May 1, 1994
This system is dying and it's trying to take us down with it.
Look at our brothers and sisters who are homeless. Going through garbage cans in search of their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Look at them pushing carts to collect cans to buy food with. Look at our homeless brothers and sisters in New York City--the place they say is the greatest city in the world--living in tunnels under the subway system, eating rats, roaches, whatever they can get their hands on to survive.
Look at our young brothers and sisters in the hoods, with kids to feed and raise. Trying to make it on a minimum wage job if they can get one. Living in projects that look like the penitentiary. Standing on the corners with no jobs. Forced into a situation where they have to try this and that hustle to make it from day to day.
Look at our sisters and brothers who are forced to come across the border--to leave their countries because of poverty and war. Trying to support their families. Running from the immigration police.
And this system treats us all as criminals. Look at what the LAPD did to the sister who went on the hospital roof with her kid. The police said they were saving her kid from her--so they shot her 2 times in the head and 4 times in the back. In cold-blooded fashion, just taking her out. Look at how many of our people are in jail, prison, or are on parole or probation. Now they have stepped to us with their ``3 strikes and you're out'' law. They want to lock us up forever and warehouse us in the pen.
Then look at those who run this system, those in power, wining and dining, living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, making billions and trillions off of all this suffering they cause to us and people like us all over the world. Look at that class of imperialists who invest 100s of millions of dollars in a country to force working people to sell themselves for 2 dollars a day. Double and triple their millions. Rob and steal everything people make. Forty thousand children die every day in the Third World!
Everybody is talking about crime but who are the real criminals? These dogs who rule over us are the biggest and the most savage criminals in the entire history of the world!
This is madness. Here we are in 1994, in what they say is the most ``civilized'' country on the planet earth, and people are living in tunnels. Every day this setup makes our lives more harder, more desperate. It's gonna take some extreme action on our part to get out of this oppressive situation.
And when you get right down to it, what's really so crazy about this is the fact that there's absolutely no logical reason for anybody in the world to have to live like this.
We can live a better life. We can make a better world. In the world today there's enough machinery and tools--and there is a class of people who have every interest in using these machines and tools--to feed everybody in the world. To house everybody. To provide jobs for everybody. In the world today we can educate everybody. Give people real education. Not the brainwash they give us now.
Why don't things go down in this way? The problem is the capitalist system and the way it has organized society and the world. The only thing it and those who run it are concerned about is making a profit off of others. The only way this system can live is by profit-grabbing--life-stealing--exploitation. Use everything and everybody as something to be bought, sold, and to make a profit off. And if they can't make a profit off of us, they just push us aside and throw us into the streets where we have to try and live from hand to mouth.
Profit is why Amerikkka dominates and oppresses, dogs other countries, and that's why there's so much suffering going on. Profit is why they invest 100's of millions in other countries. Not to help the people. But to feed off of them. To double and triple their investment.
It's a vampire. And we are gonna have to take some extreme action and drive a very sharp stake through its heart.
But the capitalists are not the only ones capable of organizing and running society. In fact this system has long, long ago worn out its welcome on the planet earth.
We can organize and run society and the world much better. We are the property-less class. The have-nots. The so-called ``nobodies.'' We are the proletariat. The people all around the world who make everything people need to live. We are on the bottom of society in common. We have a common enemy--the vampires who run this system and their enforcers. And we have a common fight. We are the only ones who can unite all the people who want a better world and lead them to take this system out through our revolutionary actions.
On this day, May 1st, which is the revolutionary holiday of the property-less class around the world--a day our enemy hates and fears and runs from like a vampire runs from the appearance of a bright new sun--we declare and dedicate our lives to getting rid of this bloodsucker once and for all. We dedicate our lives to taking out this mad-dog, profit-driving capitalist system--and putting the power over organizing and running all society into the hands of the common people, the have-nots, the property-less class of proletarians.
This is the first great step in our mission. And once we take this step we can give jobs, food and housing to everybody. Nobody will have to live in the street. Nobody will have to be malnourished, under-fed, or starving. And we will be able to do this because we will have gotten rid of the thing that hangs us up from doing this: the profit driving, everybody beats everybody else and chase after the biggest dollars--system of capitalism.
We need revolutionary power...to do this...and to do more. We know where crime comes from. Once we take out this criminal system and the criminal dogs who rule over us--and put the power in the hands of the people--we can solve this problem. People and especially women will be able to freely and safely walk down the street day or night. No one will have to prey on others to make it from day to day. No one will have to do any jacking or slanging to survive or to give meaning to their lives.
With this power, we will be able to get rid of racism and white supremacy. No longer will Blacks, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities be forced to live in ghettos and barrios. And treated as outsiders in society because the inside is white-supremacist. For the first time all the people will be able to approach each other as real equals in society.
We will be able to get rid of all master-slave relations between the people. Between men and women. Between our brothers and sisters. We'll do away with this situation where sisters are dogged and played by brothers as ``something'' to be used for sexual pleasures. Cuz that's the enemy way.
Sisters are one-half of humanity. And with revolutionary power in the hands of our class---sisters will take full part in using this power to organize society in a way where nobody is dogged or played.
Our proletarian revolution will break down the situation where the middle class is walled off from the basic people, looking down in contempt and fear on the masses. People from the middle class will no longer be obsessed and consumed by their individual problems and tripping on the ``dream'' to get rich. They will no longer be locked in cut-throat competition with others to do this.
We call on all those who hate this suffering to join with us so we can put an end to this nightmare and build a better world.
