here in seattle we were told by president obama that we have the model of policing that we need to actually use to spread around the country and our chief of police here in seattle was flown out to the state of the union address to sit in close proximity and then go to a party afterwards with the president and be congratulated for transforming the seattle police department and she came in from boston then the seattle police department was under federal consent decree by the department of justice because one out of every four arrests in our city was shown to be a violation of that person's constitutional rights and with an excessive use of force and especially against black people and people of color in the city so she came in as the great liberal reformer who's going to clean this all up and was celebrated for her track record that includes me getting pepper sprayed in the face on martin luther king day for the crime of coordinating a ride to my son's birthday party and then the chief directly intervening in my case to downgrade the punishment of the officer who sprayed me in the face from a want from the amazing punishment of a one day suspension without pay two to an oral reprimand right so i don't know if you have much to talk about and the city but we'll we'll see if we can find some stories of race and racism to discuss this evening but i'm i'm really thrilled to bring kanga here because she has been a long time friend and comrade and i've learned an incredible amount theoretically historically about how to engage in the struggle for black liberation from from her it works that were previously read you know publishing with the guardian the black agenda report the international socialist review al jazeera america and now i'm just if you haven't read the book yet you have to get it and get assigned before the end of the evening just took my understanding to it to a whole different level of the project we so urgently need to engage in right here definitely in this country definitely in the city where che taylor was just shot down and quote unquote executed as the president of the people at it by seattle police recently right so i think that  there is one paragraph in this book the i want to read to you all before i bring her up to summarize i think the importance of what we can get from this talk and from engaging in deeper conversations about the conclusions of this book and kanga writes the struggle for black liberation requires going beyond standard narratives that black people have come a long way but we have a long way to go which of course says nothing about where it is that we actually need to get to it requires understanding the origins and the nature of black oppression and racism more generally more importantly it requires a strategy some sense of how we get from the current situation to the future perhaps at its most basic level black liberation implies a world where black people can live in peace without the constant threat of social economic and political walls of a society that places almost no value on the vast majority of black lives it would mean living in a world where black labs matter and i think that that's really  what i've gotten from this book is not just the theoretical understanding for why i'm facing the oppression that i face and that we see in our schools and on our streets day in and day out but but also a plan of action for how we can collectively confront these institutions and tear them down and i want to welcome kanga to share those lessons with us thank you so much thanks everyone for coming out tonight and thanks to the bookstore and people who put this together i appreciate it  december of twenty fourteen if i could write the book and i said no a couple of times and then i decided that i wanted to really write the book that i wanted to read  about what was happening and i didn't really you know i couldn't find something that was not just a kind of blow by blow account of black lives matter but really  put this into some historical perspective and really raised the larger kind of political questions that i was looking for and then there were there was a more immediate question that i had which was if people will recall at the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight when barack obama was running for president the least in the mainstream media there was a bizarre discussion about whether or not the u s was entering into a post racial period in fact in december of two thousand and eight forbes magazine actually ran and editorial that was headlined on the magazine that said quote racism in america is over a month after obama had been elected  and you know so one of the questions i wanted to at to answer or to figure out was how do we go from two thousand and eight and you know the public querrey as to whether or not racism in america could be on its deathbed to the eruption first and ferguson aug ninth two thousand and fourteen into a full blown movement called black labs matter and so how do we understand those two things and that question is really what drove me to write the book and so really with this talk i'm trying to go over some of the black youth so forbes runs this headline and i think while most african americans did not accept that the country was moving beyond race i think among almost all americans there was widespread optimism that obama's victory indicated that the country was shedding its long history of racial injustice how ironic been that over the last nineteen months presidency we have witnessed the birth of a black social movement and the revival of radical black politics the movement is known by its most popular slogan black lives matter it's diffuse angry and his are merged in response to the continued plague of police murder corruption and violence throughout black america black lives matter is not incidental to the obama presidency but in many ways it is a product of it what do we make of the emergence of this movement during the ascendance of the nation's first black president certainly the election of a black president in a country founded on the genocide of its native population and whose wealth was accumulated off of the enslaved labor of africans was significant but eight years after the historic election of barack obama very little has changed in the daily reality of most