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Why There Must Be a Truly MASSIVE Outpouring Against Police Murder on October 24 and Why YOU Are Needed
September 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
1
By now you’ve seen it more times than you can count. A Black or Latino person, at any time, just walking down the street or driving to work or standing in front of a hotel or even in their home, has their life snuffed out for no reason whatsoever. Video after video of people with their hands up, people running away, people surrendering, people pulled over for a traffic stop, or doing absolutely nothing but minding their own business—verbally abused, body-slammed, tased, gang-stomped and/or outright murdered, often after they have surrendered. Picture after picture of parents, of partners, of children demanding justice, of communities pouring into the streets. Time after time of the victim then being demonized and slandered, of authorities claiming “this wasn’t racial,” of killer cops walking free because they claim “they were scared.” And now one side of the media, the politicians, and powers-that-be viciously attacks those who protest... while the other side says “go slow, be patient, it’s complicated.” No! There’s absolutely nothing complicated here. And there’s no more time for “going slow.” How is any of this legitimate? What kind of society tolerates a system that views and treats an entire group of people, based solely on their skin color or language, as suspects, as criminals, and worse—as people having no rights or even humanity which the police are bound to respect? How long must this go on? Police murder and terror must stop, NOW!
2
This situation is not static. Either the protests and resistance will be repressed or derailed and the controversy shut down, with the horrors not only staying in place but intensifying... or people will come forth in much greater numbers and determination than before, and seriously change the terms of how all of society looks at this and acts on it. There is a way to do that, to fight this, right now, and to take this fight to a higher level. This October 24 in New York City thousands and thousands will pour into the streets, insisting to the world and the country: THIS MUST STOP! This outpouring aims to change the terms of how people think about this and act on it, and to politically rock those who order and carry out this terror back on their heels. This will draw a sharp line in all of society: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. NOBODY with a beating heart and a functioning conscience should stand aside. (A call from Cornel West and Carl Dix... #RiseUpOctober to STOP Police Terror)
3
There is a place for you in this. Your ideas, your support, your efforts are urgently needed—now—to make this happen. In fact, this can only happen on the scale and scope that is absolutely necessary if many many people throw in on this, now—people who have been fighting this, as well as people who are just now coming to the fight. You are needed. We face a decisive moment, a crossroads, where terms are being set as to what is legitimate, what will be tolerated and what will be opposed. Lives are at stake. Be part of determining the outcome.
Updated September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Imagine if it came to light that in Russia today, Jewish people were systematically and pervasively discriminated against in housing, jobs, education and health care; and that connected to that, their life expectancy was dramatically lower than that of Russian majority people—as low as three decades in some regions! Let’s even say that the maternal mortality rate for some Jewish women was 12 times as high as that for Russian women in Moscow.
Imagine further that Russia had by far both the largest prison population and the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in the whole world—so high in fact that 25 percent of all the prisoners in the whole world were in Russia. Imagine that nearly one half of those prisoners were Jewish, while Jews themselves only made up 1/8 of the population. Imagine that the media and culture purveyed crude stereotypes of Jewish people as violent criminals and degraded fools.
Finally, imagine that it was documented in countless videos that Russian police patrolled Jewish neighborhoods and routinely stopped and frisked Jews who did nothing wrong, routinely beat them and arrested them on phony charges and sent them to prison, and even routinely murdered Jewish people—and then were not prosecuted because they claimed that they were scared of Jews because they were “demons.”
Wouldn’t humane people rightly condemn this as a slow genocide? The U.S. itself would no doubt rush to the United Nations to attack its rival for such gross violations of human rights and would warn that this slow genocide could easily become a fast one.
Well, you don’t have to imagine it. This is going on right here, right now, in America, to Black people. The conditions and specific facts cited above apply to Black people in the US, not Jews in Russia. So why do people in America deny that this—genocide—is what is going on right here, carried forward by their own government, supported by way too many of its own people, silently tolerated by way too many others... when it is right in front of their faces??
The time is long since past when this denial can be allowed to continue. The stakes are way too high. People need to clearly take sides AGAINST this genocide, and especially the illegitimate police terror and murder that enforce it, and demand that “THIS MUST STOP!”
The time to do that is NOW, this October. The place to do that is New York City, October 22-24 – where the whole world will be watching, and all of society will be compelled to answer the question:
Rikers Island Jail, New York City: Shut Down This Torture Hellhole!
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Aerial photo of the huge Rikers Island jail complex, New York City.
Photo: U.S. Geological Survey
Rikers Island jail complex sits in the East River, right next to Manhattan. It has an average of 14,000 inmates a night. Brutal beatings, torture by isolation, and other horrors are happening daily in this hellhole only miles from New York City’s skyscrapers.
In 2014, the New York Times reported that use of force by guards at Rikers had gone up nearly 90 percent over the previous five years, even as the jail’s population had declined. In the first six months of 2014, guards at Rikers used force on inmates 1,927 times—an increase of more than one-third compared with the same period the previous year.
Rikers is supposed to be a place for people who are waiting weeks or months for a trial (and still supposed to be presumed innocent) and for those who have been given less than a year’s sentence. But in reality, thousands of people have ended up here for years, “waiting for their day in court” while being subjected to brutality and torture and denied medical and mental health care.
Of those imprisoned at Rikers on an average day, some 90 percent are Black or Latino, 85 percent have not had a trial or been convicted of a crime, and 40 percent suffer from diagnosed mental illness. Hundreds of them are teenagers.
As of last March, it was reported that 400 people had been at Rikers for at least two years without being convicted; half a dozen had been there for six years. Some 1,400 people had been waiting at least a year to have their cases settled, some of them arrested for crimes that wouldn’t even have sentences for that long if they were found guilty.
Brutality Against Mentally Ill and Juveniles
Kalief Browder. Photo: Screen Grab from ABC News
The standard “treatment” for Rikers prisoners with mental illness is beatings, pepper spray, and solitary confinement.
In 2013 a Black prisoner, Jerome Murdough, a former Marine, died of hyperthermia while on psychotropic drugs, locked inside a cell where the temperature was 101 degrees. Murdough had been homeless when he was arrested for trespassing.
Earlier this year, in June, Kalief Browder took his own life—driven to do this by the torture and brutality he was subjected to during his years at Rikers. He was only 16 years old when he ended up at Rikers, accused of stealing a backpack! He was held in solitary confinement for two years and repeatedly beaten by prison guards and other inmates. He refused to plead guilty, insisting on his innocence. Finally, the charges were dropped and Kalief was released, but he was unable to escape the damage of the years of torture and abuse.
Denying People Medical Care
Over the last five years, poor medical care at Rikers played a role in the death of at least 15 prisoners.
In 2014, Bradley Ballard, 39, a schizophrenic prisoner, died after being left alone in his cell for seven days. He was denied some of his medications for diabetes and mental health issues and his toilet was clogged and overflowing. He was found naked, covered in feces, with his genitals swollen and badly infected. He was taken to the hospital and died hours later.
Andy Henriquez was brought to Rikers when he was only 16. After three years, he was still waiting for trial and was put in solitary confinement. He had been complaining of chest pains for months, but none of the guards took him seriously. On April 7, 2013, he called out for help, but the guards did nothing. Other prisoners who shouted out in alarm were also ignored. Andy Henriquez died from a tear in his aorta.
*****
In June 2015, the NYC government agreed to some “reforms” and federal “oversight” at Rikers in relation to a Department of Justice lawsuit. Whatever changes that may go on are NOT going to address what fundamentally gives rise to all the crimes against prisoners that are taking place at Rikers. This is not about expanding guidelines for use of force, “video cameras,” “accountability,” and “better training.” This is about a system that needs mass incarceration because there is a whole section in society—millions and millions of Black and Latino people, especially the youth—that the system has no use and future for. This system needs to control and contain this volatile force in society—and uses its police, its IN-justice court system, and its prisons to do this. The crimes being carried out at Rikers are part of this horror.
Updated October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
What REALLY Changes Things?
Those who insist voting can bring change, but determined resistance and struggle cannot... have it backwards. Yes the powers that be wield their police, army, and media to enforce their rule, but they’re in deep shit around the world and have conflicts within their own ranks—they can be challenged and defeated. A lesson from history: In 1964, a Democrat (Lyndon Johnson) won a landslide victory running for president as a “peace” candidate. He massively escalated the Vietnam War. In 1972, Republican Dick Nixon ran for president threatening to escalate the war further. He was forced to pull out U.S. troops and sign a “peace agreement” that led to the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam. In neither case did how people voted in the elections determine what happened. The actual factors were a whole set of events in the world along with defeats the U.S. suffered in its wars for empire, and protest and rebellion in the homeland. A critical lesson for today: Real change never comes through working through this system’s elections, but determined struggle can be a game changer.
Why Economic Boycotts Will Not STOP Murder by Police
The real power the masses of people have is the ability to challenge the injustice this system has brought down on Black people and other oppressed people from the very beginning of this country; not withholding our dollars from the economy of the country.
The outpourings of protest have stripped away the cover of legitimacy the rulers work to keep over the savage oppression and the vicious exploitation this capitalist-imperialist system brings down on people. Rather than calling on people to stay home and not shop, which is a very passive form of activity, we need to mobilize even more powerful resistance, bringing forward wave after wave of people taking to the streets and saying NO MORE to police getting away with murder... It is easier to stay home and not shop or to work on getting people to do that than to go right into the teeth of the repression, the mass arrests and the threats the authorities have unleashed against those who have stood up to say this shit must STOP! But it won’t stop the horrors from continuing to be perpetrated against the people.
—Carl Dix, representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party
and co-initiator of #RiseUpOctober
Codifying Racism into the Law
Every time another pig uses “I feared for my life” as a justifiable legal excuse for the straight-up murder of unarmed Black or Latino people, this system is codifying racism into the law. They are saying that it’s legally “justifiable” for an armed enforcer of this system to murder someone based on their racist, white supremacist ideas—ideas that are shaped by this racist, white supremacist system. Such a system is murderous and decrepit, it’s totally fucking illegitimate and needs to be swept away!
Who Are You?
To those who say: “Who are you to be standing up against police murder?” We’re people who think this is outrageous and has to stop—where do you stand?
And to those who say: “You’re invading my safe space by being so sharp.” Bullshit! There is no safe space, for you or for the masses of people getting harassed, beat down, brutalized, and murdered.
Now let’s get down and change all this once and for all!
Crime Among the People and the Police: A Revolutionary View
There should be no “ambiguity” or “confusion” about the role of police in dealing with crime among the people. Let’s look at the actual relations here. People have been maintained forcibly in conditions where, to quote a conservative writer, Edward Luttwak, for masses of youth in the inner city, crime is a “rational choice.” Even with the risk of prison and lives cut short, crime is a “rational choice” under this system. Why? Because of the workings of this system, there are no decent jobs and there is no education for millions of Black and Latino people in the inner cities, there is forced segregation to this day, and there are forced conditions of poverty. There is absolutely no justification for bringing down violence on people who have been forcibly kept in this position in their millions and millions for generations.
A Point to Media Mouthpieces
To Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and the media mouthpieces of this system who defend police violence and murder: At every point in the history of this country, when it comes to Black people, people just like you defended the enslavement and the vicious violence they were subjected to and then came around later and said it was wrong. When the overseers were cracking the whip and the slave chasers were running amok, people like you defended it as necessary to keep the slaves in line... until the next phase of white supremacy, where you came around and said that, after all, slavery was so wrong—while you backed up Jim Crow, KKK, and widespread lynching. Now you’re up there, ready to admit that that was just terrible, while you defend the current form of white supremacy: police murder, brutality, and mass incarceration. Until you admit that and are ready to fully expose the violence this system rests on and perpetrates, shut the fuck up!
Dear Celebrities who still remain silent;
Progressive people who care but have not acted;
People of means who may not face police terror personally but who could provide the means for those who bear the brunt of this everyday a platform where their courageous voices could move the hearts and minds of the broader public:
There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:1
You live in a country that has, since its birth, considered Black lives as less than human. The ideology of white supremacy that this country was founded on, that justified slavery and propelled forward the development of capitalism has continued down through the centuries—through discriminatory laws and terror unleashed upon a people—to this very day. From Jim Crow and lynching to mass incarceration and police who murder with impunity—this has throughout the history of this country been justified under the pretense of CRIME and keeping “ the good people safe”—recycled and re-purposed for different decades.
You who would condemn Jim Crow yesterday...
Where are you now and what would YOU do today?
Whole generations of Black and Latino people have been criminalized and consigned to utterly inhuman conditions of mass incarceration. The largest prison population in the world exists in our midst—hiding in plain sight with the consent of a population that for decades has tolerated a travesty of historic proportions.
A system of punishment of the poor—where there is NOT equality and justice for all but laws that comprise a modern day system of debtor peonage and government discrimination—paying forward the misery to each new generation in a downward spiral with genocidal consequences.
A thousand people a year—850 this year so far killed by police. Video after video of people pulled over in minor traffic violations, videos of people surrendering, videos of people running away, videos of people mentally ill instead of getting medical attention being summarily executed. Instance after instance of people doing nothing other than being Black or Latino but who are profiled, stopped and so often shot down because they “look like a suspect.”
Police who consider whole groups of people—because of the color of their skin or the language they speak—as having no rights that the police are bound to respect.
You know this—this has been brought to your attention because people have risen up to say, “Enough! We will not have this.” This was brought to your attention because many thousands of young people disrupted business as usual over that last year.
At a moment when that resistance is being shushed, when demonstrators are being prosecuted and police who murder are protected, when “Go slow, let the system work,” is being counseled by people more interested in preserving the status quo than changing it—and when liberals are too easily assuaged by promises of minor policy changes like body cameras (yes this can make a difference but now that we are seeing video after video without prosecution—the question is: What NOW Are You Going to Do?): Rise Up October is saying that protest must not be derailed. The controversy must not be suppressed, and the resistance that has made THE difference must be re-mobilized to go to another level.
If it is not, not only will nothing in the end have actually changed, but the pace of the brutality and barbarity will have intensified. With the political and moral atmosphere being fouled by wall-to-wall election coverage of arenas filled with morons cheering for undisguised bigotry and reported on by ALL the major media as “legitimate,” nothing less than many, many thousands of us taking to the streets with renewed determination will change this ugly dynamic and set different moral and political terms. To say most clearly: THIS MUST STOP.
There is a way to do this. By participating and supporting financially the outpouring on October 22 through 24. These days open with 100 families traveling from all over the country, joined with prominent voices where we will Say Their Names in Times Square on October 22. On October 23, there will be nonviolent civil disobedience. A massive march on October 24 will aim at changing the terms of how people think and act, politically rocking the country so that everyone has to decide: “On the matter of POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP, Which Side Am I On? Will my silence be complicity or will I stand with the people who refuse to tolerate these outrages?” Those who carry out, back up and enforce this terror have to be rocked back on their heels. THIS MUST STOP.
The controversy must not be shut down and the suffering that continues must not be allowed to be swept under the rug. Millions have to demand THIS MUST STOP.
As Lorien Carter, aunt of Tony Robinson killed by Madison police this past year, put it:
“The ‘Truths’ they are providing to you are not truths at all. The reason #RiseUpOctober is so important is because I neglected the facts and my nephew paid... If this makes you uncomfortable, I’m glad. It should. The blood of all these people stain your hands, the same way it does mine.”
BE PART OF THE SOLUTION:
1. Contribute $1,000 dollars to sponsor family members who have lost loved ones to police murder to come to NYC. DONATE HERE.
2. Make a substantial donation for advertising and getting the word out. DONATE HERE.
4. Endorse the call initiated by Carl Dix and Cornel West and commit to getting five other endorsements of prominent people, churches and organizations to. Read the call below and SEND ENDORSEMENT TO addmyvoice@riseupoctober.org.
6. Call the Rise Up October National Office at 646-709-1961 to find out what more you can do.
***
Initiated by Carl Dix and Cornel West
Advisory Board includes: Carl Dix, Eve Ensler, Arturo O’Farrill, Jamal Joseph, Rev. Stephen Phelps and Cornel West.
Call for a Major National Manifestation Against Police Terror
#RiseUpOctober to STOP Police Terror
Which Side Are You On?
Come to New York City!
OCTOBER 24
Washington Square Park, New York City, 11:00 am
March at 1:00 pm
Closing Rally at Columbus Circle at 4:00 pm
Actions on October 22 & 23
Eric Garner... Michael Brown...Freddie Gray... Rekia Boyd... Andy Lopez...Tamir Rice
One after another—and so many others, precious Black and Brown lives—victims of police murder. We think of their faces, and furiously ache for justice. Over 1000 people a year killed by police—yet since 2005, less than 60 indictments, less than 25 convictions! *
Millions languish in prison, generation after generation, Black and Latino brothers and sisters. The spearpoint of a whole matrix of oppression.
People have struggled, resisted, risen up. This must go on and go further—in many different ways, intensifying.
At the same time, these repeated outrages cry out for a major, national manifestation this fall that states very clearly:
NO! THESE MURDERS BY POLICE MUST STOP—NOW!!
This demonstration will be resistance-based, uncompromising in spirit and, at the same time, pluralistic and diverse, involving hundreds of thousands of people, reaching into every corner of this society and powerfully impacting the whole world.
History has shown that no significant change has been won without mass determined resistance.
We refuse to be derailed by promises of reform that are merely that: promises. We refuse to be intimidated by government repression or by threats from forces of open and unrepentant racism and fascism. We will respond to the urgency of the political situation by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to say these horrors must stop.
We aim to amplify the many forms of resistance against police murder and mass incarceration. More important, we aim to change the whole social landscape, to the point where a growing section of people all over take ever-increasing initiative and make it unmistakably clear that they refuse to live in a society that sanctions this outrage, and where those who do NOT feel this way are put on the defensive.
Join us—on October 24 in the streets of New York City.
*Thousands Dead, Few Prosecuted - Washington Post, 4/12/15; Police Killings Rise Slightly, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise - New York Times, 4/30/15 [back]
What Are the Key Materials to Use in Organizing for October 22-24?
October 4, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
There are a lot of materials and articles up on this site that relate to the days of resistance against police murder and terror on October 22-24. But what are the key materials for people to use?
First, there is a new posting and pdf for printing now available at revcom.us that lays out what is happening on October 22-24, which should be very widely gotten out all over.
Everyone should also be getting out the palmcard put out on this by the Rise Up October coalition, and the Stolen Lives poster, too. (See the page for downloadable Rise Up October materials.)
In all this, people should also wield the quote from BA earlier this summer (now available as palmcard) on the possibility of great beauty emerging from unspeakable ugliness, as well as other quotes from BAsics that relate to the what people feel up against and what we are striving to do, and revcoms should be backpacking and selling copies of BAsics, as well as Revolution newspaper.
These, in our opinion, form the core “messaging” materials for October 22-24. Now let’s get them out!
More Brutality Coming to LA County Jails—ICE to Deport Prisoners
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Four months ago, the LA County Supervisors made a ruling that outlawed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from going into the LA County jails. Now, in an outrageous reversal, LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said that ICE will be allowed in the jails to deport immigrant prisoners.
As Revolution previously reported, the LA County jails have been exposed for their massive brutality against prisoners and visitors. (See “Brutality in the Dungeons of Los Angeles—This Must Be Stopped!“ December 16, 2013.) Eighteen sheriff’s deputies were arrested for covering up these beatings as well as for disappearing prisoners. In July 2014, six of these brutal dungeon keepers were convicted and then later sentenced to prison.
McDonnell qualified his statement by saying that “the new policy will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents access to inmates who have committed serious crimes and who are not protected under a 2013 state law that restricts collaboration between local cops and federal immigration officials.” That law, the California Trust Act, bars local authorities from holding inmates at ICE’s request unless the inmate has been convicted of a serious or violent crime. At the same time, McDonnell said that “ICE agents would have full access to inmates in the jails and the inmate release area, and to the department’s databases.” He said he would adhere to the California Trust Act.
But a Los Angeles Times editorial questioned whether allowing ICE “full access” violated the California Trust Act. On the other hand, the editorial called going after those “who have committed serious crimes” as being “reasonable.” That’s outrageous. There is nothing reasonable about deporting people—and further, the Los Angeles Times does not have a clue about how ICE has defined those “who have committed serious crimes.”
Here are some of those categories directly from the memorandum “Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants” (November 20, 2014), where ICE lays out how they will dedicate resources for deporting:
(a) aliens convicted of three or more misdemeanor offenses, other than minor traffic offenses or state or local offenses for which an essential element was the alien’s immigration status, provided the offenses arise out of three separate incidents;
(b) aliens convicted of a “significant misdemeanor,” which for these purposes is an offense of domestic violence; sexual abuse or exploitation; burglary; unlawful possession or use of a firearm; drug distribution or trafficking; or driving under the influence; or if not an offense listed above, one for which the individual was sentenced to time in custody of 90 days or more (the sentence must involve time to be served in custody, and does not include a suspended sentence);
(c) aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States after unlawfully entering or re-entering the United States and who cannot establish to the satisfaction of an immigration officer that they have been physically present in the United States continuously since January 1, 2014 ; and
(d) aliens who, in the judgment of an ICE Field Office Director, USCIS District Director, or USCIS Service Center Director, have significantly abused the visa or visa waiver programs.
Also included for deportation are those who have been issued a final order of removal (legally ordered to be removed from this country) on or after January 1, 2014. Included in this group are all those who are stopped while crossing the border, held in detention, and then sent to court.
These categories take the notion of “serious crimes” and broaden that out in a way that just about includes any immigrant who is currently being held in a jail.
Los Angeles is not the only jurisdiction that has recently reversed previous decisions to not allow ICE into their jails. Over 340 communities previously enacted such provisions. But now, with the new ICE ruling and a vicious political campaign targeting immigrants, over half of those communities have reversed their earlier rulings and are now giving ICE “full access” to their jails.
How did we get to this situation, in such a short time, where in a four-month period these communities reversed their stand on allowing immigrants in jails to be deported?
The Secure Communities Program came in with the Obama administration and it outlined a procedure to deport anyone deemed a “threat to public safety.” Resources and funding for massive deportations were allocated to this program. During the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014, almost three million people were deported with a little over half of them not convicted of any crimes.
Opposition to this program grew as immigrant rights groups, hunger strikers in detention centers, the Dreamers (undocumented people who came to this country as children), and others who were outraged by this pogrom against immigrants came into struggle against it, demanding that immigrants be treated and respected as full human beings with rights. By 2011, communities were beginning to say that they were not going to participate in any deportation program and that grew to a high of 340 communities by the end of 2014. Some of these cities became “sanctuary cities” for immigrants.
This opposition forced Obama to come out and say that these massive deportations were splitting apart families and removing law-abiding, productive people from this country, and that the immigration policy in the U.S. was “broken” and needed to be fixed. At the same time, his administration continued to deport hundreds of thousands each year, reaching a peak of 438,000 in 2013. (For a further analysis of this, see “Obama’s Immigration Moves: Nothing to Celebrate—A Need for Increased Resistance,” December 1, 2014.)
In late 2013, the Secure Communities Program was abandoned. It was replaced in the summer of 2014 with ICE’s Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which was seen as a “lesser and kinder” deportation program. Rather than deporting all who can be deported as was done under the Secure Communities Program, PEP’s stated role is to enable “DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to work with state and local law enforcement to take custody of individuals who pose a danger to public safety before those individuals are released into our communities.”
On November 14, 2014, Jeh Charles Johnson, Secretary of DHS, issued a memorandum with “new policies for the apprehension, detention, and removal of aliens in this country.” As we can see above, those “new policies” include a very wide range of people who can now be deported. Further, how PEP identifies people does not differ from the Secure Communities Act as it continues the policy to allow ICE agents to access all fingerprint-based biometric data submitted during bookings by state and local law enforcement agencies to the FBI for criminal background checks. Therefore, the ICE database will contain biometric data on anyone who enters a jail system for any reason they are arrested, whether they are guilty or not.
Further, this new policy “mandates that sheriff’s deputies assigned to jails will give ICE up to seven days of notification before an inmate deemed potentially deportable is to be released, so that immigration officials can begin the deportation process.” For anyone to state, as DHS and ICE do, that PEP is “supposed to target terrorists, violent criminals, gang members, and recent border crossers” is ludicrous, when we know that any undocumented person “sentenced to time in custody of 90 days or more” will be deported.
But despite this “kinder, gentler” deportation program, there was still a problem with getting all those jurisdictions that previously refused to cooperate with ICE to allow them access to their jails. So DHS and ICE began a full-court press by allocating resources and funds to lobby local governments and the sheriffs to convince them that they would not face a backlash if they reversed their previous rulings. Still, most communities refused to budge.
Then things turned in DHS’s and ICE’s favor: Donald Trump, the Republican presidential campaign, and a killing in San Francisco. Trump kicked off his presidential campaign calling undocumented immigrants “rapists, drug dealers, and criminals,” and announced that he would deport 11.3 million undocumented immigrants and would repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ending the birthright citizenship of all babies born to undocumented immigrant parents, and build an impenetrable wall along the southern U.S. border. Then, when a woman was shot and killed in San Francisco by an undocumented immigrant who was released from police custody despite a detention request from ICE, Trump used that to further bolster his diatribe against immigrants and build mass support for his anti-immigrant program. Trump was followed by other Republican candidates for president—Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz—as all of them continued to spew racist rants and to propose vicious pogroms against immigrants.
This anti-immigrant program may seem like the ravings of some lunatics, which Trump and others are. But as we have stated previously, “these (rants) are calculated and the Trump campaign is deadly serious,” and this is “a serious plan for massive pogroms, U.S. style, upon immigrants and people of Mexican descent. This is the program being embraced by a section of the U.S. ruling class. And as part of this they are working to enlist the support of broad sections of the people in this country in the name of “making America great again” and putting “American workers first.” (See “14th Amendment Gave Ex-Slaves Citizenship—Trump Says Shred It,” August 31, 2015, and “Trump: The Vileness IS the Point,” August 17, 2015.)
This whole election process, which is now, primarily, focused on the Republican candidates, has emboldened a section of the population that wants to cohere this country around open white supremacy, the Bible, and fascist solutions to the key social contradictions that currently exist in this society—the oppression of Black people, global wars of empire, forcing women back into motherhood, destruction of the environment, and mass deportation of immigrants—social contradictions that are deeply rooted in the current mode of production, this system of capitalism-imperialism. And it is these contradictions that have given rise to Donald Trump and his ilk.
And now that this debate has been “legitimized” and deemed as “serious” by the whole election process, cities and communities are reversing their previous rulings to keep ICE out of the jails. Joe Guzzardi of Californians for Population Stabilization, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration, said that, “The action by the Los Angeles County sheriff may smooth the path for other jurisdictions that would like to cooperate with federal immigration officials under the new program but have been concerned about receiving criticism for doing so.”
Jennie Pasquarella, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said that “Los Angeles is a priority jurisdiction for ICE, and I think it will be a model that is used by other counties, for better or worse.” Just this week, the North Carolina Senate voted to ban “sanctuary cities” in the state. And other communities throughout the country are following suit. In Fresno and Kern counties in California, sheriff’s officials are now letting ICE work out of the jails to take people into custody directly. San Diego and San Bernardino counties said “they are notifying ICE when immigrants sought by the agency are being released so deportation officers can arrive in time to pick them up.” The Dallas County sheriff’s department in Texas said they will allow ICE to detain immigrants who are “more serious offenders.”
But not all cities and counties are going along with the deportation steamroller. San Francisco and Cook County, Illinois are saying to ICE: No Way! We are not we going to participate in PEP and allow you in our jails.
People should not stand for this ramp-up of immigrant deportations. We’ve got to put a stop to ICE being in the jails of this country and deporting our brothers and sisters. We have to breathe, live, and fight for what is stated in one of the “5 Stops”: STOP The Demonization, Criminalization, and Deportations of Immigrants, and the Militarization of the Border!
On Thursday, October 1, a small crew from SMIN (Stop Mass Incarceration Network) held a press conference in front of the Santa Clara County Jail, which has recently been in the news after the death of a mentally ill young inmate, Michael Tyree. It has recently come to light that there were discussions recorded between the guards who beat Tyree sadistically saying they love “twisting up” inmates in this particular unit where there are no cameras.
In addition to Tyree’s death, there were two other recent deaths: one involving a brutal cell extraction of an unnamed man and a suspicious death of a woman inmate at the same pig station. AND, if this wasn’t enough, charges were dropped just the day before against the cops who killed Phillip Watkins, a young Black man who was distressed and holding a folding knife, while relatives shouted for the cops not to shoot. Authorities called it “suicide by cop” and abruptly swept the murder under the rug.
The SMIN representative exposed these blatant racist acts, mirrored nationwide by the huge stolen lives banner draped directly in front of the pig station. He pointed out the “codified racism” implicit anytime the cops are let go by claiming they “fear for their lives.” And he called for people to end this genocide and stop police terror in the “capital of America”—New York City—on October 24 in a massive march and demonstration for Rise Up October.
The press then turned their cameras on another SMIN member who had once been locked up (for traffic violations) in the same jail. In fact, he’d been beaten just like countless others. He explained to the press that the cops in there KNOW the places where they cannot be recorded; and these are the beating grounds. One other member of the community joined the crew on the spot and held the banner, as we got out palm cards and Revolution papers (this issue appropriately had on the back page BAsics 2:16 where Bob Avakian talks about the police murder of Tyisha Miller). The press conference was covered by four major TV stations in just a few hours notice.
Editor’s note: Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American woman shot dead by Riverside, California police in 1998. Miller had been passed out in her car, resulting from a seizure, when police claimed that she suddenly awoke and had a gun; they fired 23 times at her, hitting her at least 12 times, and murdering her. Bob Avakian addressed this:
If you can’t handle this situation differently than this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this situation, but get off the earth. Get out of the way of the masses of people. Because, you know, we could have handled this situation any number of ways that would have resulted in a much better outcome. And frankly, if we had state power and we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people. You go there and you put your own life on the line, rather than just wantonly murder one of the people. Fuck all this “serve and protect” bullshit! If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way but the way they did it to handle this scene. They could have and would have found a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the proletariat, when it’s been in power has handled—and would again handle—this kind of thing, valuing the lives of the masses of people. As opposed to the bourgeoisie in power, where the role of their police is to terrorize the masses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, without necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more broadly it affects the masses. And that’s one of the reasons why they like to engage in, and have as one of their main functions to engage in, wanton and arbitrary terror against the masses of people.
This call was sent out to students and professors at University of California, Los Angeles.
There comes a time when we have to cast off our ignorance and confront reality, and when the reality is as outrageous as the one we face today, we are also confronted with the moral question of how to act on it.
Ernesto Flores was a 52-year-old man from Montclair, California who had a mental breakdown one day as a side effect of some medication he was taking. His daughter has a background in criminal justice, so her first thought was to call the police for help getting him to a hospital. She volunteered all sorts of vital information—she gave them Ernesto’s name so they could run it and know that he had no criminal record; she told them that he was holding a BB gun; she told them that he wasn’t behaving like himself; she told them that he needed medical attention. She did everything right, and what did the police do? They spoke to Ernesto in English when he only understood Spanish, they rejected his daughters’ request to use their sound system to console him, they shot at him with rubber bullets (one of which knocked him over), he said “I want to die,” they said “You want to die, motherfucker? You’re going to die!” And then they shot him with hollow bullets 45 times, 12 to the head. They had every opportunity to handle the situation without hurting anyone, but instead they shot Ernesto on the front yard of his home, in front of his children.
This story is not an isolated incident—there are thousands more stories like this, thousands more people unjustly murdered, people with their hands up, people who were unarmed, people running away, people who committed a petty crime undeserving of death. And time after time, there are no indictments, no convictions, no justice. This system has said over and over again that Black lives DO NOT matter, that Brown lives DO NOT matter. And when the courts rule these incidents “justifiable homicides,” when they say “the police were just doing their job,” they give us some insight into the fact that the police’s job IS to kill Black and Brown people with impunity, because if it wasn’t, there would be consequences for their crimes. This system is waging a genocide—not only with murder by police, but with a whole program of mass incarceration and demonization of Black and Brown people.
This system is waging a slow genocide, and, up to this point, it has gone largely unchallenged. Yes there was Ferguson, and Baltimore, and Ferguson again, where people stood up courageously, but this resistance has not come close to the scale necessary to actually put an end to this.
This is why students have to take up #RiseUpOctober. Because the atmosphere on the campuses impacts all of society. Because when we resist, we call on others to resist. Because we have to show the people who are victims of brutality that they are not alone when they resist. Because we should know better than to think that ignoring the situation is going to make it stop, that passing legislation is going to make it stop, that Bernie Sanders is going to make it stop, and that white supremacists are going to let it stop. Because this is a genocide, and as Carl Dix said:
“When you’re up against a genocide, and that IS what we’re dealing with, you don’t ask the people presiding over it to make some changes to smooth out the rough edges of that genocide or to slow down its intensity. You act to stop it.”
It is going to take mass resistance to stop this! And it is up to us to make that happen. Students cannot sit in their safe spaces or ivory towers and not ask questions about where the trains are going, like the good Germans did during the Holocaust. Students have to be part of eliminating the illusion of neutrality. Students have to be part of drawing the dividing line in society between those who refuse to live in a world where Black and Brown people are dehumanized, brutalized, and murdered just because of the color of their skin, and those who accept living in a world like that. Because if we don’t do this...the situation is going to get much worse, thousands more people will die, and by the time society recognizes that this is an actual genocide, it will be far too late to reverse the trajectory. So now the moral question is posed: Which side are you on?
“The Night for Justice” at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University on October 1 started with a slideshow accompanied by live music from professional cellist Clerida Eltime. Horrific images from almost 100 years of lynchings—Black bodies defiled in the most inhuman and vicious way; the KKK smiling and walking free. Many, many decades of Black people being murdered and brutalized with cops and racist vigilantes walking free. The faces of Emmett Till, Eleanor Bumpurs, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown... and more. Mothers’ faces stained with tears of grief and anger. But also the people’s struggle against all this. People going up against fire hoses and dogs 50 years ago... and people facing tear gas and rubber bullets today in Ferguson.
The event was sponsored by Project R.E.P.A.I.R. and its founder Mia Thornton, a graduate student at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, who opened the program saying, “I have invited you all here so we can explore the history of oppression and violence acted out in our communities across the country. As you saw from the opening video, today’s terror is nothing new. No, it’s old practices played out on a new stage, with new faces and new names. But this sort of terror is nothing new.”
The audience of about 75 included students at the NYU School of Social Work, as well as students from schools of social work at other campuses, including Columbia, Yale, and Stony Brook. The lineup of speakers exposed people to different, sometimes conflicting perspectives, including from Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans, and Carl Dix, an initiator of Rise Up October and representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Angelo Pinto from the Raise the Age Campaign talked about how youth, especially those who are tried as adults, are being literally tortured in jails and prisons (see rush transcript). Krista Larson from the Vera Institute of Justice talked about mechanisms used to try kids as adults and hold them in adult custody. People stood as Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, walked to the stage. She talked about the pain she went through of losing her son and how she doesn’t want her son’s death to be in vain—that she truly hopes this will lead to real change.
Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and current president of the National Urban League, gave the keynote address. He promoted the example of the reforms he made to the New Orleans police department when he was mayor. He talked about how it was young people who fought in the civil rights movement, resisted the Vietnam War, and got arrested challenging U.S. support of apartheid in South Africa. Within the framework of calling on people to not give up on working within the system, he said young people are now needed to fight for justice and then specifically pointed to efforts by his organization to provide jobs for 5,000 youths.
The next speaker’s remarks were in sharp contrast to this view. Carl Dix, from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and the Revolutionary Communist Party, ended the evening coming from the need for “Revolution, Nothing Less.” He challenged the students, saying, “Do not let people tell you we can’t do better than this. America is not eternal; we can do better than hope for itty-bitty changes in the way that the system dogs us. Don’t get sucked into framing what you’re trying to do in the language and terms of the system and limiting yourself to working within the channels that this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before and I know that they got all these horror movies out there, but the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide. So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution. Get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Keep your sights aimed on emancipating all of humanity.”
