Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/550-pack-columbia-university-auditorium-for-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

550 Pack Columbia University Auditorium for Rise Up October

A Challenge to Columbia University Students and the World

October 8, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

After a down-to-the-wire battle to hold the event, 550 people, largely Columbia University students, packed the Lerner Hall Auditorium on the Columbia campus in NYC on Wednesday night, October 7, for a powerful, moving event challenging everyone to take up and organize for Rise Up October.

Columbia’s moves to deny an appropriate space for the event were turned around when students refused to back down, took the battle to the people, and enlisted wider support for the event—and this struggle actually strengthened people’s understanding of the importance of the event, the stakes of the struggle to end police terror, and the importance of Rise Up October.

A student in the Columbia School of Social Work talked to Revolution about what students went through in fighting for a venue, and the changes they went through themselves to make that happen. They had to reach out way beyond the initial core of organizers—to the School of Law, to other colleges at Columbia, to Barnard (a traditionally women’s college affiliated with Columbia). She said, “This is how it happened: We raised more awareness. It had to get political. And we got it. It was a lot of student-led advocating, and we don’t often do that but this time we had to. And there needs to be more of that.” And she emphasized: “It doesn’t stop here. This event has to happen because on October 24, it’s gonna be a broader scale, we’re gonna shut down New York City to raise awareness for all those affected by police brutality. So it goes beyond here. ...This is continuing for the month of October.”

* * *

Featured speakers were Jamal Joseph, Eve Ensler, Nicholas Heyward, Sr., Kimberlé Crenshaw, Carl Dix, and Cornel West. The atmosphere was electric and determined. And the event marked an important step to build on to make Rise Up October a game-changing event in the battle to STOP POLICE TERROR.

Jamal Joseph—one of the Panther 21 and currently professor in the graduate film program at Columbia—opened the evening up with a challenge: Rise Up October! He saluted the students in the School of Social Work who had waged a struggle with the administration to be able to have a major venue for this event.

Jamal Joseph talked about being on the Columbia campus as a youth with the Black Panther Party, during an anti-war protest in the 1960s: “What we witnessed... was the power of the people, what we understood about those gatherings in those moments—and a big round of applause for the students on the committee and the School of Social Work—is that the University recognize that this is something to open the doors to, because you cannot turn back a moment when it is time for liberation and truth-telling and progressive change. Our job tonight is to witness and act on that.”

He posed: “For the people on the front lines, here’s what this must mean, and here’s why a gathering like tonight at Columbia University is important—and the other places we have been—churches, the community, other schools—it’s important because we are looking into the faces of the people, we are understanding the power of the people. And what must happen in Rise Up October is that we have to get people out, so the powers of oppression know the next time they stop a Black or Brown boy or girl, that the next time they stop a poor person or a homeless person, the next time they harass them, they’re not just looking into the eyes of that one particular person, they’re looking into the eyes of all of us! [loud applause] That’s what the power of the people is. Yes we have to use social media, we have to reach people by any way we can, we have to canvass, but we’ve got to do that ground to say that at this point nothing is going to be more effective than to flood the streets so they can understand that this city and this country is rising up in October!”

Eve Ensler—V-Day; author, playwright: The Vagina Monologues—vividly, viscerally took the crowd into the room where Natasha McKenna, a Black woman, desperately in need of mental health care, was brutally degraded, assaulted and murdered by prison personnel. Seven of them, with hazmat suits and Tasers assaulting one naked woman who had told them, “You promised not to kill me.”

“They took their Tasers and zapped her naked body, over and over. Four times—50,000 shockwaves into her body! While they covered her head! It was Abu Ghraib all over. Covered her head! They wrestled her down, tied her to an electric chair, drove her outside, where she was probably already half dead. And you know what, nobody noticed. Because Natasha was not a real woman, she wasn’t a real person, she was a story, she was an idea. She was a racist projection in their minds. And I’m sorry, if we all in this country don’t understand that Natasha McKenna is our sister, she is our sister. That could have been anyone of our sisters. She’s our sister. We are part of that story that killed Natasha McKenna. And if we’re not on the streets October 24th and if you don’t bring every single person out, this police state will eventually come for all of you.”

Nicholas Heyward, Sr. courageously shared the excruciating pain of having his 13-year-old son, Nicholas, Jr, murdered by police—shot down in cold blood as he played with a brightly colored plastic toy gun: “He had already had his mind set on being a basketball player and a lawyer, all of which was within his reach, and then I had to have a coward-ass cop gun him down. The cop asked Nicholas, ‘What are you doing?’ Mind you—the cop asked him. And when Nicholas replied ‘We only playing, we only playing.’ And he shot and killed him anyway. What kind of society, what kind of system is this? Why is he still on the force? And why must we continue to fight this system that we know we not gonna get no justice under? Rise up October! Let’s show them we are tired of this and we are not taking it no more.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw—professor, UCLA and Columbia University School of Law, one of the initiators of the Say Her Name campaign—challenged the audience. She started by asking people to raise their hands if they recognized the names of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray. Most people raised their hands. But then she continued with the name of women killed by police whose names are less widely known: Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Maya Palmer, Aura Rosser, Kayla Moore. And she called on the audience to know their names, and SAY their names.

“Melissa Williams was killed along with the partner she was driving with in Cleveland, Ohio. The car backfired. Police mistook that for gunshots. Police chased them throughout Cleveland shooting 137 rounds. An officer ran up on the hood of the car, he alone fired 49 rounds. Said he was in fear of his life. You don’t go on the hood of a car when you’re afraid for your life. Melissa was killed instantly. When we Say Her Name, we need to say: Melissa Williams.”

And Kimberlé Crenshaw talked about how Black woman are killed by police in their homes when in desperate need of help, including “Tanisha Anderson, Black woman, Cleveland, Ohio. Killed a week before Tamir Rice. You don’t know her name. Same police force that killed Tamir killed her. What happened? Her family called because she was having a mental health crisis. The family called for help. Police arrived, decided they were going to take over the situation with coercive force, rather than treating her as a woman in need of help. Tried to put her in a police car, tried to put her in a confined situation, tried to separate her from her family. She resisted. They did a takedown move on her, threw her to the ground, on the cement in the dead of winter in Cleveland, Ohio. Her death ruled a homicide. You need to know Tanisha Anderson’s name! Say her name! Tanisha Anderson!”

Carl Dix—co-initiator of Rise Up October and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)—shared heartfelt experiences working with families of those murdered by police. And he framed what he spoke to in a quote from Bob Avakian:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

Carl Dix talked about the ugliness: “All these horrors are completely unnecessary. Things don't have to be this way. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or maim an innocent person.” And the problem: “It’s not just the way the police spread terror in Black and Latino communities. It’s also what was done to the native inhabitants of this land. This land was stolen from them. They were nearly wiped out. Those few who survived were put in concentration camps they call reservations. There is what is done to women in this society with its rape culture, with viewing women as sex objects, and with the interference of government authorities in the very private decisions around when and whether to have a child. There’s what’s done to our immigrant sisters and brothers, driven here by the devastation that the U.S. wreaks in their homelands and then arriving here to face persecution—deported by Obama in record numbers and insulted by fascist idiots like Donald Trump. And then there are the wars for empire—wars in which one million people were killed in Iraq in the past few decades and before that three million in Vietnam and before that in Korea.... I was in their military...when they told me I had to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people for them my answer was ‘Hell no, I ain’t goin’!’ And then there’s also the way they’re devastating the environment of the planet we live on.”

He spoke to both what was revealed in the revolutionary upsurges of the sixties and the setbacks the movement for revolution was hit with over the past decades. And then he pointed out, “That’s where Bob Avakian comes in—he never gave up on the people and he never gave up on revolution. He went to work learning from the experience of revolution and from experience more broadly, and has developed a new synthesis of communism—an even more scientific understanding of the methods, goals, strategy and plan for making revolution and creating a new society. On the basis of this new synthesis, the party Avakian leads, the RCP, is building a movement for revolution. So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution. Get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Keep your sights aimed on emancipating all of humanity.”

He posed a sharp challenge to the students, and the audience: “Don’t get sucked into framing what you're trying to do in the language and terms of the system or limiting yourself to working within the channels this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before, and the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide.”

Carl called on everyone, wherever they were coming from, to resist, and to take up Rise Up October and make it happen: “WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. NOBODY with a beating heart and a functioning conscience should stand aside.”

And Carl Dix laid out exciting, ambitious plans for October 22, 23 and 24 (see accompanying box).

The last speaker was Cornel West—co-initiator of Rise Up October and professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary and professor emeritus at Princeton University. He posed an uncompromising moral challenge to students, to academia and beyond: “Don’t tell me how smart you are. There were smart Nazis. Smart white supremacists.”

West said: “You got precious Black and Brown folk shot down like dogs every 28 hours for ten years and not one policeman goes to jail or Federal prison. We did send one to jail in Oakland—that was community pressure over Oscar Grant. They let him out quick. Then you got a Black president, Black attorney general, Black Homeland Security. That doesn’t deliver justice! Police are still getting off scot-free. Those Black faces in high faces—it doesn’t translate to justice for poor and working people. Columbia University, I thought you was committed to truth, and the condition of truth is allowing suffering to speak like the folks we talking about then you’re not serious about education. You’re not serious...

“We live in the age of Ferguson. What is Ferguson, that marvelous new militancy of the younger generation who are tired of the spiritual malnutrition and moral constipation of contemporary capitalist civilization? They’re tired of the emptiness of soul. They’re tired of the stimulation of bodies and instant gratification. They want something deeper. They want something more profound. They want something like joy, not just pleasure. They want something like justice, not superficiality. They want something that affects poor and working people, not just some colorful set of faces on high when folks in the basement still being crushed like cockroaches. That’s what we’re talkin’ about today. That’s why October 24 is crucial. Because we got to let the powers-that-be know this talk about police murder, about police terror, is no fad or fashion, it’s a way of life. If we gonna stay in it, if we gonna be faithful unto death, then we gonna die into life...call into question our cowardliness, call into question our indifference, call into question our callousness. We gonna be reborn with new vision, new courage, new determination, new fortitude.

“But at the same time, I’m gonna end on this note: If love is not at the center, it is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. I don’t want to know just how sophisticated your analysis is. I don’t want to know how broad your horizons are. I wanna know how deep your love is. Love fundamentally on a steadfast commitment to the welfare of others, which means you willing to take a risk, you willing to bear a burden, you willing to pay a price for something bigger than you. That’s what this younger generation needs.

“Columbia University, are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? Are you ready for Rise Up October? Are you ready for the love train? Are you ready for the justice train?” [crowd erupts: “Rise up! Rise Up!”]

* * *

After the speakers, Nkosi Anderson, member of the National Steering Committee and Faith Task Force for Rise Up October, brought Noche Diaz to the podium. Anderson called on everyone to stand with Noche, who is facing invented, but serious, criminal charges for his role as a Revolution Club leader and a leader of struggle against police terror. Noche said: “This is why they’re coming down hard on people like me. Because they have shown they can inspire change—the ones called the worst of the worst, those who the system calls ‘thugs,’ with tremendous potential for a whole new world. When we rise up in October, next time they come—and they will come, until revolution—[the youth] are gonna know which side you’re on, they’re gonna know whose got their backs.”

People were called on to stand with Noche on October 13 at 9 a.m. at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan when his next court hearing is scheduled.

Nkosi Anderson ended the formal presentations saying, “This is our chance to meet the social challenge of our time”—and led chants of “Rise up! October!”

The presentations were followed by Q&A with the audience and panelists, facilitated by Columbia professor Zerandrian Morris, who kicked off the exchange with “We are here because the terror that my grandfather would speak about regarding Jim Crow is back...,” and noting that Dylann Roof—the white supremacist who carried out a massacre of Black people during Bible study at a church in Charleston, SC—was taken to a Burger King by police.

As people left, the back of the room was a buzz of activity and engagement, including people getting organized to make October 24 a massive success.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/carl-dix-columbia-october-7-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Carl Dix Speaks to Columbia University Students, October 7

"I don't want to keep making hashtags!"

by Carl Dix | October 8, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This is a rush transcript of Carl Dix’s speech at the October 7 “Police Terror Must Stop WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON” event at Columbia University in New York City. Watch the video of the full event.

Carl Dix is the co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Click here for more from Carl Dix.

We’ve heard tonight about what happened to Nicholas Heyward Jr. at the hands of the police. We heard about what happened to Kayla Moore, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Melissa Williams. We’ve heard a number of horrors. I have been on tour promoting Rise Up October. In the course of this tour, I interacted with a number of family members of people murdered by the police. I want to mention a couple of them. I just came back from Waukegan, Illinois, being with LaToya and Alice Howell. Six months ago, they buried 17-year-old Justus Howell, the son and grandson of LaToya and Alice. He was shot in the back twice by police. Also on this tour I interacted with Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice. Eight months ago she buried her 12-year-old son, Tamir, gunned down by police. Also on tour I was accompanied for awhile by Mertilla Jones, who five-and-a-half years ago buried her seven-year-old granddaughter, Aiyana Stanley-Jones. In none of these cases have any police been punished in any way.

These are not isolated incidents. It happens all the damn time. They amount to an unspeakable horror... an unspeakable horror that must be stopped. Now to get into what we must do to stop police terror, I want to start out with a quote from Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

All these horrors are completely unnecessary. Things don’t have to be this way. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or maim an innocent person. It’s not just the way the police spread terror in Black and Latino communities. It’s also what was done to the native inhabitants of this land. This land was stolen from them. They were nearly wiped out. Those few who survived were put in concentration camps they call reservations. There is what is done to women in this society with its rape culture, with viewing women as sex objects, and with the interference of government authorities in the very private decisions around when and whether to have a child. There’s what’s done to our immigrant sisters and brothers, driven here by the devastation that the U.S. wreaks in their homelands and then arriving here to face persecution—deported by Obama in record numbers and insulted by fascist idiots like Donald Trump. And then there are the wars for empire—wars in which one million people were killed in Iraq in the past few decades and before that three million in Vietnam and before that in Korea.... I was in their military... when they told me I had to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people for them my answer was "Hell no, I ain’t goin’!" And then there’s also the way they’re devastating the environment of the planet we live on.

This is not we should have justice some far off day. Humanity CAN be emancipated. The way to do this is through revolution—thru getting RID of this system and bringing in a system that is based on freeing people from all that ugliness and developing whole new ways for people to relate to each other and to the whole world.

A lotta people tell me, “Carl, you’re crazy. You can’t make revolution. They’re too powerful.” But what’s crazy is going along with this system and expecting things to get better. And let me tell you about their power—I’ve seen it up close, and I’ve seen the very real potential to defeat that power.

We saw the possibility to end these horrors in the 1960s when Black people rose up against the savage oppression being brought down on them, sparking off broader resistance and rocking the whole system back on its heels. The potential to defeat their power was shown in Vietnam, where peasants who were inspired and organized defeated their big powerful army—and part of how they did that was by inspiring soldiers like me to rebel. Back then we wanted to question and change everything. We saw glimmers of a different morality, a whole different way people could relate to each other. We saw a glimpse back then of the beauty Bob Avakian is talking about.

 

 

THE NEW SYNTHESIS OF COMMUNISM: FUNDAMENTAL ORIENTATION, METHOD AND APPROACH, AND CORE ELEMENTS

by Bob Avakian, Chairman,
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Summer 2015

Read more

 

Break ALL the Chains!
Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution

Sampler Edition | Full Work

Hear Bob Avakian read from his memoir:

From Ike to Mao... and Beyond:
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist

Chapter Six: Your Sons and Your Daughters

Opening Up... Torn by Kennedy and the Democrats... Into the Student Life... Dylan and “Beatlemania”... New People, New Influences... Malcolm X... Straddling Two Worlds... The Free Speech Movement... Mario Savio... The Assassination of Malcolm X... Deciding about Vietnam... Getting In Deeper

All Media Players • RealPlayer • MP3
• Read Excerpt

Learn more about Bob Avakian

But we didn’t make revolution in this country. In the major places where revolution was made, power was seized back by capitalist exploiters. People around the world and in this country have paid a heavy price in blood for this ever since. A lot of people got too beaten down and gave up. What we got was over 2 million people in prison. 40 percent of Black children are living in poverty. We got crack and AIDS and all the horrors that go with a “dream deferred.” But that’s where Bob Avakian comes in—he never gave up on the people and he never gave up on revolution. He went to work learning from the experience of revolution and from experience more broadly, and has developed a new synthesis of communism—an even more scientific understanding of the methods, goals, strategy and plan for making revolution and creating a new society. On the basis of this new synthesis, the party Avakian leads, the RCP, is building a movement for revolution.

So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution. Get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Keep your sights aimed on emancipating all of humanity. You can get into Avakian by going to our website—revcom.us—or going to Revolution Books when it opens in its new location in Harlem ... but do get into him and get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building.

Don’t let people tell you we can’t do better than this... America is not eternal, we can do better than hope for itty-bitty changes in HOW they dog us. Don’t get sucked into framing what you’re trying to do in the language and terms of the system or limiting yourself to working within the channels this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before, and the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide.

Now, coming from the need for and possibility of revolution, I understand that we have to mobilize everyone we can, wherever they’re coming from and however they see the problem and the solution, to fight this madness we face. We can’t let them beat people so far down that we could never rise up against the things they do to us. So what we need to do is to stop police terror.

We are at a crucial turning point. Authorities are desperate to suppress the inspiring protest movement that has grown over the past year, hitting people with mass arrests and heavy charges. Either they will get away with this and killings by police, and the exoneration of killer cops will not only continue but intensify. Or we will come into the streets in even greater numbers with much more determination, acting to stop police terror.

This is what RiseUpOctober is all about doing. It aims to change the terms of how people think about this and act on it, and to politically rock those who order and carry out this terror back on their heels. This will draw a sharp line in all of society: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. NOBODY with a beating heart and a functioning conscience should stand aside.

This will tell the whole world that you have not put our movement into a cage of begging, of lining up behind some savior or other, of passivity—but we are coming at this stronger than ever, we are refusing to tolerate this, we are sending a signal to everyone who wants to fight but can’t find the way, that this fight is getting stronger but it needs you... a signal to everyone who is sitting on the sidelines and wishing for better that the time for wishing and sympathy is over and the time for acting is now... a signal to everyone who hates this that your days of dominating and demonizing must end and will end...a signal to this system that there is a growing force of people in society who think this police murder, and the whole genocidal thing it’s the spear point of, is illegitimate, immoral and MUST STOP!!

Now what we gonna do on those days?

In the morning of October 22, we will gather in Times Square, and we will SAY THEIR NAMES. We’re gonna gather family members of people killed by police, together with prominent voices of conscience, artists, clergy, professional people, and we need to have some students up there too, saying the names of the men and women who have had their lives stolen by those who have sworn to protect. That is how we’re gonna kick off RiseUpOctober.

Then the afternoon of October 22, here in New York City, there’s going to be a demonstration here in New York, in Brooklyn, starting at Borough Hall, moving to Barclays Center, marking the 20th annual Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. And there will be similar marches around the country.

Friday, October 23 we are going to carry out a non-violent direct action. When I talked about this before I said that details will be upcoming. Well here’s a big detail. This action will focus on shutting down the butcher shop, concentration camp, debtor’s prison that is Rikers Island.

And together through the sheer strength of our numbers, shutting New York down. We will gather in Washington Square Park, march to Columbus Circle, right through the middle of Manhattan.

I applaud all the students have done in fighting for this program, but I have to tell you your work ain’t over. You have to devote the next two weeks of your lives to realizing this vision of a powerful outpouring of resistance in NYC for RiseUpOctober. We need you to be all over social media, not only struggling with everyone you know on this campus, but all your friends from high school, all your cousins, aunts & uncles, everyone you know on every other campus, spreading the word to be in NYC. We need you to donate money to make this happen and to raise money to make this happen.

Look, let me just end on a personal note. I have been working around the horror of police murder for decades. I have been putting together lists of names. I worked on this book Stolen Lives that Nicholas held up. We have a poster that has dozens of pictures of people killed by police. We started doing hashtags when we got into the computer age, but we started this before we were in the computer age. We do hashtags identifying the women and men who have been murdered by police.

I don’t want to keep making hashtags. I don’t.

I don’t want to keep adding names to lists of people killed by the police.

I don’t want to keep having new pictures to put onto those posters.

We got to end this, sisters and brothers!

Look, I’ve got an eight-year-old grandchild. I don’t want her to grow up and her generation be talking about how the police get away with murder and what we’re going to do about it.

We have to stop this. That’s our charge. And that’s what RiseUpOctober is going to be a big contribution towards. So what we need to do is that everybody here needs to do all that they can to make RiseUpOctober as powerful as it needs to be, and can be.

And then we’ve got to do more than that. That’s how important this is. We need to get to a place where when people talk about the history of horrific crimes that this system has inflicted on Black people and other oppressed people the way that Eve was talking about, they will really be talking about history that has been ended, not history that continues to echo and reverberate in the present.

We will be talking about it in a situation where humanity has emancipated itself.

Let’s contribute to making that happen, sisters and brothers. Rise Up October!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/404/which-side-are-you-on-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Which Side Are You On?

Why There Must Be a Truly MASSIVE Outpouring Against Police Murder on October 24 and Why YOU Are Needed

September 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/407/food-for-thought-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Then Would You Call It Genocide?

Updated September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Imagine if it came to light that in Russia today, Jewish people were systematically and pervasively discriminated against in housing, jobs, education and health care; and that connected to that, their life expectancy was dramatically lower than that of Russian majority people—as low as three decades in some regions!  Let’s even say that the maternal mortality rate for some Jewish women was 12 times as high as that for Russian women in Moscow. 

Imagine further that Russia had by far both the largest prison population and the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in the whole world—so high in fact that 25 percent of all the prisoners in the whole world were in Russia. Imagine that nearly one half of those prisoners were Jewish, while Jews themselves only made up 1/8 of the population.  Imagine that the media and culture purveyed crude stereotypes of Jewish people as violent criminals and degraded fools. 

Finally, imagine that it was documented in countless videos that Russian police patrolled Jewish neighborhoods and routinely stopped and frisked Jews who did nothing wrong, routinely beat them and arrested them on phony charges and sent them to prison, and even routinely murdered Jewish people—and then were not prosecuted because they claimed that they were scared of Jews because they were “demons.” 

Wouldn’t humane people rightly condemn this as a slow genocide?  The U.S. itself would no doubt rush to the United Nations to attack its rival for such gross violations of human rights and would warn that this slow genocide could easily become a fast one.

Well, you don’t have to imagine it. This is going on right here, right now, in America, to Black people.  The conditions and specific facts cited above apply to Black people in the US, not Jews in Russia.  So why do people in America deny that this—genocide—is what is going on right here, carried forward by their own government, supported by way too many of its own people, silently tolerated by way too many others... when it is right in front of their faces??

The time is long since past when this denial can be allowed to continue. The stakes are way too high. People need to clearly take sides AGAINST this genocide, and especially the illegitimate police terror and murder that enforce it, and demand that “THIS MUST STOP!”

The time to do that is NOW, this October. The place to do that is New York City, October 22-24 – where the whole world will be watching, and all of society will be compelled to answer the question: 

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/carl-dix-on-exonerating-tamir-rice-killers-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Condemn Reports Saying Cops Who Gunned Down Tamir Rice Were Justified!

Carl Dix is the co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old playing in a park who was gunned down by police in Cleveland, Ohio on November 22, 2014.

Read more

Authorities Greasing Skids to Exonerate Tamir's Murderers!

by Carl Dix

October 11, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The prosecutor's release of reports that say the actions of the cops who gunned down Tamir Rice were justified is a blatant step toward exonerating the cops who murdered Tamir. The question is: what are we going to do about this?

We must condemn these reports as the ignorant pig talk they are. And if they go ahead and let these killer cops get off without charges, we must take to the streets with great determination to deliver a message that we refuse to accept the system backing up its cops when they murder Black people. And this is one more reason why everybody who wants to STOP the terror police spread in Black and Latino neighborhoods has to be in NYC for #RiseUpOctober.

#RiseUpOctober—October 22-24 NYC
Massive Mobilization to STOP Police Terror
Which Side Are You On?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/cleveland-family-of-tamir-rice-denounces-prosecutor-reports-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Cleveland: Family of Tamir Rice Denounces Prosecutor Reports Exonerating Killer Cops

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From readers:

October 16—The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old youth murdered by Cleveland police on November 22, 2014, held a news conference to expose the “expert” reports that came out on October 10 and to call for a special prosecutor to take over the case. John Abady, one of the attorneys for the family, said that prosecutor Timothy McGinty sought out “experts” who would side with the police and justify the killing of Tamir Rice as “reasonable.” Abady pointed out that one of the “experts” claimed that Timothy Loehmann, the cop who shot Tamir, said in a statement that he gave commands to Tamir before shooting him—which is clearly false because the video makes clear there was no time for the cop to have given any commands before shooting Tamir.

The truth is, the cops drove up within a few feet of Tamir and shot him in less than two seconds. Abady criticized the “experts” for deeming it was “reasonable” for the cops to drive into a park and immediately open fire on an African-American boy they saw there. He said that the police themselves had created the dangerous situation, which they used to justify the killing of Tamir. Another lawyer, Earl Ward, said that the fact there have been no indictments of the cops shows that “Black lives don’t matter” and that “Tamir’s life doesn’t matter” to them—but that we say “Black lives do matter” and “Tamir’s life does matter!”

After the press conference, about a dozen people took to the streets with signs about the police murder of Tamir and chanted, “Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail.” Monday, October 19, we are going to Cleveland City Council to demand immediate indictments of the cops Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the killing of Tamir Rice. The prosecutor’s “expert” reports exonerating the cops must be met with outpourings of condemnation in the streets and in other ways to say: We demand the killing of Black and Brown people stop.

All out for Rise Up October in NYC on the 24th.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/bringing-it-home-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

"Bringing It Home"

Thoughts on Work Among the People in the Home Stretch of #RiseUpOctober

October 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Letter from a reader to other regular readers of revcom.us about building for Rise Up October:

As we move into the home stretch for #RiseUpOctober, we need an approach and corresponding plans to “bring it home”—to mobilize all positive factors with the perspective and goal of actually manifesting thousands on October 22 and 23, and especially tens of thousands on the 24th. Over the last couple of weeks, we have been out in the neighborhoods, at transit hubs, projects and commercial strips, in churches, schools and community organizations—and met a lot of people who have been moved by the agitation, and in different ways and at different levels see #RiseUpOctober as the means and vehicle to take a leap in the political battle to stop police terror, posing to society at large the moral and political challenge, Which Side Are You On? In the next week, all this has to be brought home through a multifaceted approach so that tens of thousands actually do manifest for #RiseUpOctober.

This will require (a) even sharper agitation, comprehending the outrage of the recently released prosecution reports stating the murder of Tamir Rice in Cleveland was “reasonable,” (b) even sharper challenges for people to throw in, organize, and manifest for #RiseUpOctober, based on the stakes of this moment and the political battle over whether it is legitimate for police to keep killing our youth, and (c) work involving masses in ever growing numbers to fundraise and meet the goals of the Indiegogo campaign and to give people a sense of momentum and social movement, to secure commitments of organized cores and facilitate actual organization. This should include ways and means of transportation, so that people demonstrate—overcoming hesitation and doubts, and the obstacles posed by conditions of life—and make this the powerful manifestation it needs to be.

Along with the three points on “Why There Must Be a Truly MASSIVE Outpouring Against Police Murder on October 24 and Why You Are Needed,” here are some brief thoughts on the discrete, but interrelated, aspects of work that I think will be required during this home stretch, all of which should include fundraising as part of it, through donations on the street and online contributions in the hundreds and thousands.

* Saturation and Visual Presence, a factor in the compulsion to “get on the bus” for #RiseUpOctober. In addition to the palm cards, there should be a concerted focus on the Stolen Lives posters and stickers for #RiseUpOctober (available from the materials tab in the Rise Up October page at revcom.us). Along with a vibrant social media campaign, this gives a sense of social movement, that “it’s happening,” and people are reminded of and feel compelled to politically act in relation to the genocidal proportions of what’s on the Stolen Lives poster. We have contact information for hundreds in certain neighborhoods, and with a systematic plan covering blocks and quadrants, masses can be marshaled to saturate the barber shops and storefronts, and the project and church lobbies with the Stolen Lives poster—making for an unmistakable presence through the week. We should get out hundreds of thousands of stickers and encourage people, especially youth and high school students, to wear them through the week, strengthening their commitments to be there on October 22-24.

* Institutions, Community Groups, and an Approach of Two Maximizings.* In the last week, there should be a priority to get with, activate, and organize institutions, community groups, and social networks, all of which are disproportionate in their influence and numbers. These are also cohered groups of people, and are more likely to manifest in groups and as contingents if organized. Along with churches and schools, these should include the numerous social work and service groups in the neighborhoods of the oppressed, such as those focused on addiction and substance abuse, on youth empowerment, on health and employment assistance. There has proven to be great receptivity among certain sections of social workers, given their genuine sympathies and desires to help those less fortunate and their familiarity with the conditions of life among the oppressed. As far as possible, we should have a “two maximizings” approach of unleashing and leading the positive dynamic between those taking up #RiseUpOctober among those at the bottom of society who catch the hardest hell, and those in the middle strata, such as students, social workers, teachers, and artists—strengthening the resolve among all sections of society in the process. This includes concrete plans for this Sunday (October 18) at the churches, meeting with the pastors beforehand so that they announce it in their sermons, even preach on these themes, and organize their congregations; for Columbia students to “cross the tracks” and build for this in the projects and neighborhood of Harlem; and for masses in the Bronx to attend the teach-in at the local community college this week—and maximizing off all this.

* The Entirety of #RiseUpOctober, the Three Days is an enormously positive factor and provides many channels for masses of people to be part of #RiseUpOctober, including being at the reading of the Stolen Lives names on October 22, which will feature the families of those killed by the police joined by voices of conscience, and either participating in or bearing witness to the nonviolent direct action to shut down Rikers on October 23. The entirety of the three days (see yellow box at “550 Pack Columbia University Auditorium for Rise Up October - A Challenge to Columbia University Students and the World”) should be presented in a compelling way to masses of people, and participation on the 22nd or 23rd provides a lot of positive compulsion towards the culmination with the mass demonstration on the 24th. As a concrete example, parents and family members of those imprisoned in the hellhole called Rikers should be encouraged to provide testimony on what goes on inside Rikers, and why it needs to be shut down.

* Actual Organization includes many forms, including transportation for people to get to Washington Square Park on the 24th, convergence spots for people to gather and travel together, and team captains with responsibility for different groups from project buildings, social networks, schools, and churches. This has proven to be a critical factor, even if most of the masses come on their own as individuals. This need for organization, for finding and determining the appropriate forms, and the actual responsibility for it, should be put to masses of people, especially key individuals, because #RiseUpOctober “can only happen on the scale and scope that is absolutely necessary if many, many people throw in on this, now—people who have been fighting this, as well as people who are just now coming to this fight.”

* Ideological Work with Organizational Cores. In the course of this, masses have and will have lots of questions; many will come from those they are working with, ranging from “what good will a protest do, they keep killing our youth” and “what about violence among the people” to “what will it take to ultimately stop this,” “is a revolution really possible,” and other big questions on the role of the U.S., the history and legacy of Black people in this country, nationalism and communism, human nature and the nature of this system. We should use every opportunity to drive people to revcom.us and Revolution newspaper, where there are not only answers to these and other big questions, but also where the vision for a radically different world, the strategy to bring that world into being through communist revolution, and the leadership for this in Bob Avakian and the Party that he leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party, are made easily accessible. People need to know about and get to know BA, the most scientific and radical of thinkers and leaders. REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN is available online at revcom.us and is a good introduction, as is the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! and BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian.

* “Two maximizings” refers to doing revolutionary work among the basic masses, and revolutionary work among the middle strata, and their dialectical interrelation. For more see “The Strategic Approach to Revolution and Its Relation to Basic Questions of Epistemology and Method.” [back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/no-more-stolen-lives-say-their-names-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

No More Stolen Lives: Say Their Names

A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice

10 am, Times Square, Thursday, October 22, 2015
Rise Up October to STOP Police Terror, October 22-24, Which Side Are You On?

October 10, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Thursday, October 22, join families whose loved ones have been murdered by the police and a gathering of voices of conscience to Say Their Names and demand Murder by Police Must STOP Now! Before the eyes of the world, we will come together for an unprecedented reading of the names of just some of the many people killed by law enforcement in the last 10+ years. Ranging in age from seven to 92, thousands of lives have been stolen. These were husbands, wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters whose dreams were cut short, leaving hearts broken and families torn apart. A disproportionate number of these victims were Black and Brown—their lives stolen under the color of authority with the state’s approval over and over again.

100 Families of Stolen Lives victims will travel from across the country to New York for Rise Up October. Dozens of them will join prominent voices of conscience from the arts, literature, clergy, and more to Say Their Names, share remembrances and demand that police terror stop now! The diverse range of voices includes those who are directly affected and those who are not but refuse to stand by in silence... who refuse to tolerate living in a society that views and treats Black and Brown people—men, women, straight, or LGBTQ—as suspects, as criminals, and worse, as people having no rights or even humanity that the police are bound to respect or protect.

This dramatic event will give voice to the hidden stories and lives of the thousands and thousands of people who not only have had their lives cut short by law enforcement but who are murdered a second time: by having their character assaulted, demeaned, and criminalized by the defenders of police violence. With readings from cherished voices of conscience, and remembrances from family members, a sense of the scale, scope, and lived impact of the number of lives stolen will be provided. Most important, we will begin to understand these victims as more than abstract names, videos, and statistics. Their humanity will be voiced and celebrated through stories told by those who raised them, planned lives with them, and loved them.

If you’d like to volunteer to help develop the list of names of people killed by the police over the last decades to be read at the public reading and remembrance, or to assist with this event (filming, making artwork commemorating the stolen lives, etc.), please write to: AddMyVoice@RiseUpOctober.org

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/shut-down-rikers-october-23-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Shut Down Rikers!

