Friday Night:
Report from the Front Lines in Baton Rouge

July 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

I'm here with Carl Dix and other Rev Coms in Baton Rouge, where on July 5 police murdered Alton Sterling for being a Black man selling CDs. The world saw it on video and protests broke out immediately. We came in here with the proclamation, Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. And we were standing with the people as part of fighting the power, and preparing the people, for revolution.

Friday night, people took the struggle to the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters. And as it turned out, we—Carl Dix in particular—were able to play an important role in how things went down. There were hundreds of people. The crowd was in constant flux—maybe about 500 at its peak. Most of the crowd was young—college age, in their 20's, some high schoolers; mostly Black people, but especially for the first few hours, a significant number of white youths.

We arrived at the protest right in the middle of a tense argument between the "respectable leaders" and angry masses (mostly youths). The "leaders" were encouraging people to follow the completely outrageous orders of the police and disperse. A chant developed out of this tension when one young woman said "if we don't do it now, we can't do it later." She kept shouting it and eventually a large number of people took it up.

In general, the young women were particularly fierce. A lot of the tension centered around patriarchal attitudes—some men openly argued that "we can't do anything to endanger our women". This pissed people off in two ways—they thought the people need to be angry at the murder of Alton and the attacks on Black people; and women should not be held back (several men angrily expressed this also).

Many (maybe most) people had been in the streets since early that afternoon. Several of us, led by Carl Dix, started chanting "Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail—the whole damn system is guilty as hell!" At that point some joined in and many approached to get a copy of the Message from the RCP's Central Committee. A couple of people complained loudly about "outsiders starting shit, like in Ferguson," but nearly 80 copies got out in a few minutes while this was going on, despite some people complaining about "outsiders."

As the evening went on, dozens of riot gear-clad cops lined up on the opposite side of the street blocking protesters from crossing the street to the police station and trying to intimidate people from expressing their outrage. As the night went on, many of the youths became emboldened and wanted to defy the cops and cross to the other side. The "leaders" quickly tried to shut that down—they tried to quiet the crowd by calling on people to gather and pray. That tactic worked well until the cops crossed the street and picked off a young guy during the prayer. One of the Rev Coms shouted, "the pigs are taking him" and a few others shouted as well. The "leaders" ignored it and called for people to be quiet during the prayer. This obviously pissed a lot of people off.

At what turned out to be a key point of the evening, Carl Dix gathered some of the youths who wanted to make a more defiant statement and not allow the cops to keep them from crossing the street. When Carl began to agitate and later shared the mic with others, it changed the mood dramatically and it appeared that the leaders' calls for calm had much less success.

Carl said, "We all saw the police murder Alton Sterling. Then we saw the aftermath of the police murder of Philando Castile. A system that has its enforcers out there doing that not only in these two cases, but again and again and again is no damned good and needs to be gotten rid of through revolution."

He told people to "think about it, these murders bring to mind the slave chasers back in the days of slavery, the KKK lynch mob, and today we have the police doing the same damn thing. This has to stop, and it is up to us to stop it! People being in the streets here and cities across the country is beautiful, necessary, and it has to continue. This is one reason, but not the only reason we need to make revolution.

"There are two things that everybody needs to do," Carl continued. "They need to stand up and continue standing up and refusing to accept this shit, and must make unmistakably clear we're not going to let them get away with this murder. Murder by police has to stop. That means us staying out in the street and being defiant. The second thing is, if you want to see this and all the other horrors of this system stop, then you need to get with this actual revolution the RCP is organizing for right now. A revolution that overthrows this system and builds a totally different and far better one in its place. You need to go to the website and you need to get with the Message from the Revolutionary Communist Party's Central Committee," Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution."

Carl's agitation helped to create a different atmosphere, one where people felt they were right to be out there defying an authority that was killing them. Then CD passed the mic among some of the youths and others who spoke bitterly to what compelled them to be out in the streets and how determined they were to act to stop the horror of people being killed for no reason other than being Black. Women spoke of the fear they had for their sons, or their brothers, or the children they might have in the future.

As the cops moved in to prevent people from crossing the street, the march (tactically) retreated and began marching down the street away from the police station—eventually taking over both sides of the highway. The protest headed down the highway and spread across both sides. It took several minutes before any police arrived. Cars were blocked in by the demonstration. Many of the youths on the roof of cars and in the back of pickup trucks celebrated defying the cops while blasting music and chanting "fuck the police!" A white woman, stuck in the line of traffic, took pictures from inside her car. After a few minutes she stepped out of her car with her fist in the air and joined the demonstration, abandoning her car to stand with the people. It was powerful.

Some protesters drove their cars into the grass in front of a car dealership to get away from the on-coming cops trying to bust up the action. Several of the cars got stuck in the mud. Dozens of other protesters ran to the vehicles to help get their cars out before the cops could close in. It was powerful to see people supporting each other, fighting back and putting themselves at risk to defend each other.

Shortly after that, the cops moved heavily into the crowd. They seemed to grab people at random with each arrest becoming more brutal. (On CNN, the Baton Rouge police chief said 31 arrests were made.) Throughout the protest, the cops—including the Baton Rouge SWAT team—patrolled with automatic rifles and riot gear. Toward the end of the demo, several cops drew their handguns and pointed them at the crowd as they arrested people.

Many people—especially many youths—are in a defiant, angry mood in Baton Rouge. The stand of the Revolution Club has made an impression on a lot of people—there is a force seriously getting organized for revolution. But more was required from the revolutionaries, and there was more opening than we took advantage of. We're grappling with how to fill that need, how to maximize the opportunities for advancing the movement for revolution in this situation.

This battle is far from over. There are demonstrations in the streets now as I finish this report, marching toward the interstate that runs through Baton Rouge. More demos are planned for the days ahead. The revolutionaries are following up with the Message from the RCP's Central Committee. A lot has changed since Tuesday. Things are on a new level here, and there is an urgent need and a basis to get into the Message with real substance, to build and strengthen the movement for revolution, and to make real strides forward in preparing the ground, the people and the vanguard, to "get ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win".

 

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