Permalink: http://revcom.us/avakian/bob-avakian-on-current-elections-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/drop-the-charges-against-notorious-flag-burner-joey-johnson-and-the-RNC16-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Drop the Charges Against Notorious Flag Burner Joey Johnson and the RNC16!

July 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Wednesday, July 20, in the face of the toxic chauvinism and reactionary ideas of all stripes coming out of the Republican National Convention, and surrounded by scores of cops and a whole zoo’s worth of fascist lunatics, some of them openly brandishing weapons, something fresh and positive happened. Joey Johnson, backed up by members of the Revolution Club, set aflame the American flag.

The Revolution Club had announced earlier Joey’s intent to do this as the only fitting response to the madness going on inside the convention hall. In response, hundreds of cops and reactionaries gathered to stop it.

They did not succeed. Suddenly, the Revolution Club seemed to materialize out of nowhere, a large circle—a safe space—formed, and Joey got up in the middle to speak:

”1, 2, 3, 4—Slavery, Genocide, and War! 5, 6, 7, 8—America Was NEVER Great! We’re here today to stand with people of the world! We’re taking a stand against this imperialist Republican National Convention. Donald Trump is an open fascist. Hillary Clinton is a proven war criminal. We’re not following either one of their leaders. Donald Trump’s message of ‘America first’ is a fascist message of control over people of the world to wage unending war, to exploit people all over the planet. America No. 1? America first? It always has been first: at genocide, at slavery, at exploitation, of destruction of the environment, of torture, of coup d’etats, of invasions. We’re standing here with the people of the world today... Donald Trump says America first...”

Suddenly, the flag went up in flames.

Pigs Strike Back

And just as suddenly, a mob of police assaulted the protective perimeter of Revolution Club members, attempting to extinguish the flames with water and spraying chemical flame retardant in people’s eyes. Half a dozen of these pigs piled on top of Joey, and then brought him to the ground in a chokehold.

At least 17 people were arrested, including Johnson and 15 other members of the Revolution Club. They were charged with multiple misdemeanors and two with outrageous felonies. The pigs quickly called a press conference to claim that Joey had burned himself and they were trying to save him—a lie that has now been exposed, but formed the pretext for the whole attack.

Even as this outrageous assault went on, Revolution Club members defiantly chanted “1, 2, 3, 4—Slavery, Genocide, and War! 5, 6, 7, 8—America Was NEVER Great!” and “What’s the problem? The whole damn system! What’s the solution? Revolution! Who’s our leader? Bob Avakian!” People held up posters—”Overthrow, Don’t Vote For, This System!” and images of Bob Avakian. After their comrades had been seized, the remaining members of the Revolution Club and others regrouped and continued to march, agitating about the need for revolution.

The police then proceeded to hold 15 of the comrades for more than the legally allowable 24 hours until late the next day, claiming all sorts of excuses, and kept two more until the day after. Note that the Cleveland pigs had claimed the ability to handle thousands of arrests a day, and had tons of personnel there doing nothing until 11 pm that night, and even promised the National Lawyers Guild that they would release people by 1 pm the next day—and then continued to do nothing and held them till that evening! Further, the authorities put people in solitary for singing, withheld medicines from people, and did not feed one woman the whole time she was in there. The outrageous and openly repressive character of this was described in an article in The Nation (see “Why Are People Arrested at the RNC Still in Jail?“). Despite this and through all this, spirits were high, with people continuing to chant and sing almost the entire time, and then they marched out with heads high into the night when they were finally released. When Revolution Club members rallied Friday in the projects, people had heard all about it and were highly supportive.

High Stakes

This fight is far from over. The defendants have vowed to fight the charges, and a great deal is at stake.

First, burning the flag at the Republican National Convention was extremely timely and necessary. The speeches and chants at this convention, reaching a peak with Trump’s speech on Thursday night, were nothing if not Hitlerian. Yet here he is, treated by the media and by the Democrats themselves, as a legitimate candidate. To treat Trump as legitimate, to give him billions of dollars’ worth of free publicity and allow him to set the terms of debate, means that this system itself is ILlegitimate. Yet where were the political forces ready to say how extreme this was and put something on the line to sound the alarm? The Revolution Club stepped up to fill this need.

Second, the assault on and arrest of Joey Johnson and the Revolution Club members, as well as a bystander, were themselves evidence of the repression that is here and bound to intensify if it is not resisted. The right to burn a flag in protest is a right ironically won by Johnson himself, from a conviction and one-year sentence stemming from the 1984 Republican National Convention. Well, if you can’t burn the flag in protest at THIS Republican convention, and in a setting where the locked arms of supporters gathered around prevented any possible accident, then this right is meaningless. And if in suppressing this right, as the police did, brutality is used and people are denied rights and put in preventive detention until nearly the end of the convention, this is all the more outrageous. These injustices and this repression have to be brought to light, fought, and defeated.

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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Third, and ultimately most important, Joey and the Revolution Club were there in Cleveland fighting for a whole different future. Everywhere they went, they distributed the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP, USA, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” clearly posing the need for revolution; the problems humanity faces and the solution to those problems; the leadership for that revolution in Bob Avakian; and what people need to do now to make that happen. Everywhere they went—including in the Public Square of Cleveland that Wednesday—they modeled a conscious and disciplined force, a force made courageous by their understanding of what was needed and the morality that grounds the Club (which is also put forth in the RCP Central Committee Message they distributed). Everywhere they went, they put forward the stand: America Was NEVER Great, We Need to Overthrow This System. Everywhere they went—including last Wednesday as the flag went up in flames—they fought for the stand put forth by BA: “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives.”

These revolutionaries must be defended. We’ll be covering this fight and giving readers ways to support this. (To contribute urgently needed funds for the bail and legal expenses for Joey and the Cleveland 17 and to support the work of the Revolution Club at the Republican National Convention and at the Democratic National Convention protests this week, click here.)

DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST JOEY JOHNSON AND THERNC16!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/448/special-convention-coverage-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/448/message-to-the-bernie-supporters-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Yes, We DO Need A Revolution—Overthrowing This System! Don't Let Bernie Take You Back Into It.

July 13, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

You were RIGHT to reject Hillary Clinton, and find her despicable.

You aspired to something different. But now Bernie wants to lead you back into the fold, back into what you once swore you’d never go along with.

A word. Now is NOT the time to give up on this—your aspirations—with “broken hearts,” to “hold your nose” while voting for Hillary. Precisely the opposite. Now is the time to really follow through on your convictions. Now is the time get really radical and scientific: to dig into the cause of the problems and horrors that drove you to Bernie... and into the solution as well. Ask yourself:

What is the nature of this system that gives rise to the howling inequalities, not only within this country but to an almost unimaginably greater degree worldwide? Is it just control by the “greedy corporations”—or is there something deeper in the very framework and “rules” of how things work?

Revolution Club at the RNC & DNC

Money for bail, legal and organizing support needed urgently.

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What is the history of this country, interwoven since its founding with the slavery and continuing oppression of Black people? And how does that play out today?

Is America a source for good in the world, or is it in fact the principal source of the world’s horror—of imperialist wars, unprecedented violence and torture, and oppressive domination of entire nations?

Why do immigrants come here? Who and what drives them on their deadly journeys?

Why are women so pervasively degraded and abused in this society—and in this world?

Could you really solve the rapidly developing ecological catastrophe within the framework of this economic and political system?

Let’s also ask this: What will it take to get beyond all this? Does the road out lie in rallying big crowds of disaffected people within this system’s workings and choices, and ultimately funneling people back into what they started out rejecting? Does it lie with a “third party”—again, within this system? Is it a social movement that may rattle some chains of this system, only to be suppressed or swallowed up in its entrails?

Or is what humanity requires a REAL revolution that shatters those chains?

What, for that matter, is GENUINE socialism? Is it a basket of Scandinavian-style social reforms (based on a position high in the imperialist food chain)? Or is it a path toward truly uprooting all forms of oppression and exploitation, and getting to a world fit for all seven billion on our planet? A hard path, yes, one with challenges and sacrifices—but one that is actually capable of birthing a whole new world.

There are answers to all of these questions. But this requires science—a method for understanding the world as it actually is and how it can change—and it requires leadership based on this science. Without this, even the most heroic struggles remain confined and contained within the system that is the source of these horrors, and the nightmare continues.

Order Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

That is what makes Bob Avakian (BA) so important. BA has developed the scientific understanding and approach to make the kind of revolution that can emancipate humanity. He has learned deeply from previous revolutions, as well as from many different spheres. He has forged a strategy for how a revolution could be prepared for and won, as well as a concrete vision for the new society that is on the road to real liberation. At the same time, he has kept his connection to and acted as a true champion of the oppressed, from those who catch the hardest hell in this country’s ghettoes and barrios, to the majority of the seven billion around the world. He has never given up, and today he leads a party which is actively preparing for a real revolution, one aimed not at reforming but overthrowing this system.

That is real leadership—leadership that demands to be engaged and examined. At the same time, there are real outrages that must be fought right now and that people ARE fighting right now. Let’s join together in both dimensions: fighting to STOP the madness and, as we do, digging into what it will take to fundamentally and finally get beyond this insanity. And let’s do this now—at both conventions.

Leave Bernie behind. Get ready for, and get into, the REAL revolution.

Get Radical, Get Scientific, Get Into BA!

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

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/one-flag-burns-two-futures-clash-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Carl Dix is a courageous freedom fighter from the 1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Today, Carl is a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. Carl Dix and Cornel West co-founded the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City demanding a stop to police terror.

Carl Dix from Cleveland:

One Flag Burns—Two Futures Clash

All Out to Defend Joey Johnson and All Those Arrested

July 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolution caught up with Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party a few hours after Joey Johnson, surrounded by members of the Revolution Club, burned an American flag outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland July 20. Johnson, 15 members of the Revolution Club, and one other person were attacked and arrested by police.  Carl has been in Cleveland with the Revolution Club and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, and he was at the flag-burning protest in downtown Cleveland today.

This is a rush transcript.

***

REVOLUTION: Why don’t you begin by describing what happened today.

CD: OK, what happened today is that Joey Johnson burned a flag right outside the arena where the Republican National Convention is going down. And as the flag began to go up, a number of police came at Joey and the revolutionaries that he was with and began to push people, to grab people, to arrest people. And there was some unleashing of reactionaries and allowing them to get in. But it was mainly the police grabbing and arresting people. What I can tell right now is that Joey and 12 other people got arrested.

REVOLUTION: It's striking that inside this Nazi festival called the Republican Convention one future was being put out, and in the streets the revolutionaries were courageously going right up against this and bringing out—and representing—a whole different future. 

CD: Well, the flag being burned outside the Republican convention today came down to a collision between two drastically different futures for humanity. On the inside of the convention, you had the anointing of the spearhead of a growing fascist movement and the nomination of Donald Trump to be the Republican candidate for president—a man whose surrogates and supporters are touting that he’s going to bring to the country what Adolf Giuliani brought to New York City in terms of the police state clampdown, who are vowing to go on the offensive against Muslims, who are vowing to step up the assault on the right of women to choose to have an abortion. And in Giuliani’s words to the world, “We’re coming to get you.” This is what’s going on inside the convention.

And outside it, there was something totally different going up against that. It was a statement that America was never great. What was so great about the slavery and the genocide that this country was founded on? What was so great about Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror? What’s been great about the theft of land from Mexico, the thieving of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba? What’s great about the degradation and violence that women are up against in this society? What’s great about the murders by police that get presided over? And what’s great about the way that they paint that flag on the side of bombs that are dropped on villages in Pakistan and places like that which destroys hundreds of people, incinerates them? That’s what was being rejected by the stance that people took—and bringing forward that we need a world without America and everything that it stands for. And that the Revolutionary Communist Party is organizing for an actual revolution at the soonest possible time—to make that revolution, get rid of this capitalist-imperialist system and bring in a totally different way for people to live here and around the world.

And another thing that Joey began to do—they came at him too quickly for him to get too deeply into this—he had with him a copy of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, a document that speaks to how things don’t have to be this way. That capitalism-imperialism isn’t the only way to organize society. That there’s a way to organize a society where power is in the hands of the people—and the main right that they have is to get rid of the exploitation and oppression left over from this capitalist society, after the revolution has overthrown this system.

So there were two different futures. And it really did come down to one future that represented continuing and intensifying horrors being inflicted on millions of people around the world, and the other future represented the chance for humanity to get out from out of those horrors.

REVOLUTION: The Revolution Club has been marching in the streets of Cleveland and one of their chants is: “We are the revcoms, the mighty, mighty revcoms.” There's their courage and determination. And even more fundamentally there is what they represent. Talk about what that is. 

CD: That’s a very important point because, look, taking this action today concentrated something about the determination that the revolutionaries and the Revolution Club have had here at the Republican National Convention. There have been pigs all over the place. I mean, everywhere you turn there are cops on bicycles, cops on horseback, cops on foot. They got cops from many different localities and states around the country—Texas, Utah, North Carolina, Indiana, Michigan. So you have to go up against a lot to be in the streets here. And that was on purpose—there was a message of intimidation directed at people, visits by the FBI of people who were planning on protesting or considering supporting the protests. All of these things have been going down.

So you had to go in the face of that. And you had to go in the face of this “America number one” fascist surge that’s being pushed out. In the face of that, the revcoms went right into it, they marched into it, they were chanting. It was really a thrilling thing to see—organized and disciplined revolutionaries who are not only talking about a different way the world can be, but who embody that in the way that they function, and the way that they carry it out and the way that they went into the face and into the teeth of the police state clampdown that has been in effect here at the Republican National Convention.

It wasn’t just a lot of bravado or anything like that, but the fact that people are being led by a vision of the kind of world that could be brought into being through revolution, that things don’t have to be this way. And people inspired by that vision, a vision coming from Bob Avakian—the scientific theory, the new synthesis of communism that he’s brought forward. The way he’s addressed the questions that stand between humanity and its ultimate emancipation has really unleashed people to begin to act to bring that out. So that’s what’s guiding the discipline and the organization and the determination and the courage of the revolutionaries and the Club who were out there today.

And once people displayed that and took that action, we did suffer a number of arrests. But some of the revolutionaries who weren’t arrested were able to regroup. They began to march and they began to attract people who wanted to know what was this is about. Even though they didn’t know what it was about, there was a way in which what was done with the flag being burned—and the chief of the police couldn’t put it down and people continued to carry forward the political thrust, which was very attractive.

I was just giving an example of a woman who was a friend of Melissa Williams—the Black woman who was in a car with Timothy Russell a few years back and who were set upon and chased by lynch mobs of cops from a number of different localities around the Cleveland area. The cops chased them for more than 20 miles, fired more than 100 shots, 137 total, and exterminated them both, executed them in that car. And none of those cops were punished. The friend of Melissa saw what we were doing, came over, connected with it, took the bullhorn to do agitation with us. And after she did some agitation and after I had done some more agitation, she came up and said, “I want to thank you all, and I know more people who would want to get with this revolution. So you gotta tell me what it’s about so I can go to them with it.” Because even though she was just reading it and just beginning to learn what it was about, it was beginning to open up for her that a world where people like her friend could be murdered for nothing more than being Black and in the wrong place could be gotten rid of, and she wanted to connect with it. That is just an example of the kind of impact that the Club has had here in its activity at the Republican National Convention.

