"This dialogue will open up a lot of eyes, a lot of minds...to what is going on and how we can make a difference."
Responding to the announcement of
Revolution and Religion: A Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian
September 28, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revolution and Religion—wow, this is long overdue. This is long overdue. I feel that I didn’t know much about Mr. Avakian. I know about Cornel West. But the fight for emancipation, the role of religion and the dialogue between these two revolutionaries of our time, the great revolutionaries of our time—it is long overdue. Religion plays a great part in our revolution and what has changed amongst the churches, what has changed is humanitarianism has went out the window. Between the revolution and religion, the fight for emancipation is that we have to fight for what is right. And so many times religion can play a part but it has played a part of the heinous insanity that has also gone into the prisons. You know solitary confinement was invented by the church. You understand? So we need a revolution to break down the barriers of the religion that created this heinous torture of solitary confinement. It was done in the 1800s, they felt that if an inmate with mental illness or behavior problems, if they were to put them in solitary in a little cubicle room they would be able to talk to god and come to their senses and adhere to rules and regulations. But what has happened with that process is that it backfired. Most inmates that was in prison under religion really had mental illness after they were put into solitary confinement, they didn’t have mental illness before they went in, they had it after they came out.
We need eyes to be opened in our society. Eyes need to be opened because many of us don’t understand. I don’t understand most of it, just a little bit of it, about revolution and religion and how it plays a part in our society. I expect for everyone, myself and everyone involved, to open up their eyes to what is truly going on and life will go through this matrix of what is supposed to be, not what is. And at this Dialogue I believe that everyone will walk away with what’s truly going on and how revolution and religion play a very close part and how it can play a great part in helping those in our movement to understand that we have been hidden in the shadows for many years. This dialogue will open up a lot of eyes, a lot of minds with these two that’s coming together, the two minds, the meeting of the minds to let our society understand, to give us, for them to acknowledge what is going on and how we can make a difference.
Terry Hubbard, mother of 23-year-old Joshua Richardson
who is incarcerated at Rikers Island prison
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