black people black unemployment is still almost twice the national average despite constant talk of an economic recovery forty percent of black children continue to live in poverty fifty five percent of all black workers make under fifteen dollars an hour but even more than the quotidian struggles to negotiate and manage poverty and economic inequality every day are the more dramatic examples of how black men women and children continue to suffer the humiliating indignities of racism and injustice whether it is a white chicago police officer shooting sixteen bullets into the prone and fetal body of a black teenager as he l huddled on the street or whether is the poisoning of the water in flint michigan because the governor of the state assumed he could get away with it because the majority of the residents are poor and black the persistence of these conditions eight years into the obama administration fifty one years after the passage of the voting rights act one hundred fifty one years after the end of the civil war in one hundred fifty years since the passage of the nation's very first civil rights act that declared in eight hundred sixty six quote citizens of every race and color without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude shall have the same right in every state and territory in the united states to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as it is enjoyed by white citizens one hundred fifty years after that declaration it in evidently raises the question of what is wrong with the united states and why are the vast majority of black people treated as if they have no rights this country is bound to recognize or respect the black lives matter movement is a powerful intervention that is not only confronting the scourge of police terrorism but it is also demanding that we consider what it would mean for black people to actually be free in this country but on the eve of obama's first inauguration optimism was the prevailing mood sixty nine percent of african americans said the king's dream had been fulfilled there were high expectations from black people that there would be a break with the politics of the past and that actual change was on the way obama's candidacy for president in two thousand and seven did not begin with such high expectations black voters actually put their chips on hillary clinton as a sure bet obama then transformed his candidacy from the usual affair into something that he and his supporters would describe as a social movement obama tapped into the anger and exhaustion of ordinary americans who were fed up with what seemed like endless war in the middle east in afghanistan the complete incompetence of the federal government in reaction to hurricane katrina in new orleans and the overall cynical nature of american politics recall how the soaring rhetoric of candidate obama broke decisively with the status quo in american politics obama declared that we ordinary people were quote the change that we had been waiting for recall his impassioned pleas of yes we can but for black voters in particular obama's campaign represented the optimism of new beginnings the belief that perhaps finally this country not only because he was black but also because of what the bush administration had represented from the theft of the election in florida in two thousand based on the disenfranchisement of black voters to once again the collective shrug of the government in response to hurricane katrina black voters turned out for obama like never before young black voters produced the highest proportional voter turnout in the nation's history for the first time a higher percentage of eligible black voters supplanted the white electorate but almost as quickly as obama became president so too did the disillusionment with his limitations it was not all at once but there were three significant markers for african americans that pointed to continuity with the past not the change that had been promised the first factor was obama's benign response to the economic crisis in black communities by the end of two thousand and eight the american economy was in freefall african americans would bear the brunt of the great recession an economic crisis that ensued by the end more than two hundred forty thousand black homeowners had lost their homes by the fall of two thousand and nine black unemployment has reached a high of fifteen percent fueled by cuts to federal and state government jobs that had always been a bedrock for black employment wal mart became the largest employer of black americans supplanting the historic role of work in the united states postal service the network the net worth of black families fell to eleven thousand dollars compared to one hundred forty one thousand dollars for whites an alarming forty percent of black families had zero or negative wealth it appeared that a black president was right on time who better to understand how racial discrimination and inequality would create an even access to programs intended to accelerate the economic recovery and thus particular or even yes special provisions would have to be made to pull african americans out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression but obama preached that there was nothing in particular he could do for the growing numbers of black poor the black unemployed or black homeowners instead he insisted that quote a rising tide would lift all boats the second factor contributing to black disillusionment with the black president was how he characterized black poverty obama was reluctant to offer assistance to african americans but he did not show nearly the same reticence when it came to invoking the stale yet highly effective stereotypes of blacks as somehow being responsible for their own condition it was stunning the entire western world was blaming wall street for its reckless practices for almost crashing the entire global economy in this country that expression came through the occupy movement that organized opposition to the growing gap between the rich and poor or is the movement said between the one percent versus the ninety nine percent while it was often described as a white movement polls found that forty five percent of americans expressed a positive view of occupy and an additional thirty five percent said the movement was good for