A relative of mine in Seattle has suggested that I blog about the death of African-American George Floyd and the resultant protests and rioting. I hesitated because I’m aware of being British and of my white privilege. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But an American friend of mine on Facebook has posted photographs of the Washington DC headquarters of the AFL-CIO – the equivalent of the Trades Union Congress in Britain – which has been trashed by rioters in the city. Now I was a professional trade union official for 24 years and, on one of my visits to the US, I visited the AFL-CIO building, so the images spoke to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the protestors probably didn’t specifically target the building. It is in downtown Washington DC and it was perhaps seen as a symbol of the establishment. But the American labour movement supports the Black Lives Matter movement. The AFL-CIO tweeted: “The Labor Movement is much more than a building. We’ve said it before and will will say it again: Black Lives Matter.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The murder of George Floyd – for that is what it was – is just the latest in a long line of incidents in which unarmed black men have been killed by white police officers. It comes on top of centuries of racial discrimination and disadvantage in the United States. It comes at a time when over 100,000 have died from the coronavirus and some 40 million have been made unemployed as a result of the pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All these problems exist in Britain and many other countries, but the United States is especially blighted by its poor coverage of health provision, its weak social security entitlements, its small trade union movement, its flawed system of political representation, and – perhaps above all just now – its appalling political leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are no quick or easy answers but, if the Democratic Party does not take back the Presidency (and hopefully the Senate) in November, black lives, Latino lives, poor lives, LGBT lives, and many other lives will not matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A relative of mine in Seattle has suggested that I blog about the death of African-American George Floyd and the resultant protests and rioting. I hesitated because I’m aware of being British and of my white privilege. But an American friend of mine on Facebook has posted photographs of the Washington DC headquarters of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25900"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25905,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25900\/revisions\/25905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}