From the Desk of Carl Dix

MAKE 2013 A YEAR OF RISING RESISTANCE TO THE HORRORS OF THIS SYSTEM!

Sisters and Brothers,

I spent 2012 deeply involved in building resistance to mass incarceration.  Along with other Stop “Stop-and-Frisk” Freedom Fighters, I faced several trials for having stood up in 2011 to say no to that racist, illegitimate policy of the NYPD.   In waging a legal-political defense, we successfully turned the tables on the authorities and put Stop-and-Frisk on trial inside and outside the courtrooms, and beat back their attempts to put us in jail for standing up and fighting back.   

Along with Cornel West, I issued the Call to “Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk” on September 13, 2012.  In NYC alone, more than 5,000 whistles were distributed, giving people who the cops sweat non stop a way they could enlist in the resistance to police abuse and the way the whole criminal "injustice" system comes down on them

I did all this as part of building a movement for revolution, a movement that has set its sights on leading millions of people in doing all that’s necessary to get rid of this capitalist system and all the horrors it inflicts on humanity — the wars for empire; the pillaging of whole countries; the brutality and sexual slavery enforced on women in many different parts of the world, including in the U.S.; the ravaging of the environment and more.

This kind of revolution is possible.  In Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP, we have the leadership we need to make revolution.  And the new approach to revolution and communism he developed by studying the many great achievements and the errors and shortcomings of the revolutions in the Soviet Union and China make it possible to go farther and do better the next time revolution is made and power is in the hands of the people.  And the RCP has a strategy for making revolution in a country like this:  It’s spreading revolution everywhere" and “Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution!”

Look, I know a lot of people argue that the thing to do in 2012 was to make sure Obama got re-elected.  And those same people now say the thing to do is to hold his feet to the fire to get him accountable to the people who voted for him.  Doing this paralyzes and immobilizes people who should be out there building resistance to the crimes against the people Obama presided over and will continue to preside over.

At Obama's campaign rallies, the cry "Four More Years" rang out.   Four more years of what?  ...Of drone missiles rained down on Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries destroying whole villages and killing thousands of innocent people?  ...Of Obama reviewing a kill list and deciding who gets assassinated on his say so every week?  ...Of Obama instituting policies like his assertion that the president can kill US citizens if he determines they are enemy combatants?  On these and other fronts Obama is worse than Bush!  Working to keep him in the White House, and trying to make him accountable to the people who voted for him keeps the system that breaks the bodies and crushes the spirits of millions and millions of people around the world in effect.  Doing this is worse than useless.

But there is something worthwhile you can and must be a part of.  

Join me in making 2013 a year of rising resistance, a year that thousands -- and even millions -- stand up to say police murder, racial profiling, torture like conditions in prison—all this shit—must end.  The slogan -- Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide -- expresses the reality for tens of millions of people in the U.S.  We must make 2013 a year of breaking that silence.  I urge you to be a part of making this happen because it will make a difference: for the youth treated like criminals and seen as guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive to prove their innocence; for those warehoused in prison; for those discriminated against after they’ve served their sentences; and for all their loved ones.

There are practical ways you could be part of breaking that silence.  

1. Join the Stop Mass Incarceration Network in its Bear Witness Project (click here).

2. Bring me to your campus or your area to speak on the horrors of mass incarceration and what to do about them.  Contact me directly at comradecarl@hotmail.com.

3. Set up an interview so I can get into the media about what’s being done to fight mass incarceration.  Contact me via the SMIN at stopmassincarceration@gmail.com, or directly at comradecarl@hotmail.com.

4. Contribute money!  Your contributions can play a crucial role in making 2013 a year of rising resistance.   You could contribute to both my efforts and to the SMIN:

(a) You can contribute to help me focus all my efforts on spreading revolution and building resistance.  Make a check or money order to Carl Dix to P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station, New York NY 10002-0900.

(b) You can make a tax-deductible contribution to the SMIN.  You can do this by going online to make a contribution, or send checks and money orders to the Alliance for Global Justice (with a notation to “Stop Mass Incarceration”), and then send them to The Stop Mass Incarceration Network, P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station, New York, New York 10002-0900.  