the american political system and yet even as the structural inequality of capitalism was exposed barack obama scolded black parents for feeding their kids cold fried chicken for watching television instead of reading books and indeed lectured black america that there were quote no excuses for any predicament the black people might find themselves in without question some if not many black people agreed with the criticism of the black poor and working class it fit the commonsense of the last forty years that african americans are to blame for conditions that exist in black communities the black people lack morality personal responsibility and in general the personal character to overcome the hardships that everyone must endure to be successful or so we are told it is an argument that has been reinforced at every level of government in the mass media and in our popular culture and yet for others it was an argument that completely contradicted their experience black homeowners had played by the rules and were cashing in on the american dream only to be built by mortgage lenders and dirty banking practices that left them penniless and homeless black college graduate had played by the rules were still three times as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts black men with no criminal record and looking for work were as likely to be called back as white men with a criminal record looking for work discrimination in other objective factors that had nothing to do with morality or personal responsibility were the culprits behind black poverty finally the growing excesses and brutality of the american criminal justice system from violent policing to mass incarceration and beyond drew attention to how much things have remained the same the moments  had to affirm black concerns with what people were referring to as a criminal injustice system were ignored for example in september two thousand and eleven and international campaign was underway to save the life of wrongfully convicted black death row inmate troy davis everyone from the pope to the european union to the governments of france and germany and even the former director of george bush's f campaign to save davis life the night that davis was to be executed hundreds of black college students across washington d c marched and rallied at the supreme court and at the white house hoping to lure obama out of the white house to intervene in some way or another to save davis life but obama did nothing he never even made a statement instead opting to send his spokesperson out to the press to insist that this was a quote states rights issue for many this had been the exact reason he had been elected but instead it was more of the same finally the murder of trayvon martin and the subsequent acqu george zimmerman marked a clear rupture for some with the obama administration as the slow trickle of facts concerning the death of martin began to come to light it was clear that he had been the victim of an extra legal killing meanwhile florida officials coddled and protected george zimmerman from arrest with the spirit of militant protest having been aroused the previous fall by the troy davis demonstrations and the explosion of the occupy wall street movement marches demonstration sit ins and occupations had been validated and were employed in the campaign to bring george zimmerman to justice black and white activist who had been involved in occupy connected with new people drawn into the streets by the horror of the murder of trayvon martin as a protest swelled obama was finally forced to speak publicly but in doing so he only spoke personally saying that if he had a son he might look like trayvon consider poignant by the media it felt to articulate resonate with growing black anger against police misconduct in florida and the refusal of our officials to arrest martin's killer eventually george zimmerman would be arrested tried and ultimately acquitted as trayvon martin was transformed from a seventeen year old victim walking home to his father's house to a marijuana smoking oversized thug who was the aggressor when the verdict was announced obama implored the public to respect the jury's decision claiming quote we are a nation of laws what did this mean when the martin case so clearly demonstrated that we are a nation with two sets of laws one for black people and one for everyone else everyone understood that if the tables had been turned if martin had been violently set upon if martin had violently set upon and shot and killed zimmerman he would have been arrested and immediately convicted the raised expectations of black people with the obama presidency had been dashed over and over and over again in the aftermath of the zimmerman verdict alicia garza a labor organizer in the bay area created the hashtag black labs matter it's declarative simplicity articulated the anger of a generation and the pieces of a movement begin to take shape not just with the development of the black lives matter network and organization but this was a time for the development of new organizations like the dream defenders in florida and the black youth project out of chicago in addition to local grassroots coalitions that came together to challenge police brutality in their own what was clear was that the black president and an unprecedented number of black elected officials could not even perform the most basic task of keeping black children safe from racist agents of the state the young people would have to do it themselves why the issue of police brutality police violence against black people is not new in one nine hundred fifty one a multi racial contingent of activists in the civil rights congress raised the slogan we charge genocide to characterize the depth and consequences of police murder and the silent complicity of the state the preamble of their petition read in part quote again this is one nine hundred fifty one there was a time when race is violence had its center in the south once most of the violence against negroes occurred in the countryside but that was before the negro immigrations of the one nine hundred twenty s and thirty's now there is not a great american city from new york to cleveland or detroit from washington the nation's capital to chicago from memphis to atlanta or birmingham from new orleans to