It’s day who knows! and many corporations in America seem antsy to reopen and go back to business as usual, but this pandemic isn’t over!

Cases are on the rise in some states -- including Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and California. 

These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before tens of thousands of people all across the country ventured out to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. But contrary to what Right-wing media is saying, protestors were wearing masks and therefore, any spikes that are likely to occur are not product of the protests.

What could've been a big factor is the excessive militarized police response -- crowding protesters together, blasting them with lung and eye irritants, and cramming them into paddy wagons and jails.

But not even all those risks prevent hundreds of thousands across the nation -- and around the planet -- to show their anger for the lost life of George Floyd and their solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. 

We, at Move to Amend, also stand 100% in solidarity with this Black-led, multi-racial uprising -- and we give full-throated support to their demands.

The main demand is abolishing or defunding the police.

But What does #DefundThePolice mean?

The slogan has launched a huge debate into what it means to "defund the police." While some people certainly do ultimately want abolition, the word defund does not imply either "all" or "some." We can understand the concept of defunding by looking at the success of the movements to defund our commons over the past few decades -- schools, healthcare, the safety net.

We can understand the clarity of the call to reduce funding by the quick responses from cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Boston to start reallocating police funding back into communities. We can also see the example of Minneapolis choosing to dismantle their police department and replacing it with something new.

This movement is for community sovereignty and control over resources. This movement is against an oppressive, unaccountable white supremacist system that protects property above people and communities.

Why does Move to Amend support this uprising?

The "Move" in our name denotes our deep commitment to movement-building and solidarity as a strategy for deep and lasting systemic change. Fighting against corporate rule means we are fighting for democracy, and there is nothing more democratic than a massive uprising pushing back against oppressive institutions. We deeply respect the power of this movement, for it has accomplished more in two weeks than most of us have seen in our lifetime. Respecting the power means respecting the demands, and doing the work to push back against the censorship and watering-down of the messaging. Believing in community sovereignty means we believe communities when they state what they need. 

We also know that policing is an extension of corporate rule. The origins of police go back to the "Runaway Slave Patrol" -- since Black people were considered "property" of the owning class, their job was to protect that "property."

With the abolition of chattel slavery, we now see this relationship in the form of criminalizing and warehousing humans -- disproportionately Black and Brown -- for cheap labor, and corporate support of heavy policing and funding "tough on crime" politicians. 

Beyond the property rights vs. human rights lens, this is also a money in politics issue.

Police unions have an incredible amount of political power. This is why you'll find many of the District Attorneys, mayors and city council members who refuse to prosecute or condemn egregious abuses of power by police were very likely propelled into power by large political contributions from police unions.

These unions have also successfully bargained their way into having almost no consequences for their behaviors -- in other words, communities foot the bills for their crimes. We pay the settlements while they get suspended with pay, and are eligible for work in the next town.

What will Move to Amend's solidarity look like?

This is developing! Meaningful support can look different from day to day with how quickly things are changing. Keep an eye out as we will be lifting up different campaigns and actions that folks can plug into. We encourage you to show up on the front lines, as well as through material donations and financial support of the grassroots organizations doing this critical front-line work toward our collective liberation.

Genuine solidarity is how we grow and how we win -- ESPECIALLY when our mutual enemy, the mega rich and the corporations have the militarized police as their first line of defense, and the courts and the politicians they own.

One recent example of how strong their grip over our own courts is:

A U.S. federal appeals court judge ruled on Monday that California cannot require companies like agrochemical giant Bayer to include a cancer warning on their glyphosate-based products, despite the World Health Organization's 2015 classification of the weed-killer as a probable human carcinogen.

According to the judge, California’s requirement of Cancer Warning Label for Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Bayer’s weed-killer classified by the WHO as a probable carcinogenic for humans, violates Bayer’s ‘Free Speech’ right. 

GIVE ME A BREAK! 

It’s worth mentioning that it’s not JUST ONE JUDGE, it’s the whole freaking system!

Back in  2015, when the WHO brought together 17 oncology experts from 11 countries to review the long-suspected link between glyphosate and kidney disease in farm workers, they concluded and published, that glyphosate is a "probable carcinogen." 

But it should come as no surprise that the giant Pesticide producer disliked the WHO's findings, and thanks to its corporate constitutional rights and deep pockets, they set in motion a plan to discredit the international agency's study in order to continue selling their dangerous product!

Their political influence was so great they had the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency itself alleging that contrary evidence was ignored or omitted!

If you wish to read more about this and the willing shill that made the whole scheme possible, Alfonso wrote an in-depth piece that was published on CommonDreams.com titled A Cancer on Society: Monsanto Claims Right Not to Speak About Roundup

Time and time again we see this same problem: corporations abusing the Constitutional Rights that they don’t deserve in the first place! 

Like in the case of PG&E -- 

"When they want to buy politician’s favors and votes, they claim that they are a “person,“ but when they admit to killing real human persons, they claim that they are just a corporation and therefore nobody can or should go to jail."

And it wasn’t just ONE real human being killed:

Pacific Gas and Electric, aka PG&E, pleaded guilty to killing 84 American citizens.

So, right now, the question on everyone’s mind -- besides when do we overtake this fascist government -- is why isn’t PG&E getting the death penalty? 

It makes so much sense that PG&E should receive the corporate version of the death penalty -- meaning the company gets dissolved, its assets sold, and its directors put in jail -- RIGHT??? 

After all, Corporations are People -- RIGHT???

Well, though luck -- this is America, where for 134 years we’ve allowed Corporations to buy politician’s favors and votes, and claim that they are a “person“...

Corporate Personhood has completely destroyed our American political process.

That doctrine, along with the parallel doctrine, that the Supreme Court also created, that “money is speech“ when that money is used to promote political positions or buy politicians, have turned America from a democracy into an oligarchy.

And we know we don’t just speak for ourselves when we say we’re sick of living in an oligarchy. 

That’s the very reason why Move to Amend was formed-- to create a Movement to abolish Corporate Personhood, and get money out of politics, and have a clear shot to have Real Democracy. 

The We the People Amendment, HJR48, is the silver bullet to this monstrosity called Corporate Personhood. 

We must end it to prevent Corporations from continuing looting us like they did under the Federal Economic Stimulus Bill where--as we now learned-- thanks to BlackRock.

The world’s largest asset manager is sparking concern from U.S. lawmakers in both parties on multiple fronts, including over its sheer size and market power, its ties to China, and the role they played at the center of the Federal Reserve’s massive bailout, through which hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds went to politically powerful corporations with a history of wage suppression, inadequate leave policies, and reckless stock buybacks and speculative investments. 

That’s right, the real looters in America are Wall Street bankers in designer suits and corporate executives in lofty boardrooms! Not the ‘violent protestors’ on the streets, as Donald Trump and his enablers, are trying to portrait. 

In a recently released video, Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich exposes that while more than 10,000 people have already been arrested during the Black Lives Matter uprising, only 1 Wall Street banker was jailed for fraud after the 2008 financial crash, despite causing American households to lose a combined $19 trillion in wealth.

Back in April, we broke the news to you all about many U.S. companies like Caterpillar, Levi Strauss, Stanley Black & Decker, and World Wrestling Entertainment were still rewarding shareholders while thousands of their recently laid off workers are filing for unemployment.

Well, to this day, more than half of working-class America is still unemployed, unable to pay all their bills, and -- some -- even facing the risk of eviction or certain death due to the lack of healthcare!

By comparison-- and even today, in the midst of a global pandemic-- America's billionaires have seen their wealth soar by $434 billion — thanks to the bailouts and tax breaks they lobbied for.

And the looting doesn't stop there: just think of the epidemic of wage theft in America — with employers stealing a combined $15 billion in income from their workers every year. Not to mention multibillion-dollar companies not paying a single dime in federal taxes (like Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, and Halliburton), and predatory payday lenders that target communities of color and trap borrowers in a cycle of never-ending poverty.

This needs to end.