Making Black Lives Matter in the Trump Era

Socialism 2017

August 15, 2017

When Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, the national debate was about whether or not the U.S. was becoming a “post-racial” society. Eight years on, we could not be further from that conversation. Now, an unabashed racist, xenophobe, and sexual predator sits in the White House. In 2014, the Movement for Black Lives, beginning in Ferguson, Missouri, and spreading throughout the country, brought with it the promise of a renewed struggle against the deep racial injustices that persist in this country—but Obama and the Democrats failed to address the racial, economic, and political status quo that this movement questioned. The support and solidarity it engendered have not gone away, but the movement seems to have gone quiet under Trump. In this new era, how can we reignite this movement—and others—to push back the right and build an alternative to the twin parties of the status quo?

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