The cause of black Americans is that of all of us, and this is how it will succeed

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to essay by Times opinion writer Charles M. Blow, “An Insatiable Rage,” June 14, 2020:

The movement to end the violent policing of blacks can change America dramatically, to an extent that until now few would ever have dreamed possible. This possibility depends on an important truth easily gotten wrong:

It is indeed about ending the oppression of black people, centrally, but not only. It is not only about "who" suffers, but "what" is done.

This is unlike the situation in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, because segregation as law meant white people could only participate in the cause, not for themselves, but out of morality and charity. Today, we can want these changes for you and us too.

Instructive is a page from the extreme case of the struggle against fascism in Europe. It was indeed about the oppression of the Jews, but not only them.

In movements of revolutionary change, particular groups can represent universal interests.

Time to end the neoliberal police state, with all of its social control (in workplaces, schools, hospitals, even relationships and families) that work by threats and punishments, and inculpating moralisms, as the solution to every problem. Someone must be guilty, and people cannot be trusted, so we control and punish. Link, too, our entertainments to mass surveillance.

With authoritarian governance comes the smallness of mind reduced to concern about one's property and its rights. We must change all of this. We may need what a student radical once called "the long march through the institutions."