Where do we go from here? • ¿A dónde vamos desde aquí?

Image from DRWORKSBOOK.

by Allison Paksoy

“The challenge of the 21st century is not to demand equal opportunity to participate in the machinery of oppression. Rather, it is to identify and dismantle those structures in which racism continues to be embedded. This is the only way the promise of freedom can be extended to masses of people.” –Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy

We are beyond words at this point. The murder of Breonna Taylor by police was immediately followed by the murder of George Floyd. And while the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer responsible for Floyd’s murder, was being held; we saw police murder Daunte Wright and 13-year-old Adam Toledo. People could not even have a moment of relief at Chauvin’s guilty verdict before hearing the news that police had again killed a child – 15 year old Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, since March 29, the start date of Chauvin’s trial, 64 people – approximately 3 people each day – have died at the hands of law enforcement in the United States. 

One officer being held accountable does not come close to rectifying the loss of Black and Brown lives nor does it erase the fact that the United States has a serious problem with policing. We also can’t view the institution of policing in isolation when the whole system is guilty. 

“[W.E.B.] DuBois pointed out that in order to fully abolish the oppressive conditions produced by slavery, new democratic institutions would have to be created. Because this did not occur; black people encountered new forms of slavery… economic, social and political conditions themselves will also have to be dismantled.” –Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy

The roots of white supremacy run deep and intertwine through centuries of Western European colonial rule. During the Age of Discovery/Exploration, European explorers reaching new shores brutally enslaved or exterminated Indigenous populations from Africa to the Americas and beyond. These conquerors stole and divided up native land that they then exploited for its resources. They enacted “law and order” over their conquests, demanding forced migration or assimilation, erasing Indigenous cultures, languages and ways of life in the Americas and the Caribbean.

The establishment of the first police forces in the Americas were used to seize land from and control Indigenous populations as well as protect economic systems benefiting from chattel slavery. From there, we continue to see the direct line throughout history connecting Indigenous colonization to slavery to more recent reiterations of these same measures of control - Standing Rock in the United States, the Wet’suwet’en land defenders in Canada, Jim Crow, the War on Drugs,  over policing communities of color, gentrification and housing discrimination, anti-blackness on a global level, the Prison Industrial Complex, and the list goes on. In his current docu-series titled Exterminate All the Brutes, Raoul Peck, points out that the genocide of a particular people is not unique or isolated. But rather that centuries of colonial genocide have allowed for these conditions to recreate and repeat themselves over and over again - from the Holocaust, to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Rwandan genocide and more.

These white supremacist, colonial roots are far reaching, entangling themselves through all aspects of our societies and countries, tainting our world views, and continuing to contribute to the same economic, social and political conditions that still hold the poor and disenfranchised under control and struggling for resources.

“The contemporary structures of the global economy - including neoclassical economic theory, international financial institutions, global trade agreements and the actions of transnational business corporations - are designed by people in the first world in ways that disproportionately benefit those of us living in the first world… [In the 1980s] a new set of economic policies were promoted…These policies brought business leaders and political leaders together in the task of developing a more integrated global economy… These economic approaches relied heavily on deregulation, privatization and increasing international trade… The economic power that these institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization) wielded through economic policies and critically important credit ratings of developing countries’ economies, allowed them to pressure many developing countries to conform to Western economic assumptions about growth and trade. These assumptions often discounted the particular circumstances, histories and cultural specificities of individual countries and their economies… [This neoliberal model] eviscerated social spending on education, health, unemployment and other social services in countries where many people were unable to compensate for this loss of government services. These cutbacks had significant impacts on the literacy rates, prenatal care, infant mortality and the general health and well being of many people living in or near poverty… Neoliberal globalization is a particular ideology or belief system that offers humankind one pathway for organizing economic behavior and transactions. It is not, however, the only model of how international and domestic economic arrangements could be ordered. When viewed from the perspective of the poor and disenfranchised, the morality of neoliberal globalization is far from benign. In fact, the current form of neoliberal globalization mimics the patterns of colonialism and exploitation that dominated international affairs for the last several hundred years.” –Rebecca Todd Peters, Solidarity Ethics

We cannot continue like this. As overwhelming or impossible as it may seem, we have to decolonize our own minds in order to find new, transformative ways forward. In my opinion, we also cannot keep operating within the same systems and institutions that were built and maintained through extermination, exploitation and oppression - from the global level down to the local. Reforming is not enough.

Abolish. Although not a four-letter word, it’s sometimes treated as one. But what if we were to change our perceptions to see that abolition, also framed by W.E.B. DuBois, is not about “a negative process of tearing down, but [rather] about building up, creating new.” A process of going Beyond what is to create what could be.

One starting point is to begin identifying how deep white supremacy culture runs in our own lives and institutions; in ways we might not even realize or recognize. From the link provided, how do you see one or two of these values showing up in your life or workplace? What changes need to be made in your life or community to move toward the antidotes?

BPFNA-Bautistas por la Paz works to train and equip peacemakers with resources, small grants and unique gathering experiences so you can strengthen your spirit and mind to act… precisely for a time such as this.

It is up to all of us. Where do we go from here?