REVOLUTION: Can you talk more about the contrasts in futures, and leadership, that you had today in Cleveland?  

CD: OK, like I was saying, what’s leading this is the vision of a different world and how to get there, how to realize that world that BA has developed. He’s taken on the questions that we’re up against in terms of how do we go from the revolutionary forces being small and weak to being strong enough to actually be able to bring forward and lead a revolutionary people numbering in the millions. What’s the strategy for revolution? How could you go up against all the power and might that this system has? So he has been speaking of those questions. And on the basis of the work that he’s done, that unleashes people to go out and to be a mighty force—even as it’s in small numbers now and to take that to others. So that’s what’s behind it.

And again, for a lot of the people that we’re meeting, this is brand new. They don’t know a lot about it, but as they begin to learn and as they see it in motion and in action, it taps into something. It begins to move them to say: OK, all these horrors that I have hated dealing with all my life, these people say things don’t have to be this way—that they got a strategy for getting rid of them and leadership for that. And they want to know about it. We’re connecting with it, we’re getting them organized, and we’re showing them clips from revcom.us on our phones, clips of Bob Avakian. The clips that are being put up—the one about police murder and the murderous logic of the system and the one about the elections. We’re bringing that out to people, to both give people a deeper understanding—to some who are already kind of pulled in the direction of, “I don’t think any of these politicians are any good for us” and some of the ones who are maybe a bit confused, like thinking, “I really hate that Donald Trump—maybe that means I should get with the Democrats.” And when we break that out, [with the clips] people want to get into it, people want to hear it, people want to listen to it.

So that’s what we’re working at here, that’s what we’re working on. And really trying to one, bring out to people and make them not only understand but feel the horrific crimes that this American imperialist system has perpetrated against people in this country and around the world; laying bare through current events, like the murder of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by the police, situating that in the historical context. But then taking people to the fact that these horrors—not just on that front, but on all the fronts, whether it’s the question of women facing domestic violence, violence in society, the threat of rape and actual rape in widespread, horrible numbers, and having the right to choose to have an abortion taken away, record number of deportations under the “pro-immigration” President Obama—bringing those horrors to people, but bringing to them that these horrors are rooted in the actual capitalist-imperialist system and how it works, and that there’s a way out and leadership for that way out.

That’s what we’re working on, that’s what we were trying to do with the protest around police murder and saying that people who are protesting that are right and righteous and need to be supported and need to stay in the street. And through the course of this taking on the reactionaries who really don’t like the fact that we’re here, who try to shout us down in streets, but have been dismayed at the fact that we haven’t been cowed, that we have continued to speak out to bring the reality to people and to situate that reality in the actual workings of this system and to promote the way out and the leader, BA, who has forged that way out.

And then, the regrouping in the aftermath of the attack. Because a lot of our forces were snatched up. But then the forces that were left got regrouped and then they began to move. They marched around the area, chanting. We’d stop, we’d agitate and we began to pick up people who wanted to go with us. Media wanted to interview us. And it was through the course of this mobile chanting and agitation, we began to attract people. And this has been happening—it’s been everywhere that we’ve gone, this has been part of the process. You meet some people who don’t know about the revolution, but what really hits them is that when they hear about it, they want to know more about it. And some of them, even as they want to know more, want to take it out and spread it to others.

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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

REVOLUTION: Overall what have you and other revolutionaries been trying to accomplish through the different things you've been doing, including taking out the message "Time to Get Organized For an Actual Revolution," at the RNC?

CD: That’s a good question. Look, we are organizing for an actual revolution. Here at this convention where the naked fascism of Donald Trump, the America uber alles, the police state clampdown, the targeting of Muslims, of immigrants – all of this is being put forward and legitimized. We have been in the streets bringing to people that America has never been great. Posing questions like, what was so great about slavery, what was so great about genocide? What was and is so great about violence against women? What’s so great about the attacks on immigrants? We need a revolution. We need to get rid of this system. And bring into being a world without America and everything it stands for—and taking that message everywhere, from in the streets around the convention to the housing projects; in the protest around police murder yesterday, the flag burning today, out to the concerts, the Prophets of Rage have headlined here—to all of that.

And we are both putting out before the eyes of the world that not only is there opposition to what Donald Trump stands for, there is a revolutionary opposition to what Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and this whole system is about. And it is being led by the Revolutionary Communist Party that is organizing for an actual revolution, bringing to people the leadership that we have for this revolution in Bob Avakian, and connecting people with that leadership—bringing to people the strategy for it. And, as we do this, we are also mobilizing people to stand up and to fight against these crimes. Because you cannot accept in silence the horrific shit that this system is doing to people here in this country and around the world. You gotta stand up, you gotta fight it, you got to resist it, you got to be in the streets. And that resistance and that protest is even more powerful as it’s connected with and being taken up in the context of organizing for an actual revolution.

So that’s what we’ve been trying to do. That’s what we’ve been pushing out and pushing forward in all of the ways that we can, both through the actions we take on the streets. The coverage that has been on revcom.us has been very important, and then the spreading of that coverage through social media and in all of the other ways. Doing it in form of interviews, letting people know that they can find out what’s happening at the convention and what the revolution is doing all over the country by going to that website, that they need to go there every day. Because every day there’s new stuff up on that website—catching the system red-handed in its crimes, bringing out how the revolution is moving to actually organize people, bringing forward and training the hundreds and thousands of people who can become tested leaders and who can influence broader numbers, even millions, today and prepare to get into position to lead millions, when the time comes to actually launch a real attempt at revolution that has a real chance of winning.

And then in the course of this we’re connecting with people, working to get them organized, working to spread and develop the Revolution Club both among people in this area but also among people who have come to this area for the convention and found the revolution here at the convention and want to get connected with it. So we’re looking to have organization forged here and spread from here.

REVOLUTION: Is there anything before we end that you want to say to our readers, that you think they should know.

CD: Two short things. Anybody who is in Cleveland or who can get here for Thursday afternoon, there’s a 4 pm protest that was called. I don’t recall exactly what group called it, maybe it’s a coalition of groups, but it’s against all of the foul stuff that’s coming down. And it would be very important for that protest to be as large as possible. We’ve been promoting it in the work that we’ve been doing. And readers of revcom, if you’re close enough to get to Cleveland or in Cleveland, then be here and be part of that, and be looking ahead. Because the Revolution Club is not going home from Cleveland. It’s going to Philadelphia, taking the same message. We don’t need to vote for this system. We need to overthrow this system. And the Revolutionary Communist Party is organizing for an actual revolution to get rid of this system at the soonest possible moment.

REVOLUTION: This is going to be a battle to free Joey Johnson and those arrested with him. What do people need to do now?

CD: The arrest today of Joey Johnson and those who stood with him marked the beginning of a major political battle. When he torched that red white and blue rag, Joey Johnson was making a bold political statement that America was never great. He was exposing the crimes this system perpetrates around the world and in this country. In arresting him and those who stood with him the authorities were trying to suppress this. People are facing serious criminal charges, including some are facing felony charges. So there’s a lot at stake here. Everyone who hates the horrific crimes this system has perpetrated needs to join the effort, to join the fight, as does everyone who believes everyone has the right to freely express their viewpoints, especially when those viewpoints go up against what those in power are doing. This means everyone needs to call for those arrested to be freed. We will be calling for people to demand those arrested be released from jail. Right now there is an urgent need for donations for bail and the legal battle – do that at https://www.crowdrise.com/revolution-club-at-the-conventions. And spread the word about what happened. Donate now! And raise money for this legal and political battle to free Joey Johnson and those arrested with him.

The arrest of these freedom fighters needs to become – to borrow from Mao Zedong – we need to make this case a rock the authorities have picked up to drop on their own feet.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/mein-trumpf-fangs-bared-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

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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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Cast Away Illusions, Get Organized for Revolution

Mein Trumpf—Fangs Bared

July 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Donald Trump promised revenge to the resentful, restoration of unchallenged white supremacy to the racists, and unchallengeable U.S. power to the American chauvinists. Donald Trump demonized immigrants and those who end up in the crosshairs of the police, and he demonized those who fight for justice and change. Donald Trump promised the sky to the gullible among the oppressed. And all he asks of those who follow him is this: OBEY. Obey Trump, and obey his enforcers. Or face the consequences (which as Trump has made clear elsewhere includes torture, the death penalty, and no rights at all for Black and other oppressed people facing the street corner judge-jury-executioner in police uniform).

And why should you trust him? Because Donald Trump has risen to the top of the "shark tank," he has proven himself to be "successful"—that is, a merciless, lying, grasping hustler in this capitalist system that rewards nothing so much as the ability to exploit other human beings.

This is fascism, fangs bared. It isn't new—it's the speech he's been giving the whole time. And it isn't something that somehow cannot win—Trump taps into deep veins in the American psyche at a time when the American system has run into deep problems and when those who rule that capitalist-imperialist system are bitterly divided over what to do about it.

Yet even with this speech—even with Trump's delivery that nakedly oozed arrogant hatred and thrilled his audience by doing so—none of the major TV commentators and none of the opposing politicians dared to call it by its rightful name. Even those who sternly criticized it as "authoritarian" refused to call out the essential illegitimacy of a system that would put someone like THIS forward as a major candidate. And most of them criticized him for painting America as "too dark." Are you fucking kidding? America IS a hellhole! And Trump is clever enough and cynical enough and fucking hypocritical enough to mention the fact that Black children have a poverty rate of over 40%, that people in the ghettos and barrios cannot get jobs, that whole sections of the country are rotting out, and that large numbers of white workers and poor, as well as middle class people, are dealing with mounting misery. He points people in the entirely wrong direction as to the solution and he distorts the character of the problem to make America the victim rather than the reality that America and its foul, people-destroying system is the culprit—but the problem, dear liberals, is not that "things are not really that bad."

Nor is the solution Hillary Clinton, who herself is a mass murderer overseas and mass incarcerator at home. Hillary Clinton is a walking exposure of the character of liberalism, from her role in the first Clinton and then Obama administrations to today: ending welfare and casting millions into even deeper poverty, expanding the prisons and cutting out legal rights and resources for the masses, voting for one war after another in the Middle East and unlimited support for Israeli aggression... this is the alternative?

No. Hell no. None of the REAL problems we face—the wrenching and utterly unjust and relentless murders of Black and Latino and Native American people by the police, and the whole genocidal direction those enforce; the constant degradation of and attacks on women, including their right to control their own reproduction; the demonization and persecution of immigrants; the wars of plunder and military aggression carried out or sponsored by the U.S. all over the world; and the despoliation and destruction of the environment—NONE of these can be solved short of revolution. These are all BUILT INTO the functioning of this system. This is why despite all the protests, despite all the sacrifices, despite the airtight cases and reasonable arguments, the oppression and misery goes on and nothing fundamental changes.

The solution is not more of the same. The solution is NOT Hillary Clinton. The real crimes she carries out are those of enforcing this system and again—it is this SYSTEM that is the source of all the problems. The solution is revolution, and a whole new system, aimed at eliminating exploitation and all the many forms of oppression that reinforce that exploitation. And, as we said earlier this week, this revolution

is not something that is only conceivable in a far-off distant future. The rulers of this country openly talk of how the center may not hold and refer to “faultlines” in the social fabric. The basis for a revolution exists in the contradictions of this society. Moreover – and this is the most important point – there is a leader of this revolution, Bob Avakian, who has done the work to develop a strategy to actually build up the forces to lead the millions necessary to make such a revolution, a strategy that could win such a revolution when the time came for the all-out attempt to seize power, and a blueprint and road map for a new society aiming to do away with exploitation and every form of oppression once victory has been won. No, the time is not yet here, but yes, the time is here to very urgently work on the developing conditions to bring forward the situation where such a revolution could be made – with a real chance of winning.

If you are really serious – serious about revolution and serious about winning and getting to a whole new world – then the time is now to get with this revolution.

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

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

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

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/interview-with-woman-in-baton-rouge-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

From Baton Rouge: Out in the Streets Against Police Murder

"I've been thinking about the revolution – I'm part of something bigger than myself."

July 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A Revolution newspaper correspondent reporting from Baton Rouge recently interviewed a woman who has been part of the protests that started there right after the police killed Alton Sterling. The protests and her participation have been continuing. The interview also gets into the video she had watched, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian.

Revolution: What was it like the first few nights after Alton Sterling was murdered?

A:There were a thousand people out there. Everybody was rattling. It was the first time that I ever saw that many people, Black people, together standing up. It was empowering. I grew up being told Black people couldn’t come together without there being trouble. That we were not capable of doing that. It was mind blowing, freeing. Just to say, it was just... I was in awe. I was impressed. I was proud. I was proud to be a part—it was like—the first time—I’m a proud Black woman but it was the first time I was actually proud—does that make sense?—to be a part of the African-American community. The first time I ever felt like we were together. It was amazing.

Revolution: People pretty much took over the street, didn’t they?

A:Yes, we took over the street, we took over the sidewalk—we took over, one, two, three, four, five—seven blocks. Both sides of a four-lane street crowded with people. It took me 30 minutes to walk from my house to the next block ’cause people were like clustered up together.

And everybody was rallying together, “No justice, no peace.” They were on top of cars and, I don’t know... It was amazing, I can’t really put it into words. Like you almost had to be there to experience the vibe, the pulse. It was like an aura, where people were just... you had a whole group of people all together experiencing the same emotion and on the same vibe. That was amazing.

Revolution: Were there any police out there the first few nights?

A: No.

Revolution: And what were people saying and chanting?

A: “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” “Black lives matter, hands up—don’t shoot,” you know, “Stop police brutality.” They were making references to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and all this, mind you, while all this was going on, we had only seen the first video. Only the first video had come out. While we were out there, the second video started to hit everybody’s social media on their phones. So now we’re watching the second video. And the first reaction that I had when I saw the second video, I almost got sick. The first one, I was disturbed, to say the least. The second video—because you only heard the shots on the first video, and we knew what the aftermath was—but the second video, where you saw everything taking place, it was so heavy, I almost couldn’t process it.

Revolution: What was the impact when people started seeing that second video on social media?

A: People’s emotions got harder. People were outraged. They were angry. People were passing their phones around—nobody was worried about anyone taking their phones. People was like, “Did you see this? Did you see this? Did you see this? Can you believe this?” “How could they not put them in jail? How could they... needs to be an investigation!” The second video was—I don’t know, I’m not a crier, but I cried.

Revolution: It’s been over two weeks since the murder of Alton Sterling and nobody knows what’s going on, if anything, with their “investigation.” I don’t get the sense that people are going to let this die down.

A: Ever since the murders of the police in Baton Rouge, you had leaders calling—political people, elected people—calling to not protest. They have put fear in people. Not people like me that are still willing to protest and come out. But they have set fear in the masses. If we are a five-party household and four people are saying, “don’t go out there, the police want to kill you, it’s gonna be bad, they want to hurt somebody”—that’s what happens. People don’t go out. But I, myself personally, I been all over social media calling for people to come out today for 6 o’clock [at the Triple S store where Alton Sterling was killed]. I got a couple of hit-backs, a couple of shares—so weather permitting, we’ll get people back out there and people talking. People are talking, but they are afraid of action. They are afraid of retaliation from the police.