October 23, Non-Violent Direct Action as Part of #RiseUpOctober

Updated October 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Just 300 yards from the runways at LaGuardia Airport, just a few miles from a glistening city, an island sits dedicated to confinement, brutality, and torture of our youth and others. Human beings languish for weeks, months, sometimes years awaiting trial. Almost all Black or Latino. Many simply for lack of money for bail. Many locked down for weeks and months in solitary confinement. Guards inflict a culture of violence—fractured jaws, broken bones, denial of medical care, cover-ups and retaliation against those who report, and rampant sexual violence against the women and LGBT people as well as the men. Rikers typifies and concentrates the immorality and illegitimacy of mass incarceration in the U.S.

It is difficult to say which is a greater shock to the conscience: that this torture and brutality goes on day in and day out, or that millions go about their daily lives accepting this as normal just miles away.

The violence against inmates at Rikers has been studied. It has been exposed. Guards have been sued. Settlements have been paid. The deaths inflicted through brutality and negligence have been documented. The life-long trauma and dysfunction imposed on inmates has been proven. Yet the brutality continues day in and day out. All this is plain for the whole world to see.

The time for wringing our hands is over. The time for cosmetic but essentially meaningless reforms is over. A line must be drawn. People of conscience must put our bodies on the line to stop this depravity and barbarity, else we ourselves are complicit.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Check back at www.RiseUpOctober.org for details to be announced soon.

This call was initiated by:

Nellie Bailey, Harlem activist
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and co-initiator of Stop Mass Incarceration Network
Willie Francois, Associate Pastor, First Corinthians Baptist Church, Harlem*
Rev. Jerome McCorry and Candace McCorry, RiseUpOctober Faith Task Force
Rev. Stephen Phelps, member, Presbytery of New York City*
Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan, killed in unjust U.S. war on Iraq, 2004
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper, initiator of StopPatriarchy.org
Mia Thornton, NYU student activist
James Vrettos, professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice*

* for identification purposes only

#RiseUpOctober is three powerful days of action to STOP Police Terror and Murder and to challenge everyone in society: Which side are you on? Learn more about it: www.riseupoctober.org

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/tens-of-thousands-come-to-dc-for-justice-or-else-rally-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Tens of Thousands Come to DC for Justice or Else Rally
What Is Really Needed for the Movement to STOP Police Terror?

October 12, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Tens of thousands of people turned out in Washington, DC on October 10 for a rally demanding “Justice or Else,” led by a coalition initiated by the Nation of Islam. A lot of Black college students turned out from all over, along with a lot of Black families. The mood was serious, purposeful, and fed up with what is happening to Black people and other oppressed nationalities, looking for a way to go forward in resistance and for answers to the deeper question of WHY this keeps going on. Just so many people coming together for that purpose, with real seriousness, gave a sense of potential power that nearly everyone there commented on.

Justice Or Else march, Washington, DC, October 10, 2015. Photo: revcom.us

People like Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Travyon Martin, as well as family members of other victims of police murder, and Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, powerfully condemned police murder. Other speakers drew out sharply the many forms of oppression that Black people face in America. The whole U.S. history of genocide against its native inhabitants was movingly decried by a number of Native American speakers. Spanish was spoken from the podium and common cause was drawn with the struggle of immigrants. The roots of the antagonism between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the same island, were shown to exist in slavery, and a call was issued to overcome these antagonisms and unite to take on their oppression as nations. One highlight of the program was the linking of the struggle of African-American people in the U.S. with the struggle of the Palestinian people. All this was very positive, and needed to be heard.

But while the uprisings against police murder last fall shook this whole society, ever since the militant demonstrations of April 14 and the uprising in Baltimore (which itself was followed by national demonstrations), the movement has not been out in the streets. Some of the forces fighting for justice are focusing on developing “policy reforms,” others are getting into the political campaigns... meanwhile the rulers of this country have come back against the movement with repression and slander, and are increasingly censoring the news of the police murders that do happen. They are trying to turn the “conversation” to “the problem of Black-on-Black violence” (and the police have helped in this by unleashing and directing some of that violence), while assuring the masses that “reform is happening.” In actual fact, for all the talk about reform, not only are the “dogs still in the street,” they are biting with even greater ferocity. The actual struggle to END this reign of murder and terror, and to root out the whole genocidal program of which it is the spearpoint, has come to a crossroads. Many of the thousands who came to DC on October 10 were looking for leadership and direction.

What Is the Problem—What Are Its Depths, and What Is Its Source?

But while the initial part of the program was mainly positive, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, who gave the major speech of the day, put forward an analysis and program that would lead in a seriously wrong direction, both for this movement and in terms of what kind of new society could put an end to this and other horrors.

Farrakhan did applaud the Black Lives Matter movement and the Ferguson, Missouri, uprising (though Nation of Islam actually attempted to suppress the rebellious youths on the scene, as well as slandering and attacking revolutionaries who fought side by side with the youths). He also exposed some of the ugliness of U.S. history. But in the main he provided people with a wrong analysis of the problem and a wrong path forward. His method and approach substituted religious prophecy for scientific analysis—at a time when a scientific understanding of the problem we face and the solution to it is more critical than ever. We will focus in this article on a few key points (even as there is more to talk about at another time).

First, while Farrakhan called out America on many things, he did not really show people anything close to the full dimensions of the genocidal policy now being pursued against African-Americans and the dire implications of this situation; nor did he really get into the causes of it. Instead, he talked in a sort of timeless way about the tricks of the 10 percent of white men who supposedly understand the “laws of cause and effect” and who dominate Black people as a result.

In fact, while what is going on today has a long and ugly history, it is not same-old, same-old; right now is a particularly crucial and dangerous time. The capitalist-imperialist system that actually runs this country (and which is, yes, overwhelmingly run by white people and flesh-and-bone connected to white supremacy) has by this point taken things to an extremely dangerous turn. Right now these capitalists regard millions and millions of Black (and other oppressed nationality) youths as not very “pliable” for exploitation. They find it more profitable to exploit immigrants with absolutely no rights, and to ship production overseas where they can exploit women in low-wage, deadly factories. As a result, these capitalists see our youth in the Black and Brown communities as potential social dynamite—people who must be demonized as “super-predators” and locked down, penned in and if necessary killed off. Farrakhan’s speech did not urgently sound the alarm about this. This is a slow genocide that could become a fast one at any time.

Can Liberation Be Won Through Boycotts and Land Purchase, or Must We Struggle?

Farrakhan did not really call on people to struggle against police murder, to organize and rise up against it. He did not challenge people to draw thousands of others actively into this struggle right now and to move millions more to get on the right side of it and take it up. He did not provide a path toward making this horror STOP.

Instead, he called on people to boycott Christmas and give money to the Nation of Islam to buy land. This land, it seems, would go to build up economic power within capitalist America and then at some point perhaps lead to a separate state. All that would somehow be done in the middle of an America that first forcibly enslaved Black people and then, after slavery was ended in law, still denied them the right to self-determination and enforced generations of terror and oppression and super-exploitation. All this would somehow be done against rulers who have only ever conceded anything as a result of extremely sharp struggle involving millions, such as the Civil War and the Black liberation struggle of the 1960s.

There was talk of “hard truths.” What about the hard truth that only a struggle of at least those earlier dimensions would even have a chance against the New Jim Crow system that now rules the lives of the masses of Black people? Instead, Farrakhan claimed that “God’s judgment” was now on America—but that America’s rulers still had time to repent for all the horrible crimes they’ve committed. This judgment and repentance deal sounds a lot easier than massive struggle, but it was wrong 60 years ago when Nation of Islam put it forward and it is still wrong today.

And by the way, the idea that Black capitalism would do anything other than enrich a few Black capitalists is an illusion—a deadly illusion that only serves those who are or aspire to be a new bourgeoisie, exploiting and ruling over their own people. Capitalism requires exploitation, capitalism requires that some people own the means to produce wealth and that others have to sell themselves for wages to survive, and exploitation means that the majority will always be oppressed. Capitalism is capitalism, no matter the flavor, and as such will only ever benefit the capitalists. The capitalists of an oppressed people are themselves oppressed by the imperialists, and can at times be united with. But if they are given the leadership of the struggle, it will lead not to liberation but merely to a new capitalist class—or really, more often than not, to a deal to be “junior partners” with the reigning oppressor-nation capitalists (as has happened in South Africa). Just to reiterate and be clear: this does NOT mean that we cannot and should not unite with Black capitalists who oppose police terror and brutality, as well as other ways in which oppression comes down; to the contrary, we should and must reach out to such forces. But if the program or outlook representing Black capitalism leads, the struggle will neither get to full emancipation nor even be firm enough around the immediate aim to stop police murder and terror

Religion Is NOT the Road to Emancipation

Here a word must be said about the constant casting of real-world material problems in religious terms. What was done to Africans—the kidnapping and murder and enslavement of millions, and then keeping them chained in living hell for centuries, does not have a damn thing to do with any supposed prophecy from any supposed god. The twin crimes of the enslavement of Africans and the genocide against Native Americans came out of the very real-world workings of the capitalist system. THAT is a scientific fact.

While many, many people with religious beliefs play a positive role in the struggle for liberation—indeed, most people in this struggle ARE religious—and while in many cases these beliefs propel them to do positive and courageous things, in the final analysis if religious thinking guides the struggle, it will not get to liberation. Stories of Moses and the Israelites being saved by God’s intervention against the Pharaoh may be nice (if you don’t read the “fine print”¹) but as a political program they come up way short, to say the least! Indeed, waiting for “God’s judgment” or for any kind of savior is ultimately a slave mentality. It will take struggle against a very worldly—and understandable—capitalist power structure to prevent that power from beating people down and even carrying through genocide. It will take a revolution to dismantle this system of white supremacy and the whole capitalist economic and political system in which it is embedded and which that system in America has always required. To do any of this, we are going to need to rely on a real-world scientific understanding of things, and not hopes of redemption from on high.

10,000 Fearless Men—But to Do What and Against Whom?

Farrakhan’s call for “10,000 fearless Black men” is both vague and off base; at least at one point in his speech he seems to be saying that these men would be deployed to stop the crimes that some Black people do to others, and that if they did that they would then also have to deal with what he called “rogue cops” who “had fun” and benefited from this. This totally mixes up who is the main enemy.

Yes, there is crime that is concentrated in the ghettos—in part due to the conscious steering of such crime by the police into the neighborhoods of the oppressed; in part due to people internalizing the constant drumbeat of the system and its culture that treats Black people as worthless; and in largest part due to people who are given nothing and have nothing but the snarl and contempt of their oppressors actually applying the dog-eat-dog, me-first mandates of capitalism to their lives in the only ways available to them. But even while we struggle with the people caught up in serious crime that actually harms other people (or themselves) to get out of that destructive stuff and get into revolution and mass struggle, they are not anywhere close to the main problem.

The main problem again is the system that both deploys the pigs AND keeps people in a situation in which some of the system’s own theorists say that crime for such youth is a “rational choice.” Yes, we need fearless people (whatever their gender!) right now to stand up and stop this outrageous killing of our people; and ultimately we need many more than 10,000 people to go up against this system, all-out in the struggle for power, at the soonest possible time—to make revolution, to dismantle and destroy this SYSTEM that causes it. It is just that aim—mobilizing and preparing millions to do that, hastening the time when that CAN be done—which the Revolutionary Communist Party is committed to carrying out.

As this movement grows in strength, it SHOULD definitely set different standards and morality among the people, standards that do not allow for predation on each other. But you can only set these standards by involving people in the struggle against the main enemy and, as you do so, struggle with them over what their lives will really be about. If we do that, such people can actually rise from the depths to be emancipators of humanity and nothing less—precisely on the basis of fighting the power, and transforming themselves and others as they do so, for revolution.

We absolutely do NOT need to “police our own people” within the confines of an economic and political system that can never produce anything other than exploitation and oppression. Nor should we call on the police to resolve problems or disputes that take place among the people. This almost always leads to worse disasters, as the countless people who asked for help in dealing with mentally ill relatives and friends, only to see them murdered by police, can so painfully testify. The movement does have to figure out ways to resolve these kinds of things—but this can ONLY be done in the context of going up against the real power that keeps people continually clawing and scratching at each other and themselves, like so many crabs in a barrel.

A System Enforced by Illegitimate Violence—Not a Few “Rogue Cops”

Further: the problem with police and prison goes far beyond some rogue cops. You could have a total cessation of crime done by Black people against Black people tomorrow and it would not have stopped the harassment (leading to murder) of a Sandra Bland, the brutalization of a James Blake, the torture and driving to suicide of Kalief Browder, or the murder of an Eric Garner, a 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a Tanisha Anderson, a 13-year-old Andy Lopez—none of whom were doing a damn thing criminal. These pigs are given a green light by the system to break people’s spirits, to bully, abuse, brutalize, frame up, and outright murder Black and other oppressed people—ALL of these police are given that green light, most of them take advantage of it, and none of them will come forward to oppose it. The problem is not some rogue cops, but the standard operating procedure for a force whose mission and raison d’etre (reason for being) is enforce the relations of exploitation and domination, of degradation and oppression, that this system requires for its functioning and cannot help but generate.

What is required is actual MASS STRUGGLE against those who rule this system—nothing has ever been won without this and no larger struggle and certainly no revolution for human emancipation—and again, this is what is ultimately required—ever could or will be won without it. Right now, the challenge for thousands is to ACT to STOP murder by police—to follow your convictions that this is wrong, to find the best ways to oppose this and make this movement grow, and to learn more about the source of the problem and its solution as you do so.

Patriarchy: Part of the Problem, Most Definitely Not Part of the Solution

Finally, but hardly least, there is the patriarchy that permeated Louis Farrakhan’s speech. The whole speech was suffused with the outlook of the old James Brown song that “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World (But It Would Be Nothing Without a Woman or a Girl).” This is a world in which men are the creators, the leaders, and the warriors—and in which women, even if they are scholars or scientists, are mothers and domestic slaves above all. There are, unfortunately, too many instances of this in Farrakhan’s speech for this brief article to get into—talk of the “luscious hips and lips of women” and even upholding polygamy, to take just a couple examples—but surely one of the worst was when Farrakhan had some women from Nation of Islam come up on stage and then pointed to them and proceeded to brag about how they are trained to cook, to sew, to rear children and, yes, to dress in a way that covers up most of their body.

Even if women are supposedly put on a pedestal in this worldview, they are treated as lesser human beings whose mission is to help “their” men. As for those women who refuse such treatment and refuse to dress and act as lesser beings than men, the implication is that they are undeserving of respect—and therefore “deserving” of the harassment and worse that they get. Farrakhan’s upholding of the right to abortion is of a piece with this—he immediately followed this with a strong assertion that abortion is wrong, shaming the women who DO get abortions and effectively treating women as breeding vessels—a view that has much in common with that of the slave masters.

This is not just a case of someone who happens to have “traditional values” or someone who hasn’t got the news—this is an attempt to cohere a movement around male privilege and domination, and this is something going on all over the world wherever religious fundamentalism forms the core ideology of a movement. The terrible results of such a movement coming to power, especially but not only for women, can be seen in countries like Iran and Afghanistan.

Going along with this is the fact that while a number of other important struggles and causes were spotlighted at the DC rally, not a single speaker represented for the movement against the oppression of women as women. As for the supposed “inclusion” of LGBT people, through the parable of casting the first stone, let’s remember that that parable still assumes that “the woman at the well” had sinned—and by implication, that LGBT people are, by who and how they love, “sinners.”

This is NOT the movement we need to be building. It is true that for some time to come there will be a struggle in this movement over whether we are fighting for a world in which everyone gets emancipated from ALL forms of oppression or for something lesser, but the standards of this movement must be clearly against the oppression of women.

Where to Now?

Tens of thousands of people came out to call for justice, to protest and to seek answers. To all who did come out and who felt the power of their numbers: now is the time to build on this. The question of what to do now to STOP murder by police remains sharply posed; the moment to actually ACT on this situation, to take concrete action and challenge millions of others to do so as well—to ring out the call to ALL society of WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?—is here and now, and urgently must be seized.

1. The actual books of the Bible concerning the story of Moses—see, for instance, Numbers 31:7-18—show him to be someone we would consider a tyrannical monster today, inflicting wholesale genocides and mass rapes on people who are not Israelite but who possess land that they think was promised to them by God, and wild, vengeful slaughters not only against the Egyptians but those among the Israelites who disobey him or incur his displeasure. [back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/drones-lynch-mobs-and-occupation-more-outrages-and-crimes-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Drones, Lynch Mobs and Occupation...
More Outrages and Crimes from the Self-Proclaimed Global Champion of Human Rights

by Alan Goodman | October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Countries that have been targeted by U.S. drone attacks. Map: www.forensic-architecture.org

The rulers of the United States and their media constantly brand themselves as bringing democracy and human rights to the world. Three outrages in the past week shine a light on the REAL nature of what the U.S. brings to the world: mass murder by drones, a devastating occupation of Afghanistan, and backing their ally Israel in a reign of terror against Palestinians.

Mass Murder and Terror by Drone in Yemen and Pakistan

This week, an important series of exposes in The Intercept—based on documents leaked by a whistleblower—revealed that as many as 90 percent of those killed by U.S. drone strikes are not even the intended targets.

Barack Obama claims the use of drones by the CIA and the U.S. military in places like Pakistan and Yemen is “heavily constrained” and targets only “high-value al Qaeda targets” or “forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces.” In reality, U.S. drone strokes are raining massive and indiscriminate terror on the people of Yemen and Pakistan.

The official criteria for drone assassinations authorize murder completely outside anything resembling a judicial process. For example, not only did the CIA illegally assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, a separate CIA drone attack a week later assassinated his son—who was never accused of anything and had not been in contact with his father for two years. A spokesman for Obama justified the murder by saying al-Awlaki’s son should have had “a far more responsible father.”

Injured staff at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan that was bombed by U.S. military planes on October 3. At least 19 people, including 12 staff, were murdered. Photo: Médecins Sans Frontières

But not only do official criteria allow the U.S. to kill anyone without judicial review, the majority of those killed are not the intended victims. The U.S.'s obscenely named “Operation Haymaker” killed more than 200 people between January 2012 and February 2013, and by the military's own account, only 35 of the dead were intended targets. During one five-month period of “Haymaker,” almost 90 percent of the people killed by U.S. drones were not intended targets.

In the dehumanizing jargon of the U.S. military, people killed by drones on purpose are referred to as “jackpots” while unintended deaths are referred to as “EKIAs”—“Enemies” Killed in Action—a category that includes women, children, and people bombed in homes or at social gatherings.

The fact that the U.S. military refers to people they murder by accident as enemies killed in action shines a gruesome light on the actual nature of the U.S. drone program: mass murder and indiscriminate terror, where anyone and everyone who happens to be in the way of a drone is counted as the “enemy.”

Lynch Mobs and Massacres in Israel

Thirty-seven Palestinians have been killed in October, and hundreds more have been seriously injured by Israeli forces firing live ammunition at demonstrators and carrying out on-the-street extrajudicial executions of Palestinians suspected in being involved in knife attacks that killed seven Israelis this month.

And Israeli authorities and media have whipped up a lynch mob atmosphere where rabid settlers hunt down Palestinians. On October 4, 19-year-old Fadi Samir Alloun was killed after a stabbing attack that wounded an Israeli teenager. There is no evidence that Alloun had any involvement in the stabbing, but he was chased down by a mob shouting “Shoot him! He’s a terrorist! Shoot him!” and “Death to the Arabs!” Instead of intervening to stop the lynch mob, Israeli police executed Fadi Samir Alloun in cold blood.

Even though it means taking some hits to their image as the self-proclaimed champions of human rights, the rulers of the U.S. all agree on maintaining a “special relationship” with Israel. That “special relationship” is one of shared “values” of genocide and oppression, and a partnership where Israel has consistently served as a relatively stable and reliable hitman for the U.S. in the region and around the world.

As Israeli mobs and police were terrorizing and killing Palestinians, the new chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff went to Israel to meet the commander-in-chief of the Israeli Defense Forces and others. A U.S. military spokesman said the visit was to reaffirm America's commitment to Israel.

Extending the U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan

On October 15, Barack Obama announced 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan until and beyond when he leaves office. The U.S. invasion Afghanistan in 2001 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, combatants, and people who died as a result of battered infrastructure and poor health conditions, loss of food supply, and economic devastation.

For an in-depth understanding of the nature Israel, its relationship to the U.S., and the illegitimacy of invoking the Holocaust to justify genocide, see “Bastion of Enlightenment... or Enforcer for Imperialism: The Case of ISRAEL”.

Amnesty International investigated nearly a dozen instances of mass killings by the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013. The crimes include murdering people in a SWAT-style raid on a birth celebration—including two pregnant women who tried to protect other guests, and the massacre of up to 140 people gathering fuel from an abandoned oil tanker by U.S. bombers. Amnesty reported, “None of the cases that we looked into—involving more than 140 civilian deaths—were prosecuted by the U.S. military,” and “Evidence of possible war crimes and unlawful killings has seemingly been ignored.”

Obama justifies keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan because “The bottom line is, in key areas of the country, the security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there is risk of deterioration."

But nobody is supposed to ask: How did we get here?

In 2001, powerful sections of the U.S. ruling class saw the 9/11 attacks as a moment they could, and had to, seize to knock down and subordinate Islamic fundamentalist forces, and to solidify the role of the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. They invaded Afghanistan, and two years later rolled into Iraq. Twelve years later, the U.S. is still fighting in Afghanistan. A large section of Iraq is occupied by virulent Islamic fundamentalists. And the aftershocks of the U.S. invasion continue to uncork and strengthen reactionary jihadist forces in a vast region of the world.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan made conditions in a desperately poor, brutally oppressed country worse. Life for women in regions controlled by the pro-U.S. Islamist regime is—outside a few places in the largest cities—no better than life under the Taliban. And the death toll in the war between the U.S.-backed regime and the Taliban is growing. After 13-plus years of U.S. invasion and occupation, there were a record number of civilian deaths and injuries in 2014—more than 10,500. One out of every ten Afghans is a refugee.

* * *

The absence of mass, determined protest within this country against the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan—and other U.S. crimes in central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East—feeds a vicious cycle where jihadists claim the crimes of the U.S. government represent the people of this country. That has to change. It is essential that the people of the world see much more protest—involving all sections of people in this country—against the crimes of “our” government around the world.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/new-exposes-in-the-intercept-us-drones-remote-control-mass-murder-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

New Exposés in The Intercept:
U.S. Drones—Remote Control Mass Murder

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A murderous policy of remote controlled drone bombing has become a centerpiece of U.S. imperialism’s global wars. Over the past dozen years the U.S. has killed—murdered—thousands of people by drones. It has developed a vocabulary to conceal thousands of civilian deaths. Its leaders—especially Barack Obama—have routinely lied about the extent of death by drone.

October 15, The Intercept ¹ released an important series of articles on U.S. use of drones. These articles are based on documents on the U.S. military’s assassination policy provided to them by a whistleblower. The Intercept articles and the material they are based on reveal that the U.S. has coldly and callously murdered thousands of civilians, as a matter of official political and military policy. Another study, by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, concludes that from the initial U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to today, between 3,492 and 5,545 people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes.

The Intercept report reveals that as many as 90 percent of the people killed in some drone strikes are people who weren’t even intended targets. Many of them are women and children.

Obama described U.S. policy on drones in a major policy speech at the National Defense University. He said that in Afghanistan, the U.S. “will continue to take strikes against high value al Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces.... Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al Qaeda and its associated forces. And even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained.”

This is bullshit. It is a straight up lie to cover up systematic murder, including of children. The U.S. has been using its drones as a method of targeted assassination. It also spreads mass terror through drone bombing of weddings, market places, urban areas. It killed 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki—who was a U.S. citizen—while he ate lunch with some cousins. The Intercept reports that Larry Lewis, who was principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, concluded that “drone strikes in Afghanistan were 10 times more likely to kill civilians than conventional aircraft.”

The U.S. government routinely lies about who it is targeting and killing, and has developed a whole vocabulary to conceal the amount of civilian deaths. The old euphemism “collateral damage” used by the military to cover up civilians killed by the military has been changed. The report explains that “when drone operators hit their target, killing the person they intend to kill, that person is called a ‘jackpot.’ When they miss their target and end up killing someone else, they label that person EKIA, or ‘enemy killed in action.’”

The U.S.’s “Operation Haymaker” between January 2012 and February 2013 killed more than 200 people in its “special operation airstrikes.” Of these, even according to the military’s own account, only 35 of the dead were “intended targets.” The government documents leaked to the Intercept show that during one five-month period of “Haymaker,” almost 90 percent of the people killed by drone bombing were not “intended targets.” Military reports labeled each of these deaths as “enemy killed in action.”

Virtually everyone specifically targeted by a drone strike is an adult male, who in the language of the drone policy makers is a MAM, or “military age male.” The whistleblower explained how every mangled and shredded corpse left in the aftermath of a bombing was determined to be that of an “enemy.” “If there is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was either not a MAM, or was a MAM but not an unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no question. They label them EKIA.”

Barack Obama has direct authority and responsibility for the development of drone policy and its implementation.

A detailed and specific hierarchy The Intercept calls a “Kill Chain” has been structured to carry out drone policy. There are two steps to the process to approve a strike on an individual. First a packet of information on the individual, which the military refers to as a “baseball card,” is drawn up and “staffed up to higher echelons—ultimately to the president.”

The “baseball card” contains “intelligence” (supposedly specific information about particular targeted “jackpots”) developed from spy drones, electronic spying, and on the ground spies up through generals on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense, to a group of top Obama administration political leaders and lawyers called the “Principals Committee of the National Security Council,” then to Obama himself. Then, when a decision is made, it goes back down through the military command.

The Intercept report states that a document provided by the whistleblower “detailing the kill chain indicates that while Obama approved each target, he did not approve each individual strike.” In other words, Obama—who certainly is aware of the thousands of civilian deaths U.S. drone bombing has caused—makes the general decision to launch an attack, but the specifics of when are left to others. Obama’s National Security Advisor said: “He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations go.”

Find, Fix, Finish

The doctrine of assassination and massive murder by drone, called “find, fix, finish” by its architects, is in the process of being further refined, expanded, and institutionalized in military and political doctrine.

Michael Flynn, who once headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Intercept that “the drone campaign right now really is only about killing. In the drone strategy that we have, ‘capture’ is a lower case c. We don’t capture people anymore”. Another former official disputed some of Flynn’s details, but accepted the overall premise of massive drone use by the Obama administration. “The Obama administration has been quite ruthless in its pursuit of terrorists. If there are people who we, in our best efforts, assess to be trying to kill us, we can make their life as short as possible. And we do it.”

What they have actually done is bomb a hospital, bomb wedding parties, bomb family gatherings, bomb children herding animals, bomb rural villages in the deep of night, bomb markets. Drone bombing has increased exponentially in the Obama years. Under Bush, Obama’s predecessor, there had been one drone attack in Yemen. In the first four years of Obama’s presidency, there was a reported drone strike in Yemen on the average of every six days. By August 2015, more than 490 people had been killed by drone strikes in Yemen. In Pakistan alone, as of September 1, Obama had ordered 370 drone strikes, which killed up to 965 civilians, including as many as 207 children.

Every one of the drone missions, according to the material leaked to The Intercept, “begins as an objective to find one person for whatever reason. Every jackpot is one person off the list.” U.S. use of drones in its assassination program is criminally illegitimate in any circumstances. But the massive civilian death it causes—hundreds and thousands of people the government deceitfully and foully calls “EKIAs”—doesn’t even factor into its plans, its reports, its summations. What the U.S. routinely does is bomb people’s homes and gatherings with weapons that tear them into unrecognizable pieces, then declare them “enemies.”

A Great Crime—and a Moral Challenge to STOP It

This is a war crime, a crime against humanity of the highest order. The U.S. rains remote-controlled death on people, bombing them from the safety of air conditioned computer rooms hundreds of miles from their intended targets, in its fight to defend and extend its global empire. It terrorizes thousands beyond those directly killed, both by the seeming randomness of the attacks, and by the drones that buzz and hover overhead, sometimes for weeks, always threatening.

Drone usage as an arm of U.S. policy and military planning has expanded massively under Obama. Now the government plans to significantly expand and hone its use of drones both for surveillance and its inevitable companion, bombing. Reports that came out in August said the Pentagon plans for drone use to grow by 50 percent in the next few years, using the military itself and “civilian contractors.”

Air Force Major General J.D. Harris told a reporter the expansion is because “the combatant commanders, they need more. They’re tasked to do our nation’s business overseas so they feel that stress on them, and it’s not getting better.” Currently the CIA and U.S. military conduct drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The plans are to extend use of drones to “Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, the South China Sea, and North Africa.”

The Intercept journalists and the whistleblower who provided the documents have done a great service to the people of the world in exposing the inner workings of U.S. policy and use of drones. As the whistleblower explained, they leaked these documents because the public needs to know about the assassinations carried out in their name. “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

Now there is a great moral challenge before people, especially people in this country.

STOP Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation, and Crimes Against Humanity!

1. The Intercept was founded in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill. It is, in the words of its mission statement, “dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism.” [back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/us-border-solution-outsourcing-deportations-back-to-hell-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

"Outsourcing" Deportation Back to Hell

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Over the past six months journalists have been reporting on the vast increase in the deportations from southern Mexico of Central American immigrants; and on the even more difficult and dangerous journey these immigrants face now that they have become targets of Mexican police and immigration authorities. Forced to find more remote and dangerous regions to avoid checkpoints and police raids, they now face greater risk of robbery, rape, disappearance, and death.

The Sunday, October 11, New York Times Magazine featured a powerful opinion piece by Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey. The article, which included interviews with immigrants trapped in aid shelters in southern Mexico, is titled “The Refugees at Our Door: We are paying Mexico to keep people from reaching our border, people who are fleeing Central American Violence.” She begins:

In the past 15 months, at the request of President Obama, Mexico has carried out a ferocious crackdown on refugees fleeing violence in Central America. The United States has given Mexico tens of millions of dollars for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to stop these migrants from reaching the United States border to claim asylum. Essentially the United States has outsourced a refugee problem to Mexico that is similar to the refugee crisis now roiling Europe.

To stop these immigrants from reaching the U.S., it is sponsoring the hunting of migrants in Mexico and forcing them to return to their homelands, and often to their death. A conservative estimate from statistics available is that 91 migrants deported back to their countries have been murdered.

U.S. rulers’ solution to their “urgent humanitarian situation”—Pay their clients to do the dirty work

In June 2014 a serious humanitarian crisis on the U.S.’s southern border suddenly came to light when tens of thousands of people—half of them mothers with young children, and the other half unaccompanied minors—began appearing in large numbers, seeking asylum from desperate economic conditions and raging gang violence threatening their lives if they remained in their own countries.

Children with and without their mothers had been forced to take dangerous journeys from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—Central America’s poorest nations—where conditions are the direct result of decades of bloody repression, domination, and exploitation by U.S. imperialism. During the 1980s, the U.S. directly and through its flunky governments waged and led genocidal campaigns in several Central American countries to crush rebellions influenced by its imperialist rival, the Soviet Union. Their economies have been devastated by the “free trade agreement” imposed a decade ago, and gangs have filled the economic void, creating countries with vast areas run by gangs and police under their influence.

Carefully avoiding the term “crisis,” Obama declared it an urgent humanitarian “situation.” But the “urgent situation” as the ruling class saw it wasn’t the challenge of welcoming these immigrants, meeting their immediate needs, and finding them decent housing while those with family members already in this country could be reunited with them. Rather, the challenge for the leaders of the empire responsible for the horrific conditions they are trying to escape was to quickly find and build more detention centers to jail them instead of releasing them to await their asylum hearing; to speed up the legal process to send them back; and to stop this surge from happening and deliver the message to anyone else considering doing the same thing—”forget it.”

Southern Border Plan

A key part of their strategy has been to give Mexico more than $80 million to launch what is called the Southern Border Plan (Plan Frontera Sur), which has unleashed the “ferocious crackdown” against Central American immigrants coming into Mexico. Mexican authorities sent hundreds of agents to the south to stop the flow of immigrants across the southern border, setting up checkpoints to pick them up and send them back. They carried out over 20,000 raids in 2014 in the bus stations, hotels, and highways where migrants travel, and on the freight trains. Until then, making the dangerous trip atop a freight train, known as “La Bestia,” had been a major route across Mexico. Migrants were now chased off the trains, and shot at with Tasers. Concrete structures were built so the migrants couldn’t get to the trains; and overhead barriers forced them off the tops of the trains along the way.

As a result, there are children walking the length of Mexico, often at night, to avoid detection. And all along the way the women and children have to be constantly on the lookout for criminals who rob, beat and sexually assault them, and take their money, and for the Mexican police, who capture them, often demanding bribes for not being sent back. The shelters along the way, intended to be short term rest stops before moving north, have now become refugee centers.

A 24-year-old Salvadoran woman trying to escape a gang told a reporter that the trip to a shelter in Ixtepec, about 150 miles into Mexico, had once taken her three days. This time it took her nearly a month, walking most of the way, and once barely escaping Mexican immigration agents who shot her with a Taser*: “Problem Solved.”

From the perspective of the U.S. imperialists, their plans appear to be “working.” Between October 2014 and April 2015, Mexico deported 92,889 Central Americans, almost double the 49,893 in the same period a year earlier. Over the same period, the U.S. detained 70,226 people “other than Mexicans,” most from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The year before it had captured 159,103. Mexico is expected to detain 70 percent more Central Americans this year than previously, while the U.S. is expected to cut its detentions of Central Americans in half. More than 24,000 women were deported from Mexico in 2014, twice the number in 2013. And the upsurge in child detentions was even greater—climbing 230 percent to over 23,000. For the ghouls in Washington: Problem Solved.

Nazario points out that while the Central American immigrants are legally eligible to seek asylum in Mexico, the government puts enormous obstacles in their way. Those detained and allowed to apply are kept in detention while waiting for months, or even years, kept in rat-infested, unspeakable conditions. And those who apply have only a 20 percent likelihood of having asylum granted; in this country, it is 50 percent.

U.S. officials are shedding “crocodile tears” for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants now desperately seeking to escape the catastrophe the U.S. has created in the Middle East. And they seek to distance themselves from the ugly, fascistic response coming from some European states. But nothing can cover over the blood of the people of Central America on their hands, who are witness to the real way these imperialists cover their crimes when they arrive at their doorstep.