los angeles that is not disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent negroes it is no longer a sectional phenomenon once the classic method of lynching was the rope now it is the policeman's bullet to many an american the police are the government certainly its most visible representative we submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of negroes has become police policy in the united states and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy today there was no shortage of issues the black people in this country could mobilize around but police brutality remains the catalyst for black protests because it is the clearest example of the compromise citizenship of black people when the police can approach to search you arrest you and even kill you with impunity it means that you don't have first class citizenship you have second class citizenship and this second class citizenship and comes into sharp conflict with what the united states says about itself and man is what drives the radicalization of young black people and others who know it to be true in other words we as a nation are always told that this is the greatest country on earth we believe in american exceptionalism and the promises of unfettered opportunity for anyone willing to work for it we believe in the american dream just a few weeks ago when obama traveled to cuba he gave a speech to the cuban to the cuban public among many things he said quote i believe that every person should be equal under the law every child deserves the dignity that comes with education and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads american democracy has given our people the opportunity to pursue their dreams and enjoy a high standard of living i mean there's third as an aside there's something insidious about the american president lecturing cubans about education and health care who want the most educated population on the planet and yet so that this that's an aside but really the notion of american democracy what on earth do these words mean to the family of tamir rice the twelve year old boy who was shot and killed by police within one point six seconds of their arrival on the scene what does it mean when the cops who killed him face no charges for doing so what does it mean to ayana jones a seven year old girl who was sleeping on her grandmother's couch when the police raided the house in a botched raid in the wrong house and killed her what does it mean that those officers face no charges far from a democracy where everyone  pursue their dreams the movement his expose what the vast majority of black people in america know to be true that in inner cities across this country there exists a police state where the police are governed by a completely different set of rules where they can kill often with impunity where they are empowered to do what they want when they want all with the intention of maintaining discipline and control over the country's black population don't take my word for it a commission created by chicago mayor rahm emanuel in the wake of the killing of seventeen year old look kwan mcdonald just released its report last week and found among many things quote that outrage regarding mcdonald's death exposed deep and longstanding fault lines between black and latino communities on the one hand in the police on the other arising from police shootings to be sure but also about daily pervasive transgressions that prevent people from all ages races ethnicities and gender across from having basic freedom of movement in their own neighborhoods stopped without justification verbal e in physically abused and in some instances arrested and detained without counsel chicago police department's own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color this is from an official commission report a commission that activists in chicago protested because they were all handpicked people but i run a manual so this is what rahm emanuel's hand picked people are saying about the police in chicago but if you think that's an exaggeration then consider this since january of two thousand and fifteen american police have killed one thousand four hundred and five people according to the standings study conducted by the bureau of justice statistics on police homicide in the years two thousand and three to two thousand and nine and two thousand and eleven american police killed seven thousand four hundred twenty seven people that is an average of nine hundred twenty eight people a year if we include the last four years american police will have been responsible for killing more than eleven thousand people in two thousand and fifteen when the guardian newspaper began to keep track of police killings they found that young black men aged fifteen to thirty four were nine times more likely than other americans to be killed by police consider the twenty two american soldiers were killed in afghanistan last year or that twenty five people were killed by law enforcement and canada in two thousand and fifteen in the last twenty four years police in england have killed fifty five people by january thirty first of this year american police had already killed eighty nine people in germany the police killed no one in twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen  china with a population four and a half times the size of the united states the police killed twelve people in two thousand and fourteen and this is only a fraction of what we know there are eighteen thousand police departments in the united states and only one thousand of them bother to report to the federal government how many people they kill each year the new york city police department for example has not reported on how many civilians it is killed since two thousand seven the state of florida does not report at all so we have a very limited view of the extent of police homicide in the united states and because of the lack of consistent tracking we have no idea what proportion of these deaths are incurred by african americans or latinos the police in the us have always been an oppressive institution but these practices have become worse and more widespread recently the increasing brutality of police have coincided with the attrition of the already weak american welfare state the political establishment and its republican