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In speaking to the youth in the inner cities and to people throughout society in his “Call To Revolution,” Bob Avakian made the point that “what we do matters a great deal.” In today’s situation, this truth is magnified. There is great potential right now for the fight against oppression and the fight for revolution to make very big advances. The things being called for over the next three weeks in this issue of Revolution—the premieres of the filmed dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, “Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion” and the massive nationwide “shut-it-down” actions against murder by police on April 14—are a huge part of that.
To get a hint of how that is so, let’s look at the situation we are acting on and working to change. This past Thursday, the police chief of Philadelphia called a community meeting to talk about why— yet again— criminal charges had not been filed against a cop who killed a young Black man. But in this case, something different happened. In the words of the New York Times, “instead of a conversation about the man’s death, the meeting descended into lawlessness. Residents angrily shouted at the commissioner and pointed fingers in his face. Metal folding chairs were hurled. Protesters tussled with police officers. There were 10 arrests.” (Here we’ll pause only to say that while the Times may find these actions “lawless,” they are definitely just— and especially when the authorities find murder after murder of Black and Latino youth by police “lawful”!)
The article goes on to say that this is all part of an effort of police to “break away from images of them as hostile, occupying armies.” Think about what that means for a minute— the pigs have to send their biggest honcho into a meeting where they are forced to listen to just a little bit of people’s righteous anger because they are worried that people are seeing their true nature and this freaks them out!
This comes right in the middle of a steady stream of actions, one after another, in which people stand up, protest, demonstrate, take over streets, and blow whistles in response to the wanton, racist murder and brutality of the police, making it unmistakably clear that “WE AIN’T HAVING THIS SHIT!” You can see it in the many articles we have in this issue and in issues over the past few months—there is a different mood. (Also see the "Stop Mass Incarceration" section of this site.)
In the face of this, those who rule this society have no answers. They talk about “body-cams” for pigs— and then just this week we see a video of cops in Dallas shooting down in cold blood yet another mentally disturbed Black man—and still nothing being done, even with their damn body-cam. They admit that the Ferguson police are little more than racist extortionist gangsters in one breath, and then immediately go on to justify the cold-blooded murder of the unarmed youth Michael Brown in the next, in an attempt to spread confusion. They talk about “we need better statistics, we need more studies”—and then someone comes up with a study that shows the government’s own statistics undercount murders by police by more than half. Think about that Times article we quoted—the police are worried that people view them “as hostile, occupying armies.” And those on top are in conflict over how to handle this, attacking one another not over whether to clamp down—but how best to do it. Again: they have no answers.
Our experience bears out tremendous potential, among all sections of people. Take just one story among hundreds. A man working as a professional at a ghetto hospital brushes by people leafleting for the premiere of “Revolution and Religion”— “I don’t need that stuff,” he says—but then he thinks twice, stops and comes back. He bares his heart to tell how last week, on a “dad date” with his 7-year-old daughter, the police pulled him over and his daughter clutched him and began crying, “please don’t kill my daddy.” “I can’t live in a society like this,” he said, and got materials for the premiere. Other people in the middle class tell us of their disillusionment with Obama and their desire to learn about revolution, and to do something about the horrible shit coming down. People very broadly are feeling a moral challenge—and they are in a mood to respond to it, if those who do have answers step to them.
To put it another way, over the past six months or so “the equation has changed”— and we must change it even more. By this we mean that the ways in which those who rule society had people on the bottom believing that it does no good to fight back, that nothing else is possible beyond what we have today... the ways in which they had people in the middle thinking things are pretty much okay... that is beginning— beginning—to break down. Those who are fighting for justice find people who want to fight with them, more and more—not in a straight line and not all at once, but these articles tell you it’s happening.
And those who understand that revolution is the only answer to all this are finding a different response as well. The fact that nearly 2,000 people came to hear Bob Avakian and Cornel West in dialogue in November, and that thousands more have watched the live-streaming of it... that tells you that revolution, especially in the form of what BA brings, is striking a chord with people. The fact that the vast majority of those who were there found it gripping and totally absorbing tells you about the potential for this message to spread far and wide, and to begin to take hold deeply.
At the same time, the ways in which the movement for revolution fought in Ferguson and all over the country meant a whole lot. People saw the revolutionaries standing with defiant ones... spreading the spark of the struggle for justice all over... refusing to back down in the face of slanders, brutality and threats. This too had an impact—on friend and foe alike. Those actions, along with the Dialogue, are also “part of the equation” and should not be underestimated. For sure, those who want to maintain this oppressive system do not underestimate the potential, and neither must we.
We cannot miss this opening. We cannot fail to see the patterns before us, manifesting themselves in different ways. Yes, the situation is full of conflict and contradiction. Yes, we are going to have to put our heads together and figure out answers to a lot of hard problems. And yes, people who want change are going to have to struggle for that. Struggle in two senses: struggle against the powers-that-be... and struggle with the people over stepping out further and going deeper into the WHYs of this madness, and WHAT to do about it. This is not going to be easy—it's going to require sacrifices, sometimes very hard sacrifices, because those in power have their machinery of repression...but they are also not all-powerful.
If you read BA’s statement on the kind of situation you would need to make a revolution, you see that he starts out with a “deep crisis and sharpening conflicts in society and in the government and ruling circles, where they cannot find a way to resolve these conflicts—in society and among their own ranks—which do not make things worse for them and call forth more resistance and further undermine people's belief in their ‘right to rule’ and in the ‘legitimacy’ of their use of force to maintain their rule.” No, that’s not where we are yet—but can’t you see the embryos of that in the conflict around Israel that we talk about in the article "Israel's Ugly Election—Heightened Conflicts, New Challenges," or in the way the Times says that the police are worried that people see them as a “hostile, occupying army”? When you see those kinds of embryos, you don’t just sit back like a spectator and hope for the best—you work on it, you fight like hell to build up the people’s resistance AND to build up, to make huge leaps, in their understanding of what it will take to finally GET FREE AND TRULY EMANCIPATED. The whole piece by BA bears repeated study and reference.
With all that in mind, we call on those reading this to take up the struggle to build these premieres with new vigor, along the lines laid out in the article "4 POINTS to Launch the New Film of REVOLUTION AND RELIGION," to take up as you do so the battle to build Shutdown A14, again going off the guidance in this issue... to link both of these together as part of making big leaps toward getting free... and to bring people INTO the movement for revolution and the different critical fights against oppression, at whatever level they can.
Last fall, people all across the country rose up against the egregious murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others by police and the exonerations of their killers. Their actions woke people up all over the world.
All winter, resistance to this has been bubbling. From Pasco, Washington, and Atlanta to Madison, Wisconsin, and Virginia—people are refusing to take this.
But the murders keep happening.
More must be done to stop this daily, deeply seated, deadly horror.
On April 14 people all across the country will shut things down, bringing the “normal operation” of things to a halt through mass political mobilization and action.
These actions will make it absolutely clear that these unpunished murders by police must STOP—and that the whole genocidal agenda that they are part of must be reversed!
These actions will let the world know that this is not just a problem in Ferguson, Missouri, or Madison or Oakland or any of the other places in the headlines day after day. These actions will make clear that this is the reality of America. That this is not a few bad apples or bad departments, this is systemic! And it will be fought that way.
Most of all: these actions will sound a loud call to millions, here and around the world, that there are peopledetermined to STOP this... It will make it clear that there are people—and there is a movement—determined to fight for a future where our youth are not cast off, locked down, warehoused, routinely abused and even murdered—a future where they can instead live with their humanity fully recognized. A movement determined to call on, inspire, and organize many, many others to join in this battle. These actions will say to the millions now agonizing to come out and be part of changing the future!
There is resistance bubbling and boiling across this country. Daily outrages continue with police killings of unarmed Black youth and others; racial profiling and brutality by cops. But here, there, in unexpected places... from those who catch the most hell every day to students at elite universities... people are saying: “We ain’t taking this shit!” In just the past 20 days...
Los Angeles: As soon as word got out of the LAPD murder of a homeless man known as “Africa” on March 3,people took to the streets — 200 people, including many homeless, marched through downtown LA. They went right up to the entrance of the LAPD headquarters and faced off against a line of cops. The Police Commission was inside “discussing” the killing, but people weren’t having another “behind closed doors” cover-up. Dozens went right inside and challenged the Police Chief and the President of the Police Commission. Four days later more than 100 people converged at LAPD Headquarters then took to the streets again to express outrage at the killing of Africa.
