Following is the statement by AFL-CIO President Richarch Trumka:

We will never stop fighting for racial and economic justice.

My heart is heavy at the events of the past few days. I watched the video of George Floyd pleading for his life under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. No person of conscience can hear Floyd’s cries for help and not understand that something is deeply wrong in America.

What happened to George Floyd, what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, what happened to far too many unarmed people of color has happened for centuries. The difference is now we have cell phones. It’s there for all of us to see. And we can’t turn our heads and look away because we feel uncomfortable.

Racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color. This is a labor issue because it is a workplace issue. It is a community issue, and unions are the community. We must and will continue to fight for reforms in policing and to address issues of racial and economic inequality.

We categorically reject those on the fringes who are engaging in violence and destroying property. Attacks like the one on the AFL-CIO headquarters are senseless, disgraceful and only play into the hands of those who have oppressed workers of color for generations and detract from the peaceful, passionate protesters who are rightly bringing issues of racism to the forefront.

But in the end, the labor movement is not a building. We are a living collection of working people who will never stop fighting for economic, social and racial justice. We are united unequivocally against the forces of hate who seek to divide this nation for their own personal and political gain at our expense.

We will clean up the glass, sweep away the ashes and keep doing our part to bring a better day out of this hour of darkness and despair.

Today and always, the important work of the AFL-CIO continues unabated.

In Solidarity,

Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

It’s not just about Joe Biden stepping up. He should, for sure. But the leadership of the entire Democratic Party and democratic movement has to step up as well. It takes more than a village to win an election.

Call it what you will, Black anger, rage, or whatever. But be mindful of the two things. First, It fuels resistance to systemic racism which is egregiously unjust and should have been ignominiously buried long ago. Second, its material roots lie in racist exploitation, oppression, brutality, and the systematic denial of rights over centuries, notwithstanding the country’s profession at the time of its founding that all people are created equal and have a “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

That was untrue then and remains no more than an aspiration now. A bloody civil war extirpated slavery to be sure, but not racism. In fact, new structures and forms of racist oppression and exploitation arose soon after the war’s end and are present to this very day. It is this bitter and, at times, deadly reality combined with the unfulfilled proclamations of equality in high places that give rise to the righteousness anger of Black people and their supporters marching in cities across the country.

It’s not just about Biden stepping up. He should, for sure. But the leadership of the entire Democratic Party and democratic movement has to step up as well. It takes more than a village to win an election.

Martial law is easier said than done. Obstacles to such a course of action are more than you might think, including the blow back on Trump and the Republican Party if it, as is likely, broadly repudiated from many quarters of our society, not least from within state/governmental structures. It would constitute a shift from hegemonic rule, which includes an element of domination, to rule by domination exclusively, which is, if not said by its practitioners, an admission of weakness.