“Here, in Deep South Louisiana, ... we were taught not to stand up against the police...”

Revolution: You were telling me yesterday that you thought people in Baton Rouge didn’t know how to protest. But it seems that they really stood up in a way that made a big difference across this country and impacted the world.

A: People feel strictly by emotion. We were led by what we hoped to do right. Nobody organized that. There was nobody that called and said let’s go do this. People just came on their own from this neighborhood. They just came out. Some with signs, some without. They didn’t know they was supposed to have signs or not. They didn’t know they was supposed to say something or not. But they was like, “If we can’t do nothing else, we have to stand and let our voices be heard. We have to do something, so let’s all be here. Let’s show them that we are not afraid, that we are not scared.” ’Cause like I said, here, it has been a history of, you know better than to say something about the police—or say something about anything.

Revolution: I’ve met several families whose own children have been murdered by the police. At the march from the Triple S to the church and back, everyone had a story to tell.

A: Here, in Deep South Louisiana, coming up, we were taught not to stand up against the police or other people, you know, but to just pray about it, to be quiet. If you don’t say anything, maybe no more trouble will come. And then, in this area, you have a lot of things that go along with that culture. It’s the way people were brought up, their parents, their grandparents—you know, “Let’s go to church.” We can talk amongst ourselves, but not to anyone else. Because if we do, they’re gonna come back.

We’ve always been taught that the things that happened here last week couldn’t happen here.

Revolution: That protests like those after the murder of Alton Sterling couldn’t happen?

A: Yes, after the murder of Alton Sterling. We were always told that things like that couldn’t happen—that we are not capable of doing that. Northerners, other people were capable of that, but we are not capable. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told that “you can’t gather up.” If the police see 20 people somewhere standing around, or if they get 100 people at a public park, and they’re all hanging out, playing music, having fun, eating, they come and disperse us. They break that up. This can’t happen, you know? We’re Black people, we’re at a park on our side of town, but they can’t have that. That’s dangerous to have that many Black people together in one spot.

We don’t have organizations here that talk to us about “the empowerment of people, and the betterment of people, and standing up.” We don’t have that. In the South we have “good Southern leaders” who come and calm down the crowd, and tell them to be peaceful, and make a couple of statements on the media. And people watch, and go back to being quiet. We could never speak out for ourselves, other people had to come and speak for us. They couldn’t be from here, from Baton Rouge.

Devastating Effects of Mass Incarceration

Revolution: Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, mostly young Black men. Angola state penitentiary is not too far from here. What impact has all that had on this neighborhood?

A: What happens in a family when you remove the man? You have a breakdown of the whole family structure. You have women trying to raise new generations without men being present, and it breaks everything down.

Revolution: Are a lot of young men around here sent away?

A: Yes. By the time you’re 16, you’re in the system. That’s the plan, see. They catch them young. They have this massive police presence here. They pull you over for no reason—they get you for minor infractions and they put you in jail, and if you don’t have any money then you stay there. The average time for a person staying in jail here at the East Baton Rouge Parish prison, before they go to trial without making bond, is about two years. If you go to jail and you can’t bond out, and you want to go to trial for your charge, and you don’t take a plea, then it takes about two years for you to go to court.

So what do people do? They don’t have any money. They go to jail and they plead to a misdemeanor. Then they have a record, and they can’t get a job. And what do they do when they have children and families? They commit crimes or do whatever they can to provide. You’ve been here, around this neighborhood. You see a Racetrack [gas station], a Burger King, a chicken joint, a Family Dollar and a Dollar General.

Revolution: You’re saying that a lot of things had been building up when people saw the video of Alton Sterling.

A: People are just tired. They’re tired of seeing all the things that don’t make the news. Tired of seeing people go to jail for nonviolent crimes, and getting 60 years, 80 years, life plus 30. They’re tired of seeing their sons and daughters pulled over and beat up by the police and let go. They’re tired of the police just running in their houses. They’re tired of every school in their district failing ever since they started grading schools. They’re just tired, just tired.

Being a Part of “Something Bigger Than Myself”

Revolution: Yesterday you watched about an hour of the video by Bob Avakian (BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!), and you were taking notes throughout. What is some of your thinking on it?

A: I’ve just been thinking about the revolution, just simply words I’ve never heard before that are empowering. Revolution. I’m a revolutionary. If I think this way, if I want things to change, I’m a revolutionary. I’m a part of something. I’m a part of something bigger than myself that I didn’t even realize was going on. So this is something that’s going on, people know about this. Why didn’t we know about this?

The plan of being a revolutionary was interesting to me. The fact that somebody has sat down, and figured out... a plan. An actual plan of how to go about winning at this. Not just doing it, and making people see that something’s wrong, but letting them know that there’s a plan, you know? We can learn how to do this.

It was a lot to take in. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And talked to my children about it. I think that he sees this thing is... is the way that’s going to happen. This is not just about the murder of one Black person. It’s the whole system that’s screwed up, and the whole system is designed to keep people in classes. And we have to fight the system, but we can win, though. It’s hopeful that we can win.

Revolution: What did you think about the way BA talks about the forces for revolution?

A: Knowing the way it’s gonna take all kinds of people to make this thing possible—that opened my eyes a lot, ’cause I kind of felt like if people were not willing to be the “first line of defense,” then they were kind of useless. But everybody has a role in the revolution. Everybody has something, some vital part, to play, and it is a huge thing that’s wrong, and there has to be a multipoint attack. In order to break this system down, you’re going to have to attack it in different ways.

It’s like the movie Jurassic Park, when they had the velociraptors there, and they cornered them all, and then they all went in and attacked them and got rid of them. You’re here in Baton Rouge, or in Houston—you have intellectual people over here, or you’re in North Carolina, you have all these people working together. You’re here and here and here... You have a strategy, a whole strategy for bringing them together. I’ve been watching the video. I took it in my room so I could lay in the bed and watch it.

That was interesting to me. I keep telling people to come down to the store (and protest)... and I want them to know, if this lit a fire under me, and you tell somebody else, maybe it’ll light a fire under them. And they can light a fire under somebody else. And maybe the fire for this movement won’t burn out, and turn into an ember going unnoticed because it’s not causing any smoke.

Revolution: Earlier, you spoke of the anger and fear many people have, and how it’s misdirected, and how you think this revolution can really give direction to the anger people have.

A: Yes, with the youth! Our most vital, untapped resource for this revolution! They are young, they are angry, they know that it’s wrong, they have no fear of anything. They’re not afraid of nothing and nobody. But just to have them like that is not going to serve a purpose for the whole movement, the whole revolution. We need to take that anger, take that fury and we can bring it together and harness it like a beam of light. That’s what I mean by focusing it. They have a movement, a revolution behind them, and a purpose, it’ll do some good.

Winning an Actual Revolution

Revolution: At the end BA gets into the possibility of fighting and winning 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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

A: Yes. To me it’s an actual hope that things can change. Things can get better. When we first started to protest, people would ask me, “Well, what are you all doing, what do y’all want, is it going to make any difference?”

I compared it to a slave that had been a slave for all of his life. Born into slavery, his mother was a slave, his father was a slave—for all intents and purposes, he was not to even know that he was a slave. But he did. Some kind of way, he got enlightened that this wasn’t right. And he heard about something that was in the North, that Black people were free. Nobody had ever come back and said what it was like, and the only thing he knew was, this was wrong.

It wasn’t guaranteed that there even was freedom in the North. He didn’t know for sure. But he took his chance and ran in the middle of the night following a star. Did he know where he was running to? Not necessarily. Did he know what he was running to? No, not necessarily. But one thing that he knew for sure is that where he was and what was going on there wasn’t right. Did a slave that ran away back in the day have any idea that just by running away seeking freedom that we would be as free as we are today? We enjoy some freedoms here, I’m not saying we don’t. But did he have any idea that that would lead to this? No.

We didn’t either. We didn’t have any idea that things here would spark shit all over the fucking world. We just knew that what we were going through wasn’t right. And, to have a plan, to have somebody come in and say look, there’s a plan for this. You don’t have to just run into the darkness, the wilderness, and hope for something better, just by running.

There’s a plan. There’s a pathway. There’s things in place to help guide you. There’s literature, there’s education, there’s DVDs, there’s an outline, a plan to this thing. And it gives you hope, that what you’re doing is for a reason other than the obvious. Not just protesting, but, revolution. Evolution, even. You know?

There’s something bigger than what you see. Protesting, no matter how big it is and where it is, at some point, it stops, because people don’t see things changing. But if someone comes and says, yes, protest, do this, but do these other things. Well, then we’ll know that there is another step, another place to go. Then we say, well, we’ll protest until it’s time to take the next step. And at least we know there is a next step, there is something else to do. There’s revolution.

Revolution: Yes. And we’re getting ready for it.

A: And we’re getting ready for it. What is it, “hasten, while we wait”?

Revolution: Right. Hasten while awaiting the emergence of a revolutionary situation, when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/reality-check-who-to-believe-on-police-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Reality Check:
Who to Believe on Police—
Obama? Or Your Lying Eyes?

July 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In the wake of the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, President Obama held town hall meetings, called press conferences, and wrote an open letter to “our Nation’s law enforcement community.” These all hammer at the theme that the police make “split-second...life or death” decisions and risk their lives to protect us; they deserve people’s “full-throated” support, and they and the community are on the same side and need to work together.

But here’s what’s been going on in the real world in just the few days since Obama said this:

* Cops in North Miami, Florida, shot Charles Kinsey, a Black man and a behavior therapist, who was trying to calm a young autistic man in his care who had wandered away from his group home. Seeing the police, Kinsey immediately got down on the ground with his hands up. And while continuing to try and calm his patient and get him to lie down as well, he shouted to the police that there was no need for guns and that the young man was holding a toy truck.

Kinsey’s words are clearly audible on cell phone video, and the toy truck is plainly a toy truck. And it turns out that another man also approached the police line to tell them the same thing. Yet the cops shot Kinsey anyway, and then handcuffed him and left him in the street that way waiting for an ambulance. A few days later, in an apparent attempt to calm public outrage, the police union claimed the cop was not trying to shoot Kinsey—he was trying to shoot the young autistic man!

* Video recently surfaced of Breaion King, a young Black woman and second-grade teacher, being attacked by police in Austin, Texas, in 2015. In the video, a pig confronts King as she gets out of her car in a parking lot and claims she was speeding. He orders her back into her car. King complies, then he orders her back out. But before she can comply, he reaches in and grabs her, shouting “stop resisting!” He pulls King (who weighs just 120 pounds) out of the car and throws her violently to the ground. When she gets up, he slams her to the ground again. He threatens to tase her, handcuffs her hands behind her back, then yanks her to her feet by her wrists. All the while King is crying out, “Why are you doing this, I didn’t do anything.” You can hear the terror in her voice.

In the police car, King asks the cops why they attacked her and if racism is involved. One of them replies that police treat Black people like this because Black people have “violent tendencies.”

* In the seven days between Obama’s July 18 letter to the nation’s cops and this writing, police killed at least nine more people around the U.S. (killedbypolice.net).

What do these outrages, on top of the daily stream of equally or even more horrific outrages, tell you? What does it say when...

...a Black professional, helping a patient in the middle of the day on a quiet street, sees the police and immediately knows his life and that of his patient are in grave danger and that they’d better lie down in the street with their hands up? Or that, when Philando Castile was fatally shot in front of his fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, she was able to maintain her composure while an angry, screaming cop pointed a gun at her—and knew that she had to keep her hands on the steering wheel, maintain a calm tone of voice, and continue to call Philando’s murderer “sir” if she was going to survive the situation? And that when she finally broke down in tears, her four-year-old daughter felt that she had to step up and calm her mother, saying, “It’s OK... I’m right here with you”?

...a Black cop (Freddie Vincent Jr., a 22-year veteran of the Cincinnati police) feels compelled to go on Facebook to warn other Black people that “white officers are looking for a reason to kill a black man,” and to warn Black people to “always keep your hands in the air”? Or that he says, “I’m so tired of cops using those famous words ‘I was in fear of my life’”? And what does it tell you that Vincent—not the white pigs—was then investigated by the police department?

...the President of the United States repeats a dressed-up, double-talk version of the same “I feared for my life and had a split-second to act” standard excuse the pigs use for murdering people day in and day out?

It tells you that police murder and terror has been recognized by all Black people in the U.S. as something that could happen any day and at any time to them, regardless of who they are or what they are doing—and that this is something they have to have survival strategy for. And that tells you, as Bob Avakian (BA) sharply points out, that the job of the police is not to protect people, it is to protect the system that oppresses us, by murdering and terrorizing Black and other oppressed people.

So no, Obama, we do NOT need to “come together” with the police, we do NOT need to “appreciate” the police, and we do NOT even need to “reform” the police. We need to overthrow—at the soonest possible time—the system that needs, unleashes and supports their brutal police, causing endless terror and suffering among the people, day in and day out!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/photo-essay-revolution-club-at-rnc-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Running in the Streets of Cleveland with the Revolution Club – a Photo Essay

July 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a Revolution Club member

Monday, July 18....

1. When the Revolution Club marched as an organized force into the End Poverty rally opposing the RNC in Cleveland, the whole crowd assembled to see and hear: "It's time! To get organized! For an ACTUAL revolution!"

2. Reporters flooded the Club; the revolutionaries lined up and agitated sharply: "They say make America great again?? When was America so great? When they gave smallpox blankets to the native people and committed genocide? When they kidnapped and enslaved African people? When they dropped nuclear weapons on Japan? Burned children with napalm in Vietnam?" And we challenged people to take up the world-class leadership of Bob Avakian, who has shown the way out of this madness, to OVERTHROW, not vote for, this system.

3. Inspired by the work of the Revolution Club, people grabbed proclamations -- Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution, Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA -- and started reading them on the spot.

4. The reality that "America Was NEVER Great" resonated deeply with this crowd, and people proudly took up these signs from revcom.us.

5. Before the march, speakers spoke passionately against Trump, along with different artists who performed. Prophets of Rage, including members of Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, and Public Enemy, played passionately in resistance to the RNC, while people pumped these signs in the air.

6. The Revolution Club joined the march in formation, chanting, "1,2,3,4: Slavery genocide and war! 5,6,7,8: America was never great!" - "Hillary, stop bullshitting me! Trump stop bullshitting me!" - "Land of the thief, home of the slave, America was NEVER great!" Others took them up en masse. A woman the Club had met at the rally said, "You never said your group was this dope."

7. "America was NEVER great" became a theme of the march, as broad groups of people sported the signs and chanted along.

8. Hundreds of cops on bikes monitored the march, but people's spirits were not dampened. Police were still outnumbered by protesters; on multiple occasions they stuck especially close to the Revolution Club.

9. The Revolution Club gathered to deliver a 10-foot indictment to the criminal Rudy Giuliani, who was speaking at the convention on the theme of "Making America Safe Again." His felonious acts as the mayor of New York against Black and Brown people, and poor people, were exposed and condemned. (See “The REAL Plagiarism at the RNC: Giuliani Bites Off Hitler”).