In Madison, Wisconsin, March 6, protest broke out immediately after the police murdered 19-year-old Tony Robinson. For days people stayed in the streets. High school students – thousands – walked out. Saturday March 7, students at the high school Tony went to wore all black at the basketball game. On Sunday, churches held vigils and speak-outs. On Monday,March 9, 2,000-3,000 students from four high schools, as well as middle schools, walked out and took over all lanes of a main street leading to the State Capitol. Students from the University of Wisconsin joined them, and together they occupied all three floors of the Wisconsin State Capitol rotunda. Two days later a thousand students again took to the streets demanding justice for Tony.
Thousands of students pack the State Capitol rotunda to demand justice for Tony Robinson, Madison, WI, March 9. Photo: AP
The very day that thousands of high school students were marching in Wisconsin on March 9, police in DeKalb County, George murdered another Black man, 27-year-old Anthony (Tony) Hill. Most of Tony’s neighbors are Latino, but dozens stepped across language and cultural barriers to join with the Atlanta Revolution Club in a protest the next day chanting, “Policías Asesinos, ¡No Mas!” and “Police Murder, No More!” Middle and high school youth on skateboards took handfuls of #ShutdownA14 stickers. The next day 200 people marched through downtown Decatur to protest the police murder of Anthony Hill.
East Oakland: Blow the Whistle!
On Blow the Whistle on Brutal Murdering Cops day, people learned to blow the whistle when they see the police
In the midst of all these police murders – and GROWING RESISTANCE -- the Stop MassIncarceration Network put out a call for March 14 to be a day to: “Blow The Whistle On Brutal, Murdering Cops! Mobilize For A Day Of Blowing The Whistle On Brutal, Murdering Cops On March 14.” In response, actions were held in cities around the country including New York, the San Francisco/Bay Area, Los Angeles, Houston, and Cleveland. Hundreds of whistles and materials about Shutdown April 14.
Kenwood Academy high school students challenge students at the University of Virginia to join them walking out of school on April 14 against police brutality. Justice for Martese!
March 18, University of Virginia. The day after Martese Johnson, a Black student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville was grabbed by police outside a bar, tackled, thrown to the ground and had his face slammed to the ground and bloodied—up to a thousand students, including many white students, rallied on campus. Students chanted: “If we don’t get it, shut it down.” On March 20, 750 miles away,in Chicago, students at Kenwood Academy (where Martese Johnson graduated from) called on University of Virginia students—to join them in taking the struggle to another level, to walk out on April 14.
On March 19, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and District Attorney R. Seth Williams appeared at a town hall meeting to tell the public why – once again – NO CHARGES were going to be filed against a cop who had killed Brandon Brown, a young Black man last December. But in this case, something different happened. As described in the New York Times, “instead of a conversation about the man’s death, the meeting descended into lawlessness. Residents angrily shouted at the commissioner and pointed fingers in his face. Metal folding chairs were hurled. Protesters tussled with police officers. There were 10 arrests.” People chanted “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and called the murderers out as pigs. (As we note elsewhere in this issue, while the Times may find these actions “lawless,” they are definitely just— and especially when the authorities find murder after murder of Black and Latino youth by police “lawful”!)
3/21: Dozens in Cleveland protest at spot where police killed Brandon Jones. Photo: special to revcom.us
On March 21 dozens of people gathered Saturday night at the spot where 18-year-old Brandon Jones was killed by a Cleveland police officer on March 19 to demand justice. People made links to other police killings going on – the epidemic of police killings, carrying photographs of 12-year-old Tamir Rice killed by the Cleveland police for playing with a toy gun on November 22 and Tanisha Anderson, a mentally ill woman who died after police forced her to the ground November 13.
*****
All this... and MORE is needed to build the movement to STOP police murder and brutality. All this needs to go forward and go to a whole other level on:
April 14—Stop Business As Usual! We Will Not Go Back!
No School! No Work! Say No More to the System Giving a Green Light to Killer Cops!
A Message to Students and Young People of ALL Nationalities
March 18, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a former prisoner who is now an emancipator of humanity:
People on the bottom of this society are being brutally oppressed, growing up with targets on their back, incarcerated in huge numbers, constantly fucked with, beaten, and murdered by the police. This is part of a whole program of repression that targets Black and Brown people, and it is on a genocidal trajectory. This program can and will escalate as this system gets into a deeper crisis and if the capitalist-imperialists who rule this society are able to get large sections of the population to go along with it. The ruling class and its enforcers expect you not to notice or to look the other way as they carry out their genocidal assault against Black and Brown people. But as murder after murder by the police and people’s righteous resistance to it makes this brutality harder and harder to ignore, they work hard to try to get you to go along with it, getting you to abandon all sense of morality and accept the racist justifications that say its okay to choke a Black man to death if he sells loose cigarettes, it’s okay to riddle a Mexican immigrant with bullets if he throws rocks at a car, and it’s okay to blow away a 12-year old Black child if he’s playing with a toy gun!
What this situation demands of you is not to focus on “doing good in school,” on increasing the economic and social distance between you and the people on the bottom so that you can become the “leaders of tomorrow” that will somehow magically change all this in the distant future, which is impossible as long as this system and its repressive institutions remain in place. No, the urgency of this situation demands that you stand with those people on the bottom and everyone who is willing to resist and fight back. What you do or don’t do matters a great deal, it matters for people in the lower sectors of this society who see no way of fighting back without getting crushed and it matters for the future of all of humanity.
Those of us who are committed to fighting back have already pledged that we will not go back, we will not accept the continual killing of our youth by the police as the new normal. Our resistance will continue and escalate as this system continues and escalates its fight for the freedom of its police to keep killing us and continue to carry out its vicious, genocidal program. “Calming down” is not a choice that we can afford to make because Black and Brown lives DO MATTER to us and those lives are at stake right now.
And especially for those of us who are revolutionaries, we are not in the streets registering people to vote, misleading them into thinking that turning in a ballot will change the violently repressive nature of the police, and we are not in the streets telling people to shop at Black-owned businesses, pretending that putting more money in a Black person’s pocket will stop a pig’s bullet from tearing through an unarmed youth’s body or skull. We are in the streets building a movement FOR REVOLUTION to STOP all this, organizing people as they fight back, introducing them to the leadership of Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party, calling on others to get with and join this leadership, strengthening and increasing its reach so that when conditions are right millions can be led to go all out for an actual revolution, with a real chance to win. We have a scientifically developed strategy to carry out this revolution and we have a Constitution that lays out the kind of society we intend to bring into being if we’re successful. Our line is clear on how we intend to get rid of all this on revcom.us and in the pages of Revolution newspaper.
You don’t have to agree with everything that we have to say, even though you should engage it if you are serious about wanting a world where all lives DO matter, but the undeniable fact that there is an epidemic of police murdering Black and Brown people and an urgent need to resist this will be a reality that you’ll continually be confronted with. The challenge will continue to pose itself, “What are you going to do about this?” If what you want is to leave behind a better world when you die, then you need to join the fight against what is happening to Black and Brown people and not let the social divisions that this system relies on determine whether or not you stand against any injustice. Regardless of your nationality or social position your place is in this struggle, not on the sidelines. On April 14 you have to be in the streets, shutting down your campuses, taking over freeways and taking over buildings, sending a clear message to everybody in society that you will not let people down here be continually brutalized and murdered then demonized and isolated as this shit goes on. The actions on April 14 must let these people know they are not alone, and that the fight against what is being done to them will be joined by youth from different strata and many different nationalities. That message needs to be made clear to those on the top as well as those on the bottom.
As someone who has never stepped foot in a university classroom and only caught glimpses of what life is like outside ghettos and prisons, I can tell you that when you’re cast off and counted as nothing, you often see yourself as the least able to change anything. But when you rise up against the conditions that you didn’t choose but were born into, and you see people stand with you, who come from sections of society that you learned to assume could never give a fuck, then that defeatism begins to break down and the possibility of getting rid of all this shit begins to come to life.
That’s why unity in righteous struggle between people coming from many different backgrounds is not just a beautiful thing to see, that unity represents nothing less than a way out for the oppressed throughout the world and a nightmare for their oppressors. When people begin to break out of the divisions and the accompanying outlook that have worked so well for this system, when Black, Brown, and white people stand with each other, when so-called “thugs” from the inner cities and suburban youth from college campuses are coming together to get organized to fight the power, they can have tremendous impact on all of society. You can not only shake the whole country awake to what is happening, but also break open possibilities to changing the whole world, bringing forward fighters with nothing to lose but their chains.
The problem is real. The challenge is real. The role you choose to play in the face of this will also be real.
Israel's Ugly Election—Heightened Conflicts, New Challenges
by Larry Everest | March 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On March 17, Benjamin Netanyahu, the reactionary leader of Israel, was re-elected. More significantly, to win re-election Netanyahu openly reversed his previous professed support for a Palestinian state and actually whipped up racist hysteria against Palestinian Israelis who were exercising their (legal) right to vote in the election. In doing so, Netanyahu significantly widened the depth of his public disagreements with Barack Obama. The consequences of this are unpredictable—but what is clear is that the potential for this sparking a “chaotic situation in the region,” in the words of Obama’s criticism of Netanyahu, has gone way up. Why did this happen? Why is there so much controversy over this? And what challenges does all this pose to people who want justice, and to the movement for revolution?