* “Mexico’s migration crackdown escalates dangers for Central Americans,” Jo Tuckman, Guardian, October 13, 2015

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/stand-up-for-abortion-rights-counter-protest-march-for-life-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From Stop Patriarchy

Stand Up for Abortion Rights!
Counter-Protest the March for "Life"

January 22, 2016 in Washington, DC
January 23, 2016 in San Francisco

Updated January 18, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Fetuses are NOT babies.

Abortion is NOT murder.
Women are NOT incubators.

Stand up for abortion on demand and without apology this January on both coasts.

Abortion rights are in a state of emergency! Clinics across the country have been forced to close through unjust laws and anti-abortion violence. Women and staff are shamed, harassed, and threatened. Christian fascist politicians are fighting to shut down Planned Parenthood. Thousands of women are once again risking their lives and prison to self-induce their own abortions. Eleven people have been murdered by anti-abortion terrorists. And a looming major Supreme Court case will affect abortion rights for decades to come.

The time is NOW to stand up for abortion on demand and without apology!

Each year, tens of thousands of fanatics march against women's right to abortion and birth control on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Be part of standing up in counter-protest, letting the world and the powers that be feel our demand that abortion be available to every woman without shame, restriction, or stigma.

Forcing a woman to have a child against her will is a form of enslavement. It traps women in abusive relationships, drives them into poverty, forces them to give up their dreams and forecloses their lives. Denying abortion rights is a keystone of the entire web of degradation, violence, rape, discrimination and oppression that women face throughout society.

This must be stopped! Women are not bitches, hoes, punching bags, sex objects, breeders or property of men. Women are full human beings!

Get organized. Be in DC and/or San Francisco for these counter-protests. Mobilize your school, religious congregation, community group, family and friends. Spread the word far and wide. Donate and raise funds. Do not let the future belong to the woman-haters. Be part of defeating the war on women.

Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!
Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement!

StopPatriarchy.org
@StopPatriarchy
Facebook event for DC: www.facebook.com/events/754443141326468
Facebook event for SF: www.facebook.com/events/1660509807549937
For more info & to get involved:
For DC - StopPatriarchy@gmail.com
For SF - StopPatriarchyBayArea@gmail.com

Initiated by Stop Patriarchy

Endorsed by:
Carol Downer, co-founder of Feminist Women's Health Center, Los Angeles
Merle Hoffman, CEO, Choices Women's Medical Center
Cindy Sheehan, Peace Activist and Author
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper
Deep Green Resistance
Joy of Resistance Multicultural Feminist Radio – WBAI
Occupied Wall Street Special Projects Affinity Group
PopularResistance.org
Women's Liberation Front (WoLF)
World Can't Wait

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/nobel-prize-in-medicine-awarded-to-tu-youyou-for-breakthrough-in-malaria-treatment-in-cultural-revolution-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Correspondence:

Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to Scientist Tu Youyou for Breakthrough in Malaria Treatment During Cultural Revolution... and Why It Matters

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader working with students on Rise Up October:

The Nobel Prize in medicine for 2015 was shared by three scientists, William Campbell of Ireland, Satoshi Omura of Japan, and Tu Youyou of China, for their contributions to developing treatments for parasitical infections and malaria, which kill millions of people, mostly among the poorest, in Third World countries.

Tu Youyou developed an unconventional but extremely effective treatment for malaria that has saved millions of lives. She did it as part of a team called together by Chairman Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China, to aid the North Vietnamese army, fighting against U.S. imperialism in the Vietnam War, when it was being decimated by malaria, and many people in South China were dying from it as well. (AP photo)

Tu Youyou was awarded for developing an unconventional but extremely effective treatment for malaria that has saved millions of lives. She did it as part of a team called together by Chairman Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China, to aid the North Vietnamese army, fighting against U.S. imperialism in the Vietnam War, when it was being decimated by malaria, and many people in South China were dying from it as well. The discovery came at a time when malaria had become resistant to more commonly used drugs like chloroquine and deaths were surging.

Tu was not a degreed MD or PhD, but was part of the Chinese Academy of Traditional Medicine which studied traditional, mainly herbal, Chinese medicine. She had been part of a battle, led by Chairman Mao, to wipe out a parasite that caused the disease schistosomiasis, which killed millions in pre-revolutionary China.

She and her team searched through more than 2,000 ancient Chinese texts for clues on how to fight malaria. One recipe, written 1,600 years ago and entitled “Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve,” described how sweet wormwood, or Artemisia annua, a plant, should be prepared in water to treat what were described as intermittent fevers, a symptom of malaria. Early trials of the plant worked at times, but not others. Tu found that boiling destroyed the active ingredient in Artemisia, but when she found a way to boil it at lower temperatures, it was 100 percent effective in tests on monkeys and mice.

When the plant had to be tested on humans for toxicity, Tu tested it on herself (this was a common practice during the Cultural Revolution). She has said in interviews that because the disease was killing so many, she felt a responsibility to do so. The drug went on to save millions of lives.

Tu’s team was part of a revolution in health care in China led by Mao that accomplished what the U.S. has never done: it established a system of universal health care. Health services were provided free or at low cost, with a health system guided by principles of cooperation and egalitarianism. Revolutionary China integrated Western and traditional medicine; for example, not only the use of traditional herbs, but wide-scale use of acupuncture, including as anesthesia in operations. This policy, championed by Mao, was called “walking on two legs,” utilizing the best of Western and Chinese traditional medicine. Some 1.3 million peasants were trained as health care providers (“barefoot doctors”) to meet basic health needs in the countryside, where the peasants and other poor people had never had access to quality health care. Life expectancy in China doubled from 32 years in 1949 to 65 years in 1976.

People need the truth about the communist revolution. The REAL truth. At a time when people are rising up in many places all over the world and seeking out ways forward, THIS alternative is ruled out of order. At a time when even more people are agonizing over and raising big questions about the future, THIS alternative is constantly slandered and maligned and lied about, while those who defend it are given no space to reply.

Contains Interview with Raymond Lotta, Timeline of The REAL History of Communist Revolution, and more...

Read it here

Barefoot doctors were one of the “socialist new things’’ created during the Cultural Revolution. Young people were chosen to receive medical training not because of their grades or their family’s wealth, but because of their dedication to serving the people. They were called “barefoot doctors’’ because they lived and worked among the common people, including working barefoot in the fields.

The barefoot doctors became an inspiration and role model to medical people all over the world, including for the “free clinic” movement that developed in the U.S. as part of the struggles of the 1960s.

With the capitalist coup in China after Mao’s death in 1976 and the reversal of the revolution, the barefoot doctors program was disbanded and the poor in China are again dying because of lack of affordable health care. China’s health care system today is so elitist they wouldn’t let Tu Youyou into the Academy of Sciences, and much of the scientific establishment ridiculed her for not having a PhD.

But it is important, especially for the younger generation today, to know that the way things are today, including millions of children dying by age five from hunger and preventable disease, as well as crimes against humanity like thousands killed by police in the U.S., DON’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! Compare the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” which is turning huge profits for the capitalists who invest in insurance companies, hospitals, and the drug industry, while tens of millions of people still have no access to health care and thousands die each year of curable conditions, or are forced into crushing debt or homelessness through lack of insurance, to the sweeping achievements in health care in revolutionary China, and you see why we don’t need to try to put band aids on this system, we need a revolution and a whole new system: socialism on the way to communism, as envisioned in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal), based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis.

I write this especially for the students I work with, who have never lived on Earth when there were genuine socialist revolutions, and have grown up in a time of endless slanders of socialism and communism, which has led to all kinds of cynicism, relativism, rampant individualism, and other outlooks that prevent people seeing the potential for, much less fighting for, a whole different and better world.

Even, or especially when, we’re fighting intense battles, like today’s to stop mass incarceration and police terror, we must keep our sights set on revolution and the liberation of the whole world. As Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party has said:

Don’t let people tell you we can’t do better than this... don’t let anybody tell you that America is eternal, and that the best we can hope for is getting some itty-bitty changes in HOW they dog us. Don’t let them suck you into framing what you’re trying to do in the language and the terms of the system. Don’t let them tell you that we have to limit ourselves to working within the channels this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before, and the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide. So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution—keep your sights aimed where they need to be: on emancipating all of humanity.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/police-rape-impunity-a-revealing-and-totally-outrageous-epidemic-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

#RiseUpOctober—STOP Police Terror!

Police Rape & Impunity: A Revealing and Totally Outrageous Epidemic

Which Side Are You On?

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Break ALL the Chains!
Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution

Sampler Edition | Full Work

From a reader:

About three times a day, the police kill. Over 875 so far this year. Often very young. Often unarmed, or with their hands up, or retreating—and when this is the case, the victim is disproportionately Black or Brown. Yet time and time again, those murdering cops walk free. That’s because, as Bob Avakian (BA) says, “The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It’s to serve and protect the system that rules over the people.” (from BAsics 1:24) If the system has white supremacy woven into its very fabric, that’s the kind of policing you’re going to get—police terror has replaced KKK terror, and is part of their job. There are little to no consequences because it’s part of how they are expected to teach Black and Brown people “their place.”

This same system rests on a cornerstone of patriarchy—the domination of women by men. Every day and in a million ways women are degraded and abused, raped and beaten, bought and sold, and treated as less than human. That is the system the police serve, and in turn, it serves them back, allowing them to rape and dominate women with impunity. Consider the following stories—just a few from one month last year.

June 2014. A county sheriff’s deputy in Georgia was charged with falsely imprisoning women (locking them in an office in a courthouse), sexual battery (exposing himself, and groping them). May 2015. All five charges, felonies and misdemeanors, were dismissed by a judge due to technicalities (i.e., the prosecutors may or may not have missed a filing deadline by one day).

June 2014. A deputy in Colorado was arrested for kidnapping, imprisoning, beating, and raping his wife. July 2014. The deputy attacked his estranged wife in public, punching her in the face. May 2015. All charges were dismissed. The district attorney dropped the case during a hearing, citing “lack of credible evidence.”

November 2013. A police deputy chief in Utah was accused of obtaining and sharing swimsuit pictures of female officers in his department without their consent, and encouraging his underlings to do the same, for at least two years. The women in question say they were encouraged not to report, because of the deputy’s position and prestige. June 2014. After being on paid leave for months, he retired with full pension and benefits. The chief of police said those actions didn’t merit firing, and he “deemed the matter concluded.”

June 2014. A former Georgia officer was sentenced to 35 years on aggravated child molestation charges, including anal rape, for forcing sex acts from two girls while on duty and a woman he’d arrested. One of the girls, a 15-year-old who was forced to give him oral sex, had a hard time getting the story out in the trial. The defense lawyer was glib and repeatedly insulted and attempted to discredit the victims. The officer appealed.

May 2014. A police officer in Texas went after his wife with his baton and trashed the house, saying he would “throw [her] in the woods so the maggots can have [her],” and that she needed to be “cut by a razor, set on fire, beat half to death and left to die.” The entire confrontation was recorded. June 2014. He was arrested and immediately released on bond. This was the second time he had been charged with domestic violence, and those charges have been pending for three years. He remained a police officer. July 2014. He retired with full pension and benefits. May 2015. An assault charge was dismissed, and the officer was sentenced to 24 months probation.

March 2013. A New York police officer was charged with official misconduct after a woman accused him of rape, assault, battery, and a long list of other violations, after the officer arrested her saying she could go to jail or give him a “date.” December 2013. A judge ruled to let the officer walk, claiming the prosecutors built their case too much around the fact that the officer took video of the woman’s backside while she was being arrested—which didn’t fit the definition of misconduct. No sexual assault charges were filed. June 2014. The woman filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and the City of New York, for false arrest, rape, battery and other offenses. June 2015. A judge dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that even assuming everything she said was true, this did not warrant giving her a “right to relief.” All along, the NYPD refused to comment on the officer’s status.

June 2014. A police officer in Oklahoma was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting eight women, threatening them with arrest or physical harm. He was put on paid leave. November 2014. Five more women came forward to press charges; the 13 plaintiffs were ages 17-58. January 2015. The officer was fired. July 2015. After violating his house arrest two times, the officer was put in jail. His trial is scheduled for October 2015.

June 2014. Several sexual assault charges were filed against a former California officer who was an adviser to young people interested in careers in law enforcement. He was charged with molesting two underage Explorer Scouts. December 2014. The former officer pled no contest, which guaranteed him a vastly shortened sentence of two years, eight months in jail, and got at least three out of six felony charges dropped.

June 2014. A former Wisconsin police officer was arrested for killing two women, whose bodies were dismembered and stuffed in suitcases. This was evident and he fully admitted it. The officer claimed it was “rough sex gone wrong”; he was accused of murder. The former officer had for a long time met women through an s&m site where he was seeking a “24/7 slave, for absolute ownership,” and bragged about how he kept women naked, shackled, handcuffed, and caged for months at a time. The trial was delayed until November 2015.

This system that has patriarchy woven into its fabric works time and time again for its enforcers, and against women.

• Sexual misconduct is the second most reported form of police misconduct—second only to excessive use of force.
• There is no institution that keeps comprehensive, quantitative data about sexual assault by police: reports, charges, convictions, none of it.
• The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) receives calls from survivors of police rape “several times a month.”
• Already rape is the most underreported crime, with an estimated 60 percent of sexual assault going unreported; with police rape, the number that goes unreported must be higher (who you gonna report to??).

Look at what they do to women—false arrest, lock them up, beat them, rape them, and then what? Intimidate them, discredit them, interrogate them, insult them, criminalize them. In the end? Overwhelmingly, rapist cops either face no consequences at all, are put on paid leave, or are allowed to retire peacefully, leaving their victims devastated, battered, traumatized, or dead.

None of this is legitimate! This must be stopped. #RiseUpOctober—a Massive March in New York City October 24 to STOP Police Terror—aims to change forever what police are able to get away with. How the people see who are their friends and who are their enemies. Bring the people most affected by police terror to NYC, joined by thousands of others to issue this challenge worldwide: Which Side Are You On?

Everyone who is outraged at the crimes, the pain, the brutality inflicted on people by the police should put your time and energy into making #RiseUpOctober a turning point in the battle against POLICE TERROR. Which side are YOU on?

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VOLUNTEER

Their culture of terror, violence, victim-blaming, and enforced silence must be punctured through #RiseUpOctober. Let the suffering speak, and refuse to stop fighting until this atrocity is eliminated. As you fight, dig deeper to see what is at the root of these crimes against the people, and the revolution it will take to bring all this unnecessary oppression, here and around the world, to an end, once and for all.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/crewing-up-in-queens-for-rise-up-october.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

An Interview with Joey Johnson

Crewing Up in Queens for Rise Up October

October 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This week, revcom.us/Revolution had the opportunity to interview Joey Johnson(JJ) who has come to New York City to join the waves of people there working to make happen the events from October 22-24. He is working with a team of people in Jamaica, Queens.

Revolution: I was thinking we should start out by talking a little about Jamaica, Queens. You’ve been out there talking to a lot of people and learning about what the lives of people are like and about their encounters with the police. That’s the place Sean Bell was brutally murdered right before his wedding day and that’s put a certain stamp on that part of New York City.

Joey Johnson: Just to start off, it’s been tremendously exciting. It’s fascinating on one level. Okay, so Jamaica, Queens—you are just kind of like parachuting in and not knowing much about it at all, but learning really quickly. It’s an incredible place. I mean, it’s just teeming with people, as a lot of New York is. I think it’s 98 percent Black. It’s not only African-Americans, so many also from the Caribbean, not just Jamaica but other places in the Caribbean, Africans and Haitians. And in this one area, Jamaica, Queens, where we’ve been concentrating, people tell me it’s a transit hub for a lot of people, a lot of the working poor, proletarians, but also like 30 high schools. It’s fucking mind-blowing. At 3 o’clock every day it’s a wild scene, just teeming with young people.

And the pig harassment of the people is pretty intense. The pigs roll deep in groups of four in vans and SUVs and on foot. They’re out there and they’re pretty intense, like jacking up these young people and it’s like stop and frisk, whatever they’ve said they’ve done or not done about that—it’s ongoing. It is more like how the Israeli soldiers come at the Palestinian youths and it is not just the brutality but also the humiliation. And there is a deep sentiment out there of loathing all of this; just deep disgust and anger with it. I’ve heard so many stories, including from people who knew Sean Bell. We’ve gotten out somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 palm cards, people readily take them up and take stacks and take up the challenge of distributing them. People tell you things about their own ordeals. I met so many people who themselves have been brutalized, who almost didn’t survive or a friend of theirs was killed.

People tell you stories like this one guy who had fresh bruises on his face and he told me that two days before they busted him for an open container. And he said to them, why are you doing this to me, there’s murderers out here, why you harassing me? And they put him in the squad car and they told him to shut up and he said to them, no, I don’t have to shut up; I have the right to remain silent and I have the right to say what I think about what you’re doing, say what I think. Then they beat him up, they knocked him out, they knocked him unconscious and he doesn’t even remember exactly everything that happened, except that they went at him. And then he woke up in the precinct and they refused to take him in the precinct and they took him to the hospital because he was injured.

People we know, that we’ve met out there and are working with us closely, took us out to where Sean Bell was killed. We talked to people all throughout the neighborhood, like a muffler repair shop, auto mechanics, beauty salons, barbershops. The Sean Bell murder runs deep with the people; it’s like Oscar Grant out in the Bay Area, really egregious. And they named the street after him. They took us out there to show us that and then we canvassed through the whole area talking to people.

I met this young brother, you could tell he was like a star football player. The way he carried himself and he had all his shoulder pads and his helmet, his equipment with him. And he had a lot of suppressed anger about police brutality. And the more you talked to him and pulled it out, him sharing his own stories but then he just talked about how the other kids in the school weren’t going to do anything. And I said to him, well, you got to challenge them, you got to be a leader. In football there are people who are leaders, players who pull the whole team forward. And I said you got to do that in this part of your life.

So that’s what’s out there, but because it’s out there doesn’t mean it will make it to Manhattan on October 24. It’s got to be organized. And I feel like that’s the challenge we face.

Another quick story is, over at this junior college, we met this guy from Haiti, he’s been here like four years. You meet people who’ve been working things out in their own head, going back to Trayvon Martin, just watching all this and seeing that things are going in a bad direction, in society overall. He definitely felt a sense of responsibility to do something about it.

Revolution: You’re pointing to a lot of raw material in people’s experiences, and their anger. Can you talk about the way you are approaching this—to really unleash that potential? One of the things I understand is that you are working to bring to life, and work with a team of people that is building for October 24. Could you talk about that a bit?

JJ: The team is really exciting. I hooked up with a guy who has been doing Stop Mass Incarceration [work]. He’s been in and out, busy with other projects, but he’s put quite a lot of time into this. We’ve done a lot together and he’s really motivated around it. And then there’s other people including some young Black men in their early 20s and a Latino in his early 30s who’s an Iraq vet. He really wants to do something meaningful with his life after he’s seen what this system has done to people around the world and here.

So I’m very excited about the team. People come in and out, there’s different challenges, but when we crew up together it’s really good, we go together, we go to the transit hub, we go to the schools. And when we’ve been out there—it’s not only that they harass the masses, but the pigs have been pretty belligerent, they’ve harassed us quite a bit. They stop their patrol cars in the middle of an intersection, blocking traffic to sit there and stare at us. We just keep doing what we’re doing and don’t get baited, don’t get drawn into it, we call it out and all that. But one day, and they were like, “clear the sidewalk, clear the sidewalk” and they’re right up behind us doing that shit; and wow, this was on a whole other level, they don’t want us connecting with these young people. Or they come up asking can they have a palm card and we agitate loudly for all the masses to hear, “No they ain’t for you!” And then a while later they will be across the street holding up a palm card. They are really petty pigs like that. But all this has also been drawing the masses to us, people don’t like us being harassed like this. It is what they too have endured.

One day we were out there and our crew had just started doing mass distribution at this transit hub and a couple of masses joined with us right on the spot and one of them, a Jamaican brother, was doing some agitation and he was pretty good, he was hitting the points. So the pigs come up, about five of them, and do like a half circle to intimidate people, people coming up the escalator from the subway. But these guys don’t fade away, they just keep doing what they doing. That’s part of what’s going on out there too.

Back to the team. I think people are getting cohesion, working together and talking and walking through and seeing the basis for this; and then it was really special, three people from our team—including two people who are newer to the team, came to the night at Columbia [on October 7] and this was like: whoa!

I feel like that event helped catapult a lot of things, opened a lot of people’s horizons and a lot of doors much wider because the way the student organizations and the groupings of people that took it up out there, the students. The speeches were all incredible. Eve Ensler, Carl Dix, Nicholas Heyward—everybody who was on the panel hit hard. But I was also really moved by the students—you could tell they were moved, as never before, with a sense of purpose.

We’ve gone to a couple of colleges in Jamaica. We’ve made some progress at one college because we met a professor and another woman who is some kind of administrator and has all these connections with different professors. She was really enthusiastic but then you know how things can drag out and other things come up and they don’t get back to you. But as soon as that event happened at Columbia, I shot that back at her. She told me this whole story, though, about how she took it to her students; she really wanted to involve them. And they had a debate about gun violence versus Rise Up October—which one should they take up as their capstone project, which is like their school-year project. And gun violence narrowly won the vote. So then I responded with an email and I used that thing about crime among the people from revcom.us—the Reality Check article; I sent that to her and said I really wished I would have been there for that discussion because the system is responsible for both of these things; it’s not one versus the other. They enforce these conditions, they’re responsible for both of them. So she goes, okay, we got to make something happen. It’s like that letter in the paper where someone was dialoging and so then the person responded to them, they went to their friends and then said maybe this is too extreme, we should do something more reasonable. So then the person working with them wrote a whole response.

Well, that’s what I did around this, I challenged them around it. So she was like, I don’t know if we can do this in two weeks, maybe we’ll do this as an after event in November. And I was like, no, no, no—too much urgency here. It’ll really make a difference if you do something for it, to open up to let these students know. I said, look you don’t have to carry it all by yourself. She said, I’m an adjunct professor, I don’t really have that much standing here. I said, go to this other woman in the department who was really enthusiastic. So then she called her afterwards and she emailed me afterwards and said we’re having a teach-in on October 21 and I said righteous, that’s great. But it’s a good example of not accommodating, but challenging people and working through the obstacles together.

So it’s working in different spheres. We’re doing the work at the transit hub with all these thousands of basic masses. Many places you have to scratch to find concentrations of people, here it’s like how do you not get lost in the multitudes. There’s that at the transit hub and then there’s the colleges; both of these things are going on.

The team has gone out to the colleges. We’ll go to a school and people will say hit the cafeteria, let’s hit the departments. Maybe someone will say, we should go to the administration first and it’s like nah, nah. Let’s go to the student organizations and to the departments, because sometimes you just walk through the departments and you see what’s on the professor’s door. Like at another college, we found a professor who wrote about the Central Park 5 and the media bias against them. On another door there was a guy who made a film about the Amistad rebellion. So we’re trying to follow up with them. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, to try to bring forth. And then we’ve gone to the meetings of kind of the equivalent of the Black Student Union or different groups to try and involve them.

Revolution: It’s an important dynamic that is being set into motion... in the sense of, on the one hand, going out very broadly to people on the bottom and drawing them forward to stop police terror. And there’s a dynamic between that and drawing forward broader forces. You have different people from different places seeing other people in motion—the broader forces are moved when people on the bottom move and they learn about the reality of what goes on every day in this country. And then, it’s also true that people on the bottom feel like they have some backing when they see other people stepping into the fight, standing up, and they see there is this whole broader section of society, and it gives people breathing room to step into larger things. You do get a feel for how this is a societal wide thing, even as this is full of contradiction and struggle.

JJ: We’ve gotten down with a pastor who’s got a small congregation, but who’s got a lot of respect, standing in the community out there because of fighting for a long time against stop and frisk. This pastor’s known Stop Mass Incarceration for some time and appreciated the Call [from Carl Dix and Cornel West] but did initially have a view that things need to happen in Queens because of all the ugly the police are doing to the people there. But then I said, but look, things need to happen in Dayton, Ohio. But on this day, people need to be in New York City in Manhattan, we have to bring all this together.

That’s the whole point, instead of people being isolated in their own cities or communities, this is unprecedented, there’s never been a coming together of hundreds of family members who all share one thing in common, they all lost a loved one to murder at the hands of the police. This is unprecedented. And then the pastor got the vision of the Call and readily endorsed it and said, “You all have commissioned me. It feels like we were blessed to do this.” That’s the framework the pastor is coming from.

So the pastor right away set up a meeting between us and a stop the violence group that’s more focused on the gang violence—but they see the need to deal with this as well.

Then the pastor took out a front-page ad in a community newspaper and the Rise Up October poster is going to be right on the front page of the paper and it has a distribution of 40,000 or something like that.

And the pastor’s calling for a meeting and for support with 125 pastors, and doing a mailing, and we’re trying to do it with them. Then one of the other team members was going out to another church today to get out the palm cards and talk to people and get the right connections.

You can do a lot in a couple of weeks actually.

Revolution: Well, you are getting a certain, as we used to say, calculus going. I would like to get a little better understanding of the people who are stepping forward because that makes a huge difference, the people in the community who are stepping forward, going out to the churches. You’ve met these people but then what’s the process of their being integrated into this team? I realize it’s not 24-7 for everybody, but they’re being part of a certain collective team.

JJ: One person who is part of the team said, after we had been running together for two-three days, I still don’t understand and nobody has actually explained it to me, how a march is going to make a difference. Because we’re going to do this on October 24 and on October 25 the police are still going to be killing people.

So we came at it from a number of different angles. I said, look, you got to pull back the lens. I can’t remember exactly, but some of the different points I made was what difference has it made that people stood up, going back to Ferguson, and what happened here after the grand jury decisions around Eric Garner and Michael Brown—what happened all over the country. The tens of thousands of people that stood up and went into the streets and blocked bridges and blocked freeways and did these die-ins to symbolize the thousands of stolen lives, people murdered by the police. And then in Baltimore people rose up the way they did. What difference has it made? I said it’s forced millions of people to confront this, who otherwise would have been either oblivious or indifferent or uninformed, whatever you want to say. Across society, it has put the way the police are brutalizing and murdering people before people——in a way it hasn’t been for decades.

I said, that’s really important! Don’t take that for granted just because we have that. If that wasn’t important then why are the authorities trying so hard to shut it down, rule it out of order, de-legitimize the movement with all this bullshit about how Black Lives Matter is a hate group and the protests are causing cops to get shot. And I told him about the piece Larry Wilmore did on the Nightly Show, about how that’s a total propaganda of the system, that actually less cops have been shot in 2015 than in decades, and how it’s just a whole thing that they’re running on people to try to de-legitimize the movement that has arisen. You know, it’s amazing, you have people like Anderson Cooper or Don Lemon, they never liked the uprising of the masses from Ferguson going forward but it’s like when Katrina happened, they weep a little, but look how readily they want to turn out the lights on this movement against police brutality and terror. It’s like Bob Avakian says about Anderson Cooper and his “keeping them honest” bullshit, where is it now?

And people have to see that. That’s the point in the editorial about the situation’s not static: “Either the protests and resistance will be repressed or derailed and the controversy shut down, with the horrors not only staying in place but intensifying... or people will come forth in much greater numbers and determination than before, and seriously change the terms of how all of society looks at this and acts on it. There is a way to do that, to fight this, right now, and to take this fight to a higher level. This October 24 in New York City thousands and thousands will pour into the streets, insisting to the world and the country: THIS MUST STOP!” I’ve been using the 3 Points a lot—I’ll show you my copy, it’s all ragged... you can’t underestimate how you have to set the orientation, and then reset the orientation. You set the orientation and then you go out and get hit with things and then you need to reset the orientation. And people thank you for reading it, resetting the orientation.

And then I told him, look, we have to rock this New Jim Crow and this intensifying police terror back on its heels and challenge people with the urgency of it. And I told him my own understanding as a revolutionary communist that we have to sweep away the whole system of capitalism and imperialism so we get to the underlying system that is responsible for this mass incarceration and police terror, criminalizing whole generations, and so many other crimes against humanity around the world—I like the way that comrade Carl [Dix] connected all this at Columbia University, including that we have a revolutionary leader in Bob Avakian, in BA, that has forged a strategy for a revolution in this country and has brought forward a new synthesis of revolution and communism, a society we would want to live in. And some people have bought BAsics off of just reading the quotes from BA about the real role of the police, or the Key Concentrations of Social Contradictions, and the Strategy for Revolution. And people are reading Revolution newspaper. But then you have to also come back to the point, that is an ongoing and important discussion and regardless of what people think about that, they got to see the moment we’re in right now. The powers that be want to shut this controversy down and get back to the business as usual of killing with impunity. So what are we gonna do.

Revolution: So do you think he’s more fully seeing why this needs to happen?

JJ: I don’t think it’s all straight line but I think there’s forward momentum. And some people they come forward and then they disappear for a little bit. We met this one guy who worked with us for one day who’s what’s called a “lite feet” dancer on the subway trains, and they get harassed by the police. He was only with the team one day and then I think he got some pushback, as they say, some opposition from his, he called it the “old heads” who said they ain’t with the marches, they want something more militant.

But I told the young brother, we actually need revolution and have a strategy, but that involves “fighting the power and transforming the people for revolution” today if you want to even have a chance to get to a revolution. And this just ain’t any ole march, hundreds of family members of people killed by the police are coming from all over the country to NYC to march and tell the world that the police are terrorizing Black and Latino communities in this country. But I don’t know if they get that.

But we just need to persevere with these youths. I mean, they get harassed, there’s a whole thing that goes on with them—where they get enough citations and they can get banned from the subway and that’s like a fucking death sentence, how are you supposed to do anything in NYC if you are banned from the trains? And they’re just phenomenal dancers.

Revolution: So how do you see things unfolding, with two weeks to go? There is time to go all-out even as you are focusing on bringing people together and organizing for people to go together to October 24.

JJ: Oh, the church pastor wants a bus or in some way have an organized way for people from Queens to come into Manhattan, like a delegation. So they’re really trying to get this mailing out to these other pastors. They called a meeting with them before around this police brutality shit. They sent out a mailing to 125 and 20 showed up and I said, that’s good, we can roll with that.

Revolution: The experience you’re describing is interesting, because you could contrast it with the approach of: well, the church wants to bring a bus but we don’t have enough money. Instead the approach is, they don’t have enough money to cover it, so let’s reach out to other ministers. If you’re starting from the need and the basis that you’re describing about the vision—the police are really an occupying army—and the basis to reach out broadly to ministers who care about their parishioners, and you can see how things could go to a whole different level, because you’re looking at these challenges as, not “shoot, we don’t have a bus,” but we can get a bus if we expand the movement. You didn’t have a team when you started, but you started with who you got and organize others.

JJ: I think it means keep coming back to “Why There Must Be a Truly MASSIVE Outpouring Against Police Murder on October 24 and Why YOU Are Needed” in terms of the urgency and the stakes and what it says about what difference it will make for people to throw in, the last point: “In fact, this can only happen on the scale and scope that is absolutely necessary if many people throw in on this, now—people who have been fighting this, as well as people who are just now coming to the fight.” The whole third point.

Revolution: There is a certain scope to what you’re doing. It’s not an approach of one by one by one. But actually how do we reach out broadly and then when people who step into it, they reach out to another 125 ministers, the professor at the college gets with another professor to organize a teach-in. There’s a certain geometric progression as opposed to one by one. From what you’re describing, you’ve gone out very broadly, connected with all different kinds of people and then the people who have stepped forward themselves have taken more responsibility for making October 24 what it needs to be. There was this outpouring and then the powers that be have hit back and now there’s the question of taking the initiative and taking things to a whole other level. In other words, it’s the people who are really passionate about this and growing numbers of people who are saying no, we’re going to step out and say this must stop. There’s a certain quality to it beyond, it’s not just a continuation of what’s happened but a qualitative step beyond what has happened before. And that will have an impact. This is taking the offensive in a certain way; it’s not just responding to the latest thing, as important as that is, and that’s very important. But it’s taking the offensive that’s what you’ve been taking out to people, what difference this is going to make. No, you’re not going to stop police brutality ultimately without revolution, we know that. But this could be a big step in building the movement for revolution even as it will rock them back on their heels, that’s a fact.

Revolution: You mentioned people are reading BAsics and Revolution newspaper...

JJ: Yes, we have gotten out a lot of issues of Revolution—we could be getting out more. And with the team, I’m really struggling, hey, you need to go to revcom.us every day. I mean, people have these smart phones—I mean, yes, we need to get to a situation where millions are going to revcom.us, but especially when we are in battle like this, people that have stepped forward to join these teams, we need to more strongly encourage and challenge people they need to go daily because there is so much reporting, including articles that really help people see the basis to do more. It is the “grasp revolution, promote production” versus just “production, production, production”—fuck that. They can go to revcom.us and see the short clips from BA from Revolution—Nothing Less!

Learn more about BAsics

And yes, BAsics often sells itself. It walks away from you [if you] open it up and show them the quote about the role of the police, ask them to read the quote aloud, and also the Statement on Strategy, when you tell people, hey, look, there’s actually a strategy. To be honest, we should be doing more of all this because it is about keeping in mind the strategic needs of the masses. It ain’t all just about this battle. People really do need to become emancipators of humanity. And they need the science of communism to do that. I mentioned earlier that a person bought BAsics off the quote, 3:30:

Some Principles for Building a Movement for Revolution

At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the “pole” and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution.

Because this brother said, I go to people where they’re at, when people say they feel strongly about lack of good housing and education, and he said, this is about that.

And I said, it is about that, but look, the ability of the police to just murder you just wantonly, with impunity, for them to just arbitrarily be able to just take your life, all that other stuff is foul and is part of the conditions of life that this system enforces on millions of people and the oppression of whole peoples. But I said, this is a concentration of all that, for them to just be able to arbitrarily take your life and nothing to come of it. And I said, this is something that the RCP has actually scientifically determined that this is a fault line, a key concentration of social contradictions is the way that the police enforce these relations of oppression and exploitation; the conditions of life that the system is determined to keep people in. That’s it right there. So off of that people are buying and reading BAsics.

I think there’s a lot more work to be done around that. I like the way that Carl did it at Columbia when he talked about all these horrors that the system does all over the planet. Murder by the police doesn’t stand alone, it’s part of what they do all over the planet, this is what they do. People suffering horribly and unnecessarily. Whether it’s all these millions who have been murdered and displaced, the whole refugee crisis in Europe because of these imperialists, overwhelmingly the U.S. empire upending the whole entire Middle East, the whole arc of countries from Pakistan to Tunisia and everywhere in between, for oil, power, and empire. All this blood-thirstiness between the U.S. and Russia over Syria; or the whole global degradation of women, destroying the global environment. All of this is why the system needs to be swept away. So people are engaging with it.