10. At "the gates" of the RNC, nasty and smug Trump supporters chanted, "Make America Great Again!" while the Revolution Club broke down for all why this was never so, and compared and contrasted their bigot leader, a concentration of a capitalist-imperialist system and world that's about exploitation and domination, with Bob Avakian, who concentrates a radically different and better system and world and hope for a new era in human history. Revolutionaries took on all comers: Christian fascists, homophobes, and other bigots. As the Club marched out in formation, a group of people, including from Code Pink, formed an aisle on either side and applauded.

 

Listen to Bob Avakian Remarking on the Current Elections, and the Illegitimacy of this System

  Listen HERE     |     Share this audio

READ HERE

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/taking-message-from-rcpusa-to-time-to-unite-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Taking the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP to "Time to Unite: United Hood + Gang Nation"

July 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From members of the Revolution Club, L.A.

On Sunday, July 17, a significant event took place in South Central Los  Angeles, “Time to Unite: United Hood + Gang Nation.” The Game, a popular rapper from Compton put out a call via social media “to all CRIPS, BLOODS, ESE’S & all other gang members, major figures & GANG LEADERS...” to come to this meeting. Hundreds from Los Angeles and surrounding areas such as Long Beach attended this event that was also organized by the Nation of Islam and rapper Snoop Dogg. Two members of the Revolution Club went to reach out and spread the RCP Central Committee message, “It’s Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution.” We went to unite with the message of unity among the different gangs and hoods and sets and nationalities but we also went to challenge everyone that we DO NOT need unity to be good “house slaves” and we DO NOT need unity to be “respectable” and “acceptable” to the system and to go along with the crimes of this system... but instead to unite to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time.

Broadly among people, including among the OG’s in the audience there was a strong desire for unity.  Some were influenced by the solutions put forward from the speakers from the stage but there were others who were looking for more and feeling it was going to take more to really make all this go somewhere good.

There was receptivity to the RCP Central Committee message. Over 200 copies were distributed and copies of Revolution newspaper also got out. There was also a sound truck with a TV mounted on the back, that parked not far from where people were exiting the event, that played the recent excerpts posted on revcom from Bob Avakian’s dialogue with Cornel West and other clips. An OG passing by the truck which had a banner displaying the title of the RCP Central Committee message, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution” stopped for a moment and said, “Damn, they’re saying they’re communists straight up.” He talked about all the bullshit in the past he’d dealt with because of the “three strikes law” and how this was affecting him today. He appreciated the RCP Message and we challenged him to spread this everywhere and he took a small stack for friends and family he interacts with. There were several others that did the same, taking larger stacks to distribute on their way home or on the bus and apartment complexes.         

The front cover of the Revolution newspaper also attracted attention, “American Was NEVER Great!  We Need to OVERTHROW This System!” One young Latina woman came up and asked what we were getting out. We read from the Message and she agreed that we needed change at the soonest possible time.  She said she came to the event to talk about what happened to her nephew who was killed at a young age by a rival gang and she wanted to contribute to putting this senseless violence to an end. She had a baby girl with her that was no more than two years old and was expressing the horror of what life would be like for her if things don’t change. Violence among the people was a frequent topic of discussion among those we were connecting with and we challenged people on the real roots of that violence and what really is needed to finally put an end to it. Others also talked about the murders by the police.  Some in the crowd expressed frustration with the youth who are caught up in the gang life and we spoke to this, although we summed up we could have done better, including by using the “Points of Attention for the Revolution”, in particular #4 to address this.

One young Black man who is not affiliated with a gang but grew up in a poor neighborhood talked about the need for more Black-owned businesses and for Black people being able to produce their own things and control the wealth that comes from that. He said a collective spirit is needed also where those who are doing better could help out those who are not doing too well economically. He mentioned agreeing with what a representative of the Nation of Islam had put forward earlier from the stage that Black people need to buy South Central and have it benefit Black people (among other similar proposals). So we got into how this system of capitalism actually works and why there cannot be any fundamental change for the better until this system is overthrown. We walked him through the RCP Message and he was open to what it said about communism as the goal and was interested in learning more about Bob Avakian. We set up a follow up meeting with him. 

There was interest among some in learning more about who Bob Avakian was. A few had heard of his name but most people we encountered had not. One person was interested in learning more after we told him about his history and how he became a revolutionary and a communist. And we would highlight to people the section in the RCP Central Committee message where it speaks to the leadership of Bob Avakian.

In some cases it was important to persevere in getting clear with people on what we meant by revolution. One person for example who had initially agreed, “yeah, we need revolution” went on to change his mind once he actually understood that we are talking about “overthrowing this system at the soonest possible time.” He said that would not be possible. We challenged him but still he felt they are too powerful. We told him he had no evidence to say that this system of capitalism-imperialism cannot be defeated. He said he would go online and actually look at the documents “On the Strategy for Revolution” and “On the Possibility of Revolution.”

A Latino former gang member liked the front cover of Revolution newspaper and said he agreed we needed to get rid of capitalism because that same system has also fucked over his country of origin.

We also ran into some people who live in some of the areas in South Central where the RCP Central Committee Message has been posted up on fences, light posts, and many other places on the streets.  One person pointing to a copy of the Message said, “I’ve seen that when I get off the freeway near my house.” He also said he’s seen the Revolution Club out spreading the revolution on the corners of South Central near his home. 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/avakian/science/09ba-science...epistemology-and-morality-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/448/contribute-to-the-ba-everywhere-campaign-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Bob Avakian (BA) has made a historic breakthrough for human emancipation
You are needed—to let the world know! Contribute to the BA Everywhere Campaign

July 18, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

These are turbulent times. Old orders are straining, societies are polarizing, and people are in motion. Videos of the police executions of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have set off righteous protests and sparked deep anger and agonized questioning across the country. As Obama tries to tamp down the protests and the outrage, he recognizes, in his own words, the deep “fault line” that stands further “exposed” and “widening.” He recognizes an anxiety that the “center won’t hold” and “things might get worse”—sentiments furthered and globally echoed in the context of a world torn apart by Western imperialism and Islamic jihad, with specters of outright fascism looming.

Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP

Do you know anyone else—any person or organization—that has managed to bring forth an actual PLAN for a radically different society, in all its dimensions, and a CONSTITUTION to codify all this? — A different world IS possible — Check out and order online the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).

Will the fabric of society and this system be stitched back together with continuing, and possibly even more horrendous consequences for humanity and the planet? Or is there a radically different alternative that charts a viable path towards the emancipation of all of humanity? That is the question beneath the turmoil, upheaval and questioning.

In fact, there IS a way out of this madness and horror, represented by BA and his work and leadership. But this work and leadership is not known in society widely, either among the vast majority of the world’s oppressed who need this most, or to those who question this world and want a radically better one. The BA Everywhere fundraising campaign is about changing this.

Let’s step back for a moment.

The world is a nightmare for billions: millions driven from their homes by wars, poverty, environmental devastation... women raped, beaten, and degraded in staggering numbers... Black and Brown youth routinely incarcerated and brutalized and even murdered by the police... immigrants demonized and torn from their families... human habitats and food and drinking water supplies—and the planet’s ecosystems—under threat of environmental catastrophe...

Download PDF

These problems stem from, and are woven into, the system of capitalism-imperialism. Solving them requires overthrowing this system through an actual revolution.

Making such a revolution—and building a radically new and far better society and world—is complex. It requires science—a method and approach to understand reality as it actually is, and how it can be changed. And it requires leadership based on this science. Without this, the system’s confines will suffocate the people’s resistance, and the world will remain fundamentally unchanged.

Shattering these confines is the work and leadership of Bob Avakian (BA). Over four decades, BA has developed a new synthesis of communism. This new framework represents and embodies the scientific understanding and approach needed to make an actual revolution that emancipates all of humanity. He has learned deeply from previous revolutions, as well as from many different spheres. He has forged a strategy for how a revolution could be prepared for and won, as well as a concrete vision in the Constitution for a New Socialist Republic in North America for the new society on the road to communism. He is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and the leader of the revolution. Rooted in how needless the horrors of this system are, and based on the revolutionary potential of people to transform themselves and all of society, BA is a champion of, and has a deep visceral connection to the most oppressed in society and those the system has cast out.

This needs to be known everywhere. This is the goal of the BA Everywhere fundraising campaign. Imagine the difference it would make!

Get BAsics, the handbook for the revolution

Getting BA Everywhere changes how people look at what is possible and desirable. It breaks people out of thinking that their only choices are those dictated by the system. No longer the “lesser of the evils” in the war criminal Hillary Clinton against the fascist monster Trump. Breaking as well out of the deadly dynamic where Western imperialism and Islamic fundamentalist jihadism fuel each other, while grinding up humanity. Raising sights to a far better world, BA Everywhere changes the conversation to the real questions of what it means to be free, and what will it take to get there. Imagine if science—and a scientific approach to knowing and radically changing the world—were a point of reference from the prisons to the housing projects to the universities. Indeed—Imagine the Difference!

BA’s work is controversial in a good way, stirring up discourse, challenging conventional wisdom. And BA Everywhere is essential to a better future—for the concrete leadership and approach he is providing, and for the questioning, elevated sights, and liberating culture this sparks.

But for this to happen on anything even approaching the scale required, BA Everywhere needs serious funding. Funding to publicize his works, to send out advocates, to produce materials, to hold classes or sponsor seminars, to enable the dispossessed to get these works, etc. Funding to seriously challenge the dominant frames of reference in every sphere of society and their hammerlock on the discourse.

Donate generously. Make a difference.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/spread-two-new-powerful-video-clips-from-ba-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Spread two new powerful video clips from BA

July 18, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Note to readers of revcom.us: Now is a moment to reach out broadly to people with many ways they can contribute to the movement for revolution! Including: through contributing funds, through popularizing and projecting Bob Avakian, through feeding in their ideas, energy and skills. There are many great needs!

One important thing people can do is spread and promote clips now available at revcom.us from REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN through social media. Below is a template letter you might use to encourage and help people do that. And you may want to combine this with a request for funds or other things people can do to contribute to the movement for revolution at this critical moment.

Dear friend,

Check out these two powerful new video clips posted at revcom.us:

1. Bob Avakian on: Police murder... and the murderous logic of this system’s election game

2. Bob Avakian and Cornel West on: Is there value to voting? Can voting stop fascism?

(These are both excerpts from the West and Avakian Dialogue from 2014 and are INCREDIBLY relevant to the current moment.)

I’m writing to ask you to watch these and spread them to others. This is the truth about WHY police keep murdering Black and Brown people, and WHY they get off for it time and time again. And what will be required to prevent the rise of fascism, and to bring into being a radically different and far better world: resistance and revolution.

Right now, when people are looking for answers, Avakian breaks this down in ways people need to hear and understand.

And... here are a few sample tweets you might use to drive people to check these out... or you can make your own:

—Is there value to voting? Can voting stop fascism? #BobAvakian and @CornelWest get into it with unity and struggle. https://youtu.be/9OpgpeMEXjc

—The assassination of #FreddieGray and the police acquittals IS this system working #RNCinCLE #RevolutionNothingLess https://youtu.be/9OpgpeMEXjc

—Bob Avakian: We have to change the terms, NOT find best we can within these terms. #RevolutionNothingLess #RNCinCLE https://youtu.be/9OpgpeMEXjc

—Bob Avakian: What will stop fascism? Resistance and Revolution. #RNCinCLE #ClevelandRising #RNC2016 https://youtu.be/9OpgpeMEXjc

—This is for a world we can give to our children & their children thats much different & better than this. https://youtu.be/9OpgpeMEXjc #GetIntoBA

—Y do police keep killing Black & Brown pple? Bc its their job to kill Black & Brown pple! BobAvakian breaks it down: https://youtu.be/wIkOgYuKWNk

—Watch this REALITY CHECK from Bob Avakian: what IS the job of the police? #AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile https://youtu.be/wIkOgYuKWNk

—There is a need & possibility for a real revolution 2 end these horrors. BobAvakian breaks it down: https://youtu.be/wIkOgYuKWNk #PhilandoCastile

—There is a need & possibility for a real revolution 2 end these horrors. BobAvakian breaks it down: https://youtu.be/wIkOgYuKWNk #AltonSterling

Finally, stay tuned to revcom.us for regular coverage and revolutionary analysis of the scene from on the ground in Cleveland.

Looking forward to hearing from you...

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/trump-and-pence-an-arranged-marriage-made-in-hell-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Trump & Pence: An Arranged Marriage Made in Hell

July 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The selection of Mike Pence as Donald Trump's vice-presidential running mate was, to all appearances, an arranged—if not a forced—marriage between Trump and powerful forces in what has been the establishment of the Republican Party. Both of the "families" behind this marriage—Trump's camp and the traditional mainstream Republican Party—represent the most hellish exploitation and oppression, here and around the world. But they have real contradictions over how that should go down.

Trump and the establishment Republicans have a lot in common. For decades, and in increasingly blatant ways, the Republican Party has been the party of the "angry white male"—whipping up and unleashing unapologetic white supremacy and patriarchy. Trump's fascist madness is a continuation but also an extreme escalation of this.

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There are forces in the ruling class, including high up in the Republican Party, who worry that Trump's naked fascism—his open racism, his indiscriminate assault on immigrants, the crudeness of his violent hatred for women, his open embrace of torture and executing innocent relatives of "terrorism suspects" to defeat "America's enemies," and his visceral disdain for the rule of law—threaten to tear society apart in ways they are not ready for.

Further, there are elements of Trump's agenda that are in serious conflict with the traditional positions of mainstream ruling class politics. Trump is dismissive of NATO—which has been a key to U.S. domination of the world since World War 2. His attacks on "free trade" agreements conflict with what the Republicans have championed for decades as a core element of their program—"free," unimpeded U.S. investment in sweatshops, mines, plantations, and other sources of massive profit around the world.

For these and other reasons, a number of very prominent Republicans—including nearly all the former Republican presidents and presidential candidates—are at this point sitting out this election. At the same time, many of these forces are hedging their bets and working to influence the Trump camp from within. These establishment Republicans prevailed on Trump to replace his close advisor Corey Lewandowski with Paul Manafort as campaign manager. Manafort has a long record of working for previous Republican presidents. And Manafort apparently played a key role in pressuring and maneuvering Trump into accepting Mike Pence as his VP over Trump's objections.

Pence represents the establishment Republican Party, and in case anyone is looking for a "lesser evil" in this mix there's nothing good about them! Pence is a Christian fascist who, while in Congress, led one of the efforts to shut down the government unless all funding was cut off for Planned Parenthood. He has long and deep ties to representatives of capitalists who chafe at any government regulation that impedes "free trade"—meaning any regulation that gets in the way of the manic movement of capitalist investment around the world. These forces, including the oil billionaire Koch brothers, are fixated on shredding environmental protection; virtually eliminating government regulation of workplace safety; privatizing education; and cutting taxes by de-funding essential social services including social security and Medicare.

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.

See all the articles in this series.

Pence's views on U.S. aggression around the world are in line with mainstream ruling class strategic thinking. One of his first major statements after being nominated for vice president was to contradict Trump's dismissive attacks on NATO and reassure U.S. allies that, if elected, Trump "would absolutely stand by our allies and treaty obligations."

