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Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

NYC: March to Trump Tower, Drive Them From Power

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The message of July 15 resounded off the walls and streets of Manhattan, reaching, shaking up, and challenging people. The marchers came from all walks of life, with a wide range of perspectives and outrages, and a common determination to drive out the regime.

The day kicked off with a dozen or so people who had been part of 100 Hours of NO! In the Name of Humanity, We Indict FOX FASCIST NEWS. They marched through a street fair, down 6th Avenue, chanting, “No pussy grabbing, no patriarchy, no fascist USA;” and “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” They met up with people from all over the NYC area near Trump Tower. Across the street a few dozen fascists screamed insults and chanted “USA! USA!” and “Build That Wall.”

Trump Tower was the starting point where people gathered holding NO! signs, Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Jay Walker of Gays against Guns, speaking for the Rise and Resist organization, spoke as people readied to march. As people stepped off to march, the crowd grew to close to 500 people. What compelled them to be there? A white woman in her 70s said, “This is fascism—another Hitler, which means deporting people, no economy, martial law, Gestapo everywhere. My friends don’t see it so strongly. But my family came over here [from Europe] before World War 2 and they described what it was like. That has really shaped me and how I see things now.”

A Latina in her early 20s, said, “As a woman of color, this regime directly affects me and my family—mass deportations, attacks on women’s rights and access to healthcare. But it’s not like my problems are worse than those of people who are cut off from their families because of the Muslim ban. All suffering is equal!”

An immigrant woman talked about overcoming fear to be there: “Even if we’re not citizens we still have the right to speak out, so we have to. Donald Trump opposes everything I teach my children about what is right and what is wrong. Every single thing. Today is small, but we represent millions who couldn’t come, or who were afraid to come.”

A young activist with ACT UP said he was protesting the cuts to a lifesaving program that provides medicine to people with HIV and provides care for people living in the global south. “We are protesting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and cuts to Medicaid which would leave large numbers of HIV-positive without having access to lifesaving medications.”

A young Arab-American, who has been reading Bob Avakian (BA), said, “Trump represents the potential for fascism with all that implies. The glorification of ignorance, the attacks on science, the violence and hatred towards the oppressed that will be much more prevalent. And all the progress of the last decades will be obliterated. And all that’s needed is for people to do nothing—they don’t have to support Trump or like Trump, they just have to stand back and it WILL become fascist. So people need to organize under the leadership of a vanguard party, which to me is the RCP, because BA’s work has done so much to bring forward how the world could be different, like it shows in the new Constitution. That Constitution is so important for people to see. But inaction is implicit consent. So once people realize what’s on the line, we can get the numbers to drive him out.”

There were college students, part of summer programs in NYC. There was a middle-aged steelworker union rep from Wisconsin visiting NYC with his family. He grabbed a NO! sign, and joined the rally. Most of his concerns have to do with the conditions of the other workers, and how things are getting worse. He was opposed to everything Trump is doing except... around trade, where he thought maybe it would do some good.

A young Black man said he was stunned when Jeff Sessions was made attorney general, “I mean Jeff Sessions? A man like that?” Waving his hand towards the march: “You see this, every color and nation and age? This is a cross-section of America, this is our strength.”

People marched from Trump Tower to Broadway and 48th street on the edge of Times Square for a rally with speakers and performers, including a representative of ACT UP New York, the Raging Grannies, Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, a dramatic reading of the July 15 statement—leading the crowd in calling out They Must Go! Noche Diaz of the New York Revolution Club read a statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party. The speech from Refuse Fascism was a highlight of the rally; giving people a sense of purpose as they took to the streets to bring the message to many more. Then, the march headed downtown, stopping at the intersection where a white racist who had come to NYC to kill Black people murdered Timothy Caughman, a Black man, on March 20. Hawk spoke to the significance of that murder, and the connection to Trump, and there was a 10-second moment of silence. A smaller crew took the march all the way down to Union Square, reaching parts of the city with more intense support for the message—fists in the air, with a final sendoff rally.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/la-july-15-protest-in-face-of-fascist-thugs-hundred-rally-and-march-humanity-first-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Los Angeles July 15 Protest:

In the Face of Fascist Thugs Yelling "USA, USA, USA"—
Hundreds Rally and March to say "HUMANITY FIRST!"

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Hollywood and Highland, the site of the Trump Hollywood Star, to rally and march against the Fascist Trump/Pence regime. Fascist thugs came to contest the march, to try to intimidate and silence protesters, and to “defend” the Trump Star. They were not successful. People gathered for two rallies and marched through the street, shutting down Hollywood Blvd., powerfully demanding the Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!

At rallies before and after the march, a broad range of speakers drove home why the Trump/Pence regime must be driven from power. Isabel Cardenas (Salvadoran-American activist and co-initiator of Refuse Fascism), GrayWolf (assistant director of Southern California Chapter of AIM), Alex Sanchez (Defend Movement), Crystal Keshawarz (Muslim-American activist), Reverend Frank Alton (Cathedral Center of St. Paul), Ernestine Henning (supervisor [ret.] AME church), Josiah Gonzalez (California Freedom Coalition), Tala Deloria (spokesperson for the Revolution Club Los Angeles), Perry Hoberman (representing for Refuse Fascism Los Angeles), and Steve Gregoropoulos (musician) spoke, and one sang, exposing the crimes of the Trump/Pence regime and the urgency of taking to the streets to demand this fascist regime be ousted.

Over 400 protesters came out into the streets to express their outrage. While numerous organizations were represented, the overwhelming majority of people were individuals—not under any banner, but indignant at the regime and the direction of the country. Representatives from the LGBTQ community, science lovers and teachers, members of labor unions, members of religious organizations, members of the American Indian Movement, Aztec dancers, students and youth, families, elderly people, homeless people, LGBTQ individuals, Black and Brown people, punks, rappers, and artists turned out. About 18 different news and press organizations came to cover the event.

People came from all over California, and people from all over the world were represented. Lots of people came out because they saw NO! posters across the city, saw the event on Facebook, heard about it on Pacifica Radio, or received a phone call from Refuse Fascism. Students from a liberal arts college in Hollywood saw the poster for the July 15 protest, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to their friends who came to the protest. People came from East LA, San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, Antelope Valley, Joshua Tree, and San Clemente. People from Canada, Australia, South Korea, and different African countries bought NO! T-shirts and donated. Someone from Australia said, “This is really great, do you think that even though we are from Australia that we could participate and be involved there?” Tourists from Germany, a whole family, read the panels that indict the outrages of the Trump/Pence regime. The mother explained to her daughter in German and in English about the Trump/Pence attacks on women’s rights, pointing to the Refuse Fascism panel that powerfully describes this. A volunteer for Refuse Fascism said to them, “Trump is like Hitler,” and they said, “Yes, we agree.” This family joined the protest and was moved by it all.

About 80 fascists came to disrupt the rally and march. They assaulted two individuals, and harassed and attempted to intimidate many others. They tried to disrupt the chants, shove cameras and megaphones in people’s faces, and rip up posters and materials. Some spectators were indifferent and stayed on the sidelines, while others, once they understood what the rally was about, stood up and confronted the fascists and didn’t allow them to intimidate and disrupt the rally. Some people asked about the banner of the Portland Heroes—the two men who were killed and one who was injured by a white-supremacist neo-Nazi Trump supporter when they stopped him from harassing a young woman wearing a hijab and her Black friend. After hearing about the courageous action taken by these heroes, these people summoned their courage and joined the march. As hard as the fascists tried they were not able to shut us down. There was a moment where they were chanting “USA, USA, USA” the crowd responded with “HUMANITY FIRST, HUMANITY FIRST” and this made the fascists turn strikingly silent and the moment had a very profound effect on everyone involved.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/july-15-san-francisco-hundreds-rally-and-march-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

San Francisco July 15 Protest:

Hundreds Rally at UN Plaza and March Through the Mission

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Over 300 people joined the “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!” rally at the UN Plaza. Then about 240 people marched, starting on Market Street, the main street in this city, and then going into the Mission district along Mission Street to 24th.

A range of people came to take part, support, speak, and march. One group came holding a homemade banner saying “Health Care for All—Leave no one behind.” People came from around the Bay Area—from seeing the event on Facebook, some students from SF State and UC Berkeley. A few individuals from Indivisible chapters were there. A number of people on the Refuse Fascism email list who had not been part of other things came out.

The Colectiva de Mujeres from the SF Mission, a grouping of women immigrants, came in a contingent of over a dozen people, spoke at the rally, and marched. Alex U. Inn, a grand marshal of the SF PRIDE parade, spoke and called on everyone to defy the Trump agenda. Rev. J. Alfred Smith Jr. of Allen Temple Baptist Church in East Oakland, powerfully called out the Trump regime as fascist and passionately called for resistance. The El/La para Translatinas organization from the Mission spoke movingly of the situation of trans people and immigrants. Sharif Zakout, the lead organizer of Arab Resource Organizing Center, spoke of the effect of the Muslim ban and made the point that the refugees who are being banned are largely forced from their homes because of wars waged or backed by the U.S. Longtime people’s lawyer Tony Serra urged the crowd to “resist, reject and repudiate all that Trump stands for, in every fashion that you are capable of. This is the struggle of the century....” (See excerpts from some of the statements, on this page.) One of the organizers read a powerful poem about confronting that this is in fact fascism. The salute “To the Brave Dreamers and Fighters of July 15” from the Revolutionary Communist Party was read with passion.

The rally was opened by a powerful reading of the Refuse Fascism call, and closed with a reading of the message from Refuse Fascism to these rallies. The march was loud, and the chants rocked the streets of San Francisco. The Brass Liberation Orchestra added a whole dimension. Many people who were marching in their first action with Refuse Fascism helped lead chants. The whole thing had a spirit of “It’s up to us” to drive out this regime. Everyone who was there was invited to come to the next meeting of Bay Area Refuse Fascism.

The alt-right forces who had threatened on social media to come did show up, but in small numbers. Three of them were there to film the rally and march. A couple others seemed to be there to assist in that. They did not attempt to disrupt. There was also a small grouping of UC Berkeley College Republicans, who just observed.

The following are excerpts from some of the statements made at the UN Plaza rally:

La Colectiva de la Mujeres:
“We have to unite. We have to unite to say: No Ban, No Wall. We have to unite to say we are coming together to get Trump out. We need a different future. A future that is worthy of human beings, a future for humanity. No more chains. No more intimidation. We have to stand up strong, united, and fight until we drive this guy and the whole regime out. We have to overcome fear and fight so that future generations can see that we have fought for them.”

Johanna, from El/La para TransLatinas:
“As Trans Latinas, we are immigrants. They say that we are a danger. But we are the ones that are endangered. We come here to work and we are being denied our basic rights. We demand that international law be respected. We demand full rights for the Latino community and all immigrants in this country. We come here to work as women. We don’t want to live in a situation where our life expectancy is 35 years. We want a full life and to live to an old age and live life fully.”

Alex U. Inn, 2017 San Francisco Pride March Grand Marshall:
“There is a small window of time, people. If we do not act on that, we have lost the power. Our voices, our action, everything in you as a human being today is what you need to be holding onto and saying I am not intimidated. I am not fucking going anywhere, and you are going to hear my voice, you are going to feel my power. You are someone that I will take from power and I will be in your face to do it.”

J. Tony Serra, people’s attorney:
“At no time in the last 50 or 60 years, though I have participated as a lawyer in many civil rights issues, has there been greater challenge than presently. We are engaged in a struggle to preserve the soul of the nation. Trump has declared a war against the poor, the working class, and the immigrants. Trump has declared a war against race, against religion.... The concept we all must embrace is resist. Resist his racism, resist his religious bigotry. This country does not belong to the wealthy, the white, and the Christian. Resist, reject, repudiate all that Trump stands for in any fashion that you are capable of. This is the struggle of this century. The soul of our democracy, the soul of our constitutional liberties, the soul of the great majority of persons is in jeopardy. Time will not reverse itself. We must reject the trajectory. So resist, my friends and we will prevail.”

Rev. J. Alfred Smith Jr., Senior Pastor, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland
“Folks seem to be very conversant about the atrocities that are multiplying daily but they have not in many cases put a face on this. There’s been an elephant in the room, and nobody wants to name the elephant. Today, that elephant has been named many times, but in case any of us are slow in seeing the picture, the face of the elephant in the room, all we have to do is connect the many dots that describe this elephant. We’ve heard that this is an autocratic, authoritarian regime that rules by fear: that’s a dot. This is a racist, white supremacist regime that promotes state-sponsored persecution, discrimination, and violence against people of color, particularly Black lives, Brown people, our Native people. It has perpetrated this against immigrants, against Muslims, against LGBTQI sisters and brothers, against women. That just about includes all of us. Against the poor, against those that are vulnerable. This regime has assaulted science, has raped the environment. This regime is taking sections of government that are supposed to be led by civilians and turning them over to military generals. These are all dots. Many other dots have been identified. If we would just connect the dots we would see a three dimensional, panoramic view of the ugly face of fascism. An organizer of the protest asked me, ‘Are you going to use the F-word?’ I’m pretty free but when he said the F-word I was taken aback. I said, ‘No I don’t think I’m going to use that word,’ though some other speakers have used it today. But he wasn’t talking about that F-word. He was talking about fascism. My sisters and brothers we are going to have to confront fascism. We’re going to have to fight fascism. We’re going to have to refuse fascism. We’re going to have to resist fascism.”

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Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Chicago July 15: Rally and March of Hundreds in Downtown

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

There was a spirited rally in downtown of around 100 people, of all ages and backgrounds. Speakers at the rally included: Linda Solotaire of Refuse Fascism; Salman Aftab from the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights & Elections; Carl Dix, who delivered the statement to the July 15 demonstrations from the Revolutionary Communist Party; Bishop Gregg L. Greer, President, Freedom First International; Curtis Harris, Chicago ADAPT, a disability rights organization; Bro. Michael Oboza, LGBTQ feminist and Ted Sirota, musician and founder of Degenerate Artists Against Fascism (DAAF). Matt Skolar did a blues number about how “no human being is illegal”; Shontay Luna read two poems; and Steakhouse Mints sang a new song, “We are united, we are not scared, we're not tired, we are marching, we are on fire!”

There were several contingents in the march which grew to about 300 people, including: “women breeders” dressed in red robes and white hats—like from The Handmaid’s Tale; the “mass incarcerated and tortured” in orange jump suits; giant grotesque puppets of Trump, Pence and the “grim reaper” Stephen Bannon; a contingent to honor the Portland heroes; the Revolution Club with a banner supporting J15 signed by Black people from the South Side neighborhood of Englewood; and a group of women drummers working with Ted Sirota.

The march, which went through downtown and to the Trump Tower, had a big impact—hundreds of people lined the march route, clapping, joining the chants, and taking pictures; and some taking up signs and joining the march. There were many different kinds of people on the march who had met Refuse Fascism in different ways—at the Pride Parade, the Climate March, the Women’s March in Chicago, the Handmaids demonstration, the counter-demonstration against the reactionaries who are spreading anti-Muslim hatred in the guise of being “anti-Sharia”; people who saw the July 15 protest on the morning TV news and decided to come join; and some who were just walking down the street.

