COMPLEX participates in partner marketing programs, which means complex receives commissions on purchases made through our links to retail sites. Our editorial content is not influenced by the commissions we receive.
© 2020 Complex Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Complex.com is:
.
Share this story
It’s been just over five years since Bree Newsome ordered the nation’s news cables with the insurrectionary act of stripping the South Carolina State House of its Confederate ornaments. Despite a replacement for administration, a viral pandemic and media cycles that have accelerated as a result of unemployment and record quarantine, as Newsome himself does not hesitate to point out, the more things have been replaced, the more they remain the same. “The formula itself is the problem,” he says. “I don’t think the existing formula can give answers because it’s not broken.”
Complex spoke to the activist and organizer of coalition formation, the destruction of racist effigies embedded in American architecture and its priorities in the coming months as the country struggles to cope with one of the worst crises in recent history.
This interview is edited and condensed for clarity.
Verbal exchange about the desire to dismantle and abolish the police is still a concept for many people. They still do not perceive this concept very well, for example, how we can have a society without police forces, but everyone perceives that hiring is too high. But, of course, it crosses paths with all those other police problems, that’s what can get everyone around the table.
A primary disconnect between population and politics is one of the things that the housing crisis has made even clearer. There are millions of other people who are being deported lately, and the way these politicians are acting on this issue, you wouldn’t think they saw the same thing. I think it just shows that it’s anything that doesn’t have them – they’re fitness, they have housing, you know what I mean? They are so disconnected from the truth of the number of other people living, that I don’t think they really recognize the extent of this wealth inequality. Politicians sometimes can’t respond because they’re so disconnected from this experience.
I don’t think we can rely on mail-in voting, given that Trump’s management has done it right now.
That said, I don’t think we can rely on mail-in voting, given that Trump’s address has done so at this time. They get reports that mail is stacked in certain places, other people don’t get their mail on time; if they can already do it, then who knows what they’re going to have to do with the ballots? We will also have to recognize that the U.S. Postal Service employs many other black people. I don’t know what it looks like in your post office, however, when I move into my post office, the most common thing is for black women to run there. So it’s also an attack on employment for us.
At the same time, monuments are important, otherwise it would not be such a problem. There would be no such confrontation as to whether or not he deserves to be knocked down. There would be no other people who are fighting so vehemently to keep those Confederate monuments in their position because they mean something. It’s an ideological battle. There is an explanation as to why, especially in the total south, in front of each and every court in the county, this same monument has the Confederate soldier. It intends to send a message that even though the Confederacy has lost the war, the white force is still on the calendar in the South.
I don’t see a situation where all these disorders are resolved, we are on the other side of systemic racism and we still have monuments of the Confederacy in place. The structure of the monuments was component of the worldwide colonization procedure, component of how they indicated that we are and how to consistently send the theyArray message So that is a component of the procedure. The destruction of monuments to [Christopher] Columbus and those other colonial figures is part of the decolonization procedure.
On this Memorial Day weekend, there was Amy Cooper, and then, right after, we had George Floyd. People start protesting. What, in my opinion, was a turning point was when the first officer was still arrested. At the time, the status quo hoped: “Okay, we arrested the officer. Calm down, everybody. Come in.” That didn’t happen and it didn’t happen. People have been protesting ever since. When this kind of thing starts to happen, they start making concessions.
What happened is that they turned themselves in to Minneapolis and set himself on fire to a police station, [and] that’s what scared them.
They just changed the name of a Chicago highway to Ida B. Wells, [and] it’s powerful. You see that and you think, “Well, who’s Ida B. Wells?” If you didn’t know, you’re going to learn. It will be a reminder of this story.
You may not be able to make your component by visiting the resort’s Pull Up – Vote website, where you can verify your registration, log in to vote if you haven’t, and request a ballot.
Related stories
Look, too.
Share this story