To our readers in the prison hell-holes
March 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
To the millions locked up in prison who will not be able to be in the streets to STOP police brutality and murder on April 14, and who will not be able to be there in person for the March 28 online launch and Premiere theater screenings of REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion: A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN. YOU CAN play a critical and dynamic role in these events, even from behind bars.
Don’t underestimate the role you can play in helping to change the terrain at this moment in history. Spread the word among yourselves but also among everyone you are in touch with: family and friends, loved ones, progressive teachers, clergy, lawyers, and others in the legal community, and everyone you are in touch with on the “outside.” Explain the importance of these two events and urge everyone to get involved. Tell them who BA is and why they cannot miss this film of the Dialogue between him and Cornel West if they hunger for a world where human beings are no longer treated as less than human. Explain why they do need to step out themselves and spread the word about April 14th and act together with thousands of others to say “NO MORE” to the horror of brutality and murder of our youth and others at the hands of the police. And direct them to revcom.us to learn more about this and connect with the growing movement for actual revolution.
Beyond that, write to Revolution newspaper with your thoughts on all this and appeals to people on the outside. Many of those can be posted online to reach an even broader audience. One thing in particular we want to draw to your attention is the call, “April 14th—All Sets—All Colors—Together—Blacks... Latinos: A Day of Unity—Where in One Voice We Say: No More of This Shit!” And there is also the Statement of Conscience from Carl Dix & Cornel West: “The Horror of Cops Getting Away With Killing Again and Again Must STOP!” that would gain strength if prisoners in particular institutions signed as a group from their prison (for example: 15 inmates from so and so prison). These endorsements would be all the more powerful if they reflected prisoners crossing the divides among the oppressed that are so viciously promoted and cultivated by this dog-eat-dog system—divisions that can and must be turned around—taking a cue from the example of the Agreement to End Hostilities in California’s prison system two years ago.
We also want to call attention to the letter from a revolutionary ex-prisoner that was in Revolution issue no. 375-376, March 8, 2015 ("To my brothers and sisters locked down behind the walls").
An Appeal to Those the System Has Cast Off
Here I am speaking not only to prisoners but to those whose life is lived on the desperate edge, whether or not they find some work; to those without work or even homes; to all those the system and its enforcers treat as so much human waste material.
Raise your sights above the degradation and madness, the muck and demoralization, above the individual battle to survive and to "be somebody" on the terms of the imperialists—of fouler, more monstrous criminals than mythology has ever invented or jails ever held. Become a part of the human saviors of humanity: the gravediggers of this system and the bearers of the future communist society.
This is not just talk or an attempt to make poetry here: there are great tasks to be fulfilled, great struggles to be carried out, and yes great sacrifices to be made to accomplish all this. But there is a world to save—and to win—and in that process those the system has counted as nothing can count for a great deal. They represent a great reserve force that must become an active force for the proletarian revolution.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:16
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