Chicago Goddam!

December 7, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Laquan McDonald, 17 years old, gunned down on a busy Chicago street by a cop. Shot seconds after the cop pulled up and jumped out of the squad car, as Laquan walked away from the cops, hands at his side. After the first shot, Laquan fell to the ground and as he lay there he was riddled with 15 more bullets. This cold-blooded execution of a teenager was followed by a massive cover-up. 16 shots and a cover-up: CHICAGO GODDAM!

The city of Chicago, where Black people came up north seeking freedom and a better life only to be super-exploited in the steel mills and stockyards by this capitalist system, when they could get jobs at all...where 23 Black people were lynched or otherwise murdered “up south” in the bloody summer of pogroms in 1919 just to enforce their being locked down on the bottom of society and to let people know that there would be NO freedom in Chicago either...where white mobs rioted over and over again in the decades that followed whenever Black people dared to go in the “wrong neighborhood” or when schools were being desegregated and where this was managed by the top real estate interests in the city for the benefit of their capitalist system, backed up by the Democratic Party/city government and the mob...where the police murdered the Black revolutionary leader Fred Hampton in 1969 as he slept in his bed, drugged by one of their undercover agents, and then the city, the State’s Attorney and the police all tried to cover it up (see “December 1969: The FBI Assassination of Fred Hampton—I Am a Revolutionary!’“)....where they tortured Black people for decades and the cops in the force still revere the pig commander Burge who ran the torture. The list is long and the crimes are many.

And now Chicago, where they not only murdered Laquan but conspired together, up to the very highest levels—and let’s not rule out the White House either—to cover it up... (See “Recent History of the CPD & More Revelations of Cover-Up in the Murder of Laquan McDonald”)

Here is this goddam city with its downtown of gleaming skyscrapers and sparkling lights, upscale retail shopping districts like the Magnificent Mile...where the rulers have no real way to make profits off of large swaths of the masses of Black people, and unemployment is sky-high and lasts for generations...where segregation is still the rule of the day, more so today than ever, when they are not literally driving Black people OUT OF the city...where the schools in Black neighborhoods are turned into virtual prisons and pipelines to actual prisons, when they’re not being shut down by the city...where, especially now that the capitalists no longer have any use for them to directly exploit, masses of youth are consigned to lives of such hopelessness and desperation that crime, in the words even of one of the capitalist system’s defenders, becomes a “rational choice” and “the life” becomes a source of meaning for the youth and they are driven to murdering and shooting and crippling each other.

This goddam city is not an exception to the rule, it’s the rule itself—the way that Black people are forced to live, and die, in every major city of this country. There is more for people to know about all this, about where this oppression comes from and how to get rid of it, and this is part of the incredible work that Bob Avakian has been doing, and people need to get into that. The point is this: Chicago is Baltimore is Ferguson is Birmingham is Los Angeles is Houston is New York. And it is and it will be, grinding up Black people and even today threatening genocide...unless and until we make revolution, a real revolution, one that can finally get at and abolish this white-supremacist madness by getting at and abolishing the system that gave rise to it and keeps it going—capitalism-imperialism. A revolution guided by the method of understanding reality, the strategy and the vision developed by Bob Avakian and led by the Party he leads.

This goddam city is also where people just shut down the “Magnificent Mile” on “Black Friday”...where people have lifted their heads and are asking big questions...where the powers-that-be are on the defensive, pointing fingers at each other and trying to get this to calm down, blow over. This is just an inkling of what the masses of people are capable of, IF they are aroused and given leadership, revolutionary leadership. Chicago is a major part of this empire, and this whole empire is dealing with all kinds of crises right now, including right within the ranks of those who rule this empire. Right now there is the kind of crisis where truths can suddenly spill out and questions are raised in a way that doesn’t go on “normally.”

The powers that be are scared and maneuvering to contain the outrage, limit how much more about police murder and brutality comes out, quell questioning of the legitimacy of the police’s use of force against oppressed communities and channel the furor into dead ends. A section of the ruling class is in trouble right now, focused on their murdering police in Chicago. While nobody can say where all this will lead...one thing is damn sure, we cannot let them just “patch it up” and go back to their brutalizing business as usual with another task force, another mea culpa by the mayor, another pig chief. NO WAY.

Now is the time to double down, to get organized for an actual revolution and to bring into it everyone who dreams of justice, of freedom, of a radically different, liberatory world. It means getting out to the communities of the oppressed, those whose conditions of life scream out for revolution, to get organized and play a much greater role both in the current situation and in reaching out to and uniting with different sections of people, especially youth and students of all nationalities in the city and suburbs...doing all this to transform the terrain and the people, preparing the ground TODAY for revolution. Those who normally count for nothing in this society—what we do in this situation can count for a great deal in putting an end to all this madness here and around the world.

Anyone who is serious or is just waking up needs to know there is a revolutionary leader out of the great worldwide revolutionary struggles of the 1960s who they need to get into. Tell people to go to the website www.revcom.us and find out more about Bob Avakian and the revolution we need. Get with the movement for revolution the Revolutionary Communist Party is building and Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.

Right now we have to be in the streets like mad, raising hell and demanding justice and at the same time giving out real answers as to WHY this happens and WHAT we could do about it. There can be no half-stepping—all the truth must come out. All the criminals—the real criminals who are behind the crimes committed surrounding the murder of Laquan and the cover-up of that murder—as high as it goes—must be indicted, convicted and go to prison for their crimes. All the other police murders, torture, shootings that have long been buried must also come to light.

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