Someone was saying to me you can tell by the way Carl carries himself, he’s been through it, the way he carries himself and the way he talks to people, he’s been through it, he’s been tested as a leader for decades now. And coming from his experiences in the military and refusing to fight and going to prison for that, refusing to fight in Vietnam and going to prison for that and he’s still at it today. So I have a lot of admiration for him. But you know he’s also out on that panel working with people coming from a different framework, different beliefs and he’s worked hard at learning how to do that for a long time now. He’s very adept at how to do that. That’s part of leading as well. So I think people are impressed by that. They know this movement’s got legs, it’s got a real foundation and real substance.

But I honestly think we need to find the ways for these young and older new fighters who are coming forward to find out more about the movement for revolution and the strategic leadership that we have in BA. I’m sorry people, but this system that has lied to you about so many other things of importance has lied to you about something of the greatest importance, the path to the emancipation of humanity. That is the project BA has been working on. So I think we need to do better at that.

In the brief street encounters we have, will thousands of people make that extra effort to get the newspaper in their hands, text people those links to key articles [on revcom.us] or even just the memes, get people into BAsics and the films of BA? People should think about this in these days of vacuous and worse imperialist presidential “debates.” the competing packages of deadly poison being sold and the need to get BA and the movement for revolution way out there. That is the leading edge of what we need to be doing as we are fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution. That scientifically how something as important as Rise Up October can really contribute to the Three Prepares of preparing the ground, preparing the people, and preparing the vanguard for revolution.

Revolution: My last question: Why did you volunteer to come to New York?

JJ: Are you crazy? I’d come in a heartbeat. I love New York. I love the masses, and how everything is compressed here in one place. I would come here at every opportunity, at every chance. But this is a particular movement around police terror and the need to stop it. I think it is really a wise call, to call for this national march in New York because people have been fighting in every other area of the country—people have a sentiment we need to do more here, be it San Jose, California, or Dallas or St. Louis or Columbus, Georgia.

But I think the call to concentrate in New York City means we can put this in front of the world. It’s a big challenge because you got to do a lot in a place like New York in order to break through on that level. It’s an international city, international media is here, it’s the financial capital of the empire. It’s a big concentration of oppressed people in this city, as well as people from other strata who empathize and don’t like that oppression. That’s all concentrated here. But to break through on the level that we need to break through on is going to require a lot, so that’s what we’re racing to come from behind on.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/letter-from-precious-edwards-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Letter from Precious Edwards, sister to Dakota Bright

Dakota Bright, murdered by Chicago police, November 8.
Photo courtesy of the family of Dakota Bright

 

"We have to take a stand and the time is now"

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Hi my name is Precious Edwards and I am the older sister to now 18 yr old Dakota Bright. My brother, then 15-yrs old, was hounded down and brutally murdered by Chicago police Nov. 8, 2012. He was chased thru a dark alley where he was brought to his death by one fatal shot to the back of the head at point blank range. Police harrassed and tried intimidating our family starting the day he was murdered, followed by his funeral being invaded and guns being drawn on the family at the burial. They went so far as to telling my mother they would kill her with a rifle pointed in her face. They've been issuing illegal tickets for everything under the sun to our family, friends, and even the community for seeking justice for the last three years. We've done nothing wrong our loved one was taken from us. All we ask is for answers, its been three long years and we've got none.

Only two people know what happened in that alley and as they say in law enforcement terms a dead man tells no lies. Why would a 15yr old boy who is obviously in fear for his life (because he is running from people who are supposed to protect him but are chasing him with guns drawn) be shot in the back of the head at point blank range then be handcuffed ? Why was the family never informed? Why are the police constantly harassing the family? Why are they at every memorial in rememberance of Dakota? Are they lookin for trouble so they can kill again because who wants the murderer of the person they love around at a time like this? Why were there 15 cops surrounding a dead handcuffed body of a 15 yrold unarmed baby boy? All questions that cause me not to be able to sleep most nights . I see sisters get to send their brothers off to college or welcome home their first nieces/nephews something they took from me I'll never experience those things, just like Dakota never experienced life.Its only getting worse victims are getting younger! Victims are getting older they prey on the weak and us as black and brown people are the weak because we are weak minded we pay so much attention to the media and so little to our everyday lives we need everyone to come out not for one day but for all three days, October 21-24, rise up black brown white pink and purple people because this is not an issue of race, its an issue of immorality. How long will we be tortured and remain silent?  How many of our own do we have to lose before we realize every life does matter. Come to NYC.  Say the names, if you've never lost someone to police brutality come listen to the name. Please buy a ticket, support our family in this trying time, support your friends and family in this trying time, support a neighbor or even a familiar face from the news.

They take the lives of less fortunate so some of us can't afford to just get up and go, but with your help we'll be there and our voices will be louder than ever because it wont just be me, it will be us, and it'll take us to get our voices heard. Lets start our own black panther movement we have to take a stand and the time is now. Please if you can't buy a ticket due to lack of money and can't attend due to lack of time, please donate $10.  Every supporter is recognized and I send my sincere gratitude from my brother Dakota Bright and the whole Bright/Edwards family.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/i-will-donate-500-this-minute-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

"I will donate $500 this minute"

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader in Houston:

I wanted to let readers know about an experience our team had this weekend. Two of us, revolutionaries, were taking a break after a long day of taking out Rise Up October. We were sitting on the patio of a pub, and my friend asked the man at the table nearby about the appetizer he was eating. He looked over and commented, “I really like your shirt.” (I was wearing the RiseUpOctober/Which Side Are You On? shirt.)

I immediately walked over to his table, sat down with him while he was eating, and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but we are facing an emergency situation!” He didn’t mind at all. I explained that we are about to make history with a massive national march in New York City to stop police terror, and that he must be a part of it... and then asked him what he thinks.

He expressed his outrage about the police murdering people with impunity, and described, “After Ferguson, I talked with all my colleagues, a mostly white law firm [he is a middle-aged Black man] and they even donated money for people to travel to Ferguson. But the racism and police brutality, it just doesn’t stop, it’s getting worse. How do you confront white people with the horrors of police brutality, what else can we do?”

After a very short back and forth, describing the amazing, courageous families, showing him the Stolen Lives poster, about changing the thinking of millions with Rise Up October, and how he can participate right now, support this financially to bring 100 families to NYC, traveling from all over the country, he said, “I would be there myself if I could!”

He explained to me that he’s an attorney, and that he wants to spread this to other attorneys he knows. As he went through the pages of Revolution newspaper, a big smile came over his face. “I’m going to post this [the centerfold] up on my office window. You just don’t know, I am so happy to hear this is happening!”

He finished dinner, cleaned his hands, pulled out his phone, and told me, “You are right, this is so important, and I want to help make sure these families get to NYC. In fact, I will do it right now! Send me the link to the website, and I will donate $500 this minute.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/cindy-sheehan-why-i-want-to-shut-down-rikers-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From Cindy Sheehan:

Why I Want to Shut Down Rikers

October 17, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This appears on Cindy Sheehan’s blog, The Soapbox. Revcom.us is reposting with permission.

“Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Eugene V. Debs at his trial for sedition: September 14, 1918

Before my son was killed in Iraq, I wouldn’t say that I “respected” or “feared” authority—that’s never been in my nature. However, looking back, I think I was terrified of crossing the proverbial line. Relating my rude awakening and experiences since then, I know that the line is drawn by the violent empire and arbitrarily re-drawn whenever it suits the needs of the Police State.

Since my son Casey was killed in another US imperial war based on lies and waged for profit and I have become an anti-Empire activist, I have now been arrested too many times to keep track: I stopped counting at 20.

Besides the frustration of being “popped” for exercising my so-called constitutional rights, the many, many hours I have spent in jail have been ultra eye opening to me.

I have been in holding cells with fellow activists (of course), accused sex-workers, drug addicts, petty thieves, embezzlers, drug dealers, and once with a woman who had stabbed her common law husband (after years of abuse). 100% of the others arrested have been “crimes” of economic deprivation. I have NEVER once been in jail with a War or Wall Street Criminal.

As uncomfortable or abusive as my arrests and incarcerations have been, I always knew that there was someone “out” there who was working to get me sprung as quickly as possible. I have often been in tears leaving my fellow inmates because I knew that most of them wouldn’t be so fortunate.

One of my worst stays in jail (in the top three) was in the legendary Tombs of NYC after the class traitors in blue had brutally arrested me (concussion and dislocated shoulder).

The four of us activists who were arrested in front of the US mission to the UN were stuck in a large filthy cell for the night with about 20 other women. As bad as that place is, there is the “Abu Ghraib” of the US sitting on an island right off of Manhattan: Rikers.

“Rikers Island is the second largest jail system in the country. It is located on an island in the East River, right next to Manhattan, a mere 300 yards from the runways at LaGuardia Airport. It consists of 10 jails which house an average of 14,000 inmates per night. Since 1990, six class action suits have been filed by the Department of Justice against Rikers due to rampant brutality and gross violations prisoners’ rights. The most recent (2015) class action suit found a culture of ‘deep-seated violence,’ resulting in a ‘staggerin’” number of injuries, where ‘adolescents are at a constant risk of physical harm.’” [Shut Down Rikers Fact Sheet]

In combination with #RiseUpOctober against police murder and brutality, a call has been issued for non-violent civil disobedience to shut down Rikers Island. Why am I participating?

As an antiwar “criminal” I have always realized my privilege, but I don’t need any commandments, constitutions, or declarations to dictate my behavior: Every last person on this planet has the same right to dignity. Along with the vast majority of the Prison Industrial Complex of the US, dignity is a human right in very short supply at Rikers Island. The system and its lackeys regularly dehumanize those illegally incarcerated (some without any charges for the past six years) with rampant physical and sexual abuse and torture.

Millions of people in the surrounding area live, work, play, and exist in very close proximity to the scourge of Rikers Island, and I am confident that most don’t give it, or their fellow humans trapped in indefinite detention there, one thought during the day. We who signed this call do and we are willing to put our bodies on the line for change.

I hope that if it’s at all possible, any one reading this will join us in this very important action on Friday, October 23rd at 9 am at the Queens side of Rikers Island. (Meet at 19th Ave. and Hazen Street.)

Facebookevent

Go to #RiseUpOctober for more information about this protest and more in the three days of action in NYC.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/reform-nyc-rikers-island-jail-no-shut-down-this-torture-hellhole-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

"Reform" NYC Rikers Island Jail?
No—Shut Down This Torture Hellhole!

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been saying that “reform” of the brutal Rikers Island jail is a top priority for his administration. There’s been news of some steps being taken, like officially banning isolation for inmates under 18 years old (but not for prisoners generally). Responding to a city comptroller report on NYC jails released October 16, a de Blasio spokesperson said “meaningful reform takes time.” The message being pounded into people’s heads is: Things are being reformed at Rikers—be patient.

But the reality is that the horrors at Rikers are continuing every single day, not far from the high-rises of Manhattan. And this is intolerable!

With an average of about 14,000 prisoners each day—including hundreds of adolescents—some 85 percent of them not even convicted of a crime and overwhelmingly Black or Latino, Rikers is a huge debtors’ prison where people are shut up for weeks, months, or even years because they can’t make bail. And it’s a torture hellhole, where prisoners, including many with serious mental health problems, are thrown into isolation for slight violations or for nothing at all... and where rampant brutality by guards has resulted in what one class-action lawsuit called a “staggering” number of serious injuries among those imprisoned.

And now, the city jail administrators are considering rule changes proposed by de Blasio that, if implemented, would make Rikers an even more dehumanizing hellhole.

In the name of “keep[ing] weapons, drugs, and other contraband off this island,” the proposed rule changes would put more restrictions on physical contact between visitors and Rikers prisoners. The changes would also allow prison officials to conduct intrusive background checks on potential visitors and deny visits based on vague criteria about the “danger” they might pose to the prison. Another change would prohibit people in Rikers from receiving packages of clothes and other personal items from family and friends unless they are purchased new from and delivered by an approved vendor—making it more expensive to send packages to the prisoners. As a statement from groups and individuals opposing the rule changes says, “They will overwhelmingly impact Black and Latino families and communities, and poor people who can’t afford bail.”

Yet another proposed rule change would allow prison authorities to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for much longer than under the current rules. Right now, if a prisoner is held in isolation for 30 consecutive days, the prisoner is supposed be released into the general population for seven days before they could be thrown back into solitary. That 30 days of permitted isolation is already twice the 15-day period of solitary confinement that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has determined constitutes torture. De Blasio’s proposed rule changes would allow the authorities to remove the seven-day requirement for prisoners held in solitary for 30 days—in effect allowing for indefinite isolation.

At the October 16 Board of Corrections public hearing in Manhattan on the proposed rule changes for Rikers and other NYC prisons, speaker after speaker spoke about the great harm that these changes would bring down on prisoners, many of whom are already suffering from mental illness and/or are very vulnerable because they are adolescents. Many spoke movingly about how the prisoners held at Rikers are all human beings—and should be treated as such, not as “bodies” or animals.

A young Black woman, who courageously spoke about the harrowing, nightmarish ordeal she suffered for three years in solitary at Rikers, called NYC’s island prison “a modern-day concentration camp.” Her words hit the mark.

When there is a concentration camp right in your midst—where people are being held under horrendous conditions of inhumane brutality and torture—you don’t ask those running the camp to be a little less brutal. You can’t wait patiently for those concentration camp overseers to carry out promised “meaningful reforms.”

What’s needed is a loud and clear demand, and political action to carry through that demand: Shut Down Rikers Island!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/awtwns-the-us-airstrike-on-the-kunduz-hospital-unacceptable-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From A World To Win News Service

The U.S. airstrike on the Kunduz hospital: "Unacceptable"

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

12 October 2015. A World to Win News Service. On 3 October, the U.S. military leading the occupation of Afghanistan carried out a prolonged series of air strikes on a hospital in Kunduz, the only facility in north eastern Afghanistan capable of treating the victims of the war. Ten hospital patients, including three children, were killed, burned in their beds, along with twelve medical staff working for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), which opened the hospital four years ago

Initially, the U.S. military tried to justify the attack as “collateral damage”, the by-product of a necessary action to “protect the force”. A military that has invaded and occupied another country cannot morally justify its actions as self-defence, and further, international law explicitly forbids targeting wounded people and medical facilities under any circumstances. U.S. President Barack Obama dismissed the attack as “a tragic incident,” as if the death of these people had been unavoidable.

“It is unacceptable that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake,” MSF president Joanne Liu said. As shock and indignation mounted, on 8 October Obama tried to close the incident by calling Dr Liu to offer his “personal apology” for what he claimed was an “accident”. The facts, as MSF has brought out, make it clear that this claim is not true. MSF has repeated its call for an international commission to investigate the attack, which it continues to call a war crime.

Dr. Joanne Liu

Following is Dr Liu’s statement while visiting Kunduz Trauma Centre after the American attack.

For four years, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) trauma centre in Kunduz was the only facility of its kind in north eastern Afghanistan, offering essential medical and surgical care. On Saturday 3 October this came to an end when the hospital was deliberately bombed. Twelve MSF staff and 10 patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured, including 19 members of the MSF team. The attack was unacceptable.

The whole MSF Movement is in shock, and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. Nothing can excuse violence against patients, medical workers and health facilities. Under International Humanitarian Law hospitals in conflict zones are protected spaces. Until proven otherwise, the events of last Saturday amount to an inexcusable violation of this law. We are working on the presumption of a war crime.

In the last week, as fighting swept through the city, 400 patients were treated at the hospital. Since its opening in 2011, tens of thousands of wounded civilians and combatants from all sides of the conflict have been triaged and treated by MSF. On the night of the bombing, MSF staff working in the hospital heard what was later confirmed to be a U.S. army plane circle around multiple times, releasing its bombs on the same building within the hospital compound at each pass. The building targeted was the one housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms and physiotherapy ward. Surrounding buildings in the compound were left largely untouched.

Despite MSF alerting both the Afghan and Coalition military leadership, the air strike continued for at least another 30 minutes. The hospital was well-known and the GPS coordinates had been regularly shared with [the U.S. and Nato] Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials, as recently as Tuesday 29 September.

This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war. Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on Coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and U.S. forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime.

This attack does not just touch MSF but it affects humanitarian work everywhere, and fundamentally undermines the core principles of humanitarian action. We need answers, not just for us but for all medical and humanitarian staff assisting victims of conflict, anywhere in the world. The preserve of health facilities as neutral, protected spaces depends on the outcome of a transparent, independent investigation.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/awtwns-turkey-murderer-erdogan-and-murderous-state-must-be-stopped-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From A World To Win News Service

Turkey: "Murderer Erdogan" and the murderous state must be stopped

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

12 October 2015. A World to Win News Service. At least 97 people were killed in the October 10 bombing of a political rally against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s refusal to reopen peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and his repression of the opposition. Erdoğan quickly called the massacre a “heinous crime against the unity of our country.”  Since the moment when the explosions took place, his government has used it to further strengthen his regime and the state as the only way to hold the country together in the face of bloody chaos.

The demonstration in Ankara, the country’s capital, was organized by a coalition of leftist and other organizations led by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) as part of its campaign for the 1 November parliamentary elections. As a large crowd gathered in front of the main train station, first one and then another bomb filled with metal pellets went off about fifty metres apart. Witnesses later recalled that contrary to “normal” police procedures in Turkey, security forces were absent and no one was searched entering the assembly area. Not long after, the police intervened―attacking people trying to carry the injured to safety, firing their guns into the air and shooting rubber bullets, tear gas and concussion grenades. No ambulances arrived for some 30 minutes. Hundreds were wounded, many very seriously. HDP puts the death toll at 128.

The next day, Turkish police brutally stopped HDP and other activists and family members of victims who wanted to lay flowers on the site of the massacre, again tear gassing and attacking people already mourning a terrible loss. People chanted “Erdoğan murderer, police murderers, state murderer” as they marched later that afternoon in Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakir (Turkish Kurdistan), France, Germany and Switzerland.

Initially Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced that Daesh (Islamic State), the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and PKK itself were suspects in the bombing. This might be seen as a stupidly bad joke, especially since the regime itself has identified HDP with PKK. But the serious implication was that the Kurdish movement had killed its own supporters and broad sympathizers in order to divide Turkey.

Days later, the regime announced that it was focusing its investigation on Daesh, and it rounded up suspected members. But in the hours following the bombings, it seized on the situation to launch airstrikes on PKK positions. Readjusting its previous position of an armed response to the regime’s refusal to negotiate, PKK ordered its fighters to cease engagements and return to their camps for the time being.

The Ankara massacre took place in an increasingly polarized pre-election atmosphere. HDP’s entry into parliament last June denied Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority by drawing votes from previous AKP supporters. Erdoğan found himself unable to put together a parliamentary majority to back proposed constitutional amendments meant to push through AKP’s Islamist programme and tighten the unity of the state. The lack of a governing majority made new elections necessary.

No matter what AKP’s role in the Ankara massacre may have been, what is certain is that Erdoğan’s determination to make himself and the regime the only alternative to bloody chaos was itself a major factor in causing it. AKP has done everything possible to fuel both traditional Turkish (anti-Kurdish) chauvinism and Islamism. Erdoğan seeks to weaken PKK and the Kurdish movement politically as well as militarily, to force it further into the fold of the existing political system.

By portraying this situation as a conflict between a corrupt personal dictatorship and liberal democracy, HDP and other leftist parties are making a grave mistake about the necessity driving the Turkish ruling class and its state. One of the sharpest contradictions is between the AKP’s intensifying drive to Islamize Turkey and support Islamist forces in Syria... on the one hand, and on the other the fact that Islamism has become a big problem for the U.S. and the current imperialist world order. This has led the U.S., never a friend of the Kurds or any other oppressed people, to ally itself with the PKK’s Syrian affiliate PYD in fighting Daesh.

At the beginning of 2012, an in-depth interview with Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, was conducted over a period of several days by A. Brooks, a younger generation revolutionary who has been inspired by the leadership and body of work of Bob Avakian and the new synthesis of communism this has brought forward.

The U.S. is both bothered by the Erdoğan regime and, at least for now, stuck with it. The sudden step-up in U.S. and Russian contention in Syria has made this even clearer. While President Barack Obama’s mouthpieces scold Russia for not attacking Daesh enough, Washington has complained very little publicly about Erdoğan’s policy of concentrating his regime’s attacks on PKK. If after this massacre Erdoğan can convince enough of the Turkish ruling class and people in Turkey that there is no viable alternative to his rule, he may think he can keep playing his double game with the U.S.

HDP is calling on people to respond to the massacre with their votes and continue to press for reform to democratize the state that at the very least created the conditions for this crime to happen. Erdoğan has used peace negotiations and war, elections and open repression in bringing this situation about. The regime has already shown that the state can use its armed power to win votes, while HDP has counted on being allowed to help hold Turkey together, and getting U.S. support in doing that. These goals are no more in the people’s interests than the methods they are being pursued with.

The electoral politics adopted by much of the opposition to the regime are based on extremely dangerous illusions about the nature of the state and the world imperialist system it is embedded in. Such illusions are the necessary clothing of a stable reactionary state, especially when AKP’s actions are leading to cracks in the state’s legitimacy. Erdoğan’s attempts to use events and resorting to extreme measures does not mean that things are under his control. Just the opposite. The Ankara massacre brings to mind the possibility of the kind of state collapse that has occurred in Iraq or Syria. The same contradictions, however, could give a determined struggle against the regime much more impact and open the possibility of revolution.

The regime badly needs the people’s illusions to strengthen its hand in a gamble in which it could win or lose everything. This weakness could be exposed and taken advantage of, instead of seeking to lend the naked emperor some “democratic” clothing. In this extremely difficult and dangerous situation, being able to wage an effective and coherent fight against the regime’s mounting crimes depends on many factors, but most of all an understanding of what is really at stake.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/enablers-of-israeli-terrorism-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From The Electronic Intifada

The enablers of Israeli terrorism

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This article by Michael Lesher originally appeared at The Electronic Intifada.

“These attacks,” intoned a pro-Nazi Protestant minister as he bewailed the killing of Germans during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, “were unprovoked attempts to murder innocent civilians, or police or soldiers who were trying to maintain peace and order.”

Decrying international criticism of the German army that had laid siege to the ghetto, the minister was particularly incensed at local Jews who had described attacks against German settlers (who lived on land, and often in houses, expropriated from former Jewish residents) as acts of self-defense.

That claim inverted reality, the minister insisted: “The enemy is a religious ideology ... which seeks to dominate the world through murderous evil. The world must recognize this and call it by its name.”

The minister concluded his sermon by exulting that Germans had just staged an Easter celebration in the center of the occupied city, on the site of a strike by Jewish partisans a few days earlier. And he offered prayers for “the healing of those [Germans] who have been wounded recently ... and for a swift, just, and comprehensive peace for the German people.”

Now comes my confession: there was no such sermon in April 1943. There was no such Protestant minister (or if there was, I have no record of his comments about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising). In that sense, what you have just read was pure invention.

But not really. For those exact sentiments were expressed – and very recently – by a prominent clergyman, who wrote them in denunciation of a small, violent uprising against a long-standing military occupation whose oppressive tactics had culminated in an escalating terror campaign against a defenseless local population.

The clergyman did pray solely for the peace and safety of the invaders, not the invaded. He did blame the victims for resisting the military might of the occupying forces. He did insist that the victims’ religion rendered them a threat to civilization. And he even made the weird, racist claim that the objects of so much systematic brutality were somehow engaged in a conspiracy “to dominate the world.”

Plea for peace?

In fact, all of these quotations were taken verbatim from the clergyman’s published remarks, with only one difference: where my fictitious pro-Nazi minister prayed for “the German people,” the actual preacher — an American — privileged “the Jewish people” over its “enemies.” (The religious ceremony proudly celebrated in occupied territory, where soldiers and mobs loyal to the occupying force had reportedly wounded more than 100 victims over the previous days, was the Jewish holiday of Simhath Torah in East Jerusalem, not Easter in wartime Poland.)

For here’s the whole truth: the clergyman was Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, a prominent figure in the Orthodox Union, one of the largest organizations of Orthodox rabbis in the world. Weinreb’s remarks, published on 8 October, were directed against recent Palestinian resistance to a wave of official Israeli terror that has killed 32 Palestinians since the beginning of October and demolished 450 Palestinian buildings so far this year.

None of that, however, has ever troubled Weinreb, so far as one can judge from his public comments.

He has not offered a single word of consolation to the friends and relatives of several Palestinians — including a 13-year-old child — killed by Israelis in the days immediately preceding his published wish for “healing” and “peace.”

Moral slumber

I do not apologize for any discomfort caused by the temporary masking of the clergyman’s real identity. The similarity of Weinreb’s apologia for Israeli terror to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda — the horrific effects of which are indelibly carved into the memory of every living Jew — ought to be drawing volleys of outrage from the religious Jewish public.

In fact, the parallels between the two have scarcely been noticed.

What will it take, I wonder, to awaken my religious “leadership” — and the Orthodox Jewry it represents — from its parochial moral slumber to the knowledge that in blaming the victims of the occupation, and sanitizing their oppression, clergymen like Weinreb are using religion as a cloak for crime?

His words would be bad enough if they were eccentric. Unfortunately, they’re anything but.

The other day I received this message from an Orthodox Jewish email list to which I subscribe: “We suggest the recital of one kepitel [chapter] of tehillim [psalms] a day for the sake of Acheinu Kol Bais Yisrael [our brothers, the whole house of Israel] — to be saved from terror ... Let us plead!”

Let us plead by all means, but for whom? If the list’s rabbinic sponsors really hoped to succor all victims of “terror,” why did they name only the “house of Israel” in their appeal — knowing, as they must, that Israelis endure a small fraction of the violence faced regularly by Palestinians under occupation?

I suspect – sadly – that the authors of comments like these are not even aware of their one-sidedness, that their indifference to the suffering of non-Jews is less a matter of policy than a sort of cultural reflex. That only deepens the problem: such omissions suggest the radical insufficiency of Orthodox theology to match contemporary needs.

It’s bad enough to overlook one’s moral obligations to the bulk of humanity; it’s downright criminal to ignore the suffering inflicted by one’s own co-religionists.

Nothing is more basic than the priority of moral responsibility for actions we control, or over which we have influence — and a prominent figure like Weinreb could have considerable impact on religious Jews, in Israel and in the United States, who could in turn throw their political weight against the occupation. That such rabbis choose, instead, to give religious cover to a national persecution is intolerable.

Yet the intolerable continues. The day after Weinreb’s sermonizing appeared online, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “since the beginning of the current clashes, 150 Palestinians have been wounded by live weapons fire, with 360 others being injured by rubber-coated bullets fired by Israeli forces.”

As if that weren’t enough, Haaretz told us that “the Palestinian health ministry has recorded 18 attacks on Palestinian ambulances, with injuries sustained by 20 medical personnel and volunteers en route to treating the injured.”

If Weinreb even noticed this most recent spate of Israeli brutality, I haven’t heard about it.

Summary execution

But I did hear about the reaction of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a member of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Council and the son of Israel’s former chief Sephardic rabbi. Less than 48 hours after Weinreb’s blame-the-victims homily, Eliyahu had publicly decreed that any Palestinian who uses force against an Israeli soldier in occupied territory — a right under international law — must be killed on the spot.

Indeed, according to Eliyahu, Israelis who do not assassinate such Palestinians “need to be prosecuted.” This member of Israel’s rabbinic elite thus supports not only an illegal occupation but the premeditated murder of those who resist it.

In my worst nightmares, I could not have conjured an Orthodox Judaism that so radically dehumanized Palestinians and so casually embraced pure terrorism as a religious norm. But that’s precisely what is happening. Our rabbis — some eagerly, some with silence, others (like Weinreb) out of muddled, parochial self-righteousness — are contributing to a national pathology that eerily recreates the madness of pre-war Nazi Germany.

But this time we are the Germans; the violence has already begun; the rationale for genocide is well under way; and, most tragic of all, the rabbis entrusted with the preservation of Judaism, one of the oldest traditions to celebrate the sanctity of human life, are acting as the enablers of terror. If we don’t stop them, we will be complicit in the destruction of our own religion along with the human rights of Palestinians.

Michael Lesher, a writer, poet and lawyer, has published numerous articles dealing with the Israel/Palestine conflict, child sexual abuse and other topics. He is the author of the recent book Sexual Abuse,Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities (McFarland & Co., Inc.), which focuses on cover-ups of abuse cases among Orthodox Jews. He lives in Passaic, New Jersey. More information about his work can be found on his web site www.MichaelLesher.com.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/interview-immigrant-supporter-revolution-books-ny-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

An interview with an immigrant supporter of Revolution Books NY

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Recently the staff of the new Revolution Books space on Malcolm X Blvd. in Harlem, NY, conducted interviews with volunteers working on building support for and renovating the new store.

Finding Revolution Books – a Bookstore That Changes Lives

Revolution Books: Could you describe when you first found Revolution Books?

I came to the U.S. when I was 20. When I saw the big red flag “REVOLUTION BOOKS” outside the store, I didn't expect to find that here! What you experience when you come here to the U.S. is that it’s a totally different place, a different culture, so you find your place and some way to survive, and through people at my job I ended up in college. Then when I was looking for books for school, I found Revolution Books. I met people there and started looking at the books and thought, Where has this been hiding? I was impressed and shocked that this existed in this country! Revolutionaries in the U.S., when did that happen! You don't know the history of people rising up in this country, like the Black Panthers, where I grew up. It challenged me to think differently and I wanted to learn more.

Revolution Books' new space at 437 Malcolm X Blvd. (Lenox Ave.), Harlem, NY. Photo: Revolution Books.

Even before I came to the U.S., I was involved in graffiti and street culture, it was a way to fight the system. Our understanding was very limited. We didn't know what a “regime” was. These kinds of concepts were too big for our heads, but we were looking for a way to fight back and we didn't have any other way, rather than violence and gang culture. It wasn't until I got here that I got into revolutionary theory. So I started reading books even though I started out hating reading, I was never taught to appreciate culture, history, philosophy. So when I started reading books at Revolution Books, it was a different world – to learn about my culture, other people's culture, how people live around the world. When I found Revolution Books it helped me to see the importance of how you think but also how to change things. Revolution – what does it mean? You like it but you don't know what it's about. I didn't know anything about a strategy for revolution.

The first thing I started reading was the paper (Revolution/Revolucion), I was very attracted to it: the news, the content, the life of the revolution in this country. I wanted to learn from zero up to what was happening now. Every paper had an article from the Chairman (Bob Avakian). I would come in and get the paper and I started asking who is this Bob Avakian guy? Is there a biography? How did he end up being the Chair of the RCP? I read BA's memoir, it took me a while to finish it and then I really started to see why he is the leader of the revolution. I could see he is a human being, not a superhero, he was a normal kid growing up in this country and got to share a lot of his life with his Black friends, playing basketball, singing doo-wop. I had listened a lot to doo-wop, I was working with a guy who loved that music so when I read that I said “I know doo-wop!” I learned how BA went through a terrible disease and almost died. It makes you think about what are you doing in your life. And how a person is shaped by what is happening around them. There was a lot happening in the 1960s that he experienced, he worked with the Black Panthers. This was how I started to learn about the Black Panther Party. 

When you are in the bookstore, you see all the time people who come here from other countries and are shocked to find revolutionaries here. So I understood this bookstore is for the people of the world, not just here. “Patrimonio” in Spanish doesn't translate exactly but it sort of means “heritage” and this is about the patrimonio of the whole world, not just for “revolutionaries in the U.S.” but a place of the revolution and for a socialist state that would make such a difference for the people of the world.

But having the bookstore means so much right now. You can learn about everything at Revolution Books that matters for humanity. Science, evolution, religion and why things don't have to be this way, how it could be different and HOW different. You don't learn those things on a daily basis! Not in school!

I could hardly speak English when I came here. My own understanding was very limited, I had no formal education and I was starting from zero. I didn't think I needed to know all that at first. I felt, you read one thing and then you read something opposed, so what's the point? But you have to be able to determine what's true, and how to prove it. You do learn from other people who don't have the same approach as the revolutionaries like BA. I've learned from BA that you can learn from many people, even the enemy. So I started to read and study more to learn, you develop an approach and method of understanding the world, and where philosophy comes from. Not like “oh they are just wrong.” At first I was intimidated, I thought intellectuals were all-knowing, I questioned myself, but then I started to be able to ask questions, share and exchange, listen and engage. This encouraged me here at the bookstore.

I was shy back then, believe it or not! But you can't be shy in the revolution! You have be brave and want to learn, that encourages you, the more you learn the more you appreciate. You have a different impact on other people too. You are not like other people. People wonder, why do you ask those questions? What makes you that way, why do you want to know all these things?

Revolution Books: Why does it matter so much right now to reopen Revolution Books?

Not having the bookstore now – we realize how necessary it is! Especially at this moment – with all the changes in the world, in society, especially in this country, the marches that happened in Baltimore for example around the murder of Freddy Gray. Having this bookstore represents a movement and place where you can have discussions – where you can have these debates and programs, where the Revolution/Revolucion newspaper and books are found that talk about these questions, facts you can learn from. So much happens in this store. As a center for the revolution, this is the place. This is where you go to find out about the Party, the movement for revolution, and the public can come here and learn about it.

People have made big contributions so this place can open and look good, so people can come and experience the kind of books and programs and people who speak here. It's not just another business, it's something special! We need to open the bookstore right away. It's desperately needed, to have the center of organizing the movement for revolution.

Think about it, step back for a minute. Outside these walls think about the kind of world we live in because of this system that dominates and is destroying the entire planet, what's happening in other countries and here. For a long time, you haven't seen the kind of masses especially among Black people rising up and denouncing the crimes of this system, partly by themselves and partly through leadership of movements like Stop Mass Incarceration. Think about having this store open in the middle of all this, as we get ready for Rise Up October, where you can have this kind of engagement about if there is to be a chance to win and end once and for all, all these injustices and crimes. If this is possible – even not guaranteed – if there is a way to build resistance and fight back and build unity and transform people's thinking and find ways to fight the power to increase the possibility of making revolution – this bookstore needs to be the center where you can have all these questions talked about and have organizing and activity and a life and sense of a different way to live and relate to each other and think and act; to challenge each other to break with old ideas.

