Revolution Club Member on Going to Baltimore:

Eye Opening to See the Hood, Amazing to See People Rise Up

May 11, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The following is transcribed correspondence from a young person who recently joined the New York City Revolution Club. This was written after going with the Revolution Club to the May 2 march and rally in Baltimore against the murder of Freddie Gray and police brutality.

First of all, seeing the National Guard and not just reading about it, not just seeing it on a television screen but seeing it right before your eyes, seeing the National Guard in all their gear, geared up like they are ready to kill somebody, like they are ready for war, having snipers on a building surrounding all the protestors that were standing below, it just goes to show that the system is baring its teeth and this is what the system is meant to do. There’s no real solution for the people. What their proposed solution for everything is, is to go in and militarize, brutalize, and punish. And that’s their solution, to beat back the people until the people cannot speak, until they are subdued into these submissive roles.

And to see that right before your eyes, just by these assholes being there with their guns and everything, it was so real and so shake you to your core, you know, that this is happening right before your eyes. This is NOT a movie, this is NOT some story, this is HAPPENING in the streets. It looked like... it looked like a war zone, and they were ready to pounce and kill. All for people going out there and speaking the truth, for saying, we are going to rise up because we can’t take this shit anymore. You are coming into our communities; lower income communities, people of color, Black and Latino people, and you are occupying them. You’re not providing any solution, you’re occupying. You’re coming in and you are murdering. And you know, like I said before, they have no real solution, except to come in and dominate the people into submission.

And it was just really eye opening to also see the ’hood in the state that it was. As somebody who doesn’t live in the ’hood, as somebody that didn’t grow up around the ’hood, to go really into an impoverished area, to an area that I haven’t seen, not even like the projects in Manhattan, these buildings were just totally abandoned, foreclosed buildings. And it’s another symbol of the system not giving a shit about its people. They just leave it, these peoples’ homes. They get rid of schools in these neighborhoods. They act like the kids are thugs. You know, it’s another symbol, just like the National Guard, of the system showing its teeth and saying and giving a huge FUCK YOU!... a huge FUCK YOU! to the people.

And to be there with the people and say I stand with you, you are righteous in your rioting and what you’ve done because of Freddie Gray. And being able to stand there with the people and say you are righteous, THIS IS RIGHT because of everything that’s been done to your community, to your people, to OUR people—it’s enlightening. But it’s also disturbing to see how people in the system, the higher-ups in this country, just really don’t give a flying fuck and want to see these people die. And that’s straight up how it is.

Although it’s disturbing to see this happening to these people, it’s also amazing to see them rise up. It is beautiful to see them rise up and for them to say that this shit is foul, this system is foul, this system has no future for our youth. They are treating them like thugs. They are arresting them, they are harassing them, they are killing them, they are brutalizing them, they are following them home from school, they are letting them die in prisons. And after all of that, you know, these people rise. They continue to rise and enlighten everyone else around them.

To say that we are human beings and even in this face of disgusting oppression and disgusting acts against us, we rise and we are willing to die to make change, and to see that and to be around that is absolutely amazing and beautiful and inspiring. And although a lot of it is disturbing, there’s also a lot of beauty when you come out into the streets and you see what people put forward through all of this horrible shit that this system puts them through. It’s inspiring and it’s beautiful. You just feel a love like no other, a love that’s actually human and what human beings should feel for each other.

 

 

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