Revolutionary Greetings,

           Carl Dix

Office of Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station, New York NY 10002-0900 * 866-841-9139 x2670 * blog:  comradecarl.blogspot.com *  facebook: carl.dix * youtube: CarlDix1 * twitter: @Carl_Dix

“A slow genocide that could easily become a fast one”

December 23, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“More than 2.4 million people are warehoused in prisons across the country. In 2009, more than 55 percent of those in prison were Black or Latino. Most of the prisoners are men, but there are more than 200,000 women in prison. And the rate of increase for women in prison has been almost double that of men since 1985. In these prisons, people are subjected to conditions that amount to torture. In California alone, there are tens of thousands of prisoners held in segregation units called special housing units or SHUs. People get put in these units arbitrarily, often just at the whim of a guard or an administrator. There is no way for a prisoner to challenge being put into one of these units. Once you end up in one of these units, just about the only way you can get out is by snitching on some other prisoner. When you are in there you are denied visitors. I mean, at times, they don’t even let your lawyer come to see you or give you a call. And they deny people human contact for weeks or months at a time. And this is something that international law calls torture, holding people in that kind of condition.

“These conditions were so bad that this is why 6,600 prisoners in California went on hunger strike in July 2011, followed by a second wave of hunger strikes with 12,000 prisoners participating in September 2011. I mean, people were willing to starve themselves, putting their lives on the line to demonstrate their refusal to continue to put up with these horrendous conditions. And as I said earlier, one of them recently died.

“Then you’ve got the millions and millions more people who are on parole and probation. They’ve already served their sentences, yet they remain under the control of the criminal injustice system. They aren’t allowed to vote; they’re discriminated against when looking for a job; they’re barred from public housing; they’re denied access to government loans.

“All of this, the 2.4 million people in prison, the youth for whom going in and out of prison has become a rite of passage, the former prisoners who are forced to wear badges of shame and dishonor after they’ve already been punished by the authorities, the loved ones and friends of all these people whose hearts are incarcerated with them. This amounts to millions and millions of people living their lives enmeshed in the criminal injustice system in this country. And it comes down to a slow genocide that could easily become a fast one targeting Black people.”

—Carl Dix, speaking at Riverside Church, 
February 18, 2012

The slow genocide Carl Dix talks about continues to grind on, breaking the bodies and crushing the spirits of many of the tens of millions of people whose lives are enmeshed in the web of the criminal injustice system. The horrors this means for so many in this society provides potential to unleash millions to stand up and resist.

To tap into this potential, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) is dedicating February, which is Black History Month, to bearing witness to the injustice of mass incarceration and all its consequences. The month will begin with a week of Bearing Witness and Manifesting Resistance to mass incarceration, and SMIN plans to use the Call to Bear Witness to transform the resistance to these injustices into more of a nationwide movement.

SMIN will continue the fight to see to it that none of the STOP “Stop & Frisk” freedom fighters do any jail time, and it will turn the system’s legal attacks on the people who stood up against stop-and-frisk into opportunities to put that racist illegitimate policy on trial. In particular, SMIN will rally people to beat back the government’s prejudicial prosecutions of Noche Diaz.

An important call for unity among different groups of prisoners (“California Prisoners Call for Peace Between Different Nationalities in Prisons and Jails,” Revolution, October 7, 2012) has been issued by prisoners in California. The call is spreading across the country behind the walls and even reaching outside the prisons. It needs to be spread even further.

2012 Police Attacks on Black and Latino Youth Multiply

This Shit Must End!! 
And WE Must End It!!

by Carl Dix | December 23, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As 2012 draws to a close, rage builds over the murder of Jordan Davis, a Black youth in Florida who was gunned down by a white man named Michael Dunn. Dunn was angered by Jordan and his friends playing their music too loud, and says he fired eight shots at them because he saw a shotgun, a gun that has yet to be found, in their car. Think about this—a white man says he felt in fear for his life after he confronted Black youth playing loud music, and this is seen as possible justification for murdering one of them. They might as well declare open season on Black youth in “Stand Your Ground” Florida.

This brings to mind the racist murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman—who considered a Black youth in a hoodie automatically “suspicious.” Add to these unofficial murders the police murders of Ramarley Graham in NYC; Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo in Anaheim, California; the authorities in Jonesboro, Arkansas, calling it a suicide when Chavis Carter was found dead of a bullet to the head in the back seat of a cop car while double handcuffed, and many more outrages that were perpetrated in 2012.

COPS AND VIGILANTES STEALING THE LIVES OF OUR CHILDREN MUST NOT BE TOLERATED! IT MUST BE ENDED!

This is part of the whole way the criminal “injustice” system is unleashed to assault Black and Latino people today. Add to these official and unofficial murders the more than 2.2 million people warehoused in prisons across the country, 60 percent of them Black or Latino. Add to all that the 400,000 immigrants held in detention centers in the course of a year. And stop-and-frisk in NYC, gang injunctions in California and other places, and other forms of racial profiling that make Black and Latino youth a criminalized generation, guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive to prove their innocence. And how former prisoners are subjected to open discrimination even after they’ve served their sentences.

