There’s no doubt that this is America’s
moment of reckoning.
But we want to make the connection between
the local and the global, because, you see,
when you sow the seeds of greed — domestically,
inequality; globally, imperial tentacles,
800 military units abroad, violence and AFRICOM
in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial
ones in Asia and so forth — there is a connection
between
the seeds that you sow of 
violence externally and internally.
Same is true in terms of the seed of hatred,
of white supremacy, hating Black people, anti-Blackness
hatred having its own dynamic within the context
of a predatory capitalist civilization obsessed
with money, money, money, domination of workers,
marginalization of those who don’t fit — gay
brothers, lesbian sisters, trans and so forth.
So, it’s precisely this convergence that
my dear sister Professor Taylor is talking
about of the ways in which the American Empire,
imploding,
its foundations being shaken, with uprisings from below.
The catalyst was certainly Brother George
Floyd’s public lynching, but the failures
of the predatory capitalist economy to provide
the satisfaction of the basic needs of food
and healthcare and quality education, jobs
with a decent wage, at the same time the collapse
of your political class, the collapse of your
professional class.
Their legitimacy has been radically called
into question, and that’s multiracial.
It’s the neofascist dimension in Trump.
It’s the neoliberal dimension in Biden and
Obama and the Clintons and so forth.
And it includes much of the media.
It includes many of the professors in universities.
The young people are saying, “You all have
been hypocritical.
You haven’t been concerned about our suffering,
our misery.
And we no longer believe in your legitimacy.”
And it spills over into violent explosion.
And it’s here.
I won’t go on, but, I mean, it’s here,
where I think Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer
and Rabbi Heschel and Edward Said, and especially
Brother Martin and Malcolm, their legacies,
I think, become more central, because they
provide the kind of truth telling.
They provide the connection between justice
and compassion in their example, in their organizing.
And that’s what is needed right now.
Rebellion is not the same thing in any way
as revolution.
And what we need is a nonviolent revolutionary
project of full-scale democratic sharing —
power, wealth, resources, respect, organizing — and
a fundamental transformation of this American Empire.