Israel: An Illegitimate Settler-Colonial State and Hit Man for Imperialism
Israel is a Zionist, settler-colonial state built on the terrorist expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. Israel has, from its founding to the present day, subjected the Palestinian people to repeated massacres and daily humiliation and brutality. Prime Minister Netanyahu is on the hard-right edge of that political spectrum. He is notorious for unapologetically upholding Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and belligerently demanding that nobody interfere.
COMMUNISM: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW STAGE: A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (available in English, Arabic, and other languages)
Last summer’s barbaric military assault on Gaza was just one example. Israel, led by Netanyahu, unleashed a torrent of bombs and missiles, murdering more than 2,000 Palestinians, 500 of them children. Much of Gaza was reduced to rubble, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. And this was done to further punish and terrorize Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians who were already confined to what is in effect the world’s largest outdoor prison—cut off from contact with the outside world and the ability to live.
Netanyahu and Israel are increasingly exposed and isolated around the world. And they’ve been sharply at odds with the Obama administration over key issues. For these and other reasons (including elements of disaffection among Israeli voters), many observers predicted that Netanyahu would be defeated by a coalition of less virulent political parties. This was clearly the preference of Obama and West European powers. They depend on Israel as a key ally and enforcer in the Middle East, but have growing differences with Israel. And they are increasingly uncomfortable with the regional and global political fallout that supporting Israel brings.
But Netanyahu wasn’t defeated. He and his Likud Party scored a resounding victory, winning 30 seats in Israel’s Parliament, 12 more than in the last election, and six more than its closest competitor. And Netanyahu didn’t win by becoming more “moderate,” just the opposite. Faced with the possibility of an election defeat, he went even further to the right and appealed to and called forward the ugliest, most fascist elements in Israel.
First, Netanyahu threw out stated U.S. and Israeli policy, and vowed there would never be a Palestinian state. Then he went on an openly racist rant warning right-wing Israelis that “Arabs” (Palestinian citizens of Israel*) were streaming to the polls “in droves,” threatening to steal the election.
For decades, the U.S. and Israel have maintained two fictions. First, that Israel is a democratic state—the only one in the Middle East—in which all of its citizens are equal. Second, that Israel is sincerely trying to satisfy the national aspirations of the Palestinian people by negotiating with them to create a separate Palestinian state—the so-called “two-state solution.”
The two-state solution has never been about anything but a promise of a surrounded, oppressed micro-state, utterly dependent on Israel and defenseless in the face of Israeli violence. And Israeli democracy has been and is a form through which the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine takes place. But it’s a big deal that Netanyahu has now publicly and openly rejected these longtime legitimizing myths. He was elected on a campaign and platform that in effect denies Palestinians a voice in the democratic process in Israel and the right to any form of statehood. This amounts to a call for Israel to be put on a more openly fascist, genocidal, and warlike footing. Miko Peled, a progressive critic of Zionism, called Netanyahu’s election a declaration of “war on Palestinians everywhere,” and “a mandate for the Israeli government to murder Palestinians.”
No one can say exactly what the reverberations from all this could be, but they could be far-reaching and profound—in Israel, regionally, and globally. Netanyahu’s election could be a major blow to any remaining sense of Israel’s legitimacy even for some within Israel and for many, many people around the world. It could spark struggles and upheavals in Palestine. It could also have serious and unpredictable political consequences in Europe, and lead to much more dramatic disaffection in the U.S.—among liberal Jews and especially among students. Such developments might propel even more powerful and energetic anti-occupation/boycott-divestment campaigns on campuses in the U.S. and worldwide (where such movements are a major and positive force).
All this could be part of more deeply cracking open the overall political-ideological terrain and atmosphere. What has seemed to be a horrific yet permanent situation may now be seen by many as breaking down, and not necessarily so permanent.
Missing from the ‘Debate’ Over Iran: the Interests of Humanity!
Israel is a key linchpin in the imperialist world order. So it is a big deal that the legitimacy and credibility of this whole sordid setup could end up being called into question for many, many more people by Israel’s more openly genocidal posture. And that “turn to the right” in Israel is one product of intensifying and intractable contradictions confronting global imperialism on many different fronts.
A Host of Conflicts and Contradictions
This intensified tension between the U.S. and Israel is happening when the U.S. rulers face a host of other contradictions at home and around the world. Among other challenges, instability and in some places chaos is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa where reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like ISIS have made big advances. Just this past week, the U.S. was forced to withdraw its military forces from Yemen. And this is all mixed in with growing challenges to U.S. global hegemony (domination) from rival oppressive powers including Russia and China. The “individual choices” made by political figures like Netanyahu interact with this complex and chaotic political landscape, again—in this case—with consequences yet to unfold and emerge.
The Obama administration reacted very sharply to Netanyahu’s election victory, condemning his campaign positions and warning that the U.S. may now shift its position on Palestinian statehood in the UN—against Israeli wishes. In an interview with the Huffington Post (March 21, 2015), Obama warned that Netanyahu’s renunciation of the two-state solution was forcing the U.S. to “evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region.” Intersecting with all these challenges to the U.S. empire and tensions with Israel are U.S. moves to integrate Iran into its networks of oppression in some form, and Israel’s adamant opposition to these moves (see “Missing from the ‘Debate’ over Iran: the Interests of Humanity!” at revcom.us). And there are real differences between Obama and Netanyahu over how to handle the Palestinian issue. All these conflicts boil down to disagreement over how—not whether!—to enforce domination of the peoples in the Middle East.
To be clear, the U.S. at this point is not “cutting off Israel.” Obama has made clear that the billions of dollars in U.S. aid that have made Israel the most powerful military in the region will still flow. But when possible forces of “chaos” have been released, neither Obama, nor Netanyahu, nor any single actor can predict everything they will and won’t do, all the consequences of their actions, or where things will go. Things are not under the control of any single force, as the recent eruption of U.S.-Israeli tensions, in response to the many contradictions each faces, shows.
The potential for upheaval in all this is heightened by the sharp conflicts between Obama (and those who support him) on the one hand, and the Republican Party on the other. The Republicans invited Netanyahu to address Congress and to criticize Obama’s effort to make an agreement with Iran over Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear power. It is virtually unprecedented for competing groups of rulers in the U.S. to invite a foreign leader into the middle of a conflict they are having over foreign policy! That they would do this shows, first, how high-stakes the disagreements over how best to dominate the Middle East are; and second, how these conflicts mix into a whole matrix of contradictions that these rulers have over how to “navigate” imperialist interests at a time of great upheaval and challenge.
In the face of these serious challenges, the U.S. and/or Israel may well feel compelled to make extreme moves that would bring even more death, destruction, and suffering to the region. The current situation is extremely ominous for the Palestinian people. It’s hard to imagine how—after decades of brutal military occupation and wars—things could get worse. Right now, to take one example, children in Gaza are still living in rubble from last summer’s Israeli blitzkrieg... and are freezing to death! Yet given the situation in Israel, occupied Palestine, and the region, Netanyahu’s election and repudiation of even a token Palestinian micro-state points toward even more openly genocidal atrocities being carried out by Israel.
It is crucial during this period that revolutionaries, as well as all people with a basic sense of justice, be alert to and take initiative to combat further Israeli or U.S. outrages. This is particularly true on the campuses, but out in the broader society as well: as the “5 Stops” palm card puts it, “STOP Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation and Crimes Against Humanity!” The need to make that real will likely be very acute in the coming period.
But there is another level as well. None of the current “alternatives”—neither Western imperialism nor Islamic fundamentalism in any of their forms—can bring an end to the one of the greatest and most blatant crimes of the last 100 years: the ethnic cleansing, suppression, and genocide against the Palestinian people. Nor do any of the forces in the field—the U.S., the European powers, Russia or China, Iran, ISIS—have any answers to the horrors the people of the region as a whole are up against. They do not offer a way out for people.
There is a crying need to bring forward another way! The article “Missing from the ‘Debate’ over Iran: the Interests of Humanity!” makes the point that people in the Middle East and beyond “never stopped struggling against oppression. But what they lacked, or what they have lacked in sufficient strength, was a leadership that had a vision and strategy to unite all positive factors and really break through to bring forward societies that liberate people, with the aim of a world without oppression of any kind.” And that article points to the potential when there is that kind of leadership, that “represents the interests of the most oppressed and exploited people in society, those who, as a class of people, have no stake in any oppression. Such a force can bring forward and give full play to positive factors for revolution in a way no other can, including very importantly unleashing the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution. Such a force can unite very broadly, while continually focusing the struggle against the enforcers of exploitation and oppression.” The force that can play this role is a genuine revolutionary communist party based in Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. (To learn about and connect with Bob Avakian and the new synthesis, get into the material at revcom.us/avakian,) Imagine what a difference a party like that would make in the current situation, and in the range of possibilities that might arise.
