Recently, CNN host Don Lemon spoke about reading again Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. Lemon called attention to the part of that speech that says now is the time to end racial injustice. Lemon repeated this, speaking of the present: Now is the time. Whatever Lemon’s intent, this raises a very big question:

Why, 57 years after that speech by Martin Luther King, is someone having to say, again: now is the time to end racial injustice? If it was time, 57 years ago, for this to happen, why has it not happened, after all these years?!

Is it because, before now, people have not struggled mightily against this racial injustice? NO—throughout their history in America, Black people have repeatedly risen up and fought heroically against this oppression. And the 1960s was precisely a time when there was massive and sustained struggle against this oppression, with millions of people—not only masses of Black people but many people of other “races” and nationalities, including large numbers of white youth—actively taking part in and sacrificing in the struggle to put an end to this.

And now is not the first time that the powers-that-be (or some of them) have been forced to admit that there is a serious problem of racial injustice in this country and to talk about making real changes. More than 50 years ago, at the height of the 1960s upsurge, the Kerner Commission Report did all that.

There is one basic reason why this oppression has not been ended: The system that we live under, the system of capitalism-imperialism, has this oppression built into it and could not exist or function without it. So long as this system remains in power, no matter which politicians are in the seats of power, and regardless of any promises they make, this oppression will go on... and on.

The conclusion is clear: This system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown!

As I have said before: “we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!”

It is now time—it is long past time—to end all this.

And to do that, we need: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!