The whole atmosphere will be changed. All of the people will be motivated and activated not only around the goal of getting rid of hunger, poverty, lack of medical care and other problems like this--but even more around the goal of digging out and wiping out the system and the relations between people that breeds inequality and oppression.
Once our mission is completed there will be no more haves sitting up top over the have-nots. No more racism. No more whites oppressing other nationalities. No more men oppressing women. No more one group controlling the wealth and power and making the other slave for them to make them richer and more powerful. Our Party Chairman Bob Avakian teaches us: Our revolution doesn't stop until these ``no mores'' really are no more, everywhere, and for good.
We stand for organizing and preparing the people to move from resistance to a mass armed showdown, people's war and revolution against this whole setup when the time is ripe. And we got to get ready for that TIME.
It's like eating a big meal. If you try and eat it all at once you can't do it. But if you eat it mouthful by mouthful, bite by bite, you can finish the whole meal. It's the same with us.
We are gonna start small and get big. We are gonna do it step by step. We are gonna start with what we have today---start organizing ourselves, building revolutionary organization so wisely and so well that the enemy and its snitches won't be able to get to it, defend the people and go into battle against our oppressor. And we will grow because the world we are fighting for is in the interest of all the have-nots--and it's for the future of the world.
It's not time yet to kick off the all out revolutionary assault. To settle things through revolutionary war. The enemy ain't in deep enough trouble yet and the people ain't ready to put it all on the line yet. But things are changing. We have stood up.
We are the new fearless generation that hit the scene with the L.A. Rebellion. We set L.A. on fire and rocked this whole country. We put fear in our enemy's heart and inspired and gave strength to people like us all over this country--<|>and in other parts of the world.
This is their worst nightmare. To see those they victimize and brutalize every day stand up and bust out in this way. And we are not gonna settle for just giving them nightmares.
We need our people organized and waging battle against our enemy tit for tat. This is what we are about. We stand for organizing the people to resist and defend ourselves against the brutality the enemy is bringing down on the people. We will not beg this enemy. We stand for relying on ourselves to solve our problems.
The capitalist vampires say that we can never unite. But they're the one's keeping us at each other's throats. Trying to get us to fight each other for a piece of this dog-eat-dog action. Right now they are trying to play Blacks off against Latinos and Latinos off against Blacks in this way. And Asians. They have kept us ignorant of each other's history, culture, and language even though we live side by side of each other in the same situation. They tell Blacks you can't trust Latinos and Latinos you can't trust Blacks. Trying to get us to fight each other for some crumbs from the master's table.
They got us on a treadmill when they play us like this. You walking but you ain't going nowhere. And after you get all sweaty and tired you find you are in the same spot that you started from. You haven't moved a inch. You are still down here on the bottom. The thing that put you here is still here. The only thing you have done is bust and bucked on people who are just like you. Who have the same enemy. Who are part of the same class of have-nots proletarians. And who have the same revolutionary mission. Every time we see this go down we got to ask the question: Is this hurting or hng capitalists. And why should we want to become exploiters anyway?
We will only get free by putting our common class interest first and fighting the real enemy.
Once we begin to act in a revolutionary way, people begin to see things another way.
The L.A. Rebellion in '92 showed that we can act in common to fight the real enemy. It showed the potential for all the have-nots--Black, Latino, white, Asian, to act as one heart and one mind against this system. It showed the potential for revolution. It showed the potential for us to act in common to solve the problems that the people face. But to do this we need power. For us, solving anything is an illusion without forcibly seizing power and putting it in the hands of the masses of people.
The problem in the world is not that there is too much violence. The problem is that there is too much counter- revolutionary violence--too much violence against the people by the oppressor. And there's not enough revolutionary violence-- violence of the people rising up to do battle with their oppressor--like what happened during the '92 L.A. Rebellion.The violence of the masses rising up to fight our oppression is powerful. It strikes fear in the hearts of oppressors everywhere. And the more revolutionary it becomes, the more organized it becomes, the more it zeros in on the system, the more all-powerful it becomes. So when the time for that revolutionary showdown comes, we will be ready--to bring down and bury this beast and go on and build a whole new world.
And we will do all this because we have a vanguard that can lead us to do it.
Chairman Bob Avakian wrote: ``Our Party, the RCP, is prepared and determined to stand with the masses of people in the fight against the system and to carry this fight all the way through and not to sell out or turn back. No matter what the enemy uses to come at us, whether it be bullets or bribes, we are willing and ready to take on the responsibility of building the revolutionary understanding, organization and fighting ability of our class, the proletarians and all oppressed people so that we can move on to carry out the great transforming and cleansing process of proletarian revolution.''
The Revolutionary Communist Party is the only ones who tell us the truth. The truth about what our problems are, where they come from, and what's it gonna take to get rid of them. It arms us with a fighting scientific ideology--MLM, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It tells us what to live and die for. It is the only force who can lead us to free ourselves and all mankind. It is our Party--it belongs to us. It's time for more of us proletarians who have nothing to lose--to join the Party--to make it stronger so we can go ahead and do what's got to be done.
When we join our Party, we are joining a detachment of a growing Maoist worldwide revolutionary movement--the RIM, our Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.
We need our Party. We need to strengthen our Party. And we need communism. We need a communist world. A world where there is no rich or poor. A world where the common people---work in common---for the common good.
We need this. We want this. And we are gonna fight and die for this.
Comrades in Los Angeles, written under the leadership of the RCP