And then in that context he said, “We have to mobilize everyone we can, wherever they’re coming from and however they see the problem and solution, to fight this madness we face... Rise Up October is a way to take this fight to a much higher level, right now. To bring thousands upon thousands of people into the streets of New York City to declare to the country and the world that this must STOP! And you all here tonight have to rock NYU with the message—Stop Police Terror. You have to take it into classrooms and places where students gather and challenge people—Which Side Are You On? The march is gonna start out in Washington Square Park [which is right outside NYU]. NYU has to be out in force for this and you all have to make sure that happens.”
At the end of the evening, lots of people stayed around to talk and share ideas about how to put an end to this madness and horror of police murder and mass incarceration, and in the mix, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network was enlisting people to go and organize for Rise Up October.
Building for #RiseUpOctober in Chicago's South Shore:
Large Crowd Blows the Whistle on Police Brutality
Cops retaliate with 2 felony arrests of activists
Updated October 5, 2015 | Originally published September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
Chicago: Saturday, September 26 a “Rise Up October” crew was out in the South Shore neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. This is the same neighborhood where earlier in the summer there were a series of angry protests against the police murder of Alfontish “NuNu” Cockerham and Jeffery “JJ” Kemp. Gang conflicts have been and remain very sharp in this area.
The crew included some members of the Chicago Revolution Club, some new people running with the Club and others from the neighborhood. Many were wearing “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! ” T-shirts. They hung up a large “stolen lives” banner showing pictures of people murdered by police, and set up a table with organizing materials for #RiseUpOctober at a major intersection. They played a loop from a powerful short video about Rise Up October over a loudspeaker and interspersed it with speaking out to those in the area. They were calling on the youth to stop killing each other and start fighting the system, organizing people to become organizers for Rise Up October and to get on the bus and get others on the bus to the massive march to stop police terror in New York City on October 24.
There was a constant crowd at the table talking about how to stop police brutality and the need and possibility of revolution. People were getting Rise Up October literature to distribute, other literature to dig into and get out—including Revolution newspaper—and whistles to “blow the whistle on police brutality.”
When the police began to harass a young man for allegedly selling loose cigarettes nearby, the crew gathered to challenge this—blowing whistles, chanting and videoing what was happening on cell phones. Many more people from the neighborhood joined in. One man who had been active in the protests around NuNu was loudly denouncing the police: “The police just gun us down.” Others were telling the police to “get out of here, we don’t need you, leave this young man alone.” In the midst of this wild scene, people were signing people up to become organizers for Rise Up October.
More police cars pulled up. Eventually there were 11 police cars on the scene and officers with billy clubs at the ready. But seeing the anger of the crowd, which had grown considerably to over 50 people, the police backed off and let the young man they had accused of selling loose cigarettes go. The crowd was jubilant to see him set free.
The Rise Up October crew regrouped at their table. Most of the police cars left the scene. A young man came up to thank us and learn more about what he could do. New people came up to learn more about Rise Up October, saying they wanted to get involved. Others in the crowd that had gathered drifted away.
Five to ten minutes later the police returned to retaliate. Many of the police cars that had left only minutes earlier rushed back into the intersection, blocking traffic. Police jumped out of their cars and started pushing and grabbing at people in the crew. A young woman was chased, grabbed and slammed to the ground. A young man filming was attacked and also slammed to the ground. He was later taken to the hospital due to possible head injury. The young woman was taken to the hospital for an asthma attack. At the hospital the police tried to claim that she was suicidal. Others from the crew who had followed police to the hospital rallied the hospital staff, who knew about what happened to Sandra Bland, to prevent the police from creating a scenario where they could lock the young woman in a psychiatric ward or hurt her worse and claim she did it to herself.
In the neighborhood, people who saw the attack on the crew were outraged about the arrests. People came up to give their names as witness and others were propelled to get more involved in building for Rise Up October. One guy getting off the bus at the corner was stunned to learn that all the police (about a dozen cars) were there for protesters. He said he thought someone had been killed or something. Another man from the neighborhood, wearing his “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” shirt, gathered a load of materials to get out. He seriously discussed what it would take to be on the bus and worked out how he could raise and save enough money to buy the ticket. He lives by selling loose squares (loose cigarettes).
After being held overnight, both people arrested were charged with felony battery on a police officer and were released on “personal recognizance,” meaning no money had to be put up for bail. There was a preliminary hearing on October 2, and the court set an arraignment date for October 16.
On September 30, students at DePaul University in Chicago hosted a program on Rise Up October. They heard from two women whose sons were murdered by police: LaToya Howell, whose son Justus was killed by Zion, Illinois police; and Gloria Pinex, whose son Darius was killed by Chicago police. The students were moved to act. So they (along with others) took this picture together to challenge students everywhere to do what they are doing: show everyone that you are going to New York for October 24 AND then challenge people to contribute the money to help you—and many others—get there. Tickets from Chicago are available online at Rise Up October-Chicago Buses
Action Plan from Students at Truman College, Missouri, for Rise Up October
October 1, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
A meeting was hosted by a campus SDS chapter at Truman College in northern Missouri. Fifteen students showed up. After quick introductions, there was a short presentation by a revcom and Rise Up October organizer from another city about the emergency of police murder, the crossroads the struggle to stop police terror faces today, and how Rise Up October can be a turning point to make a leap in the struggle to stop police murder by challenging society about “what side are you on?” and bringing many people off the sidelines and into the streets for #RiseUpOctober. Students discussed the situation and what the stakes are in making a leap in our resistance, or not. At first students talked about getting a dozen or two to NYC. But soon something different came into focus—a vision of #RiseUpOctober becoming a big thing on the whole campus with many students being mobilized for the showdown in NYC October 24. With that orientation, students jumped right into getting organized! They brainstormed ideas, made plans, and delegated responsibility, and came up with this action plan.
I. Creating a list of students, showing their degrees of interest through high, medium, or low. This is on a Google Doc, which can be seen and edited by anyone.
II. Exploring various modes of transportation. We are looking into options such as a university bus, a commercial bus, trains from out of Quincy, IL, and if there is still a possibility of traveling with your group, we would like to explore this option as well. If we end up getting out own commercial bus, we intend on having the bus leave out of STL at the same time as your group so that we may caravan and increase communication between each other during the travels.
III. Next we are pursuing recruitment for the event. We have fashioned a contact e-mail for Truman students specifically to contact to the Stop Mass Incarceration leaflets you provided us with. We are in the process of reaching out to various leaders on our campus such as the university President, and Professors in the efforts to find sponsors for individual students to attend the event.
IV. In addition to these plans, we are creating a lead in week on our campus the week of the event in NYC. Our plans are as follows...
a. Tuesday—Open Forum Discussion on Event, Mass Incarceration, and Police Brutality.
b. Wednesday—850 Man Vigil recognizes and mourning the lives lost to police brutality in the last year. We will be lighting 850 candles at a memorial building on our campus, lit next to our university’s eternal flame. Here we will be raising awareness and accepting donations for the efforts of the trip.
c. Thursday—Classroom Walk Out and on campus Die-In Demonstration.
V. Leave for the trip!!!
We are working on contacting various chapters of SDS through the national conference calls and we are also having members participate in the Rise Up October national calls to help keep momentum and spread ideas. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns with what we are doing, please let us know. We wish to gain a strong support within our community to bring to Rise Up October and to get involved in this and political activism in general. We cannot wait to see this all come together and be marching by your sides at the protest on NYC.
Statement from Meko Williams, mother of LaReko Williams, murdered by Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina police, July 2011
September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
My son, LaReko Williams was Tasered to Death - an expert witness in the civil trial, Dr. Shahad, said that he never in his life seen a heart that look like that. The electricity fried his heart. Dr. Shahad stated it look as if someone through an atomic bomb in his chest. At Rise Up October I want a picture of my son with his face on banners. The law is designed so that police officers are allowed immunity. Also, they scare the jurors in civil trials, because all jurors are registered voters, and the police have their personal information that pertains to their address and contact information.
Rise Up October is a unity, it’s making a difference. Many people don’t know when the police steal a life, it’s life changing for the whole family. My [other] son’s birthday is 4 days after LaReko was murder. We had a candlelight vigil on his birthday. His reaction to Reko’s vigil was “what a fucking birthday.” They were very close brothers. I support Rise Up October because we are standing up for something right! In the eyes of society the media always justifies homicide by focusing on a charge but not on convictions. The truth of the matter is a deceased persons record isn't relevant if it don't have no bearing to the situation, period. They don’t release police officers service records or internal affairs records or complaint records or disciplinary action records because they don’t want you to know the truth. They try to justify when it’s unjustified! If there is no accountability it will always be liability. Police officers are trained to disrespect us as a way, they say, to defuse a situation! When it makes the situation worse!
Rise Up October everybody should stand up. Families have to tell their stories over and over again, reliving the moments with emotions raging, a sensitive situation, because we will be reliving the moment with a deep rooted pain no one could imagine unless they are in our shoes. My last memory of LaReko was when he walked out the door thinking he would be returning and said “I LOVE YALL SEE YOU TOMORROW”!!!
Rise Up October ~ come together with other mothers and fathers that know your pain and your day to day struggle in life, trying to adjust. Rise Up October is my biggest thing!
Interview with Rise Up October Steering Committee Member Debra Sweet:
Let's Make History!
September 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revolution checked in with Debra Sweet, who is working out of the national office of #RiseUpOctober and has her finger on the pulse of the emerging movement for massive protest on October 24 in New York City and for actions on October 22 and 23. She is on the #RiseUpOctober Steering Committee along with Nkosi Anderson, Nellie Hester Bailey, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, Carl Dix, Alice Howell, James Lane, Rev. Jerome McCorry, and Travis Morales.
Revolution: Give us a sense of how things are developing for this historic event.
Debra Sweet: We are challenging people to become organizers for Rise Up October right now. Carl Dix recently shared this: “An NYU student working on #RiseUpOctober recently said: ‘I believe silence, like inaction, is consent. Anyone who is not participating in the sparing of lives, the urging of new practices, they are complicit in the deaths that we see reported.’ She is right. Let’s heed her words and together make history!”
Revolution: Give us a feel for what’s happening at the National Office.
Debra Sweet: People are getting in touch with us to get into this. I recently spoke with a Black student organization at Princeton, and they are forming a contingent and will be there. Also, we just heard from an NAACP at Hofstra University asking can they bring a bus.
Some important new developments are: We raised our first $10,000 of our goal of $100,000 in the first weekend of our crowd-funding project.
Revolution: Stop right there for a sec and give our readers the URL where people can go to donate.
Revolution: OK, we’ll pause for a moment to give people a chance to donate... And we’ll come back to this. OK, go on...
Debra Sweet: Also, Carl Dix will be the "Keynote Elect" at a major Night for Justice at NYU on October 1, promoting #RiseUpOctober. That event is at the Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Square South, 7 to 10 p.m.
Revolution: What’s happening in the faith community?
Debra Sweet: Here’s an interesting story: Some people have been involved in the discussion within the Unitarian Universalist Church nationally over the controversy surrounding the Beverly Unitarian Church in Chicago, Illinois that took down their “Black Lives Matter” sign when racists objected and threatened them (see “Open Letter to Beverly Unitarian Church—Which Side Are You On?”). Some of these people have argued you have to stick up for principle whether or not it’s easy. So this has been part of the mix and this controversy has been reverberating. Some of them had been talking about needing to take more of a stand, and one of them picked up a palm card for Rise Up October on the subway and had been invited to a planning meeting. I think maybe they saw that as an “omen”—something telling them they had to go to a planning meeting for Rise Up October, and they came. They are taking important responsibility to house people, particularly family members of people killed by police, who are coming to NYC for the march.
Another church had a meeting to plan how to participate in the march—they decided they want to house some families and that they need palm cards for services on Sunday to get out so parishioners can get them out at work and in neighborhoods where they live.
New people are signing on from the religious community in NYC including, recently, the Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski from Cathedral of St. John the Divine. We are working with people from the Micah Institute connected to Union Theological Seminary, and reaching out to the religious community, challenging them to organize people to provide housing.
Revolution: That sounds really important. Also, I know from the beginning families of people killed by police have been a driving force in this. How is that developing?
Debra Sweet: Families have been a driving force so far. Many are still in acute grief. There are people involved in this who lost family members in 2015. But many are saying they are doing this to stop it from happening again to anyone. There is an 11-minute video at igg.me/at/riseupoctober that features really moving, powerful testimony from many of them.
We have a Bring 100 Families of Victims of Police Murder to #RiseUpOctober task force that includes some families themselves—but also people who want to make it possible to bring families here. Some of these families are out in the communities raising funds to get to New York City. In Atlanta, the family of Alexia Christian, killed on April 30 of this year, is going out in the community and raising funds to be in New York. The police murder of Alexia Christian has attracted international press coverage. Other families have their bus tickets now and are doing fundraising for the trip, including hot dog sales and bake sales. But this cannot be all on them, and raising the funds to bring 100 families of people killed by police to NYC requires major funds.
The task force working on this recently had a conference call with some 40 people including people from Northern and Southern California; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; Utah; Houston, Texas; Chicago, Waukegan and Zion, Illinois; Atlanta; Cleveland; and from a number of cities in North and South Carolina, including Charlotte and Greensboro.
This is all part of posing to all of society: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. During the conference call, a number of family members spoke movingly about the situation overall in the U.S.; about what happened to their loved ones who were murdered by police; about the cover-ups and the perjury; about the attacks on the character of those whose lives have been stolen.
Families wrestled with "what is it going to take for people to open their eyes and see" what is happening, and how the work being done to raise funds with groups and people for Rise Up October and the 100 Families can begin to impact this now—building up to October 24. Families discussed the need for us "to be clear on our focus—Rise Up October in NYC October 22-24: Which Side Are You On?" Thousands and thousands and thousands need to be in NYC for this national mobilization.
Alice Howell, the grandmother of Justus Howell who was murdered by Zion, Illinois police, is on the National Steering Committee, and she and I welcomed the family members on behalf of the Steering Committee. I emphasized that we've got four weeks to put families "on center stage" to have all of society confront the reality of thousands killed by law enforcement in the U.S. And I made the overarching point: significant outreach needs to be done to people, organizations, the progressive religious community, professional organizations, unions etc. to "open their wallets, to open their hearts, and their pocket books" to make 100 Families for Rise Up October possible.
Alice Howell said, "There is no price tag on stolen lives—multitudes need to stand with families..." And Alice discussed a range of fundraising activities she has been involved with her daughter, Latoya, including major programs featuring Carl Dix (initiator of Rise Up October with Dr. Cornel West, and Rev. Jerome McCorry, faith initiative leader with Rise Up October) and one-on-one meetings with former Congresspeople. Latoya told us about the work to secure buses to go to NYC from Illinois; reaching out to organizations, and the need to surmount obstacles; and how she was reaching out to families in a number of cities in the Midwest.
I emphasized that while $100,000 crowd funding goal is critical, more is needed given all that will be required. But that $100,000 crowd funding campaign is crucial
There were a number of family members on the phone call from the Carolinas, and there are collective efforts being taken up right now to raise $10,000-$15,000 for at least 50 people (as a starting conception, could be more...), including numerous families who have lost loved ones to murder by police, to be in NYC October 24. People in on the call from Northern California, including family members, shared their experience raising funds for Rise Up October 100 Families Project: They had BBQs—one raised $400 selling hot dogs. The people who did it said, "It was a simple thing—and it wasn't just hot dogs—people donated a lot more than just for the hot dogs" so families could be in NYC.
Revolution: Everyone who hears these family members speak, at least anyone with a heart and a conscience, feels very challenged and inspired to act.
Debra Sweet: Yes! And also, these family members are levers to get the word out in society. Yesterday, for example, Gloria Pinex called a press conference to speak publicly about the conspiracy to cover up the murder of her son, Darius Pinex, in Chicago, that was front page in the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Along with demanding justice for her son, she called on people to join her in NYC on October 22, 23 and 24 for Rise Up October—Stop Police Terror! And challenged people: Which Side Are You On?
Georgia Ferrell is the mother of Jonathan Ferrell. On September 14, 2013, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jonathan Ferrell—a 24-year-old Black man—was injured in a one-vehicle accident. When he knocked on doors seeking help in an upscale white community, police were called. When they came onto the scene, they shot Jonathan 10 times, killing him! Georgia Ferrell has endorsed the CALL for Rise Up October, and she issued this statement today:
“We have to keep this struggle alive. I'm working hard here fighting for justice. We have to put those officers behind bars. This is an attack on our children! We have to keep praying, and we have to keep fighting to stop them. If we stop... if we rest for a moment... it starts all over again. We have to be in the forefront. My parents marched for equal rights, to be treated right. Why in 2015 is this happening? I want to let the nation know what's going on. We need a new future. People in authority don't stand up and speak for the people. No one in authority has stood up and said innocent people are being killed. Jonathan was seeking help! The President says nothing. When Freddie Gray is killed by police and young people stand up, the President says the kids are ‘thugs.’ I'm a Christian and a parent. If Jonathan was doing anything wrong I'd say so. He needs help and the police fire their guns. This must be stopped. I'm flying to NYC for Rise Up October. I've put the word out for funds. And I am using my own money. I am very excited about Rise Up October. We need to do this!”
Revolution: That’s very inspiring and should be a challenge to everyone reading this. So let’s share that URL to donate again, and also can you give people a phone number to call and be part of all this right now?
Revolution: Talk about how the fundraising is going. You mentioned that you raised $10,000 in the first weekend of the crowd-funding campaign.
Debra Sweet: First let me emphasize how important this is. A significant amount will go to bring families of people killed by police—“Stolen Lives families”—to NYC. And for transportation—buses to take people to NYC. Some will also go for publicity for Rise Up October. This needs to be seen by millions of people. We need to buy newspaper ads, print posters, and get the word out to millions. We are aiming to buy ads. This very public crowd-funded campaign is, number one, telling people this is serious and for real, and a way to get people involved.
The first weekend, the $10K we raised included a $5K challenge donation from someone in the faith community in the Bay Area.
Here’s an experience to share: At one meeting that was called to involve people and reach out in NYC, someone went around with a laptop and collected online donations—as much as $100 and $150. We don’t just want pocket change. People don’t have that on them in cash so if we’re serious we have to have them get out their cards and go to igg.me/at/riseupoctober and donate.
Fundraising is not a sideline, it is a way people can take a stand to stop police terror NOW and to make the national outpouring Oct 22-24 in NYC powerful. And it is important to donate through the crowd-funding site. There are “perks” there—like signed copies of books by Cornel West. But you can also get recognition for something like sponsoring a bus or a family. One couple donated $500 to sponsor the travel of one Stolen Lives family member.
Also, while it is critical we get large donations, small donations are important as well because the number of donors makes an impact on people with significant financial resources. So no matter how much you can donate, do that now. We need 1,000 donors—yes we need the money but we need that number of donors. We won’t do this unless we talk to a lot of people.
Revolution: So when people get to one of those websites you mentioned, riseupoctober.org, stopmassincarceration.net, or revcom.us, they need to get palm cards and the Call for Rise Up October—with an impressive list of signatures. But they also need to get people to the crowd-funding site.
Debra Sweet: Right! You can text that URL—and get people to donate now. Text people the URL: igg.me/at/riseupoctober. They can donate, they can watch the 11-minute video of highlights of the very powerful program in NYC on August 27.
Revolution: Your take-home message is?
Debra Sweet: We’re challenging people to become organizers right now, to stop police terror, come onto the streets of NYC and change history. Begin right on the spot with a substantial online donation—and then share the link on social media and call your friends and tell them you donated, and challenge them to donate. This all comes down to: Which Side You Are You On?
Press Conference Exposes Cover-up – Demands Justice for Darius Pinex
Updated September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Above: Gloria Pinex speaks at the press conference
Gloria Pinex called a press conference to speak publically about the conspiracy to cover up the murder of her son Darius Pinex that hit the Internet Saturday and was front page in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.
She said:
"My son Darius was murdered for no reason. Right from the beginning it was a cover up. I was out in the cold January night trying to find out what happened to my son. The police wouldn't talk to me. They told their story to a reporter, but they would not talk to me his mother.
"For over 4 years I have been seeking the truth about what happened to my son and to get justice. I never gave up. They lied to me this whole time. I didn't realize how far the lies went. They talked on their personal cell phones at the scene to be off monitored police communications. They said my son had backed the car at them. They described how he did it. They didn't even know my son's shift was on the floor.
Darius’ brother told how he was in jail at the time Darius was killed and he didn’t even get to say goodbye to his older brother. He knows his brother and knows he would never do anything that stupid. He said you have no idea what we go through in the crib everyday thinking about my brother. He said this police killing has to stop. They are stopping us and killing us for nothing. The police are killing Black people and getting away with it. He called their names – “Justice for Darius” “Justice for Flint Farmer” “Justice for Dakota Bright” “Justice for Nunu” “Justice for JJ Jeffrey Kemp”. “Justice for all the people killed by police!”
"I want justice for my son. I want Gildardo Sierra and Raoul Mosqueda locked up – indicted, convicted and jailed for the murder of my son. I want everyone who was involved in this cover-up (and there were a lot of people). I want them fired.
"I want justice for all the families. Over 800 killed by police this year.
"I want everyone to join me in NYC on October 22, 23 and 24 to Rise Up October! Stop the Police Terror! Which Side are you on? "
* * *
Major media from ABC, CBS, Univision and the Chicago Tribune covered the press conference. It was attended by a number of community activists, stolen lives family members, members of the Chicago Revolution Club. The mother, grandmother and brother of Darius Pinex family spoke. Standing with them and speaking were two other stolen lives family members, the mother of Dakota Bright and the father of Freddie Latrice Wilson. All have endorsed Rise Up October. Gator Bradley spoke representing the family of Flint Farmer – Flint was murdered by Gildardo Sierra 6 months after Darius was murdered by that same cop -- a direct consequence of this cover-up. Community activists at the press conference included Brother Raymond of Brothers Standing Together; Tio Hardiman; Hal Baskin; and William Ayers of Movement Reimagining Change. Iggy Flo spoke from the Revolution Club.
Statement from Syreeta Myers, mother of VonDerrit Myers Jr., executed by police on October 8, 2014 in St. Louis
September 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Unfortunately I was forced into this club no parent wants to be a part of. My one and only child, VonDerrit Myers Jr. was executed by an off duty cop October 8, 2014. The media attacked my son’s character and demonized him.
Here is what you don’t know about VonDerrit. He was loved. He was a student. He loved basketball and the latest fashion. He was intelligent and an intellectual. He had big dreams.
When VonDerrit was killed he was not committing a crime. He just left out of a store after buying a sandwich. Jason Flannery did not have the right to pursue anyone that was not engaged in a felony act. There was no forensic evidence or one eye witness that put a gun in VonDerrit’s hand. All the bullet wounds to VonDerrit’s body were from the rear, and one fatal shot to his head.
This has left my family confused, hurt, lost, empty, and destroyed. That’s why we need people to join us at Rise Up October in New York, Oct. 22, 23, 24.
Justice for all the families that have been impacted by police brutality.
Mother of Jonathan Ferrell, Killed by Police in Charlotte, NC:
"Why in 2015 is this happening?! Rise Up October. I want to let the nation know what's going on"
September 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Georgia Ferrell is the mother of Jonathan Ferrell. On September 14, 2013, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jonathan—a 24-year-old Black man—was injured in a one-vehicle accident. When he knocked on doors seeking help in an upscale, white community, police were called. When they came onto the scene they shot Jonathan 10 times, killing him! And the trial of the cop who killed him—where Jonathan was made out to be the criminal—resulted in a hung jury.
Georgia Ferrell has endorsed the Call for Rise Up October, and she issued this statement today:
“We have to keep this struggle alive. I’m working hard here fighting for justice. We have to put those officers behind bars. This is an attack on our children! We have to keep praying and we have to keep fighting to stop them. If we stop... if we rest for a moment... it starts all over again. We have to be in the forefront. My parents marched for equal rights, to be treated right. Why in 2015 is this happening?! Rise Up October. I want to let the nation know what’s going on. We need a new future. People in authority don’t stand up and speak for the people. No one in authority has stood up and said innocent people are being killed. Jonathan was seeking help! The President says nothing. When Freddie Gray is killed by police and young people stand up the President says the kids are thugs. I’m a Christian and a parent. If Jonathan was doing anything wrong I’d say so. He needs help and the police fire their guns. This must be stopped. I’m flying to NYC for Rise Up October. I’ve put the word out for funds. And I am using my own money. I am very excited about Rise Up October. We need to do this!”
From a Rise Up October Volunteer: "I'm not shy or afraid to challenge people and even argue with them if they are taking the wrong side"
September 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
A member of the Revolution Club on the West Coast wrote this statement about why she is volunteering to go to New York City to be part of building for Rise Up October:
I want to volunteer to go to New York early to help get Rise Up October everywhere. I’m part of the Revolution Club. I have been doing work in the city I’m in to organize people to get them to New York on October 24. I think people need to be challenged around “which side are you on?” and what people are going to do to act to put a stop to these murders. Because there is a genocide in front of us and the difference Rise Up October will make in society when you have thousands and thousands of people in the streets demanding this stop. People need to hear that challenge.
I’m not shy or afraid to challenge people and even argue with them if they are taking the wrong side. I have talked to family members, to artists and prominent people. I’m not shy to go to these kinds of people and make the argument of why they need to act. I’m not shy to agitate in front of a lot of people and call on them to get with this. I can contribute all that and more. I’m ready to go all out with Rise Up October. And throw in, in whatever ways I can, to make October what it needs to be.
Never underestimate the effect one very committed and energetic person can make in getting the word out about October 24 and raising funds to get to NYC for that day! Recently we had a serious sit down about October 24- Rise Up October with the mother of a young man who died suspiciously while being chased by the police. We talked about why a massive demonstration in NYC can make the difference between stopping police murder and brutality or letting the police and all their backers push the people down further. We went through the 3 points in the editorial on revcom.us “Why There Must Be a Truly MASSIVE Outpouring Against Police Murder on October 24 and Why YOU Are Needed.” We talked about why families of police victims need to be in NYC that day to stand together and say THIS MUST STOP.
After talking with us, the mother got on the phone and got three friends and another family member to come out with her the next day to sell hot dogs to raise funds for her and her other son to go to NYC. The owner of a local bodega agreed to let them use his parking lot. A Stolen Lives banner was hung on the fence. Immediately,the crew began shouting into the bullhorn, chanting to ‘join us’, passing out cards and seeking donations. Traffic slowed down, people got out and if they didn’t buy a hot dog, they made some kind of donation. What they said hit a strong nerve, as passersby also told of loved ones whose lives were stolen by police, victims we never heard of. But most importantly, there was the feeling that this epidemic of police murder of Black and Brown youth had to stop NOW. They raised $100 that day and planned to come out the following day.
The following day, the mother had to work and her friends did not go out. When we put this before the mother, she decided that she needs to be the organizer every day. She had listened in on a conference call that included family members from around the country, heard how this is truly a national movement calling on people to be in NYC on O24. We shared with her the interview with Alice Howell about the importance of fighting not just for her grandson but for all victims of police murder, going to her grave to end it! The mother here was even more determined to be in NYC and to raise funds for her family and others. She planned another BBQ for the weekend.
On the weekend, her friends again did not show up (but one of them did get a REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt from the mother who proudly wears her shirt whenever going out to tell people about Rise UP October), but her son’s friends, Black men in their 20s, did. They wanted to show their respect for the mother, their friend and wanted to support her going to NYC in October. They found different ways to help even if they were not loudly agitating. An artist walked by the lively scene outside the project where the mother lives. Right away, the mother said, “We need beautiful banners for NYC. Can you make them?” and got him organized on the spot to make the banners. $150 was raised, including a donation from a middle class man who worked with the young man who had been killed on his music. He had come to see the memorial for the young man, learned about O24 for the first time and wants to learn more.
Later, some of us sat down with the mother to read BAsics with her and talk about how O24 is part of getting prepared for revolution to finally put an end to police murder.
Now, over a number of weeks this family has raised funds for two airplane tickets and they are not stopping. Another BBQ is planned for Tuesday afternoon to raise funds so others can go. People like this mother, who are clear and sure about the need for October 24, can make a big difference in a neighborhood and beyond.
September 26 bake sale to send Ferguson fighters to NYC for #RiseUpOctober
September 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
An activist in the movement against police murder which jumped off last year after Mike Brown was murdered by a Ferguson cop organized a bake sale to raise funds for a bus from Ferguson-St. Louis to NYC for #RiseUpOctober. $300 was raised, and many new people were challenged to start deciding “what side are you on?” by donating on the spot. Bake sale volunteers now are calling for the $300 proceeds to be matched 10 times in order to pay for close to half the cost of one charter bus to NYC to make this goal real and realizable.
It was a sunny day and a beautiful scene. The bake sale was held in Tower Grove Park right across the street from MoKaBe's Coffeehouse where people were viciously teargassed by police last fall. A very large Stolen Lives banner faced the street. Throughout the day, scores of people dropped by the table to get homemade cookies, turtles, and red velvet cake and hot coffee donated by MoKaBe's. Several motorists donated right out of their car windows to volunteers who were leafleting and collecting money in the street.
A bake sale organizer said, “I think that October 24, being that we have a lot of people come out to NYC, we can definitely amplify the energy that was initially here in Ferguson and get back going all over again.”
A few motorists driving by shouted out, “Why aren’t you doing something about Black on Black crime?” One volunteer called them out. “That’s your way of saying you support the police without saying you support the police.” She went on to speak about the role of the police and the attacks by the police on the movement to stop police brutality.
Another volunteer at the table said, “I think it is a movement that was really strong and has been dying down for whatever reasons... October 24 will be a day to bring everyone awareness again. And hopefully bring more and more people together.”
Some people met at the bake sale are going back to their neighborhood or school to build for Rise Up October. Along with calling for people to donate matching funds, more bake sales and other fundraisers are being planned by drawing in the people met at the first bake sale.
Lessons Learnt For Work Among Students—And Much More
September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Strategic Commander—Communist Statesman: This is the vantage point from which I’m straining to proceed from. As part of the national student task force for Rise Up October, I’ve learned very deeply that every step of the way, we have to be straining against the limits of what we think is possible while drawing in many different people into the process of making revolution and emancipating humanity and mobilizing and wielding all positive factors. Both for the immediate aim in drawing in tens of thousands of people to flood the streets of New York City on October 24 (and push forward in the fight to get free) and in the longer sense of leaving behind revolutionary organization that’s not just about fighting on one front but fighting for the whole thing. And I think there’s a tension here that if we’re not being thoroughly materialist and scientific, we can lose sight of what we’re fighting for.
The first week
As part of the national student task force, we’ve set a much-needed goal of mobilizing and wielding (at least) 500 campuses. If we’re just looking at what’s in front of us, this seems like an impossible goal (or at best idealist). But if we’re proceeding from reality and the roiling contradiction that’s hitting us every day (video after video... statistic after statistic...) of the utter illegitimacy of this system (and specifically the enforcers of this system), then what’s objectively crying out to come forward is our leadership.
What do I mean?
Through the process of this past week, I’ve had to learn how to lead and organize masses on a whole different footing. I want to share a couple of stories that help to distill what I mean.
A young woman who recently graduated from an Ivy League school was walking around and noticed a Rise Up October palm card on the floor. She pursued her conviction and looked through the website and decided to contact the national SMIN office. We quickly talked on the phone and she described how much she agonizes and hates what the police are doing to Black people (and other nationalities). So when she saw the card on the floor, she saw it as a sign to act. I described that there are a lot of teams throughout NYC that are distributing materials. So she might of missed the crew in her area. By the time we talked, she had taken pictures of the palm card and sent them to her friends (students) and wanted to get print copies. I said “yes, absolutely,” but then I described what I was a part of and the goals required to bring forward tens of thousands of people to NYC on October 24 (with my particular focus on students). Then I posed the reality that there is nothing more important that she could be doing for the next couple of weeks than making this powerful demonstration happen. She was briefly silent and then said, “I think you’re right.” With that we made beginning plans. She had two free hours and connected with another volunteer and postered the entire building she still had access to. She’s continued to connect with the student task force and is headed to Philly this weekend with plans to connect up with all sorts of students and friends.
What We Must Do To STOP Police Terror and Murder (excerpts)
With this experience, I could have easily settled with giving her the materials she asked for or giving her general ideas to pursue. But it actually took posing the very real contradiction that Rise Up October cannot happen without her and asking her to throw all in. And I’ve had similar experiences to this where I’ve put forward very boldly that if you’re serious about STOPPING POLICE TERROR then you need to seriously get with Rise Up October. And have had to lead people organizationally to take the first steps to make that real (including doing things they’re unfamiliar with like going out, talking, and struggling with other students; and wielding their strengths). In addition, I’ve had to think quick on my feet: are there networks that are intersecting, can we tap into the dynamics of cross-campus life, and are we seizing on every opportunity (no matter how small it seems)?
Agitation and Organization
I had learned a lot from an NYU student who is organizing an event on her campus October 1. She has a lot of moral certitude that anything short of organizing to STOP POLICE TERROR stands in the way. So with that, I talked to a professor who is trying to organize an event on his campus. Immediately I got the list of real logistical contradictions for how difficult it is to organize an event on his campus. And the realness that there’s been a chill on anything political or radical in academia. But, instead of settling with “oh, the bureaucracy! It makes things impossible,” I had to return to (the point of) why we’re doing this. Is it true or not that we’re up against a vicious system that is systematically criminalizing, incarcerating, brutalizing, and murdering our people (predominantly Black and Brown)? And I had to agitate (to someone who’s partisan) of why this is true and why we cannot lose sight of that. Then, OK let’s get back to the bureaucracy; yes, we’re going to get a lot of roadblocks but we have to insist that people take a side. And re-set terms: “Are you going to be the institution of education that prevents students to have access to understand why police terror happens and how to act to stop it? And if you are, then what does that say of the kind of world you’re fighting for?” (And on a serious tip, if this happens, we better make it known that a campus is censoring a program.) This professor was not expecting this discussion. By the end of our call he had changed his position and said, “You’re right; I can’t take no for an answer,” and was determined to book a room and set a date by early this week.
I spoke up at a campus program and posed a serious question to the panelist about the need for revolution and challenged them to be part of Rise Up October. A Romanian immigrant student immediately came up to me after I finished my comments and wanted to be part of Rise Up October. She had a lot of enthusiasm and was glad to hear someone put forward the need to ACT to STOP POLICE TERROR. On the spot we made initial plans for how she could begin to organize for Rise Up October and exchanged contact information to follow up. A day later, I gave her a call. She posted the links for Rise Up October on social media and received little to no response. This reinforced everything that this system is constantly drumming at people that there’s really nothing you can do to stop the horrors of this system like POLICE TERROR. And then she went on to rationalize why nobody cares: “white people are so passive”; “they’re not acting because it’s not happening to them.” I could have said, “Yes, that’s true but, you know, there’s the basis to change that,” which would of been OK. But instead, I had to return to how we met: “You’re someone who cares, you’re someone who hates police terror,” and asked, “Are you going to wield that reality and challenge others to do the same?” And I went on to describe the simple things she could do to bring others forward to act (see riseupoctober.org/students). The call fell silent and then she responded, “I guess I need to try what you’re saying.” We’re developing plans for this upcoming week and are working to forge a grouping of people on her campus.
The hate...
At a recent Revolution Club meeting, we were speaking very earnestly of what we’re up against and struggling through the transformations needed. At a certain point, someone very honestly said they were being attacked by some haters and they hesitated to speak their mind because they didn’t want to reinforce the stereotypes that revolutionaries get accused of, that of “co-opting, taking over, etc.” And we were correctly summing up, fuck that, we can’t be afraid of stepping on people’s toes, we can’t be afraid of disrupting people’s spaces, we can’t be satisfied with the terms people set, and we can’t be afraid of being disliked. Why? Because we represent the seven billion people on this planet. We represent the fighting chance of humanity getting free. We know enough to know that the world does not have to be this way. We know enough to know that anything short of revolution is bullshit. And we know enough to know that there is the leadership (that of this Party and BA) needed to have a strategic chance at winning.