and democratic clothing is gutting our cities and neighborhoods when you close public schools and mental health clinics cut funding for public hospitals and public libraries when you cut welfare housing assistance and food stamps in the midst of a job crisis when there are already fifty million poor people in the united states you are creating the conditions for crime policing has become the public policy of last resort intended to contain crime to certain neighborhoods not actually stop it for example the section of baltimore where young freddy gray was picked up who's this today and yesterday today yesterday was the one year anniversary of the beginning of the baltimore uprising that went from april twenty seventh to the end of the month so we're still in the midst of that anniversary the neighborhood where freddy gray lived where he was picked up by police was included twenty one percent of the people in that neighborhood were unemployed twenty five percent of the buildings were abandoned in a state of disrepair the life expectancy in freddie gray's neighborhood was six years shorter than the rest of baltimore fifty five percent of families in freddie gray's neighborhood lived on less than twenty five thousand dollars a year three weeks before freddie garrett gray was killed police were instructed to increase their presence and arrest on corner on the corner that freddy gray was picked up on the police have been inserted where the rest of the state has failed its citizens this key role played by the police and governing our cities today means that they are a protected class governed by a separate set of rules and regulations this is why mayors and city council people regularly turn a blind eye to brutal policing brutal policing is simply the cost of doing business and the cost of doing business is quite high in the city of chicago alone they have spent five hundred million dollars over the last ten years to settle or pay out lawsuits against the city for police brutality and wrongful death suits the new york city police department has averaged one hundred million dollar settlements for police brutality and wrongful death lawsuit a year over the last decade adding up to a billion dollars the ten cities with the largest police departments paid out two hundred forty eight million dollars last year and settlements in court judgments in police misconduct cases up forty eight percent from two thousand and ten in the last five years those same ten cities have paid out one point two billion dollars any other public institution that incurred that kind of expense or deficit would have its budgets cut its services shrink or the institution itself would be shut down when the chicago board of education claimed it was running a billion dollar deficit they simply closed fifty two schools and never looked back in in two thousand and thirteen also in philadelphia the same thing they close thirty schools and never looked back policing in the united states has nothing to do with crime it's activists and radicals we don't need to denying that crime is an issue in the lives of working class and poor people but crime is a product of poverty and economic inequality we live in the richest country in the history of the world if the united states wanted to end poverty in this country tomorrow it could since the economy crashed in two thousand and eight the federal government has spent close to four trillion dollars in a bailout of the nation's financial sector the federal government spent four hundred thirty eight billion dollars alone to bail out citibank four trillion dollars if you can even wrap your mind around that figure could transform every school provide health care for all provide housing for millions in food  insecurity and up and the kind of economic inequality that produces crime in the first place but while it was determined that the banks were too big to fail or public hospitals schools and other vital institutions were and continue to be too insignificant to save instead of money and resources being dedicated to eradicating poverty we get policing and more  policing the logic of policing only begets more policing as elected officials create political value out of rising arrest rates and falling crime rates by aggressively tracking police statistics and turning them into campaign police are rewarded not for stopping crime but from making arrests and finally as revenue streams have tightened in american cities as no american politician will take responsibility for raising taxes law enforcement has become a de facto way from municipalities to raise funds on the backs of the politically weak and vulnerable in city after city there is a reliance on red light cameras and tickets fines and fees that have turned into a municipal lifeline new york city profits from ten million dollars a week in parking tickets the city made over the city also made almost a billion dollars a year in court and it ministre to funds these of course create incentives for the police to target people and entire neighborhoods as sources of income for the city and encounters with the police of this nature of course then envelop people into the criminal justice system thereby making it even harder to get a job or maintain any level of economic stability in other words ending police terrorism also means recognizing it is the logical outcome of a brutal society that willfully tons of blind to inequality and injustice it means that police brutality and murder are not the products of bad police but they are built into a system that actually has no solution to racism poverty and inequality instead the system and its representatives manage the products of inequality it is for this reason that there is never been a golden age of policing that any of us can point to as a place to get back to when the police were not violent and abusive such a period does not exist the need to build a larger movement to address these issues is not something to suggest so that we can all get along and feel good about ourselves it is really about coming to terms with the enormity of our task when we talk about ending police violence in our communities for as much as the movement has accomplished in exposing the issue of police violence we are also right now witnessing the resilience and determination of the establishment