Carl Dix On:

No More Stolen Lives Tour

February 8, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On January 23, 2016 Carl Dix delivered an important address, “We’re in a Genocidal Emergency and We Gotta Stop It,” to the Stop Mass Incarceration Midwest Regional Conference. As part of the speech he announced important new initiatives in building off of Rise Up October. One of these is the call for a Major Day of Resistance to Stop Police Terror Chicago on Wednesday, March 2. (See accompanying call.) Another is the national call for No More Stolen Lives Tour to reach out to campuses all over the country. Below Carl outlines the strategic importance of the No More Stolen Lives Tour:

 

Now this No More Stolen Lives Tour is something that’s gonna take activists, family members of people murdered by the police, students, and voices of conscience, especially to college campuses throughout the region, including here in Chicago and some of the surrounding areas as well.

The aim of this tour is to issue a broad challenge to the students to join the movement to stop police terror. This is an important strategic step that our movement has got to take. Any movement fighting for fundamental change on major social issues has to have broad numbers of students on the front lines of their fight.

Look, when you’re talking about students you’re talking about a group of people for whom what’s right and what’s wrong is a big question. They haven’t yet learned that they just have to accept this shit that’s coming down and “well, that’s just the way it is... ain’t nothing you can do about it.” And I hope they never learn that lesson because once you learn that lesson, then you give up. And we don’t want ’em giving up.

We saw this in the 1960s when students joined the struggle against Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror, and against the Vietnam War. They transformed those struggles and contributed mightily to forging the kind of movement that rocked this system back on its heels. And we’ve seen beginning stirrings of that. I went down to Missouri University, Mizzou, while that was going on and it was something! Because I’ve been around a while. I remember the 1960s, and while there were some athletes that did some powerful things back then, I don’t recall any whole football team standing up and saying: we are going on strike unless there’s some justice around something. [Applause]

Poster for No More Stolen Lives tour at Loyola University, Chicago.

We’ve gotta tap into that spirit, but we’ve gotta take it farther... This tour is going to spread the message to students everywhere: Stop Police Terror! It will make the reality of the widespread systemic nature of the horror of murder by police much more clearly known. And it will deliver a moral challenge to everybody: Which Side Are You On? And getting many of them on the side of fighting to stop this. And we’ll call on students to form chapters of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network on their campuses and to affiliate existing campus organizations with Stop Mass Incarceration Network that are already active around this fight or want to join in the fight.

Now the family members of police murder victims: there’s an important role that you all can play on this tour. Because look, you all didn’t elect to become family members of people murdered by police—this was something that was enforced on you. But then, by standing up, by dealing with not only the murder of your loved one, but the demonization of your loved one and all the attacks that come down on you by speaking out about what happened to you, it brings to life for many more people the devastation that murder by police can have. And makes clear that these aren’t isolated instances—that it’s happening to many, many people. So your determination can underscore the moral challenge that this has to stop and the challenge for people to join in stopping it, that this tour is going to be moving to deal.

These and other initiatives were only one part of a powerful speech in which he denounced the genocidal character of the police terror, addressed the crisis that is shaking Chicago in response to the police murders and cover-ups perpetrated by the authorities, and spoke directly to how this fight needs to be taken up as part of building a movement for an ACTUAL revolution to get free from this and all the other horrors this system brings down on the people here and all over the world. Below is a short excerpt from this portion of the speech:

We gotta talk about something real. And the real chance of a future for our youth lies in revolution. [Applause] Revolution, that’s what the real hope of the future is, not only for our youth but for countless millions of exploited and oppressed people all over the world. It’s the way to end all the horrors that this system enforces—the savage oppression of Black people; the attacks coming down on women, including trying to take from them the right to choose to have an abortion; the way that fools like Donald Trump demonize immigrants while Obama carries out massive raids and deportations on our immigrant sisters and brothers; the wars for empire; the devastation of the environment of the planet we live on—we can end all these horrors, sisters and brothers, and it will take revolution, communist revolution to do that.

Now Bob Avakian, the leader that I follow, has re-envisioned how to make this kind of revolution, taking what was positive and liberating from the previous revolutions and developing a much more scientific understanding of how we can actually make revolution and emancipate humanity.

Now look, when I talk about revolution I know that there’s a lot of folks that think: well we can’t make revolution because the system is too powerful. Well, let me tell you about that. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has looked at this problem scientifically. He sees the power of this system but he also sees its vulnerabilities. And he’s developed a method to identify the cracks in the system’s power and a strategy to build a movement for revolution that can work on these cracks, breaking them wider open and creating the potential for us to break through on it. He’s led our Party in developing a strategy that can actually overthrow this system and make revolution when the time is right.

LISTEN TO CARL DIX’S 35-MINUTE SPEECH IN FULL.

 

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