So to return to how we should be stepping
We have to set and re-set terms all along the way and on that basis draw out the strengths and insights of the masses. This takes work but it is what’s required because we have to lead and organize people to bring in a whole new world without this genocidal oppression, through revolution, and as a crucial part of that build up a powerful Rise Up October.
To ALL of our youth—ALL of our old heads—ALL of our youngsters and veterans in Chicago and Los Angeles—and in every other city across this country who are in the “gangster life.”
"This is Bob Avakian,
Chairman of the
Revolutionary Communist Party,
with a New Year's message—
What YOU decide to do with your life matters. It’s like what Bob Avakian, BA—the leader of the revolution—the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, says in his New Year's Message, A Call to REVOLUTION:
“...what we do matters a great deal. Our lives should be, and can be, about something with meaning and purpose that is really worth living for and fighting for. Why should we do what they want us to do—killing and crippling each other, trying to beat down or beat out each other, ending up in jail, or paralyzed, or dead at an early age—instead of joining together to go up against the system that has got us in this mess in the first place?” (Read the entire call.)
The problem is this system, this system of white supremacy, this system of police enforcers, this system of discrimination, this system of mass incarceration—this system of genocide—this system of courts, probation, parole, prisons, brutal bone-crushing poverty—this system of war and global empire—this system of male supremacy—this system—at its roots and foundation—of capitalism-imperialism.
The solution to it lies in Revolution Nothing Less.
We need to, and we can, do much better than this. The world does NOT need to be this way. This system is NOT all-powerful. They have been defeated, and there is a STRATEGY to do that right here. There is LEADERSHIP—Bob Avakian has developed a way of understanding all this and changing everything. You need to get into that as you are standing up to them. We can change ourselves as we change the world—Fighting the Power, and Transforming the People, for REVOLUTION.
There is a very, very important place for YOU in this—those who catch the most hell from this system. AND RIGHT NOW THERE IS SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT YOU NEED TO BE A PART OF AND MAKE AS POWERFUL AS POSSIBLE.
THOUSANDS—TENS OF THOUSANDS of people—Black, Latino, white, all races/nationalities, all sexes, all genders and orientations, all religions, all without religion—rich and poor—along with at least 100 families from all across the country whose loved ones’ lives have been stolen by murdering police—they are gonna come together at #RiseUpOctober 24th in NYC—the nerve center of this monstrous global empire—and take to the streets—going up against the powers that be—and defiantly declare:
STOP POLICE MURDER AND TERROR!
Compelling all of society to choose:
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Are YOU for this horrific police murder and terror or are YOU against it? There ain’t no middle ground. This will reach and touch millions of people in this country and many more around the world. Shining a BIG bright light for all of society and the whole world to see what these brutalizing and murdering pig police do to especially Black and Brown people—shine a light on the fact that tens and hundreds of thousands are marching in NYC to call out THIS crime...to STOP this terror.
Think about this. Think about what it will mean, how much more powerful, beautiful, and transforming this will be if all these people are joined by the bold and defiant ones like those of YOU who came together—tied their rags—went into the streets to fight the power—after the police murdered Mike Brown in Ferguson.
Think about how that inspired so many people of all races/nationalities. Think about how it gave a lot of people the backbone they needed to get their asses out into the streets—making millions ask for the first time, “Is this the kind of society I want to live in?”
A similar thing happened in Baltimore—sparking off a bigger process across the country—after the police murdered Freddie Gray.
To the youth and the old heads in Chicago, and LA—and in every city all across the country who are right now out for revenge, payback, who are beefing—to get “respect”—to get some kind of “justice” for the homies, for the hood—this misunderstands—and it contributes to misdirecting your righteous anger at—what the REAL problem and solution is.
As long as we attempt to find some “respect,” to find a place, within the framework of the system—we are being PLAYED big time. Because it just keeps the same shit going, and going. They get us two times. Going and coming. They do all this dirty shit to you and then they get you to do it to each other.
NO! #RiseUpOctober—Which Side Are You On?—Stop Police Terror AND Murder! Get on the bus! Catch a plane! Get the word out far and wide! Send family members from the city where you live to represent for this!
You come to NYC—the nerve center of the worldwide horror show—the brutal murdering global empire—represent for those who have been stolen from us by murdering police enforcers of this system.
Open up a giant pathway for accelerating the revolution to overturn—dismantle—and finally sweep away this fucking system.
Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for REVOLUTION.
Joe Veale is a former member of the original Black Panther Party and a present member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Which Side Are You On?
Turn Out Thousands to NYC to STOP POLICE TERROR on October 24!
What you can do NOW:
September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Tell everyone you know about Rise Up October, the massive march in New York City on October 24. ORGANIZE THEM TO BE THERE. Find out where the buses are leaving from in your area at riseupoctober.org. If there aren’t any buses organized from your area yet, organize them.
Distribute promotional materials. Download palm cards, posters & the Rise Up October Call Give them out in laundromats, libraries, classrooms, coffee shops, salons and barbershops, theaters. In the neighborhoods hardest hit by police terror, distribute flyers and palm cards everywhere.
Donate to #RiseUpOctober campaign to raise $100,000. Spread the campaign in every way that you can through: social media, phone calls, and conversations. Talk to people about why they should donate to bring the families of people killed by police to NYC, and to publicize the protest. Donations are tax-deductible.
Spread #RiseUpOctober #WhichSideAreYouOn widely on social media. Down load materials here. Hashtag #RiseUpOctober.
Contact everyone you know in NYC to open up homes and other spaces for housing volunteers and family members coming into NYC for Rise Up October 22-24.
Get in touch. Keep in touch. Let us know what you are doing to make this happen.
Call 646.709.1961
LaToya Howell, mother of Justus Howell who was murdered by the police in Zion, IL on April 4, 2015, put it well when she said, “It’s not enough to click ‘like’ on Facebook.”
September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
If students hear the stories of the lives stolen by the police, and the need to make #RiseUpOctober a powerful manifestation and organize events on their campuses where these families could speak, and call on others to be part of this, the possibility will open up for thousands of students to lend support to these families—and they will feel challenged and inspired to join in #RiseUpOctober.
Family members of some of the people whose lives were stolen by police. (Photo: revcom.us/Revolution
(2) Bring the #RiseUpOctober Tour to your college campus.
Watch this 11-minute clip reel from the August 27 program “What We Must Do To STOP Police Terror & Murder” as a model of the impact this tour can have on others.
(3) Teach-In—"In the 60's and 70's students didn't care what their teachers said. A lot of students are miseducated. We should be talking about Race, Feminism, Police Brutality..." (from a H.S. student who organized a Teach-In leading into #ShutDownA14).
Call for students to gather somewhere on campus and have a teach-in on STOPPING POLICE TERROR. This can have a very positive synergy leading into October 22-24th in NYC.
(4) Organize your student groups for Rise Up October.
Email every single organization on your campus (as most can be found online) or call and leave a message about #RiseUpOctober and why they should organize themselves and their networks for Rise Up October.
Note: A lot of campus organizations have national connections!
(5) Make classroom announcements.
Print out copies of the Stolen Lives Poster:
...and make an announcement in your classes. Let people know why you're taking up #RiseUpOctober and call on people to join you to be in NYC on October 22-24th.
(6) Print & distribute copies of #RiseUpOctober materials
Post them on bulletin boards, leave them at coffee shops, or get some friends together and pass them out on a busy area on campus. Whenever you can, give away stacks to others, and challenge them to do the same!
(7) Join the Student Task Force
We're having weekly conference calls on Monday 6:30PM ET. Email students@riseupoctober.org or call/text (646) 418-4758 for call-in details.
“I decided to give this $5,000 to encourage others to donate to the Rise Up October effort.
“Is this a sacrifice? Yes. This money would be very useful for other things. But when I think of the sacrifices of others, like the parents of children killed by the police, then I think this sacrifice is not so much. These families are not given a choice in the matter. And we are not given a choice whether to live in a place where some people are treated like runaway slaves. Our choice only comes when we refuse to accept this injustice and take action.
“If the actions in New York this October 22 to 24 can encourage more people to take an active stand against murder by police, which I think it can, then it is well worth this sacrifice, and a great deal more.
“For those who think that things are tolerable the way they are, I can only say, your standards are way, way too low. Listen to the families. Shake yourself awake. Help make Rise Up October a significant event. Go to New York October 24 and contribute to the effort for a more just world.”
Statement from Gloria Pinex, the mother of Darius Pinex—murdered by Chicago Police in January 2011
September 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Darius Pinex, murdered by Chicago police January 2011
“For 4 years I have been deceived. I always knew I was being lied to—just never knew that it was to this extent and how many people played a role in covering it up.
“Indict the cops! Fire the lead prosecutor. I want all that. I want justice!
“I want everybody who is pissed off about this system to be with me on October 22, 23, and 24 in New York City. Rise Up October! Stop Police Terror! Which Side Are You On?"
New revelations in 2011 murder by police of Darius Pinex:
Criminal Conspiracy by the Chicago PD:
How to get away with murder
September 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The pigs who murdered Darius Pinex did so without any justification at all. The story they gave to justify his murder was a lie: They claimed they been warned by a dispatcher that Darius’ car matched the description of a car involved in a shooting. In fact, they never got any such dispatch. Only after they murdered him were they fed a dispatch from another part of the city, at another time, that a car similar to the one Darius was driving was involved in a shooting incident. A whole series of police and other officials concocted this lie and consciously covered it up. FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SAY “THAT COULDN’T HAPPEN, TOO MANY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE TO BE PART OF THE COVER-UP”—IT DID AND DOES HAPPEN ALL THE TIME.
How to get away with murder:This is not about the popular TV show by that name. This is about the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the murder by police of Darius Pinex and the immediate, extensive, and prolonged cover-up of this murder involving multiple agencies. It was a conspiracy to cover it up that only now, almost five years later, is coming into the light of day.
On a dark, freezing night in January 2011 in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, Darius Pinex and his passenger were pulled over in a traffic stop. It’s hard to think about how terrifying it must have been for Darius and his passenger. The police beamed blinding lights into the windshield, the cop’s vehicle blocked Darius’ car and out sprang two cops with masks on and guns drawn, fingers on the trigger. Within minutes, Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra had fired a hail of bullets. Sierra alone fired eight shots into the vehicle. Darius died at the scene, a fatal gunshot wound to the head at the age of 27. Mosqueda and Sierra insisted that Darius’ vehicle fit the description of a car wanted in an earlier shooting, as justification for the fact they riddled the car with bullets. On the South Side of Chicago, yet another family devastated by the police killing of their loved one. Parents grieving, little brothers traumatized, a child growing up without her dad. Darius’ mom, Gloria, knew it wasn’t right and set out to fight it.
There was no justice for Darius. The state’s attorney refused to press charges and treated it as a “justifiable homicide.” The Independent Police Review Board did nothing. One immediate consequence of the conspiracy to protect Sierra and cover up Darius’ murder was that within months, Sierra had murdered yet again. In this second murder, a leaked police dash-cam video shows the victim, Flint Farmer, lying face down on the ground as pig Sierra slowly, methodically circles around his body firing shot after shot after shot. The gun Farmer supposedly had that night turned out to be a cell phone. After the Chicago Tribune did a major article exposing this in 2011, the state’s attorney AND the federal authorities launched investigations into what happened. But nothing came of it and no charges have ever been brought.
The CPD did, however, reward Sierra. For committing these two murders and shooting a teenager in that same period, Sierra was transferred over to work in the city’s 311 (non-emergency) call center for a salary of over $70,000/year.
Yes there's a conspiracy, to get the cops off
"Yes there's a conspiracy... to get the cops off" Is a clip from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian, given in 2003 in the United States. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Watch the entire film online at http://revolutiontalk.net.
But as bad as all this is, it is not all. What has come to light is a criminal conspiracy to cover up and justify the murder of Darius Pinex. This was a result of a civil suit courageously filed by Gloria Pinex Dittaway, Darius’ mother. Day after day, Gloria had to sit in the courtroom across from the two pigs who murdered her son, while the City of Chicago attorney defending them blamed her Darius for his own death. If it had not been for a small slip-up in the testimony of a dispatcher, the cops’ story would not have come unraveled and the BIG LIE TOLD OVER AND OVER BY THE pigs would not have come out.
The stunning revelation was that the police had straight-up lied about why they treated Darius as a dangerous criminal in the first place. However, even with this the judge would not direct a finding in favor of the Pinex family. Even with this, the jury swallowed the police version of events. Gloria, in anguish after the police walked away unpunished, told the press, “How can you side with somebody who just lied in your face? They’ve been lying to me for four whole years, knowing that tape existed and they never gave it to me. But they let them walk, and my son’s gone for nothing?”
It was so blatant that the Chicago city lawyers had failed to turn over a crucial piece of evidence like the dispatch tape that, in the wake of the trial, the judge ordered an inquiry into possible misconduct on the part of the city attorney who defended Sierra and Mosqueda. The subsequent discovery of a major and criminal cover-up is extensively documented in a front-page Chicago Tribune article published on September 26, 2015.
What has been revealed is nothing short of a criminal conspiracy. Murder and aiding and abetting murder. The lawyers for the Darius Pinex family are pressing for the judge to overturn the jury verdict in favor of the cops and find for the family or to force a new civil suit.
Darius’ mother released the following statement in response to the Chicago Tribune story:
For 4 years I have been deceived. I always knew I was being lied to - just never knew that it was to this extent and how many people played a role in covering it up.
Indict the cops! Fire the lead prosecutor. I want all that. I want justice!
I want everybody who is pissed off about this system to be with me on October 22, 23, and 24 in New York City. Rise Up October Stop Police Terror! Which Side Are You On?
AND FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SAY “THAT COULDN’T HAPPEN, TOO MANY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE TO BE PART OF THE COVER-UP”—IT DID AND DOES HAPPEN ALL THE TIME. AND HERE IS HOW THE POLICE LITERALLY GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND GET YOU TO SWALLOW THEIR LIES AND BULLSHIT JUSTIFICATIONS:
STEPS IN A COVER-UP (as documented by the Chicago Tribune, 09/26/2015):
In the hour immediately following the police murder of Darius, a CPD supervisor on the scene discovered that there had been no justifiable basis to stop Darius’ vehicle in the first place. And certainly no basis to justify immediately pulling guns and shooting at the driver of the car.
The CPD supervisor then called an emergency dispatcher and, against protocol, the two moved the conversation off police public frequencies that are monitored and recorded and on to their private cell phones.
Darius’ lawyers have said that over these private cell phones, the cover-up likely began, concocting a story to justify a “dangerous traffic stop.” Everyone involved claims they don’t remember what was discussed, but gave the supervisor details about an EARLIER dispatch in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT police district involving an Aurora (the kind of car Pinex was driving) that was suspected in a shooting. This crucial information was then fed AFTER THE FACT to the murdering cops.
Sierra and Mosqueda could NOT have heard the dispatch over their police radio as they claimed for four years because it was not broadcast in either their police zone or citywide. This was a complete fabrication.
Sierra and Mosqueda repeated this claim that they knew to be false to investigative agencies and in legal proceedings during the civil trial. The CPD supervisor who crafted it and the dispatchers all knew it was a fabrication.
The city of Chicago’s legal department has lawyers who defend the police in civil suits. According to the Chicago Tribune, these lawyers “told the [jury] panel in no uncertain terms that the officers had heard a message telling them to be on the lookout for the dangerous vehicle and had every right to be on high alert when they pulled Pinex over...”
During the trial, a dispatcher’s testimony hinted that there might be another relevant dispatch. The City of Chicago lawyer denied knowing anything about it. In fact, he had been fully informed more than a week before trial and had not disclosed it to the lawyers for the Pinex family.
It further came out that a copy of the dispatch that showed the police were lying from the beginning was provided to the area detective sergeant working the case back in 2011.
THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS TRULY GUILTY AND IT IS TIME TO SWEEP IT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.
Interview with Rise Up October Steering Committee Member Nkosi Anderson:
"Hey, enough is enough! We need to put an end to police terror and fight for a better world."
September 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revolution/revcom.us interviewed Nkosi Anderson, a member of the #riseUpOctober 24 to Stop Police Terror Steering Committee, on September 25, 2015. He is a graduate student of Union Theological Seminary.
Revolution Interview:
A special feature of Revolution to acquaint our readers with the views of significant figures in art, theater, music and literature, science, sports, and politics. The views expressed by those we interview are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere in our paper.
Revolution: You were an early initiator of Rise Up October and have taken a lot of responsibility to build for these three days in October when thousands of people will take a stand in New York City to say NO to police terror. Maybe you could start by talking about how you see the current situation and why you’ve made this commitment.
Nkosi Anderson speaking on August 27 at the First Corinthian Baptist Church (FCBC) in Harlem, New York City: What We Must Do to STOP Police Murder and Terror—Get Ready for #RiseUpOctober
Nkosi Anderson: Sure, sure. Well, I think when we try to look at any current social issue or situation we have to first look historically. And so for me W.E.B. Du Bois is a scholar who helps me think through a lot of what we see going on today. [In my talk at the August 27th program to build for Rise Up October] I had made reference to his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk. Now it’s funny with Du Bois, he lived from 1868 to 1963. So we’re looking at 95 years and why I think he’s such an interesting figure is because he developed over all those years. Lots of times you see people, especially as they achieve a sort of notoriety, become more conservative, or almost reactionary. But he became increasingly radical throughout his years. So I say that to say that by the 1930s and later on he had became a full-fledged Marxist in his analysis. He writes his magnum opus Black Reconstruction in 1935; in the early 60s he joins the Communist Party and leaves this country, never to return.
So he is someone who grew increasingly radical. But even in 1903 he is developing this kind of consciousness around the problems of society and the oppression of Black people and the masses in general. There’s a chapter in The Souls of Black Folk called, “Of the Sons of Master and Man,” if I’m not mistaken. And in it he’s talking about the social relations of Blacks and whites after emancipation. And what I found interesting in that chapter is that he says that it became very clear that once Black folks were freed, that the economic system could not accommodate all of a sudden now, all these people who needed to be paid for their labor, as opposed to being enslaved and exploited for their labor. And so the question was, “What do we do with all these freed Negroes?” And immediately, the solution was to use the courts; use the police, to essentially re-enslave these people. And so you were branded a criminal simply by your color, the color of your skin.
Revolution: Like there were vagrancy laws where people were arrested for walking down the street—not literally for being Black, but that was the essence of it, right?
Nkosi Anderson: You go to court and you had no chance of winning any case even if you weren’t guilty. I just found that very instructive that even in 1903, Du Bois in his historical analysis is showing the way the criminal injustice system has always been used as a mechanism of social control. It’s been used to protect the interests of the propertied class. It’s also been used to exploit the masses, poor and working folk, and people of color. I mentioned his 1935 text Black Reconstruction. Well, the first two chapters of that book talk about the Black worker and the white worker, and then the third is the planter. So, in the beginning of that book he’s showing how historically, both Blacks and whites have been exploited by the capitalist class to extract the wealth of their labor from them—but then also to pit them against one another. So instead of saying, “Hey, let’s look what we have united and let’s come together and push back,” they’ve been divided and kept oppressed. And I think we see those same types of dynamics going on today.
I think one of the challenges that we face and maybe I’m jumping ahead of myself, that I’m seeing as I try to organize for Rise Up October, is that there are different perceptions in this country on the role of police and what is actually going on in the street. And so for some folks it’s clear as day—they’re living in cities that are literally being occupied by police forces. But for other folks there is kind of this image that the police are here to protect and serve and sacrifice and do good. And certainly the police actually function that way in certain neighborhoods. The police in say a city like Short Hills, New Jersey—I’m from New Jersey, so a city like Short Hills, New Jersey, which is very affluent—the police are going to serve a certain function in that town which is very different from the function that they’re going to serve 20 minutes away in the city of Newark. So it’s kind of how can we get clarity and an orientation around this issue and I think history can give us some light in that.
Revolution: Maybe you could expand on this by addressing the role of family members who have had loved ones killed by the police. What has been your experience working with these families and hearing their stories?
Nkosi Anderson: I think first and foremost when I think of my experience working with these families, is that I’ve been first and foremost humbled by their deep strength and their deep love. I don’t know what I would do if I lost someone near and dear to me. I’d probably retreat, I’d probably fall into destructive behavior. I don’t know what I would do. And so I’m just amazed whenever I see these families not just lament their own loss but use it as an opportunity to speak out against injustices that are continuing to affect others—saying, “Hey you know what? I’m not going to wallow in my pain but I’m going take a stand in honor of my fallen family member to say that this must stop.” And so for me, I’m just humbled to see that type of courage and love of people for them to do that.
I think also this kind of just crystalizes the importance of the struggle, the importance of trying to work for a new world. People are dying. People are losing loved ones. It can’t continue. It has to stop. And so I think what these family members bring to this effort is that they make it real. It’s not just an intellectual, philosophical debate or political debate. It’s real. Lives are on the line. And I think that for those who may not understand the depths of these horrors that are going on, when they see someone speak about a lost granddaughter, or a lost son, or a lost brother, I think that it creates a level of empathy that just theorizing or detached discourse cannot. People aren’t making this up, this is real. And I think that’s what I think they contribute most to this movement to end this type of police terror.
Revolution: I think you’re pointing to the moral dimension of whether or not one stands aside, retreats into self or becomes a freedom fighter. How do you see that, including the role of your faith in that?
Nkosi Anderson: Well, you know, I think that Chairman Avakian has made this clear and I think this is something that this movement has taken up—there’s a line we have, “Which side are you on?” I think the conditions that we are facing today create a clear moral line. I mean I think when you look at the Civil Rights Movement, what freedom fighters then were able to successfully do was make it crystal clear: “OK, this is the moral issue that we’re facing. Do you believe that a certain group of people should be segregated against, subordinated against, and terrorized based on just who they are? Or do you not? And if you don’t then get with this movement and let’s stop it. And if you do, hey, you know, we’re going to fight back.” And it became clear and folks had to take a stand. And I think that’s why that movement was able to make the gains that it did.
Nkosi Anderson speaks at August 27 event in New York City: What We Must Do to STOP Police Murder and Terror
So when we’re talking about the movement today, it does become a moral question. Do you feel that police should have free rein to kill people—or not? Do you feel that police should have free rein to kill people and not face any form of review or discipline or be accountable in any way whatsoever, or not?
Then of course when we’re talking about police murder we’re also talking about our system of mass incarceration. Do you feel that it’s OK, for this country in particular, to have the highest rates of mass incarceration in the entire world? We are the richest nation in the world, yet we incarcerate more than anyone. Do you feel that it’s OK for us to have a system in this country in which for-profit corporations are able to make money off of the suffering and misery of people? I’m thinking of these prison companies that are making tons of money building prisons to house people, there’s money in that. Or not? And so these are clear moral questions and I think these are questions that everybody has to look within themselves and be honest and say OK, where do I stand?
Now, for me, I come at this as a prophetic, as a revolutionary Christian. That’s kind of my grounding, the tradition that I come out of. So we have people like Martin Luther King Jr. who fall into this tradition. You have people like the great social gospeler, Walter Rauschenbusch or the great Black Christian socialist, George Washington Woodbey. He’s someone who I’m actually writing my dissertation on. He’s one of the leading Black socialists in the early part of the 20th Century. You have people like Cornel West coming out of that tradition. It’s saying that, hey we have a call to confront evils across the board. And so you can’t just be like, oh, I’m only going to look at racism. I’m only going to look at environmental destruction. No, we have to be consistent in our morality. So we have to fight against the oppression of women. We have to fight against transphobia and homophobia. We have to fight against poverty. We have to fight against the xenophobia and the bigotry of people like Donald Trump and these other repugnant people. So we’re called to stand on the side of justice.
But I also come out of the Black Freedom Movement. And honestly at the end of the day, wherever our orientation is, whatever our ideological backgrounds are, at a fundamental level, it’s a human thing. Are you OK with seeing your fellow human beings suffer, or not? Do you believe that the way things are right now is good enough? Or do you think that we need to stand together to push for a radically different world? And so when you start asking those types of questions I think that it opens up the conversation and it opens up ground for solidarity.
I look at the relationship between Cornel West and Carl Dix—or we can even extend it to the Dialogue at Riverside Church between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, for example. Here you have folks coming from perhaps different orientations—revolutionary communist stream, prophetic revolutionary Christian stream. But they have overlap around some of these central moral questions and so in that sense they are able to build and able to say, “Hey OK, we agree on these issues of morality, let’s stand together and fight for a radically new world.” And so I just think at a bare level, that basic human level of what type of person are you going to be, regardless of your ideological or religious orientation, what type of person are you going to be and what do you want for your fellow human beings and the natural world. These are moral questions and folks have to take a stand given the conditions that we’re in today in our society.
Revolution: So how do you see Rise Up October, the 22nd, the 23rd, and the mass, massive convergence in New York City on the 24th, impacting the situation?
Nkosi Anderson: I think for me there’s always a need to simultaneously put forth a pragmatic kind of fight back, kind of reformist, broadly speaking strategy, on the one hand; and at the same time, always advance an idealistic, forward thinking revolutionary vision. So what do I mean by that? I think that our work has to be about trying to push back against police murder, against broken windows type of policing, against mass incarceration. That’s the thrust of Rise Up October, that’s the thrust of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. We want to pour into the streets of New York City and we want to say, “Enough of this, this must stop now!”
And so for October 22nd, 23rd, and the 24th we’re trying to create as many opportunities as possible for people who see things the same way to come out and let their voices be heard. So on the 22nd, for example, we’re going to have a public reading of the names of those who have been killed by the police in Times Square. We’re going to enlist religious folk, celebrities, family members, a wide range of folks, to come and give kind of a public witness, as we say in the church, of these people who have died—in Times Square to draw attention to this. The next day we’re having non-violent acts of civil disobedience, to go back to that long tradition of non-violent civil disobedience in this country that has brought about change—which we saw in Ferguson, for instance a year ago and in Baltimore. And then we’re also having marches; we’re also having speeches.
So we’re having a variety of different activities and we hope everybody comes out and participates in all this. We hope people will try and plug in and let their voices be heard in a variety of different ways. And again, the goal is to say, “Enough is enough!” We don’t want broken windows, stop and frisk type of policing. We don’t want police killing people and not being held accountable. We don’t want millions of our brothers and our sisters rotting away in prisons. We want to put an end to this NOW. And so that’s the pushback strategy, that’s the practical, kind of immediate, pushback strategy.
But going on beyond that, my hope is that Rise Up October is just another step in the push towards a more revolutionary kind of vision and action, a more kind of grand, more radical remaking of this society. The way things are right now is not good enough. There has to be a better way. And so for us to get there it’s going to take all of us working together to radically remake our world. And so I think that’s what I hope comes about after Rise Up October, that this can just work towards building momentum towards a kind of more transformative stage in our human development.
Revolution: In going out and building for Rise Up October, there is the need to challenge white people, Black people, everyone, to take a stand around stopping police terror. Maybe you could talk some about this.
Nkosi Anderson: Well, a couple of things. I guess first just immediately responding to your issue about the needing to push white people on this issue. I mean, there was a study that came out a few weeks ago, which looked at the attitudes of Black and white people in response to this issue of police terror. And predictably a high percentage of Black people felt that the police were a problem. And sadly predictably those numbers were much lower among whites that they interviewed. So certainly there is this kind of “race gap” that we need to work around. And I think this comes again from education, it comes from pushing on questions of morality, expanding people’s ethical framework, developing empathy, developing ally-ship. But developing solidarity and not just saying, “OK, I’m sorry what’s happening to people of color.” But actually saying, “OK, I see myself in you and so I have to take a stand because I don’t want you to be going through what you’re going through just based on your race.”
So certainly that’s something that we have to keep pushing on. And I’ll also say this, there’s also the question of class. So when you look at the Civil Rights Movement one of the gains was that it opened up economic and professional opportunity for a slice of Black life, so you see an emerging Black middle class. Unfortunately...
Revolution: And even a president....
Nkosi Anderson: Well, exactly, you read my mind where I’m going with this. So you see, whereas historically in the Black community, and this was a large reason why we were able to make it through all that we’ve been through, there’s kind of been this idea of linked fate and solidarity—we work together to lift each other up. But what you saw was kind of a professionalization of a slice of Black life—the doctors, the lawyers, the educators. And a lot of them moved on with their careers and forgot—oh wait a minute there’s a responsibility that I have to the rest of our community. And so why do I bring this up? I think another issue that we’re facing right now as we try to promote Rise Up October is this class divide.
There are a lot of affluent, well-to-do Black folk out there who are detached from what our brothers and sisters, walking out here in Harlem or down in Baltimore or out in Ferguson, are going through. “Well, you shouldn’t have talked back to the cops. Well, what were you doing walking on the street? Well, what were you doing playing in the park?” So there’s a disconnect. So my point is we need to work against this kind of racial gap. But we also need, even within Black America, we need to work against some of the class gaps. And I think you see this embodied in the president.
The history of Black strivings in this country has been holding, in particular, the federal government accountable, speaking truth to power. That’s part and parcel of the prophetic tradition. Speaking truth to power. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” That’s Frederick Douglass. But ever since 2008 with the Obama presidency, we’ve kind of strayed from that tradition. There’s kind of been this symbolic victory of a Black president in the White House, which is very important, we cannot minimize that. But on many levels it’s remained symbolic.
What’s the point of having a Black face in a high place if we’re not going to get some structural change as a result? And sadly, while the President has been pushed - now, of late he’s speaking a little bit more to racial issues and issues of criminal justice and so forth. I think in many respects he’s thinking about his legacy. But too little, too late. And furthermore and I’ve heard Dr. West make this point, you can’t have moral legitimacy when for the previous six years you’ve done everything to increase criminalization in this country. You can’t call for peace when you’re dropping bombs on other countries. You can’t say these things and have any sort of...
Revolution: I think Dr. West has used the term “war crimes.”
Nkosi Anderson: Exactly, oh, they’re definitely war crimes. How can we expect you to put forth fair immigration reform when more immigrants have been detained and deported under your presidency than any other before? How can we trust you to defend law and order or civil liberties when all your administration has done is crack down on whistle blowers, suppress civil liberties...
Revolution: During the Obama Administration every single time a case of police brutality has been brought before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department has defended the killing; including in cases like where the police illegally knocked down the door of a mentally ill woman and beat her. This is with a Department of Justice that was headed by the former Attorney General who talked about being “pro civil rights.” But the record speaks louder than words.
Nkosi Anderson: Exactly, the record speaks louder than words. When I was growing up that’s how my father taught me to engage politics. He said, “Don’t get caught up in the lofty words and the professional image that these politicians put out there. What type of policy are they putting forth? What are their actions saying?”
But just to wrap the point up, I think now we’re seeing some of the contradictions. Folks cannot deny the contradictions. So the vacation’s over. This is still a very racist country and I think when you see folks rising up in Baltimore and Ferguson and so forth—people are taking to the streets and saying enough is enough, we can’t just leave it in the hands of these false messiahs, these elected officials, these leaders who we think are going to take care of the work. No, we have to be the authors of the world that we want to see. And so I think it’s great seeing people rise up.
I was listening to a videoconference this afternoon with one of my mentors, a great activist for many years against poverty and homelessness, Willie Baptist. He works with the Kairos Center and the Poverty Initiative here in New York City. He cut his teeth during the Watts Rebellion in 1965. He was making a point that when the contradictions of the system are most glaring, meaning when economic exploitation and poverty and things are most intense, extreme—simultaneously you’re going to see folks rising up, but you’re also going to see an increase with police repression. And so with Watts that’s what was happening. You had these economic conditions bubbling up and then boom, you see this kind of very reactionary, racist police crackdown of the people and you also see the people rising up.
So here we are seven years after the 2008 recession and I think some of the contradictions of the capitalist system are clear for more and more people. We know the contradictions are always present, but I think in this moment they are highlighted and folks see them. What have we seen? We’ve seen stop and frisk, broken windows type policies. We’ve seen police murder. These things have always gone on but we’re seeing them exacerbated in this moment. But just like in Watts, we’re also seeing people rise up. And so there are lessons in history, whether it’s the Watts Rebellion, whether it’s going back to Du Bois and looking at Emancipation and Reconstruction. There are lessons in history that we can study to help shed light on our moment.
Revolution: Could you speak to those who are reading this, and weighing how much they should throw in for Rise Up October? What would your advice be?
Nkosi Anderson: What I would say to readers of revcom.us and Revolution newspaper—one, you’re in the right place, ok. Louis Althusser speaks of the kind of ideological state apparatuses that oppress us. So plainly put, in our world today, it’s tough to find accurate sources of information and news that go beyond just color commentating or serving the interest of these corporate political parties; that kind of cutting edge truth-telling that should be a fundamental element of journalism. It’s pretty much vanished in this world. And so Revolution newspaper is at the forefront and the cutting edge and is invaluable in terms of being a resource that stays true to this calling—to tell the truth, to inform the people and to really lift up the voices of the people. And so I would say that I think the newspaper is both a voice for the people in terms of the types of articles y’all run, the types of education that y’all disseminate. But it’s also a paper of the people and that y’all are also lifting up the voices of the people in the prisons, of the people on the street, the people in the classrooms. So it’s a paper for the people and of the people.
And then I’d also say to your readers that I think also supporting Revolution Books is connected with this mission. Again we are in a world that is growing less and less literate, that is more prone to mass distraction and spectacle and foolishness. And so it’s vital that we have a bookstore in existence that is providing the type of literature that you’re not going to find elsewhere. You know? So, where are we gonna read about Mao? Where are we gonna read about Marx? Where are we gonna read about Cornel West? Where are we gonna read about Avakian? Where are we going to have a place that disseminates this type of vital literature that we need, to light our way as we go forward in fighting this madness that we see in our world today? And so I think your readers should continue to support and be connected to Revolution newspaper, revcom.us, and Revolution Books.
Revolution: I really appreciate that and your insights on the role of Revolution/revcom.us and Revolution Books. But I did want to hear what you have to say to people who are trying to decide whether or not to throw in with Rise Up October. There are all kinds of things that can seem like obstacles to this challenge of stepping up to make and change history. So what would you say to someone who is weighing that challenge?
Nkosi Anderson: Well, I think it’s exciting. So I think of myself. I’m a student. I’m in the faith community. I’m in New York City. I’m someone with an interest in politics and changing the world for the better. And so this moment allows me to kind of be true to all of those facets of who I am. So I say that just to say, when you look at the great struggles for justice and change in this country, you had to have the participation of students, you had to have the participation of the faith community, you had to have the participation of folks who wanted to change the world for the better and then fight for something good. And so if that is you, this is a chance for you to meet the challenge of our moment, just like those who came before us tried to meet the challenge in their moment.
I think that this is an exciting network that we’re mobilizing—people from, again various different spheres and segments of society with different orientations and different perspectives, but who are all saying, “Hey, enough is enough! We need to put an end to police terror and fight for a better world.”
So I hope people can look at this movement as something that’s welcoming, that’s saying, hey, we need all hands on deck and that people feel they can come and play an active and vital part in it—and also to contribute financially. For some of us we may not be able to be in New York or we may not be able to make it that weekend. But perhaps donating or working to help secure transportation for someone who wants to come down from Boston or up from Washington, DC and be a part of that weekend. There are a lot of different things that can be done; that need to be done in order for this event to be successful. So I think we extend that invitation for people to get with this and to join.
Breaking Out for Rise Up October at Kent State University
September 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Kent State University in Ohio has a long history of struggle... struggle against racism, imperialist wars, and more. So a couple of Revolution Club members and a Revolutionary Communist Party supporter went out there during the first week of school. Thousands of students poured down the main walkway for hours—it seemed the flow never slowed. We got out 1,200-1,500 Rise Up October palm cards, some of the new BA quote palm cards, and a few Revolution newspapers on the first day there. We got names right away of people interested in Rise Up October and dozens of endorsements.
