Zoltan Grossman: America shows its true colors with Donald Trump's win


A protest in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 10, 2016. Photo by Elvert Barnes

Professor Zoltan Grossman stresses the need for strong alliances as Indian Country faces a new era with Republican Donald Trump in the White House:
On election night, America took off its mask, and in some way revealed its true nature in an honest and unvarnished way. What Van Jones called a “whitelash” revealed what many African Americans, Latinos, Native peoples, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, women and others have known all along. Just look at the militarization at Standing Rock as one example.

People in other parts of the world, who have lived under brutal U.S.-backed dictatorships or U.S.-armed settler regimes, have also known this all along. Although they were facing far greater odds than we face even under a Trump Administration, they’ve often stood their ground or even won victories, through educating, organizing, mobilizing, developing solidarity, and fighting together.

Even under the Reagan-Bush Administration (whose threat was not taken seriously and was shocking when first elected), powerful social movements took to the streets and kept it from direct invasions in Central America, from continuing to back South African apartheid, from nuclear missile deployments, from ignoring the AIDS epidemic, from nominating racist justices, and more.

Trump is a special threat, particularly to Native sovereignty given his attacks on tribal gaming since 1993 (it’s a good time to reread treaties that have clauses about termination or removal at the “pleasure of the President”). But even those challenges can be met head-on, by educating the public about how tribal nationhood benefits all Americans.

Read More:
Zoltan Grossman: To Get to You, He Must Go Through Us (Indian Country Today 11/22)

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