July 4, 2020: NYC – more sights and sounds from July 4
This call from Refuse Fascism for protests on July 4 remains timely and urgent.
Take to the streets July 4th!
Join Refuse Fascism Protests to Demand:
This nightmare must end!
TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW!
In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!
America is at a serious crossroads. A fierce struggle for the future is underway.
Trump is campaigning on openly celebrating and defending the Confederacy, with a clear message that he will unleash the violence of the police and military and his heavily armed MAGA shock troops against the movement for Black Lives.
He threatens to toss aside the 1st Amendment to jail those who burn the flag, a constitutionally protected act of free speech.
He has demeaned mayors of Chicago and Seattle while threatening to send in federal forces “to clean up” their cities; He has doubled down on his anti-immigrant rants and program.
In the midst of skyrocketing deaths from COVID-19, the Trump/Pence regime petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare. In his press briefing, Pence urged Americans to pray but did not once urge them to wear masks. The regime has the blood of tens of thousands on its hands who have perished due to the regime’s science-hating, genocidal dismissal of a global pandemic.
This is just in the past week. Stop and think if you can live with all this. The lives of countless more here and around the world are under threat.
Trump is not losing an election. He is setting the stage to declare any outcome other than his victory illegitimate, backed up by a GOP willing to rig elections and the violence of the “police, military, and bikers for Trump.” He is declaring his determination to prevail.
The people on the side of humanity must be equally determined to prevail. On July 4th and in the coming weeks, we must take to the streets in growing numbers to demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!
Should we fail to take to the streets and stay to win, do not for a second think that the fascist agenda of the Trump/Pence regime could not become the law of the land. But the last four weeks of sustained protest has also shown us that another future is possible – if the demand that Trump and Pence must go now becomes a part of the great rising in the streets against police murder of Black people. Without going all the way to driving out the Trump/Pence regime, the movement for Black lives and every struggle for justice will be crushed.
On this July 4, take to heart the words of the escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass: If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. …Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Genocide, slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow … virulent white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia … an American empire that has invaded, subjugated, bombed and occupied countries around the world.
This is the history and these are the values of Make America Great Again, hell-bent on exacting revenge against the liberation movements of the 1960s and the hard-won social progress of the last 50 years – social progress that was only made possible by people courageously taking to the streets and refusing to back down.
The upsurge of struggle for Black Lives matters a great deal. It must continue to broaden and deepen its determination to win, which includes acting on the recognition that an avowed white supremacist regime poses a mortal threat to Black people and must be driven from power. Refuse Fascism, since its founding has recognized and struggled for the understanding that at the core of the fascist regime is white supremacy. Along with hatred of immigrants and women and differently gendered people, these form a triad of the fascist program that must be opposed.
At this crossroads, what will you do? Will you continue to accept a fascist America? Will you listen to those who urge waiting until November for an election that may not come, or working within the normal channels that are being shredded by a regime that sees this as their last chance to consolidate power. Or will you seize on our power in the streets and raise the demand Trump/Pence Out Now? Dangerous regimes all over the world are driven out by the people in sustained, non-violent protest demanding the removal of the regime and refusing to go home until their demand is met.
To stop an American fascism that threatens the very future of humanity and the planet, the necessary demand is Trump Pence Out Now! This is a moment to seize. Let us change the course of history, not for ourselves alone but for all humanity.