If all this sounds like a bunch of cutthroat mob factions maneuvering for power, that's because that's what it is, only on a scale no mobster could ever dream of. No change for the better will come from either side of the conflict represented by Trump on the one hand and forces behind Pence on the other. Or from Hillary Clinton, for that matter. They all salute, demand respect for, enshrine, and pump out the American flag that symbolizes genocide, slavery, and unjust wars. And they are all about preserving the system based on exploitation and oppression.

There's nothing good in this whole ugly mix for humanity. But the contradictions and conflicts embodied in the forced marriage between Trump and the establishment Republicans have the potential to lead to greater infighting among the powers that be. That kind of infighting can be part of the mix that goes into a revolutionary situation—where there is a real chance for an ACTUAL revolution to win.

In this situation, what to do?

Fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/the-real-plagiarism-at-the-rnc-giuliani-bites-off-hitler-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

The REAL Plagiarism at the RNC: Giuliani Bites Off Hitler

July 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolution Club delivers people's arrest warrant for Rudy Giuliani. (Photo: Special to revcom.us)

As we go to press, the media is fixated on the fact that Melania Trump’s speech at the RNC tonight was plagiarized from parts of Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic Convention in 2008. But they missed the bigger plagiarism story: Right before Melania Trump’s speech, Rudy Giuliani—the keynote speaker on Trump’s plan to “Keep America Safe,” plagiarized his ENTIRE message from the body of work of Adolf Hitler.

In any decent society, someone like former New York mayor and long-time, loud-mouthed fascist bigot Rudy Giuliani would have been arrested, tried, and jailed for serial conspiracy to abet and cover up the murders of Black and Latino youth, not put before a national TV audience as if he were an authority on anything besides butchery and lying.

But there he was—speaking at the Republican Convention tonight—being promoted by the mainstream media as a legitimate authority on “Keeping America Safe.” And outdoing himself in calling for police terror at home and U.S. terror abroad.

Giuliani said that Trump would make America safe the way Giuliani did when he was mayor of New York—and overcome racial divisions—no “Black America and white America.” 

Safe? No racism? No targeting of Black and Brown people? Ask the families of Hilton Vega or Anthony Rosario, both murdered by the NYPD under Giuliani. Or ask Abner Louima, an immigrant from Haiti, who was handcuffed, thrown in a cop car, and then beaten with radios and fists. At the police station, the cops pulled Louima's pants down, took him into the bathroom, and sodomized the cuffed man with the wooden handle of a toilet plunger. Then the pigs shoved the plunger, covered with blood and feces, into Louima's mouth. 

This was “Giuliani time”—a reign of police terror against Black and Brown people—where none were “safe” from being stopped, beaten, tortured or worse. During this period, 187 people were killed by New York cops between January 1992 and December 1996.

And now Giuliani—who attacks Black Lives Matter as a hate group and blames it for the killings of police—agitated for Trump to do for the country what he did in New York:  take police terror to a whole other, nationwide level. He demanded more savagery at home and around the world. Staring right into the camera and pointing his finger he railed: “We’re coming to get you!” 

Giuliani’s hate-filled rant channeled some of the most notorious fascists in history: Adolf Hitler... Benito Mussolini... and Donald Trump.

Any system that puts this frothing at the mouth, rabid Nazi-lunatic on prime time TV, to promote another Nazi-lunatic for President, is a system with NO legitimacy.  Reason enough—and there are countless more—for this system to be overthrown at the soonest possible moment.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/two-reflections-in-the-wake-of-incident-in-baton-rouge-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Two Reflections in the Wake of the Incident in Baton Rouge

July 18, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

One: Baton Rouge – Wild Scenarios, Ruling Class Spin, and What We Actually Know To Be True

As of 5 pm Monday, July 18, here is what has actually been made public about what happened in Baton Rouge on Sunday, July 17: after a week in which the Baton Rouge police were caught on video carrying out the vicious assassination of Alton Sterling and then went on to brutally beat down and illegally arrest people who were protesting that murder, a Black man named Gavin Long had an encounter with some of those police, whom as a Black man he would have a legitimate reason to fear, and in that encounter Long and three police ended up dead.

Yet beginning with the first reports of the incident Sunday, the Baton Rouge Police Department, the ruling class media and major ruling class political figures shamelessly fabricated and reported as fact one lurid scenario after another, all designed to sensationalize things and whip up people behind approving the essentially illegitimate occupation of the Black community, and other oppressed nationality communities, by the police. And many of these forces went on to viciously attack the movement against police terror and murder and, in particular, Black Lives Matter, both the particular organization and the overall way that this slogan has become identified with an entire upsurge of protest against murder and terror carried out by these pigs.

It’s not just that the people who rule this society have absolutely no respect for the truth. It’s that they cannot afford to respect the truth because the real truth – that Black lives have never mattered and cannot matter to this system, except as a possible source of wealth and plunder, and that this has been BUILT INTO this system from the slave ships of Day One down to today – is something that exposes their essential nature.

Download PDF | JPG for web

And here is something else to think about, in relation to the controversy of today and the attempts of those on top to control and misdirect the debate. Look at the poster of the Stolen Lives. How many of the people on that poster, all of whom lost their lives to police, received any form of justice? None.  And that is the hard, bitter, cold – and, if we take it seriously, ultimately liberating – truth.

Two: A Question Posed: Do Protests Against the Oppression of Black People Under This System Do Any Good?

In a basic sense, yes. Without protest against injustice, nothing changes. Without struggle against the way things are, as people have done, they would have been broken. Without the lessons garnered from such protest, people in their masses would not be able to learn the way forward.

But in an even more basic sense, protests “do good” if and as they can increasingly be made part of something larger, a movement for revolution against this system. Because, again, the nearly 400-year history of Black people in America, right down to the ways in which this system has not and cannot deliver fundamental change today on as basic a question as to whether Black people must constantly live in fear of those entrusted with enforcing the law, makes clear that this oppression has been and remains built into this system, and that only such a revolution can bring it down.

Learn more about BA

And there is a third point that must be made as well. This revolution is not something that is only conceivable in a far-off distant future. The rulers of this country openly talk of how the center may not hold and refer to “faultlines” in the social fabric. The basis for a revolution exists in the contradictions of this society. Moreover – and this is the most important point – there is a leader of this revolution, Bob Avakian, who has done the work to develop a strategy to actually build up the forces to lead the millions necessary to make such a revolution, a strategy that could win such a revolution when the time came for the all-out attempt to seize power, and a blueprint and road map for a new society aiming to do away with exploitation and every form of oppression once victory has been won. No, the time is not yet here, but yes, the time is here to very urgently work on the developing conditions to bring forward the situation where such a revolution could be made – with a real chance of winning.

If you are really serious – serious about revolution and serious about winning and getting to a whole new world – then the time is now to get with this revolution.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/criminal-choices-of-a-criminal-system-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/awtwns-turkey-contradictions-reach-a-boiling-point-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

From A World to Wins News Service:

Turkey: Contradictions Reach a Boiling Point

July 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

July 21, 2016. A World to Win News Service. By Ishak Baran. A struggle for political power suddenly exploded into the open on the night of July 15 when units of different branches of the armed forces in Turkey attempted a military coup. Well into the next day, it was far from clear who exactly held the reins of power in Turkey—who was in command of the second largest army in NATO. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, the Erdoğan regime is unleashing massive repression and efforts to consolidate its power and push forward its Islamist agenda and regional ambitions.

Available in English, Spanish, Farsi, Turkish, German, Portuguese, Arabic (draft)

The sudden fragmentation of the political order in this country sent shock waves around the world. The explosion in Turkey, while in appearance taking the immediate form of a dispute between rival Islamist factions, is fundamentally rooted in and fuelled by the long-simmering contradictions in the whole Middle East, especially the intensifying conflict between Western imperialism, on the one hand, and political Islamism on the other. Emergency meetings of foreign ministers were convened in countries from Moscow to Washington and at the European Union and NATO level, as representatives of all the major players anxiously scrambled to get a handle on this sudden eruption of political uncertainty and turmoil.

The coup forces arrested the chief of the armed forces and top generals and admirals in an effort to force them to support the coup. They bombed and laid siege to parliament to annul its authority. Most importantly, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey and leader of the governing AKP (Justice and Development Party), barely escaped with his life when the seaside hotel where he was staying was bombed.

In a statement read over the state television channel after soldiers seized it, the coup forces, calling their executive body the “Peace at Home Council,” said they had “taken over the administration of the country to reinstate constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law and general security that was damaged.” Their intervention, they argued, was necessary to re-establish law and order in the face of Daesh (ISIS) bombings and, even more significantly, the armed opposition of the Kurdish nationalist PKK, issues Erdoğan has not been able to solve. But from early on it became apparent that they were unable to rally sufficient sectors of the military and security forces, the ruling class, and political parties bitterly at odds with the Erdoğan regime, or appeal to people at large and mobilize them in the streets.

Consequently, the initial disarray in the executive branch in this dangerous and precarious situation was overcome as key elements of the power structure and loyal military leaders rallied around Erdoğan, creating a cohering centre that could exploit the weaknesses of the conspirators and organize resistance against them. Erdoğan took the risk of flying into Istanbul while pro-coup jet fighters still prowled the skies, and then demonstrated his willingness to go to the brink of civil war by using a smart phone to connect with TV channels and call on his supporters to fight it out in the streets with pro-coup military units. The country’s 85,000 mosques were signalled to use the loudspeakers used to announce prayers to mobilize “believers” to take up the “holy task” of self-sacrificingly defending the regime and foiling the attack on their “democratically elected government.”

Erdoğan demonstrated he could mobilize sufficient numbers of the poor and sections of the middle classes in the major cities who had been brought into AKP’s grip since this Islamist party came to power in 2002-3, an ascension that marked a major shift in Turkish politics, where the ruling classes had long preferred to rule in the name of secularism.

The success of Erdoğan’s appeal marked the beginning of the turning of the tide in the political confrontation. Along with the armed engagements carried out by security forces loyal to the regime, emboldened and in some cases armed civilians literally tore the guns out of the hands of pro-coup soldiers. Political parties and forces that had been bickering with Erdoğan, even the HDP (a parliamentary party sympathetic to PKK), were obliged to come out against the coup, due to the dynamic that Erdoğan, seizing the opportunity, set into motion. Most of the country’s elite, including old-line pro-American big capitalists, feared a power vacuum more than they feared him. Very simply, Erdoğan was able to demonstrate that his hold on power was the only alternative to political chaos and civil war.

Despite the pledge by the coup makers that they would fulfil “the obligations set by all international institutions, including the United Nations and NATO” in hopes of receiving support from the U.S. imperialists, and despite the appetite for Erdoğan’s downfall nakedly displayed by CNN and other Western media, the U.S. and other Western powers clearly remained unconvinced. They did not see the conspirators as able to serve strategic imperialist interests in this region of the world. They could not afford more chaos and disorder in a region they are fighting to bring under their control.

As the the New York Times wrote in an editorial, “The volatile Middle East cannot afford to have another state unravel, especially one that is also a bulwark of NATO’s eastern flank. Over the weekend, the U.S. emphasized its ‘absolute support for Turkey’s democratically elected, civilian government and democratic institutions’ but also urged restraint and a commitment to due process.”

Even if the U.S. is very unhappy with Erdoğan’s Islamism and service of reactionary particular Turkish interests, they have to be attentive to their much broader imperialist interests at stake in a region where the Turkish state and armed forces are an essential anchor of the current reactionary order. The NYT mentioned two reasons not to support the coup attempt: “Ties between the American military and Turkish military, a critical link in the Turkey-American relationship, will be trickier to manage. That could impede cooperation on Syria and other matters besides the Islamic State, including efforts to halt the flow of refugees into Europe.”

The coup attempt has to be situated not just in the context in Turkey but also in the broader context of the bloody confrontation between the U.S. imperialists and their Western allies, and jihadi Islamic fundamentalism (currently the predominant feature of the regional situation), and the intertwining of this with other contradictions, like the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia and even with its Western partners and regional powers like Iran, and also Saudi Arabia.

To a large extent it is the contention between the Islamist agenda and Western imperialist interests and the necessities this situation poses for the U.S. that have allowed maneuvering space for Erdoğan. This is what made it possible for him to not only resist U.S. pressure but turn the failed coup to his advantage to advance his agenda for the Islamization of the Turkish state and society and his regional ambitions. Using the accusation that the U.S. is behind the coup attempt, he has been able to paint it as part of a Western campaign to hold down the rise of a modern Islamist Turkish state as leader of the Moslem world. He relishes the idea of rubbing the U.S.’s nose in its predicament—that it has no alternative to him right now.

The fissures in the state revealed by the coup attempt leave Erdoğan with little alternative but forward flight, the speeding up of his timetable to restructure the state and the political landscape, even reshaping his own party. He is determined and now able—he called “the mutiny” a “gift from god”—to consolidate his hold on power and “cleanse” the military, security forces, intelligence services, judiciary and other government structures and the secondary and university systems of all opposition to his agenda. This means, particularly, those loyal to the rival Islamist trend led by Fethullah Gülen, who Erdoğan accuses of organizing the coup attempt, but also far broader sources of dissent and opposition. The revengist Turkish chauvinism laced with Islamic fanaticism that Erdoğan is unleashing in the wake of the coup attempt goes hand in hand with an all-out campaign to wipe out resistance in Turkey’s Kurdish provinces and the targeting of both the recently established autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria (Rojava) and the PKK presence in Iraq. The fact that the Kurds have been backed and mobilized by the U.S. in fighting Daesh is Erdoğan’s pretext for stepping this up. He wants to exploit this situation to demand that the U.S. accept this extended projection of Turkish power.

Paradoxically, Erdoğan’s temporary apparent triumph will make the whole ideological and political structure of the Turkish state more brittle and will likely bring him into further conflict with the U.S. The U.S. faces no less necessity than he does. It must confront his advance, in the context of the spiralling challenge to its imperial interests and mission in the Middle East. As a result, while the U.S. has had to recognize Erdoğan’s victory for now, the clash between Erdoğan and the U.S. will not wane but sharpen in this new situation. This is expressed by what the New York Times and other Western imperialist mouthpieces have said, that Erdoğan’s victory has been the best outcome under the circumstances but that he should show “restraint and a commitment to due process.” No one, of course, expects him to show any restraint—some 10,000 people have been rounded up for detention so far, and 5,000 people purged from their positions. So this is a justification, in advance, for U.S. retaliation when possible.

The coup attempt did not essentially stem from a political dispute between two different theological trends within Islamism. Both sides advocate the Islamization of Turkish society with all the horrors that this entails, including even more horrendous subjugation and degradation of women. Rather it is a side effect of the overarching contradiction between imperialism and Islamism and the underlying dynamics of imperialist development. The resulting fracturing of the Turkish political system has compelled different forces into motion against one another over questions of how to deal with the contradictions in the situation, internally and externally, and for different factions to see in these problems the opportunity to come out on top. This explains the slide of Gülen and Erdoğan’s earlier cooperation in promoting Islamism into today’s bloody confrontation.

