Three trials across America. Three high-stakes flashpoints in a coming showdown for the future.

Trial 1: Kyle Rittenhouse is a cowardly racist punk who traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 where he armed himself with an AR-15 rifle and joined other fascist gunmen, confronting protesters in the guise of "protecting private property." When two unarmed people—first Jojo Rosenbaum and then Anthony Huber—encountered him, with Huber trying to disarm him, he shot them both dead with the assault rifle.

On Friday, November 19, a jury declared him “not guilty” and let him walk free. This ruling gave a green light to more slaughter of Black people and anyone who would stand up for their lives.

Trial 2: Three white men claim “self-defense” for hunting down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man out for a jog. The trial is still ongoing, but everything about this case smacks of the days of slave-catching. This is true not only for the way these white men felt entitled to chase down and kill Arbery for merely existing, but also for the way they are using an 1863 slave-catching law as part of their legal defense!

Trial 3: The lead organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, are being sued in federal court. That “rally” drew thousands of white supremacists and Nazis. They marched with torches like lynch mobs. They chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” They brutally beat anti-racist protesters and Black people. All this culminated when a Nazi drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, sending bodies flying through the air and murdering Heather Heyer.

A Racist System Drenched in Blood

Each of these trials and the horrific incidents they flow out of echo the long and shocking history of this country—a country whose soil is drenched with the blood of Black people and Native American Indians and whose wealth was extracted from the labor of millions by the slave-whip and auction block. They built on the terror that has continued since then, today through police killings and torture and a thousand other ways. Black children shot for playing with toys. Black men killed as their children watched in life-scarring horror. Black women dragged by their hair and stomped in the dirt. They build on the industrial scale violence against millions—disproportionately Black and Latino—already warehoused in the concrete and steel dungeons that make up the world's most massive and notorious prison system.

All this madness, from Day One of this country down to today, is the product of a system: capitalism-imperialism.

This system causes tremendous suffering to people not only here, but all over the world.

This system is completely illegitimate.

This system must be brought down—overthrown—at the soonest possible time.

Right now, we Revcoms are organizing everyone we can to get with this. We are fighting the power—getting people together like this week, to go in the streets on the day they come down with their verdict in the Arbery case. We are getting together, learning what the revolution is about and what the goals are, in meetings early next month. 

But we need you. So read on.

An Even More Monstrous Future—IF We Don’t Act

The outrages of these trials are part of a growing momentum towards an even more monstrous future if this system is allowed to continue. A future where women are forced to have children against their will, where Black people are even more viciously ground down and any attempt at protest is crushed by police violence and/or armed white mobs, where LGBTQ people are shoved violently back into the closet—and worse. Growing numbers in this country—from Trump on down—are genocidal racists who would just as soon murder every Black person and all others they hate.

There is still time to avert this looming nightmare, but there is no time to waste. The only real way out, the only way to get at and end the SYSTEM that causes these horrors, is REVOLUTION—Revolution to emancipate humanity here, and around the world.

Fascists on the Offensive

But the fascists are on the offensive. They are clear about the stakes and they are seizing the time. After Rittenhouse walked free, Trump gloated. The FOX-TV host Tucker Carlson showcased Rittenhouse before millions. One Republican congressman offered him an internship and urged his own followers to “be armed and dangerous.” All this from a fascist movement that attempted a violent coup on January 6 to overturn the election. All this from a movement that since then has purged the Republican Party of almost all who disagreed with that and deepened and hardened the belief of millions in their base that this violence was righteous and may be necessary again.

Meanwhile, the big Democratic politicians from Biden on down don't want people to fight this and are doing all they can to keep people calm and going along. They are trying to hold this system together, even though the fascists will stop at nothing less than total control.

But bowing down to this system and the greater fascist atrocities looming is not the only future possible.

Real, Emancipating Revolution IS Possible—and It’s Worth Fighting for Now

Yes, it's true that way too many people are still keeping their heads down, glued to their phones, and going along. But it is also true that as millions are being jolted by the intensifying horrors this system gives rise to, growing numbers can be pried loose from going along, if people like you dare now to join up with this revolution and work for this.

So, what about YOU? Do YOU have the heart to get with this revolution and to learn how to go out there and be part of challenging others to get into this, too? Do you have the heart to answer the call being issued by the revolutionary leader, Bob Avakian, who knows the way out of this madness and is daring to lead us there? In his piece, which everyone should study and spread, THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY, he lays out guidelines on how we need to be living in this time that is both dangerous—and filled with potential. He says:

Instead of “staying in your lane,” and “going for self,” while this system is moving to even more decisively crush any hope for a world worth living in, people need to be looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the greater interests of humanity and the possibility for a far better world—and acting to make this a reality.

Instead of finding excuses to go along with the way things have been, standing apart from (or even bad-mouthing) the revolution, people need to get with this revolution, and not throw away the rare opportunity to be part of bringing something much better into being.

Instead of lashing out with individual acts of frustration, or attempts to take on this system with small, isolated forces that have no chance of succeeding, people need to pour their anger, and their hatred for injustice, into building a movement of millions that could have a real chance to defeat this system and make a real revolution.

Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.

Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.

Instead of being a tail on the Democratic donkey—with its attempt to keep this monstrous system going, and to deal with the growing fascist danger, by relying on the “normal procedures” of this system and doomed efforts to “heal the divisions” that are deepening every day—people need to work for the revolution that is urgently needed, and deal with the fascist danger as part of doing that.

So join with the Revcoms now as part of answering this call. Come to mass meetings on December 5 around the country. Regularly read revcom.us. Watch and subscribe  to the RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show   (new episodes every Thursday evening): YouTube.com/TheRevcoms. Follow: @TheRevcoms.

Let’s work together to wrench a beautiful future out of a putrid present!