ALL THIS TOO MUST NOT BE TOLERATED! IT TOO MUST BE ENDED!

All this adds up to millions of Black and Latino youth facing lives going into and out of prison as a rite of passage. In addition to the two million-plus people in prison, there are five million former prisoners who are reduced to the status of second-class citizens by the discrimination they face. When you consider the loved ones of all these people, you get a picture of tens of millions of people living their lives enmeshed in the web of the criminal “injustice” system. This is why I’ve called out mass incarceration as being a slow genocide that could easily become a fast one.

This represents a continuation in different form of the whole history of vicious oppression of Black people since the 1st Africans were dragged to these shores in slave chains.

As Bob Avakian has put it:

“This system, in this country, in the whole history of its treatment of Black people, what has it been?

First, Slavery … Then, Jim Crow—segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror … And now, The New Jim Crow—police brutality and murder, wholesale criminalization and mass incarceration, and legalized discrimination yet again.

That’s it for this system:

Three strikes and you’re out!”

Avakian is right on time here. We need a revolution to end once and for all the brutal, vicious oppression of Black people and other oppressed nationalities, and the 1001 other horrors this system inflicts on humanity—the violence and degradation enforced on women all over the world, the wars for empire, the ravaging of the environment. A revolution that brings into being a totally different society where power is in the hands of the people, led by their communist vanguard, and where radically different economic, social and political relations are in effect.

And right now what’s needed is resistance. Everybody needs to be a part of fighting this. If you have an ounce of concern for what’s being brought down on tens of millions of people in society, YOU HAVE TO JOIN THIS FIGHT.

I mean, how can anyone stand aside when millions of youth are destined for futures of oppression and oblivion even before they are born? We need determined mass resistance—to the police brutality and police murder, to the torture-like conditions in prison, to racial profiling, to the whole slow genocide of mass incarceration.

Our resistance has to be taken to a much higher level in 2013. To a level that can beat back the horrors that are being inflicted on so many people, that can reverse the trajectory of brutality and criminalization this society has been on for so long. Resistance that can capture the imagination of people broadly, that can open the eyes of those who are kept in the dark about all what’s being done in their names and let those who bear the brunt of all this know they’re not alone, that when they stand up and fight back, others will stand with them. YOU HAVE TO BE A PART OF FORGING THIS MUCH NEEDED RESISTANCE!

We in the Revolutionary Communist Party are going to be right in the thick of building this resistance, mobilizing masses to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution! From whatever perspective you come at all this, you need to join in taking on these horrors.

Stand with the prisoners who have put their lives on the line to fight the torturous conditions they face in prisons across the country. Spread the impact of the Call for unity that has been issued by prisoners in the segregation units in California.

Stand up and say NO MORE to police murder and police brutality, to racial profiling and to discrimination against former prisoners.

Join in and help forge a massive struggle to stop mass incarceration.

The slogan, Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide, expresses the reality faced by millions of people in U.S. society.

2013 must be a year of breaking that silence!

Send us your comments.

From the Desk of Carl Dix

November 16, 2012

Credit: Black Bird Press News & Review

Friends,

I want to make sure you all know that we won a victory yesterday in court in Queens. Four Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters, myself, Jamel Mims, Morgan Rhodewalt and Bob Parsons, were found not guilty on 2 counts of Obstructing Governmental Administration (OGA, a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of a year in prison.) for the Stop “Stop-and-Frisk” protest at the 103^rd police precinct in Queens on November 19, 2011.  We were found guilty of disorderly conduct (Dis Con, a violation which carries a maximum penalty of 15 days) for that protest.  (Sentencing in this case is scheduled for January 7, 2013.)

To be clear, we did nothing wrong at that protest. We should’ve been found not guilty on all charges. The 20 people arrested last November 19^th were standing up and saying NO MORE to the racist, illegitimate NYPD policy of Stop-and-Frisk under which almost 2000 people, 85% of them Black or Latino and almost all of them completely innocent, are subjected to harassment, disrespect and worse every day. Putting us on trial facing charges that could’ve put us in jail for a year was part of the way NY authorities have doubled down on Stop-and-Frisk in the face of rising opposition.  They wanted to convict and jail us to deliver a message to everyone else that, if you stand up and resist injustice, you’ll be severely punished.  But they weren’t able to deliver that message.

