An Important Message from Carl Dix
March 2, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
For decades, ever since the Black liberation struggle of the 1960s was crushed, there has been a slow genocide going on against African-American people. There has been an explosion of mass incarceration that has been the leading edge of the devastation of entire communities; and this genocidal thrust has hit other communities of color as well. It is not that people did not fight, it is not that there was not resistance, sometimes even heroic resistance; but the hopes for revolution and real emancipation seemed to get further and further away, and every dream of change turned sour.
But beginning this summer and going into early winter, that began to change. The outpourings of resistance to the system’s refusal to punish the police who murdered Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many other Black and Latino people opened the minds of a whole lot of people to the possibility of making revolution. Think about it—the sight of thousands and thousands of people of different races and nationalities and from all walks of life taking to the streets together to say police getting away with murdering people must STOP! This showed people suffering under the system’s program of punishment and deprivation that when they stand up and resist, they won’t be alone. And it opened the eyes of many people who had been shielded from this ugly reality to what was really being done to people and challenged them to join the fight against it. This had people thinking about the chances for radically changing things in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades.
Because of this struggle, it is possible that a real chance at revolution could develop, as other things also come into play. Think about that. Liberation. But it is also not impossible that the uprising of the fall could be suffocated in its cradle, smothered by the repression of the system and the double-edged words of its representatives. There is no justice at all in any of these outrageous cases. And not only will these outrageous unpunished murders by police and this whole genocidal program go on—and I use the word “genocide” very consciously, and very seriously—but it will get worse.
Last fall cannot become a distant memory. If you were one of the tens of thousands who stepped out back then for justice, and didn’t get justice... if you were one of the millions who were inspired and wanted to support this, if only you knew how... then April 14 must be your day. April 14 has to be the time when people re-take the offensive. When college campuses shut down. When high school students walk out. When people in the communities hit hardest by this turn out, blowing whistles and refusing to be silent. When the “gangs” make common cause. When people in the middle classes and prominent people make it known that they will not be silent in a society where 1 out of 3 young Black men are on track for prison from the time they are born, and where the police murder of Black and Latino people has replaced the lyncher’s rope.
Who should be part of this? Everyone who wants to see these outrages STOP and who refuses to stand by until they do... and everybody who can be won, through struggle, to seeing things that way.
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