Hundreds of people gathered in Poitiers this Saturday (between 2000 and 3000) to voice their fed-up of police violence, following in particular the death of George Floyd, African-American killed by a police officer in the United States . The call to demonstrate came from around twenty political, union or association organizations. But the demonstrators represented much more widely still the popular population of our city, with many young people, racialized people but also many traditional militants. This is a historic moment for Poitiers, we have never seen so many people in an anti-racist march, against police violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLpPuWOgDciEWcGBYueVe9A
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The demonstrators stayed nearly 30 minutes in front of the town hall and then strolled through the city center, with a highlight in front of the police station, where, all and all at heart, people sang “justice for Adama!” “Or” Everyone hates the police! ” The procession then headed for the station, then the Porte de Paris, to return to the city center via the 3 districts. Once in front of the town hall, it’s “No justice, no peace!” »That the demonstrators chanted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLpPuWOgDciEWcGBYueVe9A
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It is now clear that the whole of France is experiencing a movement of massive struggle against violence, and even against racism.
In the wake of the Paris demonstration “No justice, no peace”, in memory of Adama Traore, also killed by the police but in France, thousands of people take to the streets to say that this violence must stop.
The struggles and the work carried out by journalists also shed light on racism inside the police. In Mediapart or on Arte, on the Streetpress media (https: //www.streetpress.com/sujet/159128 …), we can see to what extent racism and fascism are integrated into the French police. These are not isolated cases: racism is a systemic problem in this institution. It is urgent to disarm the police before other tragedies happen. But more generally, we must do away with capitalism and its state, which are far from neutral and which use violence to maintain a social class in power: the bourgeoisie. Because this is the bottom of the case: the police play a role of “maintaining order”, even though this order is capitalist, racist and sexist … –
So, when Alain Claeys, PS mayor of Poitiers, speaks of the need for “more republic” to overcome racism, he reinforces this old universalist idea but in reality colonialist, which denies the differences not only cultural, but also social or gender . Because of course we too tend towards the idea of a more egalitarian world, but the French republic, precisely, is a brake on this emancipation because it denies oppression. Worse, it reinforces racism, notably through its Islamophobic measures and its anti-immigrant policies. Historically, we can even add that it was the republic which colonized, which pushed for “assimilation”. Because for Republicans, universalism is the idea that “their vision” is imposed on the whole world …
For us, on the contrary, the oppressed, the exploited, must organize themselves to fight together, forge alliances, and build a common ideal (like eco-socialism). This is why we are internationalists and that we defend mutual aid between peoples. Also, the calls to the republic in the mouth of Claeys, as in those of Macron or Valls formerly, resemble above all an invitation to be silent, to silence those who are fighting, to invite them to “trust” to rotten institutions to the core. We should submit to their vision, and it is precisely this vision that oppresses.
The coming weeks must be those of more solidarity, more struggles! In memory of George Floyd and all the victims of police violence, we must continue to fight, and register in time a mass movement against violence, of course, but also for another world. Because basically, racism, like sexism, like economic and ecological crises, results from the same society, and even if the struggles are necessarily distinct because the oppressions are not the same, neither the oppressors, is the capitalist lead screed that allows their maintenance. And it is experiences of struggle, of the “intersectionality” of struggles, of causes, that common possibilities will emerge. Yes it’s possible! Only if you want and build it, all together.
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