Democracy Now! Amy Goodman

Trump rally inflames racism

The weight of history is bearing down on the United States, as mass protests confront the enduring impact of systemic racism. Millions have been moved to action by the police murders of African Americans George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, Tony McDade in TallahasDEMOCRACY NOW by see and Raychard Brooks in Atlanta, and by AMY GOODMAN the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia, by a retired police officer and his son.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is holding one of his signature demagogic rallies, the first since the pandemic struck, at an indoor arena in Tulsa, just as Oklahoma suffers its worst week of COVID-19 infections.

Trump refuses to wear a mask publicly, and, while the Trump campaign won’t require attendees to wear masks either, it will require them to sign a waiver releasing the campaign from liability should they contract COVID-19.

Trump’s choice of Tulsa has angered many. COVID-19 disproportionately impacts African Americans. If the rally, as expected, causes a further surge in local coronavirus cases, the Black community will potentially be the most impacted.

Furthermore, this month marks the 99th anniversary of one of the worst massacres of African Americans in U.S. history. In June 1921, a white mob burned to the ground Tulsa’s affluent, African American neighborhood of Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street, killing at least 300 residents.

Trump also scheduled his rally for June 19, known as Juneteenth, a day of commemoration and celebration in the African American community. Juneteenth is the anniversary of the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, first heard of their liberation following the Civil War.

On that day in 1865, Union Army General Gordan Granger public-ly read General Order Number Three,

“Old master didn’t tell you they was free ... No he didn’t tell. They loose on the 19th of June. That’s a wink to white supremacists – he’s Trump caved, shifting the rally to

return to the past – ‘Make America great again’ – with all of its white supremacy, with all of its misogyny. At this moment we are recognizing that we cannot be held back by such forces.” Strong currents are countering Trump as he inflames racism and encourages police violence against protesters. The Movement for Black Lives is organizing a national weekend of actions across the U.S., including protests outside the White House on Juneteenth. The Mass Poor People’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington is also taking place on June 20. Unlike Trump’s in-person, indoor rally with no possibility of social distancing and no requirement to wear masks, the Moral March’s lead organizer, Rev. Dr. William Barber, Homes and businesses burned in the black Greenwood District of Tulsa, Okla., “Stay at Home, Stay Alive, Orgaduring the 1921 race massacre in that city. More than 35 square blocks of the district – at the time the wealthiest black community in the U.S. – were destroyed in the rioting. Public domain photo. nize, Organize,” he said recently on Democracy Now!, adding: “We’re going to put a face and a voice on poverty to lay out the demands which stated, “The people of Texas are informed that ... all slaves are free.” Word spread and spontaneous celebrations ensued. It had been more than two and a half years since President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In a 1941 audio interview recorded by the Library of Congress, Laura Smalley, born into slavery in Texas, recalled learning of her freedom as a child. The plantation owner who enslaved her, Mr. Bethany, had returned from war, but didn’t tell those he enslaved that the Confederacy had lost the war, and that they were free. June 20. Tulsa attorney and author Hannibal Johnson, who wrote the definitive history of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, said of Trump’s rally on the Democracy Now! news hour: “Here in Tulsa, we are working hard ... on moving our community closer together as we approach the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. The rally has the potential to be a disruption on the road to reconciliation.” Also speaking on Democracy Now!, scholar, activist and Black liberation icon Angela Davis added: “Trump represents a sector of the population in this country that wants to from people who are impacted and the experts and religious leaders. We’ve got 16 denominations, joining a hundred organizations, but, more importantly, 45 state coordinating committees made up of poor and low-wealth people.” Mass movements are coalescing, not only to reject hatred and inequality, but to demand equality through fundamental change to our economic and social structures. No matter how much Trump tries to vilify these activists as thugs and terrorists, it is they, people in the streets, who represent the proudest traditions of protest and dissent, and the best of what this country can be.

worked there, I think now they say they worked them six months after that. Six months. And turn them • Check it. why, you know, we celebrate that day.” Trump’s appropriation of June• Use it. teeth for his rally provoked outrage. California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted, “This isn’t just • Read it. throwing them a welcome home party.” Fearing mass protests in Tulsa, DuluthReader.com encourages safe organizing.

Environmentalists have long history of civil disobedience

Dear EarthTalk: What are some ways environmentalists use civil disobedience to accomplish their goals? Robert P., Portland, OR

A: The concept of civil disobedience (defined by Merriam-Webster as the “refusal to obey laws as a way of forcing the government to do or change something”) dates back to the dawn of civil society.

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are primary examples of nonviolent resistors using civil disobedience as a tool to achieve their goals.

Of course, environmental proponents have been practicing civil disobedience in various forms for decades if not longer. After all, protoenvironment Henry David Thoreau wrote his seminal essay on the topic in 1846 after spending the night in jail for refusing to pay his back taxes. He feared the money would go toward funding the Mexican-American War, which he opposed, by a U.S. government that also happened to permit slavery, which he also opposed.

“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood,” wrote Thoreau. “This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

While not an environmental essay per se, Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” makes the case for nonviolent resistance as “a counter friction to stop the machine.”

While democracy might be the best form of government we can hope for, the dominance of the majority inevitably leads to the trampling on the hopes, dreams and rights of the minority.

In Thoreau’s mind, individuals shouldn’t let governments doing the will of an amoral or immoral majority overrule their own consciences and thus enlist them as collaborators in injustice.

Even though its focus is more general, Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” has certainly fueled many an environmental campaign in the intervening years.

Cut to the present, and we have Extinction Rebellion (XR), a two-yearold UK-born movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience “in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimize the risk of social collapse.”

Activists working on behalf of XR’s cause have been in the news lately for various “monkeywrenching” antics, such as supergluing themselves to infrastructure like roads, trains and buildings and attempting to shut down oil rigs and airports.

Last spring the group brought traffic in parts of London to a halt for hours by parking a hot pink sailboat in the middle of a busy intersection, while activists threw black paint at the London headquarters of Shell Oil and blockaded entry to the company’s corporate headquarters.

Seven-hundred XR activists were hauled off to jail as a result of the protest, which won’t likely be forgotten by any London com-muters trying to get home that day at least.

More recently, activists from the group have been generating controversy by threatening cyberattacks if the UK government bails out its ailing airline industry.

While XR may be attracting the headlines lately, they are following a civil disobedience trail blazed by many others in the last half century. Activists from groups such as 350.org, Sea Shepherd, the Hambach Forest Occupation, EarthFirst!, Greenpeace, and thousands of others engage in acts of civil disobedience every day all over the world in their pursuit of protecting wildlife, the environment and/or the health and safety of humans. EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. Send questions to: question@ earthtalk.org.