* As a matter of policy, Israeli officials refuse to refer to Palestinian people who are survivors of the ethnic cleansing of their land as Palestinians. Instead, Israeli officials use the term “Arabs” (a more general ethnic category that includes Palestinians). This is a cultural and ideological component of Israel’s ongoing genocide—denying the existence of the Palestinian people.[back]
12 Years After the U.S. Invasion of Iraq—Legacy of Death, Torture, Displacement, and Horror
March 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Twelve years ago—on March 19-20, 2003—the U.S. invaded Iraq, overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime, and then occupied the country for the next eight and a half years. The Bush regime claimed the U.S. went to war to eliminate “weapons of mass destruction.” That was a bald-faced lie to justify a war for greater empire. Barack Obama said the U.S. military had given “Iraqis an opportunity to claim their own future.” The reality is that the U.S. war and its aftermath have brought nothing but immense death, suffering, and horror to the people of Iraq.
U.S. Marines walk past bodies of people killed in the U.S. assault on Fallujah, Iraq, 2004. AP photo.
Iraqis killed as a result of the U.S. war, directly or indirectly (due to destruction and disruption of war, including to water and power systems, health care, and food production): 655,000 according to a 2006 study by the British medical journal The Lancet. Current estimate of Iraqi deaths: 1.2 to 1.4 million. Iraqis injured: 4.2 million. (See warisacrime.org/iraq)
A house destroyed by a U.S. airstrike in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. Four houses were hit and five people seriously injured. AP photo.
The U.S. war and occupation forced 4.5 million Iraqis from their homes.
A prisoner being abused in Abu Ghraib prison. AP photo
The U.S. military tortured and sexually degraded and abused thousands of Iraqi prisoners. At Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. troops stripped prisoners naked and terrorized them with dogs. No U.S. government or military official has been charged, much less convicted, for the torture they oversaw and commanded.
Far from “liberating” women, the U.S. war intensified the oppression of women in Iraq. Two million Iraqi women were widowed over the course of more than two decades of U.S. intervention, invasion, occupation, and U.S.--instigated wars, with many forced into prostitution. The U.S.-backed regime replaced the secular constitution with one based on Sharia (Islamic religious law) with separate, unequal status for women. There has been a rise in violence against women, including “honor killings” and forced veiling.
Screenshots from the Collateral Murder video, one of the documents Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning was accused of leaking. The video shows American soldiers in an Apache helicopter in Baghdad, 2007, firing on and killing 12 Iraqi civilians.
One of the many war crimes carried out by U.S. troops was a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad when U.S. troops gunned down Iraqi civilians, journalists, and passers-by who tried to help the wounded and dying. The video of this massacre was one of the files that Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), a U.S. Army private, released to WikiLeaks. Manning was convicted in a military trial and outrageously sentenced to 35 years in prison for her courageous act.
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
Parents of Disappeared Students Bring Struggle to the U.S.
March 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On September 26, 2014, buses carrying students from the Ayotzinapa—a teacher training college in Mexico’s southwest state of Guerrero—were ambushed and fired upon by police. Three students and three passersby were shot dead and dozens wounded on the spot, and 43 students were taken away in patrol cars, never to be seen since. Protests have wracked Mexico ever since. (For the story of the massacre and background to the protests, see “Mexico Burns, U.S. Needs to Feel the Heat.”)
March 21, 2015: Ángel Neri de la Cruz, one of the Ayotzinapa students who survived the Guerrero massacre, speaks in Los Angeles.
In mid-March family members of 43 “disappeared”—along with two students who escaped this bloody massacre—began three caravans with stops in more than 40 major U.S. cities in over 20 states to tell their story and take their demands to an international audience, including the huge Mexican immigrant population in the U.S. The caravans plan to come together in Washington, DC, and then go to the UN in New York City.
The caravans are holding press conferences; speaking on college and high school campuses; and to groupings of people and organizations in the communities.
In Los Angeles, at a cultural and speaking event held at the headquarters of the United Teachers, Los Angeles, one of the surviving students—Ángel Neri de la Cruz, 19—told his story. On September 26, he was in one of several buses the students had commandeered—a usual practice—to get them back to their teachers college in Ayotzinapa, after fundraising in the city of Iguala. The police and other people attacked the buses—three students and three passersby were killed and 25 more were wounded. Ángel was able to escape; the police then turned 43 more students over to a local drug gang. They have never been heard from since that day.
One of the main demands of the caravana is for the continued investigation of the events of September 26 and since, and the return of the missing students. The Mexican government claims that the mayor of Iguala and his wife ordered the police to carry out this attack and that the surviving students were turned over to the gang Guerreros Unidos, which killed them, burned their bodies, and threw the remains in a river. The case is now declared closed. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto declared that it was time for the parents to “get over it”. However, the government’s case has always been fraught with wild contradictions, tortured witnesses, lies and coverups. Independent journalists have documented explicit involvement of the federal government on the night of the massacre and since, yet there has never been an official response to this investigation.
According to Caravana 43 organizers: “The main aim is to provide an international forum for the parents who have lost their children in a government of systemic violence and impunity. Anther important goal of the caravana is to shed light on U.S. foreign policy, specifically the Mérida Initiative and its connection to socioeconomic conditions and violence in Mexico.” The Mérida Initiative, also known as Plan México, has provided $2.3 billion to the Mexican military and police forces in the name of a war on drugs. Since the start of this U.S.-orchestrated drug war in 2006, more than 100,000 people have been killed, and over 25,000 disappeared. The Ayotzinapa solidarity movement has raised the demand for the U.S. government to “halt U.S. military support to Mexico.”
It is very significant that the caravana has focused on bringing the issue of the disappearance of the students to people in the U.S., and especially to students and youth. What is often overlooked (or deliberately covered up) in the criticism of the open corruption and repression by the Mexican government is that the U.S. imperialists are involved up to their necks in the funding and training of the Mexican security forces.
This caravana has just begun, and its events and programs are already drawing large crowds and getting media coverage. On the afternoon of March 22, people filled the streets in a march to the Mexican consulate in downtown Los Angeles. Organizers said that a March 20 event at Cal State Northridge attracted so many students a second session had to be arranged.
Another significant aspect of the caravana is that the participants and the parents of the disappeared students have insisted that the campaign is not connected to any political party in Mexico. Also, the caravaners are calling on Mexican citizens in the U.S. to not vote in the coming elections in Mexico. In fact, in Mexico, many people in the struggle for justice for the 43 students are calling to boycott elections in Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of people from broad social sectors in Mexico have taken part in this struggle, and millions have been affected. It has given heart to people on the bottom of society, like the peasant and indigenous communities where these students are from, but also marginalized urban communities, where the combined violence of the armed thugs of the drug cartels and the security forces has been a secret scourge for many years. It’s urgent that people in the U.S. take this struggle up as their own. The demands of this caravana should be supported, and the exposure of the bloody hand of the U.S. should be deepened and spread. “That’s our blood down there!”
Stay tuned to revcom.us for ongoing coverage of the caravan and the struggle for justice for the 43 students.
A Month of Abuse and Death Inflicted on Immigrants
March 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Relentless exploitation and brutal repression of immigrants is built deeply right into this capitalist-imperialist system. The following are just some of the most outrageous examples of the deadly, life-strangling abuse inflicted on immigrants in the past month.
Erika Zambrano at a rally February 11, with photo of her husband, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who was killed by police. AP photo
February 10: Antonio Zambrano-Montes, shot at 17 times, struck by five or six bullets, and killed by police in Pasco, Washington.
February 20: Ruben Garcia Villalpando, gunned down by police in Grapevine, Texas, after he had been pulled over for a supposed traffic violation. Both Zambrano-Montes and Villalpando were unarmed.
February 20: Some 2,000 men at the brutally run Willacy County Correctional Center in South Texas, near the Mexico border, rebelled against abusive, degrading, filthy, and inhumane conditions. To bring attention to their treatment, they set fire to two of the large tents that function as their barracks. Most of the prisoners were from areas far from South Texas, and most were there for nonviolent “crimes,” especially “illegal entry” to the U.S. The authorities responded in full force, shut down the prison, and scattered the inmates to other prisons across the country—they refuse to tell the prisoners’ families, friends, or attorneys where.
