April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From the Front Lines With the Revolution Club–Chicago: 2018

The Revolution Club is on a mission to make a major advance in organizing forces for an actual revolution, impacting all of society by people getting out of killing each other, changing what they are living and fighting for, taking up the leadership of Bob Avakian, and getting organized for a real revolution.

To do this, the club is out there most every day, doing all kinds of different things, trying to learn as much as we can so we can transform more, so we can learn more and transform better, so we can learn still more... and on and on... till we make a breakthrough... and then go further still. We’re struggling with people’s ideas, straight-up... and we’re leading them to struggle against the enemy. We’re fighting to get to a situation where millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.

DONATE TO: The “Revolution Project” in Chicago: Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution!

Donations needed more than ever as the struggle in Chicago, this crucial concentration point between reaction and revolution, continues and intensifies. ON TO $50,000!

DONATE HERE

 


 

Winter - Spring 2018

How long will pigs keep murdering and walking free?
How long will they enforce this system with its murder, brutality and oppression?

UNTIL WE MAKE REVOLUTION TO GET RID OF IT!

Get With the Revolution Club and Start Getting Ready for Revolution

March 30, 2018

From the Revolution Club Chicago:

“Stephon!” “Clark!” The call and response resonating out of the streets of Sacramento wrenches our hearts with fury. Twenty shots. Twenty-two-years old. In his grandmother’s backyard. Black lives shattered, murdered, stolen. By police with a green light to kill. Again. GODDAMN! Stephon’s brother powerfully spoke out and called forward inspiring resistance, and people have poured into the streets of Sacramento day after day, righteously standing up and demanding justice. Shutting down a Sacramento Kings game, city hall, and the I-5 freeway. This is beautiful and needs to continue and spread.

At the same time, the blue-coated killers of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge are walking free. People rose up and rocked Baton Rouge—and all over the country, people took to the streets demanding justice. Alton Sterling was selling CDs outside a convenience store when the pigs came and slammed him on the car, threw him to the ground, and shot him while he was down, and they are not even charged with a crime.

We see it again and again. Just here in Chicago: Decynthia Clements in Elgin. For an hour, police surrounded her car while she was having a mental breakdown. She needed HELP. They knew she had a knife and no gun, but as soon as they got her out, they shot. GODDAMN! Justus Howell in Zion, 17 and shot twice in the back. No punishment. The pig who opened fire on Quintonio LeGrier, murdering him and his neighbor Bettie Jones? Nothing. Even after the review board said the cop should be fired, the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, repeats proven lies from the killer cop justifying these cold-blooded murders.

These are the system’s bullshit “answers.” Civilian review boards that don’t mean shit. Body cams, federal and state investigations, independent prosecutors, voting in elected officials... what does it get us? Killer cops caught red-handed still walking free, more infuriating excuses, more families slapped in the face with “justifiable homicide.” And now the Trump/Pence fascist regime is straight up calling for “taking the gloves off” police, to “get tough” and execute “drug dealers.”

Does this mean we should not rise up and resist? NO. Resistance is righteous, necessary, and the only way to even get close to justice. But we have to look at the cold truth, and face reality in a scientific way. We have to take to heart the lesson from Bob Avakian, leader of the revolution, when he says:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Here’s another true statement from BA: “We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.”

A real revolution isn’t just protests or a general change. REVOLUTION means OVERTHROWING the system, defeating and dismantling its armed forces of violent repression through the conscious struggle of tens of millions of people. To be able to wage this struggle and WIN, we need to work now toward a revolutionary situation at the soonest possible time, by actively carrying out the “3 Prepares”: Prepare the Ground, Prepare the People, and Prepare the Vanguard—Get Ready for the Time When Millions Can Be Led to Go for Revolution, All-Out, With a Real Chance to Win.

We in the Revolution Club are taking up BA’s leadership, the science and strategy for making revolution. The question facing you: to accept all this terror and brutality; to keep playing the fool to this system’s promises of reform; to keep killing each other in the senseless gangbanging they have set us up to do—or to dig deeper, get with the Revolution Club, and take up fighting for a better world.

To start, you can spread and post this leaflet, spread the quotes on the back from Bob Avakian that speak the TRUTH about the role of the police and what will really deal with this system. And watch and spread the word of the film from Bob Avakian, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. Everyone needs to see this right now both to understand the depth of the danger we are facing right now, what can be done to face this, and to introduce many more people to this revolutionary leader.

