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Today, we have a naked expression of authoritarianism, hate, bigotry, and racism in the form of Donald Trump in the White House. He reiterated his law and order agenda with the appointment of the racist Jeff Sessions as attorney general heading the Department of Justice. The Trump administration is made up of millionaires and billionaires who will advance the agenda of Wall Street and racist demagoguery with such figures like Steve Bannon. Trumps rhetoric has emboldened the forces of the ultra-right-wing conservative movement, alt-right white nationalist groups, and historic white domestic terror organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

This is a major threat to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) banner, anti-racist activists, and people of color generally, particularly black workers and youth. The Trump administration and a segment of the ruling elite would like retribution for the protests, raised consciousness, and life-affirming power of BLM over the course of the last three years. The minor reforms passed to stem the tide of law enforcement terror in our communities have been important to increase the activism, fighting spirit, and morale of the banner, but not on the level of the reforms won by the black freedom movement in the 1950s and 1960s, during post-World War II economic upswing. BLM has spread to every corner of the world with solidarity actions everywhere from sports to the workplace.

As Spencer Woodman recently reported on TheIntercept.com, In Minnesota, Washington state, Michigan, and Iowa, Republican lawmakers have proposed an array of anti-protesting laws that center on stiffening penalties for demonstrators who block traffic; in North Dakota, conservatives are even pushing a bill that would allow motorists to run over and kill protesters so long as the collision was accidental (1/23/2017). These measures are an apparent attempt to keep BLM, social justice activists, and workers on a defensive footing, criminalizing the resistance movement against Trump and Wall Streets agenda. Trumps threat to send in federal troops allegedly to quell the gut-wrenching violence in Chicago which would mean martial law is another indication of the danger this administration poses to the black population..

In the aftermath of Trumps victory, a segment of workers, youth, and people of color are not surprisingly nostalgic for the presidency and legacy of Barack Obama. Without question, his election was a historic moment, but for the mass of workers, youth, and people of color, particularly black workers and youth, little was achieved as his policies primarily benefitted and advanced the agenda of Wall Street for eight years.

But the key question we face now is how to defeat Trump. Many BLM activists will be at the forefront of the resistance to attacks on immigrants, women, and labor. We must also turn the defensive struggle against the Trump administration into an offensive struggle for jobs, health care, education, and environmental sustainability.

Last summer, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of more than 50 organizations, released a comprehensive program, A Vision For Black Lives: Policy Demands For Black Power, Freedom, and Justice (Policy.M4BL.org), taking on the issues of economic injustice, reparations, police violence, and political power. We believe that adopting a clear set of demands is a very important step forward for the BLM banner, and Socialist Alternative broadly supports the platform. There is much that is positive in this material, but there are also significant political shortcomings, particularly the failure to point the movement toward the necessity of ending capitalism, which is the bedrock of racist oppression. The key question is how this platform will be discussed, debated, and amended by the wider movement and struggle so that it becomes a driving focus for struggle by the black working class under Trump.

Despite the very radical character and broad scope of the platform, there are some striking omissions, including the lack of a call for a $15 minimum wage. The fight for $15 has mobilized tens of thousands of black and Latino workers around the country into action, and there is mass support for the demand in the black community.

Its important to point out the limits of reform under capitalism and the urgent task to fight for a democratic socialist change of society to cement any gains and concessions wrested from the ruling elite. We must also end the abusive relationship with corporate-dominated political parties of war, racism, poverty, and environmental destruction.

In this new era of Trumpism, the Movement for Black Lives must urgently organize a new conference to take into account the new political and social situation, including democratically elected delegates from around the country, to debate the platform, amend it, and adopt it. This would be a huge step forward. But this process would need to be linked to the question of building a broader organization, rooted in black working-class communities, with democratic and accountable structures.

The rise and threat of Trumps administration presents the urgent task of uniting our developing social movements like the BLM banner alongside the labor movement, social justice organizations, and socialists. We must build a powerful, united mass movement in our schools, communities, and workplaces. As the example of the long, historical black freedom movement showed, only a bold, determined, centralized, and grassroots struggle with clear demands can beat back the agenda of Wall Street and racism that is etched in the DNA of U.S. capitalism and democracy.

Black Lives MatterBLMDonald TrumpendorsementsMovement for Black LivesTrump

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Trump, Black Lives Matter, and the Struggle Against Racism - Socialist Alternative

Internetgiant Google has pledged to donate $11.5 million in grants to four organizations combating racial disparities in the criminal justice system. While Google would not phrase their grants in this way, one of the recipients has praised the Black Lives Matter movement as "civil rights demonstrations," andthe cause of these organizations does overlap with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"There is significant ambiguity regarding the extent of racial bias in policing and criminal sentencing," Justin Steele, principal with Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, told USA Today. "We must find ways to improve the accessibility and usefulness of information."

Steele presented the grants as a way to quantify the racial disparity in the justice system. It is hard to know the full extent to which black people are treated differently than white people. Even South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott has sharedpersonal stories of "frustration" with cops, in the nation's capital!

"It's hard to measure justice," Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and president at the Center for Policing Equity (which will receive $5 million, the largest share of Google's grants), told USA Today. "In policing, data are so sparse and they are not shared broadly. The National Justice Database is an attempt to measure justice so that people who want to do the right thing can use that metric to lay out a GPS for getting where we are trying to go. That's really what we see Google as being a key partner in helping us do."