March 4: The U.S. Border Patrol reported that the bodies of 55 immigrants have been found in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas since October 2014. That does not include the 15 bodies of drowning victims pulled out of the Rio Grande River. The border these immigrants died trying to cross is one of the most heavily militarized patches of terrain in the world, all of it aimed at them.
Bob Avakian responds to reactionary fools who ask, "If this country is so terrible, why do people come here..." A clip from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk given in 2003.
March 9: Over a few days in early March, 2,059 immigrants were arrested nationwide by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in “Operation Cross Check.” The people arrested are either being deported quickly or sent before a U.S. Attorney for further criminal charges, to be deported when they’ve finished their sentences. The Obama administration says the people arrested are the “worst of the worst.” In fact, most of those arrested had never been convicted or even charged with violent crimes; the most common charges were illegal entry into the U.S. and DUI.
Criminalizing immigrant, and immigration is a hallmark of the Obama administration. Being in this country without “papers” is not, in fact, a crime, and until the Obama years people arrested trying to cross the border were not charged with any criminal offense. But the real question is: Who are the real criminals? Desperate people impoverished by a system that has devastated and ransacked their homelands, or the overlords who profit from that system and their heavily armed and brutal military, police, and Border Patrol who enforce it? (See the video of Bob Avakian, “Why do people come here from all over the world?”)
All attacks on immigrants must stop—all sections of the people, immigrant and non-immigrant alike—need to build resistance to the attacks on immigrants as a key component of the massive outpourings on April 14.
STOP the Attacks
A protracted, bitter fight over how to respond to what the leaders of this system see as an “immigration crisis” has been underway in Washington. Neither Obama nor his Republican opponents are remotely concerned with the well-being of the masses of immigrants. Both sides want deepened repression and intensified government control of immigrants. But they differ over how best to go about it. (For more on this, read the Revolution article, “Obama’s Immigration Moves, and the Need for Increased Resistance.”)
Meanwhile, the machinery of repression is relentless; lives of immigrants continue to be destroyed by this system and its enforcers at the border, its immigration prisons, and murdering police. The lives of millions of people hang in the balance; people’s hopes are raised one week, only to be dashed the next.
But the rulers of this society have a big problem. There is no solution within their system to what they see as their “immigration problem.” In fact, this “problem” is deeply embedded in the system of capitalism-imperialism. This system needs an enormous number of heavily exploited immigrants to function properly and to yield profits to the capitalists.
In the past 20 years or so, that need of the capitalists has grown enormously. This is one of the main reasons that the immigrant population of the U.S. has soared, and has expanded beyond towns and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border and in the Southwest. Places like De Queen, Arkansas, Dodge City, Kansas, Pasco, Washington, and dozens of others across the country have majority Latino populations now, most of these immigrants from Mexico and Central America and their children.
The more the system requires immigrants to maximize its overall profitability and functioning, the more capitalists and their enforcers are driven to repress all immigrants. The rulers of this system, represented by both Democrats and Republicans, fear immigrants because, as Revolution wrote last December, they can contribute to “potential dissolution of a U.S. social cohesion grounded in white supremacy, male supremacy, repression of immigrants, and ‘English Only.’ To put it another way, when it comes to immigrants, the capitalists ‘can’t live with ’em, can't live without ’em.’”
Determined resistance to the brutal police state assaults on immigrants needs to be an important component of the outpourings on April 14. Make plans now to mobilize immigrants and others to make April 1 a day of targeting the attacks on immigrants as part of building up to #ShutDownA14, as called for at the national meeting of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. Let the Stop Mass Incarceration Network know what the plans are.
And on A14—everywhere, people need to act to STOP the Demonization, Criminalization, and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!
Interview with High School Student Organizing in the South for #ShutDownA14
"It's so liberating because of the possibility of freedom and hope... I will be walking out A14!"
March 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is an interview conducted by revcom.us/Revolution with a high school student from the South who is taking responsibility for organizing students in her city to walk out as part of the nationwide Shut Down called for April 14. For a while, she was the only person in her area to take up #ShutDownA14, but by working with the national Student and Youth Network of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and members of the Revolution Club in other cities and taking the call for #ShutDownA14 very broadly, she has been able to build growing momentum and plans for #ShutDownA14.
Student: First off, let me give you a little background on myself. I decided to act when the Ferguson police officer wasn’t indicted for Mike Brown’s killing. After that I was like, wow, I’m gonna travel to New York and I traveled to New York on a Greyhound. I got involved with a demonstration that I found online somewhere, and we began to march to Times Square, but I didn’t want it to end there. I didn’t understand why this young man’s life was stolen or taken away. I can just imagine this young man with his hands up saying, “Don’t shoot.”
Building for A14 in other parts of the country
After, I got linked up with [the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and the movement for revolution]. I got linked up with these people and they were very eager and happy to help me out. As I started doing more work with these people, they began to open up my eyes about other things I’ve always had questions about, but I just didn’t have the answers to. They told me books to read and gave me advice. It helped me see other things that I didn’t know were there because I always had the question: Why is there so much hate amongst my community? Why has my race been oppressed generations upon generations? Why these people—the police—killing? I was like NO this is very systematic on how this is all set up. And I looked back at the leaders like the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, MLK and I compared and contrasted the way they work and honestly the system just continues to do this and it’s like they do this systematically and it’s much deeper. I decided that I wanted to do something about it, because I was needed to take a stand.
How could I continue to live like this?
Get Organized!
Connect now with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network
Revolution: You’ve recently taken responsibility for mobilizing your campus, as well as students/youth across the country, for #ShutDownA14. Can you describe what that’s been like?
Student: It’s been fun. But, it’s like you run into things once you show that you’re really serious. You run into support and you run into people who previously supported you but no longer do—they become apprehensive because they can’t make sense of it or say maybe you shouldn’t walk out. I’ve run into support of people saying, “I want to read your newspaper [Revolution],” or, “I want to you in my debate team.” And they want to learn more...
It’s so liberating because of the possibility of freedom and hope. I love the possibility. It feels good to know that you’re so solid in these beliefs with these morals and ideas—you believe them so much and have so much concrete evidence that your character changes.
"We went to a thrift store and got a sheet, went to Daily Dollar and bought some spray paint and hung it on a cemetery fence by the freeway near my school. "
I’ve come up with PowerPoints (pictures/graphics), handed out stickers (with the #ShutDownA14 logo), created a sign-up sheet. I’m planning a fundraiser with some cupcakes. I did a banner drop “#ShutDownA14 End Police Brutality. End Police Murder” with three of my friends. We went to a thrift store and got a sheet, went to Daily Dollar and bought some spray paint and hung it on a cemetery fence by the freeway near my school. I’ve done five classroom presentations on an introduction to mass incarceration and passed out #ShutDownA14 stickers. It’s going to be vibrations like no other.
Students elsewhere in the country raise their voices calling for #ShutDownA14
Revolution: The full title for #ShutDownA14 is “Stop Business As Usual! We Will Not Go Back! No School! No Work! Say No More to the System Giving a Green Light to Killer Cops!” What do you think that day needs to look like specifically at high schools and college campuses?
Student:Specifically at high schools and college campuses we need to go to school and be there, including the students who usually ditch. Yes! I have a responsibility! I will be walking out! Wearing all black and shouting out the names of the people killed by the police. Have bands marching out! Letting them know what’s going on. That shit speaks volumes!
Revolution: You’re getting a shipment of one thousand stickers for #ShutDownA14. What do you plan to do with them? And, what are you calling on students to do on your campus?
Building for A14 in other parts of the country
Student: For my campus I’m going to gather everyone who said they’d like to join. I’m going to continue doing classroom presentations. I’m going to speak more to how this is a slow genocide as part of building for the shutdown. I will have a group meeting at my school on Wednesday. I’m going to post them randomly in different places, pass them out and have people say why they’re serious to act on what’s going on.
Revolution: You’ve participated in weekly student Stop Mass Incarceration conference calls. What has that been like? And, why should others join the conference call?
Student:The conference calls have been great, very conducive. They allow you to understand what’s going on in other areas of the country. I continue to join these conference calls because they are informative and give me more security—especially when you feel like backing out. They’re a sense of leadership and people who care about the same things I do. It will clarify things you weren’t so sure about. It gives ideas, you’re able to elaborate and reflect off the things you’ve come up with.
The other day I got to speak in a college African American Literature class of about 25 students. They had previously watched the trailer to the upcoming film of Cornel West and Bob Avakian's historic Dialogue on Revolution and Religion to be premiered on March 28. My plan was to build upon that, urging students to get tickets to be at Schomburg Center when the film premieres, and to win them to not only take part in – but to become organizers for – #ShutDownA14.
My presentation was straightforward: Two important things are coming up, both of which are about how we get free.