Some high school students who joined the Handmaids contingent said there were lots of reasons to protest against Trump, including the threat of war in North Korea, climate change and attacks on science, the immigration ban and the wall, lying and nepotism, attacks on health and on women and abortion in particular, and the way fascists goons are being mobilized to attack people. A 14-year-old Latina said she came “to make a change... we’re the next generation... we’re the ones who can make it happen, to have a better world. Trump is sexist, against the nationalities, but we’re human, we all have a heart and feelings.” An older Jewish woman, when she heard this wasn't the Democratic Party but people who want to drive Trump OUT, said, “Yes! That's what I am about.” A scientist who came from the suburbs said she learned from the recent experience in South Korea, where weeks of protest by millions of people forced the resignation of a hated president, that driving out the whole regime is possible.

Shontay Luna, a poet who read two of her poems at the rally, said: “Up until he won the election, I never considered myself an activist at all. Up until that point, I considered myself a rebel, when it comes to writing words down. But activism was something that was left to other people to take up. But I see that he’s in the White House now, and I knew it could happen, but with him being in the White House now—each and every one of us who did not vote for him, we all have to be activists now because there’s no more... just standing along the sidelines and looking and saying ‘oh, wow.’ He won, he’s in there. Everyone who’s against him, we have got to drive him out.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/washington-dc-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Report from Washington, DC, Anti-NRA March

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

July 15, in the morning, more than 200 people came to a rally in front of the Department of Justice—this was a continuation of the protest called by organizers of the Women’s March, Women’s March from #NRA2DOJ , in response to the vicious videos from the NRA (see statement from Refuse Fascism, “We Must Support Those Under Attack”) which began on the day before at the National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters in suburban Virginia. People marched 17 miles from there to the Department of Justice, where a rally was held the next morning. There were very strong demands in relation to the fascist attack videos that the NRA had recently put out, and there were gun control advocates and people who had family members die from shootings. Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Tamika Mallory from the Women’s March were among those who spoke. There were some NRA and Trump supporters, perhaps 10 on other side of street, but overall there was not the menacing atmosphere there had been at the NRA headquarters the day before.

Several of us from Refuse Fascism came there in support and in participation of this two-day march and rally. At the end of Saturday’s rally, the main moderator got on the stage and said she wanted to give a shout out to Refuse Fascism and held up the flyer for July 15 and encouraged people to connect with Refuse Fascism people in the crowd.

After the rally officially was over, one of the Refuse Fascism activists did a mic check about the importance of driving out the Trump/Pence regime and its direct connection to the vital issues of the rally. A crowd of people gathered around and expressed strong agreement. Then, with the chant “No Trump, No NRA, No Fascist USA” being taken up by many in the crowd, 75 people joined in a march to the Trump International Hotel, two blocks away. Many stayed in front of the hotel for a spirited speak-out. At the beginning and end people took the pledge: “NO—In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!”

Throughout the speak-out, it was stressed that today, July 15, was a national day of action to drive out the Trump and Pence regime, in over 18 cities, and that everyone in attendance at the speak-out was contributing to adding powerful voices from DC to this national day of action.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/to-the-brave-fighters-and-dreamers-of-july-15-from-the-revolutionary-communist-party-USA-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

To the Brave Fighters and Dreamers of July 15

From the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

July 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This statement will be read at protests across the country on July 15, 2017.

On behalf of the Revolutionary Communist Party, I want to salute everyone who came out today. Everyone who stood up to the intimidation and threats, everyone who fought through the defeatism that’s out there, everyone who has responded to the relentless implantation of fascism with that most eloquent of answers: NO! We especially salute all those who over these past months have birthed the absolutely essential organization that is Refuse Fascism, and especially those of you who were living your lives and then answered the call posed by events and have thrown so much into this. This vehicle of Refuse Fascism is precious and the time is now for it to get far bigger, far stronger, and far more all-embracing so that we can drive out this regime before it’s too late!

Continue to not just resist, but go further in this battle. This is life and death for tens of millions of people and maybe more. Let’s struggle in the days to come to draw out every lesson we can from today and everything that has led up to this; let’s interrogate what we’ve done and then let’s do better... because the stakes are way too high to do anything less. Today can be and must be not just a “good thing to do,” but a point of departure for a whole new level of struggle.

But we want to ask you to go further, too. Listen to this invitation from the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Bob Avakian, or BA, on page 3 of this month’s issue of Revolution:

An Invitation
From Bob Avakian

Let’s go on a crucial journey together—full of unity against oppression and lively struggle about the source of the problem and the solution. Pursue your own convictions—that the outrages that move you are intolerable—to their logical conclusion, and be determined not to stop until those outrages have been eliminated. And if this, as well as learning about other outrages, and ideas about how this all fits together and flows from a common source—and how it could all be ended, and something much better brought into being—leads in the direction of seeing not only the need for bold and determined resistance, but also the need for revolution and ultimately communism, then don’t turn away from that because it moves you beyond your comfort zone, challenges what had been your cherished beliefs, or because of prejudices and slanders. Instead, actively seek to learn more about this revolution and its goal of communism and to determine whether it is in fact the necessary, and possible, solution. And then act accordingly.

There’s a way to take up that invitation. Get into BA. Read THE NEW COMMUNISM, which puts forth just what it says—a new communism, a way to scientifically understand and transform the world, to make revolution and to keep that revolution on the road to emancipation. Get into The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which lays out a blueprint and framework for the radically new and far, far better world that really is possible through that revolution. Pick up and carry with you BAsics, the handbook for revolutionary fighters.

Here’s a chance, and a challenge, to learn where this madness we’re fighting today came from... how it flows out of a SYSTEM, of capitalism-imperialism. To learn WHY we need a revolution, and why that revolution can and must overthrow the system. To learn how such a revolution could actually come about. And to learn about your role in it.

Go to www.revcom.us every day, and learn how events fit together and what they mean for revolution. Go to Revolution Books if there is one near you. Join the Revolution Club, where you can not only learn about this but be part of fighting the power as part of making revolution, taking on every outrage and fighting in every corner of society, where you can change the world and change yourself in the process, with people just like you and with people very different from you, in a spirit of struggle and questioning and courage and love.

Let’s go forward together, let’s drive out this regime, and let’s move on then to build a whole new world where the hellish nightmares of today really are no more, and humanity can truly flourish.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/protesters-denounce-nra-for-inflammatory-videos-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

“We Will Not Be Intimidated Into Silence”

Protesters Denounce NRA for Inflammatory Videos

July 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 14, hundreds of people rallied outside the National Rifle Association’s suburban Virginia headquarters in a protest against recent outrageous videos from the NRA. After the rally, about 200 people began a 17-mile march to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, where they will demonstrate tomorrow at 10 a.m. The first NRA video basically called on their followers to attack those who are resisting and protesting the Trump/Pence regime.

When some people called this out, the NRA put out a second video that doubled down on the first by naming and attacking several individuals, including Tamika Mallory of the Women’s March and DeRay Mckesson of Campaign Zero. Tamika Mallory was at the protest at the NRA headquarters, as was Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist who has also been the target of reactionary threats.

The July 14 protest was called by organizers of the Women’s March. The call for the protest—“We Know We Are Not Safe. But We Will Not Be Intimidated Into Silence”—was co-signed by over 70 other groups. The call began: “Recent actions of the NRA demonstrate not only a disregard for the lives of black and brown people in America, but appear to be a direct endorsement of violence against women, our families and our communities for exercising our constitutional right to protest. On July 14th and 15th, Women’s March and partners will mobilize a mass demonstration, again grounded in the principles of Kingian nonviolence, to denounce the false and intimidating rhetoric of hatred and send a clear message that our movement will proudly and bravely continue to strive for the respect of the civil and human rights of all people.”

As the statement “We Must Support Those Under Attack,” issued by Carl Dix, Sunsara Taylor, Cornel West, and Andy Zee, who initiated RefuseFascism.org, said in part: “The mobilizing of the minions and trolls of this regime to go after specific individuals is not only chilling but could directly endanger those individuals. Particularly in the case of Tamika Mallory and DeRay Mckesson—African-American activists who are explicitly attacked for their associations with important movements for social justice—this is extremely chilling and must be opposed, especially given the history and current-day reality both of the U.S. in general and the particular persons wielding power in this regime. This is also true for Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim activist who has also come under vicious attack from the extreme right…”

Organizers in front of Fox Fascist News Network send support to women in DC who are marching tonight against National Rifle Association after being threatened by name in the second NRA video message.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/paris-anti-trump-anti-macron-protests-on-bastille-day-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Paris: Anti-Trump/Anti-Macron Protests on Bastille Day

July 15, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 14, anti-Trump/anti-Macron protesters marched in the streets of Paris. The demonstration took place on Bastille Day—Trump was an honored guest at the military parade on this national holiday, which marks a turning point in the French Revolution. People were protesting Trump’s two-day visit to Paris to meet with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron.

This was a meeting of two reactionary heads of state who share much in common in terms of their reactionary anti-people programs and imperialist wars of empire. There is the fascist Trump, who is rapidly implementing and extending an extreme fascist program every single day. And then there is Macron—who defeated the openly fascist Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections in May. But Macron’s victory was in no way a victory for progress, nor did it remove the danger of fascism. The election normalized the fascist right wing in France and further legitimized its efforts to reach political power. And Macron’s program represents the continuation and acceleration of right-wing politics in France and internationally. He has pledged, among many other things, to rapidly remove rejected asylum seekers, throw many more petty lawbreakers into prison, and slash civil service jobs, social benefits, and social protection.

Trump’s meeting with Macron represented further efforts of the Trump/Pence regime to promote its fascist program internationally and cement the commitment of other imperialist countries to join in this reactionary agenda.

On Thursday, July 13, hundreds of protesters set up a “Trump-free zone” at the Place des États-Unis, a former site of the U.S. Embassy. Then on July 14, according to news reports, there were clashes between protesters and riot police who tried to block the streets and prevent the march from continuing. The police used tear gas and tried push back protesters, but after a stalemate, the cops pulled back and had to let the march continue.

There was a diverse range of anti-Trump activists, including pro-Palestinian groups, migrants’ rights activists, environmentalists, antiwar activists, and antifascists. Marchers chanted, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” Many of those marching also came to protest Macron and his right-wing, anti-people policies, like his moves against workers’ rights.

The Independent quoted two tourists from the USA who attended the protest. A woman: “We feel he does not represent us, we don’t want people to think that he does and we’re doing everything we can to get him out office.” Her friend called Trump “hostile to the planet,” and said that when Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, this was the “icing on the cake.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/confederate-flag-waving-racists-vs.people-acting-in-the-interests-of-humanity-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Confederate-Flag-Waving Racists vs. People Acting in the Interests of Humanity:

Fascists Issue Armed Threats Against Houston July 15 “Trump/Pence Must Go” Protest

July 13, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A Texas fascist group is calling on its followers to come out—armed and waving Confederate flags—to counter the July 15 “Trump and Pence Must Go!” protest in Houston. This fascist outfit calls itself the “This Is Texas Freedom Force” (TFF)—they should actually be called the “Texas Freedom Farce.” They say with a straight face that the Confederate flag of slavery “is not considered a racist flag”—these are the kinds of ugly forces who think that the wrong side won out in the Civil War.

These are the kinds of white-supremacist neo-Nazis who think that Black people, other people of color, and immigrants need to be “kept in their place,” with threats and actual use of violence. Who believe women’s “God-given” role is to bear children. Who shout “America First” and consider themselves soldiers in a Christian fascist “holy war” against their enemies. And who think that with Trump and Pence in the White House, that it’s finally “their time.”

This is the future, people, if the Trump/Pence regime wins out and consolidates its hold on power. To those who haven’t become part of the fight to drive out this regime: are you OK with that?

The TFF takes credit for joining with other fascist forces earlier this month to surround and intimidate an Austin, Texas protest that was demanding Trump’s impeachment. And they say they intend to do the same at the July 15 protest in Houston. The TFF says in their call for July 15, “Side arms are welcomed with LTC [license to carry] card, Open carry is welcomed as well.”

These claims of TFF to be about “freedom” may be facile—but the activation of these fascist ground forces is very serious. The recent National Rifle Association (NRA) “recruitment” video (followed by a couple of others, and including scenes of burning of American flags in political protests, and people holding the Refuse Fascism “NO!” posters) was straight-up intended to agitate backward fascist-minded white people to prepare for a new civil war.

People who are acting in the interests of humanity to drive out the Trump/Pence regime vs. Confederate-flag-waving racist fascists—there are two very clear roads laid out here. And there is no “sitting on the sidelines”.

Refuse Fascism, Houston has put out a call: “We cannot hand these forces the future they want. The worst thing we can do, for the people of Texas and the people of the world, is to stay home and avoid the conflict. We must gather peacefully, we must raise our demand that the Trump/Pence regime must go, and we must stand together strong... Come and be with us on July 15th. If not now, when?”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/artists-activists-and-organizations-demand-the-trump-pence-regime-must-go-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

July 12, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From Refuse Fascism:

RefuseFascism.org
Contact: 917-407-1286 / info@refusefascism.org
Interviews available

Artists, Activists and Organizations Demand: “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!”

Calling for Major National Protests, Saturday, July 15

Over 100 organizations and individuals are uniting around a call for major national protests this Saturday, July 15 demanding The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

Signers include actors Ed Asner, Justin Theroux, David Strathairn, Raul Castillo and Michael Shannon; Carl Dix, spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party; author and educator Cornel West; singer Lalah Hathaway and musician Arturo O’Farrill; poet and playwright Marc Bamuthi Joseph; scientist PZ Myers; and a number of religious leaders including Salman Aftab from the American Muslim Task force on Civil Rights & Elections and Rev. Chloe Breyer, the Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York. (See the full list of signers here.)

Taking place in over 17 cities, organizers declare: “We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!... Only the people acting together in the streets and public square can force this demand before the world.”

RefuseFascism.org, the initiator of the July 15 protests, is currently occupying space in front of Fox Network News at 1211 Avenue of the Americas for 100 Hours of No!—100 continuous hours of indictment and protests in front of Fox headquarters in NY which will culminate in the July 15 protest.

1:00 pm, July 12: Refusefascism.org will present an indictment to The News Corporation.

Statement from David Strathairn

“Our form of a humane, compassionate, all-inclusive governance, guaranteed us by the founding principles of our constitution, a government, remember?, ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’, is in a battle for its life against the vile, malignant, fascist agenda of the Trump/Pence regime.

“This regime and its co-conspirators is being allowed to infiltrate more widely, more deeply, and more insidiously, into the precious fabric of our daily lives, every day, assaulting our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by spreading bias, hatred, greed, and distrust; threatening to tear apart our own nation’s vital need for communality and inclusiveness; displaying a disgusting example of basic human decency; attempting to establish economic policies that will only fill their already bulging pockets while fleecing tens of millions of people of essential human services; trying to pass laws of ethnic, religious, and gender oppression; seeking to control the way we choose our public servants; arrogantly and ignorantly destabilizing crucial global alliances to a frightening degree; and willfully denying, while adding to, the undisputed scientific facts that the health of our planet is under serious duress. And this is all happening right under our noses.