Outrageous Attack by University of Chicago

March 12, 2017

March 1, University of Chicago. University of Chicago police brutally attacked and arrested Maya, a member of the Revolution Club, Chicago, as she left campus after participating in a SILENT protest in support of undocumented immigrants in the student center, where almost the entire dining hall fell silent for 11 minutes in support of 11 million undocumented immigrants. On top of this outrageous attack, they are now charging HER with felony battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. She was then further targeted by the state at what should have been a routine bail hearing when the assistant state’s attorney presented a lengthy, distorted, and utterly irrelevant political dossier on Maya, implying that she should not be released—on the basis of her alleged political views and associations.

The Revolution Club and others in Chicago spread word of these outrages and built support for Maya, and her March 8 court hearing was packed with 25 supporters. At the hearing, the prosecution outrageously decided to forego this preliminary hearing with the judge and take the case to a grand jury, to avoid having his one witness—a pig—crossexamined by Maya’s attorney. Her next court date is March 26.

In short, the repressive power of the state—in close cooperation with the university—was brought to bear and bring serious charges against someone peacefully protesting the ongoing raids against and attacks on immigrants.

For the full article this is excerpted from, read Coast-to-Coast Escalation of Repression Targets Revolution Clubs, Refuse Fascism, Revolution Books... Revolutionaries, Activists Stand Firm, Call Forward Broad Support

Joining with the Great Outpouring, Letting People Know About Bob Avakian and the New Communism

From Noche for the Revolution Club, Chicago

January 22, 2018

Streams of people flowed into the main area of the rally for the Women’s March in Chicago. At its height you couldn’t see an end in any direction. As of this writing, early reports from the Chicago Tribune say as many as 300,000 people filled the streets of Chicago. This would be a larger turnout for the city than the estimated 250,000 for last year’s Women’s March. The crowds held all manner of creative home-made signs, as well as groups of people with signs of their organization, school, or union. Many of the hand-made signs had creative and often funny messages calling out the dehumanization of women generally, but also the overwhelming sentiment was in calling out and rejecting Trump. And it was heartening to see this expressed even in ways that were not just tied to the horror this regime means for women, but also things like calling out "Shithole-in-Chief" expressing unity with immigrant people coming under attack as well as some people who had shirts and signs defending science. And the spirit was overwhelmingly of people finding strength and joy in coming together to oppose the truly horrific oppression of women, and an element of celebrating the battles to break the silence on sexual assault concentrated in the #MeToo/#TimesUp movement.

The Revolution Club entered into the day with the guidance from revcom.us in mind. We aimed to really join in and unite with this great outpouring, while making it known to people that there is a leader, Bob Avakian, with a new communism and a movement for revolution for people to join with now. We had a stunningly beautiful handmade 12-ft banner which cohered our theme for the day with the slogan "Unleash the Fury of Women as a Might Force for Revolution" and "Revcom.us" painted on it. We had with us many of the materials suggested by revcom, and we were able to distribute many copies of Revolution newspaper, and many copies of the sampler compendium Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution also got out. Read more.

Unleash the Fury of Women banner at the Chicago March

Bannon off campus

University of Chicago Cordially Invites Vile Poison to Spew Forth From the Mouth of Fascist Pig-Dog Bannon... The People Begin to Respond

January 29, 2018

White supremacist and fascist Steve Bannon accepted an invitation to speak at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from Professor Luigi Zingales. No date has been set, but in response nearly 50 professors signed an open letter of protest, 100 protesters came out to protest immediately at the Booth School chanting “Say it loud and say it clear: stop inviting fascists here!” and a timely mass public meeting was called for the next day.

The Revolution Club came together to discuss what articles to bring out to the mass meeting and the students at U of C. We thought the article “The Issue Is NOT ‘Free Speech’! The Issue Is FASCISM!” by Sunsara Taylor would be good guidance and a model for what students and faculty should do because it gets into WHY the issue should not be on the terms of “free speech” but why this is a platform to justify, normalize, and allow fascists to consolidate power. We felt we had to connect people up with the need to drive out these fascists and to our upcoming film showing of the talk by Bob Avakian THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible. We also talked about how the need for people to stand up to the assault on immigrants is connected with this, not least because Bannon is being invited to speak on the topic of “globalization and immigration”! We decided to send one team to the meeting and another out on campus with signs and a loudspeaker to reach out to students broadly and play the BA video clip, “Why do people come here from all over the world?”

Out on campus, many students had heard that Bannon was coming to speak. There were a few yells of “Fuck Bannon!” from students who walked past us and some people were clear and firm that he shouldn’t be speaking on campus. A lot of others hated Bannon but felt he should be allowed to speak because of the importance of the principles of free speech. People argued that if you stop Bannon from speaking, this threatens all free speech. And that the best way to take on Bannon is to defeat his arguments in a debate. Some people didn’t believe this was a big deal.