After going there twice, we summed up that we had been getting the word out but not linking that with people buying tickets to get on the bus and making Rise Up October a “Which side are you on?” issue throughout the campus. So on our next visit, our agitation still had lots of exposure of police murder and the genocide going on against Black and Brown people, but within it we sharply agitated “Which side are you on?” linking that to getting on the bus and being at the march of thousands and thousands in New York City. We got out on the walkway right in the middle of the crowds, challenged students when they nonchalantly, and in a detached, unconcerned way walked on, calling on them and others to take a stand to stop the police terror. We agitated that if they don’t take the stand against white supremacy and police terror, then they side with the police and the system that carries out this terror. Many of the students still didn’t want to hear it and walked smugly on. However, the agitation, the big Stolen Lives poster, and the Rise Up October poster made some people who were walking by turn around wanting to know what we were calling on people to do.
At this school it is usually the case that people don’t have cash, only cards, etc. and many say they have no money. One Black student saw the big poster of Rise Up October and came over, saying she wanted a ticket. She went to a bank machine and bought a ticket. Then she took cards and posters to take to classes. She is in a poetry group, and said she will take it out to them. She went off to get others, some of her friends, to get on the bus and to become organizers for Rise Up October like she had become on the spot. A white student put money down on a ticket and said if she can’t go she will contribute it for others to go .A professor bought a ticket for someone who can’t afford one. Several other students want to be in NYC on October 24. A student who wants to go grabbed palm cards and began getting them out right on the walkway. The agitation created a scene, which made some students feel uncomfortable, while it unleashed many others to commit to go to October 24 and organize others on the spot to go.
In a beginning way, “Stop Police Terror! Which Side Are You On?” became a sharp line on campus, a call to organize for Rise Up October and get others on the bus. We felt we broke with Rise Up October being an interesting idea, to making it a call for an urgent and necessary action to change the terms of how all of society looks at this and acts on it, for thousands and thousands to pour into the streets, insisting that this murder must stop. A Revolution Club member said, “When we called out loud and clear, ‘What side are you on?’ people turned around and got connected. It really spoke to people, like the one woman who was taken by the agitation, got a ticket, and began to get others to go.”
Stop Mass Incarceration Network Marches in the Harlem African American Heritage Day Parade
September 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From people working with Stop Mass Incarceration Network:
#RiseUpOctober was a powerful presence in the African American Day Parade, Harlem, September 20. Photo: Special to revcom.us
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network marched in the September 20 African American Heritage Day Parade in Harlem, New York City, to spread the challenge of Stop Police Terror! Which Side Are You On? #RiseUpOctober and bring many more people into this battle. We made a huge impact with the almost 20 feet long by 10 feet high Stolen Lives float. It was a show stopper. People were cheering and clapping with big smiles on their faces and taking pictures of the Stolen Lives float and our contingent along with the Black Lives Matter NYC Coalition that marched with us. As we chanted, “If you refuse to live like this, let me see you raise your fist!” people along the march shot their fists in the air. People loved and joined in chanting, “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail! The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” We sang the “Hell You Talmbout” song as we marched. People grabbed the #RiseUpOctober palm cards and Stolen Lives posters—15,000 palm cards were distributed along with hundreds of posters.
The following is an example of the back and forth between our person on the bullhorn and the crowd along the parade:
We got to get organized, y’all. October 24, national protest against police terror! Hundreds of families who lost loved ones to murder by the police will be in New York to be here with y’all. October 24 if you want to unite with them, let me hear you say hell yeah! [crowd: hell yeah!] If you want to unite like that to stop all these stolen lives, let me hear you say hell yeah! [crowd: hell yeah!] Why do we need to make a poster like this? Why? Because the police are killing people all over the country. It’s got to stop. They killin’ more people than got lynched back in the day, and it’s got to stop. Ain’t that right? If you feel that way, let me hear you say hell yeah! [crowd: hell yeah!]
The African American Heritage Day Parade on its website says it the largest African American parade in the country. We were invited to participate in it. This and our impact are all the more significant because the parade is full of all kinds of law enforcement contingents, including various permutations of the NYPD, New York State Police and the Rikers Island corrections officers. The Rikers Island corrections officer contingent had the outrageous audacity to have a bus they use to transport people to Rikers Island in the parade! And there we were calling out the police murder of Black and Latino people and mass incarceration with people cheering and clapping. When we arrived in front of the official reviewing stand, the person on our bullhorn chanted, “If you refuse to live like this, let me see you raise your fist!” and many in the reviewing stand raised their fist. The parade chairman, bright red sash and all, was pumping his fist in the air and came over to shake the hand of the person on the bullhorn. A woman on the huge sound system at the reviewing system boomed out, “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail! The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”
Almost 20 of us were joined by about the same number of people from the Black Lives Matter NYC Coalition. We were both scheduled to march in the parade separately and on the spot decided to combine our contingents. The two contingents were led by the latter’s “Black Lives Matter” banner, which spread almost across much of the width of the street. The combined contingents included family members of people murdered by the police, including Nicholas Heyward, Jr., Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, and Shaaliver Douse. Others in the combined contingents included members of the Revolution Club NYC, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, the People’s Power Assembly, and Cop Watch Patrol Unit.
September 25, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Wednesday, September 23. 150 people gathered to hear Carl Dix, families of victims of police murder, religious figures and others at Holman Church in South Central Los Angeles. $2,700 was raised towards sending 100+ families to New York City for October 24. People were deeply moved by the stories of families who lost their loved ones at the hands of the murdering police, and they were challenged that they have to act on that—through contributing money and getting organized to get to NYC.
More from this event, including video footage, will be available soon.
Statement from Ed Asner on #RiseUpOctober/Which Side Are You On?
September 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
When people become inspired en masse, which is not too often, they can leave their stupidity behind and truly move mountains and advance the glory of mankind. October 24th can well be one of those rare occasions when this occurs.
September 24, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader
A volunteer for Rise Up October/Which Side Are You On?/Stop Police Terror and I were going out for dinner near NYU and we stumbled upon a panel titled "THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT, RACIAL INEQUALITY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES." We looked at each other and quickly realized we could not pass this up. We called the Rise Up October national office and had someone bring us materials.
The panel had already started but we were determined to intervene and organize people for Rise Up October. We listened closely. When the floor opened up for Q&A we raised our hands (high in the air). Eventually, I was picked to ask a question. I posed two questions and said something along the lines of: "I am firmly convinced that we cannot achieve any human rights under this system of exploitation and oppression—capitalism-imperialism. This is why we don't have the right to eat, the right to housing... And this is why we need a Revolution Nothing Less...." I then went on to briefly expose the role of white supremacy in shaping the rights that get enforced with brute force under this system.
The second part of my question put forward a challenge to the panel and the audience to get with Rise Up October. I said something along the lines of: "No change has ever come about without mass resistance and everybody who is sick and tired of this genocide has to act to stop it—this is why you have to get with and organize for Rise Up October/Which Side Are You On?/Stop Police Terror."
As I spoke a lot of heads were nodding—especially when I spoke about revolution.
One of the panelists spoke to my question and said: "I agree with your second point that no social change has ever come about without mass resistance. But, I don't agree with your first point about revolution." He then went on to explain that the rights that have been fought for (for the people) need to be implemented.
Both before and immediately after the panel ended a lot of people came up to thank me for my comments. They said they agreed with what I had to say.
We talked with circles of people: challenged them to get organized and began to make plans for how to do so. We were invited to a “disorientation” event for law students and to an informal dinner (this weekend).
After the crowd thinned out, I went up to the panelist who spoke to my question. I posed Bob Avakian’s question of "Through which mode of production will any social problem be addressed?" and said if this system is fundamentally rooted on exploitation and oppression; and if rights are used to maintain and reinforce that system...why would we want any part of that?
The panelist went on to say that he's not for working within the system. But he's speaking to law students and they have to work to reinforce the laws that have been won for the people. I heard what he said. And then returned to Rise Up October/Which Side Are You On?/Stop Police Terror and said if you agree that no social change has ever come about without mass resistance then you need to get with Rise Up October and you need to organize your networks to be part of this powerful manifestation. He agreed and gave me his business card to follow up.
We learned a lot through this brief experience. And struggled with each other and others to get organized for Rise Up October. There's more to sum up, including sharpening up our agitation. But we thought it'd be important to share and as a contribution to how we should be stepping.
Beverly Unitarian Universalist—
Put Your "Black Lives Matter" Sign Back Up!
September 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The sign the activist is standing in front of used to have "Black Lives Matter" but in a move to appease reactionary sentiment against this slogan, the Beverly Unitarian Universalist church took it down. The lies and threats received by the church are part of a larger campaign by right-wing politicians, media and police representatives that claims that the movement against police terror is anti-white, anti-police and most outrageously, somehow terrorist.
From readers:
Last Sunday, a small group of us went to Beverly Unitarian Universalist (BUU) church and out to the community. Unlike big stretches of South Side Chicago, Beverly is a fairly mixed, and relatively well off community of Black and white residents. There are many police and city officials who live in this and the neighboring community. BUU had “black lives matter” up on its electronic signboard and then took it down when a storm of controversy erupted over it.
There are important lessons here. What happened at BUU shows how in fact there are objectively two sides in this struggle. And that if you do not stand up for what is right against the defenders of police murder and virulent racists attacks, you will actually strengthen and even accelerate the dominance of the very thing you abhor.
1. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is from a poem by Yeats. We learned how true this is by going out to BUU. Besides the lies, mis-education and pressure within the immediate area to take down the sign; the church, the minister and even their pre-school received a barrage of both physical threats and virulently racist emails. According to inside sources, some of the hate mail was from self-identified police.
What does it say that defenders of the police spew this garbage, especially in the wake of Charleston? These people making these threats are not going away, they are pushing very aggressively for a genocidal program carried out against Black people. The response to the sign should really underscore the importance of the message and the struggle that has arisen against police terror in the first place. It should drive home that it is imperative that people who do not want these fascist forces to prevail in society need to get off the sidelines and stand up for what is right.
2. The minister and many of the congregants are genuinely agonized by the situation they find themselves in. But they took down the sign and have not put it back up which is what we called on them to do. Instead, they keep trying to find some ground from which they can “carry forward” against racism. The problem is that they already conceded that there is something legitimate to the attacks on their Black lives matter sign. You cannot “carry forward” from standing over on the wrong side. For example, what if the freedom riders or the students who sat in at the lunch-counters said they were worried about upsetting the feelings of enforcers of Jim Crow?
On the other hand, if the BUU stood firm (and they still can do so by putting their sign back up), they could have rallied many people to stand up with them on the right side of this divide. The congregation is divided over the sign and whether it should have been taken down. We took out the big “Stolen Lives” banner, passed out the flyer of an open letter to BUU and challenged people to put on stickers that said Black Lives Matter. Shamefully, only one Black man out of about 40 total congregants there, 35 of whom were white, put it on and wore it throughout. This situation undoubtedly reinforced his view “that the dinosaurs will come back before racism ends.” We talked about what Rise Up October has to do with changing everything that weighs down on Black people.
Afterwards, we went out into the community, in a very decorated van, reading the flyer and the call for Rise Up October over a sound system. Many people honked in support. Others told us they knew about the sign being taken down and thought it was wrong. At least 4 people said they would build for Oct 24 going to NYC in Beverly, getting materials and signing up. There was one person who has been there a long time who conveyed that we wouldn’t believe what really goes on around there, given the concentration of police who live there, and what gets enforced in that community. He also steered us away from areas where there were concentrations of police-occupied houses.
Mexican Immigrant Donates $1,000 to Help Send Families to October 24 NYC
September 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Following are edited excerpts of a conversation with a Mexican immigrant who donated almost $1,000 to send three family members of victims of police murder to the October 24 Rise Up October national demonstration in New York City—as part of the call for people to donate to help bring families of 100 victims of police murder to the O24 protest. He has a manual labor job and earns $1 more than minimum wage. In the discussion he talks about the inspiration he gets from community self-defense forces who have kicked out the drug cartels from the region of his home town in Mexico and are guarding the towns day and night.
“I have no country, I’m of the world. When I see that the police are beating a Black person or anyone, I feel hate. I feel repudiation of the whites, of the racists, of the police. Because of my color, I don’t want that to happen to my children, I want that to stop before it happens to my children.
“It’s the same brutality we are living in Mexico and here, the same. Here, they see our color and kill us. There, they see that we have a dollar and they kill us. It’s the same lack of security because of the government we have.
“I just went to Mexico, and I was really impressed by what I saw and what they told me. When the people rose up and chased out the narcos and the corrupt authorities, the army came in and tried to take away their weapons. The women took to the streets waving their pots and shouting at the soldiers, ‘Motherfuckers, what do you think, that when they (the narcos) come, all we’re going to do is kiss them? That’s why we need arms, to fight against them.’ What really struck me, I don’t know how they got organized, but all the people exploded all of a sudden and were able to take back their territories. They were living in terror but they awoke from that nightmare and said, ‘If we die, we’ll be free, but if we live, we’ll be free,’ and they made up their minds and they did it. It’s not a done deal because they are still guarding their territory like dogs. But it is an example: If we want to, we can. There are no barriers that can stop us.”
Massacre at Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan
U.S. Bombs Send a Bloody Message to the World
October 3, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Fires burn in the MSF emergency trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, after it was hit and partially destroyed by aerial attacks, October 3. Photo: Médecins Sans Frontières
At 2:15 in the morning, Saturday, October 3, the United States carried out a massive, sustained bombing attack against a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz, Afghanistan. At least 19 people are dead, including at least a dozen of the courageous hospital staff who were treating patients in the most dire circumstances, without supplies. Dozens more patients and staff were wounded.
The U.S. military coldly called the massacre “collateral damage”—their euphemism (wording that covers up reality) for killing civilians.
You want to talk about terrorism?
Doctors Without Borders revealed that the U.S. military continued the bombing for 30 minutes after receiving phone calls telling military contacts that the hospital was being bombed. “All parties to the conflict including in Kabul [the U.S.-backed Afghan regime] and Washington, were clearly informed of the precise location of the MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] facilities—hospital, guesthouse, office.” And hospital staff told reporters there were no Taliban fighters in the area.
The bombing sent shockwaves through the devastated city of Kunduz, the latest focal point in the clash between the U.S.-backed regime of Dark Ages Islamic fundamentalist warlords who have aligned with the U.S., and on the other side, the oppressive Dark Ages Taliban—all of whom represent nothing but exploitation and oppression. The Kunduz hospital treated civilians as well as those wounded in fighting without regard to which side they were on—which is what a hospital should do.
Hours after the bombing, thick smoke continued to hang in the air over Kunduz—a message from the USA as it clashes around the world with factions of Islamic fundamentalists who are obstacles to its interests. A message to rival powers that smell weakness in the defeats the U.S. is encountering in clashes with these forces. And a message to the people of the world: Don’t fuck with us because there is nothing too depraved, too inhuman, too grotesquely in stark contradiction to our proclaimed values of “democracy” and “human rights” that we won’t do to teach you a lesson.
The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:8
The U.S. attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and then invaded and occupied the country. They called it “Operation Enduring Freedom.” U.S. bombs, missiles, and bullets have killed thousands of Afghan men, women, and children. Night raids, special operations, covert assassinations, extrajudicial killings, drone strikes, the use of military contractors, massive detentions and torture, and all-around terror are embedded in the nature of this imperialist occupation. From 2009-2012 alone, nearly 30,000 non-combatants were killed or wounded.
Yes, terrorism is a method of reactionary jihadists. But they can only dream of carrying out massacres that bring destruction and death on the scale of massacres brought by the United States.
October 1, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
These imperialists make the Godfather look like Mary Poppins.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:7
The Godfather ends with gangster Michael Corleone attending the baptism of his nephew at the same time his underlings unleash a bloodbath upon his enemies. This week, Barack Obama gave his tacit blessing to a real-life slaughter that totally eclipsed the violence and hypocrisy of that fictional movie scene.
On Tuesday, September 29, Obama chaired a United Nations meeting on “combating terrorism.” On September 28, key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia led a bombing attack that rained death on a wedding party in Yemen. By Tuesday afternoon, while Obama’s “anti-terrorism” conference was in full swing, a UN official reported that the gruesome toll of dead from the wedding bombing had reached 135.
The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly and ruthlessly murdered thousands of Yemeni civilians by bombing. (See “Mass Murder of Civilians in Yemen ‘Made in USA‘“). The U.S. has fully backed the Saudi-led onslaught and has sent over $90 billion in military equipment to the Islamic fundamentalist Saudi government in the last five years.
Saudi officials at first said the bombing of this wedding party was “a mistake”; within a few hours they were denying responsibility. But two things are certain. One is that the blood of thousands of dead Yemeni civilians is on the hands of Obama and other U.S. officials, who sponsor, advise, and supply the Saudi military and who provide diplomatic and political support to the thoroughly reactionary Saudi government. The horrific, ongoing massacres and devastation that have turned Yemen into a living hell are truly “made in the USA.” The other is that Michael Corleone and his family couldn’t hold a candle to the worldwide terror presided over by Barack Obama and other U.S. rulers, and to the crimes of the U.S. empire.
STOP wars of empire, armies of occupation, and crimes against humanity!
We Don't Need "Mercy" and Condemnation, We Need Liberation
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editor’s note: For all his supposed speaking out on behalf of the poor, the environment, and the persecuted, the essential message of Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. was to lull people into acceptance of the world as it is. On his last stop – in Philadelphia – the Pope let the “other shoe drop” with a series of ugly, overt assertions of traditional patriarchy. He held highly symbolic meetings with the Kentucky county clerk who refuses to marry same-sex couples, and with a Catholic order that is fighting against allowing birth control insurance coverage for their employees. He insisted, in exchanges with reporters, that there is a so-called “right” for the government to persecute, discriminate, and oppress women and LGBT people as long as this is posed as a matter of individual Christians following their conscience. What emerged in sharper relief from the Pope’s stop in Philly was the degrading and vicious enslavement of women that is a core element of, and deeply woven into the Pope’s whole outlook and message. The following is from an article that appeared at revcom.us just before Pope Francis arrived in the U.S.
Pope Francis is being deployed to not just revitalize the Church, but to play a certain kind of role. First, to promote the traditional Catholic teaching that if people are obedient and humble, if they accept their place in the world and allow themselves to be demeaned as sinners responsible for their suffering, their lives will have meaning and they will live forever after they die. Second, to promote the idea that if people struggle for modest improvements in their lives, the Church will stand with them and speak out on their behalf. Third, that—in the case of those who the Church has almost literally demonized, including women who get abortions or use birth control, gay and lesbian people, and people who get divorced and remarry—there will be forgiveness and compassion... if they repent of their supposed sins.The pope is being hailed for supposedly enlightened and merciful changes in the Church’s position on women and LGBT people. Space does not permit us to get into all the hypocrisy and misrepresentation involved in this myth, and all the self-deception in which people who believe it are engaging. In all these cases of his so-called mercy, let it be noted, Francis is still insulting people as sinners needing to repent—the only difference being that if they are sincerely repentant they will be welcomed back into the Church.
But let’s take one example: abortion. Recently the pope announced a year of mercy and said that women who get an abortion but sincerely repent and confess to their priest may, after a year, be allowed to take communion.
Mercy? Repentance? Are you fucking kidding?
In fact, 47,000 women every year die from botched abortions, in large part due to the Church’s relentless efforts to keep or make abortion illegal. 47,000. What if the Church were to line 47,000 women against the wall? Picture them, like women you know, from all the different countries, people with lives and dreams and work and love. Then think of them murdered, one by one, nearly a thousand every week. And not just one year, not even just one decade—but for centuries. This “people’s pope” is soaked in the blood of women, from his shoes to his scarlet vestments. His profession of concern is oily insult on top of raw, unspeakable, repeated injury.Countless more millions of women are forced to bear children against their will, due to the Church’s opposition to birth control. Again—for centuries.
No woman, anywhere in the world, has anything to repent to the Catholic Church for. And no thinking person, anywhere, should fall for the sick hype about the “people’s pope.” Vindictiveness wrapped in professions of concern and mercy is still vindictiveness.
Available now in eBook, paperback, and hardcover through Insight Press, your favorite bookstore, or online retailer (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.).
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As for the Church itself? It can never atone for the suffering it has enforced and the ignorance it enshrines, every single day, vindictively and without apology. The day when all tradition’s chains on all humans—including the ideological hold and all-too-real chains of the Catholic Church—have been shattered and buried will be a truly joyous one.
People don’t need a makeover of the Church. We don’t need some guy in medieval pajamas alternately dispensing mercy and condemnation, telling us he is with us while he tries to smooth over and cover up the howling horrors of this system... giving consolation to the slave to make slavery tolerable, rather than leadership in a fight to do away with slavery... wagging his finger at the destroyers of the environment while legitimizing their right to power.
We need a revolution. And we need it as soon as possible.
Noche Diaz speaking at Times Square, New York City, on August 13 at a show stopping event that included major recording artists, community leaders, and family members of victims of police murder in the fight against police terror. Photo: revcom.us
Who Is Noche Diaz?
Why Do the Police Keep Targeting Him?
Why Do YOU Need to Stand With Noche at His Upcoming Trials and Join with Him and Thousands More in #RiseUpOctober?
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Consider this: Hundreds of Black and Latino people are murdered by police every year and the killers are rarely, if ever, even brought to trial for this. Even when they are caught red handed, on video, carrying out one of their murders, killer cops walk free. Yet the people who protest police terror are the ones who are attacked, arrested, and hit with criminal charges. The authorities are sending a message: They say their RIGHT and ABILITY to use murder and terror must go unchallenged. Don’t you dare protest police terror—and don’t even think about making an actual revolution. The people need to send a very different message: We are NOT intimidated. We will NOT be silenced by these attacks and threats. We will stand with Noche and rally others to stand with him.
Noche Diaz, year after year, over and over, is someone the NYPD has harassed, threatened, arrested, and slammed with charges after charges. Right now he faces two cases in Manhattan, with a total of four criminal misdemeanor charges.
But Noche Diaz is NOT a criminal. Every day, Black people and Latinos are shot down by cops, or choked out. Walking down the street, or sitting in a wheelchair; in their own homes, or playing in a park. Beaten, tased, and tortured on the streets, or in the jails and prisons. Raided and rounded up in huge militarized police assaults.
Noche Diaz is under attack because in the face of all this ugliness he has refused to accept their murderous and illegitimate authority as eternal; he has stood up, and stood with others when they stand up, to this system’s terror. Not just for himself, and not by himself, but as part of a revolution to emancipate humanity from this long nightmare. He is a leader in the NYC Revolution Club, works with the Revolutionary Communist Party, and was an early member of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.
Since Ferguson, we have seen the potential of those kept down to rise up, to challenge all of this terror and brutality, to wake up large parts of society and change what people think is needed and possible, and to inspire tens of thousands to act. This potential is what this system is trying to suffocate in the cradle.
This is why #RiseUpOctober must be a massive outpouring where tens of thousands in the streets make clear to all their answer to the question: Which Side Are YOU On? STOP POLICE TERROR! This is why Noche cannot and will not stand alone. We will not let them take our leaders. We will not let them criminalize people who stand up to police murder and terror.
We will make sure they know: WE STAND WITH NOCHE! DROP ALL THE CHARGES! There will be no empty courtroom where they can silently lock away a freedom fighter. In the court, and in the street, we will wage a fierce battle to keep Noche out of their clutches.
Here is what you can do starting right now
PACK THE COURT: October 13. 100 Center Street 9:00 am
Sign and spread the HANDS OFF NOCHE! Drop ALL The Charges! petition
Invite Noche to speak at your high school; your church/synagogue/mosque; your community organization, union meeting or club; etc. stopmassincarceration@gmail.com
Contribute to Legal Defense Fund. Send donations to Stop Mass Incarceration Network and indicate it is for “Noche legal defense.” stopmassincarceration.net
Be part of building for #RiseUpOctober to STOP POLICE TERROR! Call 929-249-7996 or go to riseupoctober.org.
New York Prison System... a System of Sadistic, Brutal, Torturing, and Murdering Pigs
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
Ramon Fabian, doing a one-year sentence on a drug conviction in Ulster Correctional Facility in upstate New York, was yelled at and told to “shut up” by a prison guard during one of the numerous headcounts during the day.
Once count was over, Ramon Fabian was singled out. He was taken past a set of double doors out of sight of other prisoners and out of sight of the electronic surveillance cameras. He was slammed against the concrete wall and made to “spread eagle.” At which point a pig kicked Ramon as hard as he could with the tip of his boot dead straight into his groin.
Ramon fell to the concrete floor in excruciating pain and agony. Unable to get up and walk, he could only groan and cry from the horrible pain.
When the pigs finally put him in a van and took him to a hospital 80 miles away, doctors had to perform emergency surgery, removing part of Ramon’s right testicle.
This happened a year ago when Ramon was 20 years old.
The whole prison system, the whole system of guards rallied to defend and protect not only this pig—but the legitimacy of this whole system of sadistic, brutalizing, and torturing pigs.
Samuel Harrell
On April 21, Samuel Harrell, a 30-year-old Black man at Fishkill Correctional Facility—again in upstate New York—announced while in the TV room that his family was coming to take him home. He packed up his property and waited for their arrival.
Samuel Harrell was known to have a bipolar disorder. Samuel was pounced upon—savagely jumped by as many as 20 pigs known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad.
They knocked Samuel down to the concrete. They kicked and beat him until he lost consciousness. They beat him some more.
They threw his lifeless body down the metal stairs, where they continued to beat, kick, and stomp him, literally jumping up and down on his now obviously dead body—as though it was a “trampoline,” in the words of one prisoner.
Prisoners who witnessed this were either beaten, threatened with receiving the same treatment, or put in solitary confinement. Torture.
These sadistic pigs go around boasting and bragging about what they do. Not one of them has been indicted, convicted, or sent to jail for the murder of Samuel Harrell.
The beating, torture, and murder of prisoners by guards is common not only in Rikers Island (New York City version of the county jail) but common throughout the New York prison system.
After two prisoners escaped from Clinton—the maximum-security prison in upstate New York—guards went around beating prisoners, torturing (choking) them by placing plastic bags over their heads, trying to extract information.
Doing to them what they do to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and other places.
This whole capitalist-imperialist system, with its system of prisons, courts, and mass incarceration, its system of sadistic, brutalizing, murdering pigs—is an endless horror for millions, tens of millions here, billions more around the world.
It cries out to be overturned, broken apart, dismantled, and defeated—through a revolution involving tens of millions of people—and replaced with an entirely new system at the earliest time possible.
San Francisco Speak-out for Rise Up October, September 26
October 2, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Saturday, September 26, 80 people came to the Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco to hear Carl Dix and Pastor Jerome McCorry speak on the issue of mass incarceration and the importance of the Rise Up October mass mobilization in New York City to demand an end to police murder. Families of people killed by police were also in the house and spoke with deep feeling and urgency about what they have faced and the need to end these outrages. More than $500 was raised to help send families of people killed by police to the actions in New York.
From left: Uncle Bobby (Cephus Johnson), uncle of Oscar Grant, killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police January 1, 2009; Angela Naggie, mother of O’Shaine Evans, killed by San Francisco police October 7, 2014; Gabrielle McCarter, wife of Rev. David McCarter, killed by Jasper Newton County, Texas sheriffs; Cadine Williams, sister of O’Shaine Evans; Chemika Hollis, partner of Nate Wilks, killed by Oakland police August 12, 2015; Carey Downs, father of James Rivera, Jr, killed by Stockton police July 22, 2010.
Left: Carl Dix in conversation with civil rights attorney Rochelle Fortier Nwadibia. Right: Rev. Jerome McCorry
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
by s. Nicholas
Dontae Martin with his family.
JULY 23, 2015
in memory of Dontae L. Martin
Dontae Martin died on Thursday
while I was teaching the craft of writing
to boys who’ve made mistakes. Boys
with guarded smiles
and important things to say.
He was the same age as my littlest brother
and the same color.
I can call my brother today, say, How are those babies of yours?
Hear his voice say, Hey sis.
Dontae’s children will only have
the memory of what his voice was
and after a while it will fade
like a distant siren, like laughter
through the wind and they’ll strain
to hear it.
Maybe they will grow up angry,
like the boys in my class.
Because their mama is worn
from heartache and their father’s death
was ruled a homicide. One life taken by another. Maybe
it will be tough to teach them that law
enforcement is supposed to protect them.
Maybe they will see their father, lifeless
in the driver’s seat of that car, every time
they see an officer in uniform.
I wonder if he was thinking of their names
as the officers killed him. His six children. Thinking of
each of their names as they shot him six, seven,
eight, nine, ten times.
Because time slows down
in moments like that, allows us
to see, and time will slow
for Dontae’s family every time
they remember but not enough
to stop the bullets, not enough
to bring him back.
s. Nicholas lives and teaches in Lake Arrowhead, California. Posted with permission from the poet.
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Delores Scott
It is with great sadness that I pass on the news that Delores Scott died Tuesday night of a heart attack. She was an early and outspoken supporter of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, attending its first meeting in Chicago. Even when she couldn’t walk in the marches she came to the protests last year for Mike Brown and Eric Garner and the October 22 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality. She also worked with Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, mailing Revolution newspapers to prisoners. Here is what she said about why she did it:
I’m here with revcom and Revolution newspaper. Well, for me the reason I started on the newspaper almost a year ago is because of the fact of my son—he’s incarcerated; and he is in solitary confinement and they don’t really have things to read while they are there, but when I came over to Revolution (the newspaper for real) I see how much hard work and determination they are to send the paper out to prisoners and that’s why I came on board to help to do the newspaper and get insight on what’s going on by reading the newspaper. I really enjoy it a lot.
Delores considered herself a “revcom,” part of the movement for revolution, travelling to New York for the Dialogue between Bob Avakian and Cornel West last year. She distributed revolutionary literature and talked about revolution to people in West Side neighborhoods, especially the youth. And she marched proudly in the Revolution Books contingent at the Bud Billiken parade this year, promoting revolution and October 24 Rise Up October to STOP Police Terror.
Delores’ whole life cried out the need for resistance and revolution. Four of her six children were in prison. One of them spent time in the notorious Homan Square Chicago Police torture site. She lived in a shelter for abuse survivors because of a previous abusive relationship, and was finally just about to move into a new apartment. She constantly had to battle the system for her and her family to survive; her mother almost died because of a slum landlord. But she had a fierce, courageous heart, broadness of mind, and a wicked sense of humor. She wanted her life to be part of the solution, and she stood with resistance and revolution with all her strength.
She is survived by her family and loving partner CeCi. All of us who knew and worked with her will miss her so much.
Cheers to Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church for Doing the Right Thing
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In the midst of controversy and threats—including threats by racist police—against the Beverly Unitarian Church in suburban Chicago that resulted in that church doing the wrong thing, and taking down their “Black Lives Matter” sign, cheers to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, Maryland who did the right thing. On August 30, the church hung a Black Lives Matter banner in a moving and defiant ceremony that included a declaration that if the sign was taken down or attacked, the congregation would put it back up.
At the ceremony, Rev. John Crestwell, the church's associate pastor of outreach, leadership and evangelism, said: "Symbols are important, but this is more than symbolism, it is a next step toward our becoming more active, a more driven community. We want to be part of the movement on the right side of history."
Watch an inspiring video of the banner-hanging here.
I view that question as being a concentration of one of Frantz Fanon’s most famous quotes in The Wretched of the Earth in which he asked the same from a generational trajectory of responsibility of NOW in which he remarked that “Every generation must out of relative obscurity, discover it’s mission—fulfill or betray it.”
One question I often ask ones in order to capture that same “generational trajectory of responsibility of NOW”, is to ask what type of person they would’ve been if they were born during the time of chattel slavery. Would you have been a Frederick Douglass type, who as an escaped slave himself ... who taught himself how to read and write ... and who fought slavery unceasingly with his mind, body, and actions? Or would you had sympathized with Justice Roger B. Taney—both thoughts and actions—who infamously said in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision that blacks had no rights which the white man was bound to respect? Which side would you been on? Or would you been a John Brown type who was white, yet an outspoken abolitionist ... who sacrificed his own life in order to end the socio-economical system of slavery? Or would you been like Jefferson Davis—the President of the Confederate States—who was willing to fight with his mind, body, and actions in order to maintain the socio-economical system of slavery? Which side would you been on?
Or let’s say that you lived in the 60’s, would you been a Fred Hampton type of individual, who stood up to police brutality and terror as a leader of the Black Panther Party ... and who was assassinated by the police and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI because of it? Or would you had sympathized with J. Edgar Hoover, who did everything in his power to neutralize and even assassinate individuals like Fred Hampton and Martin Luther King Jr. in order to reverse the gains of the Black Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement? Which side would you been on?
I’ve noticed that depending upon how people answer those historical questions of responsibility that history has passed down to us to learn from, very much informs their conscience in how they view that question today (Which side are you on?).
There is a place where epistemology and morality meet. There is a place where you have to stand and say: It is not acceptable to refuse to look at something—or to refuse to believe something—because it makes you uncomfortable. And: It is not acceptable to believe something just because it makes you feel comfortable.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 5:11
A lot of people—not all though (as eye-brow raising as that may be)—will claim they would’ve been a part of the abolitionist movement in some way if they had lived during the time of slavery. And many of those same individuals would go even further and claim they would’ve also been a part of the Black Liberation Movement or Civil Rights Movement if they had lived back in the 60’s.
I often use this tactical approach to set the framework of my dialogues with people in order to quickly pivot to my main question, which I had in mind all along: “What role do you see yourself playing in the movement to end police brutality and terror today? Which side are you going to be on NOW?” This harkens back to what BA said BAsics 5:11 (in part), “There’s a place where epistemology and morality meet”.
I’ve found that when you become conscious of something, which you were formerly unaware of—particularly an egregious injustice—that level of consciousness at the same time provokes your level of conscience to reach an even higher synthesis as well. There’s definitely a dialectic relationship that constantly feeds both side of this coin in a spiraling and dynamic way.
Just like the injustice of slavery gave rise to the moral antithesis of it in the form of the abolitionist movement during chattel slavery or the Black Liberation Movement (and the Civil Rights Movement) embodied the moral opposition to the wide array of injustice, discrimination, and police terror that Black people stood up to day in and day out in the 50’s and 60’s, today we have our own moral antithesis to police brutality and terror today. That’s one level of struggle, but I would argue even this is not morally enough. Why? Because police brutality and terror won’t end until our generation’s abolitionist movement (the Revolutionary Communist Movement) to end wage-slavery becomes the ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE of this movement overall.
We’ve tried reforming police brutality and terror in the 60’s and 70’s, but where has that gotten us? Lest we forget, it was police brutality and terror that gave rise to the Black Panther Party in 1966. Lest we forget, it was even police brutality and terror that also gave rise to A.I.M. (American Indian Movement) in 1968, according to its founder Dennis Banks in his autobiography Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and The Rise of the American Indian Movement. Now, it’s police brutality and terror again that’s given rise to this generations movement against the same thing in 2014-2015 and counting. The question for our generation today is: How will we confront this problem this time in order to solve it once and for all, so that generations from now don’t have to confront this SAME PROBLEM AGAIN? I would argue that “Which side are you on?”—must, and will, increasingly be between reform (The little “R”) and Revolution (The BIG “R”) the longer this movement expands and deepens. I, for one, want to be on the right side of history, reality, and truth, so generations from now don’t have to continue to ask: Which side are you on?—at least as it relates to the question of Revolution.
Revolutionary greetings! Big up the R.C.P!....Regarding the October 24th initiative, spearheaded by comrade Dix and comrade West, very large numbers of people should lend their support to this most-worthy cause. We all need to strongly denounce this increasingly oppressive terror-unit, calling itself “law enforcement.” The callous way in which it casually murders and criminalizes large segments of minority citizens is appalling, and runs counter to its claim of serving and protecting. The million dollar question is: serve and protect who? It’s quite obvious that it isn’t members of the lower-class (especially minorities). We see where this segment of the population receives a peculiar brand of policing that can best be described as a form of occupation. These people are constantly preyed-upon & targeted by the police.
