Our State of the Union

What is a revolution? By definition, it is the forcible overthrow of a government or social order, with intent for a new system to replace it. This weekend, we were able to see what a ¨revolution¨ meant to the hundreds and thousands of people that have decided to take to the streets in their respective cities. One could say that the primary actor in the violence sustained these last couple of weeks was the unjustifiable murder of George Floyd. Simply put, it´s another act of police brutality that our nation has become tired of being numb to, and decided to raise hell to react to it. Richmond saw its population take to Broad Street and break down the barriers that local businesses put up. Monument Avenue felt the momentum of protesters graffiti the Confederate monuments. A GRTC bus got set on fire, along with a cop car that may have been planted. Officers were in the streets macing peaceful protesters, and snagging them from crowd like they were picking apples at Carter Mountain on a cold September evening. This is our current state of the union.

Does revolution work? Does breaking the silence actually make real noise? I´m gonna do my best to not get too history intensive and only bring up a few examples of how revolution has been used in the past. One of the most influential, in my opinion, revolutions was the Haitian Revolution. Haiti was the first country in the Western Hemisphere and in the Caribbean region to gain its independence. And to make the story even better, it was definitively a slave revolution against their French colonizers. Touissant Louverture successful lead against his colonizers was something that Africans in this time period had never seen before. I think that fact speaks more to how potent a revolution can be. Touissant proved to not be such a great leader post-revolution, and Haiti found herself owing reparations to the French.

The Bolshevik Revolution is another one. I´m not too keen on Eastern Euro-Chinese history, so hear me out. Lenin and his team were able to dismantle the czarist rule in through a series of demonstrations and strikes. They suffered through Bloody Sunday. They endured the February Revolution by taking to the streets and ignoring the calls by officials to subdue themselves to the Soviet Union´s imperial rule. Eventually, Czar Nicholas left the throne, and hurdled the Soviet Union into a new form of rule.

Is that not what revolution is about? Breaking the norms in an effort to achieve a new form of governance? I cannot speak on contemporary Russia or Haiti and give an accurate or fair description of what has happened since their dated revolutions, but simply put, their violent actions were able to communicate a message that they could not get across prior being peaceful. A controversial quote from Mao states that ¨Political powers grows of out the barrel of a gun¨. As the days have gone by and the protests have warranted lethal force from authorities, this quote seems less and less to be something that is specific to communists or hard left leaning political ideologies. It makes sense that police brutality against majority POC is part of a political ideology that aims to suppress those who don´t look like those in the highest positions in the world. Their weapon of choice is double barreled in that it can take one´s life away and simultaneously put more power into the most powerful´s hands. Just some food for thought during these trying times.

In other news, I´m about to order Thai food.