The emergence of the AKP as the party of Islamist politics and the consolidation and entrenchment of its hold in the political institutions and society has been brought about by the fundamental dynamics of capitalism-imperialism—the relentless drive of globalization toward increased “modern” capitalist development, and the way this leads to the resurgence of traditional values and religious ideology, AKP’s “politics of piety.” The AKP advocated and flourished with “free market” capitalism, working hand-in-hand with imperialism, yet its drive for power, the ideological cohesion of political forces it rallies and its appeal to a section of the people has been persistently rooted in the same religious ideology (Islam) that this capitalist development is undermining. In other words, the reactionary romantic defense and promotion of the traditional way of life that is being undercut and replaced by the very dynamics of the world capitalist system in which the AKP and the sections of the old and the new capitalist entrepreneurs it represents are striving for a larger place and role.

Some time ago Bob Avakian presciently called attention to this phenomenon and incisively analyzed what he characterized as “a peculiar expression” of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: the contradiction between highly socialized production, which increasingly ties people together on a world scale, and private (capitalist) appropriation of what is produced. Wealth, advanced technology and privilege are concentrated in the hands of a minority while poverty, hopelessness, the lack of education and the promotion of obscurantism are accumulating on the other side. What today has become the salient feature of the political terrain in the Middle East and North Africa, the increasingly devastating confrontation and deadly dynamic between imperialism and jihadist Islamic fundamentalism, was profoundly captured by Avakian’s analysis of “the two outmodeds”:

“What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.”

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The heightened contradictions and the accumulation of explosive material leading to sudden eruption of turmoil and upheaval has been dramatically revealed through the intense political crisis still reverberating throughout the Turkish state and well beyond. Yet among many people in or from Turkey and others who care deeply about the future of the Middle East, there has been a current of paralyzing disorientation and despair. This sentiment is not only the result of the strengthening of the Erdoğan regime, but even more a consequence of common political and ideological illusions. One is the idea that capitalist development is possible without fuelling Islamism, and consequently that Islamism’s appetites can be reined in. The other is that the ambitions Erdoğan represents could be tamed by relying on the formalities and institutions of bourgeois democracy.

This demoralization is linked to the prevailing lack of a correct understanding of the possibility of breaking out of the deadlock between imperialism and Islamism and all the horrors this situation is creating—that the same contradictions driving this process also provide the material basis to do so through revolutionary change. This revolution means sweeping away all forms of exploitation and oppression and the total transformation of this society aiming to achieve communism worldwide. With this goal guiding the thinking of communists, it becomes clearer why it is necessary to fight all along to transform the outlook of the people, to combat illusions and backward ideas. These illusions include the idea of working toward the gradual expansion of “democratic rights” instead of aiming to seize political power, and ignoring the problem of patriarchy and the oppression of women and overlooking the potential revolutionary energy of an all-out struggle for the emancipation of women. Or not challenging the enslavement of the mind by religion.

To see the reality beneath appearances—how the underlying contradictions driving the ugly and destructive developments in the region and now in Turkey also provide the material basis for a thorough-going revolution—requires the science of communism. Today this means grasping Avakian’s breakthrough in developing a more scientific approach and method to understanding the world and changing it. A telling example is that the new synthesis alone provides the framework to correctly understand the dynamics of the two outmodeds, one of the crucial problems facing the people in today’s world. Conversely, the failure to understand and wield the new synthesis and instead hanging onto some of the unscientific elements that have long plagued the communist movement has left people unable to correctly understand new developments such as the rise of political Islam (seeing it as a direct product of imperialist intrigue, or finding something “anti-imperialist” to support in it) and paralyzed in the face of the conflict of the “two outmodeds.”

As Avakian has explained, “So that’s why it’s important that the science of communism has been developed further, in a qualitative way, by building on what has gone before, in the main, but also casting off certain secondary aspects of the previous understanding of communism, which actually ran counter to, were in opposition to, its essentially scientific character.... So the significance of the new synthesis of communism is not that communism as a science, and its application in many different spheres, has been invented anew, but it has been further developed in many of these key areas, and this provides a qualitatively new basis for people, not just here, but throughout the world, to carry on the struggle to get beyond a world full of all the horrors that we’re now living under.”

Anyone and everyone who can’t stand the situation in the Middle East and the world has to urgently familiarize themselves with and grapple with this new synthesis of communism. Cores of people must emerge—and quickly—in Turkey and elsewhere, people who struggle to master and wield the new synthesis of communism and commit themselves to forging a vanguard force to take up the tasks of producing a movement for revolution and a revolutionary people, as this goal and understanding brings an increasing number of people into action.

This is how we can bring out, act upon and seize the revolutionary possibilities latent within the situation that is crushing the people today.

(Ishak Baran is a supporter of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism and a veteran participant of the Maoist movement in Turkey.)

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/us-plunder-treaties-trade-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Check out Revcom/Revolution on:

Waves of Refugees and a Worldwide System of Exploitation and Oppression

July 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives”

Bob Avakian, BAsics 5:7

There has been throughout this election endless discussion of how trade deals like NAFTA have hurt Americans and nothing about what the treaties and trade deals that the U.S. has imposed have done—whole economies have been dominated, plundered and gutted by the very same powerful interests dictating what is being discussed in these elections. This is pointing people in the entirely wrong direction and distorting the character of the problem—and offering NO solution.

Want to understand why waves of refugees are streaming across borders and what this has to do with a worldwide system of exploitation and oppression? The following are some of revcom.us/Revolution’s recent coverage.

“Imperialism’s Mexican Miracle of Transubstantiation: How the bones of Mexican Peasants Became Broccoli on the Tables of the U.S.” 6/6/16

“A World of Refugees, Imperialism and Borders: Intolerable and Unnecessary” 4/18/16

“From A World to Win News Service: Afghanistan: Three Decades of Mass Exodus” 5/30/16

“No—It’s NOT OUR EMPIRE! A Revolutionary Response to Hillary Clinton’s Anti-Trump Speech” 6/25/16

“Obama’s Trip to Asia: The Bloody-Jawed Beast Offers Peace and Prepares for War” 5/30/16

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/to-the-systems-pigs-the-live-of-cambodian-american-man-not-worth-life-of-dog-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Long Beach, California:

Cops Murder Human Being—Pigs and Media Cry Over Dead Dog

Updated July 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On June 28, Barry Prak—a 27-year-old Cambodian-American man—was shot to death by Long Beach cops as he responded to an order by the police to come out of an apartment. Prak was first hit with a 40-mm rubber baton round—and then a police dog was unleashed to tear at his flesh. The pigs then shot Prak dead when he allegedly displayed a knife.

The police took the life of yet another human being. In an obscene and disgusting demonstration of how the lives of the human beings killed by this system’s police are seen as worthless, the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach papers focused their coverage on what they considered a greater “tragedy” that took place—the fact that the police shot dead their own dog, in the course of murdering Barry Prak. The large photo that ran with the Times article on Prak’s killing was of four cops solemnly carrying the dog, “Credo,” with an American flag draped over him.

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.

From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution—Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

The City News Service report said of one of the cops, “The officer ... was visibly angry and shaken, ripping off his helmet and hurling it away before burying his head in his hand. The dog was then placed into a patrol car and driven to a nearby animal hospital, where he was pronounced dead...” The article announced the time and location of the memorial service for Credo, adding that “In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Credo’s name to the LB Police K-9 Officers Association.” And then they let readers know where “condolence messages” could be sent to the pig who wept for the dog after murdering Barry Park.

“Justice for Barry”

On July 16, 100 protesters, most of them young people from the “Little Cambodia” section of Long Beach, marched along Anaheim Street to demand justice for Barry Prak. Wearing white T-shirts with “Cambodian” written in large letters across the top and “Justice for Barry” on the bottom, they marched to the alley where Prak was killed. After a minute of silence, protesters took time to write messages on scores of balloons, which were then released into the morning sky.

The cops who murdered Barry Prak were serving a warrant linking him to a 2013 shooting incident—although they have never presented any evidence publicly justifying the warrant. Prak was known for having taken an active part in protesting a 2013 killing by police in the same community.

Drivers passing the other way during the march honked horns, shouted support, put fists out the window, and slowed down and stopped in some cases, a sign of how widespread the demand for justice for Barry Prak is in the community. The RCP Central Committee’s Message, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” was taken up by most of the marchers and by people in their cars coming by. Many left with Revolution newspaper in their hands.

In just the last two years, Long Beach cops have murdered Feras Morad, a college student; Mharloun Saycon, who was mentally disabled; 21-year-old Lionel Gibson, for carrying a toy air-soft gun; Tyler Woods, unarmed, on the roof of a house; Jonte House, and more.

As the Message from the RCP Central Committee at revcom.us says in the strongest terms:

"This horror must stop, and it will take a revolution, nothing less, to do that by finally putting an end to the system that’s the cause of this horror and all the others humanity has to endure. And right now, everyone who is outraged and sickened by murder after murder by the system’s police—and those pigs getting away with it time after time—need to rise up to demand justice. Police Getting Away with Murder Must STOP!"

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/revolution-books-berkeley-timely-showing-of-film-on-railroad-of-central-park-5-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Revolution Books, Berkeley:

Timely Showing of Film on the Railroad of the Central Park 5

July 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

Around 50 people packed into Revolution Books in Berkeley on Tuesday night, July 19, for a showing of the film Central Park Five by Ken Burns, David McMahon, and Sarah Burns. The film documents the outrageous framing of five young Black and Latino men in New York City, including the efforts of the police, prosecutors, courts, and media in combination to falsely convict and steal the lives of these young men for the assault and rape of a white woman in Central Park in 1989. The film reveals how this was part of a vicious offensive to criminalize a whole generation of youth, orchestrated from the top levels of society. And it exposes the role that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump played at the time in whipping up hysteria and demanding that the death penalty be restored in New York State, a barely disguised call for these youths—who were proven to be completely innocent—to be executed.

This showing was very timely—both in relation to the murder after murder of Black people by police that have been spotlighted once again, and to the ugliness coming from the candidates for U.S. president. It attracted a diverse audience, many new to the revolution, and quite a few coming based on seeing signs advertising the film placed in key areas of Berkeley. There were visitors from as far away as Australia, Maryland, and New York City... Cal students, including a couple of Cal women athletes... and a Black family that included young Black men whose mothers spoke of the fear they have for their sons’ lives every time they walk out the door. Another Black man spoke to how what was revealed in this film is part of the whole mass incarceration that has destroyed so many Black and Brown lives, citing Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow. A white special education middle school teacher shared her experience about the disproportionate number of young Black men in her classes and how this relates to the oppression of Black people revealed in the film. Everyone was given a copy of Bob Avakian’s “Propaganda Instruments of the Ruling Class... And the Railroad of the Central Park 5.” Exposing how the media works under this system, BA gets into the specific example of the case of the Central Park 5, including the role Donald Trump played.

During the discussion, following statement by BA—speaking to the reality of the lives of Black people that had been so movingly portrayed in the film—was read:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

The BA quote introduced the audience to the leader of the revolution that the Revolutionary Communist Party is actively working on right now. People heard the Message from the RCP Central Committee, “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” which declares that it is totally unacceptable for people to live in a society that condemns the youth, even before they are born, to being suspects and potential prisoners, victims of state-sponsored brutality and terror—and that there is a way out through revolution.

For many in the audience, this was the first time they had been to Revolution Books. Some expressed great appreciation for the store and the fact that there is a place where these kinds of films and this kind of discussion can take place.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/promoting-revolution-in-the-world-in-the-face-of-the-fascists-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

On the Scene at the RNC with the Revolution Club

Promoting Revolution to the World in the Face of the Fascists

July 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a Revolution Club member:

Society Splitting—A Coming Civil War

The weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention, where the unapologetic capitalist pig Donald Trump crouched, sights set on the position of commander-in-chief of this empire, were very revealing. The Cleveland police came on TV regularly with messages of intimidation to protestors, boasting about the $50 million they spent on “security” to protect their imperialist leaders and their lackeys. “White nationalist” groups (i.e., self-proclaimed Nazis) as well as other fascists and fundamentalists puffed out with pride, announcing they would attend in force to support open fascism. People continued to righteously protest murder by police, while major figures and media outlets blamed this just activism for so-called “cycles of violence” and the death of police officers. Big news outlets like the New York Times described the current situation as pre-civil war style conditions, saying that the polarization in this country has not been so sharp in decades and that the cohering norms that people have come to expect are being shredded up before their eyes.

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In the face of this, different leaders in “the movement” encouraged people not to protest, inadvertently giving Trump an even freer hand to spread his poison unopposed and puffing up his fascist supporters. Through all of this, those who hate everything Trump stands for were consistently encouraged to lay low, cower in the face of this rising Nazi power, work within the processes of this brutal empire, and play the losing game of voting for a Democrat imperialist...or else take on the hopeless mission of “changing the party.” What Bob Avakian has said continues to ring true, and amplified in this moment: “If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.” (BAsics 3:12)

Unfortunately, too many took the advice of “movement leaders” to heart. The broader organized resistance against Trump was, frankly, weak. Too many stayed home and snidely tweeted about the #RNCcircus without voicing their outrage in the streets. In the meantime, those streets were wild with Nazis and the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church and their signs reading “God Hates Fags.” And the slogan “Blue Lives Matter” (enshrining murderous pigs, a slap in the face to all those who have lost loved ones at the hands of the police) was seen all around.

Huge white men strapped with guns from head to foot stalked the streets, covered in U.S.-military, straight-up Nazi, and other paraphernalia. They announced their supposed supremacy, nationalism, and bloodthirsty desire for domination over Black people, women, and the nations of the world. Purple-faced and veins bulging, hands on their guns, these nasty, vicious, entitled thugs screamed at scattered protestors, upholding Abu Ghraib, upholding drone strikes, upholding police murder, upholding all the torture and destruction this empire has wreaked on humanity. All the while, the American flag flew unchallenged, a fitting banner over this foul and putrid stew... until the Revolution Club arrived.

Bringing Forward Another Way: Projecting Revolution into Every Corner of Society

The Revolution Club volunteers came to Cleveland from Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, California, Michigan, Indiana, and Georgia. We took the message from the RCP Central Committee, “It’s Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” into the projects in Cleveland, brought people into the streets of downtown, into the public square, and right into the thick of this fascist shit show with the message: “America was NEVER great, we need to overthrow this system!”

Our message continued: “When exactly was America so great?? Was it great when they murdered indigenous people, stole their land, and sold them blankets infested with smallpox? Was it great when they kidnapped Africans and shipped them in slave chains across the ocean? Was it great when they dropped nuclear weapons on civilians in Hiroshima, and again on Nagasaki, burning off the skin of innocent people, and poisoning entire cities? Was it great when they used napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, in efforts to crush a whole fight for liberation?!”

This was RE-polarizing. From the projects to the streets downtown, this tapped into great anguish that people have felt about their so-called “options” between criminal leaders of this criminal system. At the same time, it stabbed into the cold hearts of the brainwashed fascist gorillas and their militarized police force, and nearly everywhere we went, they followed us and tried to shut us down.

We moved boldly and wisely, linking people up with revcom.us and the leadership of Bob Avakian, the most radical revolutionary leader and theorist the world has ever seen. In the projects, where police terrorize, threaten, and kill people on the regular, the Revolution Club was there. At the Prophets of Rage concert, a righteous reunion and protest of radical hip-hop and rock artists from Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, and Public Enemy (proclaiming: Make America Rage Again!), the Revolution Club was there. At the End Poverty Now rally, one of the few anti-Trump protests that was called by broader groups, the Revolution Club was there, uniting with the resistance, but boldly asserting the real way out of all this madness through actual revolution.