“We have to stand up and say NO. However we can. Wherever we can. Before it’s too late. Add your voice on July 15th. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.”

Matthew Shipp, the renowned American pianist, composer and bandleader

He took the bullhorn in front of Fox News as part of the #100HoursOfNo to speak about the importance of driving out the Trump/Pence regime. Afterward, he commented about what he feels is one of the outrages about this regime: “In a day when cops are murdering Black kids you can’t have as an attorney general somebody who has... Jeff Sessions is the only person to my mind who Martin Luther King’s widow wrote a letter about saying he was capable of undoing the legacy of her husband. So why would somebody go and pick somebody like that to be the chief law enforcement officer? To me that is stunning—it’s galvanizing in the mind that something’s wrong.”

Statement from Perry Hoberman, installation artist and professor at the University of Southern California

“Every day, the Trump/Pence regime makes further progress in realizing their vision of a hideously unjust and unequal society, a cruel, racist, hateful, poisonous nightmare. And much of this process is happening behind the scenes, while we’re distracted by the latest mind-boggling episode of treason and twitter... We can’t let this happen. They have to be stopped. And they won’t be stopped unless all of us join the struggle.” (Full statement here.)

Statement from Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist

“Standing up to oppression in large numbers is always the most effective way of pushing back against the most horrendous oppression. In this way we startle the conscience of society, making it more difficult for the Trump/Pence Regime to carry out its program. We must bring together all the people who agonize and rage at what this regime is doing to people—this is the only way to push back against, and ultimately stop this regime! Will you join us on July 15?” (Full statement here.)

Statement from David Zeiger, Documentary Filmmaker

“Twelve years ago I made a film, Sir! No Sir!, that told the story of the thousands of men and women who found themselves caught in the middle of one of the Twentieth Century’s greatest nightmares, the Vietnam War. Those Soldiers, Sailors and Marines defied prison, violent attacks, social ostracism, and even death to build a GI Movement against the Vietnam War and play a major role in exposing and ending that crime. Their movement went up against the most powerful military in the world from the inside! It was insane. It was unthinkable. It was irrational. It had never been done.

“And it changed the world.

“Now is the time to once again do the insane, the unthinkable, the irrational. Now is the time to set our sights on bringing this horrific government of Trump and Pence down. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, short of that will end this nightmare. Refuse Fascism has called for nationwide demonstrations on July 15 to take a crucial step toward that goal.”

RefuseFascism.org is a nationwide movement that unites people of many perspectives and from all walks of life who recognize that the Trump/Pence Regime is a fascist regime that must be driven from power through the mass political protest of millions of people. They do this not just for themselves, but in the name of humanity.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/we-must-support-those-under-attack-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Received from RefuseFascism.org

We Must Support Those Under Attack

National Rifle Association Calls Its Supporters 'To Arms' Against Critics of Trump

July 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This statement was issued by: Carl Dix, Sunsara Taylor, Cornel West and Andy Zee; who initiated RefuseFascism.org.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) recently put out two lurid and inflammatory videos. The first essentially called on the followers of the NRA, and Trump supporters generally, to attack those who are dissenting, protesting and resisting the imposition of this regime’s draconian measures. When some people protested this, they released a second video which continued in this same vein and raised the stakes by naming, and attacking, Tamika Mallory of the Women’s March, DeRay Mckesson of Campaign Zero, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom of California, and Senator Patrick Murphy from Connecticut.

The mobilizing of the minions and trolls of this regime to go after specific individuals is not only chilling but could directly endanger those individuals. Particularly in the case of Tamika Mallory and DeRay Mckesson – African-American activists who are explicitly attacked for their associations with important movements for social justice – this is extremely chilling and must be opposed, especially given the history and current-day reality both of the US in general and the particular persons wielding power in this regime. This is also true for Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim activist who has also come under vicious attack from the extreme right. The warning of Pastor Martin Niemöller in Germany — that “first they came for the Communists and I did nothing, for I was not a communist, then they came for the Jews, but I did nothing for I was not a Jew…” and so on down the line – must be taken to heart and the grievous mistake that he criticizes must not be repeated in today’s circumstances.

We state our solidarity with those who have been singled out and declare as loudly as we can, “NOT this time, fascists.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/skybreak-why-is-it-so-important-and-what-does-it-mean-to-get-into-ba-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Excerpt from SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak

Why Is It So Important, and What Does It Mean, to Get Into BA?

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In the early part of 2015, over a number of days, Revolution conducted a wide-ranging interview with Ardea Skybreak. A scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and an advocate of the new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob Avakian, Skybreak is the author of, among other works, The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What's Real and Why It Matters, and Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps: An Essay on the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Women's Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation. This interview was first published online at www.revcom.us.

Q: OK, picking up on your point that there’s a role and a need for everybody who finds the state of the world intolerable, to get with this movement for revolution—with that point in mind, and picking up on the point that you just made, I wanted to ask you to speak directly to people with different levels of familiarity with BA, whether they’re just finding out about him or whether they’ve been familiar with his work for a while. And the question I wanted you to speak to is, basically what it means on different levels for people to get into BA and get with his leadership? Why is this so important?

AS: Look, in a lot of ways, it’s pretty straightforward. Whatever kind of background you come from, whatever your position in society today, if you’re the kind of person who feels that there are a lot of things that are really messed up about the way the world is, the way society is; if you’re completely outraged and unwilling to tolerate for a minute longer a lot of the more outrageous abuses and injustices of the society—and there’s no shortage of these that different people become aware of—then follow your conscience, first of all. Follow your conscience and follow your convictions, and follow the trail to see what does BA say, given that we’re saying, look, this guy’s been doing decades of work, analyzing why these problems keep happening, what they are rooted in, what’s the fundamental reason these terrible things keep happening in this society, what could be done about it.

So, “get into BA” means, first of all, don’t stand aloof when you see these great injustices and this great suffering of the people from various directions. Get involved. Get involved in fighting and exposing these abuses, in joining with others, get organized to fight these abuses, to expose these outrages, to make it clear you’re not tolerating them. And, as you become part of this movement, this movement for revolution, this movement to fight the power, to transform your own thinking and the thinking of your friends and family, and others, on some of the key questions of the day, as you get more involved in that, at the same time as you’re doing that, go deeper. Go deeper. Be like a good scientist. Get into BA, because by getting into BA you are going to learn a lot about the deeper source of the problems and what the actual solutions are, or are not, and what can be done about these problems.

Available now: ORDER HERE

ABOUT THE BOOK, WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING AND MORE HERE

Get Into BA HERE

A good place to start, if you’re new to things, besides something like the Dialogue, I would highly recommend that people watch, and watch with their friends and families, and so on, the film Revolution—Nothing Less! It’s six hours of BA talking, analyzing the deeper sources of the problem in society and the solution. There’s also an earlier film, Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, that is also full of very helpful material which gets very clearly into why a revolution is necessary and why it is possible, even in a country like the U.S., and what kind of revolution should we have, what kind of society should we bring into being. And you can get a copy of BAsics and just start reading it anywhere you want, read some of the quotes and the short essays that are in there that give a feel for some of the range and the depth of analysis on some of these questions, and why this system cannot just be fixed with a few tweaks, why it can’t just be reformed.

One of the most important things that it means to get into BA is to get into the deeper analysis and exposition of precisely why you cannot reform this system, and why capitalist imperialism as a system needs to be completely dismantled through a revolution, an actual revolution, and replaced with a new society built on a completely different economic and political foundation and, correspondingly, very different social values and ways people can relate to each other and function in society.

So, getting into BA—well, there’s not just one way to get into BA. There are many different ways. If you’re new to things, I would recommend the Dialogue, BAsics, Revolution—Nothing Less! I would recommend going regularly, at least once a week, to the revcom.us website and exploring not only Revolution newspaper on a regular basis, but also going to the other portals on the website: the portal that has BA’s works, and talks about the new synthesis; the portal that talks about the Party he leads, why there’s a need for a revolutionary party and what that involves and why people should be talking about joining this revolutionary party; and the portal that talks about what’s going on in the movement for revolution and these different initiatives to fight mass incarceration and police murders and brutality, and to combat the restrictions on abortion and combat the degradation of women through pornography and rape culture and in other ways, and the fights around the environmental degradation and against these imperialist wars, and so on. There are a lot of practical things, practical initiatives, that people can get into, and people can get involved in one, or more than one, of these initiatives. But getting into BA means, at whatever level and wherever you start, trying to really get into what is he saying about why you can’t fix things just one thing at a time, and why you can’t fix things by trying to reform this system. And it means getting into what is the relationship between fighting particular abuses and outrages today, and being able to get to the point where you’re in a position to have an actual full-out revolution to dismantle the existing system and reconfigure the society on a completely different foundation.

There is something that has been on the revcom.us website recently which gives a short definition. It’s called “What IS An Actual Revolution?” I’m just going to read it here:

An actual revolution is a lot more than a protest. An actual revolution requires that millions of people get involved, in an organized way, in a determined fight to dismantle this state apparatus and system and replace it with a completely different state apparatus and system, a whole different way of organizing society, with completely different objectives and ways of life for the people.

“With completely different objectives and ways of life for the people.” I just want to stay on that for a second. That’s a very important thing, how a society is organized. What does the system that governs the society—what is it aiming to do? Under capitalism-imperialism, it seeks to meet the needs of the capitalist-imperialists, in terms of being able to develop and sustain their empire, increase their profits, compete successfully with other capitalist-imperialists. It has very little to do with meeting the needs of the people, either the basic requirements of life or these more intangible things like art and culture and science. It is geared to meeting the needs of the capitalists, the imperialists. The whole state apparatus, the police and the armed forces, and so on, these are state institutions that are geared to buttressing, supporting and strengthening this system and its objectives, its goals.

And a real revolution is a process which actually involves getting to the point where you can fight—where millions of people can be involved in fighting—to dismantle, to break down and completely break apart the existing institutions of the system, and replace them with completely new institutions and new organs of power, and new ways of setting up the economy, and all the things that flow from that, including all sorts of ways that the people relate to each other, and all the ideas that flow from that. It’s a radical transformation in everything, from the way people live, to the way people relate to each other, to the way people dream and aspire to things—all of this undergoes a real sea change when you have an actual revolution.

And if you get into BA, this is what you should be looking for—you should be looking for his method and approach, his analysis of why things are the way they are. Why do police keep murdering unarmed Black and Brown people in this society? Why is this continuing what has been in existence since the days of slavery and Jim Crow? The “lynching culture” is now the “police murder of people culture”—it is an extension of the same thing. BA does a very deep and insightful analysis of the whole history of this and of how this is so woven into the fabric of this system that you can’t just wish it away, and you can’t even protest it away. You should protest, you should have strong fights against this, organize with other people, like the movement that’s been developing since Ferguson, a movement which started around Trayvon Martin and then built up around Mike Brown and Eric Garner, with people coming forward all over the country in different cities, and in cities around the world, to denounce this kind of thing. It is extremely important not only to continue this, but to actually expand it and have it grow and be stronger. It is part of organizing the people and strengthening the people.

And the same can be said around a number of other key concentrations of social contradictions, these key outrages in society, these contradictions that this system cannot fix. They cannot fix the oppression of Black people, of Brown people. They cannot fix the way immigrants get blocked from borders or turned away or tormented or denounced as “illegals,” as if any human being were ever an “illegal” human being. It cannot fix the way women are degraded and treated as less than full human beings in this country and all around the world. It cannot fix the environment in any sustained fundamental way—not as long as we live under a system that is driven by a constant search, and a fierce competition, for profits, not as long as those are the rules of the system running things. The rules of the game for capitalism-imperialism are that capitalists are constantly competing with other capitalist-imperialists around the world to divide the world, and for plunder and pillage, and to increase their profits; and if you don’t play that game, and beat out others, you go under. So even if an individual capitalist wanted to have a more enlightened position, they can’t really do anything about it. The system is set up to meet the needs of that system, not the needs of the people.

So when you get into BA, you should be reading and listening and checking out all the different things that intrigue you and interest you, and talking to other people about it. You don’t have to agree with everything, just check it out, do some work. Get together with people, read things, listen to things, watch films, discuss things, and develop your own understanding, at the same time that you’re out there fighting and denouncing and exposing the injustices of everyday life as they’re going on right now, which BA is definitely encouraging people to do. At the same time that you’re doing that, keep going deeper, so that you really start to understand why these terrible outrageous abuses are built into the fabric of this system, and you can push back for a while, but ultimately you cannot totally get rid of these abuses until you get rid of the system itself and replace it with a completely new system. BA makes very, very deep and insightful analyses of all of that: why you need a revolution; what is the possibility for a revolution; what is the basis—on what basis, even in a powerful imperialist country like the United States, with all its military and stuff, is it actually possible; and, if you succeed in seizing power, then how do you build a society that was worth fighting for, that you’d want to live in, as opposed to yet another bad system. All of that is in BA’s works.

In that statement I was reading about “What IS an Actual Revolution?” it gets into the link between fighting the power today and building for an actual revolution. It says, “Fighting the power today has to help build and develop and organize the fight for the whole thing.” “The fight for the whole thing”—if you don’t get into BA, you’re going to be missing a lot about how to link all these different things together and understand their root causes, which are deeply built into the fabric of the system, and you won’t know how to fight for the whole thing. And you have to fight for the whole thing in order to have an actual revolution. And this statement ends, “Otherwise we’ll be protesting the same abuses generations from now!” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that, three generations hence...people have made that point about Emmett Till, that people protested what happened to Emmett Till, the lynching of Emmett Till way back in the 1950s, and here we are protesting what happened to Eric Garner, to Mike Brown, to Oscar Grant, to Ramarley Graham, to Amadou Diallo, to Trayvon Martin, to Tamir Rice...the list goes on and on and on... Right? How long are we going to be doing the same thing?

So, yes, first of all, we should definitely be protesting, but we also need to go deeper and be more scientific and more organized and more unified, and we need to get smarter, frankly, about how we take on these things. Bob Avakian has developed a whole strategy for the whole revolutionary process—not just for one corner of it, but for all the different components of it—in this country, in a country like the U.S., as well as having some very important insights for the development of revolution in other countries, including other types of countries, like Third World countries that are under the domination of imperialism, where it is necessary to work in somewhat different ways for an actual revolution.

So all that is some of what it means to get into BA. You know, just do the work. Go to the revcom.us website. Get BAsics. Get Revolution—Nothing Less! Watch the Dialogue. Read BA’s memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond. Listen to some of the cultural things. Listen to “All Played Out.” Play the “Borderline” song on the Outernational album. Watch and listen to these things with other people. There are many, many different angles and many different ways to get into this. Look, BA has spent a lifetime, he’s spent decades developing all of this work. You’re not going to be able to catch up, you’re not going to be able to “get it all,” in a few weeks or a few months or even a few years. But make a start, and then follow it up. Ask questions if things aren’t clear enough. Struggle with other people about their misconceptions. Go to your friends and family and talk to them about what you’re learning. And, by the way, expect to be mocked, ridiculed, criticized, to be told you don’t know what you’re talking about! Expect push back, OK? But don’t give up when that happens. Do the best you can in answering things, on the basis of what you’ve been learning, but when you run into things that you don’t understand well enough, go back to BA, go back to his materials, dig in a little deeper, talk to other people who know more about this, ask them for help, so that you can keep spreading this among the people.