We struggled with people over all this. To see that Bannon speaking on campus is part of normalizing fascism, that it’s part of a conscious attack on the universities to strengthen the fascist movement, silence critical thinking and dissent and actually CRUSH free speech. We also struggled over what the actual terms of this “debate” were about and asked students whether we should’ve allowed for Nazis to come into our classrooms for a debate or that people had to get organized to drive them out in Nazi Germany. We made the point that free speech IS important and if people really want to fight for free speech they should be rocking the campus with protests to stop Bannon coming and let people everywhere debate THAT!

We connected this up with what is happening to immigrants right now. The all-out assault on immigrants that is driving forward the consolidation of fascism. As well as the overall white supremacy of Bannon and the whole Trump/Pence regime. The actual terror and destruction of people this means, and the need therefore for students to stand up to stop this Bannon event from happening, as part of standing up to drive the whole regime from power. In between speaking out on a loudspeaker, we played the short version of the clip, “Why do people come here from all over the world?” This drew people to us and helped set terms for all the conversations we were having. Read more.

Stand Up Against Trump/Pence Regime’s All-Out Assault on Immigrants!

January 29, 2018

A major move is happening right now in the sick Trump/Pence program to “Make America White Again.” In just the last few weeks they have ramped up an all-out assault on immigrants, especially targeting Black and Brown people. People are being arrested, detained, deported, ripped away from their loved ones, and in some cases sent to countries where they will be killed. Laws have changed overnight to declare hundreds of thousands of people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan “illegal” people. The 800,000 Dreamers, young people whose parents brought them to the U.S. as children, are having their lives and futures debated and traded on. Immigrant leaders are being detained and given deportation orders. Sanctuary cities are being targeted for raids and even elected officials have been threatened with arrest.

ALL kinds of people need to be standing up against this, now, not just the immigrants. This assault on immigrants has to be stopped and the whole Trump/Pence regime that is responsible has to be driven out of power. This has everything to do with what this society is going to be in the immediate future and what kind of world we need and are willing to fight for. This whole country was built on slavery and genocide and built its capitalist-imperialist empire by exploiting immigrants and people all over the world. This is what the Trump/Pence regime longs for and aims to take to more savage heights when they say “Make America Great Again” and when they change the laws, and how the whole government works, to more viciously crush people. The fight we have to fight is to come together to make revolution and tear this whole system down, and right now strengthen the movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. This country needs to start looking like the women’s march every day with even millions more, including those who are most targeted, until the Trump/Pence regime is driven from power.

Again, ALL kinds of people need to be fighting to stop this, and nobody should be falling for the ways this system tries to play different groups of people they oppress against each other.

Like, “Immigrants are using up the American resources Black people should be getting.” This is just begging for crumbs from a system that set you up in a situation where you can’t get resources and gets you competing with other people it did the same thing to. Worse, the system is getting you to become part of the machinery of crushing other people, taking up that “me first” and “America first” bullshit. The U.S. built its wealth on the backs of slaves and then further built its empire by plundering countries and exploiting their peoples, and you want “to get yours” out of that? And, by the way, if you think unleashing white supremacist attacks on immigrants is going to be good for Black people, go ahead and try to explain to everyone how the kkklansmen, neo-Nazi fascists in the White House and their followers who are whipping up all this shit are going to do right by Black people.

Or, “Black people have already been going through all this, so why should we stand up for the immigrants?” First of all, if you are a human being, get off that heartless shit and stand up for anyone being oppressed and mistreated. Especially if you know what it feels like. Secondly, is this really the kind of world you want? People pitted against each other and assisting in each other’s oppression on the basis of narrow self-interest? If you can see how horrible this is for people to go through, come together with all kinds of people to be part of the fight to PUT AN END to the system that keeps doing it.

The Revolution Club is working to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. We fight for a world without borders, and for equality among different peoples, cultures, and languages. Be part of fighting for that world, including standing up now against the fascist assault on immigrants. 1) Take this message, get it out to others and post it up everywhere. 2) Go to the website www.revcom.us and watch and spread the video by Bob Avakian, “Why do people come here from all over the world?” 3) Join the protests in support of immigrants. 4) Learn about and join the Revolution Club.

Taking BA out to people 'A Better World Is Possible'

Contact the Revolution Club–Chicago:

Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E. 71st St.
312.804.9121
revclub.chi@gmail.com
@RevClubChi on Twitter and Facebook

 

For earlier articles on the Revolution Club in Chicago, click here.

 

 

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.