When the gargoyle Giuliani, under the banner of “Make America Safe Again,” stood amongst his racist, homicidal ilk at the convention—praising the racist, homicidal police, and criminalizing Black, Brown, and Native people—the Revolution Club quickly responded, indicting him and setting the record straight: police murder is completely illegitimate. As the powers that be told the nation to “dial back” resistance against police murder, the Revolution Club held a press conference with Carl Dix, Cornel West, and family members of victims of police murder. And the Club led a march of hundreds to demand a STOP police terror, chanting: “Indict! Convict! Send all killer cops to jail! The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” And also the Revolution Club chant: “What’s the problem? The whole damn system! What’s the solution? Revolution! Who’s the leadership? Bob Avakian! Who are we? Revolution Club!”

Where the Westboro Baptist Church spewed their vile hatred against women, abortion, and LGBT people, the Revolution Club was there, taking them on directly—with real rage but also with science, walking through where that patriarchy comes from, where it leads, and the real way out. Everywhere we went, we fought the power, strained the limits to bring others into this revolution, and denounced the crimes of this system against the people of the world.

Burn That Rag! Flag-Burning in the Middle of Trumpfest for the World to See

In the face of all this, the Revolution Club publicly announced our intention to burn the flag in downtown Cleveland on July 20. When the time came, the area at 4th and Prospect was crawling with white nationalist groups, Trump supporters, and hoards of police who had come to stop us, but the Revolution Club slipped quietly and anonymously into the scene. In seconds, our BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! shirts were on, and we formed a circle around Gregory “Joey” Johnson, revolutionary communist and infamous flag burner (who won the U.S. Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson), as well as a poster with an image of Bob Avakian. Johnson gave a short and passionate speech about internationalism and what the American flag actually represents. Meanwhile, the gorillas lost their shit and tried to get to him but were held off by the Club standing together, arms linked and holding strong.

Then, that flag went up in flames. Police barreled through, and the Nazis tried to snatch at the revolutionaries. The circle was brutally torn apart, the fire extinguished, and the street was filled with piles of seven or eight pig police on top of each revolutionary. We continued to chant loudly, telling the truth for the world to hear, while at least 100 cameras captured the scene from different angles.

Lunatic forces such as infowars.com—the slimy right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones—had organized to stop us. Other die-hard white-male American supremacists had caught wind of the flag burning and showed up to try to make sure it didn’t happen. Literally hundreds of police were organized and ready to keep that flag from burning. The chief pig of Cleveland held a press conference and, among other things, said that they have been following the Revolution Club ever since we arrived. And guess what? Despite all that? That fucking thing burned.

Acting on the Big Stage, Advancing Internationalist Revolution

We burned the flag because it is dripping in the blood and tears of generations. We burned the flag because it has flown over the plunder, rape, and pillaging of entire peoples. We burned the flag because we are internationalists, the whole world comes first—and we are determined to see this empire not only fall, but to lead millions when the time is right to overthrow it and bring into being a radically better society: a New Socialist Republic in North America, on the way to a world no longer divided between rich and poor, masters and slaves, rulers and ruled.

We burned the flag because with all the lies told by Amerikkka, the biggest lie is that this system is the best we can do, and we are all just supposed to get used to it. Bow down, roll over, and thank the empire for democracy. We burned the flag because today U.S. imperialism is virtually unchallenged by anything other than Islamic fundamentalism, which also represents a horror for the people of the world, not least of which is the half of humanity that is female. We burned the flag because we have taken responsibility to bring forward another way, the REAL solution to a world of oppression and exploitation—revolution and the kind of communism made possible by the new synthesis brought forward by Bob Avakian.

Every major media outlet had to run a story on the flag burning. Instantly, it was everywhere. New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox News, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Mother Jones, USA Today, Business Insider, you name it—there it was. And even though some of this coverage repeated police lies, it was clear: There is a communist force in the belly of the beast of imperialist Amerikkka, right in front of Trump’s goons and gangsters, with the strategic confidence and organization to burn their flag in their faces and openly declare intent to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. Revolution Club members were especially happy to see the story in Al Jazeera, which is not only international press but has a wide readership in the Middle East—one of the places that most desperately and acutely needs this revolution. Our action was showing clearly that there is a third thing out there other than what BA pointed to as “Jihad on one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other.” (from BAsics 1:28)

Impact-Accumulate-Impact

After 16 members of the Revolution Club were illegally arrested and (finally) arraigned and released for sending that powerful message to the world, they made a proper exit from the RNC, marching and leading others to march straight back into that scene with the message and the leadership for an actual revolution. We closed the RNC out with one last crowd-splitting, re-polarizing round of marching, speeches from Carl Dix, Sunsara Taylor, and Joey Johnson, and agitation from the Revolution Club.

Some Trump supporters tried to sneak up behind us, and others chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” But as the Revolution Club agitated about what that crazed lynch mob really represents, they lost their initiative. The Trump supporters had no real answer to the indictment against them—that they stand for slavery, genocide, and war, and that they laugh off torture and the misery of the billions of people on this planet. Others in the crowd were moved to come up and hold our signs, belt out the chants, and position themselves between members of the Revolution Club and their potential attackers.

Among other things, Joey Johnson declared—for everyone to hear—what his inspiration for burning the flag in 1984, again in 1989, and now in 2016 at the RNC was. And he talked about scientific internationalism, the new synthesis of communism, and the leadership of Bob Avakian.

As we were summing up our time in Cleveland, one of the Revolution Club members, who is Black, said she had spent her whole life since childhood in fear of the exact people we were confronting (armed white supremacists). And she talked about how she found the strength and courage to go right up in their faces with the truth. A male revolutionary told a story from jail: the men who were arrested were in holding, singing songs to keep their spirits up, when all of a sudden, the women came marching in formation, still in cuffs, loudly singing, “Hell you talmbout,” in bold defiance of their arrest! He said, “We thought, damn, that is how you do that.”

Learn more about BA

Many young revolutionaries expressed how they knew that, without the revolutionary leadership we have in Avakian, the RCP, the Six Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the Message from the RCP Central Committee, they would be doing something totally different with their lives. Now, they said, they are determined to return to their respective cities on fire, and determined to get more scientific about revolution and communism. We inspired and were inspired by each other, found forte in each other, and left with a renewed energy to dig deeply into the new synthesis and throw ourselves into further advancing the world revolution. We are the revcoms... MIGHTY MIGHTY revcoms, we’re fighting for a new world, and hell bent on winning.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/hillary-clintons-crimes-against-children-and-families-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Check It Out on revcom.us/Revolution:

Hillary Clinton's Crimes Against Children and Families

July 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Today’s theme—aka sick lie—at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia celebrates Hillary Clinton for “A lifetime of fighting for children and families.”

The reality? A lifetime of impoverishing, incarcerating, and deporting people, and unleashing police to terrorize children and the people.

In a recent audio clip on the elections, Bob Avakian exposes Hillary Clinton’s claim that “it’s always been about kids,” as her latest ad puts it. He points out that from 1992-2000, as a key player in her husband’s administration, Hillary Clinton backed “anti-crime” laws, mainly targeting Black and Brown people, that were just as vicious and aggressive as anything put forward by right-wing Republican politicians—including the infamous lynch-mob mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.

Hillary Clinton backed slashing social services for oppressed people, like welfare and public housing. Thanks in part to these measures, over four million Black children now live in poverty and hunger. Thousands were evicted by draconian public housing laws.

Bill and Hillary Clinton aggressively increased the use of the death penalty and gutted civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. Hillary Clinton backed the administration’s war on immigrants and “Operation Gatekeeper” militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. She played an active role in the administration’s intensification of the criminalization of whole sections of the people, especially inner city youth, and the near doubling of the prison population, and the escalation of police brutality, terror, and murder.

In 1996 Hillary Clinton, when campaigning for Bill Clinton’s re-election, justified these atrocities by vilifying Black youth: “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘superpredators.’ No conscience. No empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

Has she changed? No. Just this past May, Hillary Clinton supported the Obama administration’s murderous mass deportations of immigrants who came here from Mexico and Central America, including, yes, children. She said the U.S. has “to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay.... They should be sent back.”

Check out the following from Bob Avakian and revcom.us for the truth about Hillary Clinton and children.

Bob Avakian on Trump, Clinton, “Lesser Evils,” and Revolution

Trump v. Clinton: Criminal Choices of a Criminal System

Top Government Official Admitted: The “War on Drugs” IS a War on the People

“Where Is a Concentration Camp ‘Rebranded’ a Licensed Child Care Center? Answer: USA”

The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer, by Bob Avakian
(This analysis was written by Bob Avakian in November 1998 during Bill Clinton’s presidency; it remains relevant and important today.)

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/hey-sarah-silverman-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Hey, Sarah Silverman—Wanna Know What Is REALLY Ridiculous?

July 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Actually? When you think about it, there was no end of really ridiculous shit going on last night, spilling out all over the place. Like telling people to get behind and support a repeat war criminal and mass incarcerator in the name of "being realistic." Or like thinking that anything good could come out of a party that is desperately and openly fighting to present itself as the best defender and enforcer for the American empire. Or Cory Booker and then Michele Obama casting American history—from its genocidal beginnings to the genocidal program of mass incarceration today, from its original invasion of this land to its invasions all over the planet, murdering millions and going right down to the "fight against terrorism" today, endorsed by BOTH parties, which has laid further waste to the Middle East and North Africa (and done nothing but stoke "terrorism")—as some kind of march to freedom from the "greatest country on earth." What is ridiculous is talking this shit as if this country wasn't built on exploitation and plunder... and as if everything it does, here and around the world, is not based on defending and extending the empire it built based on that.

What's maybe not so ridiculous as it is really kind of sad but also disgusting, is watching people like you who were once maybe striving for something better reduced to shilling for cold criminals with good manners and decent acting chops.

What would not be ridiculous at all but really quite important would be for those who were once "Bernie people" to refuse the illegitimate framework that makes you choose between an outright fascist and an oh-so-accomplished war criminal and mass incarcerator. What would NOT be ridiculous and instead pretty serious would be if those bitterly disappointed people who refused to swallow the bullshit continued to follow their convictions out to where they lead. What would NOT be ridiculous, but actually very important, would be those people who were used and played and are now being insulted checking out where the injustices, inequities and crimes that drew them to Bernie Sanders actually come from, and how they are built into this system. What would not be ridiculous but something that would bear on the whole future of the planet would be those people, and millions like them, finding out what an ACTUAL revolution would mean and what it would take and how it could be possible. And what definitely would NOT be ridiculous at all but in fact is the very next step would be those people holding onto their best and highest aspirations and on that basis getting into the work of the leader who has actually done the real work on all these questions, Bob Avakian.

There really is a basis for meeting the needs of humanity... there is a blueprint for a revolutionary society that could set about overcoming all exploitation and oppression... and there is a strategy for doing this. What would be ridiculous, and actually pretty unconscionable, would be refusing to check this out.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/revolution-club-protest-wednesday-july-27-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

July 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

For immediate Release
26 July 2016
Contact Revolution Club Media 646 450 4701
RevClubMedia@gmail.com
revcom.us

Revolution Club Rally Wednesday 1:00 pm
STOP Police Murder and Terror!
Reject the criminal choices of the criminal system!
We need to overthrow, not vote for, this system!

What: Protest Rally sponsored by the Revolution Club
When: Wednesday, July 27 1:00 pm
Where: Second Bank of the United States, Chestnut St. between 4th & 5th Street, Philadelphia

The Revolution Club, the revolutionary forces who burned the American flag at the gates of the Republican National Convention where 17 were arrested, will hold a bold political action on Wednesday in Philadelphia during the DNC.

They have released a flyer which reads:

“Hillary Clinton: Drenched with the Blood of Millions.

Hillary Clinton's concern for Black and other oppressed people is as fraudulent as Trump University. Hillary was part of the Clinton administration that 'ended welfare as we know it,' put 100,000 more cops on the street, militarized the US/Mexico border, murdered 500,000 Iraqi children thru sanctions, and more. Hillary has carried out war crimes in Iraq, Libya, Palestine, and beyond.

We need to overthrow, not vote for, a system that gives 'choices' like fascist Trump and war-criminal Clinton. We need an actual revolution. To make this revolution we need to learn from and follow Bob Avakian. Bob Avakian (BA) is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new synthesis of communism. As you get into BA at the website, www.revcom.us, join the Revolution Club in fighting the power and transforming the people for revolution right now.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/449/sights-and-sounds-from-streets-of-philly-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

Sights and Sounds From the Streets of Philly
Protesting Police Murder... Defending LGBT People... Raising Sights to Revolution

Updated July 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention...

Protesting Police Murder of Black People

March picking up steam as protesters make it to Race Street pic.twitter.com/xbLZ9kGjRr

— Aubrey Whelan (@aubreyjwhelan) July 26, 2016

Hundreds marched through the streets demanding an end to police murder, and freedom for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Chants included “Don’t vote for Hillary! She’s killingBblack people!” And “Who do you protect? Not us! Who do you serve? Not us!” As the march neared Wells Fargo Center where the Democratic National Convention is taking place, the marchers were joined by supporters of Bernie Sanders who had walked out of the convention after Hillary Clinton was nominated.

A “Wall of Love” to Protect LGBT People

Hundreds of people formed a “Wall of Love” to protect LGBT people from lunatic fascists from the Westboro Baptist Church. The Westboro fascists were at the Mazzoni Center, which provides healthcare services to the LGBT community. Defenders of the center carried signs ridiculing Christian fundamentalism, and chanted “Fascists go home!”

The Revolution Club in the Streets of Philly

The Revolution Club was in the streets of Philadelphia Tuesday, lifting people's sights to revolution—NOT choosing a "lesser evil" of a criminal system. Above: In front of City Hall.

Update: OUTERNATIONAL at @UndrgroundArts concert...Protests, Flag Burnings Into the Night

The revolutionary band Outernational joined Rockers Galore and #FarrLife! for an @UndrgroundArts “HILLARY CLINTON AFTER PARTY” concert.  One twitter review: 

Righteous! @OUTERNATIONAL_ was last night @UndrgroundArts #FightThePower #DNCinPHL #REALRevolution

Protests, Flag Burnings:

During the day Tuesday a wide variety of protests were scheduled, including against police murder and for freeing political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, in support of Palestine, and to end the war on drugs and legalize marijuana. Many protesters, reportedly joined by Bernie Sanders supporters in some cases, stayed in the streets until late into the evenings, with marches becoming rowdier, and a number ultimately converging near the Wells Fargo Convention Center.

At one protest, American and Israeli flags were burned, reportedly generating sharp controversy and debate among the crowd. CBS reported, “people gathered around the burning flag are heard chanting, ‘Feel the Bern!’ Meanwhile, an Israeli flag was also torched... Demonstrators around her chanted, ‘Long live the intifada...’”