The idea is that, if you had hundreds more, thousands more, tens of thousands more, discussing, debating what BA has been bringing forward, what he’s arguing for, his analysis, what he says the nature of the problem is, and what the nature of the solution is, then it’s not that everybody would immediately agree, but we’d all be so much better off—if everybody were having that kind of discussion, instead of just sort of turning their backs on the problems of society and the problems of the people and just cultivating their own little “self,” or maybe actually trying to fight some of these abuses but in a way that is sort of like being stuck in a narrow little cubicle, where you’re just taking on one issue, or one corner of one issue, but you’re not seeing the bigger patterns, and you’re not linking them up to the other egregious outrages in society, and you’re not understanding that there is actually a strategy to get out of this mess once and for all. There is a strategy. This is why you should get into BA, and this is how to make a start.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/standing-up-police-retaliation-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

From the Revolution Club Chicago:

Standing Up… Police Retaliation… Getting Organized for Revolution

July 12, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

When people in a South Side Chicago neighborhood took a stand against police terror with the Revolution Club last week, police threatened retaliation against the whole neighborhood. Since then, police have been coming down on people hard—to make people pay for their defiance, and to try to stop people from connecting up with the Revolution Club and the leadership of Bob Avakian (BA).

In the neighborhood as a whole, the questions are up: Who is responsible for this police terror? Is it worth standing up against your oppressor if it means they will come down on you harder? Is it possible to stand up against the pigs and change things or will they always win? Who is Bob Avakian and what is this leadership about? Should people be joining the Revolution Club and repping the T-shirt? And for some people, the question is up of who should I be living and fighting for and willing to risk something for: me and mine first, or the masses of humanity?

The threats last week came in response to members of the Revolution Club blowing whistles when they saw police in a yard where normally people are hanging out. First the pigs started to leave and then refused to leave. They threatened to go after people in the neighborhood if they didn’t turn against the revcoms, saying “nobody gets a pass around here anymore.” People were weighing what position to take in relation to this, but overall stood with the revolutionaries, and got firmer in doing that when a couple people in particular walked right up to the revcoms during the standoff with police and hugged and thanked one of the revolutionaries. The pigs left threatening to come back and to go after the people.

Later that night, after many people had gotten whistles and put on “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” T-shirts, the hang-out house where the pigs had been in the yard was set on fire. The circumstances and timing of this are very suspicious and most in the neighborhood suspect the police are behind this, and say it’s not the first time police have done this kind of thing in that neighborhood.

Over the next couple days, police started driving their cars through the alleys, stopping people, handcuffing them, then letting them go. On the block where the whistle-blowing happened, they lined up several people and handcuffed them all to each other, then let them all go. Young people wearing the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt were stopped by police who questioned them about why they were wearing that T-shirt.

On July 4th, over 100 pigs from three different police districts raided a 4th of July family party. They came in like an army, kicking in doors, dragging and beating people, terrorizing children who were hiding in fear in the bedroom, and arresting 13 people, some who now face serious charges. The next day the commander, who is Black and is supposed to be a model of “community policing,” showed up to “apologize” (none of the charges have been dropped) and said they raided the house because they look for neighborhood parties on Facebook and raid the largest ones! This is just the boot of oppression straight up, no matter that it’s coming out of the mouth of a Black pig: police consider it a criminal act for Black people to even gather for a party—in this Amerikkkan home of the thief and land of the slave that ironically was being celebrated on July 4th.

The Revolution Club called for a community meeting in the park to talk about all this and what to do about it.

In the three days before the community meeting, the Revolution Club was out in the neighborhood getting into things with all kinds of people. Talking about what the police are doing to people and the need to stand up against this, talking with people about why the police are so afraid of people joining the Revolution Club and getting with BA, and getting into BA with people on the spot, watching BA Through the Years and reading quotes from BAsics. People have been shifting their opinions and positions throughout all this, sometimes day by day and even hour by hour. And people have taken steps into getting organized, in new and beginning ways and in the crucible of heavy efforts by police to stop people from doing this.

A woman familiar with seeing the Revolution Club at first didn’t want to talk to the revcoms when they came to the neighborhood to follow up after hearing the house had burned down. Then a couple guys on the block stopped to talk for a while, filling in the revcoms on some of what was going on with the police and agreeing that people shouldn’t be allowing the police to terrorize people into staying in their place. One of them put on a BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt and discussed the Points of Attention for the Revolution.

The woman who hadn’t wanted to talk at first to the revcoms now stopped to talk. She had serious questions. What happens if people here don’t join this? Will you keep going with it? Won’t wearing the T-shirts make things worse for people because the police don’t like it? As we talked, another woman nearby started yelling at one of the revcoms because he told her there is no God. The woman asking the serious questions told the other woman to stop doing that and to respect what these people are doing and are about, even though she believes in God, too. After a deep discussion, she had to go, but later came back and bought cold water for all the comrades there.

Another day, late in the evening when people were out on their porches hanging out, some guys near where the July 4th party was raided wanted to know more about Bob Avakian after hearing a comrade talk about him and why people need to get into him. The Revolution Club members played BA Through the Years for them. They were surprised by the video—one said he was surprised that a white person was saying what BA was saying, another said it had less to do with him being white but that he didn’t expect to actually see somebody that was for real. There was struggle with them over not just liking this, but really getting into it and actually taking up this leadership. The difference was sharpened up over where you think you need to go and how to do that—trying to make some changes within this setup, or working to make revolution to overthrow it and lead a new society. And what role will they play in this. One friend intervened in the discussion with the other to tell him, “She is talking to the right people right now, but you have to go there.” He wasn’t necessarily ready to agree with that, but did say he would look seriously into it.

Earlier that day, a teenage woman about 15 years old opened up to talk for a little while with the revcoms. She responded to what the Revolution Club was saying about the police, and she said she hates the police, they killed her brother, and she named two people she knew who had been killed by police. The revcoms read several quotes from BAsics with her. We also read through the Points of Attention for the Revolution. She was especially attentive to BAsics 5:23 and the six Points of Attention, and a more serious conversation opened up. She raised that people who are stuck in the life can’t get out of it even if they want to, because people will still want to retaliate against them, and putting on a T-shirt can’t change that. She had a hard time seeing that people could start to represent something different among the people and that this could affect what others think and do, even while, yes, there is tremendous risk people are taking when they do that, but also that it is a risk worth taking because now you are fighting for a better world. We told her she could have a big effect on other people by joining the Revolution Club and fighting for the six Points of Attention, that everyone who steps into the revolution is part of forging a path for others to do that, too. She was thinking about all this, but walked away without resolving it one way or the other.

While all this was going on in this neighborhood, in another neighborhood nearby police had destroyed a memorial for one of the 15 people who were killed during the July 4th weekend from violence among the people. For all the crocodile-tear concern from the police and authorities about the shootings among the people, the pigs came through the vigil for Devonte Morgan cutting down the balloons and stomping on the candles. When people didn’t just put up with this, the police brutalized a woman who was dancing in front of their car. People defended themselves and, according to news reports, four people were arrested and a pig was injured. The Revolution Club went out to this neighborhood the day after people stood up, standing with people there, helping to strengthen them by bringing them the Revolution Club communique and whistles, connecting them up with the revolution, backing them up to re-do their vigil, and struggling with them against retaliation and revenge.

The day after the revcoms were part of the re-do of the vigil in the second neighborhood was the day before the planned community meeting in the first neighborhood, and things got more sharpened up. As Revolution Club members were talking to some people in the park, someone down the street called for the revcoms to come because somebody was being arrested. This time, it wasn’t only the Revolution Club members blowing whistles. Several people from the neighborhood were there together with them, actively standing up against and calling out the police. One pig car doing the arrest almost immediately turned into six cars as the Revolution Club and people from the neighborhood came up on the scene to blow the whistle and agitate on the role of the police and the need for people everywhere to stand up to what the pigs are doing. Two other times that day, the Revolution Club had to post up where the police were messing with people, blowing whistles throughout the day. The pigs responded by sticking out their middle fingers to the Revolution Club members, called one of the women a bitch and pointed out a couple of the men in a threatening way, as if to say, “We’re going to go after you.”

Together with the increased activity and hostility by the police was increased controversy among the people about who is responsible for all this pig activity and whether or not people should be joining with and supporting the Revolution Club. Someone who earlier in the week had started off telling the revcoms not to blow the whistles when the pigs were making threats, later donated $20 for people in the neighborhood to get T-shirts, and then another day came back and said the revolutionaries were the ones responsible for the house getting burned down. Overall, wearing the T-shirt began to spread, and became a way to take a stand. At the same time, familiar controversies popped up that are commonly used by opponents of revolution and communism to try to win people to oppose the revcoms—all of a sudden a couple people were calling Bob Avakian a cult leader and several people were saying they can’t get with the revolution because the revcoms don’t believe in God.

Throughout there has been a lot of struggle with people over whether we should be standing up to the pigs or not. Some people who were excited about standing up in the beginning have—at least temporarily—changed their minds since the pigs came back. Some don’t want to rock the boat too much, while others are thinking about how are we actually going to deal with the increased repression coming down from the pigs. It has been put to people that not wanting to cause more trouble with the police, who are there precisely to terrorize and keep the masses of oppressed people in their place, is the outlook of the slave getting used to slavery. There were slaves who didn’t want to run the risk of upsetting the slave master when Harriet Tubman came to talk to them about getting free—and there were those who knew they had nothing to lose but their chains who followed her.

Then there is the life of Harriet Tubman herself, who not only escaped slavery and led others to escape, but also struggled with people to not back down and rush back to the plantation once the dangers were getting real. Harriet Tubman never gave up and didn’t settle for helping a few slaves escape. She fought tirelessly to end the whole system of slavery, including helping to build for and plan an insurrection with John Brown. The work she did was part of what led to the Civil War that finally ended slavery. The real choice before people is whether they are going to have second thoughts about standing up to their oppressors or follow Harriet Tubman’s example in the fight to end the modern worldwide form of slavery that this capitalist-imperialist system has locked people into.

On the day of the meeting, some of the shoots of what is developing in the neighborhood could be seen, even while the turnout was too small. A woman who was angry at what police are doing and had heard of the Revolution Club before came to learn more about what the revolution is about. She participated in the meeting and left with a copy of BAsics and a BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt. Two young guys who had stopped to go to a nearby store saw the enlargement of quote 1:24 from BAsics at the entrance to the park (about the role of the police) and came over wanting T-shirts and sat in for a few minutes of the meeting. A young guy who has been checking out the Revolution Club and running with it periodically, walked up to the edge of the meeting at first. He believes in God and has recently started thinking maybe he shouldn’t be involved with people who don’t. A pastor who unites with revolutionaries to struggle for justice, and who was attending the meeting, went over to talk with him and a few minutes later the young guy came all the way into the meeting and stayed for the rest of it. A supporter of the revolution who had come to the defense of the Revolution Club during the standoff with police couldn’t stay for the meeting, but stopped by to show his support. A young man about 12 years old walked over by himself to attend the meeting, saying the Revolution Club members had told him and his friends about it at his house a few days ago and he wanted to learn more.

These were important. And overall, the debate and ups-and-downs of the past week reveal something new. Which is precisely why the pigs have raised the stakes of all this and the questions are getting sharper. But the fact that the meeting did not have the turnout it needed indicated that people are still weighing all that is involved in stepping forward and taking responsibility to figure out how to go forward. The Revolution Club is actively working to figure out why and go more deeply with people around the issues, even as we step up the struggle.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/over-100-cops-viciously-raid-familys-4th-of-july-party-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Over 100 Cops Viciously Raid Family’s 4th of July Party

July 11, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Last week we ran this article about the Revolution Club Chicago facing off with the police, and the community refusing to side with the police. In the article, we mentioned that the police threatened people. Since then there have been a number of reprisals. This is an account of one of them: an interview with one member of the family whose party was raided (referred to here as XX).

Revolution: Describe what you were saying about what its been like, what happened at the party. However you were just talking to me. Go ahead.

XX: The night of the party, like, those were my children. It was my son that got arrested. Those were my nieces and nephews, and when I left they were all out here just on the porch. They weren’t in the street. They weren’t doing anything. As a matter of fact, when I left my grandchildren were still out here because they was still popping fireworks.

So when I left, I thought everything was good. Because I mean if I thought things were going to get out of hand I would have said something. I would have probably actually stopped the party myself. But everything was good, like I said. The family over there, they were outside. The family down the street, they were outside and the family down on that end, they were outside. So quite naturally the block is filled with people because it’s the 4th of July. We all grew up on this block so we all know each other. We’re all familiar with each other.

So, it’s one thing to come for somebody who like you mighta got a call that somebody had a gun and you want to come for them, that’s fine you know. If you are going to do your job, do your job.

But I’ve never seen three districts of police officers come on the scene for a party. I’ve never seen that. I hate to have to say that it was over a hundred white officers and only four Black officers. And they counted the Black officers. So when I get here it was like “Look Auntie, they all white.” I think the commander was a Black officer. But even my daughter said, “When they came up here and they was trying to, they got my son. You already got the person who you were looking for so why were you in my house? Why did you kick in my bathroom door. My bathroom door?”

My grandkids was inside in the bedroom. They want to go in the bedroom. My daughter say, with they tasers out and she was telling them, you know, “My babies are in there please.” My great nieces and nephews were in there and I had three of my grandchildren that were in there. My daughter was begging and pleading with them not to go in the bedroom. They kept telling her, “We don’t give a fuck! We don’t give a fuck. Shut the fuck up and we don’t give a fuck.” But you are in our house. And you saying this about my grandchildren. I have never witnessed anything like that.

[Referencing something that happened at another time] Now right over across that street, my son was shot 11 times. Right there. We was standing right there and two guys came through that driveway and I saw them first. I had to run and duck. I went that way, my son went and ran that way; they followed my son. They chased my son over in that gangway. He tripped and fell and the guy was over him shooting him. He has eleven bullets all in this area (points to stomach area) of his body.

So I don’t agree with my son having a gun, that’s not something I condone. I don’t agree. I don’t think he should have had a gun, I really don’t but he feel like he need it for his own protection because even at my own house I have been shot and almost killed.

But the way the police came that night [July 4th] they were like the gang bangers that night. And I feel like they came to kill and destroy. Now on the videos that I saw there was an incident over there. They dragged my niece down the stairs and down the block. My neighbor lives right down there and she videotaped it. She say, “Poor Y [gives her name],” they grabbed her, Not only did they drag her down the stairs. They dragged her down the block! My nephew, her brother, she was trying to protect her brother; he has two knots on his each side of his head from where they beat him up out here. A little boy was videotaping right over there against that fence. He was live on Facebook. They knocked him out.

