Carl Dix Press Conference:
“Stand up, demand justice, don’t be intimidated”
August 19, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
8/19/14. Carl Dix, Joey Johnson, Travis Morales held a press conference today to denounce the police attacks on the protests in Ferguson. They upheld the courageous, heroic uprising of the people and denounced attempts to criminalize the protests. And Carl Dix took on some of the lies, slanders, and back-stabbing attacks on the Revolutionary Communist Party and the people who have stood up in Ferguson.
Carl Dix at Press Conference in Ferguson, August 19, held to denounce police attacks on protestors and to uphold the heroic uprising of the people. Photo: Li Onesto/Revolution
CNN and The Nation, were among the media who attended. After the press conference, Carl Dix was interviewed by Al Jazeera.
Carl Dix and others with him were physically attacked by “peace police”—including a city alderman who punched Joey Johnson. At the time of the attack, Carl Dix was reading from a message from the “We Stand With the Defiant Ones.” That message includes:
“We stand with the defiant ones. We stand with the angry ones, the rebellious ones, the ones who will not take it, the ones who tell the truth—and the ones they lie about. Without defiance, without rage, without righteous rebellion, without people insisting on their rights and defending those rights in the street—very few people would even know about Michael Brown and how he was shot over and over with his hands up, murdered by pigs and then left to lie there in the streets, as if he were an animal.”
And:
“To everyone who really wants liberation, who wants a better day for our youth—don’t let them tamp this down. To the ‘leaders’ who attack the angry ones and tell us to trust in the system—NO. If you can’t do any better than that, get out of the way.”
Carl said, “There are no outsiders in the struggle against injustice and oppression.” He went on to say that he has gotten this message from the people of Ferguson themselves out in the streets and elsewhere, including when he was in the county jail. He said people have come up to him and hugged him, thanking him for coming. He said, “People are proud of the fact that their resistance has reached and mobilized people around the country and even around the world and welcome others who have come to stand with them.”
Carl was asked about the circumstances of his arrest, and a confrontation that took place before that. He said, “Some people in the protest decided they need to take the responsibility to enforce a certain calm and peacefulness in the protest. People stood up and took to the streets and if they had not done that people around the country and world wouldn’t know who Michael Brown was. So we have a disagreement with the people who are saying we have to keep the protesters calm and peaceful... We were having that discussion and it got heated at times but then people went beyond that and got physical. They wanted to not allow people to make that political statement.”
St. Louis Alderman Antonio French shamefully has been ranting about the protesters being “violent” while they are being gassed, shot at and subjected to nonstop violence from the police. He punched Joey Johnson in the face. Someone else into that whole so-called “peace” agenda pushed Carl in the back and then called out for the police to arrest him.
Carl Dix said “The violence is the brutality and murder that has been heaped on the people for decades and during this past little more than a week it has been the rubber bullets, the tear gas, the arrests – that’s been the violence down here, targeting the people standing up.” He went on to say that all this bullshit is “serving the interests of the same people who are trying to crush these protests, bringing out cops, curfews, unleashing tear gas, sound cannon, and all the rest.”
And, exposing how these agents of the system work hand-in-hand with the forces of repression and brutality, Carl said after that, “The cops came in and waded into the crowd and dragged us out. And Captain Ron Johnson pointed to us and said, ‘These two people will get heavier charges.’ We were taken in, processed. The heavier charges have not yet materialized.”
Carl Dix spoke to what is behind all the attacks on people demanding justice: “They fear what people did here, they know this is part of larger phenomenon, the brutality and murder they bring down on Black people here is part of a nationwide phenomenon of punishment and repression targeting especially Black and Latino—part of what I call a slow genocide that can become a fast one. And they are afraid that people around the country who are suffering just like the people in Ferguson will be infected with the spirit of Ferguson and will rise up too. That’s one thing they don’t want to see happen. They also don’t want to see those who are rising up connecting with the group that I represent, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and its leader Bob Avakian. [They don’t want people] going up to the website, revcom.us, and finding out about this party and this leader. They don’t want people to do this because what this party and leader represent is standing with struggles against injustice like this, but even more the way to end this injustice and all the horrors of this system through revolution, nothing less. They don’t want to see that connection made because they fear that could spell the doom for their system.”
And Carl Dix insisted that the real issue is “That people need to stand up, demand justice and not be intimidated. Keep saying and acting on: Indict the killer cop of Michael Brown, fire the police chief and lay out the information of what happened to Michael Brown and stop hiding information as part of trying to cover up the murder.”
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.