Under the auspices of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression a 300-car caravan as well as marchers held a peaceful demonstration against the brutal execution of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police.

The procession began at the Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center in Baltimore beginning at 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, May 30, and did not end until 9:00 that evening. Those on foot wore masks and practiced social distancing as much as possible. Cars drove with their flashers on as in a funeral procession. The caravan and marchers went past the Douglass Homes in the oppressed communities, the neighborhood of Freddie Gray, the Penn Amtrak station, and the Baltimore City Jail, a concentration camp for the poor and oppressed. Protesters demanded housing for the homeless and rent and mortgage forgiveness during Covid-19, bona fide community control of the police, and a purging of all police departments of KKK and neo-Nazi personnel.

Although in other cities these demonstrations have been beset with agent provocateurs, ultra-left folks, and right-wing infiltrators intent on looting, burning, and breaking windows, the bourgeois media, and unfortunately even the liberal community, chose to focus on the canard of “outside agitators.” This myth is reminiscent of lies that were spread during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, that all of the problems would be nonexistent if it weren’t for the outside activists.

Some of the organizations participating in the demonstration were the Communist Party of Baltimore, the Communist Party of the District of Columbia, the Peoples Power Assembly, and some members of SEIU and the AFT as individuals.

By Louis Charles