There are people here who have been involved in the movement for revolution for a long time and have a lot so share and learn from, and newer people too. It will make a big difference for everything out there to have this store open. Not just a little special place separate from everything out there. Not like that, quite the opposite! So DONATE! VOLUNTEER TODAY!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/interview-with-supporter-of-revolution-books-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Interview with a Supporter of Revolution Books

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Recently the staff of the new Revolution Books space on Malcolm X Blvd. in Harlem, New York City, conducted interviews with volunteers working on building support for and renovating the new store.

Part One: Finding Revolution Books

Revolution Books: Tell us about meeting Revolution Books and why you are supporting its re-opening in Harlem.

Revolution Books means everything to me. I don’t know who’s heard anybody say that, but it keeps me abreast of what’s going on, it’s taught me things that were always there but I never knew until I met BA, Bob Avakian,* and Revolution Books. My greatest thing is for us to raise the funds for RB to stay afloat. It brought hope to me. Before I met Revolution Books, my life was going to work and coming home, that was my whole life. No life! I was just into “me.”

At first I was scared coming to Revolution Books and didn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t change this for the world; you are challenged so much, to think critically, to go higher in my learning. They don’t teach you that in college but BA does. He says, if you want to know about something, read about it, tear it apart, ask about it. It’s serious business but it’s fun, too.

I have a grandson, 21, who has been in a Texas prison since he was 15 for a crime he never committed. I found out at Revolution Books about the book Texas Tough. I read that book. I found out at Revolution Books that there’s hope for him and the genocide of our people. The structure is not for us—our society kicks our people when they are down. I’m learning about the youth, the ones with their pants down, all the slang, they think they are gangster tough, and the cops harass and kill them. I learned from Carl Dix and Stop Mass Incarceration and from BA that this society has no need for our youth and that they’re in the way, they are thrown away like a piece of garbage. They harass and take them to jail.

We grew up thinking this was the land of gold, liberty, freedom, and justice. But it’s not that at all. Immigrants—everyone came from immigrants, immigrants built up this country, it was a melting pot that built America and now they want to tell the Mexicans, the Dominicans, the Chinese that you are no longer welcome here when you helped build this? That’s wrong! The saddest thing to me is the U.S. bombed the Doctors Without Borders! They are bombing innocent people, kids, mothers, for what? This is craziness.

The lies this society tells about slavery, some of this is coming out now. People are slowly opening their eyes. I really hope when people open their eyes they see we have a great leader in BA. He’s been doing this for 40 years, still out there, never stepped down or sidetracked, never sold out, always stood with and loved the people. It shouldn’t be a question of he’s white, Black, polka dot. If someone tells you that you can get out of hell, you’re gonna ask what color are you?? You’ll ask them how!! He’s with the people and about tearing down this society and building one where we all are growing together, working together, making a safe world for the next generations. This is why we need to do the footwork now so hopefully the next generation can build a better society.

This is why we need Revolution Books, because it impacts and changes people’s lives. It gives people hope. But not only hope, a person can learn from BA’s teaching that everyone is needed. You are useful, not worthless, there’s a job for you.

At age 16, I was a nationalist, everything was Black, Black, Black, African, African, looking down on white people and Asian people. But now I consider myself a revolutionary and it takes all kinds of people, at all levels, to have a revolution and it means a change. I’m talking about BA leading people to emancipate humanity. He talks about Black people a lot, the people society keeps down, but also white people in the same boat, women. Look at how women are treated in society, all over the globe. How a man can tell a woman what to do with her body, not to have an abortion, I don’t agree with that. BA says that for society to be emancipated it will come from the women and I believe that, that should bring joy to anyone, especially women, giving women freedom. We’re building a movement with women in all capacities, not “you can’t do that because you’re a woman.” This is good. Blacks, Asians, Filipinos, all kinds of people are in this movement of BA, it’s not “Black” or “white.”

Revolution Books: What can you tell us about the other books in the store, the range of all kinds of books?

A volunteer working on renovations. Photos: Revolution Books

My first time at RB was when Walter Mosley read there and he signed his book for me. RB has Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow. I had never heard of her or all these other important authors before RB. Right now I’m reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book [Between the World and Me]. It tells about his relationship with his son, what it means to be a Black man, a Black person in this society. What he’s up against. Stuff like this I never would have learned without BA and the revolution. It’s important to learn from authors like this. I was taught to read but the books didn’t tell the truth, they covered up the truth. I thought “Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves” but he never did, he was saving his ass, slavery is still here but it’s a different form. I learned from the books at Revolution Books that the impact of slavery still exists through all these years. Wall Street was based on it.

In the two years since I met Revolution Books, the stuff I’ve learned has blown my mind. It’s very important that our people know these things. Walking around like I was, not knowing that this society was built for you to fail, that a generation is in jail and murdered, that you can get arrested and be dead, it’s craziness.

Revolution Books: How does RB matter not just for those on the bottom of this society?

It matters for all the people in society to know what this society is. You have a lot of people who are oppressed but also entertainers, rappers, others who do see how society is, especially through Black Lives Matter. People need to come to RB because you don’t find this anywhere else: the truth, how the world is, how the society is, the scientific method BA has, it goes across all religions, all races. You may not agree on everything, but you have to agree this is getting worse and it will keep getting worse if we don’t open our eyes and stand together. We’re walking around with blinders. When the kids in Ferguson rose up, they were tired and said “no more!” They went up against the National Guard with machine guns and tanks and teargas. And these are kids! We need to support them. We should want better for our kids, this is the next generation. We have to leave them something so they can have a better world. I have 10 grandkids, four grandsons and six granddaughters, and I’m scared for every one of them. A kid playing his rap music, he doesn’t even know what living is and he is snuffed out.

People say you can’t fight the system. Hell yeah, you can! I learned that from BA, from his scientific method. I learned what capitalism is, the effect it has on people, the ideas that come out of this. My grandmother used to put up her hand and say with one finger you can’t do anything but if you put all your fingers together you can rise up. He’s [BA’s] talking about pull the people together, you can tear down the system and build up a system that will be relevant for us and be more positive.

BA is the voice for the voiceless. I’m going to stomp for the revolution, we are going to rise up!

Part Two: Leading the Revolution Newspaper Reading Circle Outside the New Revolution Books Under Construction: “I take it seriously into my heart”

Revolution Books: Tell the readers about the Revolution newspaper reading circle you started to lead on the sidewalk outside the new store, while it’s being renovated.

My revolutionary friends surprised me on my birthday, telling me I would be leading a Revolution reading circle. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought about that, leading a reading circle from the most important paper in this society, Revolution newspaper.

It’s a joy because first of all, BA said all of us can be leaders in some way. To lead the reading circle, you have to pick out the articles, you have to get together the materials. The most important thing is to pull the people in the community to be involved.

Part of the point of me leading, I decided to play the tape from August 27 [the Rise Up October event at First Corinthian Church] when the mothers spoke. People watched it and had tears, they commented on it. Each time I demand that we have the Stolen Lives poster out there and that impacts people. The children who live on the block run to the poster and they know some of the lives and what happened to them. People in the community come over to that poster. It gets people outside their own comfort zone. It challenged me! Sometimes people shrug it away, but it can be good. You’re not concentrating on your worries, you’re concentrating on other people and how you can make their lives better.

When you lead the reading group, you have to come correct, you have to read, make sure what you are reading is correct, you have to talk to other people, your comrades and look to leadership and ask questions. To be a leader you have to also be a follower first and be led. Leaders are not born, they are created. And have a love of the people, not just your own people. The people are in a shithole and we have to find a way to get them out. It takes sacrifice, it means your time. Like Mr. G [an elderly participant in the reading circle]. I called him eight times and his voicemail was full, so my co-leader of the Revolution reading circle and me, we made a plan for going to get him. Mr. G, he and I are connected because I was a former Black nationalist and he’s into Black nationalism.

We need to bring people into the reading circle because they need to hear what BA has to say, that he has this scientific basis and our people right now don’t know way which way is up! And it’s a political year, how many Republicans are running for president, and the House Speaker just quits! No one knows what’s going on. South Carolina, there’s a flood and the first thing coming to my mind is Katrina.

People come by, they are curious, I tell them what it’s about and invite them to sit down. But I also insist that they have to be serious. We introduce ourselves so people know who we are, this is not business as usual, this is about revolution. When people come up and ask about the topics we are discussing, we ask them to get involved. We give them organizing kits with palm cards, Stolen Lives posters, and any information we have. We talk to them and take their information and follow up with them. Getting ready for Revolution—Nothing Less! T-shirt day, one woman asked for the shirt and said she didn’t have the money, but then she bought the shirt and put it on right there. We told her about the responsibility of wearing that shirt, it’s not just any shirt, it represents a movement, the people, you have to be serious about wearing that shirt.

BA and the other leaders inspire me a whole lot, so when I hear them speak I want to be like them. I am serious about what I’m doing so I can lead other people. I take it very seriously into my heart.

Part Three: Raising $700 for Revolution Books among the people in Harlem

From the Revolution Books web editor: $700 was raised among the people in Harlem for Revolution Books by the Revolution Club and the Revolution newspaper reading circle that has been meeting once a week on the sidewalk outside the new Revolution Books space under construction.

Revolution Books: How did you all decide to raise money for Revolution Books?

We decided to help Revolution Books make plans to go out in the community to raise money and we also sold the Revolution newspaper. We did different things to raise the money, mostly by going out into the community asking for donations. We told people about the bookstore, that’s how we did it. We told people where the store was going to be and why it needed the money. The best way was going into the community, letting people know it’s a bookstore in the community and why the bookstore is needed and asking for support.

Some of the money raised was from selling used books; the Revolution Club and the Revolution newspaper readers circle, we all pitched in. We all were out getting people involved in Revolution Books and telling them why it matters. We told people about police brutality, about Bob Avakian (BA), about why we need a revolution and how the bookstore has events, debates about what’s currently happening, important authors come, and there are artists that support Revolution Books. We are in the community as a vital destination to bring different people to know about this, to spread the word about BA everywhere. We told people how the youth could be involved in the revolution.

Revolution Books: What do you think about Revolution Books being a bookstore for the world that’s in Harlem?

That’s the exciting part; people come from all over the world. For the store to be in the center of Harlem, we’ll have more people coming into the bookstore and this is a way to bring more people into the movement, to let them know that this movement for revolution exists and why we exist. Then there’s also a legacy of the bookstore itself, not just in Harlem, as a point of information, it’s known around the world.

Revolution Books: You mentioned going out with used books. I know that when the reading circle started out raising funds for Revolution Books, part of it was tabling with a lot of really great used books as well as new books. What was that like?

We were at 125th and Lenox and it was exciting, lots of people were asking about the books, and some people donated books, too. Students were buying books and also older people who have been around for a while. They were interested in the books about the Black Panthers; there were a lot of people who came out of prison where they had read a lot. They were interested in Black history and the books about slavery; Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow. I sold BAsics, from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian to someone who was aware of BA and wanted to know more about him. He wanted to get involved with the movement.

When people asked what special thing should they buy to know more about the revolution, I would refer them to BA’s writings, to the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! film and to the film of the Dialogue [REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN]. I told people if you want to know about BA, read From Ike to Mao [BA’s memoir].

Raising the money was challenging because we had set a goal and a deadline, and at the last minute it was exciting when we accomplished it and knowing it would have a purpose, it would help people and make people aware of what’s going on. When we reached the goal, for me, it made me feel so good! I know the money goes to a good cause and it will be spent wisely. It will go to the movement and the debates and important conversations at the new bookstore. It will go to the renovations and the heating and plumbing, whatever is needed to open the bookstore. The grand opening is now set for November 15! That’s one year from the date that Cornel West and BA came to Riverside [Church, for the Dialogue]! I remember that very well.

Revolution Books: What does Revolution Books’ opening have to do with everything that’s happened in this last year since that extraordinary Dialogue?

Right now, since January this year, 908 people have been murdered by the police. People were rising up in Ferguson, and there’s been far more killings since then. We let people be aware of BA, we let them know they can rise up and fight the system. Plus the fact that now Rise Up October is coming and we’ll be able to bring 100 families to New York so they can tell the world what happened to their loved ones, raise the consciousness of the people who may be in a similar situation. It is so very important that people be aware, know there is hope, the hope that BA says a beautiful thing could rise out of this ugliness. Most definitely it’s important to have RB at this time!

* BA, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and whose work is at the center of Revolution Books [back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/cheers-ministers-and-rabbis-cleveland-abortion-clinic-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Cheers:

What are these ministers and rabbis doing in front of a Cleveland abortion clinic?

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Cheers to an interfaith group of 15 ministers and rabbis who held a half-hour service to bless an abortion clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, October 8, carrying signs reading “Pro-Faith, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice” and “Good women have abortions.” The gathering was held in response to “renewed attacks on reproductive health rights” and a vicious anti-abortion atmosphere promoted by “far too many religious people,” according to Rev. Harry Knox, president of the national Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. In a litany at the service, the Very Rev. Tracey Lind, Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, said, “Bless this building. May its walls stand strong against the onslaught of shame thrown at it. May it be a beacon of hope for those who need its services."

Rev. Laura Young, a United Methodist minister and executive director of the Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, says that Ohio is facing legislation that could “regulate abortion out of existence.” Seven of Ohio’s 16 abortion providers have closed or limited abortion since 2011, making Ohio second only to Texas in clinic closures as a result of intensified restrictions on abortion. And the TRAP restrictions in Ohio are more severe than most. TRAP (“Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers”) laws range from yanking public funding to casting a net of medically unnecessary standards, regulations, and requirements that are applied to no other outpatient medical facility—including facilities that offer much higher-risk procedures. The Ohio law requires clinics to arrange transfer agreements with hospitals in order to offer abortion services, but forbids clinics from making agreements with large public teaching hospitals. At the same time, most private hospitals are Catholic affiliated and refuse to work with abortion providers.

Rev. Young told the Columbus Dispatch, “Women who have had abortions are being attacked at a religious level, and the faith community has a moral obligation to heal these spiritual wounds.... It is time for the progressive religious community to stop the silence and to believe out loud.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/video-from-usher-with-nas-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Check It Out—Now

Video from Usher with Nas and Bibi Bourelly for “Chains” Targets Murder by Police

October 17, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Usher and Nas have released a powerful interactive video for the song “Chains,” also featuring singer Bibi Bourelly—challenging people to really look at the faces of Black people murdered by police and racist violence. As the faces of Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Sean Bell, and other victims, with short descriptions, appear on the screen, if the viewer looks away the video stops—and the words “Don’t look away” appears. Usher sings at one point, “We’re still in chains. You put the shame on us.” Nas raps at another point, “I am no prison commodity, not just a body you throw in a cell.”

The video is available exclusively on the music streaming service Tidal for free for three days (chains.tidal.com). On Firefox and Chrome browsers, the video will ask for permission to access the webcam. (It’s possible to disable the webcam and see the video without the interactive feature.)

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/no-hating-and-fearing-blacks-and-latinos-does-not-justify-police-murder-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

No! Hating and Fearing Blacks and Latinos Does NOT Justify Police Murder

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Justifying police murder because a cop claims he was in “fear” happens over and over:

• Cleveland police murdered unarmed Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell in a hail of 137 police bullets on November 29, 2012 after a car chase. Michael Brelo was the only cop charged in this murder. A judge found him not guilty after Brelo’s lawyers argued he was “scared to death” of the unarmed victims—even though he jumped on the hood of their car and shot them 49 times!
   
• Prosecutors in Ferguson, Missouri, convinced a grand jury to not indict police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown on August 19, 2014. Wilson was allowed to tell the grand jury that he was in fear of Mike Brown, a young unarmed Black man, because to Wilson, Mike Brown looked “like a demon.”
   
• Salinas, California, police terrorized, threatened, and then gunned down Carlos Mejia, a 44-year-old gardener carrying pruning sheers on May 20, 2014. The district attorney’s explanation for not prosecuting: It is legal for police to kill someone if they have “reasonable belief there is an imminent danger of great bodily injury, even if no danger actually existed.” [emphasis added]
   
• Jordan Baker, an unarmed 26-year-old Black man was shot and killed by an off-duty cop at a mall in Houston, Texas, on January 16, 2014. Baker was riding his bike through the mall, unarmed, and minding his own business when he was accosted and killed. The district attorney orchestrated a decision by a grand jury to not bring charges against the cop after a police report said the killer was “fearing for his life” when he killed Jordan Baker.
   

No! Hating and Fearing Blacks and Latinos Does NOT Justify Police Murder!

Which side are YOU on?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/prosecutor-greases-the-skids-to-let-the-killer-of-tamir-rice-walk-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Prosecutor "Experts" Justify Police Murder of Tamir Rice

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old child, playing by himself on a playground with a toy gun on November 22, 2014 when someone called 911 to report a “juvenile” playing with a gun that was “probably fake.” Cleveland, Ohio, police officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner rolled up on Tamir and within two seconds Loehmann shot Tamir and left him to die without rendering any medical aid.

On October 10, the Cleveland district attorney produced reports by two “experts” to justify the murder. In the words of one of them, the murder was justified because of “Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death.”

If a cop can murder a 12-year-old Black child playing with a toy gun that a 911 caller said was “probably fake”—within two seconds of arriving on the scene—and the system can justify this by claiming this pig considered the child to be “a threat,” then what is that but a green light for police to murder anyone as long as a cop claims the victim “posed a threat?”

This cannot go down! The pig who murdered Tamir Rice and his partner—who was complicit in the murder—must be indicted, convicted, and jailed!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/pasadena-beating-of-donovan-gardner-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Slave Catchers in Pasadena:

The Brutal Beating of Donovan Gardner

by Li Onesto | October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Thursday, October 15, the brutal beating of 25-year-old Donovan Gardner by San Bernardino sheriffs in Pasadena, California, was caught on video from a TV news helicopter.

The sheriff’s department says they got a call about a “possible residential burglary.” Cops from the sheriff’s department and the California Highway Patrol chased and then stopped a car with what they said were three “suspects.”

The video shows two officers brutally beating Donovan on the ground—punching him repeatedly and kneeing him, even though, as you can see in the video, Gardner is lying face down on his stomach. One of the deputies punches Gardner four times in the body, then climbs on top of him and straddles his back. Once on top of Gardner, the cop throws about a dozen punches near Gardner’s head and knees him. A third cop then runs over to help restrain Gardner. Gardner is later taken away in an ambulance with a neck brace because of his injuries.

News reports say, “It is unclear... how much Gardner was resisting.” The Los Angeles Times quotes one “use-of-force expert” who says this was “reasonable force” because Gardner was a suspect and was involved in a high-speed pursuit—he was resisting and Gardner “is a big guy,” so the cop “is raining down blows but not for malicious purposes.” Another “expert” says the beating was not justified but is “an example of what happens to officers when they’re so angry at the suspect and they lose perspective, and get what we call an adrenaline dump.”

There is a lesson here in how the system’s media takes what is clearly caught on video, an outrageous incident of police brutality, and tries to make it seem like it is all too complicated to really know what happened. This is NOT complicated. It is exactly what it looks like on the video. Watch it yourself: It’s a bunch of vicious cops unjustly and brutally beating a Black man who is lying facedown on the ground.

And it is ENTIRELY understandable; it is completely rational for a group of Black men to run away from the police on foot or in their car—given that police kill Black people all the time, many times for NO REASON AT ALL. And it is completely legitimate to resist an UNJUST brutal beating. Looking at the video, it doesn’t even appear Donovan is resisting. But even if he was, saying “he shouldn’t have resisted” is like saying a woman who is being raped should not resist!

These slave catchers and the whole system they “serve and protect” are totally illegitimate.

Which Side Are YOU On?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/4000-challenge-for-rise-up-october-from-physicians-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Sunday October 18 by midnight: $4,000 challenge from physicians

#RiseUpOctober:
National March to STOP Police Terror & Murder!
Which Side Are You On?

October 12, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Confronting the cancer of racism, silence is intolerable if we wish to remain human. Since the founding of our nation, this malignancy has been eating away at our pretensions of democracy. The reason for its persistence is not merely a cultural and social legacy of slavery. It relates to a system of governance that appropriates wealth to a few while ignoring the dire needs of the many who produce the wealth. As Dr. Martin Luther King, in his memorable speech at the Riverside Church in New York City nearly 40 years ago stated, “The time comes when silence is betrayal.”

Bernard Lown, M.D.  (winner 1985 Nobel Prize for Peace)

We are physicians who join with Dr. Lown in this match challenge. With love and solidarity with these Stolen Lives families who have suffered so much and are so courageous. Rise Up October!

Please note:  All donations through $65,432 will be matched by this grant.  Please be aware that the $5,000 challenge for Saturday, October 17th was met and surpassed!  The donor of the $5,000 has experience technical difficulties giving the matching donation. Indiegogo has been notified and we are counting this $5,000 in the totals.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/video-shows-police-tased-matthew-ajibade-before-death-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Video shows police tasing a bloody, restrained Matthew Ajibade in the testicles before his death

Updated October 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This piece by Shaun King originally appeared at DailyKos.com on October 13, 2015.

It is now abundantly clear that Matthew Ajibade was murdered by police in Savannah, Georgia. For over 10 months, police and prosecutors have concealed the video evidence of his murder not only from the public, but from Ajibade's closest friends and family members. His death in police custody was ruled a homicide by coroners, but the whole of Savannah's government has colluded in covering up the sadistic and brutal murder of a beloved artist and photographer who was a student at Savannah College of Art and Design.

The video below is awful and is confirmation that the United States tortures and kills its prisoners on American soil. Torture is not something that happens far away in Abu Ghraib: It's happening here.

In case you can't stomach the video, here's an explanation of what happens, so that you can understand it and prepare to speak out against it.

On New Year's Day 2015, Matthew Ajibade was arrested after a mental health crisis. Instead of being taken to a hospital, Ajibade, who was otherwise in perfect physical condition, was taken to jail—against his family's wishes. In a video we received last week, police are seen punching and kicking Matthew Ajibade in the face and head before restraining him.

Now, after Ajibade was stripped of his clothes and handcuffed to a restraining chair, we see the worst. The police Taser has a camera attached to it that is automatically triggered when the device is turned on.

Strapped to the chair after already being beaten and stunned with a Taser multiple times, we see a red light, the target of the Taser, continually pointed at Matthew's groin. The audio from the Taser camera is distorted, but we see little to no movement from Ajibade.

It gets much worse.

Soon, we see that the Taser is moving closer to his genitals. As the camera gets closer to his genitals, it is deployed. You hear the awful shock of the Taser, followed by the unforgettable screams of Matthew Ajibade. The video then ends—perhaps as the Taser is turned off, but we don't know.

What we do know is that Matthew Ajibade died in his cell, strapped to this restraining chair, soon after being Tasered here. The timestamp on the video states that it is 4:45 AM on the morning of January 2.

Police claimed they found Ajibade "unresponsive" in his jail cell at 1:38 AM.

Either way, the video below shows a restrained man being tortured to death in our jails.

Nobody was charged with Matthew Ajibade's murder—and we now see that officials concealed this video because they knew we'd call for such charges if we ever saw it.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/art-4-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Art 4 Rise Up October

October 13, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“Art 4 Rise Up October,” held October 11 in Chicago, was only possible because many Chicago artists generously donated beautiful art to raise funds for the 100 Families campaign  including lithographs, oil paintings, monoprints, photographs, and signed posters. The silent auction was held at La Catrina, a cafe and center in the Pilsen community, an historically Mexican-American neighborhood in Chicago that is also home to many of the artists who contributed. The evening was dedicated to Jose Guerrero, a lithographer and renowned muralist who was an early supporter of Art 4 Rise Up October but died just a few days before the event. He was a maestro (teacher) to many, a friend to more, and a revolutionary fighter for justice with largeness of mind who will remain an inspiration to all of us. The organizers of Art 4 Rise Up October placed a framed square of black on the wall, with a sign “Jose Guerrero, presente” below it in his memory.

Jill McLaughlin’s piece, No More Generations of Our Youth  was on display as well; it’s available as a perk on the indiegogo campaign. Robinlee Garber and Rick Vines played guitar and percussion and sang an amazing range of songs throughout the evening, including one written by Rick, “I Can’t Breathe.” He wrote it after reading about the vicious murder of Eric Garner. At the event, Rick announced that all proceeds from the sale of the song online will go to this movement to STOP Police Terror. Initial proceeds of $460 have already been posted, with more to come as bidders are notified of their prizes. We hope to find ways to make art work that was not sold at this event available to others who also want to support this movement to STOP Police Terror.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/a-prelude-to-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

"A Prelude to Rise Up October"

October 12, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

With Rise Up October barely a month away, a member of World Can’t Wait wanted to host an evening to raise awareness and funds so family members who have lost loved ones to police bullets can go to New York. The situation at home wasn’t one that allowed for a social gathering so a small community room was reserved at a local library. It turned out to be a great alternative and the evening was a success in many ways. About 15 people came to hear a woman whose son was murdered by police who has become active in building for Rise Up October, fighting for justice for her son and all victims, and about $550 was raised. People went away with materials to help build for Rise Up October, some people invited the guest speaker to their religious congregation, and other connections were made to help build October 24.

The event was built mainly by personal invitation to a “Prelude to Rise Up October,” sent through email or in person, but not on Facebook or lists. Most of the people attending were familiar faces, with a sprinkling of new ones. Chairs were arranged in a big circle to keep an informal atmosphere. The 11 minute video from the August 27 Night in Harlem was shown while people gathered, and the evening opened with a powerful statement by a woman whose son was cut down by police and then assassinated again in the press. Then the discussion took off! One older Black woman spoke about her family’s oral history going back to slavery, drawing a clear line through the history of this country down to today. “Remedies” were proposed in the form of better training, better education, mental health screenings, and more. World Can’t Wait and Stop Mass Incarceration Network supporters kept coming back to the systemic nature of the problem and the need for masses of people, of all nationalities and backgrounds, to come out in the streets NOW to say, NO MORE!  

A strong and serious energy permeated the whole gathering. Everyone felt it. No one left early. The importance of this prelude event and of Rise Up October in NYC was articulated. Here we are in the fall of 2015 more than a year after Ferguson and we must continue the momentum. The popular uprising to demand real justice and masses getting in the streets against nationwide police violence must not only continue, it must increase and we are all responsible to help build the movement. We have an advantage we have never had before with smart phones to more easily record police violence and expose the lies in their reports that have for decades been judged truthful by courts. The system has been exposed as corrupt to the general population and their attacks upon those of us demanding justice must also be overcome.  It can be done and Rise Up October is the crucial movement needed right now to keep this momentum going.

We encourage everyone reading this to find your own ways to bring people together to raise the funds and mobilize people to make this happen!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/cleveland-evening-for-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

True Light Missionary Baptist Church, Cleveland

An evening for Rise Up October

October 13, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“STOP POLICE TERROR! RISE UP OCTOBER!” reverberated off the walls and into the streets when #RiseUpOctober held a community gathering at True Light Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland Saturday evening.

The evening began almost an hour before the event was scheduled―when one of the church deacons grabbed a bullhorn, Stolen Lives posters and flyers and went into the street hailing cars driving by and calling on people to Rise Up October to stop the police from murdering our youth.  He called on everyone as they entered to take it to the street―and many did.

The gathering opened with powerful music by True Light's Praise Team that brought many to their feet dancing in the aisles and a heartfelt welcome from the Reverend Robert V. Aitken.  It featured Reverend Jerome McCorry, from Dayton Ohio, Faith Coordinator and member of the steering committee of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, and Stolen Lives family members: Brenda Bickerstaff, sister of Craig Bickerstaff and aunt of Ralkina Jones; Alicia Kirkman, mother of Angelo Miller; and Art Blakey, brother of Kiana Nicole Blakey.  Their courage, spoken through excruciating pain, challenged and inspired everyone in the church.  Rev. McCorry brought the crowd to its feet calling for October 24 as the time to "Get up, get out, and Rise Up in New York―to Stop Police Terror". 

Element Seven set the stage for the families to speak with an inspiring, dynamic performance of “A Change is Gonna Come”with song, dance and viola.  The Young Scholars, two pre-teen youth who had come with their family from Erie Pennsylvania for a protest for Tamir Rice earlier in the day, contributed original spoken word and dance that called out police violence against the people and violence among the people.  Puncture the Silence, an affiliate of Stop Mass Incarceration Network, and Reverend Jimmy Gates of Mt Zion Missionary Baptist Church offered statements of support.  We closed the night, loud and determined, with Art Blakey leading everyone in singing“Hell You Talmbout” ―and saying their names.

$647 was raised to send family members and others to New York when the church deacons passed the plate; new organizers stepped forward, with church members organizing for a True Life Church contingent in Rise Up October and people making plans to organize their friends to support and get on the buses.

#RiseUpOctober—October 22-24 NYC
Massive Mobilization to STOP Police Terror
Which Side Are You On?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/prairie-view-texas-police-brutality-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Prairie View, Texas

Police Brutality, "According to Policy"

October 13, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Jonathan Miller is a 26-year-old city council member in Prairie View, Texas. On Thursday night, October 8, Miller was calmly standing in front of his own home, enjoying life with some college friends. Then Prairie View cops pulled up. They forced Miller to his knees, tasered him in the back to the point that his shirt was bloodied, and arrested him!

Yes—this is the same town where Sandra Bland was pulled over and beaten for driving while Black and female, thrown into the Waller County jail, and lynched. Like Sandra Bland, Miller is a graduate of Prairie View A&M University. Some friends from school had come to stay with him during Homecoming Weekend. They all had spent the afternoon working on a cleanup of the subdivision where Miller lives. They were hanging around together, working on dance steps they could use at homecoming events.

But Prairie View cops, including one of the same pigs who harassed and brutalized Sandra Bland—determined through their pig logic that these young Black men were in a “suspicious area ... known for drug activities”. And they decided to fuck with them. The Prairie View police chief already has announced that the cops who assaulted Jonathan Miller acted “according to policy.”

Standing in front of your home in Prairie View ... walking down the sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan ... shopping in a Walmart near Dayton, Ohio ... riding a train home to Oakland—Black people are subjected to being brutalized and beaten by police at any moment, like Jonathan Miller in Texas or James Blake in New York; or outright murdered by police, like John Crawford III in Ohio and Oscar Grant in California. It is all “according to policy.” It is all hardwired into a system that has oppression of Black people as a cornerstone.

And it must STOP! WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/monday-october-12-from-student-task-force-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Report on Monday, October 12, 2015

From the Student Task Force for #RiseUpOctober

October 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Early that morning everybody on the team read three articles on revcom.us (along with other articles): Carl Dix’s statement “Authorities Greasing Skids to Exonerate Tamir’s Murderers!,” along with the accompanying article, “Tens of Thousands Come to DC for Justice or Else Rally - What Is Really Needed for the Movement to STOP Police Terror?,” and “Some Lessons in Building the Rise Up October Event at Columbia University.”  Going into Monday we knew that the first two articles were societal questions that were ruminating in people’s minds.  So we made sure to get ourselves oriented for the big day ahead of us.

A team traveled to Sarah Lawrence University, which had a contingent at the Justice Or Else Rally.  They went without knowing anybody but were very bold and agitated on the above points (in the articles referenced) and quickly drew forward very serious students who wanted to organize for #RiseUpOctober.  They spoke to a young woman from Turkey who introduced herself as an anti-capitalist and the team briefly walked through BAsics 1:3 with the side by side pictures of the police beating down a Black man protesting police murder and U.S. troops in Iraq ganging up on residents in Fallujah rebelling against U.S. occupation.  There was an immediate attraction even as there were all sorts of beginning questions to get into, like “internationalism—­the whole world comes first.”  They then attracted an organizer who organized a caravan to D.C.  The team really got into the “Justice Or Else...” article and drew from BAsics 3:22.  The heading in the second part of the article of “What Is Really Needed for the Movement to STOP Police Terror” was a point of departure—particularly in the need to not settle for anything less than STOPPING this genocide.  This organizer quickly got into motion to get transportation for NYC and potentially book the #RiseUpOctober Speaking Tour on campus.   The team also interacted with several groups on campus who were very excited to take #RiseUpOctober to their organizations and work with the person there taking responsibility to organize (whom we met that day) to make it happen and travel to NYC for #RiseUpOctober.  This team was summing up the great potential that exists broadly throughout society where they can go on to a campus and not know anybody but quickly draw forward and organize people who are serious about STOPPING POLICE TERROR and MURDER!

Another person in our team went alone to a private university in NYC.  She met up with a student who attended the “Night for Justice” at NYU where Carl Dix had been a keynote speaker.  While this newly-met student was very passionate, she’d never done anything as bold as talk to other students about the burning question of police murder.  The person in our team was summing up that they had to be quick on their feet.  They tried a variety of different tactics to interact with the student body: agitating, one-on-ones, passing out palm cards, etc..  A big part of proceeding on this approach was the reality that we’re quickly approaching #RiseUpOctober and if these students don’t step into the fight to stop murder and terror by police this genocide will continue (and accelerate).  In addition, this is the first time this person on our team went off by themselves with another student and they really had to rely on what they understood to be true and what they’ve been learning in how to lead others.  Along with the student at this school they made beginning plans to get the Stolen Lives Poster around campus and work on making a meet up point on the campus for students to travel together to Washington Square Park.

I spent the day interacting with students in different parts of the country.  Off of some of the above but even leading into the day itself I knew the articles I had the team read were important because of their social impact and because of the importance in us intervening and leading others to fight all the way through to STOP Police Terror and Murder.  I talked to some students who have “checked out” and I will say an important point of orientation was clearly setting the terms of the discussion.  While these students had been following and paying attention to all of the above there was a reality check moment: they could not avoid the character assassination of Tamir Rice and how wrong the “expert reports” were.  At the same time, the 10-10 rally had had an effect on them.  In the main, for different reasons, this seems to have sparked people’s hunger to fight back, concretely, against police murder.  At the same time, I did think it important to get into how this rally divided into two—including the content of the criticism in the article we had.  In different discussions we got into the question of patriarchy, of boycotts, and kept coming back to the need to actually FIGHT this. 

