A lesson from US history worth remembering:

When the OJ Simpson verdict came down in October 1995, it emboldened media to start ranting & harping about the incompatibilities of Blacks & whites & encouraged white racists to openly express views that were silenced by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It was a scary time.

But serendipitously, a few weeks after the verdict, the first Million Man March was held in Washington, DC, where at least that number of people came toprotest around a somewhat conservative political agenda.

Political power is a daunting thing. The sight of a million Black men & women marching together scared the bejeezus out of racists & silenced the media on a dime. All that racism didn’t go away but it was cowed into silence & never got the energy to mobilize.

That’s what we need to remember as we see bands of nationalists cruising for trouble. We have to exceed their aggression with power.

It doesn’t appear there can be rapprochement of the competing narratives among progressives about the character of the EU vote in the UK. But what is is & what ain’t ain’t. Dealing with the new realities is priority now, not postmortems & excoriations of the opposition. The political, economic, & social consequences of this vote have not yet fully revealed themselves so there’ll be plenty of opportunity for polemics.

It was Marx who said human beings “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given & transmitted from the past.”

The vote may have emboldened racists & nationalists but that only means political organizing in defense of refugees, immigrants, & citizens who are brown & black has to be more boldly advanced with no time to waste. That is a political task everywhere, not just in the UK, as rightwing extremists gain prominence.

It must be said the tone of the debate has been regrettable but that is inevitable when so much is at stake & the issues so heartfelt. However, one thing is clear: unity among progressives must be forged to respond to nationalist aggressions with massive & maximum political power.

Addressing the Orlando massacre, Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters that the most effective weapon at America’s disposal against Islamic terrorism is love–even though they still haven’t determined that the motive was Islamic terrorism & overwhelming evidence suggests Islam didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

But this raises the question of how the US government defines love. Does it include drone bombing, Guantanamo & torture prisons, & decades of military occupation? Because Muslims could probably do with a whole lot less Obama love.

The NY Times reports that to protest Donald Drumpf, Scottish residents are flying Mexican flags near his golf course. I was never prouder of that ounce of Scottish I got from my paternal granny.

Somebody has to ask this question, so it might as well be me–& hopefully it won’t start a furor & exchange of hostilities on my wall: after all the austerity policies enforced by the EU; after the years of barbaric anti-refugee operations in the Mediterranean, including over 25,000 drownings; after the despicable deal the EU made with Turkey to deport refugees, how does the UK leaving the EU get defined as racist & xenophobic?

It was hard to follow the debate because vituperations often replaced cogent explanations & those outside the UK couldn’t closely follow the politicians manipulations, pro or con.

It seems to me that the political tasks after the referendum are exactly the same as those prior: to organize against austerity policies, to organize for refugee & immigrant rights, to publicly oppose wars. It seems to me that Brexit should spread across Europe because the EU is rotting at the core & needs to be dismantled.

Can someone please explain, without the fury, what I am missing in this debate?