It is quite obvious that the police serve and protect the interest/s of the ruling class, who sanctions their terror. Seen from this angle, this terror can be accurately described as state terror. If the power-structure didn’t/isn’t endorsing these horrors then they wouldn’t be a recurring thing in U.S. society. This revelation opens a can of worms because the inquiring mind is compelled to ask: how does it benefit the power-structure to have a segment of society constantly targeted, preyed-upon and earmarked for destruction? What do they stand to gain by allowing their enforcers (the police) to terrorize Hispanic and colored youth of the lower class?
In one of his poignant discourses, Chairman Avakian profoundly points out the need of the power structure to repress minority youth because they pose a threat or, they are perceived as a potential threat to the current socio/economic system currently in place. This same system shuts out any real opportunity of advancement for a large segment of these minority youths. Fearing the righteous anger of these “outcast” youths, the policy makers have decided to conduct a very sophisticated low-intensity warfare against them in an attempt to solidify and maintain their control. These youths are demonized, criminalized and ostracized in order to justify the assault that is leveled at them, which manifests in various ways. These include mass incarceration, various types of discrimination, intimidation, miseducation, and sometimes our annihilation. A slow genocide is the aim of this low intensity warfare.
At some point even those who claim exemption from this State sanctioned police-terror will have to either shrink from their battered conscience (due to indifference), or shrink from the contradiction that they are “law abiding” citizens, yet they allow inhumanity/injustice to thrive in this so called free, democratic society. They’ll be forced to come to terms with the accurate indictment of complicity on their part.
Chairman B A once stated that, indifference is essentially violence. This position is shared by comrade Noam Chomsky, who stated: “It is the fundamental duty of the citizenry to resist and restrain the violence of the State. Those who disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war crimes, which is itself designated as a crime under international law, in the principles of the charter of Nuremberg.”
It requires the combined force of a large segment of the society to call-out these nefarious outrages and expose the many contradictions riddled in this bankrupt, putrid, oppressive and biased system which has an insatiable appetite for fresh victims.
Delaware Cops Shoot and Kill Paralyzed Black Man in Wheelchair
September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Angry residents at the site where Delaware police murdered Jeremy McDole, a Black man paralyzed from the waist down, while he sat in his wheelchair
This was murder. He shot my son like he was roadkill.
Phyllis McDole
Another horrific video of the police shooting and killing a Black man in cold blood.
According to Wilmington, Delaware police, someone called 911 on September 23 to report that Jeremy McDole shot himself. Jeremy McDole is a 28-year-old man in a wheelchair. He is paralyzed from the waist down. He lives in a nursing home.
And he is Black. How did the system respond to what—if their story is to be believed—might have been a suicidal, paralyzed Black man in a wheelchair? Were counselors sent to the scene to provide assistance to this human being?
The response is on video, filmed by someone in the neighborhood. It starts with a cop coming on the scene where McDole is sitting in his wheelchair. It ends, one minute and 23 seconds later, with Jeremy McDole lying on the ground DEAD. Watch the video here:
The first cop approaches, already aiming a shoulder-fired weapon. Within about 4seconds, he fires, starts yelling for McDole to put his hands up, then pumps the gun, ready to shoot again. Three more cops arrive with pistols drawn. You see Jeremy shifting his weight in his wheelchair. You hear the guy taking the video saying, “He’s bleeding, he’s bleeding.” No gun or anything else is visible in McDole’s hands. The cops are all yelling at him to put his hands up. About 35 seconds after the other cops arrive, you hear a hail of bullets. You see Jeremy McDole fall out of his wheelchair to the ground.
Phyllis McDole, Jeremy’s mother said, “He wasn’t bothering anybody. He didn’t have a weapon or anything. He stood up and pulled his pants up and sat back down and put his hands on his lap and they opened fire on him....They shot my son so much he fell out of the wheelchair.... He wasn’t armed. He didn’t have a gun. He died by himself. He died alone.”
Phyllis McDole interrupted a news conference by the chief of police the day after her son was killed. When Chief Bobby L. Cummings ran out the cops’ story that Jeremy had removed a weapon from his waistband, Phyllis stood up to dispute this account saying, “This is unjust—he was in a wheelchair. There’s video showing that he didn’t pull a weapon, he had his hands on his lap.” (See video of Phyllis McDole speaking before the press.)
There is anger and outrage. The New York Times reported tense encounters between residents and police, including one where objects were thrown at police responding to a different incident. Jeremy’s uncle, Eugene Smith, who was among those gathered at the scene of the shooting, said, “It was an execution.”
Every conscious person needs urgently to choose the side they are on in the face of the police systematic murder and terror of Black and Brown people.
#RiseUpOctober in New York City (October 22-24, 2015) is an important occasion for the people to take a stand and put a stop to this epidemic of police terror, which has taken and continues to take precious lives of hundreds of young people, overwhelmingly Black and Brown, in this country. In this intensifying crisis, indifference or complacency cannot be an option and we cannot stay on the sidelines.
#RiseUpOctober in NYC is an occasion to declare to this capitalist system of oppression and exploitation and its enforcers that business-as-usual must end. It is a time to show to the entire world the true nature of this system of injustice and its sham democracy. It is a time of solidarity with tens of thousands of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the victims of police murders and outright assassinations. It is a time to expose the deliberate genocidal war on Black and Brown youth in ghettos and barrios.
It is an illusion to think that the capitalist establishment is willing to put a leash on its enforcers and unbridled cops who are tools in safeguarding an oppressive and exploitative order.
#RiseUpOctober in NYC is a time for the masses to announce to the rulers and their lackeys that Black and Brown youth have the right to walk the streets without the fear of being killed by vigilantes and killer cops if they’re holding a piece of candy or a mobile phone in their hands.
#RiseUpOctober in NYC is a time for people to loudly and resolutely declare that humanity rejects slavery, lynching, police terror and assassination, and mass incarceration of minorities and the disadvantaged.
Nearly two centuries ago, in 1831, a 31-year-old black slave named Nat Turner, who was leading a slave rebellion in Virginia, was executed. Someone by the name of Jeremiah Cobb who announced the rebellious slave’s death sentence said, “The judgment of the court is that you be taken hence to the jail from whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of 10 am and 2 pm, be hung by the neck until you are dead(!), dead(!), dead and Lord have mercy upon your soul.”
More than a century later in 1969, Edward Hanrahan (Cook County State’s Attorney of Illinois) sent 14 local and federal cops in pre-dawn hours to the apartment of Black Panther Party leader, 21-year-old Fred Hampton, in the near west side of Chicago. They murdered him and 22-year-old Mark Clark in cold blood in their sleep and riddled them with a barrage of nearly 100 bullets.
Nearly a half century later, the same police terror continues. Black youth are murdered. A disproportionate number of them are incarcerated. Recently a secret interrogation compound called Homan Square was discovered in Chicago by the Guardian newspaper where mostly poor Black and Brown detainees are kept off-the-record without access to any basic rights. They had no searchable public records for their family members to find them and be represented by attorneys. It has been described as a domestic equivalent of the secret CIA black sites in various countries.
#RiseUpOctober in NYC is a time for people to march and expose the ugly face of an imperialist system of injustice, which is constantly brutalizing the underprivileged and underrepresented people by unleashing killer cops in choking to death someone like Eric Garner in New York, murdering a young man like Freddie Gray in Baltimore while in police transport, assassinating a teenager like Michael Brown in Ferguson or hanging Sandra Bland while in custody who was starting her new job at her alma mater in a small college town in Texas.
#RiseUpOctober in NYC is a time when people cannot afford to be silent and indifferent to the wanton murder of Black and Brown youth by cops, terrorizing them in their segregated neighborhoods. A society becomes dangerous to live in, not because of the bad people, but because of too many indifferent and complacent people who stay on the sidelines. (Albert Einstein).
#RiseUpOctober in New York City is a time to let your voice be heard all over the world that we are not just fighting for ourselves but for the oppressed and exploited people of the world who are preyed upon by the same imperialist-capitalist system that is ruling this country which is also destroying the planet Earth.
There is a much better way of life for humanity beyond the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression. A better way of life free of capitalist exploitation, wars, invasions, women’s oppression, national oppression, hunger and all injustices. This world can only be realized by a revolution which aims at emancipation of whole of humanity. Revolution! Nothing less!
Activists of the Communist Party of Iran (M.L.M.)—North America
Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe):
Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe). A leaflet based on this article, prepared for mass distribution by the RCMG, is included after it.
In order for the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and perilous paths to not swallow up war-ridden, miserable and oppressed masses, in order for the migrants who have survived the road to not be welcomed by police batons, barbed wire, prisons and camps, in order for thousands upon thousands of immigrant women to not become victims of international sex slavery networks, in order for the homes, jobs, existence and future of the people to not be burned in the fire of imperialist, national and religious wars, the capitalist system must be destroyed, in its totality, with all its exploitative relations of production and oppressive social relations, with all its old and reactionary institutions and thinking. To clear the face of the earth of all this darkness and garbage there is no other way but a forcible social revolution. It is only on the debris of this world that a new one can be built, with the participation of billions of toiling and oppressed women and men. A new world where people are not forced to defy the anger of seas and the fire of deserts in order to satisfy their mental and material needs.
(Adapted from the statement by the Communist Party of Iran [Marxist-Leninist-Maoist] on 29 August 2015)
A refugee who arrived by dinghy at the Greek island of Lesbos screams for help after she and her daughter fell into the water, October 2. AP photo
A major crisis is shaking Europe, the very birthplace of capitalism and imperialism, as tens of thousands of refugees stream into it from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere where the very workings of the world imperialist system have made life intolerable. The direct results of the injustices, spiraling wars and invasions, of exploitation and the open wounds of colonialism, of the ever more obscene inequalities and the dashed hopes of so many millions are showing up on the very doorstep of Europe. The tip of an iceberg of tears of both suffering and anger, normally hidden away from the view of European polite society, is emerging and, in so doing, is seriously shaking the politics and institutions of the existing order, and even rattling its very legitimacy.
It is not that the magnitude of the human tragedy whose epicentre is now in Syria was unknown. Four million people have been forced to flee Syria and seven million more have been displaced within the country itself—astounding numbers, and even more so when we consider that the country’s population is about 20 million. Millions are crowded into camps, cynically manipulated by the Turkish authorities or stocked in impoverished Jordan, and a million more are in tiny Lebanon, itself never fully recovered from years of war and strife. Millions have been violently displaced in Congo, Mali and Afghanistan. Even many who have benefited from higher education or have a slightly better position in life from countries like Tunisia and Pakistan are losing hope in maintaining a semblance of normalcy.
The present horrors of the world have their main origin and source of fuel in the system of capitalist exploitation. All this represents not only the brutal legacy of past crimes such as colonialism and the slave trade, however deep and fresh these wounds may be. The breakneck penetration of capitalism over the past few decades under the signboard of globalization has further intensified the glaring inequalities in the world and further ripped apart the existing social fabric without offering a viable and desirable alternative. But today, thanks to television and the Internet, this growing and vicious inequality is flaunted in the face of people even in the most remote village while the supposed superiority of Western civilization is proclaimed in a thousand ways.
Nor has this “capitalism on steroids” done anything to end or soften other horrors that are wrapping themselves in the cloak of tradition and superstitious belief. Many of the West’s most important leaders are themselves promoters of anti-scientific nonsense and/or have no hesitancy to ally with and prop up the most backward, reactionary forces such as the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the very process of churning up the fields for further capitalist exploitation produces new batches of embittered and disoriented people susceptible to other forms of reactionary ideology, including Islamic fundamentalism, as well as Europe’s own home-grown fascists.
Even the most cursory look at the Middle East over the last period shows that the West has not brought Enlightenment but only helped aggravate the conditions for an ever darker obscurity. The workings of modern capitalist penetration have given rise to a perverse religious fundamentalist reaction, while the people suffer as these two forces increasingly collide in bloody antagonism, or collude when they find it expedient. Each new war or political intervention, large or small, has not only created new refugees, but also swelled the ranks of the jihadis. Even the economic development that has taken place has done so under conditions which are rapidly destroying the precious resources of the planet and leading to even more misery and dislocation.
No, the crisis in Europe has not been caused by the sudden realization of the depth of people’s terror and desperation, but by the inescapable reality that it will be impossible to forever wall off Europe from the ever increasing sea of misery and violent storms surrounding it. Thus the authorities of Europe, the political parties, the different institutions can no longer play deaf and blind, and are all being forced to take a position. For a week or two Germany was heralded for its “conscience” and “compassion”, before the re-introduction of border controls and the controversy over the suspension of the Schengen agreement reminded everyone of the underlying reality of fortress Europe.
In the midst of this hypocrisy, a virulent and growing fascist current is arising that demands the full mobilization of society against what it perceives as foreign hordes, and non-Christian to boot. While official society is sharply divided between reaction and worse reaction, there are also millions of people who are disgusted by all this and want to welcome the refugees, who proclaim a common humanity and sense some sort of intertwining of interests and destiny. But for the most part this sentiment has been confined and stifled by the inability to even imagine a real solution to the system that is ripping so much of the world apart. This is why it is possible for people who know better to suspend disbelief and put their hopes in people like Angela Merkel [Chancellor of Germany] or institutions like the British Labour Party.
The truth is that it is impossible for a handful of wealthy countries to benefit from and enforce the backwardness and poverty in so much of the world without having to confront the consequences of that domination. No Europe which rests upon the foundation of capitalism can escape the fate and the need to be a “fortress Europe” that is protected and armed against the humanity on which it has preyed. This reality is just as true for Francois Hollande [President of France] and Merkel or Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party’s new face, as it is for the openly cruel Victor Orban of Hungary or the many neo-fascist parties waiting in the wings in Western Europe. They are using the present crisis to intensify their demagogic appeals and offering to solve the hypocrisy of European leaders and institutions by openly appealing to racism and chauvinism and rejecting even the capitalists’ own motto, “liberté, égalité, fraternité”.
The usual unquestioning assumption of the permanency of the prevailing order and values in Europe is eroding. Why do some people have rights to a cushion against the sharpest edge of exploitation while others have only the “right” to a speedy deportation? The guiding principles and norms of the West are revealed to be the protection of privilege and inequality at the expense of the great bulk of humanity. Discourse legitimizing the present order, the domination of the planet by capitalism, is losing its usual hold on many people, who are now declaring their support of migrants: “They are here because we were (and are) there”, or “Open the borders so we can breathe”. These beginning cracks in the ideology and justification of the capitalist order need to be burst open into full-scale rejection. People need to be won clearly to see the need and the possibility for a radically different socio-economic system, a different political order, a different culture, and emancipating morals and values in keeping with people’s highest aspirations and true potential.
People do need to be outraged, express their common humanity, fight against the cold-heartedness and hypocrisy of Europe’s leaders. We do need revolution, and nothing deserves the name of revolution that does not have as a central motor addressing and ultimately overcoming the contradictions between a handful of wealthy countries and the hundreds of millions who have suffered at their hands. Any revolution in Europe must have an internationalist, not a “European” perspective.
The political power in every European state rests upon and protects a whole socio-economic system of exploitation whose tentacles reach throughout the world. Globalization has only made this exploitation more pervasive, more brutal and more disruptive of the existing social fabric. Every government of these states is required to enforce and facilitate this process. Even the pathetic Tsipras of Greece is now explaining how these bitter realities cannot possibly be avoided.
Belief in the possibility of a welcoming, inclusive but still imperialist Europe is worse than just an illusion. It hides the present and past reality of what Western capitalist democracy and its value system perpetuates on the world; it cannot possibly be implemented regardless of who is elected; and it is incapable of standing up to the reactionary attacks from either the howling fascist forces or the Islamists who pretend to offer an alternative moral and social order in opposition to the “decadence and misery” dished out by the West. Indeed, war in the Middle East is spreading; even more refugees will take even more desperate measures to escape the horrors of all sorts that will only intensify; and women, half of humanity, will continue to face old and new forms of oppression and degradation. Obscene inequality, virtual slavery in the sex trade or sweatshops, vast populations condemned to disease and squalor, children and youth whose future is stolen from them—capitalism needs all this to thrive.
Millions in Europe have been moved and outraged by the razor wire on the frontiers, the deportations at gunpoint, the squalid camps and threats of worse. This is a very important and overdue development that can and must be developed into an uncompromising struggle to beat back the reactionary response and to extend a real welcome and solidarity to the sisters and brothers arriving in Europe as well as the many more trapped in hellish conditions abroad. Through this process people need to confront what can and needs to be done to overthrow this system and build a completely different kind of society, including the fact that this can only be brought about through communist revolution.
Overcoming the horrors of capitalism and imperialism has been undertaken before. Indeed tremendous and inspiring things were accomplished in the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, in the Soviet Union and even more so with the Chinese revolution. These revolutions were ultimately defeated by a new capitalist class of exploiters in those countries. As a result, capitalists the world over have triumphantly declared the permanence of their system and the futility of any effort at real social transformation. Today’s refugee crisis is one more evidence and a wake-up call that the world needs a completely and radically different social order, without exploitation and oppression, one based on the collective conscious cooperation of all of humanity and the collective and judicious management of the world’s resources and habitat for the benefit of all of the people of the earth and for the protection of the planet. Revolutionary communists today have a deeper, re-envisioned and more scientific understanding of both what society requires and the complex processes needed to achieve this world historic transformation. Bob Avakian has developed a new synthesis of communism based on deeply learning from the great achievements as well as the significant shortcomings of the previous efforts at proletarian revolution while incorporating knowledge obtained from other fields of human activity.
The immigration crisis profoundly reveals the conditions of humanity today and the need for a deep-going revolutionary change. Glimmers of humanity reaching for genuine emancipation can be seen in both the determination of refugees not to be deterred and the welcome many are offering. The political turmoil is setting enemies of the people and guardians of the old order at each other’s throats and creating openings for bringing forward something really new. But to confront the complexities of the developing Europe-wide political crisis, to be able to withstand the reactionary onslaughts likely to come down, to be able to build upon the positive stirrings and sentiments that are emerging but also in danger of being smothered once again by ruling class hypocrisy and cynical manipulations, people need a rigorous and scientific understanding and outlook that correctly explains the world and shows what we can do about it.
The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, not only for the refugees but for everyone. But these same explosive conditions also bring real opportunities to begin to carve out a different type of future. No more pining over the broken promises of an increasingly bankrupt European social democracy! Rather we need to look beyond the horizons of the present system and begin to construct the kind of movement that not only fights to beat back the reactionary onslaught but can also lead towards the only real solution, communist revolution.
***
Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!
In order for the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and perilous paths to not swallow up war-ridden, miserable and oppressed masses, in order for the migrants who have survived the road not be welcomed by police batons, barbed wire, prisons and camps, in order for thousands upon thousands of immigrant women to not become victims of international sex slavery networks, in order for the homes, jobs, existence and future of the people to not be burned in the fire of imperialist, national and religious wars, the capitalist system must be destroyed, in its totality, with all its exploitative relations of production and oppressive social relations, with all its old and reactionary institutions and thinking. To clear the face of the earth of all this darkness and garbage there is no other way but a forcible social revolution. It is only on the debris of this world that a new one can be built, with the participation of billions of toiling and oppressed women and men. A new world where people are not forced to defy the anger of seas and the fire of deserts in order to satisfy their mental and material needs. (Adapted from a 29 August 2015 statement by the Communist Party of Iran [Marxist-Leninist-Maoist].)
The truth is that it is impossible for a handful of wealthy countries to benefit from and enforce the backwardness and poverty in so much of the world without having to confront the consequences of that domination. No Europe which rests upon the foundation of capitalism can escape the fate and the need to be a “fortress Europe” protected and armed against the humanity on which it has preyed. This reality is just as true for Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel, and Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party’s new face, as it is for the openly cruel Victor Orban of Hungary or the many neo-fascist parties waiting in the wings in Western Europe.
The present horrors of the world have their main origin in the very system of capitalist exploitation. This is not only the brutal legacy of past crimes such as colonialism or the slave trade, however deep and fresh these wounds may be. The breakneck penetration of capitalism over the past few decades, under the signboard of “globalisation”, has only intensified the glaring inequalities in the world, further ripped apart the existing social fabric without offering a viable and desirable alternative. It produces new batches of embittered and disoriented people susceptible to other forms of reactionary ideology, including Islamic fundamentalism, as well as Europe’s own home-grown fascists. Even the most cursory look at the Middle East over the last period shows that the West has not brought Enlightenment but only helped fuel the conditions for an ever darker obscurity. Each new war and military and political intervention, large or small, has created not only new refugees, it has also swelled the ranks of the jihadis. Even the economic “development” which has taken place is done under conditions that are rapidly destroying the precious resources of the planet and leading to even more human dislocation.
Overcoming capitalism and imperialism has been undertaken before. Indeed tremendous and inspiring things were accomplished in the socialist revolutions of the 20th century the Soviet Union and even more with the Chinese revolution. A radically different social order is needed. A social order without exploitation and oppression, based on the collective, conscious cooperation of all humanity, and the judicious management of the world’s resources and habitat for the benefit of all the people of the earth and the protection of the planet. Revolutionary communists today have a deeper and re-envisioned understanding of both what society requires and the complex processes necessary to achieve this world-historic transformation. Bob Avakian has developed a new synthesis of communism based on deeply learning from the great achievements as well as the significant shortcomings of the previous efforts at proletarian revolution.
All discourse legitimizing the present order, the domination of the planet by capitalism, is losing its usual hold on many people who are now declaring about migrants, “They are here because we were (and are) there” or “Open up the borders so we can breathe”. People need to be outraged, express their common humanity, fight against cold-heartedness and hypocrisy. The world cries out for a different economic system, a different political order, a different culture, and emancipating morals and values in keeping with people’s highest aspirations and true possibilities.
The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, not only for the refugees but for everyone. But these same explosive conditions can also bring real opportunities for beginning to carve out a different type of future. There is no use in pining over the broken promises of an increasingly bankrupt European social democracy. Rather we need to look past the boundaries of the present system and begin to construct the kind of movement that, fighting to beat back the reactionary onslaught, can lead in the direction of the only real solution, communist revolution.
Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe)
September 25, 2015 rcmanifestogroup@gmail.com
A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.
8 March Women's Organisation: No border, No nation, No gender—This situation is not tolerable any more, we must start a dynamic fight!
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the 8 March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) (www.8mars.com).
September 2, 2015. Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, washed up lifeless on a beach in Turkey. He, his brother and mother drowned after their small boat capsized.
AP photo
The picture of “Aylan”, the three-year-old Syrian child who fell asleep forever, tired of the “death game” on the Mediterranean shores, shook the world and reminded us that these conditions are no longer tolerable. Aylan came to notice for a short moment through the camera lenses when he was no longer alive, while according to the statistics at this very moment there are more than 20 million refugees who need a safe shelter to live. Their story is witness to the unbearable and shameful catastrophe that humanity is facing. These are people who had to bear the atrocities of migration, banishment and homelessness and step out onto a death route to escape occupation, reactionary war, national, racial, religious, sexual and other sorts of oppression... as well as the destruction of their environment, all in order to be able to make a better life for themselves and their children!
Although migration is hardly a new phenomenon, this wave of thousands of desperate people has compelled the media and the politicians, who at first deliberately held their silence, to speak about this “humanitarian catastrophe”, especially in the countries that are the destination of the majority of the asylum seekers. Some of them sympathize demagogically with these asylum seekers and pretend to support them, while others clearly insist on anti-migration and war-mongering policies. It has reached the point that Angela Merkel, the leader of economic austerity in Europe, who is responsible for shattering pressures on lower class people—especially “foreigners”—is posing flagrantly as a “saviour angel” for the refugees. Her goal is not to sympathize and commiserate with the refugees, but either to absorb the Syrians, who were once at the top in the Middle East, as part of an educated professional labour force, so that they can rebuild the capitalist crisis-stricken Germany, or else to make them, like other “foreigners”, part of a “reserve army of labour” so as to help lower wages through “legal” and “illegal” work, and thereby enhance profitability, and also to fuel the fire of racist and anti-foreigner tendencies among the fascist parties and groups. The solution England and France offer to end the wave of immigration is to bomb Syria some more, which merely means greater destruction in the living hell where these wanderers once lived and where many who do not have the opportunity to escape are still trapped. The United States of America, the world leader in war, crime and killings, especially in the Middle East, has proposed to accept ten thousand Syrian refugees in order not to fall behind the “humanitarian” squad! They are maintaining a meaningful silence about how the Syrian crisis is the result of the U.S.’s aim to build a “Greater Middle East” in the first place with their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now that the area has become a swamp for the U.S., which no imperialist solution can ever end, every leader in these war crimes is pursuing their own interests and covering their criminal, blood-stained hands amidst the global commotion.
They all avoid the reality of WHY thousands of women, men, children, elderly, young, handicapped, sick, etc., are crossing borders on foot or in sub-standard rubber boats, or crowding into meat trucks or trains to escape, dead or alive? What is the reason for these people’s homelessness and misery? Who is the perpetrator?
Isn’t it the patriarchal capitalist system in the first place, which is honourably supported by their Excellencies (these politicians) who are in fact trying to save it at any cost? Isn’t the reason for this flood of refugees fleeing the Middle East and northern Africa to be found in the interference and wars fostered by these imperialists, who signed the firing orders for the conflagration that has spread day-by-day, with the entire region now in flames?
In facing the bitter reality that these refugees feel in their very bones, one should never forget that the civil war in Iraq and Syria is the continuation of the U.S. and their allies’ militarism, which was intended to ensure their own advantages. They destroyed Afghanistan in the name of “freedom for Afghani women” and bringing “democracy” and “fighting the Taliban”. Now that the Taliban has become their partner in power, women are more oppressed than ever, and “democracy” is a demagogical charade that is trotted out every couple of years in elections. The same bitter story of destruction, fragmentation and homelessness took place in Iraq, where Islamic fundamentalist groups emerged, ensuring that the people of Iraq and Syria wouldn’t see a day of peace.
Out of 18 million Syrians, 230,000 have been killed, 11 million people displaced, 3 million children cannot attend schools, and more than 4 million people have fled across the country’s borders. Almost four out of five Syrian refugees are either women or children. 145,000 refugee families live in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and even Iraq, one-fourth of whom emigrated under a woman’s leadership or guardianship. Women have had to defend their families against extreme poverty, fear of imprisonment, threat and constant violence, disdain and rape.
This gives only a glimpse of the conditions of Syria’s homeless women, who, like always, are the first victims of war and occupation, and besides facing the enemy’s dangers and threats, also face other kinds of threats, cruelty and rape from their menfolk who are otherwise sharing the same fate. They grapple with dangers and threats at every moment, with fewer resources at their disposal. Many women have been kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery or the flourishing prostitution markets of these countries, sometimes thousands of kilometres from their homes and families, under the control of mafia prostitution networks in Europe and the U.S., or they become domestic slaves. Women generally have responsibility for the children too, and, due to sexual discrimination, when overloaded boats capsize they lack the techniques and skills to swim, so together with their children become the major victims of the sea. This is not only the fate of Syrian women but also the fate of many women from Honduras, Nigeria, Myanmar, etc., who travel to other imperialist countries like the U.S. and Australia, or even to the poorer countries like Turkey and Lebanon. Today the fate of millions of refugees and women, who have been displaced around the world without hope or a future, is intertwined.
One thing is certain: the perpetrators of all these displacements, killings, homelessness, rape, sexual violence, kidnapping, etc., are the European and U.S. patriarchal imperialists who have helped or fostered the formation of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies in the Middle East and North Africa in order to preserve and stabilize their own privileges, and are supporting and strengthening them today. Despite the ideological-political opposition that they have with these regressive religious groups, not only have the imperialists not stopped supporting them, but they have also maintained the main source of their military equipment. Their privileges are preserved by the survival of this system, which is based on oppression and exploitation, even at the cost of killing and displacing millions of people in this region and throughout the world.
Everyone shouting “Open the doors, we want fresh air!” across Europe’s streets needs to be able to understand the message of this migration: “This life is not worthy of humanity”. The people who have opened their doors and hearts to these tired and hopeless refugees today must be able to lead a movement that guarantees a world in which there are no borders, no nationalities, no gender, no barbed wire, no camps, no prisons, no wars, no bullets, no batons, no discrimination, no oppression, no exploitation, no hunger, no destruction, no homelessness, no banishment, no threats, no rape. Such a movement must go beyond commiseration, mercy and humanitarian assistance, and must engage in a revolutionary and fundamental fight! It must be a movement that has the potential to bring about such a world and we, the women and activists of the 8th of March Women’s Organization, see ourselves as a part of this struggle to establish it.
A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This spring and summer, a worldwide movement grew to stop Arctic drilling. Above, kayakers protest the Shell Oil drill rig in Seattle, May 11. Photo: Greenpeace
On September 28, Shell Oil announced it was ending exploration for oil in the Alaskan Arctic “for the foreseeable future.”
This was extremely welcome news to all those who care about the environment and the future of our planet. It is a dramatic turnaround after a year in which Shell relentlessly pursued Arctic drilling despite intense resistance and widespread condemnation from people worldwide. What this means is that at least for now, the ecosystems and wild species of the Chukchi Sea will not be under immediate threat of killing oil spills. And a venture that could open the way for truly catastrophic climate change has been set back for now. This is cause for celebration! Activists literally danced in the streets in Seattle and London. The actress Emma Thompson joined with Greenpeace in London to celebrate and call for continuing the fight to stop all Arctic drilling.
At the same time, the battle to completely stop Arctic drilling, and to stop destruction of the environment overall, is just beginning and needs to quickly generate momentum. The Arctic is not safe! The same forces that drove Shell to attempt to drill there continue to drive the oil exploration and drilling that are exacerbating an environmental emergency.
The Risky Calculations of Capitalism
This Revolution special issue focuses on the environmental emergency that now faces humanity and Earth's ecosystems. In this issue we show:
the dimensions of the emergency...
the source of its causes in the capitalist system, and the impossibility of that system solving this crisis...
a way out and way forward for humanity—a revolutionary society in which we could actually live as custodians of nature, rather than as its plunderers.
From the viewpoint of the interests of the people of the planet and preserving the planet’s environment, drilling in the Arctic was—and is—lunacy from the word go. The damage drilling could bring to the Arctic environment, to the lives and culture of the indigenous Inupiat people, and escalating the climate crisis means even seriously considering drilling should have been out of the question. Any rational person starting from the interests of humanity would say to those contemplating this: “You melted the Arctic, you’re taking the climate and humanity into a disaster zone, and you want to seize on this destruction to get your hands on more oil to burn and cause even worse destruction? Are you insane?”
But Shell and all the other capitalists don’t operate out of these concerns. They’re driven by the rules of this dog-eat dog system, of capitalism, to expand or die. To sink their teeth into new potential sources of profit before their competitor or rival gets to bite. This involves enormous risk of advance or setback to these capitalists, even the danger of crashing and burning while others take their place.
From the beginning, Shell’s Arctic project was a risky venture. The difficulty of drilling in seas that are ice-covered most of the year and subject to intense storms, the high costs involved, etc., make Arctic drilling a big risk for any oil company. Shell calculated it was worth the risk. It sunk more than $7 billion into this project and may now lose $4 billion or even more. Shell gambled. Other energy companies were not sure the risk was worth it. They waited in the wings to see if Shell would fail or prosper.
Shell promised the U.S. it would open the way to a huge new Arctic gold rush into the richest remaining fossil fuel reserves on the planet, buried under the often ice-covered and stormy Arctic Ocean. Shell and the U.S. saw this as a way to advance U.S. energy needs and “independence,” a code word for U.S. domination of world economies through control of oil supplies. Obama’s administration backed Shell up, granting permits and shepherding them through the process. The fact that this venture and the dangers tied up with it been set back is a very good thing.
But this is not over. The necessity for the U.S. and all the world powers to exploit the oil and gas reserves, to expand military power into the newly opening Arctic waters, and to control shipping lanes has not ended and will continually reassert itself in coming years and decades. For Shell’s part, a company spokesperson did not close the book on future drilling, saying, “Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S.”
Why Shell Is Quitting the Arctic... for Now
This system and those who rule over it are not capable of carrying out economic development to meet the needs of the people now, while balancing that with the needs of future generations and requirements of safeguarding the environment. They care nothing for the rich diversity of the earth and its species, for the treasures this contains, except when and where they can turn this into profit for themselves....These people are not fit to be the caretakers of the earth.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:29
Shell said it had decided to stop because it had not found a significant amount of oil in this summer’s explorations, the costs were too high, and federal regulations governing drilling there were too “challenging and unpredictable.”
Digging more deeply, there are a number of interrelated factors underlying Shell’s decision to stop drilling. It is clear that in part, Shell is making a cost-benefit analysis that the investments it is making are not likely to pay off, at least in the current environment. Shell has sunk a lot of money into this project and would likely have to invest a lot more to find significant amounts of oil and it still might not. There was a real danger that this could have become a more catastrophic loss for Shell, especially at a time when world oil prices have dropped, cutting into profitability. An oil and gas analyst at the Economist magazine “Intelligence Unit” said, “Arctic exploration has been a clear casualty of the oil price slump.” Norway and Russia have recently postponed or abandoned Arctic oil and gas projects, while BP and Husky Energy have also recently stopped some offshore drilling projects to cut their losses.
But the question of costs has also been influenced by the determined protests and growing worldwide condemnation against Shell and Arctic drilling. Deutsche Bank analysts said Shell’s “entire episode has been a very costly error for the company both financially and reputationally.”
This spring and summer, a worldwide movement grew to stop Arctic drilling. The spearpoint of this was determined and imaginative protests by environmentalists in Seattle, Portland, Everett, and elsewhere. Kayakers, climbers, and marchers courageously defied authorities and blocked Shell drilling rigs, ships, and work sites. The protests rallied public opinion worldwide. Millions of people saw right on the side of those who stood up to save the Arctic in the face of suppression and arrests by the Coast Guard and local police forces.
Shell went forward with drilling anyway, approved by the Obama administration. Shell’s and Obama’s false claims that they were prudently “balancing energy needs with those of the environment” stood increasingly exposed as a sham, and their legitimacy suffered a real blow.
The UK Guardian reported that while Shell publicly had appeared upbeat about the oil reserves it was about to tap into, privately the company had begun to “admit that it had been surprised by the popular opposition it faced.” Further, the growing condemnation of Shell and drilling in the Arctic was undermining the “environmentally friendly” façade Shell has tried to cast itself with. Shell had been tossed out of an influential corporate climate change group, and the company’s chief executive reportedly was “worried that the row over the Arctic was undermining his attempts to influence the debate around how to tackle climate change.”
Shell now produces more gas than oil, and has been advocating for gas as a “transitional fuel” for lowering carbon emissions. This is a position in line with furthering Shell’s position to beat out other energy companies.
And lest anyone think Shell is moving away from exploiting fossil fuels, part of the reason for quitting the Arctic is so it can focus more on taking over the gas group BG, and get hold of its danger-fraught drilling in the deep offshore waters off Brazil! Shell’s Arctic operations were making it so that no one took seriously its claim to be acting to prevent climate change. Increasingly, the whole Arctic operation was becoming a big liability for Shell.
The international attention, controversy, and exposure generated by the determined, courageous struggle against Shell drilling in the Arctic was tremendously important. It was a factor in Shell’s calculations in quitting the Arctic (although we need to add, for now). And it focused international attention on the environmental emergency, sounding an alarm, and awakening and arousing people against the crimes being carried out against the environment.
At the same time and more fundamentally, the drive for domination of the Arctic by the world’s capitalist powers and interests rages on, despite Shell’s retreat (for now) from the Arctic. This can only be stopped once and for all by putting an end to the capitalist-imperialist system itself through revolution. It’s crucial we advance from here to struggle to stop the destruction of the environment, as part of building a movement for revolution.
What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revolution Interview
A special feature of Revolution to acquaint our readers with the views of
significant figures in art, theater, music and literature, science, sports and politics. The views expressed by those we interview are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere in our paper.
B. Lynn Ingram is Professor of Geography and Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the co-author, with Frances Malamud-Roam, of The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow. ScientificAmerican magazine says of the book: “Part detective story, part call to action, this book offers vital advice of how to fix the West’s looming water crisis.” Orpheus Reed recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Ingram for Revolution.
Revolution: Let’s just jump right into it. There’s this situation in California with the extreme drought that has been going on for several years and then these terrible wildfires that have been happening this year. Could you just start with giving a basic picture of the situation as it stands right now?
B. Lynn Ingram: Well, we’re in the fourth year of a severe drought, but if you look a little further back it’s actually since 2002; 13 years have been below average in terms of precipitation and run-off. So the thing is the soils have been drying, the vegetation has been drying—and so in terms of leading to larger and more frequent wildfires, there’s been a trend that actually started back in the ’80s, seeing more frequent wildfires that researchers attributed to global warming, since we’ve been seeing a lot of warming especially since the ’80s. So that’s causing drying of soils, drying of vegetation—so there’s a definite correlation between those two.
Currently we’re like 60 percent of long-term average precipitation now, so it’s pretty severe. And I think the last four years are the four driest years we’ve seen in a thousand years, if you look in four-year increments. But like I say, since 2002, 11 of the last 13 years have been below average. In the Southwest I think they’ve been in drought since 2000, 1999 or 2000. It’s almost that bad in California.
Revolution: How would you characterize this crisis, and could you talk a little about some of the impacts of the drought on the people living in California, on ecosystems there, wildlife, etc.?
B. Lynn Ingram: Right. In terms of the wildlife, it’s definitely been impacting some of the aquatic ecosystems the most because stream flows, river flows, are down. On top of that we’ve been withdrawing a greater fraction of freshwater during the drought. So salmon are really suffering, and the Delta smelt, which is endangered and endemic to just the Delta, are almost gone. They’re literally counting the number of fish left and there are very few, and that’s kind of an indicator species of the whole aquatic ecosystem in the Delta and San Francisco Bay as well. So I think as more freshwater is making it to the Delta and San Francisco Bay, the salinities have been going up and it’s been impacting the aquatic ecosystems there quite a bit.
The salmon, these fish that migrate through the Bay and Delta, are really suffering because of the ongoing drought. That started a few decades ago, but it’s taken a plunge in the last decade and then the last four years. There’s more disease with the forests, infestations of bark beetle or other insects. When the trees are weakened by drought, they’re not able to fight off disease infestations as easily, so they’re susceptible to these diseases. As the trees die they dry up even further, and that further fuels the wildfires. So some of that is, I think, the temperatures of the wildfires have gone up and there are more severe wildfires ’cause the trees have been weakened and dried up more, so there’s more fuel for fires,
Normally the trade winds in the tropical Pacific Ocean blow towards the west from a region of higher pressure in the eastern Pacific to a region of lower pressure in the western Pacific. These winds enhance upwelling (the rising of cold water from the deep ocean towards the surface) in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America. Therefore, sea surface temperatures, as seen on the figure above, are cool off the coast of South America and significantly warmer in the western Pacific.
Every few years, this pressure pattern breaks down, resulting in higher pressure in the western Pacific and lower pressure in the eastern Pacific. This causes the winds to slow or even blow towards the east instead of towards the west. This wind reversal brings the warmer water from the western Pacific towards South America. This warming of the ocean is El Niño.
Source: NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Revolution: I wonder if you could speak to the causes of this drought and how you see that—what is understood and what is maybe not so clear at this point?
B. Lynn Ingram: Well, if you look at the longer-term history, it’s true we have cycles of weather, fire, and climate that have to do with conditions over the Pacific Ocean. So there’s different time scales of these cycles, like there’s the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So those are every few decades, you get shifts in the north Pacific temperatures that affect precipitation. Then of course the El Niño cycles are like every two to seven years. But the concern is that superimposed on the natural cycles, we’ve got a warming trend that has caused a shift in the storm track further north, so fewer storms are actually reaching California and the Southwest every year. And we only get six to seven big storms in a normal season. So if we start falling short a few storms, then we consider that a drought.
Because we’ve developed our water, it’s a very fine balance for us ’cause there’s so many people living here. Part of it is the demand. We’ve got 39 million [people] and that’s projected to increase a lot. So we’ve developed all of our rivers, we have dams everywhere, we’re pumping groundwater already and depleting our groundwater—so any decrease you have, even if it’s a couple storms a year, we’re going to feel it a lot. That seems to be a trend that researchers are looking at—that this started a couple decades ago, a gradual trend of drying in this region. So instead of assuming all this is just a natural cycle, I think we have to really prepare for a drier future. This could be a longer-term trend with warming, and really start doing the things that would help us recycle and reuse greywater and things like rainwater harvesting, and treating wastewater so we’re reusing it. Some places are doing this in Southern California, I think in Orange County—I think they’re treating their wastewater and putting it back in the ground, so instead of it just running off, they can reuse that after a certain amount of time.
But on a statewide level, it seems we should be doing more with water conservation. I mean, we’re starting to do it, but in terms of recycling and reusing water, I don’t see it happening widespread here.
Revolution: I read your book The West without Water. I thought it was really what the back cover says: part detective story and part call to action. The subtitle of the book is “What Past Floods, Droughts and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow.” That’s obviously a big topic and there’s a lot involved there, but I wonder if you could give a basic overview of what these clues do tell us.
B. Lynn Ingram: One thing is that there were extended droughts in the past, like during the Medieval Warm Period and the middle Holocene 5 to 6,000 years ago. There were periods when we had drought that lasted decades to over a century. And it seems like even droughts lasting a couple of decades occur pretty regularly, like one or two decade [droughts] we might see every 1 to 200 years. Even without global warming we have to prepare to get through these periods of perhaps longer than we’d seen since we’re keeping records, like since the late 1800s. We really have to realize that the climate is capable of longer droughts naturally. So that was one lesson.
And another is that it seems that these extended dry periods, the longer ones like during the Medieval Period and then the mid-Holocene, those occurred when it was relatively warmer. So in the Medieval Warm Period, the Northern Hemisphere was warmer. And then during the middle Holocene, it wasn’t warmer due from CO2—there’s debate about why it was warmer, but there are a lot of different records showing it was warmer. So in general, that trend of seeing the storm track move further north and getting less precipitation in California and the Southwest has happened in the past during warm times. So with global warming, we can expect it to be drier. I mean, the models say that, but it’s always nice to know that it actually has happened before. It kind of confirms the models.
Just on the other end of it, we can also expect these big floods that we write about [in the book], so we can’t ignore the other side of it, which is even if it gets warmer, periodically because of atmospheric river storms from the tropics, there can be these big floods. I think people are trying to get an awareness, especially the U.S. Geological Survey, of the fact that we are susceptible to big floods in this state also. Like in the Central Valley, places that were really under water, we should be careful of where we expand our cities because we’re expanding into flood plains that could potentially be under water if we ever have a big flood again.
Revolution: Could you briefly describe what you mean by atmospheric river, and also how often do those happen compared to drought?
B. Lynn Ingram: So the atmospheric rivers are... smaller ones are pretty common—literally, we have a few every year, but they’re smaller so it’s not like they cause the massive flooding that we saw in like 1861-62, that historic flood. That was a series of atmospheric river storms that lasted like 43 days. That’s less common, but in looking at past paleoclimate records, we see that even those were every 1 to 200 years. So it’s more on the big earthquake kind of time scale, where you should plan for it, but it’s not like it’s going to happen all that frequently.
But these atmospheric rivers, it seems like every year the heat is building up at the tropics and you have a lot of evaporation, so a lot of water vapor at the tropics—and it seems to be the way the Earth releases that heat to redistribute the energy globally, it happens along these narrow bands that radiate out from the tropics and head to the mid-latitudes. So in the Pacific it happens and in the other oceans as well—and so it’s a normal thing, but it was discovered about a decade ago just with satellite imaging. So now we know that that’s what’s happening. It’s a normal phenomenon, but they think as the Earth warms it could become larger because with increased heat, you’re going to have more evaporation at the tropics and that there could be more atmospheric river storms. So it is something that’s gonna keep happening, even if it’s drier you’re still going to periodically have these storms and they may get a little larger, so something to be aware of.
I think you’re right that the droughts are a bigger long-term problem, but these are something we should also be aware of, in terms of where is all the expansion happening. Like if it’s in the Central Valley with cities, that’s not a good thing and people should be prepared for evacuation and things like that.
This Revolution special issue focuses on the environmental emergency that now faces humanity and Earth's ecosystems. In this issue we show:
the dimensions of the emergency...
the source of its causes in the capitalist system, and the impossibility of that system solving this crisis...
a way out and way forward for humanity—a revolutionary society in which we could actually live as custodians of nature, rather than as its plunderers.
Revolution: So what you’re saying is, with global warming you can have more intense droughts but you can also have, maybe less frequently but still periodically, really intensive rainstorms and flooding as well.
B. Lynn Ingram: Right, exactly. And also with global warming, because the snowpack, it’s going to be warmer in the mountains in the Sierras, that in the wintertime you’ll have more precipitation falling as rain than snow. And so that will run off immediately, and they’re also warning of more frequent flooding during the wintertime on a more regular basis. Because normally you have the snow that slowly melts in late spring and summer, so the summers are going to get drier because you’ll have less snowmelt. And the winters will have more runoff and potentially flooding.
Revolution: I was fascinated by some of the methods you actually use to discover these clues about past climate and some of the ways you go at that and what you can learn from some of these things. I want to ask you about that in a minute, but first, there’s a couple things I’m dying to find out about. First, I’ve heard a lot of talk about an El Niño developing this year. There are different things said about that—it might help the drought in the Southwest, but then other people have said it won’t end the drought by any means. So I wondered if you might talk about that.
B. Lynn Ingram: OK. In California where we have one to two years of water deficit, even if we had normal or greater than normal precipitation, it’s not likely we will alleviate [the drought] in just a single year. On top of that, in the Central Valley, the groundwaters have been pumped so the water table has been dropping and subsidence of the land surface from all this. That’s something I don’t know would take how long, if you really tried to replenish. It’s like the water in the bank that is just going away because we don’t have any regulation on groundwaters really. I think they’re talking about it for the future, but it’s not happening yet.
With the El Niño, there’s a higher probability that Southern California and the Southwest will be wetter, but right now they’re not really sure where it will turn drier, ’cause in Northern California it can go either way. An El Niño can be a normal year or even drier as you head to Northern California or further north. So where that boundary is fluctuates with different El Niños. I think most El Niños it’s wetter in Northern California, but there’s been a couple when it’s been drier, so there’s some probability, like maybe a 33 percent chance, it could be drier, otherwise it will be wetter! Which is too bad ’cause we really need it in Northern California—that’s the wetter part of the state and there are a lot of reservoirs up here, so we’re hoping that it’s wetter in Northern Cal.
Revolution: I wrote a piece in Revolution on this California drought, and in looking into it, one thing that really struck me was how the whole development of California—the development of the major cities, this whole explosion of people, the building of California into this whole agricultural empire—how this took place on the basis of a completely unsustainable approach, especially in regard to this use of water and the whole climate history that you’ve spoken of. I wonder if you could just go into your view on that.
B. Lynn Ingram: I think it started in the early 1900s and that was a relatively wet couple of decades. So they didn’t have a long-term history or many records of precipitation. There wasn’t the knowledge that we have these big fluctuations, and so I think there was an assumption it would continue. And then we went into the Dust Bowl drought, and it seemed like then our population started to go up and agriculture started to develop in the Central Valley. And so that’s when they started building a lot of dams and aqueducts and pumping groundwater—the groundwater pumps were invented about that time. In the 1930s they started pumping groundwater to make up for the shortfalls with the Dust Bowl drought of 1928-34. Then I think it just went from there that the population kept growing as we developed and started bringing more water to the cities from the Sierra Nevada. The population grew and then as the population grew you kept needing more water, so it turned into a positive feedback loop or spiral, increasing agriculture and population and you kept having to build more dams and harness more water, pump more water.
It feels like we’re still on this—the population’s still going up even though we’ve pretty much maxed out all our available surface water and even the groundwater; we’re depleting, the water in the bank, so to speak. So it’s amazing to me that it’s still happening even though the people who know about water, who should be informing... I don’t know how they’re regulating or deciding whether to have these big developments, these housing developments going up everywhere, but it’s definitely continuing even though there’s not the water resources to support it.
Revolution: So given this whole picture of the drought and how this is affecting things, I want to ask: What do you think could be done, in terms of the use of water, the protection of ecosystems, but also meeting people’s basic needs—what could and should be done to deal with this crisis? If you had a situation where you could proceed really from what’s needed, what would we do to deal with this crisis?
B. Lynn Ingram: I think we could, and we talk about it in the book, we can look at Australia as a model. They had a decade-long drought that was really severe. So they started doing a lot of things people are talking about, like recycling wastewater and requiring everyone to have water-efficient appliances, no lawns, severely regulating things more than I see happening here—where you really have to cut back on water use of the different sectors, and then start recycling water. I talked to an Australian who said he had a rainwater harvest system on his roof, and he said everybody has that now. I don’t know anyone here with one, and I heard you need a special permit for one—they make it hard to even do it here.
It just seems like we know a more collective plan with having things that are in place that will really start to recycle and reuse water and agriculture—I think it’s starting to, but even more than they’re doing now. And also have the price of water reflecting its actual cost to the environment and its scarcity. That’s clearly not in there where we’re decimating the natural environment by taking away this water, and the cost of water is so low, there’s no incentive for some people to really conserve water.
Revolution: One last question. I wanted to ask about the clues about past climate—the methods that you use to learn about these past climates and what has happened in the past. Could you give some examples that stand out to give our readers a sense of how that’s done?
B. Lynn Ingram: OK, so we have to look at these natural archives of climate, before humans were keeping records of climate. So we have to look for clues and proxy records that are contained in natural archives. And those range from things like tree rings, ’cause tree growth—you have to pick your type of tree and locations and so on—but you can look at the width of the annual growth bands that reflect the environmental conditions, like precipitation and temperature. That’s one common method. And then other methods involve looking at the size of lakes, like in the Sierra Nevada or in the desert, the Great Basin, researchers can look at, because these lakes get smaller during times of drought and larger when it’s wetter.
And also at sediments that are accumulating in either the coastal ocean or in lakes, in estuaries like San Francisco Bay. These sediments contain fossils, and you can look at the chemistry of the fossil shells or the chemistry of the sediments themselves that reflect things like water temperature, the salinity of the water, that in turn reflects how wet or dry it was.
That’s the whole detective part of the story—so we have to look at, and come up with as many ways of analyzing, these archives if we can, by looking at these chemical or biological clues. Like what organisms lived there or the pollen will reflect the type of vegetation growing in an area that in turn reflects the climate ’cause that determines the vegetation.
So there are a lot of different angles we can take to really look at how climate has changed in the past and how is that reflected in these natural archives that we find. And also the archaeological records are important so we can see how these things affected humans, for the big medieval drought caused people to abandon certain locations and mass migration and starvation, so you can see clues and relate those to the environmental changes as well.
Revolution: Well, it’s really a fascinating story and I’d love to ask you more questions, but I know you have to go, so thanks so much for the interview. Really enjoyed it!
#ShoutYourAbortion Initiator Driven from Her Home by Woman-Hating "Pro-Lifers"
Yes, There IS a War on Women—and We Must Fight Back!
by Sunsara Taylor | October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On September 19, two young women—Amelia Bonow and Lindy West—started the Twitter hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion to challenge the stigma and shame that hangs over abortion. Now, Amelia Bonow has been driven from her home by death threats and harassment from so-called “pro-lifers.” This tells you everything you need to know about the fight over abortion. It has never been about “babies,” it has always been about control over—and hatred for—women. Now, with abortion under attack as never before, it is time to stand and fight for women’s lives.
From Sunsara Taylor: #ShoutYourAbortion
I call on, encourage, and challenge every woman who can do so to join in tweeting to #ShoutYourAbortion
What exactly did Amelia Bonow say that set all this off? Frustrated by the witch hunt being conducted against Planned Parenthood by Christian fascist politicians who threatened to shut down the entire government, Ms. Bonow realized that even among her vehemently pro-choice friends she never talked openly about her abortion. So she decided to. She shared her story on Facebook, ending with the following straightforward statement: “I have a good heart and having an abortion made me happy in a totally unqualified way. Why wouldn’t I be happy that I was not forced to become a mother?” Soon after, her friend Ms. West reposted her message on Twitter with the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion.
More than 150,000 tweets rang forth in response. Women who had never spoken publicly about their abortions before tweeted that, without their abortions, they would still be tied to abusive partners, rapists, or relationships that were simply unfulfilling. They tweeted about being too young, too poor, too unhealthy, or not ready. They tweeted about simply not wanting a child and feeling perfectly fine with it. And they heard each other’s stories. They found out that their friends and their mothers had also had abortions. They found out that strangers across the country had gone through the exact same experiences and emotions. They realized that there had been a heavy weight on them for never having spoken about their abortions in public before, and they began to cast it off.
They did this in defiance of the Christian fascists in the Republican Party, but they also did this in defiance—objectively, if not always intentionally and self-consciously—of the Democratic Party, which has for decades preached that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” By insisting that abortion should be “rare,” these Democrats have capitulated to, and helped fuel, a climate and culture where even the word “abortion” is rarely uttered, where it is viewed as shameful and wrong—when in fact there is absolutely nothing wrong with abortion and it should be done as often as necessary without any stigma or shame.
This plainspoken and unapologetic tweeting about abortion was refreshing and needed! It was utterly correct, sane, and moral.
Download the PDF of this pamphlet: A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity
However, like everything that touches deeply on the role that women play in society, there was an immediate and vicious reaction. Anti-abortion fanatics, religious fascists, and woman-haters of all kinds jumped on the hashtag and began spewing hatred and shame. Those who courageously tweeted about their abortions were barraged in the same way that women who enter abortion clinics each and every day are barraged with harassment—they were called “murderers” and “selfish” and “sluts” and every other vile thing I refuse to type that woman-haters call women. Fetuses were compared to Jewish people, and women who get abortions were compared to Hitler, demeaning women and belittling the horrors of the Holocaust at the same time. The former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann joined in condemning and shaming those who tweeted #ShoutYourAbortion. Soon, anti-abortion fanatics had published Amelia Bonow’s home address and she began receiving death threats and rape threats from a movement that has bombed and vandalized hundreds of clinics and murdered eight people for being part of providing abortions.
What was all this about? It is about defending and further enforcing the shame and stigma on women. It is about telling women to “stay in your place” and “be silent” as your rights are stripped away from you and other women across the country. It is about making an example of those who speak out and sending a message to everyone else not to dare. This must be answered. It must be answered with even greater defiance among even greater numbers of people. It must be answered by pro-choice people having the backs of Amelia Bonow and Lindy West, and of all the doctors and staff who provide abortions, and all those who are courageous enough to speak out, defend abortion clinics, and say plainly and publicly that they are not ashamed or apologetic about their abortions. It must be answered by going even further, going beyond social media and into the public square—into the streets.
All this makes the call that has been issued by StopPatriarchy.org for massive Abortion Rights Protests in Washington, DC, and San Francisco this January 22, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade’s legalization of abortion, even more urgent. Every year tens of thousands march against abortion. They must not be the only voice. Stand up for women: Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!
Scientists Discover New Potential Source of Liquid Water on Mars
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Dark narrow streaks, up to few hundred yards long, emanate from the walls of Garni Crater on Mars. The streaks are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
A crude assault on the important discovery by scientists this week of evidence of water and possibly life on Mars and more basically, a crude assault on science itself, was launched by the fascist radio commentator Rush Limbaugh:
“...look at the temperature data, that has been reported by NASA, has been made up, it’s fraudulent for however many years, there isn’t any warming, there hasn’t been for 18.5 years. And yet, they are lying about it. They’re just making up the amount of ice in the North and South poles, they’re making up the temperatures, they’re lying and making up false charts and so forth. So what’s to stop them from making up something that happened on Mars that will help advance their left-wing agenda on this planet?”
Fascist pigs like Limbaugh very aggressively attack science and the very method of drawing conclusions based on analyzing actual evidence. Their method is to assert that anything that conflicts with their own pro-imperialist, racist, woman-hating, immigrant-bashing, and anti-environmental agenda has to be wrong. The method of proceeding from reality, investigating and learning from that more about reality, is opposed to everything they are about. It is not simply that they lie, though they do plenty of that. They are building up a social base of followers who are trained in anti-scientific thinking, who hate and oppose science and the scientific method. This is why Limbaugh feels he has to attack something like this discovery of the likelihood of flowing water on Mars. Without science and the scientific method, people are not able to tell what is true and real, in nature or society, and cannot fight for emancipation.
NASA scientists announced on Monday, September 28, that they had discovered exciting new evidence of water on Mars. The scientists involved argue that this discovery points to the possibility of life in some form existing on Mars. They wrote: “Determining whether liquid water exists on the Martian surface is central to understanding the hydrologic cycle and potential for extant life on Mars.” This is spurring plans for further exploration. If life were found on Mars, the planet most like the Earth in our solar system, it would be the first time life was found to exist outside the Earth. It would be tremendously valuable scientifically, and it could lead to a much fuller understanding of what life is and what possible forms it could take. And it would challenge further the unscientific and religious views that the Earth is the center of the universe. And even if life is not discovered in the near future, the discovery of potential new sources of water will certainly add to an understanding of Mars and how planets like the Earth develop.
Mars was very different in the past, with much more water and a dense atmosphere. But today overall, it is very cold and dry, in part because its atmospheric pressure is 100 times lower than the Earth’s. Mars probes have discovered that it has big deposits of ice at its poles, but it is so cold and the atmospheric pressure so low that the water molecules can go from ice to free movement as vapor in one jump, without going through a liquid state. Since liquid water is crucial to life as it is currently known, this was part of why it seemed unlikely that life could exist on Mars. In addition, because the atmosphere is so thin, radiation from the sun hits hard in the daytime and this too would make it harder for any kind of life to survive on the surface of the planet.
The recent discovery comes from thin, dark streaks discovered in 2010. These streaks appear on hillsides or slopes and change with the seasons, becoming darker in the spring, especially on slopes facing the sun, and lighter in the Martian autumn. They are scientifically known as recurring slope lineae (RSL). Analyzing data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have recently been able to decipher some of the chemical composition of these RSLs. They found salts of different kinds in the streaks: “magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate.” This implies that the changes in the streaks over time happen because the RSLs could be very salty water that flows and changes with the seasons.
This discovery is interesting and important, and to have salty water flowing on Mars opens up many new questions. One important one is where does this water come from. Some scientists argue that it comes from the Martian atmosphere. Others argue that there isn’t enough water in the atmosphere, and it more likely comes from sources of water underground.
The tantalizing possibility of unexpected sources of liquid water opens up at least the possibility that life could exist in some form on Mars. Scientists are thinking along the lines of bacteria that exist in near-boiling water or in deep cold in very extreme environments on Earth. A basic scientific point here is that the new discovery, based on uncovering and then analyzing new evidence, reveals something about the universe and opens up pathways for further investigation and discovery.
Three Prisoner Deaths in One Month Expose Murder and Brutality in Santa Clara County Jails
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Over the last month there have been three deaths of prisoners at jails in Santa Clara County, California, which includes the city of San Jose. The deaths have exposed the cruel conditions in the jails and the murderous brutality of the guards.
Murder of Walter Roches
In the latest incident, Walter Roches, 33, was taken to the jail on September 20. Sources told ABC 7 News in the Bay Area that he may have suffered a psychotic episode at the jail. Santa Clara County Undersheriff John Hirokawa said, “Jail staff noticed he was banging the door with his fist and a bit angry.” When Roches refused to take psychiatric medications or to leave his cell, guards responded with brutality, spraying him with pepper spray. Then they tossed a “Clear Out” tear gas grenade—a military-grade grenade used to clear areas up to 23,000 sq. ft.—into his small cell.
Then they brought out an FN-303 riot gun, which shoots plastic capsules filled with small metal beads. It is used by the U.S. military for crowd control in Iraq and Afghanistan. The guards fired three times at Walter Roches, shooting him at a distance of about 6 to 8 feet. Sources tell ABC 7 News that he had 15-inches of bruising on his upper abdomen and chest area.
Five days later, Walter Roches died at the jail. Reports say a cop found him with “a bloody froth coming out of his mouth.”
Murder of Michael Tyree
Michael Tyree, 31, had already served his five-day sentence on misdemeanor charges in the same Santa Clara County jail as Walter Roches. He was waiting for a bed to be available so that he could be transferred to a nearby mental health facility. On August 26, guards were conducting a cell-to-cell search in the section of the jail where Tyree was being held. As the guards went through the jail, they delivered a beating to another inmate that left visible marks.
Other prisoners reported that, when the guards got to Michael Tyree’s cell, they heard him screaming, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Stop.” This was followed by minutes of screaming, thumping, wall-banging and “what sounded like blows to a person’s body,” according to an official report.
The medical examiner reported Tyree had significant bruising above his eye, near his chin, on his cheek and on his arms, legs, back and hips. A blow to his lower left back caused serious damage to his spleen and liver, leading to internal bleeding. The medical examiner’s report said that Tyree’s injuries would have led to death in less than an hour.
But the guards did not even call for medical assistance after the beating. Instead, they acted as though nothing had happened. One prisoner in a nearby cell reported that after the beating noises stopped, the guards remained in the cell for about five minutes, and that after the guards left he saw Tyree’s body naked and motionless on the floor of the cell.
The three guards returned an hour later and pretended that they had just found Michael Tyree’s body—only then did they call for medical attention.
The Contra Costa Times reported that prisoners described Tyree as a nice man who was mentally ill. He often refused to shower or change his clothes, they said. He also didn’t have any money on his commissary books for extra food, so he’d go around to ask other prisoners for food and to dig through the unit’s garbage can for scraps.
The three guards have been charged with murder in the case. Despite the terrible nature of their crimes, all three have been released on bail.
Pattern of Brutality
Normally deaths in the county jail aren’t even publicly reported. The exposure of the death of Michael Tyree is the only reason that we know about the deaths of Walter Roches or 50-year-old Noriko Seales, locked up on drug-related charges, who was found dead at another Santa Clara County jail shortly after Tyree’s death.
Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith has gone into damage-control mode, claiming to be open and transparent while carrying out a more sophisticated cover-up, including bringing in the FBI. But reports of outrages continue to pour out. ABC 7 News reported that the pigs who have been charged in the murder of Michael Tyree texted each other, bragging of their brutality. One of the cops texted to another, referring to a cellblock he patrolled, “I love 6A no camera and no groups, I hope I keep it.” The other cop responded by texting, “I slapped a guy yesterday Cu (sic) he was cursing at the nurse and I told him to shut the (expletive) up and have some respect. He was so surprised about me slapping him that he sat on his bed with his hand on his cheek hahaha.” Some media have also reported that racist text messages have been found on cell phones of guards.
The exposure of abuse has led to a more than 100 complaints from prisoners being filed over the past month.
After the death of Michael Tyree, Santa Clara County promised a “Blue Ribbon Commission” to investigate and conduct public hearings into conditions at the jails. County Executive Jeff Smith is now recommending that the commission not be allowed to take public testimony on incidents in the jail and only look at “policy, procedures, and operations.” In other words, all those who have bravely stepped forward to document the conditions at the jail will NOT have the opportunity to testify publicly.
The exposure continues and has sparked protest. On September 30, the local chapter of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) held a demonstration and press conference outside the jail, which received coverage in the local media.
Which Side Are You On?
The brutality on display in the Santa Clara jails takes place in prisons and jails across the country and on an outrageous scale.
What kind of system shoots military-grade weapons at an unarmed mentally ill prisoner in a small, confined cell for refusing to take his medication or to leave the cell? What kind of system beats a naked man to death in a cell while he begs for help? From a standpoint of basic morality, any system that finds this kind of injustice acceptable needs to be declared unfit to rule.
But also from a standpoint of basic morality another question must be asked. How can anyone stand by silently while this kind of abuse is being carried out? This horror must end NOW!
People have a chance to make a giant step toward ending terror and murder by the police by being out in the streets for Rise Up October on October 24 in New York City and by getting the word out and challenging everyone they know to be there as well.
Thursday, October 22: National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation
10:00 am Stolen Lives—#Say Their Names
A commemoration of hundreds of unarmed people killed by law enforcement in the U.S., launching three days of action. Join families whose loved ones' lives have been stolen; artists, musicians, actors, faith leaders, elected representatives, professors in reading the names. Father Duffy Square, 47th Street & Broadway in Times Square, Manhattan
2:00 pm Rally to Stop Police Brutality & Murder; Brooklyn NYPD officers have killed dozens of people in Brooklyn. This must STOP! Join the protest. Columbus Park, Borough Hall
3:00 pm MARCH to Barclays Center, Atlantic Avenue & Flatbush, Brooklyn
Friday, October 23: Shut Down Rikers Island
It's been called “New York's Abu Ghraib,” a combination torture chamber & concentration camp. After years of exposure, after lawsuits and decrees, horrors that shock the conscience continue unabated. In the country's largest jail, every day lives are irreparably damaged.
Join in a non-violent direct action and protest to Shut Down Rikers Island. Sign up to be part of the action, or to provide support. Write: AddMyVoice@RiseUpOctober.org Action will start in the morning. Time/gathering site TBA on riseupoctober.org.
Saturday, October 24: Flood the Streets to STOP Police Terror
11:00 am Rally at Washington Square Park
Gather your school, faith group, union to march together. Bring your signs & banners, your children, and take the day to show which side you're on.
1:00 pm MARCH to put our demand to the whole world.
This genocidal epidemic of murder by police must STOP. This will be a peaceful & determined march. At the front will be the “Stolen Lives” families.
4:00 pm Rally at Columbus Circle, 59th Street & Broadway
The Criminalization of Black Children...And the Way Police are Allowed to Police
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is a rush transcript of a talk given by Angelo Pinto from the Raise the Age Campaign at the Night For Justice at NYU on October 1, 2014.
Angelo Pinto speaking at the Night for Justice. Photo: revcom.us/Revolution
I work for an organization called The Correctional Association of New York which is an organization that’s been around for about 170 years, a long time. And essentially what they started to do, or what they were charged with doing, was monitoring prison conditions in New York State. So for about a little less than 170 years they have been monitoring prison conditions in New York State, everything from solitary to what’s happening with women being shackled, etc. There’s a number of campaigns that speak specifically to the needs of individuals who find themselves incarcerated in New York State. One of them I mentioned is around solitary, there’s also some legislation around domestic violence survivors, and also there’s anti-shackling legislation because there’s a lot of women who give birth while incarcerated in New York State and many of them end up being shackled while giving birth, that’s still happening.
I work specifically on a campaign called Raise the Age. New York State is currently one of two states that automatically prosecutes 16 and 17 year olds as adults for any crime that they commit. I’m going to say that again if you didn’t get it: New York State is one of two states that automatically prosecutes 16 and 17 year olds as adults for any crime that they commit. North Carolina is the other. Thirteen, 14 and 15 year olds are also prosecuted as adults for certain crimes. And a child as young as seven can be arrested in New York State. About a year and a half ago there was a young man who was 5 years old in the Bronx who was handcuffed for stealing $5 from one of his classmates. So these are things that happen.
Just to give you some more context and numbers into the issue—in New York State, when you talk about the 16 and 17 year olds who are prosecuted as adults you’re talking about 33,000 16 and 17 year olds [2013 statistic]. So you’re not talking about any small number of young people. So about 33,000 young, 16 and 17 year olds are coming in contact with the criminal justice system and charged as adults.
What that means is that those same 16 and 17 year olds are automatically housed in adult jails and prisons. So if you’re 16 years old in New York City right now and you hop a turnstile and you’re arrested and you go through intake and you have to spend some days behind bars, you go to Rikers Island. And the Department of Justice did a report on Rikers Island about January of last year and they talk about Lord of the Flies-like conditions in Rikers Island. You have young people who have had broken bones, slashing in Rikers Island.
About a year I had the opportunity to visit a facility in the New York State Prison called Greene Correctional Facility about an hour north of Manhattan. And this is the facility where most 16 and 17 year olds who are charged as adults stay, the prison facility. The median age at Greene is about 23 years old. You have a tremendous amount of young people in Greene Correctional Facility. There’s a high school there for the 16 and 17 year olds, most of whom are still finishing school; there’s a high school in Rikers as well. And one of the first things you felt when I entered was fear. Most of the young people in the school wouldn’t look up from their desk. And it took us going into two different dormitories before any of the young people would really start talking to us. And what they started to say is that this is a hands on facility. And what we found out soon was that essentially for just about anything correction officers will put their hands on individuals, the youth would be severely beaten and tortured.
There is a report you should look at called, “Growing Up Locked Down” that looked at the use of solitary confinement on young people in the United States. It looked at New York State and one of the things it found was that young people who spend time in solitary confinement spend longer sentences in solitary confinement than adults. So upwards of 40 days is an average sentence for a teenager in solitary confinement in an adult prison in New York state, that’s the median length of time.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur has said that 15 days of solitary confinement is torture for anybody. For anybody. Any time in solitary confinement is torture for a child or a pregnant woman. So in the United States, and in New York State specifically, and every other state in the country, is engaging in torture of children. They are engaging in the torture of children. It’s important to start to look at these issues that kind of way.
When you see the death of a young person at the hands of a police officer, the people who are supposed to be protecting them—when you see a person in solitary confinement in a system that is supposed to make them better, you start to see that there’s something wrong here. And it’s important for us to use the language of exactly what is taking place.
One of the things that I think is important is understanding how we got here, right? So we’re at a moment in history where 16 and 17 year olds for a long time now in this state have been prosecuted as adults. And the question is how did we get here, how did we get to this place? We didn’t always start there. I want to give us a quick history lesson in juvenile justice or what I like to refer to as youth justice in the United States of America.
So is anyone familiar with a young man named George Stinney? George Stinney, you should know who he is. In 1944 George Stinney was a 14 year old boy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In his community two young girls, two young white girls went missing. So a team assembled to look for these young white girls and George Stinney decided that he would participate, he would help. But in the course of his assisting a gentleman was talking to him and George said that he saw the girl earlier in the day.
To make a long story short, George, 14 years old at the time, was charged and accused of murder on these two girls. First of all there is no evidence of this. To make matters worse, George Stinney was convicted in a two hour trial of murder and not only was he convicted he was sentenced to death by electric chair. A 14 year old boy. So it’s the youngest recorded execution in United States history. A 14 year old African American boy. No evidence to suggest that he committed the crime whatsoever. George Stinney was about 5’ 1”, 98 pounds, he was so small they had to put about 4 textbooks on the chair for him to sit on to be executed. And it took several attempts because the device that they were using was too big for him.
So I’m trying to paint this picture of how we get to a place where we’re continuing to torture young people in the United States.
Fast forward, and look specifically at New York State. There’s a young man named Willie Bosket who in 1979 was a young man, a 15 year old who was charged with two murders on the 2-3 train in Harlem.
There’s a great book called All God’s Children”[by Fox Butterfield] which talks about Willie Bosket and the culture of violence that he inherited. Essentially what happened was Willie Bosket was given 5 years, he was 15 years old, that was the longest sentence you could give a juvenile for anything at the time. The state was outraged and as a result what happened was that 13, 14 and 15 were now prosecuted as adults. So Willie Bosket was a landmark case.
Willie Bosket’s story was so significant—there was a gentlemen who was covering the story for the New York Times named Fox Butterfield who said, “I want to figure out how you get a Willie Bosket,”— how do we get a young person who is committing these kinds of crimes. Willie Bosket at that time was being called the worst criminal in the history of New York State. They were calling him a baby faced monster and some of the worst things you can think of.
So Fox Butterfield did this expose and this research on Willie Bosket and what he found out was Willie Bosket’s father had committed murder. He dug a little deeper and realized that Willie Bosket’s father’s father had committed murder. He said, we have to go deeper and so he traces Willie Bosket’s lineage all the way back to a county in South Carolina called Edgefield. At this time in our history, South Carolina happened to be the most violent state in the country and Edgefield was the most violent county in South Carolina, where there was dueling. And there’s even court records with stories of people entering court who are missing eyes and missing teeth.
There was a culture of violence that was so pervasive. Willie Bosket’s ancestors were slaves in Edgefield. And in this book it traces a culture of violence that didn’t originate in South Carolina or didn’t start with Willie Bosket’s ancestors but went back to Irish Scots in Europe who actually enslaved Willie Bosket’s ancestors and were their overseers in South Carolina. And this book shows you how the culture of violence spread from folks who are enslaved in the South of the United States and eventually migrated north and were living in extremely impoverished conditions. And so I’m still trying to paint this picture.
Fast forward ten years and you have the Central Park 5—the five men from Harlem who are charged as adults in the Central Park Jogger Case. One of the biggest cases probably in the last 50 years. Some of you may know that Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Times to have them executed.
Fast forward a little bit further and four months ago you have Kalief Browder, a 16 year old boy charged as an adult, spent three years on Rikers Island for stealing a book bag. They did not have enough evidence to prosecute him, he was released because he wouldn’t accept a plea bargain. Sometime, later, four months ago now, Kalief committed suicide. He spent time in solitary confinement, there’s video of him being beaten by correctional staff on Rikers Island.
Part of what I’m trying to show or illustrate is that there has been a process to get us to this place where we are with youth justice in the United States and in New York State. Part of that process has been the criminalization of Black children and this image of Black children as being criminals, as being monsters, as being super predators. When you connect and you start to look at policing you start to realize that this is the sentiment that allows police to police young Black people the way they do, certain communities to be policed the way they do.
A year ago I was in Geneva testifying about raising the age of criminal responsibility and the day I was there was the day Michael Brown was murdered, it was last August. And I remember folks were sitting around saying—Ferguson was pretty much exploding and we were in another country and we were saying, what does this mean for our issues?
We started a direct connection between the way that police are allowed to police and what was happening to young people. Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin—they could have been young people who had been moving through the criminal justice system like Kalief Browder. But because the police [and vigilante George Zimmerman] acted with force they ended up dead. And that is where we are at this historical moment. The question now is what? Because you have tremendous amounts of young people who are now returning to these communities who are displaced, who don’t have access to education, who have been tremendously traumatized. And this is kind of the kicker and I’ll close with this.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad at the Schomberg wrote a book called The Condemnation of Blackness and in this book he talks about how blackness has been criminalized in the United States. Michelle Alexander wrote the book called The New Jim Crow and she is saying how mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow. When you look at slavery, what ended slavery was the 13th Amendment . And the 13th Amendment clearly says either slavery or voluntary servitude except or by function of a crime. So essentially in the United States, if you are convicted of a crime you are still subject to what slaves were subject to in the United States. We still find ourselves in that place today.
I want to close with a quote by W.E.B. Du Bois who said, “Negroes who have been arrested, who are accused of crime, who have been convicted and incarcerated, every Negro knows that a frightful proportion of Negroes accused of a crime are absolutely innocent. Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a Black man of a crime.”
Why I am Joining Other Faith Leaders to Stand With Families of Police Victims for #RiseUpOctober
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Originally posted at huffingpost.com. Reproduced here with the author’s permission.
The numbers are shocking. According to a new study by the Washington Post and Bowling Green State University, at least 1100 people were killed by police in 2014, the highest number in decades. Only one officer was convicted of any crime for every 1,000 killed, the study found. So far in 2015 at least 897 people have been killed by police. A disproportionate number are Black or Brown.
The life-long trauma is even worse: “My son, LaReko Williams was tasered to Death,” says his mother Meko Williams of his son’s killing by Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina police in 2011. “An expert witness in the civil trial, Dr. Shahad, said that he never in his life seen a heart that look like that. The electricity fried his heart...” “They came in and automatically blew my granddaughter’s brains out in front of me,” said Mertilla Jones, grandmother of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was murdered by Detroit cops May 16, 2010. “Like I said, I seen the light of life leave out of Aiyana’s eyes. I never seen anything like this in my life.”
A deep moral and political challenge is being posed for all of us: What do we do?
One step is to keep this issue before the public consciousness. I believe that every city ought to create a citizens’ police review commission with some members appointed by the clergy of the African American community and the other members elected in city-wide elections. That review committee should be empowered to investigate every single instance in which excessive force by police has been alleged, and the power to fire, suspend or bring to trial any police officer whom they deem to have violated reasonable standards of conduct or imposed bodily injury or death. At the same time, every school district in the country should require a class at each grade level from kindergarten through college on the history and actuality of racism in this country so that citizens sitting on grand juries or ordinary juries have the intellectual foundation needed to understand the way that racism often shapes the behavior of our police forces or at least the section of our police forces most likely to use violence against minorities or other citizens.
To make these steps possible, it will take ordinary citizens placing these measures on local ballots or demanding that their elected officials implement them. To get an energized population to do this, we have an obligation to keep this issue in the public eye. RiseUpOctober.org. is an effort to do this. This coalition is organizing speak outs around the US and “adopting” families of police murder victims, and raising money to help them travel to New York City to take part in #RiseUpOctober, three days of protest starting Oct 22 with a reading of the names of people killed by police and culminating in a hopefully massive march on October 24th.
The goal of #RiseUpOctober is to bring together people from all walks of life to manifest our moral determination in the public square: POLICE TERROR MUST STOP NOW. Alongside the families of 100 people who have been murdered by police, thousands together will call out and challenge people throughout society: Will you stand up against police violence?
#RiseUpOctober is a broad based response to a moral and political emergency. Initiated by Cornel West and Carl Dix, its call has been signed by hundreds, including initially 74 members of families who have lost loved ones to police violence, 31 leaders of the faith community, notable voices including Noam Chomsky, Ed Asner, Immortal Technique, Shepard Fairey, and Peter Coyote. Its Advisory Board is made up of Gina Belafonte, Carl Dix, Eve Ensler, Jamal Joseph, Arturo O’Farrill, Rev. Stephen Phelps, Cornel West.
Faith Task Force
I am part of the Faith Task Force, headed up by Rev. Jerome McCorry, a civil rights leader from Dayton, OH, who says of the epidemic of police brutality and mass incarceration, “For those of us in the Christian faith this represents a 'What would Jesus do moment.' As was the case in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the faith community must again speak out with clarity of vision to combat the New Jim Crow of Mass Incarceration.” Those of us in the Jewish world know and come from a history of being assaulted and killed by instruments of the state, whether that was a Christian state in the middle ages, or contemporary right-wing nationalist and fascistic states , or self-described communist states of Eastern Europe. We have an obligation to stand against police violence, even when many of us do not expect to personally be subject to it. (Though don’t be so sure).
“One of the things that God says according to the traditions is that he hates brutality against the oppressed,” says Faith Task Force member Rev. Stephen Phelps of the Presbytery of New York City, a Christian minister and author whose writings have frequently appeared in Tikkun magazine, the voice of spiritual progressives and secular humanists www.tikkun.org. “What’s it mean if god hates that? Does that mean that we forgive and sit back and wait? I don’t think so. Does it mean ‘vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord, therefore we sit back and wait? Does it mean doom is coming? Sit back and wait for doom? I don’t think so. No, I think there is only one thing that we really need to get into about what God hates. God hates it when people are shaken and refuse to wake up.”
Nkosi Anderson articulates our call this way: “Do you feel that it’s OK, for this country in particular, to have the highest rates of mass incarceration in the entire world? I come at this as a prophetic, as a revolutionary Christian....It’s saying that, hey we have a call to confront evils across the board...the conditions that we are facing today create a clear moral line.”
100 Families for #RiseUpOctober
Those who have lost family members and loved-ones have been key in propelling the movement for October 24. They have borne the excruciating pain of losing loved ones at the hands of the state and then being denied justice, but instead watching in agony as the police go unpunished, while their dead loved ones are demonized.
Here’s one such story: September 14, 2013, Charlotte, North Carolina. Jonathan Ferrell—a 24-year-old Black man—was injured in a one-vehicle accident. When he knocked on doors seeking help in an upscale white community, police were called. When they came onto the scene, they shot Jonathan 10 times, killing him!
His mother Georgia Ferrell has endorsed the CALL for Rise Up October, and she issued this statement:
“We have to keep this struggle alive. I’m working hard here fighting for justice. We have to put those officers behind bars. This is an attack on our children! We have to keep praying and we have to keep fighting to stop them. If we stop... if we rest for a moment... it starts all over again. We have to be in the forefront. My parents marched for equal rights, to be treated right. Why in 2015 is this happening?! Rise Up October I want to let the nation know what’s going on. We need a new future. People in authority don’t stand up and speak for the people. No one in authority has stood up and said innocent people are being killed. Jonathan was seeking help! The President says nothing. When Freddie Gray is killed by police and young people stand up the President says the kids are thugs. I’m a Christian and a parent. If Jonathan was doing anything wrong I’d say so. He needs help and the police fire their guns. This must be stopped. I’m flying to NYC for Rise Up October. I’ve put the word out for funds. And I am using my own money. I am very excited about Rise Up October. We need to do this!”
A centerpiece of #RiseUpOctober will be 100+ families of those who have been murdered by police coming to New York. “Never before have this many families of police murder gathered in one place. Never before has the world had to confront so many of the faces of those whose lives have been torn apart by police terror and murder. Never before have their courage and cries for justice been fused together with each other on this scale, and with many thousands more from all walks of life demanding: POLICE TERROR MUST STOP?”
Communities of Faith...Inspired by These Families, Working to Bring them to New York
Meeting these family members or hearing their stories, has been profoundly troubling, and profoundly inspiring. I think Nkosi Anderson spoke for many of us when he said: “I’ve been first and foremost humbled by their deep strength and their deep love. I don’t know what I would do if I lost someone near and dear to me. I’d probably retreat, I’d probably fall into destructive behavior. I don’t know what I would do. And so I’m just amazed whenever I see these families not just lament their own loss but use it as an opportunity to speak out against injustices that are continuing to effect others—saying “Hey you know what? I’m not going to wallow in my pain but I’m going take a stand in honor of my fallen family member to say that this must stop.” And so for me, I’m just humbled to see that type of courage and love of people for them to do that.”
So a key component of the Faith Task Force’s work is sharing these stories with many, many others, urging them to support these families, and concretely organizing and raising funds so they can come to New York and inspiring many thousands and drawing strength from each other and all of us.
As Carl Dix put it, “You might say that these religious leaders are courageously stepping forward to connect with the Mamie Till-Mobleys of our day. As many of you know, with the families of police murder victims playing an especially courageous and clarion role. They are the Mamie Till Mobleys of our day - just as she refused to have Emmett Till’s body touched up and insisted the whole world see what was done to her baby, these families endure excruciating pain and open it to the world to demand people wake up and win justice.”
In all this, the $100,000 crowd funding campaign taking place right now is crucial to raising the funds needed to bring families from across the country to New York for #RiseUpOctober. So I encourage everyone to donate now at: igg.me/at/riseupoctober
As in all situations of this sort, sometimes the rhetoric gets a bit over-heated and that can become a turn off for me and others. But I believe that we should stand with the victims of this police violence and endure some overheated rhetoric, because in the final analysis this is a just cause and our society would be far better off if police felt a serious contraint on their use of violence.
“When people become inspired en masse, which is not too often, they can leave their stupidity behind and truly move mountains and advance the glory of mankind. October 24th can well be one of those rare occasions when this occurs.”
- Ed Asner on #RiseUpOctober/Which Side Are You On?
Rabbi Michael Lerner is co-chair with Vandana Shiva of the interfaith and secular-humanist welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives, editor of Tikkun magazine, and author of 11 books including with Cornel West: Jews and Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion and Culture in America; Jewish Renwal:A Path to Healing and Transformation; The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right; and Embracing Israel/Palestine: A strategy for Middle East peace. Rabbi Lerner invites you to read the worldview of the secular-atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org/covenant. He can be reached at RabbiLerner.tikkun.
Victory in Legal Case of Arrests from the Anthony Hill Protest in Chamblee, Georgia, on Blow the Whistle Day
October 6, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
On March 14, 2015, the Saturday after DeKalb County, Georgia, police murdered naked and unarmed Anthony Hill at his apartment complex in Chamblee, a powerful outpouring of protest called for by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network on national Blow the Whistle Day hit the streets of Chamblee. The protest involved over 100 people from the apartment complex and activists from various communities and organizations. As the march was ending, the DeKalb County police snatched and arrested seven activists from the crowd, including several members of the Atlanta Revolution Club, and eventually took six to jail and slapped them with multiple charges (see Revolution’s original coverage of the protest).
Last week, DeKalb County dropped all the charges and dismissed the case against the six activists! This is a sweet and important legal victory that stopped this attempt by DeKalb County to criminalize political protest and intimidate people from rising up against the murderous police force.
DeKalb police killed again in August, chasing and then tasing Troy Robinson while he was on top of an eight-foot wall, causing him to fall to his death with a broken neck. Troy was the third person killed by DeKalb County police within the past year. The police chief, Dr. Cedric Alexander, is president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and a frequent “expert” commentator on CNN. He infamously issued statements quickly after the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner that urged people to be calm and patient and trust that the Ferguson and New York police chiefs would be thorough and “transparent” in their investigations.
None of the DeKalb County cops involved in these murders has been charged or indicted. Family members, their lawyers, and community activists have been relentless in the struggle for justice, which continues. Some of the activists whose charges were dropped in the Chamblee case celebrated by being back out in the face of the DeKalb County police the following day to protest the “Beat the Badge” police fundraiser 5K race (see correspondence on that protest here).
Eric Garner... Mike Brown... Sandra Bland... Tamir Rice... Freddie Gray...
One after another — and so many others, precious Black and Brown lives — victims of police murder. We think of their faces, and furiously ache for justice. Over 1000 people a year killed by police — yet since 2005, less than 60 indictments, less than 25 convictions!
What must be done to stop this? Which side are you on? Come hear these incredible speakers on these most burning questions.
After a lot of obstruction and red-tape, CU administration has finally opened up a space for CU/Barnard students to hear from these incredible speakers on Wed night, Oct 7.
Because this approval came at the last minute, you need to help spread the word!
3) ALL DAY Wed JOIN the STUDENT TASK FORCE for #RiseUpOctober to promote this event: reply to this email with your contact information or text/call (646)343-7531
4) Make class announcement! Text all your friends! Print out and distribute the (attached) flyer! And most importantly, BE THERE!
Sponsored by the Columbia University School of Social Work caucuses: Latina/o caucus, Black caucus, Policy caucus, Education caucus, Criminal Justice caucus.
Zion, Illinois: Memorial for Justus Howell, Murdered by Police
"We're not going to stand for this police terror!"
October 6, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
People at the memorial for Justus Howell. (All photos: SMIN Chicago)
Carl Dix (left) and Rev. Jerome McCorry (right).
On Sunday, October 4 the gray sky reflected the mood of 50 to 60 people gathered at the spot where Justus Howell had been murdered by police 6 months ago in Zion, Illinois. Zion sits along Lake Michigan, almost to the border of Wisconsin. In a different world it would be a pretty vacation spot. Justus was shot twice in the back while he was running away by Zion police. The district attorney declined to prosecute the cop.
Justus was killed in front of a house in a residential neighborhood. The owner of the house allowed it to be draped with a gentle artistic fabric installation. Its creator is a supporter of Tony Robinson's family in Madison, Wisconsin. Tony was just 19 when he was killed by police there, not that long before Justus was murdered.
The remembrance/protest gathering was attended by friends, neighbors and relatives of Justus, local community activists, as well as people who traveled from Chicago to be there—students, Stop Mass Incarceration Network activists, the Revolution Club and more.
The gathering was addressed by Carl Dix and Reverend Jerome McCorry, national leaders of Rise Up October who had traveled to Zion mark this six-month anniversary with the Howell family. Reverend McCorry had a powerful impact on the faith community in Zion/Waukegan over the three days he was there. He challenged them to do what was right in standing up and taking on police terror and took them to task when they failed to do so. Dix and McCorry addressed the crowd about the importance of Rise Up October in New York City on October 22 through the massive march on October 24th. Alice Howell, Justus's grandmother and a member of the national steering committee also called on people to come to New York City on October 24 for a massive demonstration to stop police terror.
Carl Dix talked more about the challenge of Rise Up October:
This has to stop. Justus was a young man who should have been looking forward to the rest of his life. His life was stolen by someone who was sworn to serve and protect. And then the system covered it up. This happens every day, especially to Black and Brown young people. Not just the brothers, they kill sisters too. This has to stop. We can no longer stand by while they kill our children. We have to tell everybody, this is an issue for you. There ain't no standing on the side while this is going on. Because if you stand on the side when people are being killed for nothing other than the color of their skin, you're no longer a human being. That's what that comes down to. We're going to New York, to say stop police terror, which side are you on, we're going to be there in October and we want you all to be with us, but we're also going to say to people right now, stop police terror, which side are you on? There is no middle ground, you're either on the side of acting to stop this or you're on the side of saying it's okay to continue. Is it OK for this to continue? (Crowd: No!!!!)
LaToya Howell, Justice's mother shared her pain, grief and anger at Justus's life having been stolen by the police in a flash. As she spoke from the heart, she also demonstrated the courage and determination to fight not only for justice for Justus but so this doesn't happen again to even her “worst enemy.” Her words left many faces in the crowd stained with tears.
LaToya Howell, Justus Howell’s mother
Y'all, this means a lot, this is the beginning of a large movement. He's talking about Rise up October, that's in NY. I'm raising funds for all of us to go to New York, make an impact to the world. We're going to let them know, we're not going to stand for this police terror, we're not going to stand for y'all killing our kids, it's unacceptable, we can't stand and by and watch, we got to do something. Plant your feet in the ground and stand up. This crowd right here, is enough to move the nation, all you got to do is make sure another person will come with you. We will multiply and we will conquer. Power to the people!... Let y'all community know we will not be silent. People scared to come out, scared to lose their jobs, some people saying "Oh, if I am part of this, I might lose my position." It's bigger than that. This could have been your shorty, Justus is your shorty. He wasn't shooting people up, he was running away. And they took his life, that stuff ain’t right. Some people telling us they don't want to be part of an angry and bitter movement. First of all, if your shorty was gunned down for nothing, you're trying to say you wouldn't be angry? I'm pissed off and I'm going to be like that for the rest of my life. This ain’t something I expected. We protect our children every day. I wasn't there to take a bullet for my son. But guess what, I'm here and I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life...my baby was a high school student, an artist, a rap star, he had dreams as high as the sky. They took that from him. That's an injustice. So I want you all to go tell somebody, get on social media right now...they trying to wipe it under the rug, shoo it away. I want to thank you all for being here. These shorties, that's who we protect, this is who we live for, we have to guard their future. Justus was your friend or your family. We need you to stand up and do whatever it is in your power to stand up for those who have fallen.
Justus's father expressed his love to everyone who came, sobbing as he described his love for his son while silver and gold balloons were released into the air in Justus's memory.
Then the crowd marched to the Zion police department. Chants rang out:
"We won't be silent, why not! We won't forget those two shots." "We won't throw in the towel! Justice for Justus Howell." "Indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell."
At the police station, in an act of international solidarity, a Latina came to represent for and draw the connection between the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa teacher's college in Mexico and the police murder of Justus and other Black and Brown youth in the U.S. She said:
In the Latino community, like you, we have been put down. Like Latoya said, don't just like us on Facebook... We need to be united...fight for justice. I represent those mothers who lost their kids in Ayotzinapa, college people, fighting for their rights. They disappeared them, buried them... We need to be together, stand together.
As people spoke, LaToya, in pain and anger, banged on the walls of the police station and called the police out for keeping Justus's possessions which she wanted returned for the memorial. The police locked the door to the station, cowering inside the whole time the protest was outside their doors.
After the march back, people were called on to buy tickets to New York for Rise Up October. A Columbia College student told the crowd how she started a go-fund me campaign to raise money for herself and many others to go to New York. Everyone was invited to join the Howells to hear Carl Dix and Revered McCorry the next night at a program in Zion to build for Rise Up October.
Updated October 7, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 8 marks the anniversary of the death of VonDerrit Myers Jr. On that day, one year ago, Jason Flanery, a St. Louis, Missouri cop working as security guard, chased VonDerrit down and killed him in a hail of gunfire.
Immediately after VonDerrit’s killing, people who had been protesting at the nearby Ferguson, Missouri police station—against the police murder of Michael Brown—jumped in their cars and took off to the murder site. They joined young people from that south side St. Louis neighborhood. Ministers were there to join in protesting the killing. And in the year since, there have been repeated protests. A month of actions around VonDerrit's murder is going on in St. Louis currently. And activists are calling for a national day of action around VonDerrit on Oct. 22.
VonDerrit Myers, Jr. and his mother, Syreeta Myers. October 8 is the one-year anniversary of VonDerrit's murder by off-duty St. Louis cop Jason Flanery. Photo: courtesy Syreeta Myers.
VonDerrit’s Mother: “He Was Loved.... He Had Big Dreams”
Leading up to the anniversary of her son’s death, VonDerrit’s mother—Syreeta Myers—issued this statement:
“Unfortunately I was forced into this club no parent wants to be a part of. My one and only child, VonDerrit Myers Jr. was executed by an off duty cop October 8, 2014. The media attacked my son’s character and demonized him.
“Here is what you don’t know about VonDerrit. He was loved. He was a student. He loved basketball and the latest fashion. He was intelligent and an intellectual. He had big dreams.
“When VonDerrit was killed he was not committing a crime. He just left out of a store after buying a sandwich. Jason Flannery did not have the right to pursue anyone that was not engaged in a felony act. There was no forensic evidence or one eye witness that put a gun in VonDerrit’s hand. All the bullet wounds to VonDerrit’s body were from the rear, and one fatal shot to his head.
“This has left my family confused, hurt, lost, empty, and destroyed. That’s why we need people to join us at Rise Up October in New York, Oct. 22, 23, 24.
“Justice for all the families that have been impacted by police brutality.”
On May 18, 2015—over seven months after VonDerrit’s murder—St. Louis City Circuit Attorney (prosecutor) Jennifer Joyce announced there would be no criminal charges against Jason Flanery. No indictment, no trial, not even a grand jury pretense, because according to the prosecutor, there was “no reasonable basis for filing criminal charges.” The prosecutor’s report is a cover-up. And it is based on and enshrines a legal framework and justifications for cops to racially profile, target, hunt down and murder Black youth for no reason at all.
The incident that ended with VonDerrit’s death began with Flanery, employed as a private security guard for a wealthy enclave in the Shaw neighborhood where VonDerrit lived, giving chase to a young man. Flanery lost that youth, then came upon VonDerrit who he mistook for the first youth he was chasing. Flanery confronted, chased and killed VonDerrit.
Flanery and the St. Louis Police Department never acknowledged this mistaken identity—that Flanery started chasing one person and then gunned down a different young man. That was revealed from GPS records from the ankle bracelet VonDerrit was required to wear. GPS records, and a surveillance video from a neighborhood market where VonDerrit walked and bought a sandwich, proved that he wasn’t the same person Flanery initially chased.
The legal justification given for chasing the first youth is that he ran away from Flanery, leaving his basketball behind, and that his hand was pinned to his stomach, possibly indicating possession of a gun. No gun was ever seen or found. So not only did Flanery kill the “wrong” Black man, he had no reason to be messing with the person he was originally harassing in the first place.
Flanery then encountered VonDerrit, who according to this pig was committing the “crime” of putting on a jacket! Flanery claimed this must have been to change his identity—as if any Black person putting on a jacket is guilty of a crime and should be killed!
Flanery says he commanded VonDerrit to get on the ground but VonDerrit backed away and cursed at him, while supposedly “grabbing his waistband.” Flanery claimed there was a scuffle, and VonDerrit escaped and ran away. Flanery shot VonDerrit six times in the back of the legs before shooting him in the head and killing him.
Lies and Coverup
Flanery claims there was an exchange of gunfire, and he acted in self-defense. But he stated in his police report that the gun he recovered in the gangway where VonDerrit lay dead had a shell casing jammed inside it, rendering it unable to fire. If VonDerrit had a gun, it was not working when Flanery shot him in the head and killed him.
The prosecutor’s report contains numerous findings that contradict the account given by Flanery (who refused to be interviewed by the prosecutor) or given by the St. Louis police. In Flanery’s statement to police, he said that the reason the back of VonDeritt’s legs were shot six times was not because VonDerrit was running away with his back turned, but because he was on the ground and his legs were lifted in the air in front of him. The prosecutor’s report determined VonDerrit was shot in the back of the legs while running up a hill. But the teport somehow failed to note that Flanery lied about how and why he shot VonDerrit.
Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?
"Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?" is a clip from the film REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN. The film is of the November 2014 historic Dialogue on a question of great importance in today's world between the Revolutionary Christian Cornel West and the Revolutionary Communist Bob Avakian. Watch the entire film here.
In the months following VonDerrit’s death, police loudly announced that gunpowder residue was recovered from VonDerrit’s hands as proof that the gun found at the scene was VonDerrit’s and that this supposedly proved Flanery’s story of killing him in self-defense. This became another big media story. The prosecutor's report states there is no definitive gunpowder residue evidence that VonDerrit discharged a firearm that night. And the prosecutor’s report states that the gun identified as VonDerrit’s yielded no fingerprints or DNA evidence from VonDerrit or anyone else.
In his statement to the police, Flanery identified VonDerrit’s recovered weapon as a 9 mm Ruger. Later, this was changed to a Smith and Wesson. This fit nicely with what became a big media story when an image from social media showing VonDerrit with a Smith and Wesson was loudly blared in news stories, as if simply having a picture of a person holding a gun is evidence he shot at someone.
Details that are stated in the prosecutor’s report—that definitive evidence of gunpowder residue from a discharged weapon was not found on VonDerrit, that fingerprints or DNA from VonDerrit or anyone else was not found on the gun, that the type and make of the gun said to be VonDerrit’s was changed, and with some witness statements regarding the gunfire sounds and sequences, along with a known practice of police planting weapons to justify their murders (like was shown in the video of the police murder of Walter Scott) have raised suspicions that the gun that police and prosecutor say was VonDerrit’s was actually planted by police.
A SYSTEM of “Legalized” Police Murder
The prosecutor’s report invokes laws that justify police brutality and murder. These are hunt-and-kill codes.
A legal standard used in the prosecutor’s report is that the use of physical force, such as Flanery pulling out his gun and then forcibly grabbing VonDerrit when he saw him, is legally justified when “the officer reasonably believes the arrest is lawful.” So the attempted arrest, or at least an “investigative stop,” is lawful even though Flanery was grabbing the wrong person (mistaken for the person he chased earlier), whose only offense was running away from him.
A St. Louis American article reviewing the prosecutor’s draft report provided in advance, refers to the legal justification for cops chasing down someone who has done nothing. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Illinois v. Wardlow states that unprovoked flight from a police officer justifies the officer in pursuing the suspect for an investigative stop. UNPROVOKED flight? Think about this! Every single day Black and Brown people are stopped, harassed, brutalized, and often killed by cops.
Can any reasonable person deny that all this amounts to a standard where a Black person is presumed “guilty till proven innocent,” if they live long enough to prove their innocence?
The prosecutor’s report also states that “deadly force” is justified when a suspect “is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon.” And remember that cops see evidence of a deadly weapon when a Black youth touches his waistband. These legal rulings read like a slave catcher’s manual. One thing you will NOT find in the prosecutor’s report is anything about the rights of a young Black person to be treated like a human being and not as a permanent criminal suspect with a target on their back.
Yes there IS a Sinister Coverup
The same media that has repeatedly promoted police statements as fact which later are proven to be false (without bothering to inform the public they were lied to), has ridiculed the notion that there might be a cover-up in VonDerrit’s murder. In December, after the St. Louis Police Department came out with their report upholding Flanery’s murder of VonDerrit, a video interview with VonDerrit’s parents was broadcast. The reporter’s voiceover says mockingly: “to believe the version of events Vonderrit Myers Jr.’s parents believe, you have to be willing to believe the police are staging a sinister cover-up. It’s just that simple.” What is actually “just that simple” is the proven instances and pattern of how police and prosecutors routinely lie, cover up and provide legal justification for police murders. They have been caught doing this repeatedly.
Yes, there is a “sinister coverup” and it goes way, way beyond this particular police murder. Sometimes prosecutors lead Grand Juries to let killer police walk, like with Darren Wilson who murdered Mike Brown in Ferguson. Sometimes there is some kind of “special investigator” brought in. Over and over again police murder Black and Brown people and walk away with a pat on the back.
Which Side Are You On?
In a statement issued immediately after the murder of VonDerrit Myers, Carl Dix said:
Why does an off-duty cop feel like he can be making "pedestrian stops" of Black youth while he's moonlighting as a security guard? This killing and the story the police are using to justify it reflect how Black people are criminalized in this society. Some Black youth walking together are suspicious and need to be jacked up by a cop, even if the cop is off duty. This is like the Black Codes that southern states, including Missouri, enforced during the days of slavery which gave whites the power to break up any gatherings of 3 or more Black people. And it brings to mind the 1857 Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which said that Black people had no rights that white people are bound to respect.
THIS SHIT MUST BE STOPPED, AND IT'S UP TO US TO STOP IT.
Notice to Readers Going to the October 10 Justice or Else March in DC:
October 6, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Seek out the doubled-sided tent installation of the www.revcom.us “Stolen Lives” banner (8 am, Saturday, at northwest corner of Constitution Ave NW at 15th St. NW across from National Mall. Phone: 917-868-6007) and become part of the contingent that will be powerfully spreading the word about the Rise Up October actions in New York City to STOP police terror—be part of getting out this new issue of Revolution newspaper very broadly.
If you’re getting on the buses to the DC march, talk to the people on the way and back about Rise Up October and the revolution, get out materials, and organize. If you’re not going to DC, go to where the buses are leaving from and talk to the people getting on the buses about Rise Up October and about the real revolution.
Stop Police Terror!
Murder by Police Must Stop Now!
Which Side Are You On?
New York City, October 22-24
Intense, Challenging Forum in Zion, Illinois:
What Must We Do to STOP Police Terror?
October 7, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The Loving Arms Outreach Ministry opened its doors to welcome the forum “What Must We Do to STOP Police Terror?” in Zion just days before it was scheduled to take place, after other churches and schools had declined to provide a venue.
At the October 5 forum in Zion, Illinois—from left, Lorien Carter, aunt of Tony Robinson, murdered by Madison, Wisconsin, police; Sharon Irwin, Tony’s grandmother; Lorien’s daughter; LaToya Howell, mother of Justus Howell, murdered by Zion police; Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, killed by Chicago police; Alice Howell, grandmother of Justus; Venus Anderson, mother of Christopher Anderson, killed by Highland Park, Illinois, police.
It was an intense, challenging forum in many different ways. Four families who had loved ones murdered by police began the evening. LaToya Howell, whose son Justus Howell was murdered by Zion police, described in anguish her decision to leave Justus, the day he was shot, with his friends in Zion because ironically the town she was going to in Wisconsin is known for its hostility to Black people. She talked about how Justus knew about Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and how she had schooled him to put his hands up when stopped by police. “He was terrified” when confronted by the police, so he ran and then the police shot him twice in the back. LaToya described in anguishing detail frantically calling to find out what happened to Justus after she heard he was at the hospital. LaToya tore into the police’s lying justifications for killing Justus—lies that have been swallowed by some people in the community. The grief was overwhelming as people from other families held her.
Sharon Irwin and Lorien Carter, the grandmother and aunt of Tony Robinson, killed by Madison, Wisconsin, police, told the story of the police murder of 19-year-old Tony. Gloria Pinex was there. Gloria was one of the first stolen lives parents to go up to Zion in the days after Justus was killed. She talked about her four-year battle for justice for her son Darius and the cover-up by City of Chicago attorneys and the Chicago police—a cover-up that started in the hour right after Darius was killed in Englewood. (See “New revelations in 2011 murder by police of Darius Pinex: Criminal Conspiracy by the Chicago PD: How to get away with murder.”) Another mother, Venus Anderson, told a horrific story of her son Christopher, 27, who was shot by police literally while a patient at a hospital in Highland Park, north of Chicago. Christopher and his young daughter were brought by ambulance to the ER after a car accident in November 2014, and police shot him with nine bullets in less than two seconds because he was agitated about his daughter’s treatment.
And the fact that these murders by police are just the tip of the iceberg drove home how this police terror must be stopped.
The evening featured Carl Dix, who was given a stirring introduction by Jed Stone, an attorney who practices in Lake County, where Zion is located. He talked about how the war on drugs had been a war on the poor and that Lake County was notorious nationwide for false confessions/convictions. Jed expressed his disappointment that more people were not there to hear from both the families and especially from Carl Dix, who he called an “American hero” for Carl’s decades of revolutionary work, fighting against the oppression of Black people, police brutality, and mass incarceration. Stone drew from his experience in the 1960s about how determined if at first small numbers of people can mushroom into many tens of thousands more when they have right on their side.
Carl Dix spoke as a revolutionary communist and co-initiator, with Cornel West, of Rise Up October. He read the recent statement from Bob Avakian (see box on this page), which framed his discussion of both the movement for real revolution and Rise Up October. He went into the ugly history of the oppression of Black people starting with slavery down to today. He said he spoke with the cousin of Emmett Till earlier in the day, recounting that nightmare in 1955 of Emmett’s lynching at the hands of racists in Mississippi and the courage of his mother in making society confront what had been done to her son. He compared this with the courage of the mothers at the forum. He challenged the audience that this society with all its horrors is not permanent nor the best that is possible and to not accept itty-bitty changes. It is entirely reasonable, Dix said, to demand that the police stop killing people—it would not have been hard to STOP choking Eric Garner when he kept telling the police he could not breathe. The audience broke into enthusiastic applause when Dix announced the plans for the non-violent direct action against the notorious Rikers Island prison in New York City on October 23, as part of the Rise Up October protests October 22-24, as he hammered away at what a hellhole of a debtors’ prison exists right in the heart of NYC. The audience gave Dix a standing ovation at the end of his speech.
Reverend Jerome McCorry filled the space with his angry exposure of police murders in Ohio. John Crawford was shot by police in Walmart as he talked on his phone holding a toy gun he had picked up off the shelf. Another man was beaten by the police, and then the police refused to take him inside a hospital emergency room, taking him instead to a bridge and throwing him off it into the river below. The same cops broke out a window of the police car from the inside so they could lie and say the man in their custody escaped. In excruciating detail, Rev. McCorry painted a picture of this outrage for which no cop was ever punished.
Rev. McCorry was scathing in his criticism of the churches and ministers who are not taking up this urgent fight, who are cozy with city officials and police departments, who put keeping their grants above standing on the right side. It was a sharp moral challenge to those who were there and to the ministers who were not there... the ministers who knew all about the event because of the work of the Howells’ and McCorry’s dialogues with them in the days before the program.
As the evening wound up, people who are getting on the buses to go to NYC for Rise Up October were asked to stand up, and others pledged to raise the money to make sure the families and the buses got there. It was very good and important that people from around the North Shore who do not face what happens in communities of the oppressed every day came to learn and to show their support for the Howells and the other families and to hear Carl Dix and Rev. McCorry. Funds were raised on the spot and pledges taken for more.
It is probably safe to say that Zion/Waukegan has never seen a forum like this!!!
Rise Up October! It means a lot to me. It’s never happened in our lifetimes. All together: WE ARE NOT TAKING THIS KILLING AND MASS INCARCERATION! We are not tolerating it anymore. We do it in our cities, but never altogether like this. I knew we had to do this, all the relatives of people murdered by police nationwide... but I never knew how to do it, so I never tried. And I can’t rest until this happens. Last night, everything hit me. I don’t talk about this much... so it was real emotional for me. Rise Up October shows what everybody is doing, everything that is being done. And I am included. Before, I held back, thinking my son, Angelo Miller, had done something wrong, take a radio out of car, and that’s why not a lot of support. But the police shot his car up with 8 bullets and murdered him. His hands were up! They were supposedly going to charge those cops for murdering my son. That never happened. How is this justified?!