In reflecting on these particular experiences there were several things I learned: (1) we can’t be afraid to challenge others to act on their convictions (even those who say they are “with it”) and even with their differences on how to ultimately stop police terror and murder—that is, we should struggle over people around what it’s going to take to end this, but we should even more right now struggle with those who think that programs of reform may be the answer that whatever they think they need to be out there October 24, since without tens of thousands and ultimately millions struggling nothing will change; and (2) the objective situation (the larger reality that we’re all part of) is constantly transforming in unpredictable ways and we have to be ready to get into the middle of all that and struggle thru what is truly needed at this moment and at this time and how NEW, different, and ATTRACTIVE what we’re bringing forward and represent truly is.

The above was further concentrated on our conference call.  We drew from the above referenced articles and the biggest question on the call was the need to struggle sharply with everybody.  A young activist raised that she doesn’t know how to bring people forward when she’s being so sharp.  A high school student on the call (who has organized walk-outs on her campus) said with a lot of certitude and clarity “we just have to be real with people if they don’t want to confront that reality then they’re on the wrong side and that on the basis of compelling people to face reality, we need to keep challenging them to act.” And this was very helpful for everybody on the call to hear.  There’s more to sum up; but an important element of the call was peers struggling with each other to understand the importance of #RiseUpOctober and struggling with each other to throw all in these next several days. 

A student from Columbia University was going to join the conference call but we came to a collective decision that it’d be more important to attend an indigenous day open mic on campus as this would be an important opportunity to interact with students and organized them into Columbia’s #RiseUpOctober plans.  In addition, part of what we’re learning from students off of the October 7th program is the deep effect of the overall process in booking a room and in hearing these speakers.   People have been going through different kinds of changes coming off this.  Its been very important to not lose sight of what’s been opened up and work with people through sorting out the larger questions of “what’s my life going to be about” even as they’re figuring out the ways to act in ways that are commensurate to today’s reality.

By the end of the day our team stepped back and filled each other in on our day’s activity.  We posed questions to each other in striving to build off of our experience and max out in the days leading into #RiseUpOctober.  In addition, we took the time to get into BA’s quote “There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness...”  This was very important as it helped re-ground our team of why we’re doing all this.  People walked through their day in trying to lead people to a more scientific understanding of the oppression of Black people even as they’re wrestling to more deeply understand and proceed from the materialism of why nothing short of a revolution can resolve this contradiction and open up a pathway towards emancipation.  Somebody else reflected on why nothing short of a communist revolution will even have a fighting chance in people getting free and got into some of their understanding of why that argument is true.  Our discussion wasn’t long but it was important for everybody to step back and further contextualize what we’re doing.  It emphasized the importance that if we’re serious about making revolution we have to (continuously) get into BA. 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/shepard-fairey-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Renowned artist Shepard Fairey donates prints and books to #RiseUpOctober's indiegogo fundraising campaign

October 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

FLASH:  Renowned artist Shepard Fairey donates prints and books to #RiseUpOctober's indiegogo fundraising campaign.  Available as perks now.  http://igg.me/at/RiseUpOctober/x

Shepard posted the following on his website obeygiant.com.

 

STOP POLICE TERROR NOW!

Catching the police killings of many unarmed people on camera over the last couple of years has raised awareness about the pattern of excessive force by the police that needs to be stopped. A large percentage of the deaths occur in communities of color. I saw a recent Vice documentary program called Fixing the System in which a Baltimore policeman stated that the department targeted communities of color because higher conviction stats were easier to achieve there than in more affluent neighborhoods where the citizens can afford better legal representation. The system is biased and the problem needs to be addressed for the sake of equality and justice. Please support the movement to STOP POLICE TERROR!  -Shepard

Police are STILL killing. Its on us to stop it.
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Find out more about the direct actions taking place for #RiseUpOctober HERE

posted October 6th, 2015

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/17-year-old-michigan-youth-murdered-by-sheriff-for-signaling-cop-to-dim-brights-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

“This is What American...”

17-year-old Michigan Youth Murdered by Sheriff for Signaling Cop to Dim Brights

October 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On February 28, 17-year-old Deven Guilford, a white youth on his way home from playing basketball at his church, flashed his lights at an oncoming Eaton County Michigan sheriff’s car because the bright lights on the squad car blinded him. Sheriff Jonathon Frost pulled Deven over and threatened to arrest him. Deven verbally objected to being retaliated against for trying to point out how dangerous the cop’s lights were and asked to see Frost’s badge number. Frost refused to show or provide his badge number and forced Deven—who declared he was unarmed—to get out of his car and lie facedown in a ditch along the highway.

With Deven face down on the pavement, unarmed, Frost shot him with a stun gun, handcuffed him, and shot him seven times, killing him instantly. All captured on video! And yet, months later, the country prosecutor announced no charges would be brought against the murderer.

And Deven Guilford was the second motorist murdered by police in a span of 11 days in Eaton County. Deven’s family filed a civil suit this week.

Deven Guilford recorded all this on his own cell phone. Seconds before he was murdered, Deven said into the phone: “This is how American...” 

Deven never got to finish the message. But the murdering pig demonstrated for the world what American police are all about by murdering him on the highway for trying to caution a sheriff that his bright lights were unsafe. Local news reports demonstrated how American ruling class media works by starting their coverage talking about “significant injuries" Frost supposedly incurred while murdering an unarmed youth lying face-down on the ground. Top sheriff’s officials put the murderer on paid leave. And the prosecutor demonstrated how the American IN-justice system works by refusing to bring any charges against Frost. This is America—land of unchecked police brutality and murder.

How long will this go on?

Which side are you on?

NOW is the time to be in the streets—without struggle there can be no change for the better.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/baltimore-protestors-disrupt-police-chief-vote-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Baltimore Protesters Disrupt Police Chief Vote:
“No justice, no peace!” Stop the vote!”

October 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Dozens of determined, defiant protesters—many of them high school and college students—chanting “All night, all day, we will fight for Freddie Gray! No justice, no peace!” and “Stop the vote!” disrupted a meeting of the Baltimore City Council meeting yesterday. Freddie Gray was 25 years old, a Black man minding his own business, not bothering anyone, when on the morning of April 12, he was viciously assaulted by Baltimore police for making eye contact with a pig(!). He died a week later from the severe injuries inflicted by police.

In spite of the protests, the council voted to confirm Kevin Davis as the new Baltimore police chief.

Before the meeting, a coalition of activist groups issued a statement denouncing and demanding an end to violent repression of protests including “the deployment of the National Guard replete with tanks and rifles” and “officers without badges and name tags, undercover cops acting as protesters carrying firearms, and [making] wrongful arrests.” They demanded that authorities stop treating ordinary people and protesters as “enemy combatants.” And called out the “heightened aggression from law enforcement towards protesters” since Davis became acting chief.

The fact that people have to go to jail to demand the authorities not deploy the military with tanks and rifles against protesters against police brutality, stop sending armed undercover cops posing as protesters, and stop treating protesters and people doing nothing at all as "enemy combatants" tells you a hell of a lot about the nature of this system. AND it demands people be in the streets refusing to accept this situation!

After the City Council voted to confirm the appointment of Davis, dozens or protesters refused to leave the hearing room and at 4:45 AM, sixteen were arrested for trespassing.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/match-their-courage-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

MATCH THEIR COURAGE

October 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

MATCH THEIR COURAGE.

WANTED: 100 donors to give $100.  100 donors to give $10 in HONOR of 100 families of loved ones whose lives were stolen by police.

These families have shown tremendous courage in the face of the rampant epidemic of police murder, to stand up and fight for justice and Rise Up October.

It takes real courage to speak out when the authorities spin the story in order to justify the police killing.  When the media broadcasts police lies over and over.  When the media works overtime to put your loved one in the worst possible light.

It takes real courage to not give up when the police manufacture evidence and all they have to do is say "I feared for my life," because of the color of their skin and the system backs them to the hilt.

It takes real courage to speak out when the police literally come to funerals and memorials to intimidate and threaten you as you bury your loved one.  When the police department harasses witnesses, arrest your family members, and intimidate you in a thousand “legal” ways.

It takes real courage to speak out when that means reliving over and over the awful reality that your loved one's life was stolen by the police.  When you have no time to grieve privately ... when you can't sleep at night ... when you have to go through all the evidence because they are trying to dismiss and discredit you.

It takes real courage to keep speaking out when you are met with threatening hate mail. It takes real courage to stand up and demand justice, like these determined families are now.  Some like Nicholas Heyward, Sr. have been fighting for more than 20 years after the police killed his 13-year-old son for playing with a brightly colored plastic toy gun as the boy told them, “we're only playing.”  

It takes real courage to stand up to a system that retaliates against the families who dare to speak out.

READ THEIR STORIES HERE

OVER A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS IS NEEDED TO BRING A GROWING NUMBER OF FAMILY MEMBERS TO NY FOR RISE UP OCTOBER 22nd - 24th.

MATCH THEIR COURAGE:  NEEDED: 100 DONORS TO MAKE A SACRIFICE AND DONATE $100... AND 100 DONORS TO GIVE $10 EACH. Who can you ask?

Let's make this goal by October 17, one week before this historic march—let's get those most affected by police terror to New York City where their voices WILL be heard! STOP POLICE TERROR!

http://igg.me/at/RiseUpOctober/x/1218364

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/press-release-october-15-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Revolution received the following Press Release from Rise Up October:

#RiseUpOctober: 3 Days of Mass Resistance, Oct 22-24 NYC: STOP Police Terror—Which Side Are You On?

Press Conference 11 am Monday October 19

October 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—OCTOBER 15 
Interviews Available 
Contact Kimberli Diaz, Larry Everest 
646.709.1961, press@riseupoctober.org

#RiseUpOctober: 3 Days of Mass Resistance, Oct 22-24 NYC: STOP Police Terror—Which Side Are You On?

PRESS CONFERENCE with initiators Carl Dix, Cornel West & others TBA 
WHEN: 11am, Monday, October 19 
WHERE: City Hall Steps, Manhattan

"RiseUpOctober—three powerful days of action Oct 22, 23, and a massive march in NYC on the 24th – aims to change history," says Carl Dix, co-initiator with Cornel West. "Thousands will flood New York from across the country to march, to resist, to put their bodies on the line. Their message: POLICE TERROR MUST STOP, AND IT'S UP TO US TO STOP IT!"

"We're at a crossroads: since Ferguson, thousands have risen up, but this resistance is being crushed and derailed, with repression and the promise of paltry reforms. Meanwhile, every day brings another outrage—reports justifying the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a college freshman in DC beaten for the "crime" of being Black, hundreds more murdered by police over the last months, with their killers almost always walking free. #RiseUpOctober will draw a sharp line throughout society: police terror must stop, which side are you on?" says Dix.

What's coming together for #RiseUpOctober:

▪ Joining Dix and West on the #RiseUpOctober Advisory Board: Gina Belafonte, Eve Ensler, Jamal Joseph, Arturo O'Farrill, Rev. Stephen Phelps

▪ 100 families of those murdered by police from all across the country will come together October 24 to courageously tell their stories and to stand up and say No More Stolen Lives!

▪ Many prominent voices of conscience have endorsed the Call for #RiseUpOctober including: Ed Asner; educator Bill Ayers; Harry Belafonte; actor Ty Burrell; Noam Chomsky; theologian James Cone; actor Peter Coyote; lawyer Martin Garbus; Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Bernard Lown; activist Cindy Sheehan; Green Party candidate Jill Stein; David Strathairn; Quentin Tarantino; artist Hank Willis Thomas; singer Dan Zanes, and many others.

▪ Artists and writers: Ken Burns, Shepard Fairey, Alice Walker, Cornel West, and Gilbert Young have donated their work to the $100,000 crowdfunding campaign to bring 100 families from across the country to NYC.

▪ Many dozens of faith leaders from across the country are organizing with hundreds of students, grassroots activists and organizations.

The 3 Days:

▪ October 22, 10:00 am, Times Square: No More Stolen Lives, Say Their Names A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice. Over 40 families of people killed by police will gather to tell their stories, accompanied by prominent voices of conscience who will be reading the names of just some of the 1000s of lives stolen.

▪ 2:00 pm, Borough Hall, Brooklyn: National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Murder, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

▪ October 23 9:00 am "Shut Down Rikers!" A mass, nonviolent direct action. People of conscience are putting their bodies on the line to call for this torture chamber to be shut down. Details TBA.

▪ October 24: National March to STOP Police Terror: Which Side are You On? Washington Square Park, NYC 11 am. March at 1:00 PM; Closing Rally at Bryant Park at 4:00 PM. Students, religious congregations, contingents from housing projects, and people from all across the country—we will gather in the thousands and tens of thousands with the demand: Terror and Murder By Police Must STOP.

5 minute video introduction to #RiseUpOctober, hearing some of the families who are organizing and initiators Cornel West and Carl Dix.

RiseUpOctober.org 
646.709.1961 
press@riseupoctober.org 
Twitter - #RiseUpOctober 
Facebook

About 
Call to Action 
Who We Are 
Initial Endorsers 
100 Families Project

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/rev-cecil-chip-murray-statement-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

New statement by Rev. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray, Co-Founder, The Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement, University of Southern CA:

"No one of conscience will turn a blind eye nor a deaf ear to this pivotal point in our history." 

October 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The National March in New York City, Saturday, October 24, will be a turning point in police/community relations nationwide.  Both the nation and the world will be watching the world's largest democracy live out its pledge of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.  Voices from across the nation will take to the streets of our largest city to shout out the determination to end police terror.  The cry simply must be heard.  The pain simply must be erased.  The chemistry simply must be restored or even installed to bond those charged with protecting and those whom they are charged to protect.

No one of conscience will turn a blind eye nor a deaf ear to this pivotal point in our history.  

Rev. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray
Co-Founder, The Cecil Murray Center for
  Community Engagement, University of Southern CA   

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/Tolman-high-school-rhode-island-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Tolman HS students demand firing of school cop in brutal assault on brothers

October 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Wednesday, Oct. 14, Tolman High School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. A school where over half of the students are Latino or Black and only about half of incoming freshman make it to their senior year. The halls were filled with students and teachers moving between classes when suddenly a school guard assaulted a 14-year-old student, brutally throwing him to the floor inside the school.

14-year-old Tyler was brought into the school office because he was upset and yelling that his backpack had been stolen. His older brother, 17-year-old Ivander, was with him. Because Ivander knew the school guard and thought he could reason with him, he stepped in the middle to try to calm the situation down and prevent Tyler from being arrested. Suddenly Ivander was under arrest, in handcuffs on the floor. The guard pepper-sprayed the two of them. As Tyler was standing there trying to get the pepper-spray out of his eyes, the guard put a chokehold around Tyler's neck and brutally threw him to the floor. The two brothers are now charged with resisting arrest—for being the victims of an unprovoked attack!

Thursday morning, Oct. 15: After the video of the assault went viral on social media, several hundred students and adults poured into the streets to demand the firing of the security guard and an end to police brutality. They challenged the police, yelled at them, and continued to protest even as people started to get arrested. Protesters were pepper-sprayed. Eight students and two adults were arrested. The students were right to protest, and the violent attack on them was outrageous.

Students have pledged they will not stop until the school guard is fired.

NOW is the time to be in the streets—without struggle there can be no change for the better.

Students at Tolman High in Pawtucket took to the streets to protest the brutality and arrests of Ivander and Tyler

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/statement-from-princeton-student-for-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a Princeton Student

"I will march because choosing to remain silent is a form of symbolic violence in the midst of a genocide."

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In a democratic country that promises equality and justice for all, these promises fall short when current events, historical trajectories, and oppressive hegemonic foundations, kill disempowered people everyday. The genocide ongoing in this country at the hands of racialized police brutality is one of many articulations of white supremacy, amongst other oppressive ideologies, prevalent in this country. There is no equality when Black and Brown people are being murdered in disproportionate numbers. There is no justice when the law stands behind murderers constantly ruling "no indictment" on police officers whose racist motives in their murders are clear.

What does the denial of a trial, A TRIAL, mean to the victims and their families? This denial is dehumanizing and adding to the second-class citizenship people of color experience in the United States. The ongoing murders, the denial of trials, and the state sponsored violence continue to devalue and dehumanize people of color, especially Black, Brown, and Native Americans.

The world is watching the United States. I will march to demand justice and equality. I will march because promises of justice and equality have not been kept. I will march because my people are dying at the hands of racialized police brutality. I will march because if I don't I am part of the silent majority that is perpetuating the problem. I will march because choosing to remain silent is a form of symbolic violence in the midst of a genocide.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/408/raise-funds-for-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/mark-ruffalo-statement-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Statement from Mark Ruffalo:

Support #RiseUpOctober -
STOP Police Terror

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Shedding some light on the many forms of resistance against police murder and mass incarceration. Let’s help change the whole social landscape to the point where more people take initiative and make it unmistakably clear that they refuse to live in a society that sanctions this outrage. Lend a hand on October 24th in the streets of New York City. 

(posted at markruffalo.tumblr.com)

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/from-a-student-at-truman-state-university-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a Student at Truman State University

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

I and many other students at Truman State University are supporting #RiseUpOctober because it is bringing urgently needed attention to the important issue of police brutality. The capitalist media has not given enough attention to this issue, and misrepresents reality in the news, fictional television, and the creation of a police culture that demonizes parts of our population along racial and economic lines. Through the process of organizing for this event, Truman’s campus dialogue has begun to change for the better. It is becoming increasingly important to ask ourselves which side we are on, and to have serious deliberations about how we feel on this issue. My anger is not directed at individual police officers, but instead the systemic problems that have been in the works for years in this country. It is not fair for police officers or the general population to have a situation as explosive as Ferguson, Baltimore, and many cities across the United States as part of our day to day lives.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/from-a-high-school-student-nyc-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a High School Student in NYC

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Time and time again people have cried out against the injustices of our justice system. The truth is out there. It is outrageous that there is such a disregard for the sanctity of human life. People witness it every day. Generation after generation we are faced with the same system of oppression. I refuse to listen to people keep saying, “Oh well, that’s just the way it is.” I’m sick of it. It should not be this way and it doesn’t have to be. I stand here today to combat that system. When people step off of the sidelines and unite with one another, that is when we can make the changes we need. I have taken up Rise Up October for all our sakes, to change that which we are told we cannot change.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/divine-prince-allah-endorses-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Divine Prince Allah Endorses #RiseUpOctober

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/johns-hopkins-student-organizing-for-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a Johns Hopkins University student organizing for #RiseUpOctober

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“An unequal opportunity given to unqualified minorities” This is how a white student defined Affirmative Action upon being asked in a cultural competency class my first few weeks in college. A justification as to why I and my fellow students of color had the privilege to be sitting in a Johns Hopkins classroom. Right then, I wondered what did she see when she saw me? A fellow woman who Affirmation Action was originally designed for the equal opportunity of? A fellow student going through the same experience as her? Or did she just see Black, which in her eyes makes me unqualified, incompetent, and not worthy of the same seat that she too finds her self in. Our seats were not equal because I am Black. She deserved hers more than I did mine because I had an “unequal opportunity” that she didn’t. I told her that I thought her definition was racist. She said, “I don’t see race, I’m colorblind”. I said, “If you don’t see color you don’t see me, If you don’t see race, you’re not paying attention.”

At what point do we decide to pay attention? To speak up? To take action? How many more Black students have to feel inferior? How many more kids have to be shot? How many more marches? How many more protests? How much more do Black lives have to matter before you start caring about them? Choosing to remain apathetic is choosing to side with injustice. Being silent only helps them keep us voiceless.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/students-youth-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

DONATE

to Rise Up October

Youth and students on a mission to make #RiseUpOctober happen 

Updated October 27, 2015

From #RiseUpOctober Student Task Force:

Calling ALL students & youth who were part of #RiseUpOctober—fulfill a great need by filling out this questionnaire.

November 6, 2015

Click for questionnaire

Spoken word poem by student at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Student Op-ed in Hofstra Chronicle, October 20:

Mass incarceration effects subject of #RiseUpOctober action

By Shannon Alomar
STAFF WRITER

With Halloween quickly approaching and people finalizing what horrifying and fictional characters they will embody, my mind cannot help but be consumed with a real horror story affecting my community: the killing of innocent people and mass incarceration.

October is a month filled with several causes looking to spark awareness from the masses (many of which I am a proud supporter of), but one cause I would like to turn your attention to is #RiseUpOctober. This call-to-action hashtag is being used this month to encourage people all across the country to pour into New York City and march for the purpose of spreading the message that “police terror must stop, and it is up to [us] to stop it!”

Read the whole piece

Hofstra Chronicle is the student newspaper at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY

Students at Morgan State University, Baltimore

October 20, 2015

Rise Up October talked to several students at Morgan State University in Baltimore about building for and going to the October 24 national march in NYC..

Read more

From a High School Student in NYC

October 19, 2015

Time and time again people have cried out against the injustices of our justice system. The truth is out there. It is outrageous that there is such a disregard for the sanctity of human life. People witness it every day. Generation after generation we are faced with the same system of oppression. I refuse to listen to people keep saying, “Oh well, that’s just the way it is.” I’m sick of it. It should not be this way and it doesn’t have to be. I stand here today to combat that system. When people step off of the sidelines and unite with one another, that is when we can make the changes we need. I have taken up Rise Up October for all our sakes, to change that which we are told we cannot change.

Share

From a Student at Truman State University, Missouri

October 19, 2015

I and many other students at Truman State University are supporting #RiseUpOctober because it is bringing urgently needed attention to the important issue of police brutality. The capitalist media has not given enough attention to this issue, and misrepresents reality in the news, fictional television, and the creation of a police culture that demonizes parts of our population along racial and economic lines. Through the process of organizing for this event, Truman’s campus dialogue has begun to change for the better. It is becoming increasingly important to ask ourselves which side we are on, and to have serious deliberations about how we feel on this issue. My anger is not directed at individual police officers, but instead the systemic problems that have been in the works for years in this country. It is not fair for police officers or the general population to have a situation as explosive as Ferguson, Baltimore, and many cities across the United States as part of our day to day lives.

Share

Read this article, dated October 20, 2015, in the Washington Square News, "NYU's Independent Student Newspaper":

"Black Lives Matter still going strong with October call to action"

Statement by Columbia University student for #RiseUpOctober

October 19, 2015

As a student-to-be social worker, or as I like to call it, a student-to-be-social-justice-change-agent, I realize that those who choose to study social work are on a quest for truth. I constantly find myself searching for authenticity in this world, and question how to harmonize authenticity with my thoughts and actions. This cognizance compels social justice change agents to evolve their consciousness through action, and their action through consciousness. We strive to be intentional, to back our critical thinking with practice, and our practice with critical thinking. 

When we witness silence become violence, complicity become bigotry, and truth become lie, it precludes the possibility that we will stand by in complacency. In our commitment to search for truth, we vow to dismantle any phenomenon that threatens truth's constructs. Thus our truth cannot evolve without the radical interaction of action and consciousness. Our commitment to truth inherently binds us to the actions that produce it. And in our commitment to truth, we are bound by our commitment to integrity. 

We refuse to be passersby as an assault is waged on our generation. We refuse to let the stories of our lives, of our black and brown sisters and brothers, become lies. The question, "Which side are you on?" is a challenge, make no mistake. It is calling on humans to articulate their truth, to challenge their authenticity and integrity.  In this reality, it is easy for our truth to be lost, but we must remain steadfast so to not wane in our action, thinking, or language. 

To challenge your authenticity, I ask, "is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

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Report on Monday, October 12, 2015 - From the Student Task Force for #RiseUpOctober

October 14, 2015

Early that morning everybody on the team read three articles on revcom.us (along with other articles): Carl Dix’s statement “Authorities Greasing Skids to Exonerate Tamir’s Murderers!,” along with the accompanying article, “Tens of Thousands Come to DC for Justice or Else Rally - What Is Really Needed for the Movement to STOP Police Terror?,” and “Some Lessons in Building the Rise Up October Event at Columbia University.”  Going into Monday we knew that the first two articles were societal questions that were ruminating in people’s minds.  So we made sure to get ourselves oriented for the big day ahead of us.

Read reports from teams that went out to Sarah Lawrence and other universities

Action Plan from Students at Truman College, Missouri, for Rise Up October

October 1, 2015

A meeting was hosted by a campus SDS chapter at Truman College in northern Missouri. Fifteen students showed up. After quick introductions, there was a short presentation by a revcom and Rise Up October organizer from another city about the emergency of police murder, the crossroads the struggle to stop police terror faces today, and how Rise Up October can be a turning point to make a leap in the struggle to stop police murder by challenging society about “what side are you on?” and bringing many people off the sidelines and into the streets for #RiseUpOctober. Students discussed the situation and what the stakes are in making a leap in our resistance, or not. At first students talked about getting a dozen or two to NYC. But soon something different came into focus—a vision of #RiseUpOctober becoming a big thing on the whole campus with many students being mobilized for the showdown in NYC October 24. With that orientation, students jumped right into getting organized! They brainstormed ideas, made plans, and delegated responsibility, and came up with this action plan.

Check out their plan here

Columbia University October 7

550 Pack Columbia University Auditorium for Rise Up October
A Challenge to Columbia University Students and the World

After a down-to-the-wire battle to hold the event, 550 people, largely Columbia University students, packed the Lerner Hall Auditorium on the Columbia campus in NYC on Wednesday night, October 7, for a powerful, moving event challenging everyone to take up and organize for Rise Up October.

Read more

Carl Dix Speaks to Columbia University Students, October 7
"I don't want to keep making hashtags!"

Read more

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Eve Ensler, Carl Dix, Nicholas Heyward, Sr., Cornel West at Columbia University October 7.

Some Lessons in Building the Rise Up October event at Columbia University

by A Revolutionary Volunteer for #RiseUpOctober

October 11, 2015

Read more

Organizing for Rise Up October at New York University (NYU)

Photo: Special to revcom.us

Night for Justice at NYU: A Call and Challenge to Act

October 5, 2015

“The Night for Justice” at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University on October 1 started with a slideshow accompanied by live music from professional cellist Clerida Eltime. Horrific images from almost 100 years of lynchings—Black bodies defiled in the most inhuman and vicious way; the KKK smiling and walking free. Many, many decades of Black people being murdered and brutalized with cops and racist vigilantes walking free. The faces of Emmett Till, Eleanor Bumpurs, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown... and more. Mothers’ faces stained with tears of grief and anger. But also the people’s struggle against all this. People going up against fire hoses and dogs 50 years ago... and people facing tear gas and rubber bullets today in Ferguson.

Read more

DePaul University Students Say: Get on the Bus to NYC!

October 2, 2015

On September 30, students at DePaul University in Chicago hosted a program on Rise Up October. They heard from two women whose sons were murdered by police: LaToya Howell, whose son Justus was killed by Zion, Illinois police; and Gloria Pinex, whose son Darius was killed by Chicago police. The students were moved to act. So they (along with others) took this picture together to challenge students everywhere to do what they are doing: show everyone that you are going to New York for October 24 AND then challenge people to contribute the money to help you—and many others—get there. Call 312/933-9586 for bus tickets from Chicago.

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From UCLA Students and Revolution Club Members: Why Students Must Take Up #RiseUpOctober

October 5, 2015

This call was sent out to students and professors at University of California, Los Angeles.

There comes a time when we have to cast off our ignorance and confront reality, and when the reality is as outrageous as the one we face today, we are also confronted with the moral question of how to act on it.

Read more

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/seattle-send-off-for-families-going-too-nyc-for-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Seattle Send-off for Families Going to NYC for Rise Up October

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Saturday, October 17. Seventy-five people came together at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Seattle for a forum and send-off for family members from the Northwest heading to New York City for Rise Up October. They were joined by clergy and others to condemn police murder and raise money for the 100 Families Project.

People were welcomed by Rev. Robert Jeffrey, minister of New Hope, who said, “Today I hope that we come here to unite with those who are victims of what I believe is a criminal justice system bent against the poor and people of color. It is in the light of this geographic and judicial genocide that all people of conscience must now stand and say enough.”

Rev. Lawrence Willis, president of United Black Clergy in Seattle said, “My heart is heavy, but I feel honored to be part of this movement, because this IS a movement. And as I see the theme Rise Up October, it reminds me of my grandmother cooking bread, and the how the hotter it gets in the oven, the higher the bread rises. And so we see that today. The hotter it gets in our states and communities, the more we’re rising up against police brutality.”

There was tremendous and uplifting music by Patrinell Wright and the award-winning and world-renowned Total Experience Gospel Choir.

The heart of the night was heartbreaking but very inspiring testimony from the families and friends of Daniel Covarrubias, David Walker, John T. Williams, Victor Duffy, Oscar Perez Giron, Kenneth Boyd, and Danielle Willard—all murdered by police in the Northwest. The family members and friends stood together on stage, holding pictures of their loved ones and supporting each other.

Lanna Covarrubias told of how her brother Daniel, unarmed, was killed by police in Lakewood, Washington, this past April, at a time when he had just finished his first quarter in college. Daniel was a member of the Suquamish tribe, and a descendant of Chief Seattle. Lanna said she told people this “not because his life is any more valuable than any of the other victims, but because it’s a reminder this genocide is still happening and the modern-day lynchings continue to happen today. It’s just hidden behind the justice system as legal discrimination.”

Lanna told of how she had gone into the streets to protest the murder by police of John T. Williams in 2012, a Native woodcarver who was murdered within four seconds of encountering police while he walked down the street carving. The cop was let off without charges. She said she felt after protesting, she had done her job, but now realizes she could have done so much more. Someone from the audience yelled, “You’re doing it now.” Lanna finished by saying, “I’m going to keep fighting until change happens and I want us all to stand up, and I thank you guys for being here, and let’s wake ’em up!”

Marilyn Covarrubias, Daniel’s mother, broke down as she started to speak but then fought through tears. “It’s too hard! Every day I wake up crying, every night I go to sleep crying. I had a dream the other night. I dreamt that Daniel was upstairs lying on his bed. He was moaning and flapping his arms around in his sleep, like he was having a bad dream. I walked over and sat next to him on his bed. I touched his hair and I rubbed his back. And I said, ‘It’s OK, Dan, it’s just a bad dream, you’re having a bad dream and mommy’s here.’ I woke up and realized that it would never be OK for me, enraged, sobbing gallons of tears, because it’s not OK, it’s never going to be OK. I’ll feel bad and get sick to my stomach when I think about what happened to him.... We have to get up and we have to do something about this. We can’t let this go on. I cry for the kids. I relive it every single time I turn on the news and find out that somebody else has been killed and it makes me just cry for the mothers who are going through the same thing I’m going through. And we’ve got to stop it. We have to stand together and we have to make a difference. We have to make change. We can’t let them get away with this anymore. It can’t be sanctioned.”

People in the audience—a diverse mix of Black, white, Latino and Native, were extremely moved by listening to the family members especially. More people got connected with Rise Up October. At least $700 was raised, including from bracelets and T-shirts family members have made to honor and demand justice for their loved ones.

Several of these family members will be traveling from the West Coast to New York, and are greatly looking forward to joining with many other families there. Some families came forward to speak at the last minute when they heard the event was happening.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/homan-square-chicago-police-dept-continuing-criminal-enterprise-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Homan Square: Chicago Police Dept’s Continuing Criminal Enterprise 

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From readers in Chicago:

The UK Guardian released today more information about the extent of torture and kidnapping carried out by the Chicago police at a notorious off-the-books former warehouse called Homan Square that the CPD uses to disappear thousands of people. (“Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police ‘disappeared’ 7,000 people”) And this is a continuing criminal enterprise!

The statistics alone are breathtaking: The Guardian reveals that more than 7,000 people have been taken to Homan Square without even a formal arrest, far more than previously known. (See Revolution coverage of February 2015 revelations and protests.) And 99 percent are denied any access to a lawyer. Black people were disappeared there at a rate (82.2 percent) more than twice as high as their percentage of the population of Chicago (32.9 percent).

The Guardian notes that the use of Homan Square by the Chicago police has increased in recent years: “Nearly 65% of documented Homan Square arrests since August 2004 took place in the five years since Rahm Emanuel, formerly Barack Obama’s top aide, became mayor.”

When someone is taken to Homan Square, family and friends simply don’t know where their loved one is. Think about that. Imagine your son or daughter, sister or brother, roommate or best friend just vanished. You’d be frantic. You’d call jails and hospitals, maybe even the morgue. But you wouldn’t call Homan Square because there is no phone listing for it. 

Those taken by the police to Homan Square are not people suspected of violent crimes. Overwhelmingly, they were picked up (not charged—there are no booking procedures at Homan Square!) for minor drug violations. The cops take them there to try to force them to confess, to finger someone else, or to interrogate them without a lawyer. They are held there for hours or even days, prevented from calling relatives or attorneys. The parallel to Guantánamo and CIA secret torture chambers (or “black sites”) around the world is not far-fetched. David Gaeger, a Chicago lawyer quoted in the Guardian who had a client who was taken to Homan Square in 2011 after a marijuana bust, called Homan Square a “near-paramilitary wing of the government” and said, “That place was and is scary. It’s a scary place.”

This torture chamber is located on the West Side of Chicago, an overwhelmingly Black and poor area inundated with the occupying army of CPD. The Guardian article notes that CPD brings people from around the city to Homan Square, but it is an ominous presence in the midst of a community of the oppressed. This is terror. Homan Square must be shut down!

This is one more reason why we say: STOP Police Terror.

How long will this go on? Which side are you on?

NOW is the time to be out in the streets. Without resistance, there will be no change for the better.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/from-youth-organizer-in-new-paltz-ny-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From Youth Organizer for #RiseUpOctober in New Paltz

"It is time, New Paltz, to stand up for what is right"

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

New York—Come to New York, Change history, Come. Be part of standing up and saying NO MORE. Police terror must stop! We must collectively say that black and brown lives matter in this country! Which side are YOU on? Do you stand with the families who have lost loved ones to sanctioned murder by the police or with the Racist, Sexist, Ignorant, Corrupt police departments in this country? Power to the People.

Rise up New Paltz, rise up and say where you stand. You’ve seen name after name on the news and hashtag after hashtag. Each name and hashtag was a person with a family and a beating heart. Murder by the police cannot continue. These murders are the lynchings or our time. These black and brown men and women were killed for minor or no apparent crime. These victims have subsequently been dehumanized by the police in varying accounts. Black and brown people have been disproportionately robbed of their bodies based on skin color alone, which has been allowed in the police system.

It is time, New Paltz, to stand up for what is right and once and for all bring an end to this racist murder and mass incarceration.