to protect criminal killer cops there are several examples of there are several examples of this whether it is the killer of a girlie a black  man in a housing project in new york city a cop shot his gun into a dark hallway up killing this young man and the cop gets five years of probation we can see it in the refusal tamir rices killers we can see it in the decision to grant bail to michael slater who is the cop in south carolina who shot down walter scott eight times in the back as walter scott ran away the judge in the bail hearing said of michael slater that he felt sorry for him and the fact that he had been separated from his family so long and decided to give him bail we can see it when ra emanuel appoints a new police superintendent who in his first public utterances said that in his twenty seven years as a cop in chicago he has never seen an incident of police misconduct we can see the resilience in a recent decision of a san francisco judge to reinstate police officers who exchanged text that declared among other things white power all niggers must hang in nigger should be spayed we can see it in the decision to grant bail to jason van dyke who killed look juan macdonald we can see it in the fact that the fourteen months have passed since  obama's commission produced a report on improving police policing in the twenty first century that report included fifty nine recommendations not a single one of which has been implemented since that report came out in march of twenty fifteen we can see it in the simple fact that in this year the police have killed approximately eighty people a month since january the political establishment led by barack obama is always willing to throw together a commission invite activist to a round table and unveil countless studies with the objective of creating the illusion that something is happening and they try and convince the rest of us that something is progress but what we are confronting is a systemic rooted and institutional feature of racism and oppression in this society and it requires a political strategy that can challenge it but also look behind it and just and i'm just going to read a couple of pages out of this about the movement and response  that in terms of the political strategy this is from chapter six black labs matter a movement not a moment protest can expose these conditions that i've described and their relationship to the policing state protests can draw in larger numbers of people protest can't compel public figures to speak against those conditions protests protests can do many things protest alone cannot and police abuse and the conditions that are used to justify the movement against police brutality even in its current state has transformed how americans see and understand policing in the united states over the course of a year black people from coast to coast have led a struggle to expose the existence of an urban police state with suburban outpost it is shown that the country and the country the depths of the lie that we live in a colorblind post racial society eighty three percent of americans say racism quote still poses a problem that is up seven percent from two thousand fourteen sixty one percent of whites and eighty two percent of blacks agree quote that there is a need for a conversation about race in american life in less than a year the number of white americans who view police killings as isolated incidents has fallen from fifty eight percent to thirty six percent at the same time in july twenty fifteen alone the police killed an astonishing one hundred eighteen people the most that had been killed over the entire year by the minute by mid august they had killed another fifty four on the anniversary of mike brown steph ferguson police shot and critically injured another black teenager in new york city where there was a vibrant police brutality movement for years before the most recent iteration of the national movement liberal mayor bill de blasio has pledged to hire a thousand new police this was surprising since the blasio wrote the success of the campaign to end stop and frisk into office in two thousand and thirteen this is only one example of how resilient the police are as an institution but it also shows elected officials reluctance to discipline them the movement is confronted with many challenges but it also has shown that it will not go away easily this has less to do with the organizing genius of organizers than with the deep anger among ordinary blacks who have been beaten imprisoned humiliated and abused all the while being blamed for their own victimization the power of ordinary black people to push the movement forward was seen in june twenty fifteen in mechanic texas when the police attacked several black children at a swimming party including fifteen year old to gera to jerry a becton who was manhandled by one police officer in particular in years past a story like this would have resulted in little if any attention instead a few days later hundreds of black and white protesters filled the streets of the small suburban development where the children had been set upon chanting we want to go swimming and no swimming no driving it must have been a powerful saying to everyone who witnessed it and for different reasons many of the suburban white neighbors who had been supported the police were outraged but could do nothing about it they had been rendered powerless the police were undoubtedly intimidated by the action so much so that the most aggressive cop who had been who had attacked becton was forced to resign days later most importantly though for the black children who had been abused and threatened at gunpoint by the police and for their parents to have hundreds of people show up to insist that their lives mattered must have repaired some part of the damage for them to see the solidarity of hundreds of white people must have given them some hope that not all whites are racist and that someone even stand up and fight alongside them the demonstration may have also validated their right to resist and stand up to racism and racist violence and affirm that they were right to protest from the very beginning the black labs matter movement created a feeling of pride and combativeness among a generation this country has tried to kill in prison and simply disappear