As I got into the importance of the upcoming film premiere, I unfolded the Revolution newspaper centerfold of the Stolen Lives – people killed by police. Real people are being gunned down every single day by police, this is what BA and CW are talking about and grappling with how to end when they talk about revolution – this and so much more: the abuse and degradation of women, the destruction of the environment, the imperialist wars and torture, the round ups of immigrants, the putrid me-first culture and so much more. It's a really big deal that Bob Avakian (BA) has developed a strategy to bring this system down, a vision and plan for a new system and society, and is actively leading a Party to prepare for this revolution. And it is a profoundly special and historic thing to see him in deep engagement with Cornel West, a revolutionary Christian and courageous freedom fighter, over the most pressing questions of our time, including the role of religion in the fight for emancipation. And for all this to be filled with love, mutual respect, humor, and an honest airing of real differences. Students need to be in the house with others for this premiere.
Before speaking directly to April 14, I asked students to raise their hands if they'd been part of the protests last year against police murder. About five did. Next, I asked students who thought the protests had been righteous to raise their hands. Nearly everyone did. “It's very important that they stood up, isn't it?” I said, indicating the smaller number who had actually taken to the streets, “They were speaking for all of you, weren't they?” The other students nodded their heads. “And they were speaking for millions more. We should really commend them, they did something that really made a huge difference – for those on the bottom who suffer this brutality every day, letting them know they are not alone... for those who didn't know or didn't want to know how bad this is, waking them up... and for people all over the world to see the reality of this country and the fact that people here would dare to stand up against the brutality of this state... this really mattered.” I led the room in giving a round of applause to those who had protested.
The mood in the room shifted palpably. People began to feel more together, and those who had protested sat up a little taller. I asked them how it felt to be in the streets. A young Black woman started, “It was so emotional. I didn't know it would be that emotional and I didn't even notice how far I walked; I was just carried along by the energy. There were so many different kinds of people there, too. White people, old people, Black people... just a lot of diversity like I've never seen all together.”
A second Black woman chimed, “Remember the big protest of the Christmas tree lighting? I was at that. Actually, I had gone to the lighting... but when the protest came up I thought 'that is so much better' so I went with them. I had never done that before and then I was in the street yelling.” Not long after that, she took part in a speak-out on her campus, “I didn't even know I had anything to say but I went up and all this passion came out of me,” she put both hands on her heart and expressed surprise, “I didn't even know it was in there.”
In a real way, some of the same dynamic she was describing from the speak-out was taking hold in the room. People had looked around and seen how many others felt the same way they did, and each person who spoke seemed to draw from and add to the strength and determination of others. People talked about the deep impact the protests had had on them and, throughout, people kept staring at and referencing the Stolen Lives centerfold (which I held up throughout the entire discussion).
A young Latina said, “My heart breaks when I look at that poster. My brothers, my father look like those people. My friends do. That could be me.” Another young Black woman said, referencing some of my remarks, “I never heard anyone call it genocide before, but it's true. Wow. How long before they just line us all up and shoot us?”
After one student talked about having protested the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who murdered Trayvon Martin, I interjected, “People are always being told that what they do doesn't make a difference, but she protested for Trayvon and I firmly believe that had thousands of people not stood up for Trayvon the way she did, it is very unlikely that the defiance and outpourings in Ferguson and nationwide would have been so powerful and they wouldn't have spread so far. Now, we have to build on all of that and take things even further!”
The professor was clearly moved by the discussion unfolding and indicated that he would give us substantially more time than we had planned for, so we drew out more questions and got students wrestling with each other over both the tremendous importance of fighting back right now and the importance of getting tickets to and learning from BA and CW so that our fight can actually succeed in putting an end to all this madness and oppression.
Folks raised questions about communism, the strategy for revolution, the culture, and more. With each question I would give a brief indication of an answer, but mainly appreciate and deepen the question and bring alive the importance of hearing BA and CW get into those questions and more. As part of responding to apprehension several folks raised about communism, I paraphrased BA from the Dialogue saying that learning about communism in this society – including even in so-called progressive academia – is a lot like learning the history of slavery and the Civil War from Confederate leaders or from something like Gone With the Wind. Students laughed in recognition of the analogy and we dug into this a bit.
Another big question that emerged powerfully was whether it is really possible to bring about real and lasting liberation. “This system has been destroying Black people for so long, hundreds of years, it’s hard to believe that if we fight we can do any better than people before us. It seems like it's going to take hundreds more years to stop it.”
We spent some time getting into the fact that this system is actually facing enormous challenges right now and vulnerability – internationally it is facing major challenges to its global domination and within the country there are major fault lines that could open up even wider around the role of women, the war on immigrants, the destruction of the environment, and most profoundly their very program of genocide, mass incarceration and police murder against Black and Brown people. The question is a) whether people will stand up and push on these contradictions – in particular the question right now of police murder – and through doing so prepare the ground, prepare the people, and prepare the leadership and organization for an actual revolution, and b) whether we will take advantage of the tremendous advances that have been made by BA and the Revolutionary Communist Party he leads which actually has a strategy so we can win. This is something that even the best of previous generations of freedom fighters did not yet have and it can make all the difference. Again, the tremendous importance of both of the big events coming up – and the way they can strengthen each other.
Throughout all of this, and the broader discussion that unfolded, I was very mindful of the clock. It was essential to save enough time to concretely organize people to act – even as this had been a theme throughout every aspect of the discussion.
I returned us to the current crossroads and raised the Stolen Lives poster up higher: “Even after all the protests... all the arrests... all the investigations that went nowhere... the police are still killing Black and Brown youth in every city and town of America – and getting away with it! We have to take the resistance to a whole higher level, shutting down all of business as usual and bringing America to a halt. The day to do that is A14.” I asked them, “Who here knows that what I am saying is true?”
Most people raised their hands. I told them to look around, to really take in how many others felt as they did. Then I made the point that history is not made by general sentiment, there have to be those who are willing to lead. There have to be some students in this room right now who step forward and say we will make this happen. “Who is willing to do that?”
Six students kept their hands in the air. A couple did so boldly, most of them were more timid. “You are going to have to do better than that,” the students all laughed as I said this. “Put your hands up like you mean it, like you are proud. You should be proud for taking this stand. Lives depend on it!” They raised their hands more firmly and again I led the room to give them a round of applause. I also told them to look around, they were going to have to get to know each other and work together. Then, I asked a young woman who had been most vocal to get everyone else's phone number and to agree to call them all up and organize them. In this way, they each not only made a personal pledge to take up this organizing, but they did so in front of each other – making a collective commitment and feeling the collective backing.
We got the names and numbers and emails for everyone who was interested in coming to the premiere as well as everyone who was interested in A14 and the revolution more broadly, and concluded with a final challenge. As Cornel West said in the film trailer, “We are living in a unique historical moment.” A lot of people in this room know some things about what is right and wrong right now, in this age of genocide and police murder. But what people in this room decide to do – what they decide to learn about and fight for and what they decide to act on and mobilize others around – will make all the difference. We have a tremendous resource in the leadership and experience of BA and the RCP and the broader movement for revolution, and we will be there for you. Our website www.revcom.us is an incredible resource you should go to every day and we will be out here fighting alongside you with everything we've got. But history is hinging right now on whether new people, including especially students and young people, step forward and take responsibility for all of this together with us. Don't be someone who sits back and just lets all this horror happen, be part of standing up and doing something truly heroic, something that will truly matter. Be part of these two big things coming up and then, in just a month, let's look out and see the even greater possibilities – the even greater strength and unity and understanding of the people, the even greater illegitimacy of the system in the eyes of millions, the even greater prospects for an actual revolution – that we have carved out together. And then, let’s go from there.
People Must Be Inspired, Mobilized and Organized, Urgently, for #ShutDownA14!
March 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revcom.us/Revolution has put out three reasons why EVERYONE who cannot tolerate the epidemic of murder by police should take part in massive actions all over the country set for April 14—actions that have been called to shut things down all over the country, bringing the “normal operation” of things to a halt through mass political mobilization and action:
These actions will make it absolutely clear that these unpunished murders by police must STOP—and that the whole genocidal agenda that they are part of must be reversed!
These actions will let the world know that this is not just a problem in Ferguson, Missouri, or Madison or Oakland or any of the other places in the headlines day after day. These actions will make clear that this is the reality of America. That this is not a few bad apples or bad departments, this is systemic! And it will be fought that way.
Most of all: these actions will sound a loud call to millions, here and around the world, that there are peopledetermined to STOP this... It will make it clear that there are people—and there is a movement—determined to fight for a future where our youth are not cast off, locked down, warehoused, routinely abused and even murdered—a future where they can instead live with their humanity fully recognized. A movement determined to call on, inspire, and organize many, many others to join in this battle. These actions will say to the millions now agonizing to come out and be part of changing the future!
