Why Do Murders by Police Go On, Over and Over Again? And What Must Be Done to END THIS Once and For All?
May 4, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The murder of Freddie Gray comes on top of murder after murder after murder by the pigs in cities and towns all over. We cannot rest with the promise to now prosecute these particular pigs—there are way too many cases where people’s struggle and even rebellion forced a trial, only to find those murderers either acquitted or, once in a great while, given a slap on the wrist. This fight cannot stop but must INTENSIFY.
At the same time, we must ask WHY this goes on and what must be done to STOP it once and for all.
Why do the police do this? Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has put it this way:
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 order that enforces all this oppression and madness.
Think about it. THIS is at the heart of what goes on in the ghettos and barrios all over the country. “Relations of exploitation and oppression” are being “enforced.” And these relations go far beyond the ghetto. Think about what goes into just the daily functioning of this system, in addition to the killing discrimination and slow genocide now coming down on African-Americans, and Latinos, and other oppressed peoples within the U.S.:
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The oppression of hundreds of millions of people, all over the world, either enslaved to produce the great wealth these capitalist-imperialists brag about, or cast off from enslavement, or just kept “in reserve” in subhuman conditions, from Gaza to Guinea, from Pakistan to Mexico... and all of this enforced by armies and drones and terror of different kinds at the behest of the capitalist-imperialist powers like the U.S.;
Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?
From REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN
- The oppression of women in every corner of the planet through rape, battery and the denial of basic rights of all kinds, as well as the oppression of people who are gay, or just “different”;
- The massive dislocation and exile of hundreds of millions, forced from their countries to desperately seek work, hunted down at borders or killed on the high seas, and once in the “promised land” treated like criminals and demons;
- The plunder and destruction of the environment itself, all for the enrichment of the capitalist-imperialists.
We Need a Revolution—A REAL Revolution!
These horrors are a big part of what we’re talking about when we say “relations of exploitation and oppression.” This is what is enforced by their cops, their armies, their prisons, their courts, and all the rest. This is what is defended and covered over by their media and their politicians. A system that not only produces these horrors, but feeds on them and requires them to keep going, is a system that must be done away with. And the only way it can be done away with is through revolution.
Revolution is not just a catchword. It means something, something real. As we have said:
An actual revolution is a lot more than a protest. An actual revolution requires that millions of people get involved, in an organized way, in a determined fight to dismantle this state apparatus and system and replace it with a completely different state apparatus and system, a whole different way of organizing society, with completely different objectives and ways of life for the people. Fighting the power today has to help build and develop and organize the fight for the whole thing, for an actual revolution. Otherwise we’ll be protesting the same abuses generations from now!
There is no getting around it: it will be a massive struggle, full of sacrifice, to make such a revolution. But this “completely different state apparatus and system” would represent the interests of the masses and back them up in changing all of society, emancipating all of humanity. The revolution we are talking about could easily solve the problem of police murder, for instance, on Day One—with an ethos in the ranks of its security forces in which those forces would rather sacrifice their own lives than endanger one of the masses and in which that force would overall be directed at protecting the masses in struggling to overcome exploitation and oppression, and NOT (as it is today) directed at reinforcing those horrors. Some problems would take longer—but the point is, the road would now be cleared to doing that. The ignorance in which this system keeps people chained would be shattered; the scientific method, as it has been further developed by Bob Avakian, would be right there for people to take up and apply and use to transform the world. And all of society would be able to breathe.
We, our Party, have taken responsibility not only to take up this fight today but to build it as part of getting organized for an actual revolution. We are working to make that revolution as soon as it is possible—the chance for such a revolution could possibly develop out of the sharp contradictions and struggles of today, and we are working as hard as we can to make that happen. Based on the new synthesis of communism that BA has brought forward, there is a strategy to make revolution.1 There is a vision and blueprint for the new society.2 And the foundation for the theoretical doctrine through which the people could actually be led to WIN the all-out struggle for power has been hammered out, and that doctrine is being further developed.3
AND: we have in Bob Avakian (BA) a leader who has given his heart and soul to the masses of people and who has developed a visionary new synthesis of communism, a deeper understanding of human emancipation. A leader like BA is something rare, and this is a great strength for our movement. “If you are serious about an actual revolution, you have to get seriously into BA.” Our Party is made up of revolutionary fighters dedicated to leading masses of people to get free of this madness, applying science to the problems we face, and organized into the structure of our Party to do that. And we have a way for you to get with this, to learn about this as you are fighting back, to get organized to actually make a revolution.
The time is now. The challenge is there... the leadership is there... what is needed, very urgently right now, is YOU.
Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution!
Get Organized for an Actual Revolution!
To learn more, explore the website www.revcom.us. And check out the Dialogue between Bob Avakian and Cornel West, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion.
NOTES
1. “A Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party: On the Strategy for Revolution” (Also available as a supplement in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, 2011) [back]
2. Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) (RCP Publications, 2010.) [back]
3. “On the Possibility of Revolution.” [back]
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