Report (with Video) by SRV, 7 June 2020, www.thecommunists.net

Today I visited the San Francisco chapter of the protest and march held in opposition of the extrajudicial murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the hundreds of black and brown Americans at the hands of Police Departments across the country. Organized nationwide by RefuseFascism (whom you can reach at refusefascism.org), the protest in question was attended a slight bit more by middle-aged people than the usual rabble of diverse, younger people, although there were still quite a number of people in the crowds representing the latter. As far as race went, the younger people in the crowd tended to be more diverse than the older crowd, although since it is San Francisco it was extremely diverse throughout, with many onlookers, mostly Latinx, on the streets joining momentarily with applause and a few fists in support. Personally I found this atmosphere rather refreshing in terms of the emerging class-consciousness and class-solidarity brewing in our midst.

We began our march from a local train station a couple blocks and headed over to the police station to stage a couple of speeches by local RefuseFascism activists, followed by group acts of protest (kneeling with our hands in the air, while chanting many phrases utilized by the BLM movement). Among the many things said by the megaphone-wielding voices of passion were compassionate rage-like things said, things such as “No more fascist police state!” “Trump/Pence out now!” and many permutations of the structural ills of the American state paired with the usual declaration “enough is enough” following. The most popular phrase however, rather fittingly so considering the climate, was the chanting of “Black Lives Matter,” along with loud chants of the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Towards the end I personally was able to address the crowd using the megaphone, thanks to RefuseFascism, and waxed lyrical about the US being the current mega state-apparatus behind the propagation of anti-blackness worldwide. The most striking piece of data from this event was the promotion (through pamphlet) of local political figure Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and author of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

While there wasn’t any looting or physical encounters with the police, the distaste the people felt at the structures propping this country up were extremely palpable, with a few loud whispers of revolution in the air ringing through the megaphone.