And I say the news will come if a police officer got shot, the news would have been over here in droves. And then it’s, “Oh my god in Englewood [a South Side neighborhood] a police officer just got shot”. They like to, um what is the word, I’m looking for the word. Well, anyway, they like to media hype things up like gangs are over here. There’s no gangs. There is not a gang on this block. Not a gang member. Are they all cliqued up? Yes. But are they in a gang? No. There is no more gangs in the city of Chicago. They’re just a bunch of kids that get together and form their own groups and so everybody want to label them gang bangers. They’re not gang bangers. They’re my nieces and nephews.

That the police does not give them a opportunity like coming over here and taking the kids’ rim. What purpose was that?

Revolution: Describe that again because you were telling me about that. [She had described putting up a basketball hoop for the kids to play and the police taking it down.]

XX: The very next day, like after the commander came out. The commander came out the next day to try to smooth things over. But he came with Black officers. He didn’t come not with one white cop. And my brother said, the day after, he said it was early in the morning, and the police came, they came with some kind of dump truck or something and they loaded up the rim and they put it in the truck and they took it away. They didn’t ask did it belong to somebody or can you remove it from this street. They just came a got it and took it.

So now our 10-12 kids that live on this block, like they’re not out right now, if the basketball rim was up, when you walked up the street you would of saw the kids out here playing basketball. But now they can’t play basketball, so they probably in the house playing video games or something. They all have bikes but they prefer to play basketball over riding they bikes. Even the girls. So they gather right here and they play basketball. But they can’t even do that anymore because the rim that we got for them, that we put together to give them, they (the police) took it away from em. Why?

And I guess my other question would be, “Where’s our alderman, where’s the representation for us? When you knew there was 300 officers on one block, you didn’t have a problem with that? You don’t want to come out and investigate?”

All we trying to do is live over here safely. I mean, its bad enough we have to watch where we go. You see those vacant lots over there? I called 311 a few times to try to get the grass and the trees cut, because if somebody wants to come over here and even shoot at the three of us [referring to me, her, and another woman sitting on her porch] they can come right to that grass where you can’t see them and start shooting. And imagine how it look at night time. So it’s scary. So I’m calling and I’m saying please come and cut this. They haven’t come and cut it. Oh, if it’s not over five inches [it is way higher than 5 inches] tall they won’t come out and cut it. But a shooter can stand right there, and shoot at us right here. You know I just want people to care a little bit. You know people scared of these neighborhoods, but they not doing anything to help the neighborhood.

So now that you took the kids rim, where our kids supposed to go and play. Cuz we can’t send them to the park because it’s dangerous at the park. The police only police the park at what, 9, 10 o clock when the park is closed. Not during the day when it’s open and filled with people. You don’t see the police. Unless they riding by and they may see somebody standing outside selling loose cigarettes or something. They may harass them.

But I just think. I’m actually traumatized. I came home to a broke door that I couldn’t lock. I came home to a bathroom door that’s broken down, because, what was in the bathroom? You had the person that you were looking for, you never had a warrant to come to this address. The call you received never said this address. They told you that... that person was in the street and he had a gun. That’s what you said they said. You never said, “Oh we got a call at this address [gives the address] to come and you know and somebody had a gun.”

Revolution: What your nephew said that the police said to him, was they looked on Facebook for the biggest party, that it was preplanned. They looked for the biggest party and figured, I think, it's a big gang party or whatever, and that’s why they came.

XX: I believe so because my sister said that she was on another street [names the street.] Now I got family that live on that street as well. So they were having a 4th of July party too. And when actually I rode past there it looked like they was having a good time and again my sister say they went over there first but they didn’t go over there like they did here. They just went over there in the cars and they stopped the party. And I heard a couple people got arrested over there too. I don’t really know what happened but it was like that block and then they came over here. But they didn’t even come in police cars. They had parked their cars on the outside of the block and they walked. And they came through vacant lots and they came through gangways. For what? For a party that had maybe a hundred people out in the street? I just don’t understand.

And again, I been living here over 40 years. And I’ve never seen anything like that. Even when my son got shot they didn’t come by the boatload. Maybe four or five cars. But they didn’t come by the boatload. You know and no one [referring to when her son was shot] ever came back to ask me any questions. That very same night my son was shot 11 times, one of his very good friends, that I hadn’t seen in 10 years, live in Minnesota, he just came up to visit and he was killed in the back of my house. And they never came to ask to ask me anything. “Did you see what he looked like? Do you know anything?” No questions at all. Even when I was at the hospital with my son, they didn’t ask me no questions.

But as soon as we’re having a good time, and there’s nothing going on. Then here we go. You wanna come in like they were the gang bangers that night. They truly was. They were the gang bangers that night. My son said, “They were like all young, look they just came from out the military,” he was like, “they were hungry,” he was like, “they were waiting like they wanted something to happen.” My friend that lives over on the block, she said like, “I was trying to keep the peace but the police was like ‘man, lets move now, do what I say,’ cursing them out, not caring.” And my feelings are hurt because I been living here over 40 years and I mean I used to be a CAPS [community policing group] member. I used to go to CAPs meetings. Like my brother, he’s been political since he was a young guy, cuz my father was like the precinct captain and so my father was political too. So my brother has always been involved with the community.

And both us is like a little... I feel violated. But I am a little traumatized behind that, too. And then for you to ride up and down the block and now I’m being... having the light shown on me just for sitting on my porch. It’s just not right. [Here she is referring to that fact that since the raid on her house, the police ride along her street and if they see her sitting on the porch they shine a spotlight on her in an effort to harass and intimidate her.] And like I said, the news, if something happened with the police or somebody gets shot, the news is over here really, really fast. But you had over a hundred officers out here, that was intimidating people and there was no news coverage about it all. But I seen like 15 different Facebook videos. You know what I’m saying, it’s just not right and I’m trying to do something about it.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/carl-dix-and-the-revolution-club-chicago-tell-the-youth-dont-fight-for-uncle-sam-our-fight-is-here-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Chicago protest against U.S. threats of war against North Korea

Carl Dix and the Revolution Club: “Don’t Fight For Uncle Sam...Our Fight is Here!” 

July 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 11, in front of an Armed Forces Recruiting Station on Chicago’s South Side, Carl Dix and the Revolution Club went up against the Trump/Pence regime’s threats to make war against North Korea.

The Revolution Club marched into the parking lot of the strip mall where the imperialist death-recruiting center is located. The message on their banner was bold and clear:

To all Black and other oppressed people… and to all people who stand for justice—DO NOT FIGHT FOR UNCLE SAM IN NORTH KOREA—OR ANYWHERE ELSE!! Our Fight is Right Here!

In front of the military center, Carl Dix took the mic to tell people:

The United States is threatening war with North Korea. You got Donald Trump with his finger on the nuclear button, threatening to push it to start a war, telling us that this war is in some way a defense against a madman in Korea. But... a war between the United States and North Korea would be a war of a nuclear-armed bully, the United States, against a small country. And it would be a disaster for humanity. No one—not Black people, not other oppressed people, not anybody who cares about justice should fight in that war. In fact no one should fight in the United States' wars because these are wars for empire....

… you got this system, this capitalist-imperialist system, whose rulers unleash their cops to patrol Black and Brown neighborhoods like occupying armies spreading terror, brutalizing and even murdering people there. Warehousing people in prison. Pinning people down in segregated communities in cities like Chicago and elsewhere. Gearing the educational system to fail people. And then they wanna come to our young people and say “You gotta fight for your country.… It becomes your country when they go to war—they say ‘you got to go out and fight for it.’”

Well I say bullshit. This system... is unleashing attacks on immigrants, Muslims, attacks on women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people, that has everybody’s rights to protest and exercise free speech under attack, that’s even attacking sections of the capitalist media—this is not our system, its fight is not our fight. No one should fight in this war with Korea, no one should fight in any of the wars of this system.

But there is a fight that we should wage and that’s a fight to get rid of this system in the only way possible and that’s by getting organized into a revolution to overthrow this system to defeat and dismantle its military, police force and all the rest and to bring a whole different world into being. That is a fight that’s ours.... We got the leadership that we need for this revolution in Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a man who has developed a strategy and approach for how to make revolution in a country like this, how to get in position to be able to lead millions of people to go all out for revolution when the time is right, to do that with a real chance to win and a vision of the kind of world we could bring into being. A world where the exploitation and oppression of this system has been done away with once and for all. We do have a fight and people need to get with that fight. They need to check out this revolution. They need to check out the leadership we have for this revolution in Bob Avakian. They need to get with this revolution.

Struggle with and among the people

An important part of this action at the military recruiting station was to actually STOP people from going in and joining the U.S. military. It was slow at the recruiting station while the Revolution Club was there (a lot of recruiting is done at schools and other places). Then, a 19-year-old Black youth walked up, headed towards an appointment at the recruiting station. It was not his first time there—he was in the process of being recruited into the military. When a Revolution Club member stopped him to talk, he said he wanted to make his life about something and was not seeing anything else out there for him. The revcom told him, “Look, the only time you count to this system is when they are ready to use you to kill other people. The reason there is nothing for you out here is ’cause they don’t give a shit about you. They want to keep you trapped in this shit here and all over the world. And to join their armed forces to enforce this shit all over the world.”

The young man replied, “I can’t argue with that.” The revcom told him, “They also have armed white supremacists to enforce all this shit—they don’t see police killing people as a problem, they see people fighting against it as the problem. If you want to make your life about anything, don’t join the enemy’s army—join the revolution. Joining the military makes about as much sense as a slave joining the slave master.” The young man said a few times, “I didn’t see it that way,” and didn’t really say much more. But he did walk away after that conversation instead of going in for his appointment with the imperialist recruiters.

Other people going through the parking lot said they were in agreement with what they were seeing and hearing. Some stopped to listen to Carl Dix. There was struggle among the people too. A woman who took some flyers and passed them out on the corner near the recruiting station gave one to a guy who looked at it and then tried to give it back to one of the revcoms, saying, “I’m only concerned about Black people.” The woman heard this and struggled with him, saying this IS about Black people! The revcom added, and it is not just about Black people, it is about ALL OF HUMANITY getting free. The man decided to keep the flyer.

A U.S. military veteran who works with Refuse Fascism also spoke and announced the July 15 nationwide protests to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. A vet from the Revolution Club also spoke.

After this bold action held the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Armed Forces recruitment center for over an hour, Carl concluded, saying the Revolution Club will be joining in the July 15 protests and calling on everyone to be there.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/turkey-tapping-the-hidden-potential-for-resistance-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

In Turkey: Tapping the Hidden Potential for Resistance

Hundreds Become Hundreds of Thousands Standing Up to Brutal Repressive Regime

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 9, in the face of extreme repression, up to a million people flooded the streets of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, demanding that the fascist regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan end the state of emergency imposed after a failed military coup last July. In so doing, they cut through the suffocating atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and accommodation that has gripped the country over the last year.

Background

Since 2003, Erdoğan was first prime minister, and then president of Turkey. He combined extreme Turkish nationalism (known as “Kemalism” after the founder of modern Turkey) and Islamism (organizing society on patriarchal, misogynist, and anti-scientific religious tenets), with a program of concentrating more and more power in the executive branch of government and in his own hands.

This was deeply polarizing. Erdoğan had been the target of massive protest by progressive forces in big cities, as well as resistance based among the 15 million Kurds (a bitterly oppressed national minority) living mainly in Turkey’s mountainous southeast. But Erdoğan had strong support among religious fundamentalists, and in the vast rural areas, towns, and small cities.

In July 2016, a section of the military attempted a coup. Erdoğan was able to mobilize his own supporters in the streets to oppose it, and faced with the threat of military takeover, most of Erdoğan’s bourgeois liberal, as well as more progressive opponents stood with him against the coup, which was crushed.

Over 200 died in the attempted coup, but Erdoğan referred to it as a “gift from God” because it created a temporary political situation where he had broad support both in the ruling class and among the masses. Erdoğan seized on this to make a huge leap in implementing fascist rule.

Using the pretext of rooting out coup supporters, Erdoğan quickly broadened his attack by equating the just struggle of the Kurdish people with the military coup. Kurdish regions faced heavy military repression and at least a dozen leaders of Kurdish political parties were arrested. And Erdoğan went even wider, targeting his ruling class and military opponents, journalists, artists, and intellectuals. 150,000 teachers, professors, journalists, judges, civil servants, and others were fired; 50,000 people were arrested and thrown into brutal prisons where torture is rampant; over 100 news outlets were either seized or shut down.

The main bourgeois liberal, nationalist, and Islamist parties all either supported this or went quietly along, but there was important resistance. In October, the government extended the state of emergency for another 90 days—500 protested this in Ankara and in Istanbul, answering the call of trade unions and smaller left-wing parties. In the Kurdish region there were clashes both between the military and armed forces of Kurdish political parties, and between police and Kurdish youth. Even soccer games became arenas of potential protest, so the Turkish government banned the selling of jerseys with the word “Kurdistan” on them.

Though these outbreaks were extremely important in challenging both the fascist state, and challenging the broader masses to stand up against it, they were still relatively small, sporadic, and confined to a few big cities and the Kurdish area.

Fascist Referendum and Outbreaks of Resistance

To consolidate and give legitimacy to his power, Erdoğan held a national referendum in April 2017 on constitutional amendments that gave him direct legal control over both the courts and the legislature. Supported by another right-wing party, Erdoğan stacked the deck, using his control over the media to fill the airwaves with “Yes” propaganda, and organizing much vote fraud as well. Nonetheless, his victory (with 51 percent of the vote) did reflect the support of a section of Turkish society.

The referendum victory gave the government vastly more power and legitimacy, but it also sparked growing outrage and protest. Right after the referendum, there were two nights of intense protest in Istanbul, with thousands chanting: “We are shoulder to shoulder against fascism” in the face of heavy militarized police presence. There were smaller actions in cities around the country, some of which were attacked by police.

In Ankara, two teachers who had been fired in the crackdown went on a hunger strike in protest. 75 days later, as their strike continued and became a focal point, and police broke into their homes to arrest them, one of them tweeted: “Political department police are trying to enter the house. They are now breaking the door. Damn fascism! Long live our hunger strike resistance! We want our jobs back! We have not and will not surrender!”

The crackdown widened to include the mainstream parties who had supported both the suppression of the coup and the crackdown on the Kurds, but were (mildly) opposed to the constitutional amendments which pretty much eliminated any pretense of democracy. In May 2017, the regime arrested a CHP (Republican People’s Party) member of parliament and sentenced him to 25 years in jail. ¹

At that point, the CHP, the largest opposition party, did decide to speak up, and put out an ambitious call for a 280 mile march from the capital city of Ankara to Istanbul—the boldest act of mass defiance since the coup.

On June 15, hundreds gathered in Ankara to march against the seemingly overwhelming power of the state. This required real courage, as Erdoğan openly compared this nonviolent protest to the armed coup attempt that he had drowned in blood, saying: “The coup soldiers had their F-16s and tanks; Kılıçdaroğlu [the leader of CHP] has his march.” Erdoğan said the march was “illegal” and that he was only allowing it as “a favor.”

