Member-only story
April 5th Was Black Peoples’ ‘Day of Absence’
“We completed the assignment.”
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963
Now that the big, nationwide protests against the Trump abomination are over, let’s take a look at what really happened — or didn’t happen.
From the first announcements at the end of February that coordinated, organized, and massive protests against Trump and all of his caudillos would occur on Saturday, April 5, 2025, black people cast a jaundiced eye at the whole idea.
Our main objection was this: The time to protest was on November 5 of last year when all of America could have and should have “protested” at the polls. Any displeasure with Trump at this late date was just that — too little and certainly too late.
