Like many other people in the Global South, I put my hope in ordinary Americans. Unlike us, Americans have more power and say in almost everything. Any of our countries can suffer under sanctions imposed by the US, or be invaded and occupied for decades with no recourse or justice. Any of our countries can be bombed to dust, and somehow the rest of the world cannot do anything because of the veto that the US enjoys and uses to protect their client states. So, we put hope in Americans.

Recently, we were shown the true color of Americans—and not only the Trump supporters. I am talking about the liberal Americans and Democratic Party voters. The people who are concerned about the rights of LGBTIQ+, immigrants, or Muslims, are the same people who thought funding the Palestinian genocide was not a red line. The Democratic Party offered no policy change under Kamala Harris. Under the Biden/Harris government, black people are being killed by US police at record numbers, rent, and grocery prices are increasing without being followed by wage or income rises, and even Harris’ campaign proposed no change from Biden’s policy on immigration, which is on track to match the deportation numbers from Trump’s first administration.

With the election result, we witnessed a mask-off moment from liberals. This happened especially after the demographic statistics were published. Liberals on social media started blaming Arab voters for the Democrat’s devastating loss, expressing the desire for Gaza to be turned into parking lots, and threatening to call immigration authorities on Latino immigrants accused of voting for Trump. This is also after ignoring voter turnouts, which would further contextualize the result. The rigged system in the case of Native Americans, or the millions that decided to stay at home because of the disappointment. All in all, liberal Americans should acknowledge the fact that their candidates are more willing to send their tax dollars to fund a genocide than to help constituents who can’t afford healthcare.

The enemy is not the Latin immigrants or the Arabs who refused to partake in choosing who’s going to be chief of the extermination of their family, but the ones who even refuse to make changes in their policy platform. Take Malaika Jabali’s piece on how Black people in Milwaukee didn’t feel represented by either Democrats or Republicans. It is shameful that some Americans decided to blame these people without realizing that they should be forging solidarity instead. The products that are under boycott, like Starbucks or McDonald’s, are also the companies that are busting unions and using prison labor (mostly black Americans because of the mass incarceration of black people).

The Democrat Party is not a pro-worker party. Even Senator Bernie Sanders said the Democrats had abandoned the working class. The oppressors killing Palestinians are training the very people who are oppressing Americans through excessive and racist policing and surveillance.

Americans need to realize that what their government has imposed on the Global South is what millions in their own country experience or can expect to experience in the future. In the words of George Jackson “…understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

Americans need to abandon the system that constrains the majority and start organizing. Centuries of atrocities inflicted by US government foreign and domestic policy should be enough to radicalize Americans to organize, and consolidate a movement that is not only working in solidarity with the Global South but also one that represents the ordinary, working-class people in the US.

Americans, after all, are people too.