On college campuses this means that on April 14, the whole campus must be confronted with this reality, it means that this is the topic that students and faculty are debating and being compelled to say where they stand. No business as usual. This might be through sit-ins, die-ins, classes canceled, walking out en masse—there are many forms this can take. Then students would join with others in their area to impact society as a whole.
For this to happen, revolutionaries and freedom fighters everywhere must wage a systematic and concerted fight to organize people and to bring forward waves of new leaders who will also take responsibility for organizing others.
#ShutDownA14 must become known everywhere! We need to truly saturate the campuses with word of this—literally tens of thousands of palm cards on a single major university, hundreds of posters, thousands of stickers announcing the day. The goal of this is not merely to let people know about #ShutDownA14, but to make a powerful statement through the sheer volume and tenacity of the efforts to promote this day. The aim should be to create a situation where both the call for #ShutDownA14 and the tremendous amount of determined and creative promotion of #ShutDownA14 become a widespread topic of conversation. This is not only a great way to meet tons of new people, but it is also a great way to involve new people. One of the easiest and most valuable first steps that students and others can take is to slide a flier under every door in their dorm, make “table tents” for the cafeteria tables, hang posters, and spread the word through social media. And, the more this is seen everywhere—and especially the more that hundreds of students are taking up and wearing the stickers themselves and seeing their peers spread this on social media—the more emboldened and less alone those who truly want to Shut It Down will be.
2. People Must Be Compelled to Confront the True Stakes of the Epidemic of Police Murder
In broad outreach and in talking with folks we have met in recent months, we must put before people the full scope and horror of the epidemic of police murder and brutality in ways that compel them to feel the need to act.
Even if you are talking to someone you met at a protest, or someone who considers themselves “in the know” about this—take a minute to get them to really live inside the magnitude and scale of the problem. The Stolen Lives poster (PDF for printing; JPG for web) does this. Get these out and get these up, everywhere. They speak very powerfully for themselves.
3. People Need to Know that Their Actions Will Count
Everyone should see the three reasons we started this out with. Print out the PDF of this and get it around. Students, and middle-class people generally, need to hear from people on the bottom how much their actions mean to them—get out the letter from the former prisoner to let them know. People on the bottom have to understand the powerful role that they can play—make sure that they see this letter.
4. Everyone Who Has Expressed Interest Must Be Systematically Reached, Challenged, and Organized!
On this foundation of confronting the real stakes, set the bar where it needs to be—an actual Shutdown on April 14—and challenge and organize students to take responsibility for organizing this on their campus.
It’s great that a lot of people respond positively to hearing about #ShutDownA14, but right now what is urgently needed is for individuals and clusters of people to step forward and take responsibility for shutting down their campuses on A14. They have to not only decide to act themselves, but dare to lead and organize hundreds—and even thousands—of others. They need to pull together a crew that can work together, plan their actions for their campus, and then reach out to all those they can reach to get involved. We must work to give people the understanding, confidence, the concrete steps, and yes—the push—they need to rise to this historic challenge. And very quickly we need to win students to step forward to do this on dozens of campuses—and soon hundreds of campuses—around the country.
Without this, the broad sentiment that exists will not be galvanized. Instead, the moment will pass, these positive sentiments will be submerged once again in despair and apathy, and the police will go on killing and killing and killing, and the rivers of tears of Black and brown parents will continue to flow.
In doing this, it is important to systematically call everyone who has been met in the last six months. On the basis of bringing alive the true stakes, people must be given concrete ways to organize for #ShutDownA14. People should be directly asked, “What are you going to do to make Shut It Down on A14 happen?” People should be given stacks of stickers, posters, and palm cards on the spot so they can begin reaching out. And they should be able to stay in touch with others who are organizing for A14.
5. Students Who Step Forward Must Be Connected with Others Fighting for #ShutDownA14 and Given Ongoing Support and Leadership
Students raise their voices calling for #ShutDownA14
Get Organized!
Connect now with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network
When students and other young people step forward and express the desire to fight for #ShutDownA14, they need to be given the leadership and collectivity they need to follow through. This includes everything from having thousands of palm cards, stickers, and posters, to having someone to call when they run into questions they can’t answer, to having real collectivity with other students who are also stepping forward in new ways to change history on #ShutDownA14.
In a moment like this, one or two determined students can lead something truly monumental, but they cannot do it all alone. They need to see on social media photos and YouTubes of others their age across the country who are fighting for the same thing. They need to see experiences summed up on www.revcom.us as well as polemics that take on all the different things they will be hit with. They need to be able to go to the Stop Mass Incarceration website to find materials, to see what’s going on and what is planned, and to join into all this. They need to be getting into the bigger questions of where all this oppression comes from and what it will take to end it for good. And they need to have the ways to connect with—and learn from and enrich—others like them who are stepping up on other campuses.
In addition to revcom.us and and stopmassincarcertion.net, one important form for people to connect with each other around the country and take collective responsibility for #ShutDownA14 is the national student and youth organizers’ Stop Mass Incarceration #ShutDownA14 conference calls. (Read an interview with a student who has been organizing at her school and taking part in the national conference calls.) Students everywhere who are stepping forward to be part of making #ShutDownA14 a success need to be mobilized to take part in these conference calls, every Friday afternoon, 2:30 p.m. PDT/4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EDT. (Email studentsyouthsmin@gmail.com for call-in details).
6. Last but not least, learn—and talk with others—about the roots of police murder of Black and Latino people, what must be done to end it, the different questions and controversies in the movement, and what this has to do with all the different forms of oppression and the struggles against them throughout the world.
This website—revcom.us—is a rich resource for analysis and discussion of WHY these outrages go on and what can be done about it. It’s also a place where big debates in the movement against murder by police and mass incarceration are gotten into, and where people analyze their experience in building this movement. For starters, check out the film clip from the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian over why these outrages keep happening, how they should be confronted, and what must be done.
Excerpts from an interview with Ardea Skybreak: On Attending the Dialogue Between Bob Avakian and Cornel West
"It was like there was magic in the air. It was one of the most hopeful things that I've seen in a very long time. I think it was historic in many different dimensions: in terms of the topic that was approached; the people who were involved in it, the two speakers; the moment in time. I felt like I was able to see a great demonstration of morality and conscience applied to dealing with the problems of humanity—that both speakers stood out this way."
On March 27, 2015, The Michael Slate Show will air this interview with Andy Zee, of Revolution Books and the co-director of the upcoming film, Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Film of the Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian and Annie Day, of The Bob Avakian Institute who also co-produced the film. They discuss the historic significance of this film and give a flavor of why people should come out across the country to theatrical premieres this Saturday, March 28 or watch it online at revcom.us.
» Students, Basic People, and the Revolution Club Mix It Up About "Why Are We Still Fighting for Justice in 2015"—Watching and Wrangling Over Excerpts of Revolution and Religion; A Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian Read more
The Dialogue audience was invited to write questions for the speakers. More than 200 questions were submitted. Here are two questions that Bob Avakian and Cornel West addressed—see more at "Questions from People."
"For many Black and Brown people who believe in Jesus Christ and rely on him for salvation, how do they square their religious faith, or can they square their religious faith, with a revolutionary mindset that does not look to heaven to fix problems on Earth, because many will not give up their God?"
"How in this world are we, the oppressed, to accomplish true revolution peacefully, when in reality, the powers-that-be have all the artillery to kill, while all we have are our voices and our fists? How do we compete? There's no 'win' in this picture for the oppressed, as I can see. Please shed some light on this."
Below and to the right are comments about the Dialogue sent to revcom.us. See more comments at "What People Said at the Dialogue." Send comments and thoughts to revolution.reports@yahoo.com. While we cannot post all comments, all of them are appreciated and forwarded to the Dialogue organizers.
Cornel West and Bob Avakian came together and can work together and fight against injustice, mass genocide and racial profiling against young Black men. They have their differences, but they can work together. I joined the Black Panther Party in 1968. We used to patrol the police who were harassing people. I was with Bobby Hutton when he was murdered by the police. You still have exploitation and being discriminated against today. It's still going on. I saw the trailer for the film and I want to see the rest of the film.
Terry Cotton, Black Panther Alumni
“We Need a Way Out!”
A small group of women who were formerly homeless and had lived on “Skid Row” in LA came together to watch the Trailer and the new clip, “Why Are We Still Fighting For Justice in 2015?.” This area is where the LAPD recently murdered Africa, an unarmed Black man, captured on video and seen on YouTube by 7 million people in the day after the brutal, cowardly murder. Two of them had never seen the Dialogue, nor heard either of the speakers before. They huddled around a smart phone to watch the Trailer and the clip—and were captivated by what they heard. Afterward they said:
They are both telling the truth. People from Skid Row need to hear this. I want to see the whole thing... In Skid Row you feel so trapped. People think of people there as drug addicts, but most people there are just down on their luck. There’s professionals there, intellectuals, women escaping abuse, people come from all over the country because they think California is better, but end up on Skid Row. They are coming for a better life, but get treated like animals. How can people get out of this madness? You are in a hole and you keep trying to get out, but the system keeps dragging you down. We need a way out!” The women made plans to saturate Skid Row and the more gentrified nearby downtown area with postcards and posters for the Dialogue Film Premiere.
