From Carl Dix:

One Killer Cop Convicted—Get with the Revolution and Get Rid of This Whole System that Needs Killer Cops!

October 5, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop who murdered Laquan McDonald, has been convicted—of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. After decades of police and racists getting away with murder—from Emmett Till to Fred Hampton and up to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Darius Pinex, Justus Howell, Rekia Boyd, Aquoness “Quono” Cathery, and Harith Augustus—we finally got a little bit of justice. We forced a conviction of a cop for murdering a Black person. People are right to celebrate this, and the pigs have no right to suppress them or take vengeance against them when they do.

It should’ve been first degree murder. The evidence showed this. The video shows Van Dyke opening fire on Laquan as he walked away from the police with his hands at his side. Van Dyke pumped 16 shots into Laquan’s body, most of them as he lay on the ground bleeding.

Right now, it seems that these convictions are enough to send this murdering pig to jail. But we need to be vigilant that they don’t find some loophole to let him walk. We can’t go to sleep on this.

During the trial some activists and leaders said, “Yes, we should protest but we don’t want another Ferguson.” Let’s be clear: this murdering cop never would’ve been on trial in the first place if it weren’t for what people did in Ferguson and Baltimore and the other places where people straightened their backs. This spread all across the country, including Chicago taking to the streets to demand police terror STOP! And as part of this, there were all the exposures, the marches and rallies in Chicago in response to the release of the video of the murder of Laquan and the massive coverup that ran right to the entire city administration. 

This struggle has impacted the way people more broadly look at these police murders of Black and Brown people. So much so that in this case, even though there was only one Black juror and the state put on a lackluster prosecution, the jurors still looked at the video of Laquan being murdered and saw it for what it was—MURDER. HOW WE CAN WIN, How We Can Really Make Revolution, the guide to making revolution, says: “We need to oppose and disrupt the moves of the ruling powers to isolate, ‘encircle,’ brutalize, mass incarcerate and murderously repress the people who have the hardest life under this system and who most need this revolution. We need to ‘encircle’ them—by bringing forth wave upon wave of people rising up in determined opposition to this system.” This was a step toward that.

We don’t want to just keep fighting these same battles year after year. What they do to people here and all over the world is a horror … and it is unnecessary. It is caused by their system of capitalism-imperialism—and we must and we can overthrow that system. We have the science that lets us know how to fight. We have the strategy for fighting and winning in HOW WE CAN WIN that you can read at www.revcom.us. We have the plan for a new society, where all exploitation and oppression can be abolished and humanity can be emancipated, in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. And we have the leadership, in Bob Avakian, architect of the new communism, whose film Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution goes online at revcom.us on October 19.

I call on everyone in Chicago and all over the country who wants to see a better day, who yearns for freedom—get with the revolution and join the Revolution Club (for information, go to Revcom.us).

Bob Avakian: Masses Don't Know The Effect They Have On Society

Clip from BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS.