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Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

 

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Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/rally-to-defense-of-clark-kissinger-and-miles-solay-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Prosecuting Rikers Protesters Is a Crime on Top of a Crime

Rally to the Defense of Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay!

Updated July 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On October 23, 2015, a defiant, determined protest—including nonviolent civil disobedience—took place at the entrance to Rikers Island jail in New York City. The demand: that Rikers be SHUT DOWN! The action was part of three days of national protest—Rise Up October, Stop Police Terror, Which Side Are You On? It posed a moral and political challenge to all of society—and demanded an end to police terror and mass incarceration.

The system struck back. C. Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay, two revolutionaries, were singled out and charged with a criminal misdemeanor—Obstructing Governmental Administration (OGA)—along with lesser charges.

Clark Kissinger is part of the management of Revolution Books in New York City, has been a prominent figure of opposition to U.S. capitalism-imperialism beginning in the 1960s, heading Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and became a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Miles Solay is the founder of the revolutionary rock band Outernational, which has toured Europe, Latin America, and the U.S.

In the many months since their arrest, the prosecution has been adamant in refusing to drop or reduce these charges. Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay face up to a year in jail, and are scheduled for trial on July 12.

Now the question is posed again: Which side are you on?

Rikers Island prison is a crime. Persecuting Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay for demanding it be shut down is a crime on top of a crime. These charges are a direct challenge to anyone who refuses to accept a society defined in real ways by the crimes at Rikers.

Rikers Island Prison IS a Crime—Drop the Charges against Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay

The horrors inflicted on the eight to ten thousand people locked down in Rikers every night are almost always kept hidden. But over the past year or two, more and more of the crimes behind those walls have come to light.

In June, a high-ranking supervisor in the so-called “violence-reduction task force” at Rikers—Eliseo Perez—and seven guards were convicted of viciously beating 28-year-old Jahmal Lightfoot nearly to death in 2012. Perez told a prison guard captain: “This guy thinks he’s tough,” and then ordered subordinates to attack Lightfoot—who weighed 150 pounds. The beating fractured his eye sockets and broke his nose. Jahmal was given no medical treatment and was thrown into a cell nearly dead. Only when his family received an anonymous call from someone in the prison describing what happened was Lightfoot taken to a hospital for surgery.

Such crimes by authorities at Rikers are almost never prosecuted, or even exposed to the public.

The depraved beating of Jahmal Lightfoot was not an isolated incident. Over and over, those who know have exposed how violence against inmates is as much a part of Rikers as the bars and walls.

One 2012 study revealed that 43.7 percent of 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds in Rikers had been subjected to violence by the authorities.

It is obscene, outrageous, and ILLEGITIMATE that Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay face a year in prison—possibly in Rikers—for demanding an end to these crimes!

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In October 2014, Jennifer Gonnerman’s piece in The New Yorker brought to light the case of Kalief Browder, who was repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement at Rikers. He was arrested at the age of 16, falsely accused of stealing a backpack. When he would not plead guilty to something he didn’t do, he was held for two years because he could not make $3,000 bail. He came out so traumatized that he took his own life. A 2013 survey revealed that 80 percent of people arrested in New York who had bail set at $500 or less could not make bail and were sent to Rikers.

In late 2015, Mary Buser’s book, Lockdown on Rikers: Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York’s Notorious Jail, exposed systematic “barbaric” and “horrific” conditions in solitary confinement units, based on her (former) career as a social worker at Rikers.

The extended solitary confinement that prisoners at Rikers are subjected to is criminal torture by any objective definition, and defined as such by international law.

Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay are heroes for putting their bodies on the line to STOP these crimes. Bringing criminal charges against them is intolerable!

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In June of this year, barbaric and depraved rape of women prisoners by guards at Rikers came to light through lawsuits by two women victims of these attacks. In one case, a guard refused to wear a condom while he repeatedly raped a developmentally disabled woman, and then visited her family’s home to terrorize her, and them, to remain silent. The same month, a leaked internal report from Rikers authorities revealed that inmate complaints against rapist guards are routinely covered up even when there is video evidence of the assaults.

In response to this and other exposures of rape at Rikers, Gerard Bryant, who sits on the commission appointed to “oversee the Department of Correction and advance reforms to improve the quality of life for inmates and employees,” said: “As long as we are going to have prisons we are going to have sexual abuse in prisons.” And: “That’s the reality. That’s what happens.” There have been cries of outrage in some media coverage, but still no moves by the authorities to remove this apologist for rape of prisoners from overseeing “reforms” at Rikers.

NO CRIMINAL CHARGES have been brought against these rapist Rikers guards or the administrators and authorities who justify and oversee these crimes.

INSTEAD the system is targeting Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay, and through them, sending a message to anyone who would protest these crimes that the system will come down hard on you. THAT cannot go down.

Clark Kissinger told Revolution: “We are facing up to a year in Rikers Island for protesting the crimes being conducted at Rikers Island! So you have these guards being convicted for brutality against inmates. And now the system wants to turn around and go after the very people who are putting the spotlight on this situation—they want to put us away.”

This cannot go down without everyone with a conscience taking a stand!

A Critical Battle in the Fight to STOP Mass Incarceration

Rikers is typical of city and county jails across the United States—from those holding thousands every night in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Houston, to small-town lockups like the one in Texas where a Black woman driver, stopped for an alleged traffic infraction—Sandra Bland—was found dead in her cell last year.

At the same time, Rikers Island is a focal point in the battle to stop mass incarceration. Rikers is smack in the middle of New York City. It has been the object of important and searing exposure by activists, journalists, and others who have given voice to those behind the walls.

Millions of eyes have been opened to crimes being committed against prisoners in Rikers. Exposure of the horrors going on in Rikers has the potential to call into question for many—and not just those most directly targeted by mass incarceration and police terror—the legitimacy of the whole system.

And this is taking place in a country with more than two million people in jails and prisons—vastly disproportionately Black, Latino, and Native American. Over the past 30 years, the number of people in U.S. prisons increased by 500 percent. Mass incarceration, mainly of Black and Latino people, flows from the system of capitalism-imperialism in the United States. The oppression of Black people is interwoven in the history of this country, the fabric of this society, and the workings of this system. Getting beyond this will take an actual revolution, overthrowing this system and bringing about a radically different and far better economy and political and social system. We encourage everyone to dig deeply into works on revcom.us that go into this, especially the work of Bob Avakian.

Given the crimes of Rikers, and its exposure in the public eye, and for a whole range of reasons, the system is scrambling to cobble together commissions, reports, and minor reforms to blunt outrage. And there is conflict within the ruling class over how to deal with Rikers. As one expression of this, Norman Seabrook, the powerful head of the union of prison guards at Rikers, who for years has been a cheerleader for unrestrained and unapologetic brutality against prisoners, and who has been a significant player in the halls of power in New York City, was arrested on corruption charges last month.

This is the context in which Rise Up October organized the Shut Down Rikers protest, in which Miles Solay and Clark Kissinger participated. This is the context in which they were and are being singled out and subjected to prosecution which—if it succeeds—can result in harsh punishment that could potentially put them in the very hellhole they were protesting. The fact is that, at that moment, there were a lot more people outraged than were willing to take the stand that Miles Solay and Clark Kissinger took. That stand needed to be taken. In going after them, in singling out Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay for heavy criminal charges, in threatening them with a year in jail, the system is most fundamentally making a statement that it will not tolerate that.

And yet what these two did stands as a challenge not only to the authorities. It posed a challenge then, and it poses it again, now—a challenge people need to act on: Which side are you on?

The Stakes—And What Is Needed Now

The reality—right now—is that whether or not people rally behind them will have a great deal to do with whether or not Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay are convicted. The system’s prosecutors have made their determination clear to continue pursuing serious charges. The stakes include  whether the system will deliver a message that people will pay a high price if they go beyond the bounds of what the system allows by way of protest.

Right now, everyone who refuses to turn aside from the crimes against humanity that is Rikers Island jail needs to stand with Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay.

First, if people DO rally behind them, if people DO fight this outrage on top of an outrage, then there is a chance to defeat this attack. And if people do rally behind Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay, that will amplify and make more powerful the challenge posed on October 23 last year. And it will strengthen the power and determination of people to STOP Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality, and Murder of Black and Brown People!

Second, there is the further dimension that Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay pose of fully confronting the implications of what one has come to understand, and acting on that—to STOP these crimes as part of bringing in a whole new world without these horrors. Speaking of the protest on October 23 last year, Miles Solay told Revolution: “We were not like [New York governor Andrew] Cuomo saying let’s find a more efficient, more economical and less embarrassing way to criminalize people and lock people up. No, we were saying Rikers should be shut down! And the people’s struggle to shut Rikers down is important not just in its own right, but also by getting connected to a movement transforming people’s thinking for revolution.”

There are great stakes here for the most fundamental need to get to a world without exploitation and oppression of any kind. The system is striking back. That system is at the root not only of mass incarceration, but of wars and environmental devastation, of the oppression of Black people, of immigrants, of women. The system is striking back with continuing determination to prosecute Clark Kissinger and Miles Solay. And people need to rally to their defense, to push back and fight back, as part of making revolution.

Again, if people DO rally behind them, if people DO fight this outrage on top of an outrage, then the illegitimacy of this very system that is behind the horror that is Rikers—and its prosecution of those protesting it—is further revealed, and further exposed. It gives backing to those who put themselves on the line to righteously fight the power, and not be confined and constrained by the boundaries on what the system has deemed acceptable and desirable opposition.

There are great stakes here for anyone of conscience.

Are you going to stand with these resisters, or are you going to be silent and let them be potentially sent to what all agree is a torture chamber?

Which side are you on? The question continues to be posed.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/american-crime-90-the-sullivan-expedition-1779-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Case #90: The Sullivan Expedition, 1779—Genocide of Native Peoples and Scorched Earth in Upstate New York

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")

In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

 

The Crime

In June 1779, heavily armed caravans of more than 6,200 American soldiers headed north from Pennsylvania and west from a town near Albany, New York. These forces, under the command of General John Sullivan, comprised about 25 percent of the Continental Army, which had been formed by the Continental Congress of former colonies that were in a war for independence from England.

Their target: Native American tribes who lived in western New York—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples. These peoples called themselves the Haudenosaunee, and are known to historians as the Iroquois League or Iroquois Confederacy. The mission of Sullivan’s troops: the “total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible,” in the words of the commander in chief of the Continental Army.

For the next three months, Sullivan’s troops marched across western New York in a scorched-earth campaign. They destroyed everything they came across. The Iroquois had been living in this area for hundreds of years and had highly developed agriculture and well-established villages. Many of the invaders expressed envy at the abundance of the people whose lives they destroyed and at the sturdiness of their homes.

One historian described how Sullivan’s troops “methodically looted and destroyed every Iroquois town and village on their route into Finger Lakes country, their progress marked by smoldering villages and blackened fields.” By the end of September, the American forces had demolished “roughly 50 towns, 1 million bushels of corn, 50 thousand bushels of vegetables, and 10 thousand fruit trees.”

Most of the people were able to flee in the face of the advancing juggernaut, and the number of Native Americans killed by the soldiers is unknown. But those 5,000 residents who were able to survive by fleeing were now turned into refugees, and the great tribes were broken.

Men, women, and children captured by the advancing Americans were held in prisons for years after the onslaught, and many died as prisoners. Thousands of people who survived were forced to flee towards British-held areas in Canada during the dangerously cold winter months with heavy snowfall. During what became known as the “Winter of Hunger,” entire families froze to death. Hundreds of people died from malnutrition and disease. The dead were buried in mass graves. Years later, a white woman who had lived with the Seneca spoke of the indescribable trauma: “What were our feelings? When we found that there was not a mouthful enough to keep a child from perishing with hunger?”

The Criminals

The commander in chief who ordered and oversaw this massive crime was George Washington—the “father of our country” to those who uphold America and all that it stands for. Washington was known to the Iroquois as “Conotocarious”—the “devourer of villages.” Washington’s first military experience was as a British officer in the French and Indian War (1754-63), when his orders were to imprison or kill and destroy all who resisted or opposed his army. He commanded his generals and troops to apply this policy of “kill all” Native Americans during the war of independence against England.

General John Sullivan, who followed Washington’s command and carried out the genocidal campaign of mass destruction and slaughter. Countless genocidal atrocities had been committed against Native peoples since European colonists first arrived in North America. What sets the Sullivan Expedition apart is that it was the first time the forerunner of the U.S. Army carried out an official genocidal campaign against Native peoples. It would be repeated many times over.

The Alibi

George Washington and other American leaders claimed they were acting to defend themselves. They claimed that the atrocities and the mass destruction they unleashed were in response to attacks on farming villages from some of the Iroquois tribes, in conjunction with British troops with whom the colonists were at war.

The Actual Motive

Even as the leaders of the former colonies that would become the United States were fighting for political independence from England, they were also fighting to open up westward expansion of the country into territories where Native Americans had been living for centuries. One area over which they sought to gain control was upstate and western New York, which was seen as a link to the Great Lakes region. Vanquishing and destroying the Iroquois who lived in this region was key to achieving their goal.

The United States claimed that its victory over the British meant a victory over Native Americans as well. The remnants of the peoples who had lived in this area of New York were officially dispossessed by the Treaty of Paris that affirmed the U.S. triumph over England in its war of independence. Then, in 1788, the Fort Stanwix Treaty ended any Native claims to the land. Huge tracts of land that the Iroquois had lived on and worked for hundreds of years were given to the soldiers who had burned and murdered their way across the state.

A history of upstate New York recorded: “In 1789, the Indian titles to most of the lands in the State of New York, having been extinguished, the Legislature provided for the survey of a certain portion of these lands, already set apart for the soldiers of the State, who had served in the war of the Revolution. This tract embracing 1,680,000 acres, and denominated the Military Tract ... containing each one hundred lots of six hundred acres. Each private soldier and non-commissioned officer had one lot assigned him. The officers received larger shares in proportion to their rank.”

The genocide and dispossession of the Iroquois in upstate New York provided a model for how the U.S. committed genocide against Native Americans and seized their land across the entire country as it expanded westward. Washington, a Virginia slaveowner who had also surveyed and purchased land occupied by Native Americans in what became the state of Ohio, himself bought 6,100 acres of fertile land near what is now the city of Utica, New York. White Americans flooded the area, and the fact that Native peoples had once been its occupants was recognized only in some of the place names such as Cayuga, Seneca, and Oneida.

Repeat Offenders

With the formation of the United States, genocidal atrocities against Native Americans became official political and military policy. The Trail of Tears... the “Cherokee Removal”... the Seminole Wars... the “Dakota War” in Minnesota... the depredations against the Apaches, Comanches, and other peoples of what is now the U.S. Southwest... The list of horrors is endless. Entire peoples, languages, and cultures have been obliterated by brute force. The theft of the lands those people occupied has been enshrined in U.S. law, over and over and over again. (Revolution will further expose this in the American Crime series.)

These crimes continue to this day—through the high incidence of murder and brutality by police against Native Americans, the continued degradation and ridicule inflicted on their cultures, the extreme poverty and desperation in the concentration camps (aka “reservations”) on which many are forced to live, and other measures.

 

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/promesa-imperialist-vultures-descend-on-puerto-rico-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

PROMESA: Imperialist Vultures Descend on Puerto Rico

Updated May 19, 2017 (originally published July 4, 2016) | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

May 19, 2017: This week, Oscar López Rivera, Puerto Rican nationalist and one of the leaders of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional), an organization dedicated to fighting for independence of Puerto Rico from U.S. imperialism, was released from prison after more than 35 years as a political prisoner. A major controversy has erupted after organizers of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, scheduled to be held on June 11, announced they were honoring him as a “National Freedom Hero” and having him march at the head of the parade. In light of this, we are reposting this revcom.us article that was originally published last July when President Obama signed a bill called “PROMESA” that he and other officials claimed was going to help ease the enormous economic and social crisis that the U.S. has inflicted on Puerto Rico. In fact, in the year since then the crisis has only deepened. The official poverty rate is about 45%. People are being hit with deadly cuts in health care—with hospitals and other facilities closing and crucial care denied. At the end of April, Puerto Rico officially filed for bankruptcy because of its staggering debt of over $120 billion, and this is going to lead to more cuts that will further devastate the lives of the people. One of the immediate measures taken was the closing of 179 schools affecting 25,000 children.

 

On June 30, President Obama signed a bill called the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act or “PROMESA” (Spanish for “promise”). Obama and other leaders of the U.S. Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, claim PROMESA will help ease the enormous crisis that U.S. imperialism has inflicted on Puerto Rico. In particular, it was intended to immediately address a looming debt payment of $2 billion (out of $72 billion total debt) the government of Puerto Rico was scheduled to make on July 1. U.S. and Puerto Rican officials had long known that Puerto Rico would be unable to make this payment. PROMESA also puts forward a framework for further payments on this debt.

Obama presented PROMESA as a benevolent, if difficult, measure that would benefit Puerto Rico and its people. In fact, it will do nothing of that sort. It will provide a more favorable environment for extracting billions of dollars more for the enrichment of a handful of capitalists. PROMESA is the latest chapter in the almost 120-year history of U.S. imperialist domination of Puerto Rico—during which the U.S. has viciously oppressed the Puerto Rican people, denying them the most basic rights of national self-determination. The U.S. rulers have wrenched enormous profits from the country’s natural resources, and relentlessly exploited the people who live there. (See “A History of Super-Exploitation and Vicious Domination: Bloodsucking, Blackmail, and Bullshit: The U.S. Forces Puerto Rico to the Wall” at www.revcom.us for more on the history and background of the current crisis.) And now, PROMESA will inflict further calamitous suffering on the people of Puerto Rico while basically reimposing outright colonial control.

PROMESA establishes an “oversight board” (called a “junta” in Spanish by people in Puerto Rico) of seven members selected by the U.S. The board will negotiate, not eliminate, Puerto Rico’s debt payments with its creditors. In short, this junta is basically a collection agency for the capitalist banks and financial institutions who are owed money by the Puerto Rican government. The board can impose conditions of harsh cutbacks on the people as part of rescheduling the debt. PROMESA mandates a reduction in the minimum wage for younger workers, removal of overtime pay, further privatization and cutbacks in many social functions and services, reductions in pensions, and other “austerity” measures.

The “Promise” and the Reality

Since seizing control of the island at the end of the 1800s, U.S. imperialism has plundered Puerto Rico’s bountiful agriculture and turned it into a sprawling sugar plantation. It has compelled people driven from the countryside to work at less than minimum wage in sweatshops and vast “home industries.” It has enforced conditions in which most children and about half the adult population live in deep poverty. Its domination has repeatedly forced huge sections of people to leave the island, in massive waves of immigration, to seek a way to survive.

Having sucked Puerto Rico dry, U.S. capitalism-imperialism now seeks to sift through the remnants of the destruction it has inflicted on this beautiful island for further profit. The consequences for the people of Puerto Rico will be devastation on top of devastation. Health care has already been severely cut. Hospitals routinely delay life-and-death treatments such as chemotherapy because of lack of funding. Hospitals and other facilities have been closing, doctors and other professionals forced to leave the country because they aren’t paid. Puerto Rico has already had hundreds of cases of infection with the Zika virus, and its health system is collapsing in the midst of peak mosquito season. All this will intensify under PROMESA.

There have already been severe cutbacks in education. Schools across the island have closed; funding for higher and technical education has been cut back sharply. Now with PROMESA, a report from Centro Para Una Nueva Economía (Center for a New Economy) says that, among other developments, “A default in July could also endanger the beginning of the new school year in August.”

In every dimension of society, the crisis inflicted on Puerto Rico will intensify. This is an expression both of the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system and of the conscious decisions taken by its political leadership, Obama and other politicians twisting a knife deeper into Puerto Rico and its people. This is the reality behind their “PROMESA.”

As we wrote recently, “This nightmare of exploitation and oppression will finally end when the imperialist chains that shackle Puerto Rico are shattered through revolutionary struggle. There is a proud history of resistance of the Puerto Rican people on the island and in this country. One of the high points in this struggle was the courageous and bold struggles in the 1960s by the Young Lords Party within the U.S. This fighting spirit and struggle needs to be revived, and taken much further into a fight for revolution based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism.

“Right now is one of those rare times when the media and politicians in the U.S. are actually talking about Puerto Rico and the real truth about Puerto Rico and the possibilities for great advance in overcoming oppression in today’s situation must be made known as widely as possible in all society. On this scientific basis, support for the struggle of the Puerto Rican people to break the imperialist chains must be built as a part of building the movement for revolution and with the seizure of power the hold of the U.S. on Puerto Rico will be broken.”

 

 

 

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Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

 

 

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Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

A Day with the Revolution Club—Full of the Revolution We Are Urgently Working to Bring into Being

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

In the past week, the Revolution Club made a push to make revolutionary communism and the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian much more of an attractive pole, including on the South Side of Chicago, where if this were to be out there in a much more powerful way, growing and contending, it could have a real effect on the whole political terrain in the country... at a very crucial and politically explosive time nationally.

We started out this push with a potluck where the message from the Central Committee of the RCP, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” was read and the discussion got into the role of people getting it out. THIS is what we have focused on getting out in the thousands.

The Revolution Club has been posting up in neighborhoods where conflicts among the people and the murderous ways of the police are some of the sharpest in the city. It represented in the crowds at the Gay Pride Parade. It challenged rush hour commuters about the criminal reality of the red-white-blue rag (see “DO Try This at Home... Matter of Fact, We Will Tread on Your Nasty-Ass Imperialist Rag“) in the land of the thief and the home of the slave. The Revolution Club, together with families and friends of at least five loved ones murdered in cold blood by police, called out their crimes in front of the notorious 17th District Chicago pig sty right in the heart of Engelwood. This station was the home base of a serial killer in blue, Gildardo Sierra, and many other murdering and brutalizing cops. (See “Chicago Press Conference Demands: Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail.”)

Throughout the week, during informal and formal discussions at the potluck, during dinners, and in between outings, we returned to the message from the RCP Central Committee, in particular the question of how we intended to actually make the revolution it calls for, the kind of revolution it is, the leadership for this revolution, and the kind of responsibility that demands from each of us. We spent an evening watching parts of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! and discussing what BA was saying about what goes into the emergence of a revolutionary situation, the strategy for revolution, and could we really win, really, when we got to that point. Another evening, while informally just hanging, one of the younger people brought up two quotes from BAsics to get into, which led to interesting discussion about what would it take to put the world revolution first for real and what breakthroughs in understanding did BA make on that really difficult problem.

Here I want to share with your readers just one of these days with the Revolution Club. It started out early in the morning in front of the Cook County Courthouse, which abuts Cook County Jail. This jail sits on 96 acres and holds 9,000–10,000 people. It is the biggest jail in the U.S. At the courthouse, there is a river of human beings being swallowed up by this unjust system, their lives ground up, their dreams crushed. Their families and loved ones go through the agony, too. As an April 14 New York Times op-ed by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, the author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court, describes it straight out: “... [the] rottenness is not confined to the Police Department. Racist practices extend far into the criminal courts, indeed they are the very foundation of the cases that enter into the court system. The hands of many judges and prosecutors are just as dirty as the bigots in blue.”

So when a half-dozen members of the Revolution Club spread out at the base of the stairs leading into the courthouse, everyone took notice. Here was a multinational group calling on people to get organized for an actual revolution—letting people know that there was a way out of this madness. It was a challenge to the ugly day-to-day reality of what goes on in Amerikkka.

A veteran revolutionary agitated. Then a new Revolution Club member got on the mic and said, “We can do this, people, we can make a revolution.” And he challenged: “You’re not ready right now but we are here to get you prepared.” Over and over he told people, go to www.revcom.us to learn more. We had 900 copies of the RCP Central Committee message and ran out before leaving three hours later. More than 1,000 palm cards got out for the anti-4th of July picnic. And we were not giving flyers to pigs or court personnel who are there in droves, some taunting ... one even spitting as the song, “16 Shots and a Coverup” by local rapper Vic Mensa blared over the sound system.

This rally shows the potential for people to take up the “Time To Get Organized For an ACTUAL Revolution” message on their own and as their own, everywhere.

We heard from someone coming out of the courthouse that somehow there were copies of the RCP Central Committee message taped up in the courthouse bathroom stalls!!!

A steady stream of people got off buses and out of cars to head into the courthouse. A woman with a small child came over and asked a young revolutionary if he would hold her phone while she went into the courthouse where the guards hold your phone. She and others trust the revolutionaries she had never met. People confided to us about what they are facing. A young man in college caught a case for something he didn’t do and has spent almost two years on house arrest, his dreams ripped up. He mentioned in passing that his girlfriend is in the county hospital with sickle cell but there is a shortage of the medicine she needs and the hospital is trying to get it from Iowa! It just fills you with rage. I argued with him to stop saying he just has to trust god will somehow make it right and to get with the revolution. A young man with dreads cruised by, windows down, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” filling the street. A coincidence? Five minutes later, there he was slowing, driving by, going in the other direction... same song blasting. The third time he cruised by we knew—this is not a coincidence, it’s a statement!

The crew headed to nearby Pilsen for lunch. Pilsen is traditionally a Mexican neighborhood, now also home to many artists and college students. In a Mexican restaurant, we were joined by more members of the Club and other revolutionaries. The Revolution Club T-shirts on the back declared in Spanish “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” Heads turned as the multi-national group filled a long table. The waitress smiled when a young Black club member said he loves horchata (a Mexican rice drink). Over the meal, we rehashed the morning.

Then on to the nearby National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. We were there to appreciate and learn about the culture and art of the Mexican people and their descendants; especially important in light of the anti-immigrant sentiment being whipped up by reactionaries like Trump. We were all struck by the beauty and depth of what was in the art, some with direct political messages and other works that drew you in and made you ponder the culture and history of a people. One large painting showed vibrant, healthy native people in a celebration, maybe before a hunt, while faded pictures of descendants rose behind them, some in bondage, some with glittering chokers/necklaces on the pale outlines of their bodies, rising up to descendants who look like they could be resisters. A former prisoner helped me to appreciate all that was going on in this painting.

We were struck by maps showing how much of the U.S. used to be part of Mexico, and people took pictures to show friends. Questions arose—after the revolution, would we give this territory back to Mexico? We are going to read that part of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America to see how it approaches it. As we saw paintings of the Alamo—a hated symbol of oppression—we talked about Damián Garcia, a Chicano member of the RCP who was murdered in LA at the instigation of authorities a month after he stood on top of the Alamo, took down the American flag and raised the red flag in its place in 1980. His act at the Alamo became an international incident, an act beloved by many people in Mexico and their descendants in the U.S., and hated by the rulers of this country. We also came upon several prominent paintings in the museum’s permanent collection by Richard Duardo, a pivotal figure in the Chicano art scene who died in 2014. We recounted the story of how he came to create the image of BA so the world would know about this great revolutionary leader. This is the image on revcom.us, on T-shirts and in BAsics.

While we were going through the museum, taking in the art, discussing things we were finding and learning... others were also observing the Revolution Club with growing curiosity. Who are these people? Here was a mixed group—Black, white, Latino—exhibiting a deep interest and appreciation for what is in the museum. A young Latina, working as a museum guide, quietly approached and asked, “Who are you?” Next thing I noticed was this young docent at her post, a copy of Revolution newspaper tucked in her arms.

It was a full day... full of the revolution we are urgently working to bring into being. This is the life and work of the Revolution Club that needs to grow and spread and be supported, financially and in many other ways, by all those who long for a different world.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/revolution-club-in-baltimore-justice-for-freddie-gray-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Revolution Club, NYC, in Baltimore:

"Justice for Freddie Gray!"... "We are the Revcoms, the mighty, mighty Revcoms!"

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a member of the Revolution Club, NYC:

On June 23, the day the verdict was scheduled to come down in the case of Caesar Goodson, one of the pigs who gave Freddie Gray the rough ride that led to his death, the New York City Revolution Club took up the call to be down in Baltimore. All indications suggested the verdict would be not guilty or just a slap on the wrist. Nine people from NYC piled into in a rented van paid for by funds raised by and for the Club and its work. The group was made up of people from the core of the NYC Revolution Club, other people who are involved in the Club’s work, some volunteers from out of town who came to run with the Club and the NYC Revolution Books store, and one very new person taking it all in and learning what the Club is about. Men, women, different nationalities. All 20 and 30 somethings, except for one teenager.

At 10 am, the Revolution Club showed up, marching into the front of the courthouse as a force and chanting “Everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them, WE ARE THE REVCOMS, the MIGHTY MIGHTY REVCOMS!” and “Justice for Freddie Gray! Send those killer cops away! What’s the problem? The whole damn system! What’s the solution? REVOLUTION!” The media swarmed on us and we all lined up along the front of the courthouse, where RCP spokesperson Carl Dix began to speak about how this case was an injustice on top of an injustice, a mockery of justice, and the fact that this was a concentration of an illegitimate system that needed to be gotten rid of at the soonest possible time through revolution.

After about an hour, we got word that the verdict on Goodson was “not guilty” of ALL charges! This unfortunately did not come as a shock to most of us, but it was so outrageous. Carl Dix continued to speak to a lot of media about how illegitimate this verdict was, and how it was another example of why this whole damn illegitimate system has got to go.

Not long after the verdict came down, the Revolution Club led a march around the courthouse, and through the downtown area during the lunch hour. We felt there was a real need to let everyone know what had just gone down; to speak to how outrageous this was, and the injustices it concentrates; to call more people into this immediate struggle today; and to let people know there is a force out there getting organized to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time.

In the afternoon we moved to the Gilmor Homes, the neighborhood in an area called Sandtown where Freddie Gray lived. The Revolution Club had been out in this neighborhood many times over the past year introducing people to the movement for revolution and the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. We were joined by a couple middle-aged Black women from Baltimore who wanted to run with the Club, and a youngster from the neighborhood who has been running with the revolution since last year and following revcom.us periodically to stay up on what’s up with the revolution.

We started the afternoon drilling in a park on the edge of the homes, getting ready to march through the neighborhood, on point! We entered the homes, marching as a force chanting, “We are the REVCOMS” and “Justice for Freddie Gray.” We met a lot of people who had heard about the verdict, some who hadn’t; others came up to us knowing we had come for this reason, as we had been in the neighborhood leading up to this, and were anxious to hear what had happened at the courthouse. Carl Dix agitated to groups of people about how outrageous the verdict was, what this concentrates, and the need for people to not accept this, to continue to resist the ways this system comes down on them, and to not allow themselves to become broken wretches.

On the ride back from Baltimore, the nine in the van discussed the experience, fearlessly persevered in several sing-alongs of various catchy tunes, and listened to the interview of Bob Avakian by Cornel West.

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/445/revolution-club-la-no-to-outrageous-verdict-on-murder-of-freddie-gray-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

From the Revolution Club, Los Angeles

HELL NO! to the Outrageous Verdict in Case of One of the Cops Who Murdered Freddie Gray

June 27, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The Revolution Club in LA took up the call to take to the streets and say HELL NO! to the outrageous verdict that let yet another cop on trial for murdering Freddie Gray walk totally free. The Revolution Club went out with the RCP Central Committee’s message, “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” on a busy corner in South Central L.A., just a few blocks from where 2 weeks earlier the police killed Keith Bursey, a 31-year-old Black man. It was rush hour and many people who heard the agitation or saw the signs with the message that it’s time to get organized for an actual revolution, raised their fists and honked their horns.

A Black woman getting on the bus stopped to get on the bullhorn and said that Black and Brown people just want to be treated like human beings. A local news station came and took video footage. The Revolution Club then got in formation and along with other activists who’d come out, and we marched a few blocks to where there is a candle memorial for Keith Bursey. We chanted “Justice for Freddie Gray, Put those killer cops away,” “What’s the problem? The whole damn system! What’s the solution? Revolution!” along with the “Mighty Mighty RevComs” chant.

The Revolution Club then posted up on the corner where Keith Bursey was killed and continued doing agitation. One young Black man swung his van into the parking lot and said he wanted to come out with us the next time we are out but that he couldn’t stay. We made an appointment to meet up this coming week and get more deeply into this revolution and its leadership. Many people driving by filmed the Revolution Club and were paying attention to the agitation calling out this outrageous verdict and this modern-day lynching of Freddie Gray and this system of capitalism-imperialism for carrying out this kind of brutality on the daily and boldly putting forward what's in the message "Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution."

In the photo we’re sending with this piece, just behind the Revolution Club are candles and messages dedicated to Keith Bursey’s life. Two Black women came up to us—one filmed us for 20 minutes and kept saying “that’s right!” And her friend said, “They tell us we are killing each other…. Well, what the police have is a license to kill.”

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/revolution-club-sf-connecting-people-at-dyke-march-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

From the Revolution Club, San Francisco Bay Area:

Connecting People at the Dyke March
with the RCP Central Committee Message

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On Saturday, June 25, before the massive Pride Parade in SF, people gathered at Dolores Park hours before the Dyke March. People sported T-shirts that read: “You can pee next to me” in defiance of the patriarchal push in North Carolina and other states to reverse anti-discrimination laws and further alienate and foster fear and hatred against trans (transgender/transsexual) and other people who do not “fit in” to rigid and archaic gender roles. Others read: “I like girls who like girls” and “Vagina Vagina Vagina Vagina,” “Pretty Boy” and “Gay? Fine by me.” On the hill, a brewery tent labeled “Queers Making Beers” was flying a giant white flag that said “FUCK TRUMP.” Vans drove by and honked, with messages soaped onto windows that read things like: “Make America GAY Again.” It was a mix of people all giving the finger to the many ugly faces of patriarchal tradition. Right on.

Two members of the Revolution Club moved through the crowded walkways, offering people the message from the RCP Central Committee, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” and the article from revcom.us: “On the Horrific Massacre in Orlando and the Need for a Whole New World.” Along with the title of the message, we were saying things like, “No more Orlandos—EVER,” and “Get with the overthrow of capitalism, end patriarchy, end white supremacy,” and “We need to overthrow this system, not vote for it.” Though there were only two of us, we carried ourselves like revolutionaries, made eye contact, looked serious, and connected with quite a few people.

One woman called out, “End capitalism, yes!” and we called out, “If you’re serious about that, you have to get organized,” so she came back across a moving crowd to get a message. A group of shirtless men came by as we were saying, “Overthrow this monster of a system. End capitalism, end patriarchy,” and they scoffed and rolled their eyes. We said, “Not interested? Not acceptable.” A young woman nearby heard that and came over, saying, “Not interested in ending patriarchy? Hell no, that’s not acceptable.”

We argued with an old activist about why incremental change under this mode of production—capitalism-imperialism—cannot end oppression and exploitation, and why revolution and communism can. We talked to a young Native American woman who was all fired up having just learned the truth about what sadistic concentration camp-like conditions Junipero Serra forced on native peoples, and the kind of relations that could be possible in a world without social class. (Serra was a Catholic priest who played a major role in the genocide of Native Americans—he set up the mission system in California under Spanish colonial rule that led to the deaths of 60,000 Native Americans from 1769 to 1821.) A high school student said she was not used to anyone listening to what she thought about the world because she was so young, and said she never bought the story about communism being a terrible idea; capitalism is a terrible idea. Everyone we talked to got to hear about the historical moment we are in, where powerful machines, technology, and means of production exist to feed the planet and remake the world, but as long as they are governed by profit, the horrors of this society will continue. What’s more, a world-class leadership exists in Bob Avakian, who has synthesized the revolutionary experience of the 20th century, and charted a more scientific path, a vision, a strategy, and even written a constitution for a new socialist society, making so much more possible for humanity than ever before.

We agitated by a park bench, “No more Orlandos—EVER. They want you to choose your leader, between two imperialists. There is another way. The problem is this system. The solution: Revolution—Nothing Less!” In this way, moving through the crowd, stopping to agitate in front of groups, and challenging people publicly who blew us off, two people had an impact. We connected with several people for the anti-4th of July picnic, distributed hundreds of messages and articles, challenged people to lift their sights and refuse to be hemmed in by this system’s version of what is possible, and challenged people to do the work to uncover if this is all real, by going to revcom.us and getting with the leadership of Bob Avakian and the RCP.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/do-try-this-at-home-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

DO Try This At Home...

Matter of Fact, We Will Tread on Your Nasty-Ass Imperialist Rag

June 30, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Chicago: Our Revolution Club decided to do an action giving commuters the opportunity to walk on the red, white and blue rag to build for the July 4th picnic. We got flags at Home Depot and ended up stapling 2 together in order to have a large enough swath to almost cover the entire ground where people exited from the turnstiles at a busy south side El train stop. We wrote some of the crimes carried out under the flag in black marker on the flags. We also made a 4x6 enlargement of the centerfold in the current paper “Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave”. This was almost too large to transport once we put it on foam core. 3x5 might have been better.

We knew what we were doing was legal (the exit from the trains is considered public property and it is legal to walk on the flag) but we expected to get flack from the police. So we printed out our legal rights and got a friend to dress up and be the person to interface with the authorities. This turned out to be a great idea. At times there were up to a dozen cops and various Chicago Transit Authority officials trying to figure out how to shut us down. Our friend was kept very busy the entire time we were there and the pigs never succeeded in shutting us down.

Two Revolution Club members in uniform stood on the ends of the flag to hold it in place and so the pigs couldn’t call it a safety hazard. Others held the huge “Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave” sign while one person loudly agitated.  Others passed out pluggers for the picnic and the “Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution” proclamation.

It was a wild scene. Some people really welcomed what we were doing, walked on the flag and gave us information about how to stay in touch. Some stayed and watched for a long time. Many took video and photos. Others hated it and told us so, although one woman after doing this returned some time later to apologize saying she hadn’t understood what we were all about. She asked for extra pluggers and proclamations to take to friends and family. The heavy police presence attracted people’s attention and more than a few seemed to enjoy taking the materials, or giving us their contact information right in the face of the pigs. There was also a significant number of people that tried to sort of ignore the whole thing as they pushed their way out of the turnstiles and headed home from work. At the end we marched out of the station doing our “we are the revcoms the mighty mighty revcoms” chant.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/police-murder-of-antwun-ronnie-shumpert-a-modern-day-lynching-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Police Murder of Antwun "Ronnie" Shumpert: A Modern-Day Lynching

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In Tupelo, Mississippi, the state flag with the hated “stars-and-bars” symbol of the Confederacy still flies over City Hall. And on the streets of Tupelo, a Black man who ran from police was mauled and mutilated by a police dog, then beaten and shot dead by a Tupelo cop—no different than how they would have run down and murdered a runaway slave back before the Civil War or what the KKK did to many thousands after outright slavery was mainly abolished.

On June 18, Antwun “Ronnie” Shumpert was driving his friend’s car while his friend rode in the passenger seat, when they were pulled over by Tupelo cop Tyler Cook.

This is the USA—where over and over and over again, the pigs jump on any pretext to beat, arrest, or even kill Black people. Ronnie Shumpert had every reason to fear that’s what would happen. He took off running. According to his family’s lawyer, Carlos Moore—who has interviewed witnesses to the incident—Shumpert hid in some bushes.

Officer Cook then unleashed his K-9. At that point, Moore says, Shumpert attempted to surrender but was attacked by the police dog, which ripped at and mutilated his testicles. As Shumpert attempted to get free of the dog, Cook came up on him and beat him so badly that his teeth were jammed down into his throat. Cook then shot him four times—in the stomach and chest—then handcuffed him. Ronnie Shumpert died five hours later.

K-9s, like their masters, are more than just dangerous savage beasts—they are trained by those in authority to do what they do, whether it is ripping at the testicles of a helpless Black man or shooting him dead. They are rewarded for doing this, and protected by the system from any accountability. Both dog and cop are vicious servants of an unjust order.

Shumpert was unarmed. No drugs or weapons were found in the car. Shumpert’s friend was held, questioned, and released without charges.

Two weeks later, police have given no justification for the initial traffic stop. They have given no explanation for unleashing a dangerous beast (the K-9) to attack a man who was not even suspected of any serious crime.

The only “explanation” given by the police for the beating and shooting was their claim that Shumpert, unarmed, jumped out of the bushes and attacked the police dog!! So, according to their own ridiculous lie, they felt it necessary to murder Shumpert to protect their dog!

Ronnie Shumpert was murdered for running from the oppressor—just like Freddie Gray was murdered in Baltimore for running from the oppressor, just like Walter Scott was murdered in South Carolina for running from the oppressor... and on and on.

This system was built on the oppression of Black people through slavery as a foundation stone, and it has an unbroken record of maintaining and enforcing that oppression with terror and atrocity, even as the particular forms of oppression have changed over decades and centuries. It will take an actual revolution and a whole new, liberating system to put a stop to these never-ending and unspeakable crimes.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/chicago-press-conference-demands-indict-convict-send-killer-cops-to-jail-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Chicago Press Conference Demands: Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The whole issue of police murder continues to pulsate through Chicago, where protests erupted last fall after the release of the video of Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. The Chicago Tribune has an ongoing series titled “Chicago’s Cop Crisis” with articles appearing sometimes more than once a week with some new revelation of police and criminal justice misconduct. Last Sunday’s Tribune had a huge photo of Gloria Pinex, whose son Darius Pinex was murdered by the police in 2011, with another such revelation. (“City Hall often fights to keep files secret in police abuse cases“)

On June 30, only days after this article appeared, Gloria Pinex, along with other family members of people murdered by police, and the Chicago Revolution Club held a press conference/protest at the 7th District police station in Englewood. Three of the murdering cops were assigned to this station, and the protesters demanded that they be indicted, convicted, and locked up.

Speaking were Gloria Pinex and Emmett Farmer, whose sons Darius Pinex and Flint Farmer were both murdered by pig Gildardo Sierra. After murdering Darius Pinex, Sierra went on to shoot a teenager three months later. He then murdered Flint Farmer six months to the day after he killed Darius. This all happened five years ago. Even after it was found that Sierra and his partner, Raoul Mosqueda, lied about Darius Pinex’s murder and that the city attorney withheld evidence, even after the Internal Police Review Board (IPRA) found the murder of Flint Farmer unjustified, the cops have still not been charged.

Gloria Pinex said: “I came to demand that these three known murderers who worked for the 7th District be indicted for the murder of our children. IPRA said that they were unjustified for the murder. That means wrongful death. Indict the cops and send the killer cops to jail.”

Also attending the press conference were Chantell Brooks and Freddie McGee. An officer from the 7th District murdered Chantell’s 15-year-old son, Michael Westley, on June 16, 2013. Freddie McGee’s son, Freddie Latice Wilson, was shot at least 18 times by police and killed on November 15, 2007.

Percy Coleman spoke about the brutal murder of his son Philip Coleman in 2012 while Philip was in police custody. He said that over a dozen cops were involved in his son’s murder. Philip, a University of Chicago graduate, was taken into custody after his family called the police because he was acting erratically. Percy Coleman told the Chicago Tribune that an officer brushed off his family’s pleas to take Philip to a hospital. “We don’t do hospitals, we do jail,” Percy Coleman reported the cop saying. Philip was tased 13 times while in custody. Percy Coleman is a former chief of the nearby Ford Heights Police Department.

A group of young men from the neighborhood where Martice Milliner was murdered by police on July 9 last year stood together to represent for him. A close friend of Martice gave a moving statement about witnessing the murder. Later he told Revolution, “Martice Milliner was gunned down in cold blood by a police officer who was supposed to be serving and protecting him. He shot him once in the back and then stood over him and shot him four more times. I don’t know why cops were called. We were enjoying ourselves on a block in the neighborhood we grew up in. I guess he thought we were all criminals. He didn’t have any respect for us and definitely didn’t respect Martice. I was a witness and there were 30 or 40 other people there. We gave our account to IPRA, the police review board, but since that time nothing has been done. They are sitting on it, an obvious murder case, with the gunshot wound, ballistics, and all our testimony. They have to be held accountable.... We need to continue to stand up, we’re not going to lie down, we need to do what we have to do to keep them from coming in our neighborhoods and killing us.”

Arthur Stringer, who is with Black Men United for Peace, also spoke as part of a contingent who came to represent for Martice. He told Revolution, “Enough is enough. If the people don’t stand up, we will keep dying. Enough is enough. How many youths have to die? It doesn’t have to be my son killed to take a stand. We have to take a stand even when it doesn’t affect us at first, because it’s unjust for any of us. So that’s why I’m here, trying to stop violence in the city. I think we’re doing a good job, being that voice for those that don’t have a voice out here.”

Eric Russell, president of the Tree of Life Justice League of Illinois, spoke for the family of Betty Jones. Betty was murdered by police along with Quintonio LeGrier the day after Christmas 2015. Quintonio’s family has been sued by the cop who murdered him! Eric told Revolution: “In other communities police are able to de-escalate. In ours they shoot first and ask questions later. They don’t get the right to be judge, jury and executioner. We have targets on our backs. They have no respect for our humanity and murder us with impunity. This goes up to the mayor. Mayor Emmanuel has blood on his hands, he should be in jail. We will never forget.”

A spokesperson for the Revolution Club gave a statement. Her remarks included the following point: “I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a way out of the hell of this system of capitalism-imperialism. There is a strategy, a plan, and a leader—Bob Avakian—who has forged a path to bring this system down through revolution at the soonest possible time.”

One young woman in the crowd, a friend of Martice Milliner, told Revolution she knew six of the people on the Stolen Lives banner brought by the Revolution Club showing the names and faces of dozens of people murdered by police. She told how she grew up with Corey Harris, murdered at age 17 in 2009 by the CPD, and helps keep up the park that people in the neighborhood named after him.

Revolution Club members in their “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” T-shirts distributed the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA: “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” led the chant, “Indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell,” and other chants. Many people driving by honked in support.

Chicago media came out for the press conference/protest, including Univision, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and WGN.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/446/check-it-out-prophets-of-rage-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Check It Out: Prophets of Rage

July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Prophets of Rage combines the sonic firepower of
Rage Against The Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill

We can no longer stand on the sidelines of history.

Dangerous times demand dangerous songs.

It’s time to take the power back.

This is from the top of the website of the new band, Prophets of Rage, which consists of: Rage Against the Machine’s bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, and drummer Brad Wilk, with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Cypress Hill’s B-Real. The band’s name comes from the title of the Public Enemy song “Prophets of Rage” from their 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

The first stop on their “Make America Rage Again” tour will be in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention in July. And Morello says Prophets of Rage will make their voice heard at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia as well, that they are not letting the Democrats get “off the hook.”

Tom Morello said on CNN: “[P]eople believe that the system is corrupt, the system is irrevocably broken. The system cannot be fixed by the system. One way to fight back is via culture.... One thing that we do is play music—music with a message that is unapologetic and music itself that is unapologetic, that combines hard rock, heavy metal, punk rock and two of the greatest hip hop MCs of all time in Chuck D and B-Real to make Prophets of Rage to make America rage again.... It’s important to keep fighting for the world you want to see, at home, in your place of work and around the world. That’s the message our music has always been. But it has to be a riotous sound track that carries that message.”

Check out Prophets of Rage!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/445/machete-murders-in-bangladesh-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Machete Murders in Bangladesh:
Islamic Fundamentalists' Campaign to Enslave Women and Impose Religious Tyranny

Updated: July 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

As we go to press, fundamentalist Islamic jihadists have carried out yet another barbaric crime in Bangladesh. On July 1, Islamist gunmen seized a bakery café in an upscale district of Dhaka, the country’s capital. They held the diners and staff hostage, and then later massacred 20 people, apparently simply because they were from other countries—people from Italy, Japan, India and the U.S. (Two Bangladeshis were also reportedly murdered.) ISIS (the Islamic State) has taken responsibility for this utterly reactionary slaughter.

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Islamic fundamentalists are carrying out a campaign of machete murders in the South Asian country of Bangladesh. Since February 2013, they’ve murdered some 39 people—secular thinkers and writers, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists, religious minorities, foreign aid workers, and others. And the attacks are continuing: Five were murdered in April, four in May, and three (or more) in June. The killers strike with guns and bombs—but mostly with machetes, slashing the back of their victims’ necks, then riding away on motorbikes. On April 23, a university professor was hacked to death and nearly beheaded, and on the 25th a gay rights activist and his friend were butchered. On April 30, a Hindu tailor was cut down—supposedly for criticizing Islam; on June 5, a Christian grocer; two days later, a Hindu priest. A Bangladeshi blogger who’d exposed the abuse of workers and police brutality was driven into hiding for condemning the Islamists’ murder rampage.

These murders began in early 2013 after tens of thousands gathered at Shahbag Square in the nation’s capital Dhaka to demand prosecution of Islamic leaders for war crimes during the 1971 war that led to the founding of Bangladesh, and against the imposition of religion in political and social life. The Islamic fundamentalists’ first victim was Ahmed Rajib Haider, a secular blogger who helped organize the protests.

No one has claimed responsibility for most of these barbaric killings. Global fundamentalist Islamic jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda as well as Bangladeshi Islamists have been blamed, and infighting among Bangladesh’s reactionary ruling parties may well play a part. But this wave of murders is not simply revenge for a protest. It’s part of the Islamic fundamentalists’ response to the deep changes taking place in Bangladesh.

An Enslaving Traditional Order—Rocked by Global Forces

For centuries, most people in what is now Bangladesh eked out a subsistence existence, mostly farming small plots of land by hand or with a few animals. Women suffered—and still suffer—under the crushing weight of religiously sanctioned patriarchy (male domination). They’re confined to household drudgery and caring for children, unable to leave their immediate neighborhood unless accompanied by a male relative, denied schooling or social life. Even today, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshi girls are forced into arranged marriages before they’re 18, usually closing off any chance for an education or job. A staggering 87 percent of the country’s married women have been victims of domestic violence, abuse or torment. Nine in 10 rural men still think they have the “right” to beat their wives.

But in recent decades, the workings of global imperialism have created cracks in the traditional order. Two of every three Bangladeshis still live in the countryside, but tens of millions have been driven by landlessness, destitution, and the promise of jobs to seek survival in Bangladesh’s congested megacities (17 million in Dhaka alone). There, cheap labor has turned Bangladesh into a prime destination for global capitalist investment in its rapidly expanding clothing industry.

Three and a half million workers—80 percent of them young women—slave in sweatshops, often for as little as 21 cents an hour, many for 14 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. Most get to work on foot through squalid shanties stinking of excrement. These factories can be death traps: in April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed, killing or maiming more than 1,100 people. When workers organize against these horrors, they’re met with threats and beatings.

Yet for women to have jobs outside the home and be paid wages, small as they are (though sometimes more than their husbands earn), can have the effect of undermining traditional patriarchy. The same goes for other changes taking place, including the growth of a middle class, more women going to school, and some professions becoming more “feminized.”

Islamic Fundamentalists: Barbaric Means for Barbaric Ends

Islamic fundamentalism is an all-encompassing ideology and program that aims to reshape every sphere of social, cultural, and political life in order to strictly and brutally reinforce traditional forms of oppression—especially the patriarchal enslavement of women. In the face of big changes shaking the world, they aim to tighten tradition’s chains.

After the 2013 Shahbag Square protests, Hifazat-e-Islam, an association of fundamentalist Islamic groups, issued a 13-point program calling for the imposition of fundamentalist Islam throughout society: adding “Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah” to the constitution as a fundamental principal of the state; establishing the death penalty for criticizing Islam; ending the “free mixing of men and women”; ending secular education; and making “Islamic education mandatory from primary to higher secondary levels.”

These are the goals driving their machete murders. Those who criticize fundamentalist religion and/or promote science, secularism, and critical thinking (which humanity needs to understand and change the world) are targets for savage executions.

The fundamentalists aim to re-imprison women in the home, enslaved to husbands and male relatives. One way is by supporting the violent male backlash taking place against women. In Bangladesh today, there’s an epidemic of rape, including gang rape.

And, according to one news report, “Every week, somewhere in Bangladesh, a woman’s life is changed forever when she is doused with acid and disfigured.... Victims suffer horrific physical injuries. Not only does their skin burn, but often they are severely disfigured. Acid causes the skin tissue to melt, it attacks the eyes, it dissolves the bones. In certain cases, ears and noses are lost completely.” (“Stolen faces: female victims of Bangladesh acid attacks refuse to be beaten,” News.com, Australia, June 25, 2015) The cause? A spurned advance, a missed dowry payment, or any slight to male privilege. Over the past 17 years, there have been 3,240 reported acid attacks. Yes, at least 3,240!

The Islamic fundamentalists blame the victims for refusing to obey suffocating Islamic strictures. Many women are now being forced—by family or society—to wear the burqa. One study reported, “In the villages, various fatwas sanction the stoning of women to death for the ‘crime’ of asking for justice, for having been raped.” (“Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in Bangladesh,” Ananya Das)

This is why the Islamists machete-murdered Xulhaz Mannan, who edited Bangladesh’s first LGBT publication and tried to organize the country’s first “Rainbow Rally” for LGBT rights. The oppression of LGBT people has evolved as part of the enforcement of rigid gender roles that enforce patriarchy. The “holy” scriptures of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all demand these strict gender roles and forbid homosexuality on pain of death.

And the fundamentalist Islamists are targeting Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists—terrorizing, marginalizing, and even forcing out non-Muslims from Bangladesh as part of establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state.

Between June 10 and 16, Bangladesh’s pro-imperialist government rounded up some 11,000 people they declared were “suspects” in these attacks. This supposedly secular government had done nothing for years to stop the machete attacks but instead has conciliated with the fundamentalists and condemned critics of Islam, while its police are widely known for arbitrary detentions, disappearances, and torture. Human rights groups and others warn that the mass roundup is an indiscriminate sweep also aimed at other dissidents; only a small percentage of those arrested reportedly belong to any jihadist group. (Analyzing the struggle among Bangladesh’s rulers is beyond the scope of this article.)

Bangladesh: Crying Out for Communist Revolution—Not Barbaric Islamic Fundamentalism

Bangladesh is a concentrated expression of how the world is flying apart and people are looking for answers. But fundamentalist Islamic Jihad is about turning backward to a draconian hell!

Just several decades ago, Maoism was a powerful current in India and Bangladesh, and it represented a real, radical, and liberating alternative to both feudalism and imperialism, with a vision of re-cohering society on an emancipatory basis. And there’s a strong basis for a revolutionary trend to emerge there today—for instance, the Shahbag protests of tens of thousands against the Islamization of society.

Bob Avakian (BA) has put that alternative on a firmer, more scientific foundation, including in its understanding of gender, the centrality of women’s emancipation to the emancipation of humanity, and most of all the need for a scientific approach to be taken up by masses of people. This new synthesis of communism brought forward by BA is the pathway for advancing—in today’s world with all its changes and turmoil—to overcome oppressive social, class, and gender divisions, and get to a much different and far better world on the road to total human emancipation. There is not a moment to lose to spread this pathbreaking advance in human understanding to every corner of the globe.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/alton-sterling-baton-rouge-louisiana-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

July 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Once more this system's pigs carry out cold-blooded murder of a Black man!

This goddamn white supremacist system must be brought down at the earliest possible time...

Why are these murdering pigs still free?

 

On July 5th, police tackled Alton Sterling to the ground, held him down, tazed him, and then shot him dead in cold blood.

Eric Garner... Rekia Boyd... Freddie Gray... Michael Brown... murder after murder after murder and still no justice. 400 goddamn years and still no justice, no humanity. How long will this go on? Enough is goddamn enough.

WE MUST ACT. People need to do two things:

One, in Baton Rouge people are righteously standing up and fighting back, making it unmistakably clear: THERE MUST BE JUSTICE! All eyes are on Baton Rouge. This must continue with more and more people joining and supporting them. We cannot let this shit go down like nothing happened. And, people everywhere throughout the country need to get out and say this police murder stops now.  The "authorities" and their totally illegitimate system are already working to get these cops off, and that cannot be allowed to happen.

Two, people need to get ready to make a real revolution to bring this system down... and to do that, you need to get into the work of and follow the leadership of Bob Avakian who is seriously working and fighting to build the movement for an actual revolution at the earliest possible time.  Get connected and up to the minute with the revolution: go to www.revcom.us everyday.

 

Stop police terror!
Indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail!

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/philando-castile-alton-sterling-shot-by-depraved-pigs-for-being-black-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

MINNESOTA: PHILANDO CASTILE:

SHOT IN COLD BLOOD BY A DEPRAVED PIG FOR NO REASON BUT BEING BLACK

BATON ROUGE: ALTON STERLING:

SHOT IN COLD BLOOD BY A DEPRAVED PIG FOR NO REASON BUT BEING BLACK

July 7, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

How long must this go on?!

Before the eyes of the world, and over and over and over again, this system's armed enforcers are murdering Black and Brown people. And over and over and over again, they get off. But not this time, not if we act. A system that does this over and over again is immoral, illegitimate, and should not exist one day longer. We need an actual revolution.

Indict, Convict, Send These Killer Cops to Jail – this we have to fight for and not back down on. People from every corner of society need to be filling the streets – no business as usual while the cries and wails of our children and loved ones fill our ears... No business as usual while the blood flows... No business as usual while these cops pay no price and face no punishment for cold-blooded murder. The protests of the last two years from Ferguson to Baltimore, New York to Chicago have not gone too far – they have not gone far enough. Our fury, our heartbreak and outrage, must become unrelenting struggle to stop the madness of police terror as part of preparing the people for revolution.

A big part of the strategy to do just that is: Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.

Why does this police terror keep happening? Because this system is built on slavery and genocide... because the oppression of Black people is built into every fiber and every institution of this capitalist-imperialist system. Such a vicious dog-eat-dog system will not stop until it's overthrown.

The gunshots and tasers of today are no different than slave chains and whips... no different than the lynching rope and KKK terror. This system is illegitimate and soaked in the blood of our people, here and around the world. This system's power and their armed forces of violent suppression must be defeated and dismantled by millions through an actual revolution. The Revolutionary Communist Party IS ORGANIZING NOW TO OVERTHROW THIS SYSTEM AT THE SOONEST POSSIBLE TIME. Preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America.

We have the leadership for this in Bob Avakian who has developed a strategy for an actual revolution and a concrete framework for a radically different state power. BA has developed a new synthesis of communism. As a crucial part of this, he has dug deeply into the roots of the oppression of Black people and white supremacy... studied how this is a faultline – a weakness, an Achilles’ heel – of this system... and has the potential to be a driving force for a revolution to end white supremacy as a part of ending all oppression and exploitation to emancipate all humanity, all over the world.

Stop Police Terror
Indict, Convict, Send These Killer Cops to Jail!

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution!

Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/cheers-to-bryton-mellot-4th-of-july-flag-burner-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Cheers! To Bryton Mellott, 4th of July Flag Burner

July 7, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Cheers! To 22-year-old Bryton Mellott, an Urbana, Illinois resident who posted a photo on Facebook of himself burning an American flag on the 4th of July.

His post said he was “not proud to be an American” because of the “atrocities committed against people of color, people living in poverty, people who identify as women, and against my own queer community on a daily basis.”

And he posted: “I would like to one day feel a sense of pride toward my nationality again. But too little progress has been made. Too many people still suffer at the hands of politicians influenced by special interests. Too many people are still being killed and brutalized by a police force plagued with authority complexes and racism. Too many people are allowed to be slaughtered for the sake of gun manufacturer profits. Too many Americans hold hate in their hearts in the name of their religion, and for fear of others. And that’s only to speak of domestic issues.”

“I do not have pride in my country. I am overwhelmingly ashamed, and I will demonstrate my feelings accordingly. #ArrestMe.”

Bryton Mellott got a lot of shit for this on Facebook, including threats. Later in the day, the Urbana police department arrested him after—they say—receiving complaints about his Facebook posting—even though the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that it is constitutionally protected free speech to burn the American flag.

The next day, the State’s Attorney General dropped charges. Threats, attacks (and some thoughtful discussion and support) have raged on Facebook. As of this posting, that (burning) flag was still there at Bryton Mellott’s Facebook page.

Cheers to Bryton Mellott for doing the right thing, and making a powerful statement about why he did.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/revolution-club-los-angeles-south-central-alton-sterling-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Revolution Club, Los Angeles: Out in South Central After Police Murder of Alton Sterling

July 11, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From the Revolution Club, LA:

As video of the police murder of Alton Sterling went viral, the LA Revolution Club gathered to make immediate plans to be at a major historic intersection in South Central where the LA Rebellion of 1992 kicked off. The Revolution Club lined up in formation and agitated about people getting into the streets and getting with the revolution that is needed. A Black woman joined us and grabbed a poster of Alton Sterling and began showing it to the cars passing by. Cars honked and people raised their fists from outside of their windows. The woman exuberantly went out into the street and waved the poster at cars for all to bear witness the name of another Black man executed in the streets by the police. Another Black man and another video and a world of evidence that showed the ugliness and the utter illegitimacy of this system.

Flyers of the revcom.us article on the police murder of Alton Sterling were distributed to people walking by and through windows of cars. A Latino man in his 40s walked by slowly and stopped to watch for a few minutes. The woman with the Alton Sterling poster went up to talk to him and came back to report his question: “He wants to know if it’s time to set the police station on fire.” The comrade responded over the bullhorn: No, now is the time to fight, to get into the streets right now, and get organized now to tear this whole system down as soon as possible—join us right now. His face lit up in a big grin and he joined as the Revolution Club marched in formation.

The agitation continued and our heads turned to see a younger Latino man approach us directly. “Hey! Give me one of those flyers! FUCK THE POLICE! FUCK THE POLICE!” The man had pulled over to the curb with his girlfriend, got out with the door still open behind him and demanded a flyer.

We had a sound-truck with a big-screen TV and played the video of Alton Sterling being shot and then showed the video clip “There’s a conspiracy to get the cops off” from BA’s Revolution Talk. An older Black man, after watching the Alton Sterling video, shouted out that this city needed to be burned down. A few other people came over as the BA video played and nodded as they watched the leader of the revolution talk about how the prosecutors who ferociously prosecute our youth all of a sudden forget to prosecute when the pigs are on trial.

Moments later, the pigs came oinking down the street with their lights flashing as they stopped some youth and lined them against the wall, handcuffed. The Revolution Club announced we were marching over to not allow the police to kill anybody and called on people on the street to join us. We marched to the spot of the harassment and called out that we were there to prevent illegal activity by the pigs under the color of authority. The pigs got on their radios and quickly more pig cars began to roll up. The comrade on the bullhorn called on people not to allow the police to kill people, and not just sit in their car and film but get out and stop it from happening. Cars began pulling over to the side of the busy street and people got out of their cars, filming from across the street. The comrade agitated about the illegitimacy of the cops and the whole system they enforce and that they had no right to do this. She hit at the whole history of what America has done to Black people for 400 years, what it’s doing to people all over the world right now, and that now is the time to get organized for an actual revolution and get with the leadership that is leading people to do that, BA and the RCP. She called on people to fight and stand up and said when they do this it has an effect on the whole society and is part of how we build up our strength and accelerate the time when millions can be led to go all-out to overthrow this system and replace the USA with the New Socialist Republic in North America. Four or more pig cars had rolled up and the pigs got out smirking and nervous, lining up facing the street standing next to where they had the two handcuffed men.

Many people were thankful of the force that was there to watch the pigs who terrorize the community everyday unchecked. One person came up to the comrade on the bullhorn afterward and commented they had never heard a white person talk like that about what happens to Black and Brown people every day. A woman from across the street who was filming and saying “Hell yeah I’m going to put this on Facebook!” came by our sound-truck to watch BA in the film Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, A Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian. She nodded and responded as BA spoke about what if the world doesn’t have to be this way—and when the clip was over, she commented: what that man’s saying is beautiful.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/twin-cities-notes-from-streets-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Updated 7-10-16 Notes from the Streets of the Twin Cities

Anger, Outrage, Openness to Revolution in Aftermath of Police Murder of Philando Castile

Updated July 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Dear Revcom,

See below for update: Hundreds shut down freeway Saturday night

When I got to the Minnesota governor's mansion Friday morning, protests had been going on non-stop from Wednesday night after Philando Castile was shot point blank for Driving While Black in a suburb of St. Paul. Protesters set up an encampment outside the Minnesota governor's mansion the night of the murder, with hundreds protesting and demanding justice for Philando Castile, shutting down the block in front of the mansion and draping crime scene tape all over the mansion's front gate.

Friday morning found only 20-30 people holding down the encampment, and another 10 or so at the site of the police murder in Falcon Heights a few miles away. I was able to talk with a teacher from the school where Philando Castile worked as a supervisor in the cafeteria, who said that several hundred people in and around the school and others marched on Thursday evening near the school to remember Philando Castile and demand justice. Philando Castile was very much known and beloved by the entire school community. It was said that he knew the names and diets of each of the 500 students in the school.

By the evening on Friday, the crowd in front of the mansion swelled again to 300 or more, with Prince's music and dancing, and speeches mainly by leaders in the broader Black Lives Matter movement. At one point, the police tried to disallow and dismantle the one tent on the scene, but people streamed toward the tent and formed a human chain around it.

It seems events in Dallas were disorienting to some of the movement activists, given how Black Lives Matter was being attacked. There were views out there that in response people should just retreat into basically making peace with and helping each other make it in the world as it is. In addition, on Friday morning there was a shooting on the north side of Minneapolis, the Black community there, which took the life of a child and wounded another. (I had a very interesting experience later in that community, which I'll get to shortly.)

Despite this, hundreds of people didn't retreat and were at the protest at the governor's mansion Friday night. I found the mood among this mainly young crowd, of very mixed nationality but more than half white, to be far more impatient and fed up than was reflected from the front by the speakers. I circulated among the crowd introducing "Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution," the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA: "It's time to organize for an ACTUAL revolution," and "We need to overthrow this system and completely replace it from bottom to top, let's put an end to police murder and genocide of Black and Brown people—and all the other crimes of this system—once and for all." I had these bundled in a packet along with articles from revcom.us on these police murders.

When asked how they saw putting an end to this police murder, many people expressed an urge for unity among all people, along with a complete exasperation at the cops walking free in case after case. Not long ago, the cop who murdered Jamar Clark in Minneapolis walked, even after people waged determined struggle. There was a further understanding, however incomplete, that reforms and struggles—not only over the period since Ferguson but for generations and even hundreds of years in this country—have not led to equal rights, let alone liberation, for Black people.

Compared to what was being presented to them by speakers at the governor's mansion, and what they were previously aware of, the possibility of a total and liberating alternative was music to many ears. I say "many" because some of the organizers of the rally took great exception to what I was getting out. They threatened to not only kick me out, but to have my presence denounced from the front of the rally, until several protesters who overheard all this started asking them simple questions like, "Did you read what it says in what he's passing out?" When they said "no," these other protesters, mainly young women of color, told these self-appointed police that people had a right to check out other views and especially serious analysis of how to fucking end this shit!

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

During the afternoon on Friday, I went to the neighborhood on the north side of Minneapolis where Jamar Clark was murdered, and where the two-week occupation of the Fourth Precinct police station took place. I walked up and down a busy street with various strip malls and stores. Here the response to the Party's Message was immediate and visceral in many cases. I talked to a mother sitting in her car with her young daughter, about the same age as Philando Castile's girlfriend's daughter, who had to witness the murder and who tried to comfort her mother in its wake. I said that no little girl should ever have to go through that again. She brought up the killing of a child that morning on the north side in the all too familiar drive-by shooting. I read the sentence from the Message: "This system locks down generations of Black and Brown youth, brutalizing and incarcerating them and even blowing them away—or else setting them up to fight and kill each other, when they should be fighting the REAL enemy." She took the materials with serious interest.

I came upon a young Black man, shirtless in the warming sun in the middle of a strip mall parking lot, holding up a home-made poster on cardboard saying "Fuck Da Police." He was waving it around to everyone and no one. His reception to the content of the Message was excited, to say the least. We talked about it briefly and he took a stack of the Message and flyers with him, saying he was going back over to St. Paul that night. He gave his contact info and expressed strong interest in the Revolution Club. About a half-hour later, I found him in another parking lot, waving his poster and passing out the flyers to everyone, insisting that they take it. We spoke again, and he took copies of Revolution newspaper, a poster of "Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave," and a copy of BAsics, which he said he would seriously read. I said that he should really dig into this material, and go to the website so that he would know exactly what he was taking out, and why it was righteous to do so.

I was actually tipped to go to this particular strip mall where I met this young man by a bit older Black man who is a manager of a small restaurant on the main street. He read the article from Revolution on the two police murders all the way through, and looked at the Message. He was very much into distributing the packet, and took a large amount to give out to his customers. He was totally fed up with the cops walking and no justice in these police murders. He had a sense of the historic oppression of Black people and the failures of previous attempts at reform and liberation. At one point I remember emphasizing that the approach in the materials is scientific, that it reflects reality, and that it doesn't rely on faith in any way. To this last point he exclaimed loudly, "Yes! Relying on faith, that's why we're in the situation we're in!"

7/10/16 Update from St. Paul

There was word circulating late Saturday afternoon that there was going to be some kind of action associated with the evening rally at the Governor's mansion to protest the police murder of Philando Castille. As of about 7 pm, the crowd was no larger than last night, about 300, but then the ranks started to swell, and organizers started to prepare people for some kind of civil disobedience. As the march set up and set out, I would say there were close to 500 people, of many nationalities, mainly white, and mainly on the young end.

About a half mile away from the governor's mansion, the march suddenly veered down the on-ramp to I-94, a major interstate highway, and marshals told people who didn't want to get arrested to go down to the overpasses. About half of the march went onto the highway, and immediately blocked both directions. This was around 8 pm Central time. The blockaders moved down the highway several hundred yards, and then stopped. The police presence at the outset of the evening was heavier than last night, but they were unable to stop people. On the highway, the buildup of police vehicles, cops, vans and buses went on for hours, until they started to arrest people, but very slowly.

It was a very tense situation, with cops holding their shields up and aiming weapons at the nearby tree-covered embankment. It was almost midnight before the arrests of the dozens of hold-outs started, with tear gas grenades being used, and many demonstrators running up the embankment of the highway to escape the onslaught.

As of this writing, I don't know the number of arrests, or even when the blockade ended. There were parts of I-94 a few miles west of the blockade point, even in the direction away from the demo, so it was unclear if there were other blockages going on. There were some late protests at the governor's mansion, also, and that area was totally locked down well past midnight.

The crowd was positive toward the proclamation of the RCP from the start, but this increased dramatically during the blockade. Many of those who were on the overpasses—which included increasing numbers of people from all over St. Paul, Minneapolis, and surrounding areas who were streaming in to support, and even to join the blockaders on the freeway—were reaching out for the proclamation, and exclaiming their support for the idea of a total revolution, overthrowing the system and replacing it with a better one, for the world.

As it got later, more basic youth came on, also mainly eager to check out the idea of getting organized for a revolution. There were students from various nearby universities who expressed interest and gave contact info for the Revolution Club. I ran into a young Black man who I met yesterday who said he had passed out all of his proclamations, and I gave him a couple of hundred more. I connected with people of many nationalities out in the streets who have substantial populations in the Twin Cities, including Hmong people and other Southeast Asians, Mexican-Americans, and North Africans reaching to find out about the revolution.

After a while, various countercurrents became apparent. A small group came on with their charge of the RCP being a cult, and being homophobic. One of them barged into me and knocked the fliers onto the ground. I withstood this physically and politically, challenging them to read the proclamation, which of course they wouldn't do. But they had aroused others who wanted anyone who was homophobic to get out of there. I loudly read the second point of attention, about treating men, women, and differently gendered people as equal and comrades, and this not only neutralized these assholes but won others to take up the proclamation.

One Black man started to escort me out of there until I read him the same point of attention, at which point he said he was on security, and shook my hand, and said I was welcome to stay. Later a group of Black women came over and said they wanted to pass out the flier, and I asked why, had they read it? No, they just heard that it was in support of revolution and of people of different genders and sexual orientations. So, we read that point of attention and they took a large stack of fliers. Perhaps 6-700 proclamations got out, counting the large stacks others took.

So, Minneapolis/St Paul came from behind and replicated their past feats of militant and dramatic action against police murder of Black people. Right On!! Now, let's get organized for an ACTUAL revolution!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/the-revolution-club-is-in-cleveland-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

The Revolution Club Is in Cleveland—Fighting the Power, and Transforming the People, for Revolution

July 9, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From Revolution Club members:

As Cleveland gears up for the Republican National Convention (RNC), the Revolution Club is hitting the ground, fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution. We are taking out the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP and popularizing the slogan “America Was Never Great! We Need to Overthrow this System!” We are aiming to bring forward, mobilize in the streets, and organize into the revolution the defiant ones, and everyone who wants to stand up against what Donald Trump represents. And we are bringing out the basic truth, which BA speaks to in his new audio clip where he is remarking on the current elections and the illegitimacy of this system: the fact that this fascist pig Donald Trump is a “legitimate” political candidate just shows the whole damn system is illegitimate. And that revolution—NOT getting behind the “lesser evil,” which is a logic that only leads to more evil—is the answer.

The RCP Central Committee Message is beginning to appear in different neighborhoods of Cleveland. But today, for the first time, the Revolution Club stepped out as a disciplined, organized force, in uniform, chanting and agitating, marching in formation through a housing project. Some of us were more experienced representing for the revolution in this way, and others were newer to it, so we spent the morning practicing in a park until it looked sharp! While there weren’t that many people outside, many people did respond when we called on them to come out of their homes to get connected with the Revolution Club, and we had serious and substantive discussion and struggle about the content of the Message with a number of them. Many responded to the raw outrage of the recent brutal police murders. A number of people talked about how there are no jobs and the daily hustle just to keep from going under. One woman spoke about her experience of abuse and rape. In all this, we struggled with people to really look at the SYSTEM that is at the root, to lift their sights to a world beyond just trying to survive or be a “big dog” in a dog-eat-dog world, and to follow the revolutionary leader BA and get with the Revolution Club now. We made some connections in these projects, but this is just the beginning! We are definitely planning on going back to that neighborhood and others throughout the city, building strength and organization which we’ll take into the protests at the RNC before the eyes of the world.

In line with, and as part of all this, we could not just let these pigs get away with the cold-blooded murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile for no other reason than being Black in Amerikkka. We took leadership from revcom.us and called for a protest at the Public Square in downtown Cleveland. About 35 people came out—Revolution Club members and supporters, several activists from different organizations, and a number of Black people of all ages. We had a short rally (which was covered by local TV news) and then marched through the busy outdoor cafes with hundreds of people watching, and then to the baseball stadium (right next to the Quicken Loans Arena where the RNC will be happening), where thousands of people were filing in to the game.

All this was part of announcing the presence of the Revolution Club on the scene here in Cleveland—fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/protesting-murder-and-terror-by-police-is-absolutely-righteous-and-necessary-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Protesting Murder and Terror by the Police Is Absolutely Righteous and Necessary!
STOP MURDER AND TERROR BY POLICE NOW!!
We Need Revolution! 

July 8, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

July 17, 2016: At this point, it is not clear exactly what happened in Baton Rouge today—where several police were shot and killed. But the points in the following statement remain relevant and correct.

A Point of Orientation for Right Now:

In the past few days, in the face of yet more new and awful videos documenting the real role and behavior of the police, people have once again begun to rise up righteously.  Despite an incident in Dallas in which five police were killed, THIS PROTEST MUST CONTINUE AND INTENSIFY AND PEOPLE MUST CONTINUE TO SEEK THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION.

The protest movement that arose once again in the last few days is positive and important.  Slanders must be met with the truth and attempts to suppress this movement must be defeated.   Attacks on the families of the victims must CEASE.

These protests came after the cold-blooded blue-coated murderers of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray and Rekia Boyd and Andy Lopez and countless less well-known victims have walked free.  These protests come after months of promises, months of advice to “make reasonable demands,” months of advice to “do something sensible and vote” and generally to work within the system: a system that is criminal at its core and never will and never can give a rat’s ass about the people they grind under and exploit and oppress.

Let’s say it straight out: the amount of police who have been killed by people is tiny—tiny—compared to the amount of people they have killed month in and month out, year in and year out.  So don’t let them change the subject.  The subject that must be addressed is this: how do we END murder and terror by the police, what must be done to STOP it?

Reality Check #1:

Over 500 people have been killed by police in the US since January 1 this year.  In just the past few days, police murdered Alton Sterling in Louisiana for the “crime” of being Black and selling CD’s on the street.  They murdered Philando Castile in Minnesota for the “crime” of being Black, having a broken taillight, and following the order of a cop to show his drivers license.  The week before that they murdered Ronnie Shumpert for the “crime” of being Black and running away from one of these trigger-happy racists. 

There will be hundreds of others this year, just like there were over 1000 last year—disproportionately Black, Latino and Native American.  People killed like dogs or worse than dogs for the “crimes” of selling loose cigarettes on the street, having a mental breakdown, asking “why” to a pig when you are stopped for changing lanes, or—and here’s the one these cops really lash out for—running for your life and safety when you see one of these murderers stalking you or coming after you.  And even when the struggle of the people has forced an indictment, none of these murderers have been punished—or if they have, it has been a slap on the wrist.

And this goes on over and over and over again.  The mother of Philando Castile is right to call this a “silent war against Black people.” 

Why does this happen?  As Bob Avakian, BA, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA has said,

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

BAsics 1:24

Reality Check #2:

This chronic police murder comes on top of centuries of the wanton murder of Black people by the official armed forces of the state, by mobs of backward racist white people, and by white individuals—all of which has gone almost totally unpunished.  Go back to the slave catchers.  Go back to the Ku Klux Klan.  Go back to the racist white mobs that drove Black people out of “white neighborhoods,” beating them and sometimes killing them, and not just one or two but dozens and scores and even hundreds at a time.  Go back to the lynch mobs and the “strange fruit.”  Go back to the killings of those who had committed the “crimes” of trying to register Black people to vote, or the “crime” of going to Sunday school while you were a Black 14-year-old girl in Birmingham.  Black lives have NEVER mattered to this white supremacist system, except as a means to amass the much vaunted wealth of this capitalist-imperialist, gold-plated hellhole.  As BA has said:

There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery.  That is a simple and basic truth.

BAsics 1:1

TIME IS UP ON THIS SYSTEM.  We need revolution.

Reality Check #3:

This violence in turn is part of something larger—an empire, a whole system, which imprisons, drives from their homes, maims, and kills incredible numbers of people.  The U.S. armed forces have directly killed at least eight million people since World War II, and they have indirectly killed—through its lackeys and proxies—even more.  From Korea to Vietnam, from Indonesia to Iraq, from Central America to Palestine, there’s almost nowhere in Africa, Asia or Latin America that these imperialists have not slaughtered people.  As Martin Luther King said, the U.S. “is the greatest purveyor of violence in the contemporary world.”  Who can deny it?  And again, for what?  To protect the ability of these imperialists to exploit people in every single corner of the globe, to ruin their environments, to rip up and ridicule their cultures, to prevent their right to self-determination, and so on. 

Again, to quote BA:

The U.S. military, which they claim is "heroically protecting you," is in fact the machinery of slaughter and destruction enforcing a system of oppression and exploitation that causes horrendous suffering and death on a massive scale throughout the world.

And:

The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism.  What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.

BAsics 1:3

That system and all its violence is illegitimate.  That system and all its violence is criminal.  That system and all its violence must be stopped.  That system has no right whatsoever to carry out this violence and these organs of reactionary violence need to be dismantled, the whole system that they buttress and enforce must be overthrown, and something much better brought into its place.  In other words, what the people on this planet and all over the world, including here, desperately need is a real revolution.

Reality Check #4:

The only solution, again, is a real revolution, in which this system is overthrown.  And we are building a movement FOR revolution.  This revolution, in order to really have a chance at winning, would need to involve millions of people who have become convinced of the need for this revolution and who, with the emergence of a deep-going revolutionary crisis in society, would be determined to fight to carry out such a revolutionary struggle and to fight to win.  That time is not yet here.  To find out more on how to bring that time closer go to revcom.us or check out the Revolution Club.

As the Revolution Club Points of Attention make clear:

“We are going for an actual overthrow of this system and a whole better way beyond the destructive, vicious conflicts of today between the people.  Because we are serious, at this stage we do not initiate violence and we oppose all violence against the people and among the people.”

Get Organized For An Actual Revolution!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/philando-castile-alton-sterling-shot-by-depraved-pigs-for-being-black-rise-up-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/carl-dix-calling-from-baton-rouge-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Carl Dix Calling—From Baton Rouge

July 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Sent Saturday, July 9, 2016

People here in Baton Rouge and around the country are continuing to stand up, not letting the focus be changed, not backing down, not buckling under to calls to go home. Let’s be clear, the egregious murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, on top of all the other cases of cops exonerated and of the savage oppression of Black people by the system, point to the reality of this system: They can’t stop this horror.

One reason, but only one reason, why we need revolution.

I’m here as part of a crew, including members of the Revolution Club, from around the country to bring the message that we are organizing for an actual revolution. As a crucial part of preparing for that, we are joining with and encouraging people to continue to fight.

Last night we joined 300 people protesting on three sides of an intersection near the Baton Rouge police HQ. This was a very angry crowd of mostly young people, both from the neighborhood where Alton Sterling was murdered and from Louisiana State University and Southern U. People were yelling and screaming their outrage at the murders by police and chanting “No Justice, No Peace.” There were many homemade signs. One poignant one was “I fear for Black sons... and I have not birthed yet.”

There was a battle for hours over whether the people’s anger would have initiative and continue being expressed. There were people urging the angry youth to go home. Some left, and many said no one could tell them to stop protesting. Police picked off some people one by one for a total of 30 arrests, as the local paper reported.

Many of the more defiant ones joined me in speaking out, telling their stories. The remaining crowd of 150 turned away from the police and marched along the road, leaving the cops behind and then sitting down on both sides of one of the main avenues in the city, blocking traffic. There was a back and forth with the police, and the march restarted.

Through all this, the revolution crew was meeting many of the most angry to get together in the next couple days to discuss more the cause of and solution, the need for revolution.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/protesting-murder-and-terror-by-the-police-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Updated September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/447/saturday-night-baton-rouge-louisiana-july-9-en.html

Revolution #446 July 4, 2016

Saturday Night, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, July 9

July 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From our correspondent:

Fierce, powerful protests continued to rock the streets around the headquarters of the Baton Rouge Police Department. Hundreds of people—overwhelmingly Black youth—grouped and regrouped in their repeated efforts to take over Airline Avenue in the face of a heavy, aggressive, and heavily armed police presence. Over 100 people were arrested before the night was over; police brought out armored personnel carriers and carried automatic weapons; they pointed guns in the faces of angry crowds who tried to prevent fellow protesters from being dragged away. But the people were not cowed or intimidated.

Think of it—police pull up on a man and within a few minutes blast him with their guns at point-blank range, killing him. The whole world can see the video, see how coldly these pigs took the man’s life. The man—Alton Sterling—at no point threatened the cops, or even resisted their brutality. Now the cops are on paid leave—not charged with anything. Alton Sterling’s children are left without a father.

But people who protest this howling injustice have been met, repeatedly, with overwhelming police force. Last night, three cops violently threw an elderly woman to the ground, while she was standing on a sidewalk. Last night, pigs with automatic rifles slung around their shoulders surrounded people on the ground being brutalized and handcuffed by their fellow cops. Last night, repeatedly, waves of people came out to protest the murder of Alton Sterling, to scream their rage at police murder and the oppression of Black people.

Find out more about the revolution Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

The protest on and around Airline Avenue went on for over six hours. People regrouped and stood their ground repeatedly, in the face of police charges and multiple arrests. The participants came and went in waves, and one protester remarked it was almost like seeing reinforcements come in. When word of it got out on local TV news and social media, more people came to join the determined and jubilant protest.

Something profound is happening on these steamy Baton Rouge nights. A protester pointed out how these cops are breaking their own laws in the way they go after people engaged in peaceful protest and exercising their supposed “right to free speech.” Many people are challenging the police use of force, and the court system that lets killer cops off over and over. That system, and the use of violence to defend and uphold it, is completely illegitimate.

Now, I’m off to a meeting called by the Revolution Club, and what looks likely to shape up as another long night of protest on the streets of Baton Rouge.