The national march will take place in Washington Square Park in Manhattan at 11 am.

#RISEUPOCTOBER

Stand up against Police Brutality. Stand up against murder by police. Stand up against racism.

FB event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1676157789287803/

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/from-c-clark-kissinger-join-me-to-shut-down-rikers-island-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From C. Clark Kissinger:

Join me to shut down Rikers Island on October 23!

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

We received the text of a letter sent out by C. Clark Kissinger:

Dear friends,

I’m writing to you about a burning moral issue of our time—the continuing police murder of our youth.

You to whom I am writing include my old friends from SDS stretching back to 1962 and co-workers on the first March On Washington against the war on Vietnam (1965), people from community organizing in Chicago and work with the Black Panther Party, activists from the early US-China People’s Friendship Association who were inspired by pathbreaking advances in China before the ugly capitalist restoration there, friends who took up the battles here at home as part of Refuse & Resist!, defenders of Mumia Abu-Jamal and prisoners of the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, voices of conscience who joined with me in issuing the Not In Our Name statement against the war on Iraq, those who helped make the Bush Crimes Commission into a stinging indictment, and those I have met in my current work as manager of Revolution Books in New York.

I’m calling on you once again, with an invitation and, yes, a challenge.

The horrific epidemic of police murders has already taken over 800 lives this year—disproportionately unarmed young people of color. This is not the result of “rogue cops” or “a few bad apples.” These murders, along with the policy of mass incarceration, are part of a systematic effort to terrorize that section of the population that is most feared by the ruling powers. It is also a stark admission that they have no solution, nothing to offer millions of Black and Brown youth but prison or an early grave. The question now is will it remain legitimate for any cop to gun down any unarmed youth and get off scot-free by declaring that he felt he was in danger?

Emblematic of this whole reign of terror is Rikers Island in New York City, one of the largest jail facilities in the world. It has been repeatedly exposed as a horrific example of depraved conduct by authorities against the poor and oppressed. A daily average of 14,000 are warehoused there, most “awaiting trial.” A simple Google search will turn up dozens of accounts of prisoners being beaten, killed or left to die after unconscionable neglect, while a culture of brutality by guards remains the norm. Go on the internet, look up Rikers Island, and see for yourself. It is “Abu Ghraib-on-the-Hudson.”

On Friday, October 23, I will be joining with other voices of conscience in “Shut Down Rikers!” a non-violent direct action as part of #RiseUpOctober. People of conscience must now put their bodies on the line to stop this depravity and barbarity, else we ourselves are complicit. It is a situation in which we are all asked WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

After over 50 years of political activism, I have also come to see that there is no inevitability about the way society is organized. It results neither from human nature nor the will of a vengeful (albeit non-existent) god. It is the outcome of a historically evolved economic and social system that came into existence for material reasons and can, in the right conditions, be defeated through an actual revolution and lifted off the backs of all of humanity. Those who have applied science to this question, from Marx, to Mao, to Avakian today, have given me an optimism that is based on material reality. The very conditions which torment humanity can provide the basis for putting an end to the long dark nightmare of class society and all oppression.

So I am determined to unite with you and many more to bring an end to this outrage. The October 23 action is part of a larger three-day mobilization in New York called #RiseUpOctober. Inspired by the heroic actions of the youth from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore, Maryland, the New York action will be bringing together the families of police murder victims from all over the country and will culminate in what needs to be a massive march on Saturday, October 24.

Won’t you join me on Friday, October 23, to shut down Rikers Island? At a time like this, can we do less?

Give me a call. Let’s do this together.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/statement-by-columbia-university-student-for-riseupoctober-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Statement by Columbia University student for #RiseUpOctober

October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As a student-to-be social worker, or as I like to call it, a student-to-be-social-justice-change-agent, I realize that those who choose to study social work are on a quest for truth. I constantly find myself searching for authenticity in this world, and question how to harmonize authenticity with my thoughts and actions. This cognizance compels social justice change agents to evolve their consciousness through action, and their action through consciousness. We strive to be intentional, to back our critical thinking with practice, and our practice with critical thinking. 

When we witness silence become violence, complicity become bigotry, and truth become lie, it precludes the possibility that we will stand by in complacency. In our commitment to search for truth, we vow to dismantle any phenomenon that threatens truth's constructs. Thus our truth cannot evolve without the radical interaction of action and consciousness. Our commitment to truth inherently binds us to the actions that produce it. And in our commitment to truth, we are bound by our commitment to integrity. 

We refuse to be passersby as an assault is waged on our generation. We refuse to let the stories of our lives, of our black and brown sisters and brothers, become lies. The question, "Which side are you on?" is a challenge, make no mistake. It is calling on humans to articulate their truth, to challenge their authenticity and integrity.  In this reality, it is easy for our truth to be lost, but we must remain steadfast so to not wane in our action, thinking, or language. 

To challenge your authenticity, I ask, "is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/mighty-mighty-revcom-contingent-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

‘MIGHTY MIGHTY REVCOM’ Contingent at #RiseUpOctober—A Call to Join

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From the Revolution Club, NYC:

October 24th, thousands of people from across the country will converge on Washington Square Park in New York City to say NO MORE! No more to police murdering our people. No more just watching video after video of these cops, getting caught red handed, choking, tasing, beating and/or shooting to death our brothers and sisters. No more of the endless excuses, rationalizations and justifications for MURDER by police. No more being heartsick with paralysis, unable or unwilling to do anything about this. This is why the Revolution Club has thrown in with many other groups and individuals to #RiseUpOctober STOP POLICE TERROR Which Side Are YOU On?

We have to stand up to these outrages, and build up the strength to truly make this NO MORE. The problem is this system. This system of white supremacy, police enforcers, discrimination, mass Incarceration—this system of genocide—of courts, probation, parole, prisons, brutal bone-crushing poverty. This system of male supremacy. This system of hounding and casting off immigrants and refugees. This system of war and global empire and environmental destruction. This system, at its roots, of capitalism imperialism. ALL THIS must be NO MORE

There IS A WAY OUT, through revolution, communist revolution, nothing less than truly making ALL of this system’s oppression NO MORE. We CAN do better than this. We do NOT need to accept this world they got us trapped in. The system is NOT all powerful. They have been defeated, and there is a STRATEGY to do that right here, in the belly of the beast. Bob Avakian, “BA,” has developed a way of understanding all this to change everything. Bob Avakian, “BA,” is leading a party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, that is building a movement for this revolution.

That’s what we represent for when we wear the shirts “BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!” This is what people need most of all, and this is what the MIGHTY MIGHTY REVCOM contingent will be making real for people.

We are calling on you: In the midst of #RiseUpOctober the mighty mighty REVCOMS need to be a stamp on the day. An organized, coherent force, recruiting on the spot: All who want to wake up, and shake off this system’s ways, to lift our sights to the emancipation of all humanity, and to get to work fighting the power, and transforming the people, FOR REVOLUTION. There’s a world to change, and a need for YOU! Get with it.

We will be wearing the “BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!” shirts, and will recruit people to wear this shirt by getting into it with them about what it means. This crew will be spreading Revolution (revcom.us) everywhere, to get out 10,000 copies of Revolution newspaper and collecting donations, so many thousands are connected into the hub and pivot of the revolution. We will spread and wield BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, the handbook for a new generation of revolutionaries. We will chant, “WE ARE THE REVCOMS! THE MIGHTY MIGHTY REVCOMS!”representing as the force with the real way out of this nightmare.

That’s what the Revolution Club is working for today, getting ORGANIZED for an ACTUAL REVOLUTION. And that is what the 7 billion people on this planet, and the planet itself, need us to be about.

www.revcom.us           nycrevclub@gmail.com           ig/tw:@nycrevclub

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/sister-in-harlem-on-rikers-island-and-genocide-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

A Sister in Harlem Speaks on Rikers Island, Genocide against Black People, and the Need to Rise Up

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This is a statement from a woman in Harlem, whose son is jailed at Rikers Island, the huge jail complex in NYC notorious for brutality against and solitary confinement of prisoners.

I go to Rikers to see my son and I am treated like a common criminal, I am talked to in the nastiest way and I am touched, cursed, degraded, when I go in there. And the stories my son tells me about how he is treated. I was on the phone with him and there was a guard—I reported it—she is saying to him, “Get off the fucking phone you maggot.” She is saying this to him while I am on the phone with him. But then he says, “Who are you talking to,” and all I hear is a bunch of commotion and my son don’t call me for three days, because they done put him in the box, because he said something to the guard. This is what they do, they put them there, they antagonize them to give them more charges, so they don’t come home. They throw them in the box [solitary confinement] so when they go before the judge they say, look at these people, they don’t know how to act.

My son is 21 now. How do you put somebody in a little cell for 23 hours a day, and some of these kids have never been away from home before, let alone jail. And to think that they gonna come out and act OK—I’m going to be so angry I won’t. They building all these jails but there’s no houses, giving nobody no jobs, they building them because they know they gonna get them when they are 12, 13 years old. Now you got a criminal record... then you go to Rikers Island. You going to get in trouble there because everybody in there angry. So you are going to get into more trouble there. This is not the answer for these kids...

It is the nastiest, dirtiest place in the entire world. I went there only because my son was there. My son was on the Boat [a barge used as a jail by NYC] and I had him transferred from the Boat. [They] took him to Rikers Island and put him in a house where all the Grant [a housing project in Harlem] kids were at. You put a Manhattanville [another Harlem project] kid in a house where all the Grant kids are, and you think my son is safe? How is my son safe? I just tried to get him transferred over and over again.

In Rikers Island he was in the box three times, for fighting. Couldn’t go to school because he had a fight, he was trying to go to school. He was in Rikers from June 4th 2014 and released this May, in the box three times. All this time waiting to get released. My son had a $70,000 bail. And all they had was three different things he said on Facebook. That’s all they had on my son, but they gave him a $70,000 bail. $70,000 cash and $140,000 bond. Who can afford that? They put Grant and Manhattanville together, this is what they are doing. I mean you are supposed to stop the violence. So how are you doing this?... They threaten them, so a lot of them feel safer in the box. They said the guards would watch them fight and not stop it. They would sit there and watch them. Some of them would intimidate them, or tell them, “I’ll give you another phone call if you do this.” I wasn’t there but these are the stories I heard....

These fucking pigs, they treat the kids worse than they do the adults. I mean it, I think they do. Some of them want to go to school, they don’t allow them to go to school. With the charges you have you can’t go to school. What the hell is that? One kid, he was graduating later in June (they got arrested June 4th.) And the mother begged the judge, to let him out for his graduation and the judge said $50,000 bail... If he was doing something he was still going to school he was graduating, but no they didn’t allow it. Another mother told the judge her son had sickle cell anemia and he actually told her he has a jail cell for her son to die in. He actually said that. Aren’t they supposed to be impartial?

Look they want to keep us down, they know that what they have to do is give us a criminal record. Once you got a criminal record it’s really hard to do a lot. Some people have—but you already Black, you a man, you come out and you get frustrated ‘cause you can’t get a job. Then you have to do something else. It’s a genocide, 20 years from now they not going to have many kids—the kids that can make kids at this age, they all picked up, they all locked up. I don’t understand it. I can’t understand it. I’ve never been prejudiced my entire life, I’ve looked at a person as a person, never as the color of their skin, but I see all the time, the cops come in the projects and call the kids “monkeys.” White cops. Why? I mean why would you call them monkeys? “Look at the monkeys sitting on the bench.” I want them to know somebody is watching.

I don’t like them, there are no good cops because if you see your partner doing something and you don’t speak up, if you see something wrong and you don’t do nothing about it, you are just as guilty. If you see your partner kill a person and they were unarmed and you don’t say nothing, you killed that person too. The judges, the mayor. They all take up for the cops, knowing they are wrong. They never do anything about it. I mean how do you kill a seven-year-old sitting on the couch and then you find he [the cop] didn’t do nothing wrong? You looking at the tape where they choke this man to death and you didn’t find that they did nothing wrong. What else is there to do? If you can look at that then what the fuck can we do? Cause you are looking at the evidence and still... And then they are not going to see [the people in the projects protesting] as a peaceful march. Things like that they don’t see, they are going to turn it around and say like “these outrageous people, they don’t know how to act.” That’s how they gonna see us. They are not going to see that people are tired, and that we cannot take it no more....

On Eric Garner... why are you waiting on an indictment? You don’t need to wait! He said he couldn’t breathe 100 times, they still choked him, the ambulance came, didn’t do shit, because it was a person messing with the cops—some ambulance drivers act like well that’s just a perp, we don’t got to do nothing for him. And you still don’t find nothing to convict. I’m sorry, I’m done... It’s two different laws, for them and for us. Like they say, the 1% and then the 99%... There’s never gonna be justice like this. Things have got to change.

I know this guy who used to be a cop with the 26th precinct, and he told me that when he first started they told him to go out and grab a Black kid, and when you grab two or three of them you gonna find something, grab them up for no reason. He was told that by his sergeant.

People out there say there’s no point, but I say if you think like that, and more people think like that, then hundred more, then nothing is going to get done. It takes one person to think different to make 1,000 think different. Why don’t you be that one person to think different, to say, “You know what, it ain’t working this way, let’s try this other way—let me stand up and say I’m not taking this shit no more. We tried doing nothing and nothing changes, so now let’s try all standing up together and let’s change this shit. Let’s change our thinking to stand together. Let’s change our thinking to say if we all stand together we can change things.”

And people say, “If we do this the cops are gonna come around harass us.” Yes, they gonna harass you but they gonna know that “I’m not gonna just stand still and let you do it. I’m gonna keep on fighting until you stop harassing me.” That’s what has to be done. They can’t make us act like ignorant people now. We standing together now and you can’t get through us. We standing together now, shoulder to shoulder and you all can’t get between us. We done played that game already, we were stupid to that game, but no, we done smartened up. We not dumb anymore, get smarter. You don’t have to like everyone but stand shoulder to shoulder. I told the other families, we need to go to Rikers and tell our kids enough of this bullshit, you are in here and they are going to try and play you, they are treating you like you are animals, and you need to stop this bullshit. We gotta raise all these kids, I fight for all the kids, I don’t care who is being harassed.

Let’s get all our kids and stand shoulder and shoulder and say we are not animals. We are human beings, we are not animals. They have us acting like animals—but we are not animals and we need to stop acting foolish, and fighting because that’s what they want. They do things, I’m telling you, they go in Grant and then they go in Manhattanville and then next thing you see the kids are fighting. I don’t know what they do, but I know they egg it on.

We have had enough, we are not standing for this anymore. We are not repeating this story anymore. We starting a new story now. They have to stand up and let people see them as individuals, as human beings, as children and not as monsters. Then more people will look and say what are they doing, these are kids, these are not animals. But we have to stand up and let them see this, let them see the human side of you. I’m a human being, a young man and a young woman, I have feelings, and I want to be loved, and not treated like this because of the color of my skin.

They have to stand up and do that and say that—and the more young people you get to do that, the more people who don’t know this learn this side of you. They already got the monster side but let’s show them the human side. They don’t put that in the paper. They never put nothing good in the paper. They have the right to walk around and be free, not in jail or incarcerated or be murdered by police officers, I have a right to not have that happen, and a lot of these youth don’t think that they do, they don’t believe that because they been stopped so many times, harassed so many times that they start to believe it themselves. They need to believe in themselves and we need to find out what’s going to make them believe in themselves. They need to think differently. You are no longer gonna be able to do what you want to do to me because I’m going to fight back. I’m not going to just sit here and take whatever you decide to give me, because I am human, I deserve respect. You have to not only say it, you have to believe it and you have to move on it. You got to do something about it. It’s got to be more than words, it’s got to be actions. We been saying it for years and years and years, it’s nothing if we don’t act on it. I have for fight for what I believe in and my rights, and I deserve a lot more. We built this country, on the backs of our ancestors, and I believe we deserve a lot more. My ancestors were slaves but I’m not one.

To families of the stolen lives, I think about it so sad and emotional, I can’t begin to imagine losing a child. My niece was killed a few years ago, she wasn’t my daughter but I raised her. But it cut so deep... I take my hat off to them, I mean whatever I can do, to bring some type of justice to them, I’ll stand with them, and talk about it with them, we got to rally, march whatever we got to do, I’ll do it. I mean if they can do it, then there’s no reason everyone else can’t do that. If they get out there then we got to walk right with them. Right beside them. It’s all our children. Don’t we want a better world for our children, so our kids don’t have to walk down the street thinking I’m going to be criminalized or demoralized because I’m a Black man? Wouldn’t you want to do something for them? I have six grandsons and do not want to see them go through what my sons went through, what my brother went through. I’m standing here because I’m a mother of Black children. I’m going to go out with you all here and talk to these youth so on Saturday [October 24th] this starts.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/students-at-morgan-state-university-baltimore-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Students at Morgan State University, Baltimore

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Rise Up October talked to several students at Morgan State University in Baltimore:

Interview #1

You've been passing out fliers here at Morgan State. Why do you want to come to NYC for #RiseUpOctober?

The reason I was passing fliers out is just so that people can be aware of what's going on. Like you said, injustice it keeps on being done over and over again. People have to step up and change things. Make history. That's what I want to help do is just change things.  

What would you tell someone from Morgan State if they were sort of on the edge about coming to NYC for #RiseUpOctober? What would you tell to push them over the edge to want to come?
  
I would tell them, hey, people have lost their lives. I think it's worth you taking a day out of the week to come out and support. It's on a Saturday—so most people are free. Just to come out and do it. Cuz if you don't, who is going to step up and do it.

Interview #2

Why do you want to come to #RiseUpOctober the national march to Stop Police Terror in NYC? 

I believe that the way the government’s going, how they just killing Black people and getting away with it, is very wrong. It's just basically I wanna say just like, you know, the history of slavery or like segregation—so basically getting away with killing us, nothing's happening. They're always saying they are “fearing for their lives” and getting away with it. I believe it needs to come to a stop now before it gets too out of hand. 

Interview #3, with two students

Why do you want to come to #RiseUpOctober the national march to Stop Police Terror in NYC?

Student 1: Just to further the cause on preventing and reducing police terror and to send a message that regardless of where we're from that we're not going to stand for it and we're going to continue to bring attention to it.  

You were saying that you were part of the whole struggle and then it seemed like other people went back to sleep. Can you say something about that?

Student 1: Oh yeah, this is not targeted towards just the police, it's not targeted towards just the victims, this is targeted towards everybody (right here); the message needs to stay alive, and that doesn't mean that something happens and it's trending and you know you're either bringing attention on social media or you're bringing attention at home and as soon as social media is talking about something else you're talking about something else. No, we all collectively need to continue to communicate about this and to continue to send a message that laws, restrictions, something needs to take place.

Student 2: First of all, we're going to come out to NYC to march and remind people of the terrible things that have happened to people everybody had loved ones and losing anybody is a problem. But when you have a case where the law does not provide support or security force for certain people—we want to come out there and remind the world what it's like to lose a family by people we're supposed to get protection from. And also about this message: we're coming out to remind everybody, never sleep on anything even if it's solved—just remember so that people can avoid whatever started that situation.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/outrage-arrest-for-demanding-justice-for-tamir-rice-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

OUTRAGE: Arrest For Demanding Justice for Tamir Rice at Cleveland City Council!

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader

Last night, 30 activists marched into Cleveland City Council meeting demanding the city council members call for indictments against the cops who murdered Tamir Rice.  Activists and Tamir Rice’s family have been outraged when on October 10th, prosecutor,  Timothy McGinty released “Expert Reports”  that claim the cops who killed Tamir acted  in a “reasonable” way and were therefore justified in murdering this Black child.  

Rise up October in Cleveland called for this action and people from other groups came out, such as, Cleveland Revolution Club, Carl Stokes Brigade, New Abolitionist Association, supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party, family members of people killed by the police and lots of activists in the fight against police murder of Black and Brown people.  As we walked into the council chambers, we held signs of Tamir Rice and chanted “Justice for Tamir, Indict the cops!”  As city council members were saluting the flag, we stood up demanding justice. Brenda Bickerstaff, whose brother was killed by the police, began to speak saying, “We want this whitewash to stop, it has gone on too long.” The police surrounded her and claimed she would be given a chance to speak, but that never came.  

As the council went on with their business, we held up Tamir’s picture and demanded, “Indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail.”  At one point as everyone was chanting, holding up signs, the police grabbed a Cleveland Revolution Club member, Nico,  threw him against the wall, tore his shirt off him and dragged him. People shouted, “Let him go!” and demanded police free him. There were at least 12 cops surrounding him, and took him through a door and locked it. 

Then the meeting was adjourned.  Knowing they adjourned because of our message and our action, people yelled “Shame, shame!” and “Cowards, cowards!”

As the council people were leaving,  Genevieve Mitchell, a Black activist, spoke: “It is unacceptable that these homicides [by police] which are structurally, historically rooted, race and class based continue to increase with greater propensity as the days go by.”  Another family member spoke to the media as well as a member of Rise Up October, calling for people to be in NYC on October 24.  TV coverage quoted Cleveland City Councilman Jeff Johnson saying the protest was "legitimate advocacy" and "It is time to stop telling us to be patient, but to challenge the system that allows for an innocent child to be treated that way and to be killed." 

It was clear the police targeted Nico. He was standing with others chanting and shouting and holding picture of Tamir.  They picked  him out and viciously attacked him, like slave catchers. Nico was one of the 71 arrested for protesting the no conviction on pig Michael Brelo for being part of shooting unarmed Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams, with 137 bullets.

For hours Nico couldn’t be found and is now being held until Wednesday.  Outraged at the attack and arrest of Nico, people from all over the country are calling the Cleveland Police Department to free Nico now.  There is a news conference called for when Nico gets out of jail.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/from-reader-this-is-really-an-incredible-issue-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a reader:

“This is really an incredible issue”

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

I just read most of the new print issue on the train/bus coming home. This is really an incredible issue, and—in addition to of course getting it out massively on October 22, 23 and 24—I believe that, to the degree we can do so, people reading it tonight (or ASAP) and distributing it tomorrow could make a real difference in Rise Up October, in terms of filling people with a compulsion to act to stop the horror of police murder; giving people a sense of the system as a whole and its crimes against humanity across the globe; and in giving people at least a beginning understanding that things don't have to be this way, that there is leadership and organization, vision and plan for a radically better world.

Get your hands on the print edition ASAP, and bend every effort to get it into the hands of others, those you know and those you don't, in the coming days, as part of building for Rise Up October.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/statement-from-obdullo-oliva-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Statement from Obdulio Oliva, Father of Carlos Ernesto Oliva Sola

An Illegal Detention and Murder by L.A. Sheriffs

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On September 10, 2013, about an hour pass midnight, a woman called 911 to the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department about a domestic dispute between her and her boyfriend. This unknown individual left the scene before the Sheriffs arrived, and they called for back up to go in search of her boyfriend.

Around the same time, 23 year old Carlos Oliva Sola was passing by, riding a skateboard, going home after meeting with some friends. As witnesses recall, he had what appeared to be a cell phone in one hand and some ear phones on his ears, as if he was listening to music.

Sheriffs Anthony Forlano and Nicolas Castellanos were already patrolling the area. Another unknown man flagged them down about Carlos as a suspect waving a gun. Carlos was stopped and grabbed with force by the 2 sheriffs. The witnesses said Carlos asked why he was being detained and tried to make use of his rights but it was no use. The sheriffs yelled for him to “shut the fuck up.” At some point, Carlos begged to be released, and according to witnesses, it’s at this point where they used excessive force and started to beat him.

One witness said she didn’t find it fair and used her dog as a distraction, while her daughter recorded the whole thing. The mother stepped out to call her dog and it is here when the sheriffs let Carlos go.

After getting beat up and left with a broken nose and very badly hurt jaw-chin, he tried to save his life by running and hiding but failed as Forlano shot him 3 times from behind, and Castellanos also shot him. Carlos was shot a total of 5 times in the back.

Forlano had been involved in another shooting prior to killing Carlos. The witness and the family in that case moved to a different city. He shouldn’t have been still on patrol, or assigned desk duty. One of the testimonies of Nicolas Castellanos to the lawyer on the case was that when they confronted Carlos, he was “clean” (i.e., no marks on his face, etc). Yet Carlos’ body was full of cuts and bruises and his nose was broken. This means they did beat him up but don’t admit it.

After his crime, Anthony Forlano claims to have been afraid for his partner and his own life as to why he shot Carlos. What they claim to have recovered as evidence changed so many different times. First they claim the gun was a 38, then it was a 357, and later changed to a 380. So which one is it really?

The L.A. County autopsy report said the 380 gun had 6 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The District Attorney’s report says the gun had 4 live cartridges in the magazine and one in the chamber. What’s the reality? What’s the truth of the contradicting reports? They are both supposed to be official! Why didn’t they come up with the same report from both ends and made a more credible story?

They never found Carlos’ finger prints on the gun recovered but found Anthony Forlano’s finger prints and a third person’s. Who was at the scene? There is a possibility that this gun was seized from a third person whose finger prints were all over it. I strongly believe that this gun was never returned to its owner or even taken into evidence but was kept by one or both sheriffs to later have been planted on Carlos.

The County of L.A. didn’t want to bring this to light. This monster Forlano had been involved in a shooting. He deserves to be put away off the streets. He’s a danger! The County didn’t want to take this criminal case to trial. The County made an agreement with us, the parents. By this time, the case was closed and to this day, his personal belongings have not yet been returned to us.

I support Rise Up October. Stop Murder by Police and Police Terror. I will donate so that as many families as possible to be in New York City, October 22-24, 2015.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/corey-jones-shot-dead-by-plainclothes-cop-in-florida-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Corey Jones, Shot Dead by Plainclothes Cop in Florida

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On early Sunday morning, October 18, Corey Jones—a 31-year-old Black man—was killed by a plainclothes cop in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Jones, a drummer, was going home after a gig Saturday night when he called his brother to say his car had broken down on the highway. He was shot dead by the cop soon afterwards. When he didn’t show up for church on Sunday morning, where he was the lead drummer, his friends and family knew something was seriously wrong.

Shaun King, a writer for the New York Daily News, tweeted:

This is #CoreyJones. Murdered by Florida police on Sunday morning. A church musician.

Another tweet from Benjamin Dixon, a friend of Corey Jones, said:

The police killed a friend of mine this morning. Before they tell you he was a thug, he played drums in church every single Sunday.

Yet another Black man gunned down by cops. No more! Stop police terror and murder!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/cecily-mcmillan-on-rikers-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Cecily McMillan on Rikers: "We know that people die there..."

October 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Cecily McMillan was assaulted by the police and arrested in March of 2012 at an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. She was found guilty of felony assault on a police officer and served 58 days in Rikers jail in 2014. Shortly after Cecily was released she did an interview with Revolution about her experiences in Rikers. Revolution recently talked to Cecily about the Call to Shut Rikers Down that has been taken up as part of #RiseUpOctober, and the following is an excerpt from what she had to say about why she supports this Call and this action:

I think that it’s like a really worthy endeavor. I’m really glad that people are doing it. [When I was in New York] I really helped to organize the [Shut Down] Rikers effort. At this point all I’ve got left in me is a very serious anger, building towards rage because if people really want to shut down Rikers, if people really realize that there are people in there that because they are called prisoners they are not treated as people, they are not looked at as people, they are being killed, they are being raped, they are being medically neglected, which is the same as being killed, it’s not really that difficult. It’s one island, there’s one bridge.

We’re at the point now where we have heard first hand, I would say towards a hundred―hundreds of accounts of how many people who have been scarred if not killed, maimed, their life completely deranged by the experience of being in Rikers. I don’t know what else left there is to say to compel people to really do something about it. And I think that until we get over this hump of people thinking that their own freedom and that their own privilege and their own capitalist-controlled life, that is really not freedom, that is really not privilege, their own alienated life, until they get to the point that they stop thinking that is more important than these people dying in Rikers and really put their bodies on the line.

If standing outside of Rikers, if yelling about Rikers, if coalition building, if trying to even minimally even reform Rikers is not working , then people have to put their money where their mouth is, then people have to put their bodies on the line and there has to be a mass exodus to Rikers itself. This is not a crazy thing to say. There is a jail no bail movement, an effort to fill the jails. It was done in the Civil Rights Movement. And what we’re looking at is something on par with that―even worse. Because unlike the Civil Rights Movement where you could had cameras, journalists and people there standing up and witnessing the suffering and the murder of an entire people of color, you can’t do that at Rikers, no way.

In the Civil Rights Movement things were being done to people outright. They weren’t doing it behind razor wire, they weren’t doing it on an island, separating the rest of the boroughs. They were doing it there and people could see it. And now we’ve had this exposure of what goes on in Rikers, we know that people die there, we know that if people don’t die, they die a death of the soul. We know that this is happening en masse. We know that people die and they get cremated and their families don’t know about it.  We know this and yet people aren’t stepping up like they have in the past like in the Industrial Workers of the World Movement, like in the Civil Rights Movement, like in the Women’s Rights Movement, like in every other movement. It’s time. It’s time. Put yourself on that bridge. What are you doing with your life that is so much more important? What are you doing that matters more? Put yourself on that bridge....

We want a mass movement to follow. But a mass movement doesn’t follow from inaction. There has to be people who put a moral precedent on the issue and sacrifice their bodies... At this point it’s not just whether or not you’re participating, it’s whether or not you’re a decent person. You need to, you should. It’s now. Not tomorrow, not the next day. It’s now. Today somebody will die in Rikers. Today somebody will get raped in Rikers. Today somebody will get sexually assaulted in Rikers. Today somebody will not get fed. Today somebody is sitting in isolation. Today somebody will go to the hospital and die and their family will not know about it for god knows how long because they will get a letter saying “inmate no longer here” and they’ll call every single hospital until they find out their loved one has been cremated regardless of whether or not they were Catholic and their family wanted religious burial rights. Walk across that bridge....

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/extension-on-indiegogo-deadline-for-fundraising-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Extension to October 26 on Indiegogo deadline for fundraising for bringing 100 families to NYC

October 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/from-a-student-why-Im-putting-my-body-on-the-line-to-shut-down-rikers-island-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

From a student: Why I'm putting my body on the line to Shut Down Rikers Island

October 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This statement is in response to the call for non-violent direct action on October 23 to shut down Rikers Island prison in NYC as part of Rise Up October.

To say that I am fearless and that I don't care if I'm arrested on Friday would be a lie. I'm terrified. I am. The truth is I've never been arrested and I've never thought much about civil disobedience before. Sure I've marched in the streets and screamed in police officers faces calling them racist pigs, and killers. But I had the safety of the backing of a huge crowd on my side but when I lay down my body Friday morning to stop business as usual on Rikers Island I don't know what will happen. The unknown terrifies me and gives me anxiety. The fact that police have and continue to get away with wanton violence against innocent people scares me and keeps me up at night and makes me think twice about doing civil disobedience. BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT. This moment right here and now is special. The reason I'm putting my fears aside, casting my anxiety off, is because there are youth on Rikers Island who don't get to make that decision. Because I think of Kalief Browder, a young man, who was snatched one night from his friends and family, for a crime he didn't commit and ended up on the torture island that is Rikers Island for 3 years, 3 years, 3 years he spent there the majority of his time in solitary confinement. I'm putting my body on the line for the lives lost to the horrendous place that is Rikers Island. I'm putting my body on the line for the lives currently stuck in the torture chamber that is Rikers Island. And I'm putting my body on the line to wake up the people just a few miles away, living in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, to tell them we CANNOT just go about doing business as usual while these kids are left to rot in the horrendous institution that is Rikers Island. I would be lying if I said this is an easy decision for me, because it is not. I struggle with this and I fear this but too many innocent lives are being cast out by this system and too many innocent lives are forced to go through literal hell on Rikers Island. That I why I'm putting my body on the line to SHUT DOWN RIKERS ISLAND. 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/reality-check-on-october-20-events-in-east-harlem-NYC-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Reality Check on October 20 Events in East Harlem, NYC

The REAL Problem

Updated October 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The reactionary New York press—from the Daily News to FOX News and the New York Post—wasted no time slandering the extraordinary culmination to the three days of Rise Up October actions in New York City—the powerful, stunning rallies and two-mile march of thousands of people from all over the country up 5th Avenue, demanding “Stop Police Terror” and challenging the thousands on the sidewalks riveted to it to join this battle and take their stand: “Which Side Are You On?”

These media hitmen ridiculed and degraded as a “gripe-fest” the family members of dozens and dozens of people murdered by police in cold blood who courageously traveled from across the country to tell their stories describing their devastation at the wanton killing of their loved ones and the determination to stop this from happening to anyone else. And these media are using the death of a policeman in Harlem four days earlier to say this event should never have happened.

In light of the controversy fueled by the media in the wake of this important and controversial Rise Up October, and the attacks on the demonstration, we are re-issuing this statement: The Real Problem.

* * * * *

Last night a policeman named Randolph Holder was killed in Harlem. Nobody knows the circumstances of what happened last night, including whether self-defense was involved. But already the politicians, media and police are trying to make this the center of attention of everyone. They declare that "there is a war on police," that "people must support the police all the time and on every corner," and say that people should stop protesting the rampant, ongoing, systematic murder carried out BY the police.

No. This is wrong and upside down.

Let's talk about reality. This year, police have killed at least 923 people. This figure does not count instances of people dying in custody, like Sandra Bland—the young Black woman found hung in her cell in Texas after being arrested for changing lanes. Of those people, at least 187 were unarmed. (This figure is conservative, for it leaves aside instances where the police claim the murdered person was armed but in which this claim is either false or distorted.)

Very, very few of the cops who inflicted these homicides will ever face charges. On those rare occasions they do go to trial, it is only due to either powerful mass protest and resistance OR the existence of dramatic video evidence, and fewer still will be convicted. And sometimes even THAT is not enough. In New York last year, a gang of police choked the unarmed Eric Garner to death for selling loose cigarettes, with the whole heartless, excruciating lynching caught on video. No cop was even charged. The same kinds of things go on day after day after day. And these murders are only the concentration point of a daily rule of verbal abuse, bullying, harassment and violence.

Over half of the 900 plus people that police have killed so far this year were people of color. This is no accident. One out of three Black males born in 2001 will end up spending time in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Over 40 percent of Black children live in poverty. Black women in New York City are 12 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. If this were happening to any other people in any other country, people would call it by its name: genocide.

