The police murder of George Floyd sparked an outpouring of public protest across the nation, and members of UFPJ’s leadership, past and present, joined calls to defund the police and the military, while warning of imminent threats to our democracy.
Michael McPhearson, former National Co-coordinator of UFPJ and former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace (VFP), one of the founding national organizations of UFPJ, spoke to VFP and active military service people to exhort, “If there are any active duty or reserve national guard people listening to us, you don’t have to have our political perspective to understand that being out in the streets against your citizens or other people who are not in the military is not your place!” Listen to Michael McPhearson’s penetrating analysis of this moment and his hopes for the peace and justice movement.—you may choose to fast-forward to 34 minutes.
Rev. Graylan Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C, and an organizer for UFPJ in 2003, expressed his outrage: “It’s a window onto white supremacy and the way it continues to function, because all of this is in reaction to people who feel angry, that they had police killing after police killing, after police killing has occurred [and] this so-called president is leaning towards declaring martial law…it’s a real dangerous moment.” Listen to Rev. Hagler’s full interview.
Libero Della Piana, a former UFPJ Steering Committee member, is a senior organizer with Alliance for a Just Society working to combat racism and build the capacity of local community organizations. He highlights the intersection of racism and capitalism in causing the current outpouring of rage, “I think there is always a breaking point for oppression. We have reached the breaking point….Racism and capitalism are intertwined. They are not really two systems but one. The very emergence of capitalism in the United States is dependent on the institution of slavery and the wholesale removal and genocide of the indigenous people of the continent….The racist legacy of our past and present is a deep wound.” Read more of Libero Della Piana’s analysis.
Writing for CODEPINK, one of UFPJ’s most active national organizations, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies call for defunding the police and the military. “Americans are getting a small taste of the fire and fury that the U.S. military and its allies inflict on people overseas on a regular basis from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen and Palestine…. For African-Americans, the latest round of fury unleashed by the police and military is only an escalation of the low-grade war that America’s rulers have waged against them for centuries. From the horrors of slavery to post-Civil War convict leasing to the apartheid Jim Crow system to today’s mass criminalization…America has always treated African-Americans as a permanent underclass to be exploited and ‘kept in their place’ with as much force and brutality as that takes.” Read Benjamin and Davies’s full article.
Max Elbaum was a writer with “War Times/Tiempo de Guerras,” a founding member organization of UFPJ. Now a member of the editorial collective, Organizing Upgrade, he reports on the unprecedented protests that have taken place in more than 2000 locations in all 50 U.S. states and the U.S. occupied territories. “With young African Americans in the lead, people of all racial backgrounds and all ages have taken to the streets. The movement has already changed the national conversations and thrust the deep-rooted problem of anti-Blackness center stage. In a very short time it has won a number of concrete victories.” Read Elbaum’s appeal for respecting the leadership and goals of the Movement for Black Lives.
