The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression condemns Donald Trump’s continuing attempt to steal the 2020 election. We call on our allies and all like-minded freedom fighters to stay vigilant in the face of this steady creep toward fascist rule.
President Trump’s attempts to retain power have set off an electoral crisis. In the week after the election, Trump has fired his Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State Pompeo told a reporter that he was preparing for a second Trump Administration, and major shakeups at the Pentagon have put Trump loyalists into top leadership positions. This Administration has made it clear that it will not concede to President-Elect Biden and is positioning itself to steal the presidency.
There can be no compromise with Trump’s Republican party on this question. The voters have spoken. There can be no blaming the demand by masses of people to defund the police for the fact that many of the 70 million who voted for Trump bought into his white supremacist anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and anti-socialist demagoguery. It would be a fatal mistake for the Democratic Party to fail to recognize that which is seen by everyone: Black Lives Matter and the rebellion in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd and so many others helped cement Biden’s win by mobilizing Black voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and all over the country.
Now is the time for the people to stand up and fight back. Over the summer, we witnessed a historic rebellion that created the conditions that led to Trump’s defeat. Thousands have taken to the streets to defend the election results, and we must remain in the streets to stop Trump from stealing the presidency. The nation that has orchestrated dozens of coups overseas in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is now witnessing Trump and his cronies’ attempting a coup here at home. We must follow the example of the people and national liberation movements like that in Bolivia who have defeated coups by mass demonstrations.
We call on our allies and all like-minded freedom fighters to stay vigilant and to be prepared to take to the streets in the coming days if Trump intensifies his coup attempt by trying to subvert the electoral college or through calling mass demonstrations by his supporters and thugs. We further call on our allies to recognize the demands of the Black liberation movement as central and inseparable from the movement to defend democracy in the United States, given the clear leadership role that Black Americans played in defeating Trump.
We call on Biden and the Democratic Party in particular to heed the demands of the Black Liberation movement that got Biden elected, including the demand to defund police departments through democratic community control of the police, which is necessary to end racism and create a true democracy — by and for the people.
The demands to end racism and create police accountability originate with the Black community; it’s incumbent on all who value democracy to support empowering Black communities to decide for themselves how to dismantle systems of oppression in favor of resources for community investment.