This battle is far from over.  Nine more defendants are facing charges of OGA and Dis Con for the November 19^th protest, and 13 defendants, including me, face trial for protesting Stop-and-Frisk in Brooklyn.  Noche Diaz, a defendant in both these cases, also faces trials in Manhattan and the Bronx for getting arrested while observing the police brutalizing people.  Stop-and-Frisk, the injustice we set out to end, remains in effect, and as we said very loudly at our protests, “We Won’t Stop Till We Stop ‘Stop-and-Frisk.’” And all of this is part of taking on racially targeted mass incarceration.

We should take note of our victory and redouble efforts to carry forward this fight to a successful conclusion.  There are a few key things we need to focus on in doing this:

• Support the December 6^th “Evening to Support of the Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters and Raise the Roof for their Legal Expenses.”  Spread the word on it, buy tickets, line up participants and refreshments, etc.  For information go to www.stopmassincarceration.org.
• Spread the word on the remaining trials the Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters face.  Winning these cases is part of fighting to Stop “Stop-and-Frisk.”  Help get these trials covered in the media, get it out on lists you’re on, spread it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Sign the Resolution calling for dropping the charges on the Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters, ending the prejudicial prosecution of Noche Diaz and immediately ending Stop-and-Frisk.  Go to www.stopmassincarceration.org/resolution-en.html.

Revolutionary Greetings,

Carl Dix

From the Desk of Carl Dix

November 11, 2012

Friends,

The trial of the four (4) Stop-and-FriskFreedom Fighters in Queens -- myself, Jamel Mims, Morgan Rhodewalt and Robert Parsons -- will resume on Tuesday, November 13.  It has been a wild ride.  Through almost three weeks in court, we’ve had one juror arrested in the court building and another dismissed because she was horrified to hear that a fellow juror had been arrested.  The trial has been postponed twice due to extreme weather.

The prosecution has almost finished putting on its case.  They have yet to put on ANY evidence that ANY police activity was obstructed or that ANY members of the public were denied access to the precinct by the protest last November 19.  I’m not exaggerating here.  Our attorneys walked the commander of the 103 Precinct through everything he said his precinct did.  They asked him if any of those functions hadn’t happened because of the protest, and he said no.  (His exact words were, “Not to my knowledge.”)  They also got him to admit that he had created a frozen zone around the precinct to which no one was to be admitted without the permission of the police, and that NO members of the public asked to be admitted during our protest.  Yet the four of us are facing a year in prison for Obstructing Governmental Administration and Disorderly Conduct.

This underscores what the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) has been saying since this trial began: “…what is being put on trial here is nothing less than the ability and right to stand up and say NO MORE to the racist policy of Stop-and-Frisk.”

It is important that, when the trial resumes on Tuesday, there are many supporters of the Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters in the court and that many, many people are paying attention to what happens in this case.  The defendants will begin testifying on Tuesday.  We will speak to why we were willing to risk arrest to protest Stop-and-Frisk, and through this we will be putting Stop-and-Frisk on trial.  I am writing to ask you to do all you can to help shine a spotlight on this outrageous prosecution.

• Spread the word on this case.by sending this message, linking to our trial blog, posting on Facebook and tweeting about it. 
• Come to Queens Criminal Court 9:30 am Tuesday, 125-01 Queens Boulevard, Kew Gardens.  (Take the E or the F train to the Union Turnpike/Kew Gardens stop) and bring people with you. 
•  Contact your ties in the media and encourage them to cover this important trial. 

Another important thing you could do is to help us meet the mounting expenses ($10,000 and rising) of fighting this legal battle.  Keep your eyes open for the new date for the “Evening in Support of the Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters” and to “Raise the Roof on Their Legal Expenses,” which was postponed because of Hurricane Sandy.  You can donate on line here or see information on how to donate via check.  All donations are tax-deductible.

The Stop-and-Frisk Freedom Fighters have more cases coming up.  There are nine (9) more defendants facing trial for the protest in Queens on November 19, 2011, and there are 13 people facing trial for the Stop-and-Frisk protest in Brooklyn on November 1, 2011.  Also Noche Diaz faces trials in Manhattan and the Bronx where he was arrested while observing the police brutalizing people.  This case in Queens is critical because it's the first trial where the authorities have aimed to hit people with serious jail time for protesting Stop-and-Frisk.  Your support is needed to defeat this outrageous prosecution.