Nevertheless, the march set out on its arduous journey, traveling 15 miles a day along highways, stalked by Turkish police (who claimed to be “protecting” them), across open country and over mountains in the summer heat. At least one activist died of a heart attack on the way.

But this courage and determination began to tap into the vast reservoir of previously suppressed hatred of the regime. It soon grew to over a thousand, including some prominent artists and performers. After two weeks on the road, it had topped 10,000 people and then grew to 15,000.

Once it left Ankara, the march went through the rural heartland of Erdoğan support, Turkey’s “Red States,” about which a marcher commented: “I would never in a million years have even thought I’d drive through.” And the march did meet sharp opposition, as Erdoğan supporters in some places lined the road to shout abuse, while others dumped manure in the march route.

But there were also hundreds of people in these areas who were emboldened by the march, who flashed victory signs from their cars or applauded from their balconies. No doubt it left much greater political ferment and debate in its wake, which is favorable for winning over those who are now intoxicated with Erdoğan.

By the time the march reached the furthest outskirts of Istanbul it had grown to 30,000, but even then there was grave doubt and fear about what would happen when they entered the city: Would they be attacked and dispersed? Would people turn out to join them?

Erdoğan made a call to not attack the march, and into this fresh opening surged hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom no doubt only decided what to do in the last hours. The rally—at the prison that held the jailed CHP member—was jubilant. One speaker declared: “This is a rebirth for us, for our country, for our children. We will revolt against injustice.”

A Hard-fought Breakthrough, the Challenges, and the Importance of Leadership

People are right to be jubilant, and this was a hard-fought breakthrough. But it is also important to be sober and scientific. First, the Ankara-to-Istanbul march was a bold idea at the right moment and was able to bring together very broad sections of people, ranging from radical forces determined to drive out this regime to mainstream parties who vacillate between going along and conciliating with the fascists, and organizing some resistance to them. But now that a broad opposition movement has surfaced, so will those differences, and different forces will sharply contend over both the direction and the goals the movement should take.

Even more important, the Erdoğan fascist regime is still in power, wielding tremendous armed forces and a significant mass base; it is not going to give up or fade away. In fact, a few days after the Istanbul rally, another 7,348 public sector workers were fired as part of the ongoing purge. And on July 15—the one-year anniversary of the coup-attempt—Erdoğan mobilized hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, around the country to mark his victory, and he used the occasion to more tightly bind the masses there to his reactionary ideology, and to ominously threaten his opponents. Referring to those who fought for his regime, Erdoğan said that “God has promised ... those who fight in the way of God or in the way of their nation ... paradise.” And he warned that the purges and trials were far from over, and that he would “decapitate the traitors” and that “none of them will be left in this country without getting their punishment.”

So this will likely be a period of great political ferment and debate among the people, and very intense back-and-forth struggle with the reactionary forces. The Ankara-to-Istanbul march revealed not only the great breadth of opposition, but also the willingness of tens of thousands to put a lot on the line to fight it. And this whole situation poses the question of what kind of society do people want for Turkey.

But in this context, the question of leadership is crucial. If those most determined to see a new and liberated Turkey—and a new and liberated world—work to scientifically sum up what has changed and how to further transform things, and take that into the swirl of struggle and debate, there is a good basis to—through twists and turns—forge and lead a determined struggle to drive out the fascist regime and to open up new questions and new possibilities about bringing a truly emancipatory society into being, rather than settle for going back to the deeply oppressive conditions that marked Turkey before Erdoğan even came on the scene.

1. The CHP had actually supported the earlier arrest of Kurdish parliamentarians, once again illustrating the profound truth that Martin Niemöller summed up from his experience in Nazi Germany: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist…. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew.… And then they came for me, and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.”) [back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/a-real-life-horror-story-for-women-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

A Real-Life Horror Story for Women: Arkansas Law Would Force Rape Survivors to Notify Their Attacker Before Getting an Abortion

July 13, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Imagine you’re a woman who has been assaulted and raped. To add to the agony, you find that you are pregnant. But that’s not the end to the horror. In order to get an abortion, the state is compelling you to let the rapist know about the procedure!

This may seem like a nightmarish scenario out of a novel about a dystopian future. But it’s happening right now—in 2017 America. The state of Arkansas has just passed an anti-abortion law that makes it illegal for women to have an abortion without notifying the man who impregnated her—including if that man is someone who had raped her.

Adding to the reactionary perversity of this law, known as the “Tissue Disposal Mandate,” is that it is a provision being added to an existing law, called the Final Disposition Act, that gives family members of a person who has died say over what happens to the deceased’s body. Under the new provision just passed and set to go into effect at the end of July, the aborted fetus would be considered a deceased family member—and the man who impregnated the woman would have equal say with the woman regarding the disposal of the fetal tissue.

This is totally outrageous—and right in line with the Christian fascist anti-abortion movement’s fanatical, anti-scientific lies about how a fetus is a full human being with “rights” and claiming abortion is “murder.” No! Fetuses are not babies. Abortion is not murder. And women are not incubators—they are full human beings!

As Bob Avakian points out:

Unbelievable as it may seem, in the 21st century there are still people—including people in positions of power and authority—who are determined to force women to bear children, regardless of the situation, the feelings, and the better judgment of those women themselves. That is a way of enslaving women to the dictates of an oppressive male supremacist, patriarchal system; and that is what the cruel fanatics who are determined to deny women the right to abortion are really all about. (From “ON ‘PRINCIPLED COMPROMISES,’ AND OTHER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY”)

While the new Arkansas law does not explicitly give the man involved in the pregnancy the right to force the cancellation of an abortion, the law requires that there must be agreement on the method of “disposal” of the fetal tissue—and the man could go to court if there is a difference of opinion. Doctors who performed abortion procedures could face criminal penalties if they failed to inform the man about how the tissue would be disposed of. If a woman is forced to go to court over this matter, she could be forced to delay getting an abortion beyond the point where abortion is legal in Arkansas—right now, the state bans abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

Click to read

On top of the Tissue Disposal Mandate, Arkansas has passed three other recent anti-abortion laws:

*A ban on dilation and evacuation abortion, a safe and common procedure used in second-trimester abortions.

*A requirement that abortion providers disclose private medical information on patients under 17 to the police and preserve fetal tissue from abortions for those patients as “evidence.”

*A requirement that abortion doctors obtain medical records of a patient’s “entire pregnancy history”—a medically unnecessary measure that could result in the woman not being able to get an abortion before the 22-week cutoff.

Arkansas is a “leader” in anti-abortion laws at the state level—but it is hardly alone. While abortion still remains legal under the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, a barrage of state laws in recent years have put increasingly onerous restrictions on women’s right to abortion. Just in the first three months of 2017, 431 anti-abortion measures were introduced in various state legislatures, and five states (Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Utah, and Wyoming) passed 10 new laws adding to restrictions on abortion. Abortion clinics and doctors continue to be targets of violent threats and attacks from the anti-abortion movement.

And now there is a fascist regime in power in Washington that is taking the already intolerable situation faced by women under this system of capitalism-imperialism to a whole new level. Trump, the predator-in-chief, repeatedly tweets gross and violently misogynist attacks—helping to further whip up a culture of sexual assault, crude degradation, and objectification aimed at women. Mike Pence, the Christian fascist leader next in line behind Trump, vows to send Roe v. Wade “into the ash heap of history.”

There is a way to beat back the escalating assaults on women’s right to abortion—and to break all the chains that bind women under this system. This won’t happen by pinning hopes on the Democrats—under whose “legal but rare” stand on abortion, the Christian fascists continued to gain force and momentum. But it can happen by building massive political resistance to the war on abortion, as part of the movement for an actual revolution to overthrow the whole system of capitalism-imperialism at the soonest possible time and replace it with socialism—a radically new and better society moving toward a world free of all forms of exploitation and oppression (see the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA). And right now, there is an immediate and urgent need for people in their millions upon millions to be out in the streets as part of demanding, in the interests of humanity, that the Trump/Pence fascist regime must go!

Women Are Full Human Beings!

Fetuses Are NOT Babies!

Abortion Is NOT Murder!

Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/six-protesters-arrested-for-hanging-resist-banner-on-trump-tower-in-chicago.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Six protesters arrested for hanging "RESIST" Banner on Trump Tower in Chicago

July 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This week in Chicago, six protesters, four of them Greenpeace activists, were arrested for hanging a large banner on Trump Tower. At the top of the banner was the word “RESIST” with an arrow pointing toward Trump Tower. Below it is a picture of the Earth with the word “DEFEND” emblazoned across it. Of the protesters arrested, the four Greenpeace activists face felony charges, and Trump Tower claims they caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage.

The action followed a number of resistance campaigns by global environmental groups resisting Trump’s attacks on the climate, humanity, and science. Greenpeace explained that the banner was a message “to show this administration that the people of Chicago—and people all over the country—will continue to RESIST Trump’s attacks on our clean air and water, and defend our communities and the planet!” One of the protesters being charged was quoted on Greenpeace’s website proclaiming, “This action demonstrates that we will not accept the threats that the Trump administration poses to people here and around the world.” He added, “Ignoring the science of climate change and removing us from the Paris Climate Agreement is just another indication that the billionaires who have hijacked our democracy are putting the short term profit of corporations over people and the planet.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/louisiana-wanton-police-murder-of-dejuan-guillory-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Louisiana: The Wanton Police Murder of Dejuan Guillory

July 13, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 6, 27-year-old Dejuan Guillory, a father of three, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Mamou, Louisiana. The circumstances are all too familiar—yet again, a traffic stop ends in an unarmed Black man lying dead.

Guillory was DWB with his girlfriend, Dequince Brown, down a gravel road in rural Louisiana when a cop pulled them over. According to Brown’s attorney, Joe Long, an argument started and Deputy Paul Lafleur ordered them both to the ground—with his weapon drawn. Long said, “Guillory was on the ground on his belly with his hands behind his back. The officer had a gun trained at Guillory’s back, maybe a foot or two from Guillory’s body. They were still arguing back and forth, but Guillory was on the ground as directed, his hands were behind his back. He was not resisting. All of a sudden, a shot rang out, and Brown knew that Guillory had been shot. She then jumped on the officer’s back to stop him from killing Guillory.”

Adding to the complete outrage of this murder, Brown was then arrested—because she tried to stop the cop from killing Guillory—and charged with attempted first-degree murder of a police officer. She was jailed for five days and then released Tuesday, July 11, on $75,000 bond.

Long has given details on what happened, exposing this deliberate and unprovoked murder. Long affirms that Guillory was on the ground with his hands behind his back, begging for his life, pleading, “Please don’t shoot me; I have three kids,” when Lafleur fired his first shot. Then after Brown tried to stop the pig from killing Guillory, the cop fired three more shots into Guillory—in the back.

Long says two ambulances came to the scene, but “one ambulance loaded the deputy in and took him to the hospital. The other one left empty. When she [Brown] left in a police car, Guillory’s body was still on the gravel road.” (The cop was taken to the hospital because he says he was injured by Brown biting him.) Long says Brown never saw anyone trying to give Guillory CPR or help him in any way.

As Carl Dix stated recently: “If the brutality, terror and murder carried out by the police was the only thing wrong with this capitalist-imperialist system, that would be reason enough to get rid of it once and for all thru revolution. And this is far from the only horror this system enforces on humanity. The RCP is organizing people into a revolution to overthrow this system at the soonest possible moment. If you want to see police terror and all the other horrors humanity is subjected to ended, you need to get with this revolution.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/new-website-lynching-in-america-confronting-legacy-of-racial-terror.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Check It Out

New Website: Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

July 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), collaborating with Google, has developed an important website that went up in June: Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.

“Lynching in America” begins: “After slavery was formally abolished, lynching emerged as a vicious tool of racial control to reestablish white supremacy and suppress black civil rights. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched across twenty states between 1877 and 1950. These lynchings were public acts of racial terrorism, intended to instill fear in entire black communities. Government officials frequently turned a blind eye or condoned the mob violence.”

The interactive site has many different ways that people can learn about, visualize, hear and get an understanding of these horrific American crimes. There is a map showing where lynchings took place, audio interviews with descendants of lynching victims, photos of lynching sites, profiles of lynching victims, and high school lesson plans for teachers. The site also includes a map of the Great Migration, showing how fleeing this terror sparked the relocation of millions of African Americans.

The Equal Justice Initiative says its mission is to end mass incarceration, challenge racial and economic injustice, and protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people. Its website, https://eji.org/, has a range of important and informative posts which challenge people to confront the history and significance of these lynchings AND the ongoing and systematic oppression of Black people in America.

“An elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of black people was created to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery in America,” EJI writes. “This mythology of racial difference survived slavery’s formal abolition, was violently reinforced in the era of racial terror lynching, and fueled vicious resistance to the civil rights movement. Today, it is evident in our criminal justice system, which is six times more likely to incarcerate African American men than white men. If current trends continue, one of every three black boys born in America today will be imprisoned.”

This informative website comes in the context of a whole series of incidents this year where nooses are being displayed in a celebration of the lynching of Black people and a threatening show of white supremacy. Just to name some instances, nooses have been found: hanging from a tree outside the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall; inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture; outside middle schools in Maryland and Florida; at a high school in Cameron, North Carolina; at a high school in North Raleigh, NC, around the neck of a black teddy bear with a hate message aimed at the Black principal; at a fraternity house at the University of Maryland; at American University—where bananas were hung from nooses on the day the first Black woman was to begin as president of the university’s Student Government Association; and just recently, on July 5, at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, where a white worker took one of the ropes used to seal bags of coins, turned it into a noose and dropped it near a Black worker.

“Lynching in America” and the Equal Justice Initiative make important contributions in helping people confront the actual history of this country. Check them out.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/dump-sexist-trump-protest-at-us-womens-open-golf-tournament-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Dump Sexist Trump Protest at U.S. Women’s Open Golf Tournament

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As Donald, Melania, and Eric Trump stood at the Clubhouse applauding the winner of the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Tournament at Trump National Golf Club in suburban New Jersey, four people from Ultra Violet, a women’s rights organization that combats sexism, standing at the finishing hole’s putting green, took off their outer shirts displaying a purple shirt with “USGA: Dump Sexist Trump.” (USGA is the U.S. Golf Association)

This protest was right in front of the Trump family and was an “in your face” confrontation of the fascist Trump/Pence Regime.

The Guardian reported that Melissa Byrne, one of the Ultra Violet protesters said, “We wanted to be able to look him in the eye… You could tell he saw us. He looked at us, and then somebody else looked and had this really annoyed look. Security gets concerned, so we made sure the president was safe in his box before we removed our shirts. He came over to the glass to wave to people, and he looked at us.”

Hope Singsen, of Ultra Violet said, “I like millions am a survivor of many instances of sexual harassment and sexual assault… And I’m here to express my disgust that the USGA is using women’s sport to elevate, legitimize and celebrate a sexual predator.”

Ultra Violet was also responsible for a plane flying over the golf course on Thursday with a banner reading: USGA: STAND WITH WOMEN, NOT TRUMP. They had planned to do this on the day Trump arrived but the FAA would not allow it.

Ultra Violet began organizing the protest nine months ago when Trump was shown making his “pussy grabbing” comments about women in a leaked Access Hollywood tape.