Day 3

Stop Police Murder and Terror! PROTEST...Hillary Clinton: Drenched with the Blood of Millions:

Today the Revolution Club staged a rolling protest march through downtown Philadelphia, stopping at street corners to rally and speak out. They denounced “this whole rotten-ass illegitimate system which wantonly murders our people and just this morning let off the remaining killer cops who were on trial for the murder of #FreddieGray,” distributed many hundreds of copies of the message “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” promoted the leadership of Bob Avakian, and called on people to come to a showing of clips from BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!.

All told, hundreds stopped at one point or another to listen. At one point the Revolution Club—in formation—came on stage and addressed a well-attended street corner rally of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein (Green Party) supporters. Noche Diaz spoke, exposing the Sanders program, calling for real revolution, and promoting the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/450/all-charges-dropped-against-pigs-who-murdered-freddie-gray-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

All Charges Dropped Against Pigs Who Murdered Freddie Gray
A Prosecutor's Revelations... a SYSTEM of IN-Justice

July 27, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Today, Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby announced that she was dropping all remaining charges against pigs that murdered Freddie Gray. Four of them have already been tried without any convictions. Now they will all walk free.

Mosby’s explanation for dropping the charges was—in large part—that police sabotaged the case and that there was nothing she could do about it. That is true. And it only makes the decision to let these murdering pigs walk all the more outrageous and unacceptable. And it is only part of the story...

Revelations from Marilyn Mosby

Freddie Gray

Marilyn Mosby said there were police “interrogations that were conducted without asking the most poignant questions.” She said there were “lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter-investigation to disprove the state’s case by not executing search warrants pertaining to text messages among officers involved in the case.” She said police “[created] videos to disprove the state’s case without our knowledge.”

Police came up with supposed investigation notes to claim the medical examiner did not rule Freddie Gray’s death a homicide. This, despite the fact that the examiner insisted in court that she never ruled this as anything but a homicide. Mosby said these were “notes that were drafted after the case was launched” and were provided to the police lawyers “months prior to turning them over to the state.”

Mosby said, “Whether investigating, interrogating, testifying, corroborating or even complying with the state, we’ve all bore witness to an inherent bias that is a direct result of when police police themselves.” And she said that under the current “criminal justice system, we could try this case, a hundred times, and cases just like it, and we would still end up with the same result.”

All of this reveals, once again, that there has been NO JUSTICE for Freddie Gray, and for that matter, hundreds like him.

It must be added that after exposing how police sabotaged these cases, Marilyn Mosby listed reforms that she claimed would produce real change. She announced new body and truck cameras for Baltimore police. But how many times have police murdered people with cameras on—or mysteriously not functioning? She announced “new” rules that police have to seatbelt people. But those rules were already basically in effect when police murdered Freddie Gray. She announced conversations and commissions. But over and over those commissions do nothing but enable police murder.

And there is more to the story. The police were not alone in ensuring that there would be no justice for Freddie Gray.

A Judge, a Trial... A SYSTEM Working Like It Is Supposed to Work

After police murdered Freddie Gray in April of last year, video of the pigs brutalizing him went viral, as did outrage. Most importantly, people in Baltimore—especially angry, bold youths—rose up. And even as the system came down on them, others took to the streets in protest. All this went on while exposés, uprisings, and rebellions had put a spotlight on the epidemic of police murder and terror in America. That anger and outrage, along with the ugly nature of the U.S. being exposed to millions, had a lot to do with major players in the ruling class deciding to press charges against six police involved in Freddie Gray’s murder. In announcing the charges, Mosby said, “To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America. I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace.’ Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man.”

With the eyes of the world on the trials of these murdering police, the powers that be put Judge Barry Williams in charge. The media pumped out major “background” stories telling people that because of his “investigation and prosecution of police misconduct cases for the U.S. Justice Department” Williams was “uniquely prepared” to ensure justice in these cases. The system’s “commentators” touted him as “representative of the community” because he is Black.

If Barry Williams represents a model judge by this system’s standards, then judge the system by how those trials went. Williams broke the cases into six different trials—obscuring the reality that the whole gang of pigs worked together to murder Freddie Gray. In rulings on admissibility of evidence, and in his verdicts, Williams accepted the most absurd excuses for each and every action taken by the police who were complicit in the murder of Freddie Gray. In the case of Caesar Goodson, the pig who drove the van that took Freddie Gray on the “rough ride,” Williams ruled there was “no evidence” presented that Goodson “knew or should have known of the acute distress Mr. Gray may have been in at that time.”

And the prosecution was also part of blowing the case. Marilyn Mosby herself exposed that the police “investigation” was all about covering up and justifying the murder of Freddie Gray. Yet and still, the prosecution relied on pigs—even pigs that were part of murdering Freddie Gray, to present the bulk of what was supposedly the prosecution’s case.

A world of evidence could have been revealed by people in the community about the actions of the murdering police. Any Black person in the city of Baltimore knows, and could have told the court, what a rough ride is, and that they happen all the time. As it went down, the judge ruled that there wasn’t evidence presented that Freddie Gray was subjected to a “rough ride,” or even that there is such a thing as rough rides!

In the wake of outrage and uprising, this system made the trial of Freddie Gray’s murderers a showpiece for their “justice” system. What was revealed is that there is NO PLACE FOR THE TRUTH OR JUSTICE in this system.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/450/american-flag-burns-at-dnc-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

American Flag Burns at DNC! Carl Dix, Joey Johnson, Revolution Club Declare: "AMERICAN LIVES ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES"

July 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

At 6 pm tonight, notorious flag burner Joey Johnson, revolutionary communist leader Carl Dix, and the Revolution Club marched in formation and chanted up to Broad St. & Pattison Ave., right outside Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Convention Center, on the final night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Rain had drenched Philadelphia earlier in the day, but the rev coms had pledged that after burning an American flag at the RNC in Cleveland, they were going to burn one here in Philadelphia at the DNC—"come rain or shine."

Before a crowd of over 100 activists, journalists, reactionaries and others, they spoke powerfully about how this flag embodies towering crimes of empire: "America Was NEVER Great." They spoke to the reality that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are "criminal choices of a criminal system that must be overthrown." They declared, as Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution, says, "AMERICAN LIVES ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES." One Revolution Club member said: "We aren't here to fix this system, we need to overthrow it, and we're followers of the most radical revolutionary leader on the planet today—Bob Avakian."

Then after their short rally, with the Revolution Club forming a perimeter, they lit the American flag. As flames shot up, cheers and furious chants went up: "Burn the rag, burn the rag, burn the rag!" Soon the flag was tattered, shriveled, and burned. It was a raucous scene, with the revolutionaries continuing to agitate and maintain their ranks in the face of pushing and shoving by media to get pictures—and some reactionaries trying to disrupt the protest. Carl Dix led the Revolution Club and others in chants and call-and-response, including "It's time, it's time, to get organized, for an actual revolution!" After the action, the Revolution Club marched again, chanting and in formation, holding up the remains of the American rag.

Then they got down and talked with those who had gathered to bear witness and support, making connections and getting into what a real revolution is.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/450/from-its-all-about-the-children-to-endless-war-for-empire-in-four-days-en.html

Revolution #449 July 25, 2016

From "It's All About the Children" to Endless War for Empire... in Four Days

The Democrats Make the Case for Hillary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief—But Where Will the Bernie People Go?

July 29, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Give the Democratic Party its due. In four days they took you on a seamless—if bumpy—ride from “Feel the Bern...” and “It’s all about the children...” and “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party”... to frothing-at-the-mouth “USA! USA!” A declaration of endless war to maintain the American empire, to enforce this world of grinding exploitation and oppression of billions—and especially exploitation and oppression of the children of the world. They gave you a pageant to present Hillary Clinton as the best commander-in-chief for that empire.

On Wednesday—Day 3—you had the hyper-patriotic pro-war ranting of former CIA Director Leon Panetta. During his speech, Democratic Party officials literally shut off the lights to black out “No more war” protests by some Bernie Sanders supporters in sections of the hall.

Marine General Yells for Blood

Read the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America online

Read On the Strategy for Revolution

Read On the Possibility of Revolution

In the fall of 2012, Bob Avakian gave a series of talks in different cities. This is a film of one of those talks.

Find out more and buy film here

WATCH THE FILM NOW!

Then, leading right up to Hillary Clinton’s speech, you had a remarkable appearance by recently retired Marine General John Allen. He declared: “With [Hillary Clinton] as our commander-in-chief, America will continue to lead in this volatile world... Our armed forces will be stronger. They will have the finest weapons and equipment. They will have the support of the American people, and the American military will continue to be THE shining example of America at our very best.”

Allen is a former commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He played a key role in wars that have been defined by torture chambers like Abu Ghraib, terror in the form of “night raids” and random murder of innocent civilians, rape of women, bombs and drone strikes that keep millions of people living in a state of constant fear. These are wars for empire, “justified” by lies about “your safety,” about “bringing democracy.”

Important Protests Against the War Mongering

It is very important that here, too, as with Panetta the night before, people on the floor chanted against this militaristic madness, only to be continually drowned out with the NAZI-style “USA, USA” chants and whited out by most of the media. These “USA” chants, by the way, used to be virtually copyrighted by open reactionaries but, in a big sign of the times, now fit right in with the 2016 version of the Democratic Party.

In fact, this whole evening led Van Jones, the self-styled representative of the “left wing” of the Democratic Party on CNN, to happily proclaim that the Democrats were “owning patriotism, owning veterans and owning faith”—as if that was something good and positive! Jones also tried to console the still-angry former Bernie Sanders followers with worthless reassurances that since Hillary Clinton’s speech “included” the demands of movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, that showed progress. In fact, contrary to Jones’s bullshit, her speech did NOT do this—but even if it had, so the fuck what? Lip service is bullshit when the day before her speech all charges were dropped in the case of the murder by Baltimore police of Freddie Gray—just the latest in a long line of cases of NO JUSTICE.

But back to this ranting former general. The fact that Hillary Clinton picked him to give the speech setting up her acceptance speech speaks volumes about not just campaign tactics, but what she is preparing the “base” of the Democratic Party for. Allen is on the bloody leading edge of ratcheting up the hellish cycle of war and terror between Western imperialism and fundamentalist Islamic Jihad. In March of last year, Allen testified before Congress that “There’s no exit strategy for this” war—and he didn’t mean that as a bad thing. One Democratic Party congressman recently said of Allen: “Once we get entrenched in the manner that the General is describing, we will literally never get out.”

Making the Case as a Rational—That Is, Cold-Blooded—Imperialist

All this literally set the stage for Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech. In the most important part of her speech, Clinton insisted that she is the best-equipped candidate to be commander-in-chief of the army of an empire facing crises around the world.

Speaking of a military that has murdered millions—some 200,000 innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II... some three million in Indochina... over a million in Iraq—Hillary Clinton declared, “Our military is a national treasure.”

Clinton belittled Trump as someone who “is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Stop for a moment and ask yourself this: Why would anyone who had any concern for the future of humanity want to argue they were the BEST equipped to have their finger on the U.S. nuclear arsenal that could wipe out human life??—to hold the world hostage to that kind of destruction? And what does it mean if you start thinking about the world in terms of who should have the power to do that?

Clinton insisted she would be a stronger commander-in-chief than Trump: “America’s strength doesn’t come from lashing out. Strength relies on smarts, judgment, cool resolve, and the precise and strategic application of power. That’s the kind of commander-in-chief I pledge to be.” For those familiar with The Godfather movies, this is merely an argument that she should be cast as the cool murderer Michael and not the violent but ultimately foolish hothead Sonny.

Hillary Clinton can back that up with her record as a world-class war criminal within the Bill Clinton administrations and as secretary of state for Obama. She is as rabid a cheerleader for Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinians as there is in the U.S. ruling class. The “allies” she brags about lining up are a gallery of the most oppressive regimes on the planet.

She played a singular role in pushing for the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya that effectively overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi that got in the way of the U.S. and the West. The result: Libya is in utter shambles, torn apart by reactionary warlords and is a breeding ground for ISIS. Some 400,000 Libyans have fled their homes since the U.S. and its NATO allies overthrew Gaddafi. (see “No—It’s NOT OUR EMPIRE! A Revolutionary Response to Hillary Clinton’s Anti-Trump Speech“)

This is not because Hillary Clinton is necessarily particularly vicious as an individual. She may be just as loving as her slick video tribute made her out to be and her daughter claims she is—or she may not—but the hard truth is that this empire requires that those who rise within it be as ruthless in their job as Hillary Clinton has proven herself to be.  This is a worldwide system of exploitation and it requires huge and deadly military force to enforce that plunder and parasitism and all the oppressive social relations that go with it.

A Moment of Truth

There is a moment of truth here. The ruling class has given you a “choice” in this election between a fascist lunatic and a past, present, and future world-class war criminal. Choosing from those “alternatives” is unconscionable, and will end in complicity with the crimes that either of these monsters will commit.

The very fact that these are the choices being put forward by this system as legitimate tells you a great deal about how this whole system is IL-legitimate. This is not a system that we should be working to reform or tweak or move a tiny centimeter this way or that. We need to set our sights on human emancipation, all over this planet, and that requires getting rid of this system.

No, there is not a shortcut to a society on the road to human emancipation. There is no painless way to get there, no way to wield the instruments given you by this ruling class to lead to liberation—not when they possess the bottom-line monopoly on force. They use those instruments of real dictatorship now for even relatively peaceful demonstrations against police brutality or Occupy or any number of things, and they would ratchet that up exponentially, as they have in the past, in the face of any real challenge.

There is no shortcut... but there IS a path. There is a real leader, Bob Avakian, who has qualitatively further forged a scientific analysis of why this society is the way it is, and who’s hammered out a real vision and very viable model for how a society on the road to human emancipation would actually work. This is a leader who has spent decades of his life working on how ALL people all around the world could emancipate themselves as part of emancipating humanity... a leader of tremendous principle who tells people the truth... he has developed incredibly advanced theory while never losing a deep understanding of and connection to the conditions of those who catch the most hell in our society... a leader who has proven through sacrifice, determination and dedication that he won’t betray the interests of the oppressed and has taken responsibility to advance the understanding needed to make an ACTUAL revolution and bring into being a whole different society.

If you have not checked out the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, you don’t know what is ACTUALLY possible. If you haven’t looked into our “Statement on Strategy” and “On the Possibility of Revolution,” you have no idea how the strengths of the enemy could be transformed into weaknesses... and how thousands could influence millions today in preparation for leading them when crisis deepens and the all-out struggle for power comes on the agenda...preparing for, and bringing closer, the time for an ACTUAL revolution. If you haven’t got into this, you actually don’t know what could really be done. And if you haven’t seen this leader for yourself, on video—in dialogue with Cornel West, or in his speech Revolution—Nothing Less! or the Revolution Talk—you are missing out on something that could not just change your life, but answer the most agonizing questions before us about who we are, who we should follow and what kind of world is possible and should be fought for.

Both these conventions made clear that whoever wins, they really have nothing to offer beyond a future of war and repression and of worshipping the enforcers of that, a future of ever-worsening inequalities all over the planet, a future of horrors and ecological disasters. Doesn’t this situation demand you seriously grapple with this leadership and what he’s brought forward?

If you are serious about an actual revolution, you have to seriously get into Bob Avakian (BA)