YEAR: 2020Rebellion against Racism and Police Terror
On May 25, 2020, 44-year-old white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on 46-year-old unarmed Black man George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, sadistically murdering him. Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit 20 dollar bill at a local convenience store in the middle of a pandemic that left tens of millions of Americans out of work and deeper in poverty. Floyd was a victim of the capitalist system, one of the tens of millions who were out of employment. The deadly encounter between Floyd and Chauvin was captured on video by community members and went viral shortly thereafter.
The next day, the Black working-class communities of Minneapolis led thousands of people of all nationalities demanding justice and accountability, inspiring a nationwide protest movement against racism and police brutality that brought an estimated 35 million people into the streets in righteous and militant indignation. Solidarity protests were held in 60 countries all over the world from Palestine to Haiti to South Korea and more. As brutal force and thousands upon thousands of arrests were employed to repress the movement, the racist underbelly of so-called U.S. democracy was on display to the entire world.
The uprising took place in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the final year of Donald Trump’s first administration. It built on simmering anger from the brutal killing of Breonna Taylor in her home with a “no-knock” search warrant on March 13, 2020, and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by a group of white men on February 23, 2020.
While police terror against Black America continues, the 2020 uprising changed the political calculus of the US ruling class and thus the terrain of the class struggle, bringing millions into the streets and into political action.
