Here's my thesis: Poor whites should be supporting the Black Lives Matter movement as if their lives depended on it.
Why do I say that?
Well a lot of people don't realize what BLM is even asking for. If they took the time to look closer they would see that the things they are most strongly advocating for are critically needed by any American who isn't born rich.
Foremost let's consider the call to defund the police.
"Defunding" is a poor word choice, but so it goes with decentralized anything. The best choices don't always become the ones that dominate, which we should all understand from being in decentralized social media.
Anyway, what it really means is demilitarizing and no longer over-funding the police. Basically it means giving poor neighborhoods the same kind of policing wealthy neighborhoods get. You don't see the police roaming around harassing people just for sitting on their front steps or leaning against a wall. Instead the police only show up when called, and they are called for real crimes, not the crime of "looking suspicious."
It means that when someone is having a mental health crisis, you call a mental health worker to intervene, not someone with a gun who is only trained for 6 months, and primarily trained to use force.
It means that when someone falls asleep in their car, you hopefully feel enough connection to your community to go out and wake them up. At the worst you maybe call a tow truck. You definitely do not call someone who sees all behavior they are called in about as criminal behavior requiring enslavement.
And there is the key word in this post: enslavement
The 13th Amendment
Amendment XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Emphasis mine.
And that is the crux of the matter.
The well intentioned 13th Amendment didn't end slavery; it expanded it.
In 2020, slavery is for any poor person, not just blacks. Would it surprise you to learn that not only does the USA have 25% of the world's prison population with only 5% of the world's overall population, but that the majority of those prisoners are poor whites!
Take a look.... 58.70%
Now of course percentage-wise, imprisonment is happening more for non-whites than for whites, because whites make up such a large percentage of the US population and policing is not equally distributed by zip code. But setting aside inequality in how the weapon of legal enslavement is being used according to race, let's pause a moment to let it really sink in just how much the weapon is getting used against Americans period.
This is not happening in other countries. This is a uniquely American problem, and I urge you to stop normalizing it. This is NOT okay. I would argue that the only reason so many whites have been silent about it is because it is seen as a "black problem" and not pertinent to them. This is one of the many ways race is used to separate people with common interests and make them fight each other instead of joining forces to fight for what benefits them all.
As is so often the case, the most vulnerable people's needs are just the tip of the spear. And it is the tip that always must lead if the rest is to follow. Are you reinforcing that tip, or undermining it's power?
Image source unknown
Anarchy and Defunding
If you are an anarchist, even if you are under the delusion that racism is not a real thing in the US, you should still be 100% supporting the efforts by BLM to defund the police. It is the step toward removing power and funding from government institutions that has the greatest traction, support and likelihood of succeeding right now.
We need to form alliances between groups who have shared aims. Even if we don't agree on everything, we must work together where we do agree.
Are you an anarchist?
Do you support "defunding" (demilitarizing and not over-funding) the police?
If not, I'd really like to hear your reasoning within the anarchist framework.
Learn more about the US prison industry
(All text and images (except the AT logo) are by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for HIVE.)