Here’s what’s true no matter how you look at the events of the last week:
This country is experiencing an economic crisis on a scale unseen since the Great Depression.
But, Ademola said, abolitionist work is gradual and long-term; changing a society that took hundreds of years to reach its current form takes time. “As we reach towards that goal we still have to think about harm reduction,” he said. “We don’t believe abolition will happen overnight.”
The pandemic “is laying bare how different our world could be and even more it’s laying bare how terrible our world actually is,” said Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer Ariel Atkins. “More and more people are being touched by what’s happening personally and are way more awake than they have been in a long time . . . watching [the government] save corporations and banks, watching Jeff Bezos become a trillionaire while the people working for him are dying and being overworked and underpaid.”