Now, I am reaching out to families for Rise Up October to STOP police from murdering young people like my son. I got my goal of 25 people to NYC from the families in this area from my outreach. I got fundraising plans with big events October 10 and also neighborhood sales with hot dogs, chips and soda. Some families are confused, like they become activists and get taken up under the wing of the city and police to fight violence in the community. Sometimes they don’t know where to turn and end up there. But what happened to their sons is not right and they got to be with Rise Up October and in NYC too. Rise Up October is really challenging me. I am still hurting. But I am no quitter and now I can’t stop, I am working to reach out to all the families everyday and I am working to be a better fundraiser. I’m not stopping and I can’t even sleep! How about you? Which Side Are You On?
550 Pack Columbia University Auditorium for Rise Up October
A Challenge to Columbia University Students and the World
October 8, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Eve Ensler, Carl Dix, Nicholas Heyward, Sr., and Cornel West at Columbia University, October 7. (This photo was taken after Jamal Joseph, who was the first speaker of the evening, had to leave for another speaking engagement.) Photo: Alex Seel
After a down-to-the-wire battle to hold the event, 550 people, largely Columbia University students, packed the Lerner Hall Auditorium on the Columbia campus in NYC on Wednesday night, October 7, for a powerful, moving event challenging everyone to take up and organize for Rise Up October.
Columbia’s moves to deny an appropriate space for the event were turned around when students refused to back down, took the battle to the people, and enlisted wider support for the event—and this struggle actually strengthened people’s understanding of the importance of the event, the stakes of the struggle to end police terror, and the importance of Rise Up October.
A student in the Columbia School of Social Work talked to Revolution about what students went through in fighting for a venue, and the changes they went through themselves to make that happen. They had to reach out way beyond the initial core of organizers—to the School of Law, to other colleges at Columbia, to Barnard (a traditionally women’s college affiliated with Columbia). She said, “This is how it happened: We raised more awareness. It had to get political. And we got it. It was a lot of student-led advocating, and we don’t often do that but this time we had to. And there needs to be more of that.” And she emphasized: “It doesn’t stop here. This event has to happen because on October 24, it’s gonna be a broader scale, we’re gonna shut down New York City to raise awareness for all those affected by police brutality. So it goes beyond here. ...This is continuing for the month of October.”
* * *
The event was sponsored by the Columbia University School of Social Work caucuses: Latina/o caucus, Black caucus, Policy caucus, Education caucus, Criminal Justice caucus.
Noche Diaz (left) and Nkosi Anderson (right).
Getting organized. Photos: revcom.us
Featured speakers were Jamal Joseph, Eve Ensler, Nicholas Heyward, Sr., Kimberlé Crenshaw, Carl Dix, and Cornel West. The atmosphere was electric and determined. And the event marked an important step to build on to make Rise Up October a game-changing event in the battle to STOP POLICE TERROR.
Jamal Joseph—one of the Panther 21 and currently professor in the graduate film program at Columbia—opened the evening up with a challenge: Rise Up October! He saluted the students in the School of Social Work who had waged a struggle with the administration to be able to have a major venue for this event.
Jamal Joseph talked about being on the Columbia campus as a youth with the Black Panther Party, during an anti-war protest in the 1960s: “What we witnessed... was the power of the people, what we understood about those gatherings in those moments—and a big round of applause for the students on the committee and the School of Social Work—is that the University recognize that this is something to open the doors to, because you cannot turn back a moment when it is time for liberation and truth-telling and progressive change. Our job tonight is to witness and act on that.”
He posed: “For the people on the front lines, here’s what this must mean, and here’s why a gathering like tonight at Columbia University is important—and the other places we have been—churches, the community, other schools—it’s important because we are looking into the faces of the people, we are understanding the power of the people. And what must happen in Rise Up October is that we have to get people out, so the powers of oppression know the next time they stop a Black or Brown boy or girl, that the next time they stop a poor person or a homeless person, the next time they harass them, they’re not just looking into the eyes of that one particular person, they’re looking into the eyes of all of us! [loud applause] That’s what the power of the people is. Yes we have to use social media, we have to reach people by any way we can, we have to canvass, but we’ve got to do that ground to say that at this point nothing is going to be more effective than to flood the streets so they can understand that this city and this country is rising up in October!”
Eve Ensler—V-Day; author, playwright: The Vagina Monologues—vividly, viscerally took the crowd into the room where Natasha McKenna, a Black woman, desperately in need of mental health care, was brutally degraded, assaulted and murdered by prison personnel. Seven of them, with hazmat suits and Tasers assaulting one naked woman who had told them, “You promised not to kill me.”
“They took their Tasers and zapped her naked body, over and over. Four times—50,000 shockwaves into her body! While they covered her head! It was Abu Ghraib all over. Covered her head! They wrestled her down, tied her to an electric chair, drove her outside, where she was probably already half dead. And you know what, nobody noticed. Because Natasha was not a real woman, she wasn’t a real person, she was a story, she was an idea. She was a racist projection in their minds. And I’m sorry, if we all in this country don’t understand that Natasha McKenna is our sister, she is our sister. That could have been anyone of our sisters. She’s our sister. We are part of that story that killed Natasha McKenna. And if we’re not on the streets October 24th and if you don’t bring every single person out, this police state will eventually come for all of you.”
Nicholas Heyward, Sr. courageously shared the excruciating pain of having his 13-year-old son, Nicholas, Jr, murdered by police—shot down in cold blood as he played with a brightly colored plastic toy gun: “He had already had his mind set on being a basketball player and a lawyer, all of which was within his reach, and then I had to have a coward-ass cop gun him down. The cop asked Nicholas, ‘What are you doing?’ Mind you—the cop asked him. And when Nicholas replied ‘We only playing, we only playing.’ And he shot and killed him anyway. What kind of society, what kind of system is this? Why is he still on the force? And why must we continue to fight this system that we know we not gonna get no justice under? Rise up October! Let’s show them we are tired of this and we are not taking it no more.”
October 22, 23 and 24
At Columbia University on October 7, Carl Dix broke down and brought to life the plans for October 22, 23 and 24:
Now what we gonna do on those days?
In the morning of October 22, we will gather in Times Square, and we will SAY THEIR NAMES. We’re gonna gather family members of people killed by police, together with prominent voices of conscience, artists, clergy, professional people—and we need to have some students up there too, saying the names of the men and women who have had their lives stolen by those who have sworn to protect. That is how we’re gonna kick off Rise Up October.
Then the afternoon of October 22nd, here in New York City, there’s going to be a demonstration in Brooklyn, starting at Borough Hall, moving to Barclay’s Center, marking the 20th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. And there will be similar marches around the country.
Friday, October 23, we are going to carry out a non-violent direct action. When I talked about this before, I said that details will be upcoming. Well here’s a big detail. This action will focus on shutting down the butcher shop, concentration camp, debtor’s prison that is Riker’s Island.
And on Saturday, October 24, together through the sheer strength of our numbers, we will shut New York down. We will gather in Washington Square Park, march to Columbus Circle, right through the middle of Manhattan.
Go here for a rush transcript of the full text of Carl Dix's speech.
Kimberlé Crenshaw—professor, UCLA and Columbia University School of Law, one of the initiators of the Say Her Name campaign—challenged the audience. She started by asking people to raise their hands if they recognized the names of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray. Most people raised their hands. But then she continued with the name of women killed by police whose names are less widely known: Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Maya Palmer, Aura Rosser, Kayla Moore. And she called on the audience to know their names, and SAY their names.
“Melissa Williams was killed along with the partner she was driving with in Cleveland, Ohio. The car backfired. Police mistook that for gunshots. Police chased them throughout Cleveland shooting 137 rounds. An officer ran up on the hood of the car, he alone fired 49 rounds. Said he was in fear of his life. You don’t go on the hood of a car when you’re afraid for your life. Melissa was killed instantly. When we Say Her Name, we need to say: Melissa Williams.”
And Kimberlé Crenshaw talked about how Black woman are killed by police in their homes when in desperate need of help, including “Tanisha Anderson, Black woman, Cleveland, Ohio. Killed a week before Tamir Rice. You don’t know her name. Same police force that killed Tamir killed her. What happened? Her family called because she was having a mental health crisis. The family called for help. Police arrived, decided they were going to take over the situation with coercive force, rather than treating her as a woman in need of help. Tried to put her in a police car, tried to put her in a confined situation, tried to separate her from her family. She resisted. They did a takedown move on her, threw her to the ground, on the cement in the dead of winter in Cleveland, Ohio. Her death ruled a homicide. You need to know Tanisha Anderson’s name! Say her name! Tanisha Anderson!”
Carl Dix—co-initiator of Rise Up October and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)—shared heartfelt experiences working with families of those murdered by police. And he framed what he spoke to in a quote from Bob Avakian:
There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.
Carl Dix talked about the ugliness: “All these horrors are completely unnecessary. Things don't have to be this way. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or maim an innocent person.” And the problem: “It’s not just the way the police spread terror in Black and Latino communities. It’s also what was done to the native inhabitants of this land. This land was stolen from them. They were nearly wiped out. Those few who survived were put in concentration camps they call reservations. There is what is done to women in this society with its rape culture, with viewing women as sex objects, and with the interference of government authorities in the very private decisions around when and whether to have a child. There’s what’s done to our immigrant sisters and brothers, driven here by the devastation that the U.S. wreaks in their homelands and then arriving here to face persecution—deported by Obama in record numbers and insulted by fascist idiots like Donald Trump. And then there are the wars for empire—wars in which one million people were killed in Iraq in the past few decades and before that three million in Vietnam and before that in Korea.... I was in their military...when they told me I had to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people for them my answer was ‘Hell no, I ain’t goin’!’ And then there’s also the way they’re devastating the environment of the planet we live on.”
Watch the entire event here
He spoke to both what was revealed in the revolutionary upsurges of the sixties and the setbacks the movement for revolution was hit with over the past decades. And then he pointed out, “That’s where Bob Avakian comes in—he never gave up on the people and he never gave up on revolution. He went to work learning from the experience of revolution and from experience more broadly, and has developed a new synthesis of communism—an even more scientific understanding of the methods, goals, strategy and plan for making revolution and creating a new society. On the basis of this new synthesis, the party Avakian leads, the RCP, is building a movement for revolution. So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution. Get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Keep your sights aimed on emancipating all of humanity.”
He posed a sharp challenge to the students, and the audience: “Don’t get sucked into framing what you're trying to do in the language and terms of the system or limiting yourself to working within the channels this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before, and the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide.”
Carl called on everyone, wherever they were coming from, to resist, and to take up Rise Up October and make it happen: “WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. NOBODY with a beating heart and a functioning conscience should stand aside.”
And Carl Dix laid out exciting, ambitious plans for October 22, 23 and 24 (see accompanying box).
The last speaker was Cornel West—co-initiator of Rise Up October and professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary and professor emeritus at Princeton University. He posed an uncompromising moral challenge to students, to academia and beyond: “Don’t tell me how smart you are. There were smart Nazis. Smart white supremacists.”
West said: “You got precious Black and Brown folk shot down like dogs every 28 hours for ten years and not one policeman goes to jail or Federal prison. We did send one to jail in Oakland—that was community pressure over Oscar Grant. They let him out quick. Then you got a Black president, Black attorney general, Black Homeland Security. That doesn’t deliver justice! Police are still getting off scot-free. Those Black faces in high faces—it doesn’t translate to justice for poor and working people. Columbia University, I thought you was committed to truth, and the condition of truth is allowing suffering to speak like the folks we talking about then you’re not serious about education. You’re not serious...
“We live in the age of Ferguson. What is Ferguson, that marvelous new militancy of the younger generation who are tired of the spiritual malnutrition and moral constipation of contemporary capitalist civilization? They’re tired of the emptiness of soul. They’re tired of the stimulation of bodies and instant gratification. They want something deeper. They want something more profound. They want something like joy, not just pleasure. They want something like justice, not superficiality. They want something that affects poor and working people, not just some colorful set of faces on high when folks in the basement still being crushed like cockroaches. That’s what we’re talkin’ about today. That’s why October 24 is crucial. Because we got to let the powers-that-be know this talk about police murder, about police terror, is no fad or fashion, it’s a way of life. If we gonna stay in it, if we gonna be faithful unto death, then we gonna die into life...call into question our cowardliness, call into question our indifference, call into question our callousness. We gonna be reborn with new vision, new courage, new determination, new fortitude.
“But at the same time, I’m gonna end on this note: If love is not at the center, it is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. I don’t want to know just how sophisticated your analysis is. I don’t want to know how broad your horizons are. I wanna know how deep your love is. Love fundamentally on a steadfast commitment to the welfare of others, which means you willing to take a risk, you willing to bear a burden, you willing to pay a price for something bigger than you. That’s what this younger generation needs.
“Columbia University, are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? Are you ready for Rise Up October? Are you ready for the love train? Are you ready for the justice train?” [crowd erupts: “Rise up! Rise Up!”]
* * *
After the speakers, Nkosi Anderson, member of the National Steering Committee and Faith Task Force for Rise Up October, brought Noche Diaz to the podium. Anderson called on everyone to stand with Noche, who is facing invented, but serious, criminal charges for his role as a Revolution Club leader and a leader of struggle against police terror. Noche said: “This is why they’re coming down hard on people like me. Because they have shown they can inspire change—the ones called the worst of the worst, those who the system calls ‘thugs,’ with tremendous potential for a whole new world. When we rise up in October, next time they come—and they will come, until revolution—[the youth] are gonna know which side you’re on, they’re gonna know whose got their backs.”
People were called on to stand with Noche on October 13 at 9 a.m. at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan when his next court hearing is scheduled.
Nkosi Anderson ended the formal presentations saying, “This is our chance to meet the social challenge of our time”—and led chants of “Rise up! October!”
The presentations were followed by Q&A with the audience and panelists, facilitated by Columbia professor Zerandrian Morris, who kicked off the exchange with “We are here because the terror that my grandfather would speak about regarding Jim Crow is back...,” and noting that Dylann Roof—the white supremacist who carried out a massacre of Black people during Bible study at a church in Charleston, SC—was taken to a Burger King by police.
As people left, the back of the room was a buzz of activity and engagement, including people getting organized to make October 24 a massive success.
Carl Dix is the co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Click here for more from Carl Dix.
We’ve heard tonight about what happened to Nicholas Heyward Jr. at the hands of the police. We heard about what happened to Kayla Moore, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Melissa Williams. We’ve heard a number of horrors. I have been on tour promoting Rise Up October. In the course of this tour, I interacted with a number of family members of people murdered by the police. I want to mention a couple of them. I just came back from Waukegan, Illinois, being with LaToya and Alice Howell. Six months ago, they buried 17-year-old Justus Howell, the son and grandson of LaToya and Alice. He was shot in the back twice by police. Also on this tour I interacted with Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice. Eight months ago she buried her 12-year-old son, Tamir, gunned down by police. Also on tour I was accompanied for awhile by Mertilla Jones, who five-and-a-half years ago buried her seven-year-old granddaughter, Aiyana Stanley-Jones. In none of these cases have any police been punished in any way.
These are not isolated incidents. It happens all the damn time. They amount to an unspeakable horror... an unspeakable horror that must be stopped. Now to get into what we must do to stop police terror, I want to start out with a quote from Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.
All these horrors are completely unnecessary. Things don’t have to be this way. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or maim an innocent person. It’s not just the way the police spread terror in Black and Latino communities. It’s also what was done to the native inhabitants of this land. This land was stolen from them. They were nearly wiped out. Those few who survived were put in concentration camps they call reservations. There is what is done to women in this society with its rape culture, with viewing women as sex objects, and with the interference of government authorities in the very private decisions around when and whether to have a child. There’s what’s done to our immigrant sisters and brothers, driven here by the devastation that the U.S. wreaks in their homelands and then arriving here to face persecution—deported by Obama in record numbers and insulted by fascist idiots like Donald Trump. And then there are the wars for empire—wars in which one million people were killed in Iraq in the past few decades and before that three million in Vietnam and before that in Korea.... I was in their military... when they told me I had to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people for them my answer was "Hell no, I ain’t goin’!" And then there’s also the way they’re devastating the environment of the planet we live on.
This is not we should have justice some far off day. Humanity CAN be emancipated. The way to do this is through revolution—thru getting RID of this system and bringing in a system that is based on freeing people from all that ugliness and developing whole new ways for people to relate to each other and to the whole world.
A lotta people tell me, “Carl, you’re crazy. You can’t make revolution. They’re too powerful.” But what’s crazy is going along with this system and expecting things to get better. And let me tell you about their power—I’ve seen it up close, and I’ve seen the very real potential to defeat that power.
We saw the possibility to end these horrors in the 1960s when Black people rose up against the savage oppression being brought down on them, sparking off broader resistance and rocking the whole system back on its heels. The potential to defeat their power was shown in Vietnam, where peasants who were inspired and organized defeated their big powerful army—and part of how they did that was by inspiring soldiers like me to rebel. Back then we wanted to question and change everything. We saw glimmers of a different morality, a whole different way people could relate to each other. We saw a glimpse back then of the beauty Bob Avakian is talking about.
From Ike to Mao... and Beyond:
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist
Chapter Six: Your Sons and Your Daughters
Opening Up... Torn by Kennedy and the Democrats... Into the Student Life... Dylan and “Beatlemania”... New People, New Influences... Malcolm X... Straddling Two Worlds... The Free Speech Movement... Mario Savio... The Assassination of Malcolm X... Deciding about Vietnam... Getting In Deeper
But we didn’t make revolution in this country. In the major places where revolution was made, power was seized back by capitalist exploiters. People around the world and in this country have paid a heavy price in blood for this ever since. A lot of people got too beaten down and gave up. What we got was over 2 million people in prison. 40 percent of Black children are living in poverty. We got crack and AIDS and all the horrors that go with a “dream deferred.” But that’s where Bob Avakian comes in—he never gave up on the people and he never gave up on revolution. He went to work learning from the experience of revolution and from experience more broadly, and has developed a new synthesis of communism—an even more scientific understanding of the methods, goals, strategy and plan for making revolution and creating a new society. On the basis of this new synthesis, the party Avakian leads, the RCP, is building a movement for revolution.
So I’m challenging everyone here, especially you young people—get into this revolution, get into Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward about how to make revolution. Get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Keep your sights aimed on emancipating all of humanity. You can get into Avakian by going to our website—revcom.us—or going to Revolution Books when it opens in its new location in Harlem ... but do get into him and get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building.
Don’t let people tell you we can’t do better than this... America is not eternal, we can do better than hope for itty-bitty changes in HOW they dog us. Don’t get sucked into framing what you’re trying to do in the language and terms of the system or limiting yourself to working within the channels this system puts out there. We’ve seen this movie before, and the result is the whole genocidal situation we face right now—and yes, I said genocide.
Now, coming from the need for and possibility of revolution, I understand that we have to mobilize everyone we can, wherever they’re coming from and however they see the problem and the solution, to fight this madness we face. We can’t let them beat people so far down that we could never rise up against the things they do to us. So what we need to do is to stop police terror.
We are at a crucial turning point. Authorities are desperate to suppress the inspiring protest movement that has grown over the past year, hitting people with mass arrests and heavy charges. Either they will get away with this and killings by police, and the exoneration of killer cops will not only continue but intensify. Or we will come into the streets in even greater numbers with much more determination, acting to stop police terror.
This is what RiseUpOctober is all about doing. It aims to change the terms of how people think about this and act on it, and to politically rock those who order and carry out this terror back on their heels. This will draw a sharp line in all of society: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?? Everybody who agrees with the simple demand that POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP should be there on October 24. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. NOBODY with a beating heart and a functioning conscience should stand aside.
This will tell the whole world that you have not put our movement into a cage of begging, of lining up behind some savior or other, of passivity—but we are coming at this stronger than ever, we are refusing to tolerate this, we are sending a signal to everyone who wants to fight but can’t find the way, that this fight is getting stronger but it needs you... a signal to everyone who is sitting on the sidelines and wishing for better that the time for wishing and sympathy is over and the time for acting is now... a signal to everyone who hates this that your days of dominating and demonizing must end and will end...a signal to this system that there is a growing force of people in society who think this police murder, and the whole genocidal thing it’s the spear point of, is illegitimate, immoral and MUST STOP!!
Now what we gonna do on those days?
In the morning of October 22, we will gather in Times Square, and we will SAY THEIR NAMES. We’re gonna gather family members of people killed by police, together with prominent voices of conscience, artists, clergy, professional people, and we need to have some students up there too, saying the names of the men and women who have had their lives stolen by those who have sworn to protect. That is how we’re gonna kick off RiseUpOctober.
Then the afternoon of October 22, here in New York City, there’s going to be a demonstration here in New York, in Brooklyn, starting at Borough Hall, moving to Barclays Center, marking the 20th annual Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. And there will be similar marches around the country.
Friday, October 23 we are going to carry out a non-violent direct action. When I talked about this before I said that details will be upcoming. Well here’s a big detail. This action will focus on shutting down the butcher shop, concentration camp, debtor’s prison that is Rikers Island.
And together through the sheer strength of our numbers, shutting New York down. We will gather in Washington Square Park, march to Columbus Circle, right through the middle of Manhattan.
I applaud all the students have done in fighting for this program, but I have to tell you your work ain’t over. You have to devote the next two weeks of your lives to realizing this vision of a powerful outpouring of resistance in NYC for RiseUpOctober. We need you to be all over social media, not only struggling with everyone you know on this campus, but all your friends from high school, all your cousins, aunts & uncles, everyone you know on every other campus, spreading the word to be in NYC. We need you to donate money to make this happen and to raise money to make this happen.
Look, let me just end on a personal note. I have been working around the horror of police murder for decades. I have been putting together lists of names. I worked on this book Stolen Lives that Nicholas held up. We have a poster that has dozens of pictures of people killed by police. We started doing hashtags when we got into the computer age, but we started this before we were in the computer age. We do hashtags identifying the women and men who have been murdered by police.
I don’t want to keep making hashtags. I don’t.
I don’t want to keep adding names to lists of people killed by the police.
I don’t want to keep having new pictures to put onto those posters.
We got to end this, sisters and brothers!
Look, I’ve got an eight-year-old grandchild. I don’t want her to grow up and her generation be talking about how the police get away with murder and what we’re going to do about it.
We have to stop this. That’s our charge. And that’s what RiseUpOctober is going to be a big contribution towards. So what we need to do is that everybody here needs to do all that they can to make RiseUpOctober as powerful as it needs to be, and can be.
And then we’ve got to do more than that. That’s how important this is. We need to get to a place where when people talk about the history of horrific crimes that this system has inflicted on Black people and other oppressed people the way that Eve was talking about, they will really be talking about history that has been ended, not history that continues to echo and reverberate in the present.
We will be talking about it in a situation where humanity has emancipated itself.
Let’s contribute to making that happen, sisters and brothers. Rise Up October!
The Deadly Dead End of “The Proper Channels” and Why Rise Up October Is EXACTLY What’s Needed
by Annie Day
October 9, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In the Call for Rise Up October, you’ll see the argument very clearly that going through “proper channels” to insist that police murder, brutality, and mass incarceration must stop will completely derail the resistance that broke out a year and a half ago. What is required: “This demonstration will be resistance-based, uncompromising in spirit and, at the same time, pluralistic and diverse, involving hundreds of thousands of people, reaching into every corner of this society and powerfully impacting the whole world.”
Read this, think about it, and join the determined mass resistance.
(Download PDF)
I want to share with Revolution readers an important struggle I’ve been having about Rise Up October and why THIS—in opposition to turning the resistance that rose up in the last year and a half into the slow, and completely illusory road of patient reform and “proper channels”—is what’s needed. I was working with a couple people who were initially very excited about taking up Rise Up October and were particularly moved by coming to an event with Carl Dix and others where they heard families of victims of police murder speak. Right after the event, they had a lot to say about what difference it made to hear people who experienced this loss in person... how different this was from the virtual reality so many people live in. They were also part of a group reading of the Call for Rise Up October aloud at the event and said that while the whole thing was very sobering, it was also uplifting because we were actually doing something about it... and doing so together.
They made plans right away to start reaching out to their circles and had a whole range of other ideas for fundraising and more. But once they started reaching out about this, they got demoralized by some of the responses from their friends and concerned about how they would seem and sound... what the “reasonable demands” are, that they had concerns that “which side are you on?” is too aggressive an approach. To be clear, they didn’t themselves disagree that it’s wrong to be inactive in the face of what’s happening, but were worried that this would “turn people off.”
We’re still struggling this all through, but in the midst of this, one of them sent me a link to an article by Peniel Joseph in Huffington Post from last January: “Time for #BlackLivesMatter to Turn Protest Into Policy.” The subtitle of the article gives you an immediate sense of where he is coming from: “Demanding that President Obama make it clear where he stands on the question of racial justice in the criminal-justice system is the best place to start.”
What follows is my response.
***
Are you sending this article because you think this is the way to go? I’d be interested as to why you think that.
I think this requires a substantive response...
If you read again the Call for Rise Up October, you’ll see the argument very clearly that going through “proper channels” to insist that police murder, brutality, and mass incarceration must stop will completely derail the resistance that broke out a year and a half ago. What is required: “This demonstration will be resistance-based, uncompromising in spirit and, at the same time, pluralistic and diverse, involving hundreds of thousands of people, reaching into every corner of this society and powerfully impacting the whole world.”
Two examples taking off from the Peniel Joseph article you sent.
1. He cites positively the experience of The Dreamers [on immigration reform]. I encourage you to look them up if you’re not familiar. They were heroic young activists who put themselves on the line to fight for education and a future. What happened? While the Dreamers were protesting through “proper channels,” Obama deported more immigrants than any other sitting president in history. He incarcerated thousands upon thousands of families fleeing to the U.S. because of the deadly conditions that exist in their home counties (conditions that were created by the U.S. in the first place). Some laws were put into place which enabled The Dreamers to postpone deportation for themselves; meanwhile their families and those not able to go to school were deported in huge numbers... and the U.S. put into place very dangerous registration procedures aimed at bringing large numbers of immigrants out of the shadows to better surveil and control them. And all while fascist forces continued—and continue—to whip up a deadly xenophobic atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the powerful immigrant rights movement which sprung up several years ago was channeled into support for the Democrats, casting all its opposition into pro-U.S. terms and was completely demobilized, disoriented, and demoralized. This was a deadly dead end and an important lesson in exactly what is wrong with what Peniel Joseph is counseling. (I don’t have time now to pull up all the numbers, but I encourage you to research this further and don’t take my word for it.)
2. Then just look at the record of the president that Joseph is encouraging you to appeal to. What has he actually done to stop police murder, brutality, and mass incarceration? What is the actual substance of his record? I can cite some things here (a DOJ that has NEVER under Obama prosecuted a killer cop; Obama pardoned a few dozen prisoners but has overseen the war on drugs while president; and he then turned around and condemned the protesters as thugs, all the while defending the police killing our youth) but I really encourage you to look this up yourself and make the argument that appealing to the commander-in-chief of the American empire will do anything for the lives of Black and Brown people in this country. When has it ever and why will it now?
I’m going to enclose below the text of the call that we all read together the night we met and really encourage you to read it and think deeply about it. It makes this point: “History has shown that no significant change has been won without mass determined resistance.”
Can you make the case otherwise?
Finally, Carl Dix spoke well to the question of “reasonable demands” in his speech. Here’s our demand: 1. stop killing our people, and 2. indict, convict, and send cops who do murder people to jail. How is that not reasonable?
We really are at a turning point in history. Either the movement that began in Ferguson gets suffocated and derailed through repression and dead end channels of reform or it grows bigger, broader, more diverse and determined. This is right now, right here and on all of us—including you guys.
Uncle Bobby (Cephus Johnson), uncle of Oscar Grant, murdered by Bay Area Rapid Transit police, January 1, 2009
Finally on all this: you REALLY can’t base yourself on what makes you or people you know comfortable. You have to base yourself on what’s true and fight for that, no matter how it might challenge or unseat people. You were moved by hearing the stories of families of victims of police murder. You were right to be moved. Now remember those stories... multiply them by thousands and thousands and thousands. What is your responsibility to them? What is your responsibility to prevent this from ever happening to anyone else ever again?
Watch this video from Oscar Grant’s uncle, Uncle Bobby. (If you’re not familiar with Oscar Grant, watch the film FruitvaleStation on Netflix... watch it right now). Oscar was 22 years old, was shot in the back on New Year’s Eve 2009, he was handcuffed, lying face down in a BART station in Oakland.
And think of these words from Lorien Carter, whose 19-year-old nephew Tony Robinson was killed by Madison police this year:
“The ‘Truths’ they are providing to you are not truths at all. The reason #RiseUpOctober is so important is because I neglected the facts and my nephew paid... If this makes you uncomfortable, I’m glad. It should. The blood of all these people stain your hands, the same way it does mine.”
BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.
I look forward to your thoughts.
Warmly—and with a serious challenge,
A final thought: even if what you’re aiming for is reform, it is still the case that absolutely nothing will ever change for the better without broad, deep and determined resistance... and that without such resistance people will be ground down and demoralized while the genocide grinds on and even picks up steam, no matter how brilliantly “reasonable” the policy suggestions might be.
Benny Anderson on the Police Murder of His Brother Johnny—and on Rise Up October:
"This is a pivotal moment in history"
October 9, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Johnny Ray Anderson was murdered by Los Angeles County Sheriffs in the city of Hawaiian Gardens on July 5 this year. (See “Johnny Anderson, 42, murdered in cold blood by LA County Sheriffs“) Johnny’s brother, Benny Anderson, has been fighting for justice since that murder. He is among those family members of victims of police terror who, as Rise Up October Steering Committee member Nkosi Anderson said in an interview with Revolution, have taken the stand that “Hey you know what? I’m not going to wallow in my pain but I’m going take a stand in honor of my fallen family member to say that this must stop.” The following are excerpts from interviews with Benny Anderson on The Michael Slate Show on KPFK radio on September 11 and more recently by a Revolution reporter.
From The Michael Slate Show:
My brother was a great person. He was the father of seven children. He was in a vacant [yard]. He was approached by the police. He was under the Hawaiian Gardens gang injunction*, and he knew he was trespassing. He didn’t want to go to jail, so he jumped the fence; and they decided “we’re gonna chase you out of our neighborhood, we’re gonna kill you.” That was totally wrong. He didn’t have his shirt on; he was unarmed. He was a non-violent person, you know, a funny guy.
Missing You Carnalito
On July 5, 2015
The whole world changed for me
And so many, many others.
You have your wings now brother
Like an angel and its feathers
Flying high to the heavens and earth.
We all knew that someday we must go
Until the end and at birth.
I miss you dearly little brother,
Every time I seen you
That big smile on your face.
I have so many memories of us
That will never, ever be erased.
So rest now brother
I can’t wait to see you again.
That big smile and all our memories,
I just can’t say when.
Written by:
Your Carnal Dino!!! Love you Carnalito!!!!
I’m standing right here in front of his grave right now. As his older brother, I’ve got to speak for him, because he can’t talk no more. And I’d like to say to the audience—before this happened to me and my family, I used to see this all the time on the news, you know; it’s happening all over the country. An unarmed person being gunned down by the police. I used to think, “That’s pretty messed up; how could people do this, to a human being?” I never thought, “What can I do about it,” until it actually happened to me and my family. So I encourage everybody that’s listening, don’t let it hit home; because it can happen to anybody. Listen and support; do some research. I’ve been doing a lot of research; reading about situations across the country, about these murders by police. This is wrong. To take a human life; just like that. Just cause they can.
Benny spoke with a Revolution reporter during a recent protest:
Revolution: What do you say to people who ask you why do you want to go to Rise Up October in New York?
Benny Anderson: I want to go to be a voice for my brother, and for all the innocent people that were murdered—to put a stop to police murder, and police brutality, [with] them getting away with murder. I mean literally. These people are killers. They sit back, and it don’t matter who they kill either. They kill with impunity. This needs to stop!
Revolution: Think about thousands and thousands in the street, with a hundred victims of police terror represented by their families and loved ones.
Benny Anderson: I’m hoping that people will see our faces. There are a lot of people just on the sidelines, asking, “What does that have to do with me?” Or “That’s none of my business.” I’m hoping, just seeing our numbers, this has got to mean something. Because if there are thousands and thousands of people out there, and a lot of family members out there, and they see our faces, I’m hoping they’ll see there’s something to this. I’m hoping it will change their mind, the way they think. We all have to live together... I would hate to see this happen to anybody else. The reality of it is, if we don’t do nothing about it, it’s gonna keep happening—every day.
On October 3, a team building for #RiseUpOctober – including family and friends of Johnny Ray Anderson – went to the busy Carson Street in Hawaiian Gardens, near where Johnny was murdered by Lakewood sheriffs on July 5, 2015. Photo: Special to revcom.us
I watch people. I put up posters and I watch. And you see people just walk right by it. So that’s telling us it’s none of their business. “What has that got to do with me?” It has a LOT to do with you. Another thing, why I represent my brother and all the families is for our children, and for their children—the generations to come. These police, they become militarized. Why? They’re like, “We gotta enforce the rules that are set upon us.” They’re going overboard by killing innocent people. That’s wrong.
Revolution: At the Rise Up October Tour stop in L.A. with Carl Dix, you said you were doing some reading. What have you been reading?
Benny Anderson: A little of everything—about the stuff going on across the country, about all these killings, of all these people getting murdered for nothing. Unarmed. I’ve been reading stopmassincarceration.net—I’ve been going there daily. I’ve been reading the BAsics that was given to me recently, from (the works of) Bob Avakian. I just got into the book. I got on The Michael Slate show. I’ve been in the archives and looked at a couple of videos of Bob Avakian himself. I thought it was all right. You know, it’s true; this society, the way it is, and the police that enforce this society, and we have to live in this society. It needs to change. And we, as the people, we’re the ones that have to change it. We have to just not give up. And keep going forward.
And as far as Rise Up October, we need to do this. This is a pivotal moment in history, where the world’s gonna see that, “Hey, we can’t live like this no more.” And they’re gonna see how many people it has affected. And I’m all for it. This Rise Up October, I’ve been telling everybody around me, I’m hoping I can get there.
* Used extensively all over the L.A. area, gang injunctions are civil court orders that make otherwise legal, everyday activities illegal. Anyone law enforcement says is a friend of someone they’ve associated with a gang can be put on the list. For people targeted, it is as if they were on parole without having committed any crime. [back]
There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.
October 1—Santa Clara County Jail, where three recent deaths have occurred as a result of brutal attacks by police and prison guards.
#RiseUpOctober was a powerful presence in the African American Day Parade, Harlem, September 20. Photo: Special to revcom.us
From left: Uncle Bobby (Cephus Johnson), uncle of Oscar Grant, killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police January 1, 2009; Angela Naggie, mother of O’Shaine Evans, killed by San Francisco police October 7, 2014; Gabrielle McCarter, wife of Rev. David McCarter, killed by Jasper Newton County, Texas sheriffs; Cadine Williams, sister of O’Shaine Evans; Chemika Hollis, partner of Nate Wilks, killed by Oakland police August 12, 2015; Carey Downs, father of James Rivera, Jr, killed by Stockton police July 22, 2010.
Dontae Martin with his family.
A refugee who arrived by dinghy at the Greek island of Lesbos screams for help after she and her daughter fell into the water, October 2. 
From Sunsara Taylor: #ShoutYourAbortion
Dark narrow streaks, up to few hundred yards long, emanate from the walls of Garni Crater on Mars. The streaks are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
From Ike to Mao... and Beyond:
On October 3, a team building for #RiseUpOctober – including family and friends of Johnny Ray Anderson – went to the busy Carson Street in Hawaiian Gardens, near where Johnny was murdered by Lakewood sheriffs on July 5, 2015. Photo: Special to revcom.us