“People Were Feeling It.”
...People the system says are the worst of the worst can change and be part of this. If you don’t get that part you are missing a big part of what BA’s speech is about.
When BA talked about how the world could be different in the “What If...” part of the speech, almost everybody in that section was in tears, including me. People were feeling it.
Challenge yourself, think about revolution, hear what two revolutionary thinkers are thinking in late 2014, what their thoughts are about revolution and building a post-capitalist society, and then challenge yourself to think you can get there any other way...
...Bob Avakian [is] probably familiar in talking about revolution and for taking the side of it, and you throw in religion, and obviously someone who’s a very declared atheist throughout his career, and then when religion is tossed on the table, along with revolution, it really becomes revolution and the condition of man. So there’s a deep philosophical component to this. And then the inverse of that is true. Cornel West having to respond in the same manner—deeply philosophically, but also the social critique and the vision of the future from Cornel West.
(Alan Minsky, Interim Program Director, KPFK Radio in Los Angeles)
(see full interview)
What I learned from the Dialogue is that we can change this whole damn system that’s guilty as hell. We certainly and most seriously need a revolution so our Black and Latino kids can rise up and be a part of our country instead of ending up dead or locked up because they are separating our families.
(Woman from Ferguson, Missouri who attended the Dialogue)
Right out of the gate, boom, BA went after religion! I thought, Oh no, he’s going to go there... I really respect him because he is not going to compromise, and I can see why Cornel really respects him, too. I can’t say I agree with all of what he says, but this guy is really honest.
(Latino professor)
“Prophetic elders with breadth, stature and conviction.”
It was great and very powerful. I want to highlight both of them, Cornel West and Bob Avakian. They were able to agree and disagree. They are both prophetic elders and I got a sense of their breadth and stature and conviction and how that all meshes with what’s happening, particularly to what’s happening in light of the nationwide protest that jumped off in the wake of Ferguson.
(Activist/Writer/Poet, after viewing the Trailer for the film)
One guy we met said that just talking about all the murders by police gets him angry, but that he would check out the revolution and donated $14. Then we showed him the trailer. Half-way through watching the trailer, he pulled out $40 and bought 2 tickets. He said that with all the divisions among the people, he was struck by the unity and level of discussion between CW and BA.
( BA Everywhere organizer on showing the Trailer on the street)
They [BA and Cornel West, at the Dialogue] said it’s always the Black people that get killed for no reason. What surprised me? Knowing that it’s always us—like my brother who was killed by police. You shoulda came because it gives you all the information about WHY most of our black people are getting killed for no reason.
(Twelve-year-old Black youth from Chicago who attended the Dialogue)
It was so beautiful how BA and Cornel West talked about the music in the 1960s. How BA got into the influence of the movements among the people that helped create different music, and how what is happening now in society can influence the culture too, like the people beginning to stand up in Ferguson inspired the J. Cole song. People think communism would be boring or stale—but why would it be? What people get enjoyment out of now mostly just sucks! In a new society you wouldn’t have your escapism, your ‘real housewives,’ this dumb shit and gossip that we get sucked into. But BA is funny! That Ussain Bolt stuff that BA said during the Dialogue, we were cracking up! You need to laugh, you need to have heart and soul.
(Artist who attended the Dialogue)
The Bus Ride Home—Filled with the Spirit of the Dialogue: “I wish life could be like this experience on this bus all the time...”
“Science and a Game Plan for Revolution.” In the interview on revcom.us with Ardea Skybreak, who is a scientist, she is talking about BA, the revolutionary communist leader, as a scientist at the top of his field. This really means retraining how we think. We’re taught that science is just ‘chemistry’ and so on. I never would have considered becoming a ‘scientist.’ I missed that boat! But pushing myself to be a scientist now, has to do with how you look at the world and analyze it. This is a great thing about working with the Party [the Revolutionary Communist Party, which BA leads]. There’s a game plan for revolution, you work together and sum up what you accomplished and what people said. You’re learning from the standpoint of that game plan.
(Artist who attended the Dialogue)
“The role of today’s Democratic Party seems to be a stumbling point for some...”
I am overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, I am just coming to understand that my vote is not going to bring the change we need and that the current cast of characters is actually part of the problem, not the solution. My impressions reflect my point in a personal journey; I know that others in Riverside Church had their own experiences. I know that as time passes I will think of other points and consider other ideas. But the importance of this moment will always stay with me. Rather than being a single, isolated voter alone in a little booth I was one of hundreds, gathered from across the country, together to share questions, concerns, and ideas. Being together and sharing the possibilities is so much better than being alone and in the dark. That is probably the most important thing I took away from this experience.
(Woman who flew in to New York for the Dialogue, from a longer piece)
First Impressions of the PREMIERE of
the New Film of REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN
A correspondence from Andy Zee, co-director of the film
April 6, 2015
“This film brought an awareness that we do need an actual change....” A young Latino brother echoed what was felt by audiences across the country who came to the March 28 premieres of the new film of the historic Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian that took place last November at Riverside Church in New York City. Wherever you were coming from, whatever experience you have had with what this system does to people every day, whether this was your first encounter with the revolution or you’ve been fighting to get rid of this system your whole life, you came away from seeing REVOLUTION AND RELIGION feeling this brother’s sentiment.
In this correspondence, I am going to share some of my own and others’ first impressions. I urge everyone to watch, dig into, promote, and raise funds so that many more can experience and be moved by what Bob Avakian and Cornel West did on November 15, 2014.
Seeing the film on the big screen was special. Look, there was nothing like the excitement of being at Riverside with 1,900 people “live,” experiencing Bob Avakian and Cornel West together on this topic—I won’t ever forget it—being a part of something really historic.
Yet, watching this on film is just a different experience: profound and provocative. I found myself drawn deeply into their insights, their arguments, how they related to each other and engaged and struggled with the audience, the different methods by which they analyzed and approached big questions. I found myself learning more and anew. The film brings you up close inside Cornel West’s and Bob Avakian’s presentations and exchange: the passion, the audacity, the science, the morality, the revolutionary substance. Two courageous voices modeling a morality that refuses to accept injustice—pouring heart and soul into standing together challenging all of us to fight for a world worthy of humanity.
I attended the New York City premiere at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. It was fitting that this film was welcomed and debuted at this beautiful institution that resonates with the history of Black people. Watching the film on the big screen at the Schomburg—a screen that must be 40 feet across and 20 feet high with big, rich sound—was new for me after months of being a part of editing the film on small monitors!
BA and Cornel West really are two courageous moral voices of this moment. They hold and fill the big screen. The topic, Revolution and Religion, is huge: The fight for the emancipation of humanity and, in that context, looking at religion, which holds sway over much of humanity, especially the oppressed of the world, is an urgent question that demands and holds attention. But the dynamism and passion of both BA and CW, their humor and substance, their concern and struggle for the future of humanity, amplify and resonate in a special way through the film. Whether watching in a dark theater or up close on computer, TV, or smartphone, the film brings you into a personal experience with “Cornel and Bob,” so much so that afterward people who had never met either of them came up to me speaking of them by their first names as if they were life-long friends!
1. SPREAD the TRAILER and new preview excerpt of the film everywhere online.
2. TWEET and RETWEET. Spread the hashtag: #M28CornelAndBAfilm. Retweet from @RevBooksNYC (Revolution Books NYC, co producer of the Dialogue film).
3. JOIN the Facebook event page and INVITE all your friends. There is one Facebook event page for the nationwide film launch at Dialogue Facebook event.
4. In everything you do online, send people to www.revcom.us.
Bob Avakian, "BA," has developed a new synthesis of communism that opens up the possibility of a radically new world through revolution. BA Everywhere is a national fundraising campaign to make BA's work and leadership known in every corner of society.
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U.S. Marines walk past bodies of people killed in the U.S. assault on Fallujah, Iraq, 2004. 
A house destroyed by a U.S. airstrike in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. Four houses were hit and five people seriously injured. 
A prisoner being abused in Abu Ghraib prison. 
March 21, 2015: Ángel Neri de la Cruz, one of the Ayotzinapa students who survived the Guerrero massacre, speaks in Los Angeles.
Erika Zambrano at a rally February 11, with photo of her husband, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who was killed by police. 