THIS is the real war going on, a war against people of color. The police are the institution that enforces, with violence, this genocidal program. The police are the institution that enforces with violence a law and order of exploitation and degradation, of white supremacy and discrimination. The police play the role of an occupying army in the Black and Latino communities, 24/7/365. They play the role of modern-day slave-catchers. Any individual cop must fit his- or herself into that institution and do that enforcement—and if they don't, they don't last.

The mass political activities calling for an end to police terror and mass incarceration, called for October 22 to 24, absolutely must not only go on but be built as powerfully as possible. The thousands who will gather on those days will remember the thousands and yes millions who have been victimized by this, or who face the prospect of this every day, to insist that this MUST stop.

Which side are you on?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/cheers-to-csi-cybers-black-lives-matter-episode-is-a-racists-wet-dream-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Cheers to "CSI: Cyber's Black Lives Matter Episode Is a Racist's Wet Dream," by Kate Knibbs

October 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Cheers to “CSI: Cyber’s Black Lives Matter Episode Is a Racist’s Wet Dream,” by Kate Knibbs. The posting, at Gizmodo—a blog dedicated to digital design and technology—dissects an episode of the TV cop show CSI: Cyber—walking through how viewers are being programmed to see reality upside down when it comes to police violence against Black people.

And JEERS to the people who wrote, acted in, and produced this show.

The posting begins:

“Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes” is a “ripped from the headlines” police brutality-themed episode, name-checking Mike Brown and Freddie Gray and climaxing in a protest about violence against an unarmed black man. Guess who the victim in the episode is.

Did you guess?

The victim is white law enforcement!!!

And concludes:

In this episode of television, the Black Lives Matter movement serves as a pawn for two white brothers in a spat. The lone black guy on the squad learns he needs to chill out on judging how his white coworkers use force against unarmed black people. The premise for anger towards the cops and protests is a ruse with no value. This episode ends on a sorrowful note about how hard it is to control protests over police brutality—not the brutality itself, certainly not that. The brutality is presented as a literal FAKE THING MADE UP BY A CRAZY LIBERAL ARTS PROFESSOR TO HURT THE POLICE.

This is an episode that laments the anger of protesters and shows police brutality as a lie designed to rile black people up.

Read the whole posting here and share it!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/riseupoctober-o22-press-release-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

October 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The following press release is from Rise Up October:

Details of the Whole Day:

RiseUpOctober STOP Police Terror!
Begins Thursday, October 22

10:00 am-1:00 pm No More Stolen Lives, Say Their Names, A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice 

Father Duffy Square, 47th & Broadway in Times Square, Manhattan

"No More Stolen Lives: Say Their Names" will bring together some 40 families from across the U.S. who’ve lost loved ones to police violence. They will be joined by prominent voices of conscience in love, remembrance, and defiance to say THIS MUST STOP!”

"No More Stolen Lives: Say Their Names" begins RiseUpOctober—three days of mass resistance and acts of conscience to STOP Police Terror! and draw a line throughout society: "Which Side Are You On? Three days aimed at nothing less than changing “the whole social landscape to the point where more people take initiative and make it unmistakably clear that they refuse to live in a society that sanctions this outrage,” as actor Mark Ruffalo put it in a support statement.

Of the action in Times Square, No More Stolen Lives: Say Their Names, A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice, actress, playwright, and co-producer Lulu Fogarty, says:

“Before the eyes of the world, we will come together for a reading of just some of the thousands of people killed by law enforcement in the last 20+ years, ranging from age 11 months to 92 years. A disproportionate number of these victims were Black and Brown – their lives stolen under the Color of Authority with the State's approval over and over again."

Family present will include: Georgia Ferrell, mother of Jonathan Ferrell, murdered by Charlotte NC police, September 2013; Jules Garner, partner of Eric Garner, murdered by NYPD, July 2014; Maria Hamilton, mother of Dontre Hamilton, murdered by Milwaukee police, April 2014; Nicholas Heyward, Sr. father of 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr., murdered by NYPD, September 1994; Airickca Gordon-Taylor, cousin of Emmett Till, murdered in Mississippi, August 1955; LaToya and Alice Howell, mother and grandmother of 17-year-old Justus Howell, murdered by Zion, Illinois police, April 2015; Mertilla Jones, grandmother of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones, murdered by Detroit police, May 2010; Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, murdered by Chicago police, January 2011; and Juanita Young, mother of Malcolm Ferguson, murdered by NYPD, March 2000.

The voices of conscience joining the families in their remembrances include:

Author and playwright Eve Ensler; filmmaker and Co-Director of Sankofa.org Gina Belafonte; Rev. Stephen Phelps, author, professor and filmmaker Jamal Joseph; Cindy Sheehan, law professor Kimberle Crenshaw; Grammy award-winning musician Arturo O'Farrill; ethicist and professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, playwrights Kia Corthron and Naomi Wallace, civil rights attorney Martin Garbus and film director Quentin Tarantino.

Carl Dix, co-initiator with Cornel West of #RiseUpOctober, will speak.

October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation Shifts the action to Brooklyn Thursday afternoon

Facebook Event

2:00 pm Rally to Stop Police Brutality & Murder; NYPD officers have killed dozens of people in Brooklyn. Join the protest at Columbus Park, Borough Hall, Brooklyn 2/3/4/5/A/C/F/R trains

3:00 pm MARCH to Barclay's Center, Atlantic Avenue & Flatbush, Brooklyn

Get involved today at riseupoctober.org.

** October 23: "Shut Down Rikers!" 9:00 am gather at Queens entrance to Rikers Island, 77-84 19th Ave, East Elmhurst. (Directions) A mass, nonviolent direct action. People of conscience are putting their bodies on the line to call for this torture chamber to be shut down.

** October 24: National March to STOP Police Terror: Which Side are You On? Washington Square Park, NYC 11 am. March at 1:00 PM; Closing Rally at Bryant Park at 4:00 PM. Students, religious congregations, contingents from housing projects, and people from all across the country—we will gather in the thousands and tens of thousands with the demand: Terror and Murder By Police Must STOP.

** 5 minute video introduction to #RiseUpOctober, hearing some of the families who are organizing and initiators Cornel West and Carl Dix.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/409/a-shout-out-to-the-resisters-coming-to-october-24-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

October 22, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

This is a shout-out to the resisters coming to October 24

To the loved ones of those who’ve been murdered by police...

To the youths and students...

To the clergy and laypeople, the artists and the writers...

To the Black and Brown and Native people who refuse to bow down to centuries-old and modern-day discrimination and oppression...

To the immigrants, hounded wherever they go...

To the women and men, LGBT and straight...

To those who catch the brunt of this terror and those in the middle whose conscience cries out...

To the people who’ve been waging this struggle for years and the people just coming into it, and those battlers for justice on all the other fronts of society who will be in the streets on the 24th...

This is a shout-out to those who see the need to draw the line, to resist the powers that be, and to shake up the people who go along, to put out the challenge for the whole world to see and hear: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

This is a salute to the relatives of the murdered who will tell their stories on October 22, to those who lend their voices in support, and to those who will march when that is done. And this is a salute as well to the courageous ones who will put it on the line on October 23 to shut down Rikers Island, the concentration camp in the middle of New York City...

To all those and to all those working now to be there on the 24th, we say: RISE UP!

Rise Up October makes it plain: POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP. Rise Up October means challenge and struggle. Rise Up October means determination not just to reform all this but to STOP it... to dare to call out and reverse a slow-motion genocide... to live a morality of justice and emancipation as we do... and to get ORGANIZED to make all that real...

Our Party and its leader, Bob Avakian, are determined to stand with Rise Up October... to fight with all our might to reverse this genocidal insanity... and to do all this as part of bringing into being a whole new world where such madness really IS no more and where all the other ways in which the seven billion human beings on this planet are exploited, oppressed, degraded, and diminished are overcome forever. We do this as part of preparing minds and organizing forces to hasten the advent of REVOLUTION, which is the only way that humanity can achieve its emancipation and truly bury its chains.

We will stand with you in struggle on these days. We salute your courage, your perseverance, and keeping your eyes on the prize.

And we invite you—we challenge you—to get seriously into the revolution... to get into and dig into the work of Bob Avakian, to watch his videos and read his writings... to follow our website, revcom.us... to run with the “revcoms” themselves, in the Revolution Clubs, fighting the power, and transforming the people, FOR revolution... and to come into our bookstores and meet the revolution.

The future can be ours. Let us dare to seize it.

Rise Up!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/October-22-Rise-Up-October-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

No More Stolen Lives: Say Their Names

October 22, A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice

 

See coverage below (updated October 23).

 

Photos are being added as revcom.us receives them. If you were there and have photos please send them to revolution.reports@yahoo.com.

• 

  Lulu Fogarty, actress, playwright and co-producer, and Jamal Joseph, professor and filmmaker.

• 

  Tony Montenieri, and Eve Ensler, author and playwright

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  Nicholas Heyward Sr., father of Nicholas Heyward Jr., 13, murdered by NYPD, 9/22/94

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  Sister Shirley on behalf of the family of Eric Garner, 44, choked to death by NYPD, July 17, 2014.

• 

  Clergy from different religions stood with the families to Stop Police Terror.

• 

  Mertilla Jones, grandmother of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7 years old, murdered by Detroit police, May 16, 2010.

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  Rev. Stephen Phelps

• 

  Simon Moya-Smith, for Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket, 18, killed by Custer County OK sheriffs, December 21, 2013.

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  Joshua Lopez, nephew of John Collado, murdered by an undercover NYPD cop, September 6, 2011.

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  Hertensia Petersen, aunt of Akai Gurley, 28, murdered by NYPD on November 20, 2014.

• 

  Kevin Kellum and Yvette Johnson, father and step-mother of Terrence Kellum, 20, murdered by immigration police in Detroit, April 27, 2015.

• 

  Gbenga Akinnagbe, actor (left), and Arturo O'Farrill, musician

• 

  Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah, 28, murdered by NYPD, September 25, 2012.

• 

  Ishtyme Robinson, mother of Ahjah Dixon, 23, died in Corsicana TX police custody, March 4, 2010.

• 

  Mayesha, cousin of Meagan Hockaday, 26, killed by Oxnard CA police, March 28, 2015.

• 

  Kimberley Griffin, mother of Kimoni Davis, Murdered by Hanging Rock OH police, 6/29/15

• 

  L'Sana DJahspora, father of Cinque "Q" DJahspora, 20, killed by Jackson TN police, November 6, 2014.

• 

  Playwrights Naomi Wallace (left) and Kia Corthron. Photo: Phillip Buehler

• 

  Chris Silva, brother of David Sal Silva, 33, beaten to death by Bakersfield CA police, May 8, 2013.

• 

  Paris Bey, cousin of Janisha Fonville, 20, murdered by Charlotte NC police, February 18, 2015.

• 

  Georgia Ferrell, mother of Jonathan Ferrell, 24, killed by Charlotte Mecklenburg County NC police, September 14, 2013.

• 

  Meko, Lavic, Lameka, Tameka, Family of LaReko Williams, 21, tasered to death by Charlotte NC police, July 20, 2011.

• 

  Raquel Almazon, actor, and Reverend Jerome McCorry

• 

  Dionne Downs, mother of James Rivera, 16 years old, murdered by Stockton CA police, July 22, 2010.

• 

  Cadine Williams, sister of O'Shaine Evans, killed by San Francisco PD in October 7, 2014

• 

  Chemika Hollis, partner of Nate Wilks, killed by Oakland police August 12, 2015

• 

  Cyndi Mitchell, sister of Mario Romero, 23, murdered by Vallejo, CA police, September 2, 2012.

• 

  Jessica Gatewood, mother of Richard Linyard Jr., 23, murdered by Oakland police after a "routine traffic stop," July 19, 2015.

• 

  Lanna, Elijah, and Marilyn Covarrubias, for Daniel Covarrubius, 37, killed by Lakewood WA police, April 21, 2015.

• 

  Civil rights attorney Martin Garbus (left) and ethicist and professor Kwame Anthony Appiah

• 

  LaToya Howell, mother of Justus Howell, 17 years old, killed by Zion IL police, April 4, 2015.

• 

  Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, 27, murdered by Chicago police, January 7, 2011. Also in picture are Darius' three brothers.

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  Airickca Gordon-Taylor, cousin of Emmett Till (1941-1955), lynched by white racists in Money MS, at the age of 14.

• 

  Marion Hopkins, mother of Gary Hopkins Jr., 19, murdered by Prince George's County, MD police, November 27, 1999.

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  Quentin Tarantino (left) and Gina Belafonte. Photo: Phillip Beuhler

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  Art Blakey, Brother of Kiana Nicole Blakey, 17, killed by Cleveland police, 1989.

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  Maria and Nate Hamilton, mother and brother of Dontre Hamilton, 31, murdered by Milwaukee WI police, April 30, 2014.

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  Family, for Tyrone West, 44, murdered by Baltimore police, July 18, 2013

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  Tawanda Jones (speaking), sister of Tyrone West, 44, murdered by Baltimore police, July 18, 2013. At left, Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, 27, murdered by Chicago police, January 7, 2011.

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  Darlene Cain, mother of Dale Graham, 29, killed by Baltimore police, October 28, 2008.

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  Carl Dix, co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

• 

  Hertencia Petersen, aunt of Akai Gurley, 28, murdered by NYPD on November 20, 2014; Mertilla Jones (at mic), grandmother of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, murdered by Detroit police on May 16, 2010; Nicholas Heyward Sr., father of Nicholas Heyward Jr., murdered by NYPD on September 22, 1994. Photo: Phillip Buehler

• 

  Banner brought from San Francisco to Say Their Names

• 

  Crowd at Times Square, October 22. Photo: Phillip Beuhler

"Don't hide behind the lies, don't hide behind the blinds..."

Times Square, NYC: Saying Their Names & Demanding a STOP to Police Terror

The truth: An epidemic of police murder and terror. The DEMAND: It must STOP! The message broke into the light of day from a stage in the middle of Times Square in New York City, and before the world, on October 22.

No More Stolen Lives: #SayTheirNames was an unprecedented event. It was a coming together of more than 30 family members, loved ones, and representatives of victims of police brutality from around the country, together with prominent voices of conscience. It launched three days of Rise Up October, leading up to the National March to STOP Police Terror on October 24 in New York City.

People came to share the stories and outrages, pain and anger of losing a loved one. They came to support each other, and have the backs of those fighting for justice. They exposed the crimes of the police, and shined a bright light on the epidemic of STATE TERROR especially against Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans. Most of all, they courageously came to STAND UP and FIGHT and to call on others to do that until police terror is brought to a stop.

~~~~~~~~~~

Early in the day, Nicholas Heyward, Sr. stepped to the front of the stage. His 13-year-old son, Nicholas Jr., was murdered by police in 1994 for playing with a toy gun. Nicholas Sr. shared the pain of that loss with courage. And he didn’t stop there. He issued a challenge that would echo across the world from the center of NYC: “We are talking about innocent lives that are taken constantly and the police never, never are held accountable. Enough of these officers killing our children. We need to put a stop to it. It don’t matter which one they bring into office, we still have to suffer these injustices to our children and that is something we need to put a stop to.”

“They Are Still Killing Indians”

Simon Moya-Smith spoke for Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket—an 18-year-old murdered by Custer County (named for the Indian killer) cops in Oklahoma in 2013 with seven shots, one to the back of the head: “He stood six foot eight. He was a big Indian. He was known for his warm hug. You felt safety in his warm hug, and the cops took him away.... 125 years ago was the Wounded Knee massacre. Twenty of the U.S. troops who were involved in that carnage received the Medal of Honor. Those medals have not been rescinded. The two cops who killed Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket received medals of valor. More than 125 years after the massacre of 300 of my people, 200 unarmed women and children, by the United States, they are still giving medals for killing Indians.”

Darius Pinex’s 2011 murder by Chicago police was covered up by a massive conspiracy of lies by the Chicago police and other city officials. His brother said: “People don’t know what we go through at the crib, thinking about the loved ones I lost, the ones you lost. For people to just keep saying, ‘Oh, he pointed a gun at me,’ or ‘I saw a shimmer, oooh’ they just steady lyin’ goin’ with the same excuse, steady over and over. And nobody pays attention, and nobody cares. Just ‘That’s what he did.’ That’s bogus man. Thank y’all for coming out. Justice for all y’all. Justice for Darius Pinex! Justice for Dakota Bright! Justice for Tamir Rice! Justice for everybody! Rise up October!”

The loved ones of victims of police terror came from all over New York City and beyond—from Cleveland and Detroit, from Oklahoma and Oakland, and everywhere in between. There was a contingent of clergy, representing in their vestments. They were joined by prominent voices of conscience. Artists contributed powerful works. Hundreds gathered to listen in Times Square, increasingly drawn into saying the names of victims as they were challenged to do so from the stage.

LaToya Howell is the mother of Justus Howell, 17 years old, killed by Zion, Illinois,  police, April 4, 2015. She said: “The first thing they tell you when they kill one of our youth is ‘I fear for my life.’ What are you trying to force us to do? Because we fear for our lives every day. Every day we send our child outside those doors we fear for our lives. We’re shown on TV, we’re shown on computers, we hear from word of mouth, we hear it all—that your child can be killed by the way that they look, walk, or talk.”

And she issued a challenge: “I am Justus Howell and I stand for all of our youth and loved ones. I want y’all to go home and think it over. Because today is the first day of the rest of your lives. And I need y’all to be a part of the solution. If you have a mouth, speak about change. If you have eyes, use them to see this bullshit. Don’t hide behind the lies, don’t hide behind the blinds and act such as you are blind. I see this every day and I have to live it every single day, and the pain never goes away. These are not just pictures and posters, these were people breathing, living their lives dreams and their compassion for people. My son and your son, I will fight for the rest of my life. No justice no peace!”

~~~~~~~~~~

Prominent voices of conscience read names of victims of police terror, told their stories, and lent their moral and physical presence to the day: actress and playwright Lulu Fogarty; graduate theology student Nkosi Anderson; professor, artist, and activist Jamal Joseph; Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues, and Tony Montenieri; Rev. Stephen Phelps; actress Raquel Almazan; Rev. Jerome McCorry; playwrights Kia Corthron and Naomi Wallace; philosopher and novelist Kwame Anthony Appiah; civil rights attorney Martin Garbus; director Quentin Tarantino; activist Gina Belafonte; and Carl Dix, co-initiator of Rise Up October and representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

#SayTheirNames in a Political War Over Police Terror

#SayTheirNames took place in the midst of a political war over whether one can call out the epidemic of police murder that is almost never punished (and in the few cases it is, only when there is massive outrage or exposure that cannot be swept under the rug). Or, whether such truth telling will be marginalized, censored, repressed, and shut down even as it gets worse, including by invoking every instance of a police officer dying under any circumstances (something that happens very, very rarely compared to the wave of killings by police) to confuse and intimidate resistance and protest.

While the event in Times Square got major international press coverage, it was largely buried or whited out in New York media, except for Fox News, whose headline was: “Two days after NYPD cop gunned down, anti-cop rally held in Times Square.”

Martin Garbus told the story of the murder of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in 1969—a political assassination of a freedom fighter and revolutionary by the Chicago police and the FBI. Eve Ensler ended saying “Can we just take a moment to think about each of these lives, each of these very real people, and hold them in our hearts for a second.” And after a moment of silence, she threw her fist in the air and challenged everyone: “Rise up to end police brutality and murder!”

For four hours in Times Square, the picture came more and more sharply into focus: A toy gun... A man walking down housing project stairs when the elevator wasn’t working... A seven-year-old child sleeping on a couch... Someone in desperate need of mental health care and compassion... MURDERED. The sadistic randomness... The insulting and absurd excuses... The systemic pattern of targeting Black, Latino, and Native American people for nothing...The pervasiveness of police terror... The fact that over and over and over, these murdering police are exonerated if not promoted.

~~~~~~~~~~

Searing testimony and stories from the loved ones of those killed by police and voices of conscience, including voices that rooted the current epidemic of police terror and murder in the genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow oppression, and in the persecution of immigrants that are the history of this country.

Airickca Gordon-Taylor spoke. She is a cousin of Emmett Till, who was tortured and brutally murdered by white racists in Mississippi 60 years ago for whistling at a white woman. She described the vicious, horrific way Emmett Till was tortured to death. And then declared: “This is still Emmett Till! What we have going on today, instead of hiding behind white hoods, cops are hiding behind their badges. This is a system with the new Jim Crow, it’s no different. And if we don’t rise up, it’s never gonna change. It’s up to us to make a change! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!”

~~~~~~~~~~

Over the morning, the stories were told of about 250—out of literally thousands of people murdered by the police. And what was revealed was far, far more than enough to indict a whole damn system whose police are not there to protect and serve, but to enforce a world of slavery and oppression.

No More Stolen Lives: #Say Their Names—A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice was the kick off for three days of Rise Up October. It took place on the 20th anniversary of the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, along with a protest later in the day in Brooklyn, and marches in other cities across the country.

In the face of lies and denial, whitewashing and threats, the stand of the families, the voices of conscience, the activists, organizers, and volunteers was absolutely necessary, courageous, and inspiring. It set a standard for everyone to rise to, stand on, and advance off of in the three days of Rise Up October, and the battle to bring an end, once and for all, to a situation where—among all the other horrors—every Black, Latino, and Native American child is born with a death sentence hanging over their head.

 

Chicago, October 22. Photo: Frank James Johnson

 

 

See reports of October 22 National Day of Protest in Brooklyn, NYC, and across the country.

Read more

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/times-square-a-powerful-launch-for-rise-up-october-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Times Square: A Powerful Launch for Rise Up October
No More Stolen Lives: #Say Their Names

A Public Reading and Remembrance: A Demand for Justice

October 22, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Rise up October launched powerfully on October 22. Relatives of 40 different victims of police murder, joined by powerful and prominent voices of conscience, came to the heart of New York City’s Times Square from across New York—and also from California, from Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, and other states.

They told heartbreaking, painful stories of loved ones murdered by police, and the killers walking free. They told of the anguish and ache that time doesn’t cure. They expressed the largeness of their hearts in the face of all their pain, and their fierce desire to keep any other families from enduring what they have endured. Some family members have been demanding justice for years, and have lost none of their fire and conviction. Others were doing it for the first time, and found heart in those who had gone through the same excruciating experience. All spoke of their determination to keep fighting for justice, and forcefully challenged others to do the same.

Several people made the point that they had become part of a group none of them wanted to be part of—those who had lost loved ones to police murder—but they drew strength and love from each other. Paris Bey, whose niece Janisha Fonville was murdered by cops in North Carolina, said, “We Won’t Stop, We Won’t Stop, Until Killer Cops Are in Cell Blocks”!

Hundreds of people were part of this amazing experience, some for the whole time, others at different points in the four-hour event—young, middle aged, and elderly. They were Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, and white. They were students, activists, and people from the projects. A group of clergy, many in full vestments, participated as a contingent. People brought beautiful and deeply moving art, and read poems. They raised their fists and expressed their determination to continue this fight.

“No More Stolen Lives: #Say Their Names,” reverberated and challenged people in Times Square—the ugly, glitzy, depraved heart of American consumerism that is life in America. Crowds of pedestrians, tourists on double-decker buses, people watching live stream video and social media, were confronted by the challenge—which side are you on? The side of the murdering, brutalizing police, or the side of the victimized families and others determined to STOP this shit.

Passionate, deeply felt readings of the names of Stolen Lives were given by prominent voices of conscience in education, the arts, clergy, and the legal arena. They presented the lives, and the humanity, of some of the thousands of people murdered by police over the past decades. The names and stories they read painted an infuriating panorama of the people murdered by police—ranging from an 11-month old baby to a 92-year-old Black woman murdered by police who got the wrong address on a drug bust.

Those reading names included Eve Ensler, Gina Belafonte, Naomi Wallace, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Garbus, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and others. They repeatedly challenged people: Say Her Name! Say His Name—with conviction.And the crowd responded... people repeatedly raised their fists and shouted RISE UP!, and the names of the Stolen Lives.

This was an historic and unprecedented coming together of a whole tapestry of voices demanding a STOP to police murder and terror. It shined a spotlight on and condemned systematic, pervasive police brutality and murder, and posed a challenge to confront this with the determination to stop it.

This beautiful, powerful manifestation took place in the face of a storm of politicians and media attempting to turn reality upside down in the wake of the death of one NYC cop, and rule out of order any acknowledgement of an epidemic of police terror. Many family members and others spoke to this and refused to be silenced. Eve Ensler was quoted saying “That murder does not discount the hundreds of deaths that we are seeing and continuing to see and the lack of any indictments and the lack of any justice and that’s why I’m here today.”

Stolen Lives—#SayTheirNames drove home two truths. There is an epidemic of murder and brutality by cop in this country; it is a plague upon Black and Latino people everywhere in the U.S.; murdering cops routinely get away with murder.

But it also cohered and expressed the truth that there is a growing movement that is out to STOP this, once and for all. It is bringing together deeply religious people and revolutionary communists; it is bringing together people who think that there are “good cops” and “bad ones,” and people who think not just the police but the whole system of oppression they enforce is the problem; it is bringing together students from privileged backgrounds at elite universities and youths from the hard projects of the inner cities.

It is bringing all these people together to act, to move together, to put an end to the situation in which cops can gun people down, or choke them till they can’t breathe, or beat and tase them to death, and get away with it time after time. All that and more came together in Times Square on October 22—but it needs to go much, much further. It needs to reach all corners of society.

The powers that be are out to silence these voices who dare to speak out. They are out to crush and confuse opposition to their regime of police violence. They must not be allowed to succeed.

What began on October 22 can and must be a powerful platform for taking that movement to a whole other level of social impact, and to actually STOPPING murder by police.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/reports-from-october-22-national-day-of-protest-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Reports from October 22—20th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation

October 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

These are reports we've received from cities about October 22 protests around the country. We will add other reports as we receive them.

Rally and March in Brooklyn: Fierceness, Anger, and Determination to STOP Murder by Police

On October 22, in New York City, about 200 people rallied in Brooklyn for the 20th anniversary of the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

There was a fierceness and anger in the spirit of the crowd and in the rally—a determination to be heard, to shout out loud that this rampant police murder MUST STOP. This was brought home very powerfully when the parents of those whose loved ones have been killed by the police took the microphone and spoke from the heart, with passion and tremendous anger. There were at least a dozen family members at the rally, coming from New York City and other cities, who had taken part in the public reading of names of lives stolen by the police in Times Square earlier in the day.

One of the first groups to show up was a contingent of 25-30 students from St. Anne’s High School. The group, mainly white, all marched in together. At least one teacher from the school also came with them. One student said, “This is something I hadn’t thought about much but I should, it’s a big problem.” Another said what’s happening to Black people is genocide. There were other high school and college students at the rally as well and many others, including a group who came together from Housing Works, a social service agency that works with people with AIDS and the homeless. About half a dozen transgender people came together from the Audre Lorde Project. There was a banner expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle.

There were a number of other speakers and cultural performances, including a nine-year-old reading a poem about police brutality and an older Black man playing the violin and singing a song about those who have been killed by the police. Rev. Jerome McCorry, who heads up the national faith task force for Rise Up October, spoke, calling on ALL the churches, Black and white, saying that there was no excuse for them not to join this struggle. Carl Dix, representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party and co-initiator of Rise Up October, called on people to look at the pictures of loved ones killed by the police, and to think about the fact that this is just a drop in the bucket of the people killed by police. He said this is an illegitimate system and called on everyone to come out on Saturday to march in the streets to demand a stop to this police terror.

After the rally, people marched through the streets to Barclays Center for a short rally.

All Photos: Special to revcom.us

Chicago

More than 70 people gathered at the James A. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago for a spirited “Say Their Names” protest. The crowd formed a circle to represent how the thousands in New York City on October 24 will figuratively “form a circle” around the families of police murder victims. Each person in the circle read three names of stolen lives, chanting “Say Their Names” after each name, and a pot and pan were banged after each reading in the spirit of the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina. There was a contingent of 25 mainly Black youths from a high school. One of the young women had a handmade sign against the police murder of her boyfriend by the Chicago PD this summer. Also participating were 25 people from Save Our Sons and Daughters—a community organization from the West Side—and some college students, including seven or eight students from the University of Dubuque, Iowa, who were in a class studying social protest and drove three hours to be part of October 22. Speakers of conscience included Unity Lutheran Church Reverend Emily Heitzman, pastor with Youth and Households Edgewater Congregations Together, who called for more “holy anger” at the systemic racism in America. The crowd joined together to sing “I Can’t Breathe” and “Hell You Talmbout.”

Then the youths marched through downtown bursting with energy and defiance, chanting “Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail, the Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell!” The high school youths were boldly in your face to the police; one youth shouted, “You talk about Black-on-Black crime, how about Blue-on-Black crime?” A number of people on the street joined in the march and came to the final rally where people spoke out against the crimes of police and why we have to Rise Up October. Several people signed up for the bus to New York City on the spot.

Cleveland

Fifty people assembled in front of the Justice Center in Cleveland to read hundreds of names of a small portion of the people killed by the police in the past 10-plus years from all over the country. Many people came up and read, from a family member, to a Black professional singer, to people organizing in the Black community, to white middle class activists, to Black people from the bottom, and a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party. And some of the people reading are coming to Rise Up October in New York City. We had many posters of people killed by the police from Cleveland and many Stolen Lives posters. There was a serious and determined feeling among the people there that the police killing is indeed an epidemic and part of genocide against Black and Brown people and only we the people can stop it.

The readings were interspersed with two vocalists; the readings went on for almost two hours. A Black man who is part of Rise Up October summed it up this way: “People need to hear the names. It could be any of us, our family, our children. If you don’t do something it will probably be one of our names, family members or someone we know. They kill people and no one is accountable. If we commit crimes we are held accountable. I fear for my life. For us Black and Brown people it’s modern-day slavery, a way of controlling.” Brenda Bickerstaff, a Black woman whose brother was killed by police and whose niece died in police custody a few months ago, said, “[We are] reading names so people cannot forget and have a constant reminder. We are tired of putting these pictures on posters.” A young white activist said, “Reading the names reminded us of why we are going to NYC.” At different points people called on others to get on the bus and be in NYC on October 24 to declare that the police terror must stop, and “which side are you on?” has to be a rallying cry throughout society.

Seattle

Photos: special to Revolution

The October 22 protest in Seattle was riveting and inspiring. Black and white youths, Native Americans, middle class white people, basic people of different nationalities, students from community colleges and art schools and others lined up to read the names and stories of cherished people who have been ripped from their families and us by police murder. April Nation, the aunt of James Whiteshield, told the horrifying story of her nephew’s beating and murder in jail in Seattle. Jamilla Gardner told of how the police stole away the life of her dear friend Victor Duffy Jr. As the stories were read of the people lost, their lives and the horror done to them, youths openly wept and people shook their heads in disbelief. The “Say Their Names” went on for an hour. People were welded into a determination to take this out to the streets and to people, to challenge them about which side they are on in the face of this genocide. People took off in a defiant, spirited, and youthful march through downtown, marching down main streets and disrupting traffic, singing “Hell You Talmbout” and other songs and everywhere saying the names of those lost to police terror.

Los Angeles

Atlanta

Houston

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/a-shout-out-to-the-courageous-fighters-who-put-their-bodies-on-the-line-to-shut-down-rikers-island-prison-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

A Shout-out to the Courageous Fighters Who Put Their Bodies on the Line to Shut Down Rikers Island Prison

Updated October 24, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The torture chamber and debtors prison known as Rikers Island was, for about an hour, shut down on the morning of Friday, October 23! Seventeen courageous freedom fighters, in a demonstration of civil disobedience, sat and laid in front of the only entry to the dungeon and were arrested. And about 100 others gathered around them chanting, "We Are Kalief Browder," "Rikers, Rikers, Shut It Down! This audacious and historic action made a powerful statement: we're not going to stop until the epidemic of systematic mass incarceration and police terror end.

An incredibly powerful rally on the street leading to Rikers fueled everyone's determination to shut it down. The reality of this prison: where 85 percent of the prisoners have not been convicted on their charges, but waste away for months, even years in Rikers awaiting trial, as happened to Kalief Browder; the people who died because of the actions and inactions of prison authorities; the torture, cruelty, and indifference routinely meted out to prisoners and their families. All this and more was exposed and condemned.

But even more, speaker after speaker—students who agonized over committing civil disobedience for the first time, and decided they must; "Raging Grannies" who sang a song of protest against mass incarceration; families who lost loved ones to police murder and traveled from across the country to contribute to Rise Up October—expressed a fierce determination to STOP this shit, and challenged others in society to take a stand.

The people committed to civil disobedience laid down in front of the gate to Rikers. In front of them, beautiful enlarged portraits of people killed by police, including 11 who had died at Rikers; around them, about 100 witnesses, determined to carry forward the fight for Rise Up October and to shut down Rikers. Rikers Island is an abomination, an atrocity. It is a concentration of the horrific abuse this system routinely, daily inflicts on Black and Latino youth. The heroes who sat in and laid down at the gates of Rikers have put a challenge in front of anyone with a conscience and a sense of justice

Reverend Jerome McCorry, a leader of Rise Up October and a witness to the Rikers Island civil disobedience, said, "I think this is fantastic. It's going exactly the way it should have gone. The people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. And today all this changes. This dynamic weekend, this Rise Up October, will always be remembered as the October that change is made. And it's going to happen exactly like this."

All of those arrested were released late Friday night. Call the NYC Mayor's office at 212-788-1400 and Queens County DA Office at 718-286-6000 to demand the dropping of all charges on the protesters.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/410/demand-the-release-of-people-arrested-on-october-24-en.html

Revolution #409 October 19, 2015

Demand the Release of People Arrested on October 24—Rise Up October March

October 25, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On a day when thousands took to the streets in NYC as part of Rise Up October—STOP Police Terror!, the police made two rounds of arrests—once during the march from Washington Square to Bryant Park, and later when people marched into Times Square. Eleven people were arrested in total.

Four people were held overnight at Central Booking and may be arraigned this morning. Killer cops go free while those who demand justice are incarcerated! Demand immediate release!

Put the call out: Demand from the DA's office and the Mayor's office that the protesters arrested at the Rise Up October—STOP Police Terror demonstration yesterday be released immediately.

Call the Manhattan DA's office: (212) 335-9000
Call the Mayor's office: (212) 788-2502
or 311

Do it now—and spread the word.