Historical photo of the time before the bronze statue of Christopher Columbus was removed by order of the Columbus City Council on July 8, 2020.  In the long shadow of the setting sun, the statue of the OG Colonizer Christopher Columbus looms over a protest of police killings of African Americans at the Columbus City Hall on June 11, 2020, by De-Escalate Ohio Now! Heartbeat Movement, Protect Our Stolen Treasures, and BLM, significantly the descendants of the survivors of the colonization of Africa and the Americas. 
Video of statue removal-10TV

he 2020 election will be decided by 3 factors: Registration Rolls, Vote by Mail, and Ballot Counting.

How effectively a national grassroots election-protection upheaval can affect them will decide the fate of the Earth.  

THE REGISTRATION ROLLS have been stripped of 16 million or more citizens mostly of youth and color, but many have been re-registered.  

Election Protection (EP) activists must fight to make voter registration as easy and fair as possible, contact and re-register the disenfranchised, confirm the registrations of those who think they’re registered but are not, and register millions of new voters, especially among those who have just marched for racial justice and police reform.

VOTE BY MAIL (VBM) has successfully provided paper ballots in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon & Hawaii. All states have always provided absentee ballots. But the virus could force 2020 VBM totals from 5% overall to 40-80%, overwhelming unprepared counties & states.  

Topple a few statues, remove some iconic names from American institutions . . . and the ghosts of the past start to escape from history, filling the present moment. It’s called awareness.

Too much awareness can feel like chaos. Not surprisingly, a lot of people would prefer to stick with the old historical narrative, the one that’s so tried and true: This is the land of the free, the home of the brave, the birthplace of democracy. God bless America! (And forget about slavery, Native American genocide, racism, packed prisons, nukes, endless war, etc.)

The question of the moment is whether this narrative is gone for good. Are we merely in the process of making some superficial adjustments or has the national soul truly torn itself open? Will we stop short — once again — of creating a society of compassionate equality? Will we eventually (as soon as possible) retreat to another narrative of American exceptionalism and . . . uh, white power? Or are we in the process of real change?

It’s maddening that the three words “Black Lives Matter” is so hard to say for some of our public officials. Those in the majority of the Ohio Assembly, where a resolution was introduced to declare racism a public health crisis earlier this month, would do our country a great service in urging their allies to learn to say it and mean it. But considering that the US Vice President won’t say it, those of us who’ve been in the streets proclaiming it shouldn’t be surprised when so few people in power are willing to use those words, let alone show up in the streets to say it with us. 

As someone who’s worked with both organized labor and justice-seeking organizations from before the first shot in this recent uprising was fired—who has participated in dozens of direct actions, petition drives, and various other campaigns that either directly or secondarily had to do with racism—I have a question. As someone who, like anyone with a shred of empathy within them, was horrified in watching any portion of the 8:46 video in which yet another police officer murdered another Black man, I have a caveat to this support.