Nothing to lose, a future to gain
It's We Against the Capitalist World
Carl Dix: On the Million Youth March
Revolutionary Worker #970, August 23, 1998
A "Million Youth March" is called for September 4 -7, 1998. Young Black people and other oppressed youth will take to the streets in New York and Atlanta--proud, defiant, and determined to make a difference. With much to offer the world--full of life, laughter, impatience, potential. Young hearts and minds fixed on justice, equality, love of the people, freedom.
The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) salutes all the brothers and sisters standing up to oppose the oppression of Black people and the criminalization of a generation. It's right on time! Any attempt by Mayor Giuliani in New York or by the powers-that-be to shut these marches down, to suppress and derail them, must be opposed and fought.
What the System Is Doing to the Youth
Amerika 1998--being young is to be in a rolling nightmare. Suffocated and surrounded by pressure, pain, hopelessness, and rage. Instead of bright hopes and dreams, there are rivers of tears and mountains of fears. There's a million reasons to send up the message, loud and strong: IT'S RIGHT TO REBEL!
Inner city schools resemble jails. Schoolrooms are allowed to fall down, while jails and prisons are made to go up and fill up. Affirmative action, financial aid, bilingual education are torn down--so that only a privileged few can "make it." Even universities deal out miseducation and segregation.
While jobs dry up, the CIA floods drugs into our communities. For those "lucky enough" to find a decent paying job, where are the jobs that aren't degrading or mind-numbing? The choices are pushing fast food, pushing brooms, or pushing computer buttons--or risking your life to defend corporate property. What jobs give dignity, meaning, and joy to young lives?
A whole generation is criminalized by gang databases, curfews, and three strikes laws. Beautiful young brothers locked up, beat down, and shot down in record numbers by gangs of savage racist cops and prison guards, sent up by pig judges and heartless bureaucrats. Even chilling out or driving a fancy car can mean getting sweated or killed by the boys in blue just for being Black, Latino, poor, or young. And a college degree ain't an exemption from being the next Abner Louima or Rodney King.
Proud young sisters battling the odds without help of childcare, healthcare, social services, or welfare. Dreams stolen by teenage motherhood. Battered and bruised in a male supremacist world, scapegoated and blamed for everybody else's misery. The fastest growing prison population.
A Cold and Liberating Truth
From slavery to 100 years of Jim Crow, from age-old traditions that treat women as property of men to the domestic abuse today, capitalism has always been, and will be, a complete disaster for Black people, for women, for all the have-nots! The people who run this society can't offer any real future to the youth. Their plan is to keep exploiting the people and plundering the world.
The COLD and LIBERATING TRUTH is that it's gonna take a revolution to get rid of this madness and liberate the people, nothing less! This system must be overthrown and power seized from the hands of the suckers who rule over us. Liberation can only be won by MASS ARMED PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION.
With power in the hands of the people, we can create a society where the common people run things, in common, for the common good of ALL. A society based on new economics--serving the needs of the majority of the people--and new social relations of equality and justice. We can build a world where there'll be no more haves sitting on top of the have-nots, no more racism, no more male supremacy. This is worth living and dying for. This is what the RCP and the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) are all the way down for.
What the Youth Gotta Do to the System
There will be no revolution without the youth in the forefront to shake up and tear up old ways and ideas...fiery and fierce young warriors with zero tolerance for this messed-up way of life...youth who refuse to be patient while our hopes are being crushed fast...who care more about how to live than how long to live. We need a REVOLUTIONARY GENERATION to take things into the new millennium!
And to keep it real, we gotta get clear on what we need and what we don't in our revolutionary movement. We need views and politics that help our movement grow strong and powerful against the real enemy--the capitalist system. We do not need so-called solutions that mis-identify the problem and weaken the people's side.
We Need:
1. Sisters in the forefront of every battle line, sisters treated as equals, and the liberation of the sisters made a top priority.
2. The unity of ALL nationalities to build a strong fight against the oppression of Black people, Latino people, and other peoples held down by white supremacy in Amerika.
3. Mutual respect and understanding for all exploited and oppressed peoples, no matter what country people come from, or what language they speak.
We Don't Need:
1. Brothers dominating or dissing the sisters.
2. Talk and actions that pit people against each other, that target sections of people--Jews, Koreans, immigrants, Arabs--and let the system off the hook.
3. Settling problems among the people through revenge or violence.
To get from today to where we can launch the all-out revolutionary assault on the system, we have to organize the people to fight the attacks coming down, and build our unity and strength as we do that.
The 1992 L.A. rebellion saw a fearless generation take center stage. Young fighters have stepped to the frontlines of the key struggles of the '90s--for Mumia, to free all political prisoners, to defend affirmative action and bilingual education, to stop police and migra brutality, for a woman's right to abortions. All this needs to be stepped up--to make our schools and communities strongholds of revolutionary resistance; to organize collective solutions to the problems we face instead of going for individual solutions, or worse, looking to our oppressors to solve our problems.
Every generation has its chance and turn at revolution by NOT SETTLING FOR LESS. Seize the time and get busy organizing for a revolutionary 21st century!
Hook up with the RCYB and the RCP. Hook up with the revolutionary line, leadership, and plan to win. Read the Revolutionary Worker--for information as weaponry.
THE FUTURE IS YOURS, IF YOU DARE TO TAKE IT!
FEAR NOTHING, BE DOWN FOR THE WHOLE THING!
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