Revolution #74, December 24, 2006
Praying Won’t End Injustice—
We Need to Understand the World As It Is,
and Make Revolution to Change It!
What’s it going to take to stop the brutality and even murder the cops inflict on the people again and again? This question is up big-time in the streets of NY as people express their rage at the police murder of Sean Bell and several other recent police shootings. Too many people answer this by saying god will make things right for the people. This makes no sense.
So when is god going to make this right? Why hasn’t god done something already about all the injustice and misery people have been forced to endure for so long? Was he asleep at the switch while this country was being conceived in the genocide against the native inhabitants and dragging people here from Africa in slavery’s chains? Was he busy with something else during centuries of slavery followed by another century of lynchings, Jim Crow segregation and KKK terror? Has he been on vacation as the oppression of Black people continued, and even intensified, down to today? With a track record like that, why would anybody leave dealing with police murder to god?
Praying or waiting for god to take care of things has never gotten people free or ended injustice, and it won’t do that today either. The main reason is that there IS NO GOD! And praying to and relying on something that doesn't even exist will either lead people to think they don’t need to do anything about it but wait for god to bring justice—or it will lead them to do things that won’t challenge this shit while the system literally gets away with murder. Religion is a shackle and it’s been a shackle on Black people in particular since way back. And it’s even worse today. It was used by the powers back then to justify slavery, and it’s being pushed, like a drug, by the powers today to justify slavishness.
Police brutality and police murder can’t be stopped by people “getting right with god.” The police are enforcers for this rotten system. They’re out there keeping the unequal and degrading relations of American capitalism and white supremacy in effect. To get rid of this, and everything else foul people have to deal with today means you have to get rid of the capitalist system.
It’ll take revolution—communist revolution—to do that once and for all. Communist revolution would sweep away everything reactionary. It would shatter the power of the imperialist rulers and big-time exploiters, and as a first step bring into being a new state power—a socialist system in which the needs of the masses of people, not the profits of a handful of super-rich capitalists, would dictate what gets done. A system which would back up the masses in ruthlessly uprooting all the institutions and ideas that reinforce white supremacy. Where those entrusted with enforcing the laws of society would sooner risk their own lives than take the life of an innocent person. Where people could still practice religion if they wanted, but where it wouldn’t be pushed on people like it is today—and where the educational system and media would promote a scientific view of the world. Where dissent, diversity, and wrangling among the people would feed into a whole process of eventually getting to a world without class divisions, without racial and gender domination, and where people would freely decide on the future and settle contradictions among themselves, without a state standing over them and wielding coercion.
Bringing this kind of revolution about won’t be easy. But it is possible and it’s what the world is desperately crying out for. And there is leadership that is determined to lead the masses in doing what’s necessary when the time is ripe for revolution. People who are outraged by the continuing horror of police brutalizing and even murdering people, who are concerned about the state of the country and the world, have to get with the Revolutionary Communist Party and its leader, Bob Avakian. They need to check out Chairman Avakian’s writings and especially his DVD speech on Revolution, and spread them to others. And they need to be joining with people in building resistance to the attacks that the system is bringing down as part of politically preparing for revolution.
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