the power of protest has been validated for it to become even more effective to affect the policing state and to withstand opposition and attempts to infiltrate subvert and undermine what has been built there must be more organization in coordination in the move from protest to movement thank start to truly be able to answer this question we have to look at what is capitalism what you're really talking about here the google definition will tell you it's an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state allowing everyone to make profit seems like a great thing and it was in contrast to the monarchy system before it unfortunately due to perhaps human tendencies and hierarchy we land in the spot we are in today but can you say we saw it coming this is them of capitalism has always exploited people the first wall street markets sold slaves both african and native american some of capitalism depends on cheap labor this is why when we outlaw slavery we get child labor and when we outlaw that we get labor exported to the global south where you can exploit people in sweat shop factories and who's this affect most people of color women children malcolm x said you can't have capitalism without racism i would add you can't have capitalism without sexism able isn't all there is an oppressed people take for example the wage gap everyone says a woman makes seventy seven cents to a man's dollar but that's a white woman and black woman makes sixty seven cents and a latino woman make believe it's like fifty nine cents to white man's dollar but do you think we fixed that we would actually solve any quality you know they would find someone else to oppress that's always how it has been that's always how it will be climate change is only a symptom of capitalism and it's not just climate change system ecosystems are collapsing animals are going extinct entire rain forests are being cut dry as long as we measure progress by g d p that's gross domestic product when products come from a resource on a finite planet we're screwed it's entirely illogical to define our progress through consumption and growth you cannot have this and consider anything about our system sustainable take take for example tuna fish is worth half a million dollars and then you take someone like for example my uncle a fisherman from ethiopia and he was telling me how much he wants to find the elephant tuna and how he wants to be the last one on earth to kill to kill longer increase your g d p and you keep it at a steady state however that's taking into account that's forgetting about our american first privilege the average american use uses four and a half erse that means if everyone was to live like us we would need four and a half to sustain ourselves however we don't have four and a half hours which means the way that we live is actually preventing other people from eating and having water so when we talk about a steady of commerce got so scared that they sued the city all the way to the u s district court say they buy that there on the first and they said this is fundamentally a challenge to the free market that's a good  between the rich and poor was so huge that the rich decided that they would start creating things like food banks and started giving food to the poor not because they cared about them but because they're afraid of revolution you want to we're asking the wrong question we ask in capitalism be fixed and i think it's really easy for white men to say to just say oh you know we're going to reform it because white men have the most to lose since they have the most power and privilege right now but that's why you see women and people of color especially women of color like no we're going to reform our way out of this this is our opportunity and i think that instead of looking at as a problem we should look at this as an opportunity here we have an opportunity for the system that is no longer working to create something we've never seen before and a lot of people think that if you are an anti capitalist that makes you a socialist and i don't have anything against socialism but i'm not a socialist in fact we've seen socialism work before we've seen communism work before and we seem capitalism worked before ok and we see the issues that each system has so i'm not interested in any system that's been here before i think we need to completely change our framework and looking at some of these old systems and as if it's black and white it's not we can we can find entirely new systems and i think that there's a lot of things that we can take from for example socialism but then you take for example scandinavia and something that we don't talk about look at scandinavia is the city on the hill is how racist they are my father as an ethiopian refugee was actually put in jail  single system and i think that one thing that we should look to towards a new system is looked to the wisdom of the indigenous people who had a system before us that was working before we came and destroyed it i think one of the system or something in the new system i think is critical and i think a lot of people have a hard time thinking about this is i think whatever new system we have i do not think on since the sixty's it's called the rainbow gathering and there is a lot of problems with that festival but one of the good things about the rainbow gathering is the fact that in the rainbow gathering it's this huge festival that they meet in different state parks every time and there is like thousands of people and there's no money and interactions you have with strangers when there's no money being involved you it's not it's no longer transactional it's i'm actually going to get to know you because i don't have to  how much money do i have let me see what you're offering me it's it completely changes the way that you interact with people and i think there's other systems like time being king which i think is a really good alternative to money where you  time banking is essentially where you spin like a volunteer time you fix someone's house in exchange for a service of similar hours so i think that we have a lot of models that we can look towards i think that we have a lot of examples and i think that we should be pushing for something we've never seen before because we know everything else has yet to work for everyone