Other protests against the USGA holding the most prestigious women’s golfing event at a Trump golf course took place during the week of the event, but they were held offsite or outside the course. The four Ultra Violet protestors were the only ones to do this inside the gates and right in front of Trump.

Since the time that Trump was elected, the USGA had been barraged with protests demanding it remove the event from the Trump course, but it recently revealed that Trump had threatened to sue it if it did.

The Trump/Pence Regime poster on Women and LGBTQ states that Trump is, “An unrepentant sexual predator, Trump in office repeatedly tweets degrading, violently misogynist attacks on women—helping create a culture of sexual assault, crude degradation, objecti­cation and gross/open/celebrated disrespect towards women. Women are being threatened by men, even boys invoking Trump: 'With Trump, we can grab you by the pussy,' one group yelled at a woman in Virginia."

Women and LGBTQ People are full human beings, not objects to be grabbed, demeaned, victimized, and denied their fundamental right to control their reproduction, and how they choose to live. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime… It must GO!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/chicago-where-racism-flows-24-7-like-shit-out-a-backed-up-sewer-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Chicago: Where the Racism Flows 24-7 Like Shit Out of a Backed Up Sewer

July 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The city of Chicago’s water department is responsible for delivering fresh pure water to the residents of Chicago and 125 suburban communities. The stench emanating out of that department should make residents gag. No, it’s not the water that stinks to high heaven; it’s the officials running the department.

An investigation launched into a supervisor conducting private business over city emails uncovered a sewer of racist shit running through the department. 

One of the water department official’s emails started with the subject line: “Chicago Safari Tickets.”

“If you didn’t book a Chicago Safari adventure with us this 4th of July weekend this is what you missed,” followed by lists of the number of people shot in South and West Side neighborhoods.

“Remember all Chicago Safari packages include 3 deluxe ‘Harold’s Chicken’ meals a day. We guarantee that you will see at least one kill and five crime scenes per three day tour. You’ll also see lots and lots of animals in their natural habitat. Call and book your Chicago Safari today.”

The report described an email sent out with the subject line “U Know U Be In Da Hood,” with a picture of a “wheelbarrow full of watermelons with a sign stating ‘Apply for a Credit Card. Free Watermelons.’”

The racist garbage was part of a whole package laced with sexist rants against the “kotex mafia.” Black women employees were demeaned as whores and b*’s. Muslims were referred to as “rag head c--- suckers.” And these were the people in charge of water for the city! We know what happened in Flint, Michigan when officials made decisions about the water with callous and criminal disregard for Black and other people’s lives.

This was the racist culture of the department that no one even tried to hide. These emails were sent to multiple high-ranking officials in the department and yet no one raised hell. In fact, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s friend headed the water department and was forced to resign when all this started to come to light. A federal suit was filed over four years ago about the racist culture in the department so the mayor and the city officials cannot begin to claim they did not know. A second suit has since been filed by African-American employees who were routinely denied deserved promotions and subjected to the “n” word repeatedly and retribution if they spoke out against it. 

The very fact that this supervisor could be sending out this crude good-ole-boy racist garbage shows what has been not only festering in the open but is now emboldened and unleashed by the ugly white supremacy of the Trump regime.

This is not a vestige of another time. This IS how Chicago works—its racism and vicious apartheid character could rival South Africa. 

And if you think it is isolated to one department think again. As this story deepened so did a scandal embroiling the tax assessor for Cook County where Chicago is located. A Chicago Tribune investigation of millions of tax records found that for years, “the county’s property tax system created an unequal burden on residents, handing huge financial breaks to homeowners who are well-off while punishing those who have the least, particularly people living in minority communities.” In a typical example, a homeowner in a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s West Side paid taxes on a two-flat home that the county said was worth $210,000 when in fact it cost $119,000. In Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood a homeowner paid taxes on a house that the county said was worth $787,000. In reality the homeowner paid double that for the house. These are not random “mistakes.” It was systematic and widespread and illegal massive stealing of wealth from the poorest, especially minorities, and essentially giving it to the wealthy. And of course these are the same Black communities, which were preyed upon by the banks with their predatory loans such that the housing crash of 2008 resulted in a huge transfer of wealth out of the Black community. Insult on top of injury. And all of this is built on a rotten foundation of the whole history of vicious and racist segregation pioneered in Chicago running right up to today.

While the county tax assessor is committing wholesale theft from those who can least afford it, the Republican governor of the state is starving the city of much needed resources for basic services like schools, mental health facilities, and basic social services. The austerity disproportionately impacts the communities of the oppressed. Almost three years of literally no state budget has bankrupted non-profit agencies that could not hang on without getting reimbursed by the state for the social services they provided to those in need.

All this is enforced by a CRIMINAL in-justice system. While July 4th fireworks dazzled the city and people partied and picnicked in the “other, more middle class, more white part of the city,” look soberly at the horror inflicted on just one family on the South Side of Chicago for celebrating the Fourth of July while Black. And “everyone knows” that the Chicago Police Department is deeply racist and vicious in its decades of murder, brutality, and literally torture toward the Black community as attested to in major exposure after major exposure. Rahm Emanuel has now backed off getting federal court oversight of the Department of Justice’s already weak reform of the police practices. And this while Trump’s DOJ attorney general, “Jeff KKK Sessions” has met with both the CPD Chief of Police AND the president of the FOP—the FASCIST ORDER OF POLICE. Now they are sending in the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] to carry out high tech repression.

There are days it literally makes you sick to read what is right there to see in the local newspapers ... knowing what this has meant for people’s lives and in the callous, genocidal destruction of a people. You have to be willfully ignore-ant to refuse to face that this is what goes on in Chicago—home of the first Black president and presided over by a Democratic mayor and now being served up to a homicidal, fascist president Trump. 

A simple and dead serious question: why should anyone tolerate this one day more when the possibility exists to do away with this through revolution?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/houston-facing-down-armed-fascists-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

From RefuseFascism.org

Houston: Facing Down Armed Fascists – and Not Stopping Until This Regime is Driven from Power

July 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Here in Texas, there was a mixture of excitement, tension and fear leading up to the July 15th rally and march to demand that Trump and Pence Must Go. About a week earlier, we learned that a group of fascists was coalescing to disrupt our event, and were in fact planning to become an armed presence at all protests to keep the protesters in line. In a Facebook post, they stated, “This is what is going to have to happen every time these people rear their heads in the Lone Star State. We show up in force, outnumber them & make it clear to their members & supporters that this is Texas & we won’t allow them to assault Texans, riot & trash our state like they do in California, Michigan & Illinois.” This group, calling themselves the Texas Freedom Force, showed up armed to the Impeachment March in Austin on July 2nd.

They stationed themselves at various points along the march, followed marchers as they shouted into their bullhorns, harassed people who stayed behind at the Capitol during the march, and they made it up to the stage to disrupt the speakers. Some of their vitriol from the Impeachment March is captured in a video blog made by a Refuse Fascism volunteer. I urge everyone to watch it, even if it is uncomfortable, because it shows how integral these fascist ground troops are to the overall program of remaking society and government. They want an end to critical thinking, an end to diversity, an end to reason and kindness, an end to a culture of caring about oppressed people. They want a world where might makes right, and showing up to intimidate people who don’t think like them, who don’t want to live in that kind of nightmare, is part of enforcing this worldview at all levels, in the streets and in the highest halls of power. These are Trump’s brown shirts uniting as an organized force to carry out, on the most basic level, the threats of this regime.

The fact is that on July 15th, they did show up in force. Some wore paramilitary uniforms and were armed with automatic weapons. Some were dressed in shorts and tee-shirts and their MAGA hats. Many carried American flags and one held a weird raggedy combination of the American and Confederate flag sewn together.  It seemed like this was a loose coalition of people uniting under one call to “defend” their president. And the fact is, we were outnumbered.  As about 27 of us, a diverse and determined group, marched past them to get to the rally site, I’m sure all of us were aware that this situation could get volatile at any moment. We countered their chants of USA, USA, USA, with No Trump, No KKK, No Facist USA.

We stayed focused, looked straight ahead, and got to our rally site as a coherent group, ever more determined to raise our demand that this regime must go.

Once our rally started, we set our own tone, our own culture of unity, respect, and joy at speaking out. Beyond making a wall with our signs and banners to block the view from across the street, we paid little attention to the Texas Freedom Farce. We listened to each other. We heard the call read aloud again, reminding us of where we started and why we were here. We heard the message from the Refuse Fascism National Office, moved by the fact that this same statement was going to be heard in cities across the country. We cheered at the performance of a fierce spoken word artist.

We mourned and honored Alva Braziel, whose widow told the story of how he was shot sixteen times when he was out one night looking for one of their horses that had run away, reminding us of the kind of open terror Jeff Sessions and his Department of Justice wants to unleash more of, where the police have permission from the top to subject any Black person to public execution. We heard a homeless advocate talk about the callous attitude of this regime against the poor and hungry. He rightly pointed out that Trump and Pence don’t care about any poor or working class people, including the white working class.

Joey Johnson read a statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party and saluted all of us for coming out in spite of great odds. Years ago Joey had burned the U.S. flag at a Republican National Convention here in Texas, and now this notorious revolutionary communist boldly returned in the teeth of the Confederate and U.S. flag waving, camouflage wearing, open and concealed weapon toting fascists.

At their peak there were about sixty of the Trump supporters, but they never succeeded in drowning us and our seven bullhorns out. They never shut us down, and never dampened our spirit. At one point a whole group of them left, and although there was a steady stream of disgusting and stupid insults from their side, including the N-word, comments about how physically weak we looked and what we were wearing and how our signs were “finger-painted,” there were also moments where they simply got tired of yelling, and all we heard were our own voices rising up in strength and unity. One of them yelled out, “You don’t know what respect is because you’re liberal arts majors.” This statement reveals so much about how threatened they are by critical thinking. To them, respect is blind obedience. It’s the absence of free thought.

When the rally ended, one of our volunteers gathered everyone together for a picture with our signs and banners and our fists in the air. It was a beautiful sight.

And still we carried on. We weren’t sure we would have the numbers to attempt our march through downtown. We weren’t sure if they would follow us, or look for an opening to surround us. We started on our march, and most of the Texas Freedom Force went in a different direction. When we started chanting, about ten of them broke off from the main group and followed us through the streets, still hoping to shout us down. Again they didn’t succeed. We were louder, our call bouncing off the buildings of downtown Houston. We gave people our statement as we passed by and made it back to our starting point. In the end, we simply walked away from the small group of fascists still yelling at us.

There was tremendous diversity among our group, people from different races, different economic backgrounds, different ages and different cities. Two people who had never been to a protest before came just because they felt they couldn’t ignore this anymore. One of our group had been arrested and released just in the past few days for protesting police violence. A young videographer who had come at the request of one of our volunteers stayed the whole time even though he was supposed to leave at noon. He captured hours of footage. As our MC said later on, we were outnumbered but it didn’t feel like we were.

I felt strongly that the people who did not come out to this, because of their fear or uncertainty or apathy, missed out on something very special. They missed out on a chance to develop a new sense of agency, to take control of their destiny and stand up for everything that is beautiful in the world and everything that could lead us to a better future.

My own fear was visceral and overwhelming, but I decided there was nothing I would rather do than face down this fear, by standing shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers. It was an unforgettable and emotional day for me, and I can’t wait for the day when millions of us take to the streets to drive out this fascist regime for good.

Two statements from participants:

From a spoken word artist: “We’re Houston, Texas and we’re refusing fascism. We just had a march in Houston. We were outnumbered. The white rightwing fascists came out but we were louder than them. They didn’t disrupt what we had going on. We had the Black and Brown community out here demanding an end to the Trump/Pence regime, an end to police brutality against Black and Brown people, and all of the injustices that occur. We stood strong, we stood our ground, and we said no, we’re refusing this fascist regime.”

From an undocumented immigrant: “Despite being outnumbered 2 to 1, we still made sure our voices were heard. We fought for the rights and defended those who are being oppressed by the Trump/Pence regime. We made sure we made clear that we will not stop until the Trump/Pence administration are kicked out of power, because this is a matter that not only affects us, but others all around the nation and all around the world. We’re doing this for everyone who lives on this great planet and who deserves to have their freedoms upheld no matter what. You need to join us because if you don’t, the Trump and Pence administration will only get stronger. They will do whatever is needed to secure their power. In six months they’ve already taken the sort of steps to create that tyrannic future that we’re trying to avoid. So it is imperative that you come out into the streets and that you shout all you need to, so we can avoid that future at all costs.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/alert-supreme-court-again-upholds-trumps-total-barring-of-refugees-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Alert! Supreme Court Again Upholds Trump’s Total Barring of Refugees.
Resist the Muslim Ban!

July 20, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Wednesday, July 19, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling that would have allowed about 24,000 refugees into the United States—these refugees are part of the Trump/Pence regime’s ban on refugees and people from six Muslim-majority countries.

In early July, the Supreme Court upheld sections of the Trump/Pence Muslim Ban 2.0 that barred all refugees and visitors and immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries without “bona fide relationships” to people in this country. The Trump/Pence regime then declared that the relationship between people living here in the U.S. and their grandparents (and some other relatives) in those countries was NOT considered “bona fide relationships.” A federal judge in Hawai'i ruled against the ban on grandparents, and also said that refugees already certified by a resettlement agency should be allowed in.

Now, the latest Supreme Court ruling shuts the door on those refugees. While the ruling does go against the Trump/Pence regime’s efforts to include grandparents among those banned from the six Muslim-majority countries, overall this is a continuation of the escalation of a war on Muslims represented by the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of major parts of the Muslim ban. In October, the Court will take up reinstating the entire ban.

And the fact is that the Trump/Pence regime, with its open contempt for legal challenges and court rulings, has been going ahead with aggressively implementing measures that effectively amount to a Muslim ban. This is gone into in a July 8 New York Times op-ed, “How Trump Is Stealthily Carrying Out His Muslim Ban,” by two representatives of Muslim Advocates. Revcom.us will be writing more about this soon.

The “highest court in the land” is putting a stamp of approval on dehumanizing and terrorizing Muslims in the U.S.—and around the world. This has very serious implications—intensifying a situation where all Muslims in this country must seriously fear legal persecution or violence and terror at the hands of “unofficial” fascist thugs. It ratchets up the hellish conflict between Western imperialism and fundamentalist Islamic Jihad. And to the extent that these fascist developments are not met by widespread outrage and protest, a toxic climate is further fanned in society—where people remain silent, pretending not to see, while others around them are hounded and rounded up... as happened in Nazi Germany.

The Muslim ban must be opposed and stopped—in the name of humanity.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/revolution-books-fund-campaign-extended-to-august-2-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Together We Can Win the Revolution Books Fund Drive

$25,000 By August 2^nd

Updated July 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

You, and we, have an opportunity and a responsibility to raise the funds, so that Revolution Books not only survives, but thrives at a moment when it is needed as never before. It is a time to donate generously.

