Saturday, June 11, 2016

June 13 Press Conference: Justice for Freddie Gray – CONVICT & JAIL the Murdering Cops

Carl Dix                                                                                 Contact: Steve Yip 917 868 6007
11 June 2016
carlmdix@gmail.com

Justice for Freddie Gray – CONVICT & JAIL the Murdering Cops

What: Press Conference
When: Monday June 13 4:30 pm

Where: North Calvert & East Fayette, Baltimore, MD

Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party said today:

"Baltimore police murdered Freddie Gray OVER A YEAR AGO. They came up on him for no reason and assaulted him. They bent him like a pretzel, to the point where his screams of pain were heard a block away. Then police threw Freddie Gray in a van and subjected him to the “rough ride” that has terrorized and tortured so many Black people in Baltimore. By the time they were through with him, Freddie Gray was near dead. He died a week later. Together, these police murdered Freddie Gray. They are ALL murderers and accessories to murder. Police saw him not as a human being but a Black man who they were licensed to torture and kill. This was a modern day lynching.

Over and over police in America kill Black and Brown people with impunity. What was different this time is that the youth of Baltimore rose up. Their uprising was followed by days of outrage and protest by people from all walks of life – especially students. The uprising and the aftermath forced the hand of the powers-that-be to bring charges against six police who murdered Freddie Gray.

But ever since, the wheels of injustice have worked to cover up what really happened, deny justice, and let the murdering police go free. They are letting the murderers walk on the installment plan. And media coverage has worked 24-7 to focus people’s attention on anything but the real issue: JUSTICE for Freddie Gray.
The first trial of the police who killed Freddie Gray ended in a mistrial. The second ended in an acquittal. Right now Goodson, the cop accused of ignoring Freddie Gray’s desperate demand for medical help, throwing him in the back of a police van, and subjecting him to a rough ride – at the end of which Freddie Gray was near death – is on trial for murder. This trial CANNOT be another whitewash. It CANNOT be another mockery of justice. What is needed to change things is for PEOPLE to take things into our own hands. We are making clear: there MUST be justice in this case. We are not asking, we are demanding:

Justice for Freddie Gray!
Convict the killer police and send them to jail!

The days when police can kill with impunity must be gone, and they can be gone.

Be there Monday! Stand tall!

Carl Dix is available for interviews.  Contact 917 868 6007

Embracing the Legacy of Muhammad Ali Means Standing Up and Acting for Principle

June 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

People talk about their admiration for Muhammad Ali and profess to embrace his legacy. I have a serious question and challenge to put to them, and especially the prominent Black people among them: Are you ready to stand and act for principle as he did? Muhammad Ali put himself on the line to stand up against the oppression this system was bringing down on Black people. When the powers that be told him he had to join their army and be part of the military machine being unleashed to drown the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people in blood, Ali responded in bold and clear terms:

“No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here.”

This stand cost him the heavyweight boxing championship of the world and millions of dollars. And it put him at risk of being jailed for years, but he stood firm and refused to back down. This is what was most inspiring about Muhammad Ali: his willingness to put it all on the line to oppose terrible wrongs.

Today, the same system continues to inflict savage oppression: horrific numbers of particularly Black and Latino people, including many youth and even young children, brutalized and murdered by vicious police. How many videos must you see of people gunned down or beaten, tased or choked to death by the police, responding only with weak sympathy for the victims, and begging the system for justice someday? How long will you stand aside while the system backs up their killer cops again and again, seldom putting any of them on trial—and in the few cases where cops have been tried, virtually never convicting any of them, or at most giving them a slap on the wrist? “Justifiable homicide”? No. Ali said then, and we must say now: “This is the day when such evils must come to an end.”

Ali, in a short poem, said: "Me, Whee!" With props to his exuberance, I am going to take a liberty with his rhyme to say: Yes: You, me, WE know this horrific police brutality and murder is still going down. Are you/are we going to stand up and say unequivocally that these and other horrors perpetrated by this system must stop? ARE YOU/ARE WE GOING TO PUT IT ON THE LINE TO FIGHT TO STOP THESE CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE? I’ve been doing this for a long time and will continue to so. Are you ready to join this fight? The time is now. THIS IS THE LEGACY THAT MUST NOT ONLY BE SPOKEN OF, BUT ACTED ON.


Gray Is NOT Justice! Indict, Convict and Send Killer Cops to Jail!

December 16, 2015  Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A Baltimore judge has declared a mistrial in the case of William Porter, the first cop brought to trial for the murder of Freddie Gray. Another cop involved in the death of a Black man at the hands of the police has walked free. This happens all the damned time. It is unacceptable and illegitimate. It is not justice, and it has to STOP!

We should live in a society where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or injure an innocent person. It'll take revolution, nothing less, to bring that kind of society into being. This kind of revolution is possible. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), has spent decades developing a new synthesis of communism that points to how we could get rid of the system responsible for the savage oppression of Black people, and all the other horrors enforced on humanity—the attacks on immigrants, the subjugation of women, the wars for empire, and the destruction of the planet we live on—once and for all. And points to how we could bring into being the kind of world people would want to live in. If you want to see that better world, you need to dig into the work of Bob Avakian.

And if you have an ounce of justice in your heart, you need to join the fight to STOP police getting away with murder. This starts with insisting that Porter be retried. And for all the killer cops—the six who murdered Freddie Gray, the Chicago cops who murdered Laquan McDonald, the Seattle cops who murdered Chris Harris, the San Francisco cops who murdered Mario Woods, the Virginia jail guards who murdered Natasha McKenna, and ALL the rest—to be indicted, convicted and sent to jail.

Look at what the six cops did to Freddie Gray that night. Several chased him down like a runaway slave because he ran when he saw them. They beat him down so bad that one witness said he was “bent up like a pretzel” when the cops put him in the van. The van was a few minutes from the police station, yet these cops, joined by several other cops, drove Gray around for 45 minutes, stopping six times. Pigs in Baltimore call this giving them the “rough ride,” making fast starts and stops. This form of summary punishment has been documented to have killed—murdered—people in police custody.

By the time the van had stopped the sixth time, Gray's spine was severed, and he was paralyzed. A week later he died. The Baltimore Sun described Porter’s so-called defense: "Prosecutors argued that Baltimore Police Department rules clearly require officers to seat-belt arrestees. Porter's lawyers argued that police rarely seat-belted prisoners..." And this was enough to get him a mistrial.

This is another example of the whole system going into motion to exonerate cops in the rare cases when their murderous deeds are so outrageous—and the people find it intolerable and go out into the streets, as they did in Baltimore—that the system is compelled to indict one of its front-line enforcers. Imagine what would happen if a group of Black youth had been involved in the death of a cop, and some of them tried to blame it on the others. The system would throw all of them in jail.

Killer cops belong in cell blocks, and we can't rely on the system to get them put there. It'll take mass determined resistance to the ways police get away with murder to get justice for Freddie Gray, and all the victims of murder by police. Get with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and become part of that resistance. And get with the movement for revolution that the RCP is building if you want to end the horrors this system inflicts on humanity.

Indict, Convict and Send Killer Cops to Jail—The Whole Damned System Is Guilty as Hell!

It'll Take Revolution, Nothing Less, to End Police Getting Away with Murder!