The Movement is Broadening Its Demands – Margaret Prescod

https://vimeo.com/433035391 From demanding radical reforms to policing to broader demands about social and economic equality, the movement is growing, maturing and becoming more inclusive. Margaret Prescod joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. TRANSCRIPT Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Margaret Prescod is a longtime community-based women's rights, anti-poverty, and anti-racistcampaigner. She's the host of The Sojourner Truth, a nationally syndicated drive time publicaffairs program on Pacifica Radio station, KPFA, in Southern California. That also airs in manycities across the country. Margaret led the delegations that successfully move U.N. resolutions onmeasuring and valuing unwaged work in the home, on the land, and in the community. She'sactive with the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival. Margaret is the authorof Black Women Bringing It All Back Home, based on her experience as an immigrant. She's themother of one daughter and lives in inner-city Los Angeles. Thanks for joining us, Margaret. Margaret PrescodYeah, good to be with you, Jay. Paul JaySo in hosting your radio show and your activism, you get an opportunity not only to understandthe movement and know people all across Los Angeles. You also get a chance to talk to activistsacross the country, so give us a kind of state of the movement report. Margaret PrescodWell, I'll have to say that this is a very hopeful moment. In fact, I've just been discussing thiswith a number of people. For those of us who were trained in the civil rights era and who camethrough the Black Power movement, you know, the women's movement, et cetera, we haven'tseen a movement quite like this. Like what we're calling an uprising that's taking place not onlyacross the United States and not only in urban areas, but in places in small towns like in southern Illinois that were former bastions of racist terror. You know, the sundown towns (ED: Sundowntowns, also known as sunset towns or gray towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoodsin the United States that practiced a form of segregation by excluding non-whites via somecombination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence), but also across the world.In London, England, and Paris, France, where you had up to 25,000 overwhelmingly blackpeople are protesting in Paris saying Black Lives Matter in New Zealand and Australia, theindigenous people of Australia, also calling out the racism against them. And on the face of it,two things I want to say on that: one is that the direct attack on a state institution, that theseyoung people, multiracial, by the way, are saying the demand to defund the police. That's reallyimportant to look at and to unpack exactly what that means. Because I know it means differentthings for different people. But if you peel the onion a little bit, you will see that the movementright now, although its focus, of course, on the horrific police killings and watching a murderactually for the world to see, which is what happened with George Floyd and the knee on theneck. But there is a lot more to it because people have expanded their demands. And even thesigns that you'll see on the protests, you'll see a lot, of course, George Floyd, you know, RashardBrooks, Brianna Taylor out of Louisville, Kentucky. The black woman was killed in Louisville,Kentucky, while she was asleep in her bed by the police. But underlying all of that is a situationwhere you have a young population there facing a future that could be just an environmentaldisaster. You're looking at 400 of the wealthiest residents in the United States now own morewealth than the bottom 64 percent in the US,