Naturally, USA Today had to report that Google "is trying to address the racial imbalance in the demographics of its workforce. Hispanics make up 3% of Google employees and African Americans 2%." USA Today likely omitted the number of whites (61 percent), because the number of Asians (30 percent) is so high, according to a 2014 PBS report.

But rather than confirming a racial bias against minorities, the fact that Google, a majority-white company, is nevertheless heavily subsidizing efforts to quantifyracial disparities in criminal justice should be heartening, especially to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Indeed, one of the groups Google is supporting, the Equal Justice Initiative, explicitly endorsed Black Lives Matter in one of its videos, calling the group "civil rights demonstrators." That video linked slavery to mass incarceration, lamenting that "many states celebrate the era of slavery with Confederate holidays and by honoring the defenders and architects of slavery, while ignoring the history of enslavement."

This is a horrifying insult to all those who commemorate the Civil War and view the battle as a fight over states' rights. While I consider their viewpoints incorrect, I do not dismiss as racist those who commemoratethe Confederacy, and neither should the Equal Justice Initiative.

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Google Pledges $11.5 Million to Make Sure Black Lives Matter - PJ Media

CEDAR FALLS Some say they are colorblind when it comes to issues of race.

But in the era of Black Lives Matter, Rasheed Ali Cromwell questions if anyone can truly claim they dont notice or arent influenced by the color of another persons skin. The fact that we have to say black lives matter in and of itself means that its an issue, he told the audience at the African-American Children & Families Conference Friday.

Cromwell was the keynote speaker during the day-long conference at the University of Northern Iowa. The founder and president of the The Harbor Institute, an educational consulting firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, earned a law degree from Texas Southern University. In the past, he was an attorney with the Washington law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett and Dunner and a law clerk with the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas in Houston.

Black Lives Matter is a movement that emerged during recent years in response to the deaths of a number of African-American men across the U.S., often at the hand of police officers. The increased racial tensions seen since that time strain the idea of a colorblind society, in Cromwells view.

They dont see color. Thats an interesting concept, he said. By saying I dont see color, youre saying I dont see a part of you and where youre coming from.

He believes the colorblind concept is a misunderstanding of the Martin Luther King Jr. quote expressing hope that black people like the civil rights leaders then-young children would someday not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Its about what you relate to what you see, said Cromwell, rather than not noticing skin color. Everyone has their own prejudices. Whats most important is how people deal with them, he added.

After slavery ended in the U.S., racism was institutionalized through segregationist policies that were reinforced by the courts, in some cases until the 1950s and 60s. Cromwell showed some examples of how that bias has been reflected in media and advertising during the past century. Those included a montage of clips from D.W. Griffiths racist 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Nation and various offensive depictions of black people in product advertising through the decades.

For Cromwell, that all points back to the need for the movement around Black Lives Matter. Its an issue because for so long American society said they dont, he contended.

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Speaker: 'Colorblind' ideal inadequate in Black Lives Matter era - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Nothing is off-limits forLeslie Jonesstand-up routine.

If I see another 45-year-old white woman from Williamsburg saying black lives matter, Im going to punch you in the mouth, the Saturday Night Live starsaid during her recent four-night stint at New York comedy club, Carolines on Broadway. Stop doing that.

Not one black woman out there, she said of the marches. Black woman at home watching Housewives of Atlanta.

In August,nude photos of Jones were leaked on her personal website. She laughed off the hacking scandal during her routine, explaining that although it was hard to explain to her relatives, shed been trying to send out pics of herself in her birthday suit.

You really just helped a sister out. Thank you for the distribution, she said.

Currently single, the Ghostbusters actressalso blames the president on the lack of love in her life.

I want to be in love, she said. I want to do that, but its 2017, and we got a pig in office. The world is about to end.

Click here to read more in the New York Post.

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Leslie Jones makes fun of white women supporting Black Lives ... - Fox News

Delaware County Community College this week hosted, Law, Order and the Black Lives Matter Movement,a symposium that explored issues surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, such as police brutality, white privilege, stereotypes, the militarization of some municipal police forces, justifiable use of force, police officer safety and more.

The symposium, which took place at the schools Marple campus in Media, was moderated by KYW Newsradio reporter Cherri Gregg and featured panelists John Whelan, Delaware County district attorney; Reggie Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania; Ramona Palmerio-Roberts, associate professor, psychology, Neumann University; and Jennifer Wyse, assistant professor of sociology, Widener University.

About 100 students, faculty, administrators, staff and guests attended the event, sponsored by the colleges Black and Latino Male Empowerment Initiative, a group led by faculty, administrators and staff that seeks to enhance and improve diversity at the College through insightful programs, mentoring and other activities, according to a news release.

Gregg, who also is an attorney, utilized several short video clips of fatal and near-fatal incidents involving confrontations between police and citizens, both white and Black, to help explore the issues.

The panel examined issues of justice, equality, equity, and the impact of police body cameras, cell phone video, social media and the internet on community-police relations.

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Delco college talks 'law, order, Black Lives Matter movement' - The Philadelphia Tribune