Thank you,

Carl Dix

2012 Hurricane Sandy; 2005 Hurricane Katrina

Reflections on Natural, and Man-made, Disasters and Standing Up Against the Oppression of Black People 

By Carl Dix

I’m hunkered down in New York City, riding out Hurricane Sandy.  The trial of me and my three co-defendants for protesting the NYPD’s unjust and racist policy of Stop-and-Frisk has been postponed because of the Hurricane.  I’m hearing reports that it may be a while before the city is back to normal functioning, but it’ll only be a few days before the court has this outrageous prosecution back in high gear.  Meanwhile, I’m reflecting on the winds, rains and flooding that battered the whole northeastern coast of the country.  This storm has drastically disrupted the lives of tens of millions of people.  Millions have lost power, and thousands have been forced out of their homes by the flooding.  Houses in parts of the New York City have had their roofs torn off by the winds that have whipped through.  As Sandy goes further west, major snowstorms are hitting West Virginia and other states. 

The full story of the impact this storm will have for many, many people has yet to be written.  People one paycheck away from being forced over the edge are finding themselves right up against that edge.  People could soon be unable to buy food for their families, and if areas remain shut down, it could become impossible to find any food in the stores.  Historically it’s been people on the bottom of society who are hardest hit when natural disasters bring on human suffering that’s made worse by social factors. 

All this takes me back to the months I spent in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005.  There 100,000 mostly Black people were left to die by the powers that be, and castigated as “thieves and looters” when they organized themselves to get food to eat and boats to save their own and others’ lives.  While Katrina was still raging, police forced people walking across a bridge over the Mississippi River trying to escape New Orleans to turn back to where flood waters rose, at gunpoint.  Five police officers were convicted last year of killing two Black men and wounding four other people, all of them unarmed, on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge and covering up these crimes. The governor of Mississippi gave state police orders to shoot looters, meaning people acting to save lives ran the risk of being gunned down by society’s enforcers.  Prisoners were left locked in jail in New Orleans as flood waters rose, and some of them drowned. 

Hurricane Katrina exposed many people for the first time to the poverty and deprivation faced by huge numbers of Black people in New Orleans and throughout the U.S.  The sight of people jammed into the New Orleans Convention Center without adequate food, water or sanitation horrified millions.  Photos of people on their roofs begging to be rescued while flood waters rose made clear that what Kanye West said about George W. Bush — that he “doesn’t care about Black people” — applied to federal, state and local government officials. And there’s a deeper truth we need to get at here.  The disaster being inflicted on Black people that Hurricane Katrina laid bare for millions of people had been going on for decades and has continued to deepen in the years since Katrina. 

Mass incarceration has almost 2.4 million people warehoused in prisons across the country, two thirds of them Black or Latino.  Almost 5 million people on parole or probation treated like second class citizens, discriminated against when looking for work, barred from living in public housing or receiving government loans, often not even allowed to vote.  Racial profiling serves as a pipeline to mass incarceration.  When you add in the loved ones of all these people, there are tens of millions of people living their lives enmeshed in the web of the criminal justice system.  This comes down to a slow genocide targeting Black people. 

This isn’t because people have chosen to get involved in criminal activity or because of “human nature.”  Instead it flows from the way capitalism works, and from conscious policies by the country’s rulers.  The factories that used to provide employment for people in the inner cities have been moved around the world by capitalists in search of higher profits.  The education system has been geared to fail our youth.  What choices does this system offer them?  Living on the edge of survival, going in and out of prison death at an early age or joining the military and becoming a mindless killer in America’s wars, leaves millions of youth to grow up facing futures of hopelessness.

The system’s response to this has been racial profiling like stop-and-frisk that treats oppressed youth like criminals, guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive to prove their innocence.  Laws and law enforcement disproportionately target Blacks and Latinos.  

I was and am outraged by this continuing disaster.  It’s unacceptable and needs to be stopped.  That’s why I joined with Cornel West to issue a call for a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to stop “stop-and-frisk,” and why I was arrested three times as part of that campaign.  Now I’m on trial with three other stop-and-frisk protesters in Queens, NYC, and facing a year in jail.  They have us in the same court where the District Attorney couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put on an effective prosecution against the cops who murdered Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets back in 2006. 

As I said above, Hurricane Sandy has delayed our trial for the past few days, but this hasn’t changed what this trial is about.  Despite the protestations of the judge and the prosecutors that this trial isn’t about Stop-and-Frisk, it’s clear to me that what’s on trial here is people’s ability and right to stand up and say NO MORE to Stop-and-Frisk and the whole way this country’s criminal “injustice” system comes down on people.  If they get away with convicting and jailing us without a fight, it will send a message that those who resist all the brutality and repression brought down on the people will suffer heavy punishment for doing that.  On the other hand, winning this legal battle will inspire many more people to join in resistance to injustice and feed the hopes of many that the continuing disaster this system has been raining down on Black people can be taken on and beaten back.

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