On August 18, 66-year-old Laura Carleton, called “Lauri” by friends and community and known for her life-long passion for fashion and her generosity and care for others, was shot and killed in Lake Arrowhead, CA. We don’t yet know all the details, but  since Lauri opened her shop in 2021, the pride flag that she displayed in front of her store had been a target of vandalism and taunts that Lauri never backed down from. The shooting that resulted in her death was carried out by a man who was disparaging Lauri and the LGBTQ flag.

The murder of Lauri Carleton is heartbreaking and outrageous! It is an intolerable result of a nationally coordinated fascist movement: Republican legislatures passing hundreds of laws attacking LGBTQ people; school boards introducing and passing policies to vilify LGBTQ youth; campaigns to “eradicate” LGBTQ people from public life. All this is whipping up fascists, religious fundamentalists, and deranged lunatics who feel justified in terrorizing and even murdering people.

It’s time people really wake up to the reality that the Republican Party is now a fully fascist party that intends to impose its genocidal, white supremacist, male supremacist, xenophobic, theocratic, divorced-from-reality insanity over the whole of society. This is a country  that has not been this deeply divided since the Civil War, with those who have ruled over it for so long in a unified way—no longer able to.

Radical change is coming. It’s going to be murderously oppressive, or we wrench a whole different emancipating future for humanity out of the grips of the rule of capitalism—a system of brutal exploitation and murderous oppression.

A whole different way to live is possible! We need, we demand, a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system. This is not just a dream. In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, ending oppression based on nationality and race, sex and gender—will be the fundamental purpose and goal of a society aiming for the abolition of all exploitation and oppression.

The bridge to that world is revolution, a real revolution to overthrow this system. And the possibility for this revolution is much greater NOW in this time of acute crisis, where the country and the ways it’s been ruled is coming apart.

Now is the time to start working with the revcoms to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution: involving masses of people in rising up to resist the continuing crimes of this system, and defending people from attacks on their rights and their lives by racist, women-hating and anti-LGBTQ thugs, in and out of government... as part of building up forces for, and re-aligning society for, a real revolution to end this capitalist system that is a threat not just to the humanity of LGBTQ people but to humanity the world over.

Lauri was an example of someone who stood with LGBTQ people even as she herself wasn’t a member of the LGBTQ community; she cared about others, not just herself. This is a call for everyone who refuses to live in a world where people are under attack, to get with this revolution. To fight for a world that really is worth fighting for, to not allow future generations to be condemned to the same or worse, if they even have a future at all. This is the time to find your courage and conviction to stand up and not allow another person’s life to be cut short because of these fascist attacks, as part of bringing into being a truly emancipating future.