There is no place else, none that plays the role that Revolution Books does. If you have spent any time at RB you experienced what we say about the store: that people come to Revolution Books from all over the world and around the corner—from the projects to the brownstones of Harlem—to find the books and the deep engagement with each other about why the world is the way it is and the possibility of a radically different way the world could be. How much does that matter at a moment when the Trump/Pence fascist regime threatens the seven billion people on the planet, and the planet itself?

Every dollar you donate to Revolution Books opens up possibility: for children to discover books with humane values, for young people to grapple with the big questions of our time, for people of all ages and nationalities from ex-prisoners to college professors—to know, grapple with, and be a part of changing the world. This can be life changing. But it only happens with your financial support.

Curiosity about everything, discovery of different cultures, learning of lives of peoples hidden from view, and the stories of history suppressed course through Revolution Books. Here you feel the vibe of certitude about the potential for a better world and a deep critique and intolerance for the unnecessary suffering of people. Authors, artists, and customers comment that programs or just hanging out here is different, richer—an engagement filled with a thirst for what is true.

This vitality stems from the breakthrough in revolutionary theory that is the new communism developed by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. Most of all this is a more scientific method and approach to understanding the world as it actually is. The passion for changing the world at RB comes from his vision and the strategy for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.

More than a bookstore, Revolution Books is the political, intellectual, and cultural center of a movement for revolution. Important Books. Pulitzer and Grammy award winners mixing it up with youth and ex-prisoners. Scholars and writers engaging with spokesperson Andy Zee and other revolutionary thinkers and fighters. RB is a place of radical and revolutionary ferment. A place that hosts a culture of revolt against a revolting culture.

FOR ALL OF THIS, YOUR SUPPORT IS ESSENTIAL. YOUR CONTRIBUTION MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR THE NEW REVOLUTION BOOKS IN HARLEM TO BE VIABLE AND THRIVE.

This can't happen on the sale of books alone, especially when so many still don't know about the new RB in Harlem. Your contribution this year will go to a vibrant promotion campaign so that many more people learn about and make RB a destination. This is crucial to getting the store on a sustainable path.

RB has an important curated collection of thousands of books... but more titles are needed to serve the wide scope of our global mission and as part of making RB viable.

Without you, RB cannot meet the needs of today. But with your generous donation, Revolution Books will meet that need with the books, the engagement, and the understanding to forge a culture, a people, and a movement for a whole new world.

TOGETHER, WE CAN WIN THE REVOLUTION BOOKS FUND DRIVE—
$25,000 BY AUGUST 2

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/alert-revolution-club-chicago-arrested-protesting-martial-law-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

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ALERT: At least five members of Revolution Club, Chicago arrested for challenging “unofficial” martial law in South Side

July 21, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Twice this morning 7th district police sent over 10 cars of cops out to mob and arrest at least 5 members of the Revolution Club on 57th and Racine. People in the neighborhood not only objected to this attack, but took video of it.

What was the crime of these revolutionaries?

Standing with a banner urging people to defend and exercise their rights, and to learn about, and get into, the movement for revolution. This neighborhood has been the target of what can only be described as “unofficial” martial law for the past several weeks, with police forbidding people to even be on the streets, harassing people for wearing revolutionary tee-shirts or blowing whistles when police appear, carrying out raids on simple holiday parties, etc. The Revolution Club had vowed to defy this illegal and illegitimate unofficial martial law, and that's what they were doing when the police assaulted them.

At 3 pm today, the Revolution Club will hold a press conference at the 7th district police station detailing what happened and outlining its response.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/protest-in-philadelphia-as-attorney-general-sessions-spoke-to-police-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

From a reader:

“Trump/Pence Must Go! Jeff Sessions Must Go!”
Protest in Philadelphia as Attorney General Sessions Spoke to Police

July 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

July 21—White-supremacist, immigrant-hating Jeff Sessions came to Philadelphia today to speak to a gathering of law enforcement officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Over 40 people came to call out this fascist attorney general in the Trump/Pence Regime.

Word got out only two days before that Sessions was coming, and the emergency protest was organized in 39 hours. The Philadelphia Chapter of Refuse Fascism, joined by a delegation from Refuse Fascism in New York, sprang into action. A broad and diverse group stepped forward—some people taking off work to take part, including many who came to the July 15 Trump and Pence Must Go protest in Philadelphia. People came from the disability rights advocates organization ADAPT, the Women’s March, Planned Parenthood and others.

A major element of Sessions and Trump’s program is to viciously slander and attack immigrants and attack “Sanctuary Cities” programs and threaten cities who have them, including Philadelphia. This was a big part of what Sessions did in his Philadelphia speech, and this was sharply called out and exposed by those who came to the protest, including delegations from the immigrants’ and refugees’ rights advocates group HIASPA (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. And an owner of a local bike store came with a giant sound system carried on a trailer to his bike, greatly raising the volume of the demonstration. A man came dressed as and talking like Jeff Sessions, exposing and mocking his lies before the crowd.

Protesters marched and had a speak-out in front of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and then had a sit-in in the street.

Dozens of news media were at the protest, and people very broadly heard about the protest. On the same day, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney issued a statement against Sessions’ attack on sanctuary cities.

 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/revolution-club-calls-rally-july-22-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

Pigs Mob and Arrest Revolutionaries for “Putting Up a Sign”

Revolution Club Calls Rally Today to Protest Pig Harassment

July 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Twice on the morning of July 21, 10 cars of pigs from Chicago’s 7th District came out to mob and arrest at least five members of the Revolution Club on 57th and Racine. People in the neighborhood not only objected to this attack, but took videos of it. Later that day, Carl Dix, Rev. Gregg Greer, Mark Clements and a young witness from the community wearing the Revolution Club tee-shirt held a press conference right at the front of the 7th district police headquarters. 

The arrested comrades were all released later that night, with charges, court dates and in some cases injuries. The Revolution Club has called a rally for July 22 at 3 p.m. in the very area in which the revolutionaries have been organizing people and the police have been cracking down.

What was the “crime” these revolutionaries were committing?

Standing with a sign urging people to defend and exercise their rights, and to learn about, and get into, the movement for revolution. This neighborhood has been the target of what can only be described as “unofficial” martial law for the past several weeks, with police forbidding people to even be on the streets, harassing people for wearing revolutionary tee-shirts or blowing whistles when police appear, carrying out raids on simple holiday parties, etc. The Revolution Club had vowed to defy, and to lead others to defy, this illegal and illegitimate unofficial martial law, and that's what they were doing when the police assaulted them.

Think about it. The Revolution Club, Chicago has been on a mission to get the youth OUT of the madness of killing and maiming each other and INTO making revolution against the system that got them in this situation. It’s connecting the youth and oppressed of Chicago with Bob Avakian, BA, the leader of the revolution, who says:

Why should we do what they want us to do—killing and crippling each other, trying to beat down or beat out each other, ending up in jail, or paralyzed, or dead at an early age—instead of joining together to go up against the system that has got us in this mess in the first place?

And BA also says:

Those this system has cast off, those it has treated as less than human, can be the backbone and driving force of a fight not only to end their own oppression, but to finally end all oppression and emancipate all of humanity.

These ideas, and people listening to and taking them up, is apparently what these police find so threatening. The Revolution Club is bringing to people a way to scientifically understand the world... a strategy to win... a Constitution for the new society... once-in-a-lifetime leadership in Bob Avakian... and a way to get organized into the Revolution Club, and the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The police have worked overtime to prevent this message from getting out to the masses of people. They’ve tried to intimidate the revolutionaries, they’ve threatened them, and now they’ve arrested five revolutionaries on the ridiculous charges of hanging a poster and using sound amplification. And these same pigs have been harassing threatening and attacking people in the neighborhood who DO support this in different ways or who simply want to hear about it.

These pigs have been running roughshod in the neighborhood. In the weeks before the June 10 public rally called by the Revolution Club, two youth were murdered in cold blood by Chicago pigs. On June 2, 17-year-old Corsean Lewis was shot down in the Washington Park neighborhood on the South Side. Just over 24 hours later, the Chicago pigs shot and critically wounded someone for just trying to get away after police harassed him for supposedly drinking. And on May 17, Cook County sheriffs killed another 17-year-old, Rashad Wells Jr., in Englewood on the South Side. On July 4, over 100 pigs from three different police districts raided a 4th of July family party. They came in like an army, kicking in doors, dragging and beating people, terrorizing children who were hiding in fear in the bedroom, and arresting 13 people, some who now face serious charges. These come on top of incident after incident, murder after murder by Chicago pigs: May 13: Tywon Salters, 21 years old; April 3: Jack Burris, 66 years old; February 15: Chad Robertson, 25 years old; February 10: Michele Robey, 55 years old.

None of this is the “exception” to the rule. All this harassment, terror, and murder fits into everything this system has done to Black people since Day One: from the whips, chains, and shackles of slavery to the KKK lynch mobs of Jim Crow, to the murdering pigs and the massive dungeons of the “New Jim Crow,” and to the even worse horrors that they have in store now with Trump. Trump, who’s threatening to send in the feds and to give these cops even more backing to repress, harass, abuse and murder people—all part of a reactionary offensive by this system and the fascist regime now running it against other people in this country and all over the world.

A Notice to One and All...Including the 7th District

The Revolution Club, Chicago, declares: We mean what we say, and we will not back off or turn our back on what we have started, on the people who need this revolution. We will keep coming back and digging in, to strengthen this movement for revolution, to build up the bases, spread the influence and organize the forces we need to make revolution. We will not be scared off, backed down or driven away.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/the-us-liberation-of-mosul-en.html

Revolution #500 July 17, 2017

The U.S. “Liberation” of Mosul:
War Crimes in Service of Imperialism

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The U.S. and Iraqi governments claim the city of Mosul has been “liberated.” The shattered city and its survivors tell a different story.

Bashar told PBS, “We tried to escape the day before, but ISIS shot at us. We ran back to the house and the army told us, stay inside. We will evacuate you when we make the area safe.” The next morning, two U.S. bombs hit his house. Bashar and other family members and friends dug through layers of concrete, desperately searching for his 18 relatives trapped in the rubble. They finally found them in a collapsed kitchen—all dead, including women and young children.

Bashar’s friend Ali’s house was hit 28 days earlier. Ali ticked off the dead: “My mother, three brothers, three sisters, my father, two sisters-in-law, two nieces.”

Vast swaths of Mosul, which was a modern city of 1.3 million, have been reduced to dusty, smoking rubble—hospitals, apartments, and businesses leveled. Traumatized survivors had huddled in basements during the U.S.-led assault, sometimes surviving on grass. A UN official said refugees from Mosul look “like someone who has gone through an experience like hell.”

Car and drone bombs exploded by ISIS—the jihadists in control of Mosul since June 2014—played a part. But overwhelmingly, sections of west Mosul have been flattened the American way: by 2,000 U.S. air strikes, cannon fire from Apache and Hind helicopters, and 29,000 munitions hurled at Mosul by the U.S.-led coalition during its nine-month assault. IRAMs—basically massive, flying IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]—“were being flung into neighborhoods where people were trapped,” Amnesty International (AI) told Democracy Now!

AI estimates that between February 19 and June 19 of this year, 5,805 civilians may have been killed by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces, and close to a million residents forced to flee, nearly 700,000 still living in refugee camps. A Kurdish intelligence official told Britain’s The Independent as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in retaking Mosul.

Covering Up America’s War Crimes

The blood staining the U.S.’s hands has been covered up by the Trump/Pence regime and the bourgeois media. Trump never mentioned U.S.-caused deaths in his statement on the “Liberation of Mosul.” The New York Times July 15 photo essay—“Satellite Images of Mosul Reveal the Devastation After the Islamic State Was Forced Out”—which showed neighborhood after neighborhood “in ruins,” never stated that U.S. munitions were overwhelmingly responsible.

“On the one hand, ISIS systematically moved thousands of civilians directly into areas of active fighting, and then they trapped them there,” a representative of AI told Democracy Now! “On the other hand, Iraqi and coalition forces then subjected these very same areas to relentless attacks. These attacks used explosive and imprecise weapons that killed and injured thousands of civilians and left the city flattened.” [Our emphasis]

Indiscriminate bombing that recklessly endangers and kills civilians is a war crime.

But that’s been the American way of war, from the firebombings of Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan, during World War 2, to the mass murder of three million Koreans during the 1951-53 Korean War, to the carpet bombing of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Not “heroic” close-quarter combat, but high-tech mass murder from a safe distance.

Liberation? No. A Deadly Clash Between Reactionary Imperialism and Reactionary Islamic Fundamentalism

There was nothing liberating about ISIS’s takeover of Mosul in 2014—and there’s nothing liberating about the U.S. and its allies seizing it back now.

ISIS (the Islamic State) imposed a barbaric, medieval form of Sunni fundamentalist Islam that included draconian dress codes and punishments for Iraqi women, while keeping others from minority nationalities and religions as sex slaves. Dissidents were flogged or executed publicly, often beheaded. Residents trying to flee the recent fighting were shot, sometimes hanged as a warning to others.

But what has America now brought to Mosul? The U.S. was in charge of retaking the city, and they trained, advised, and led the Iraqi forces and provided decisive airpower. The U.S. coalition’s use of massive, indiscriminate bombing was deliberate—not “inadvertent.” In May, Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis declared the U.S. policy is “annihilation”—taking no prisoners, not allowing any ISIS members to survive. Where did Mattis get his nickname? From leading the 2004 siege and devastation of the Iraqi city of Falluja, carried out by war crimes.

Humanitarian workers reported that the U.S. stepped up its bombing campaign in Mosul—including the use of 500-1,000-pound crater bombs—in order to maintain the military momentum and finish the battle as soon as possible. (NBC)

This was driven by key imperialist objectives: not getting bogged down; and sending a global message that the Trump/Pence regime won’t be bound by any concern—or even appearance of concern—for international law or civilian casualties. It won’t hesitate to savagely and violently impose U.S. dominance.

U.S. Imperialism, Emergence of ISIS, and Bringing Forward Another Way

How did ISIS emerge and seize control of Mosul?

This happened largely because of the actions and impact of U.S. imperialism. After invading and occupying Iraq in 2003—in the name of “liberation”—the U.S. empowered a new reactionary regime dominated by Shi’ite Islamic parties, which together with U.S. forces carried out horrific crimes against Iraq’s Sunni population. This was all part of attempting to secure U.S. domination of Iraq, but it fueled the spread of Sunni jihadism.

As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian analyzed in Bringing Forward Another Way, reactionary imperialism and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism fuel and reinforce each other—even as they clash.

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] 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.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists. (BAsics 1:28)

America’s so-called “War on Terror”—actually a war of empire—has stoked this deadly dynamic across the Middle East. The U.S.-Iraqi assault on Mosul will do nothing to slow that dynamic.

In other words, nothing good for the people is going to come of the U.S. “victory” in Mosul. It is part of a reactionary war of empire that is not in the interests of humanity.

The carnage in Mosul is heartrending—even more so because it is completely outmoded and unnecessary. This underscores the urgency of taking up the challenge Bob Avakian poses and the leadership he provides in Bringing Forward Another Way, for building broad resistance to the crimes of America’s empire, and more fundamentally for preparing for revolution and birthing a radically different and far better world.