Whose War? Whose Troops?

You Can't Support Troops Waging An Unjust War!


There's a lot of talk about who does, and who doesn't, support the troops these days. It's one thing for George Bush and the leaders of the Republicans and Democrats to say they support the troops. Particularly those Democrats who say they oppose the war but support the troops are trying to corral the antiwar sentiment of people—to prevent people from confronting what is really going on over there, and beyond that the real role and character of the army and the troops who fight in it.

There are also people who genuinely oppose the war, but who also say I support the troops. Many of these people approach this from a personal point of view. They have relatives, friends, or people they know in the military. Some people feel these troops should be supported because many of them were drawn into joining the military because there is so little opportunity for employment or education for so many people in U.S. society today. But that isn't the heart of the matter. To determine whether you should or shouldn't support the troops, you have to look at what these troops are doing and decide whether that deserves your support.

These soldiers are part of the U.S. military. The war they are fighting in Iraq is aimed at maintaining and extending U.S. domination in the Middle East and around the world. This is an unjust and immoral war. Look at what it comes down to for the people of Iraq.

From the very beginning, the U.S. military has rained death and destruction on the Iraqi people. They've killed many, many people and created conditions in which many, many more have been slaughtered in violence pitting Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds against each other.

U.S. troops flattened the city of Falluja, driving virtually the entire population out in order to take the city back from the those resisting the U.S. occupation. They routinely call in air strikes on Iraqi villages and urban areas, killing innocent Iraqis. U.S. troops set up checkpoints and raid people's homes, subjecting people to harassment and brutality on a regular basis. While carrying out this occupation, some U.S. troops have raped Iraqi women and just outright murdered people. What about any of this deserves the support of anybody who opposes this unjust war?

Some who oppose the war try to deal with the contradiction involved here by saying, "I support the warrior, not the war." But how can you separate the troops from what they are doing? Bob Avakian has raised the point that if you came upon a woman who was being attacked and raped by a gang of men, would you say, 'I support the rapists, not the rape?' Or if you encountered a mob of racists lynching a Black person, would you say, 'I support the lynchers, not the lynching?' Of course not. You'd say these people are doing something heinous, and I can't support them. Well the war that U.S. troops are waging in Iraq is also heinous, and it, and the troops who are carrying it out don't deserve the support of anybody who cares about justice!

I know that these GIs are largely drawn from the working class and oppressed people. But that doesn't matter—it doesn't mean that we should support them. Nor does it matter if they think that what they're doing is defending their country. What matters is that they ARE a part of inflicting untold suffering on the Iraqi people in order to enforce U.S. imperialist domination. If you're in the U.S. military, you have to take responsibility for what it's doing, and troops who are responsible for the kinds of things the U.S. military is doing in Iraq and elsewhere don't deserve the support of anybody who is concerned about what's just and right. The fact that their fundamental interests aren't served by the plundering and raping of Iraq and other countries the U.S. rulers have them carrying out makes it doubly painful and all the more necessary to struggle with them over where their real interests lie.

When I talk about this, I'm dealing with something that I've been through. I was in the U.S. military back during the Vietnam war. The U.S. rulers put a gun in my hands, trained me how to use it and ordered me to go to Vietnam—to kill Vietnamese people and maybe be killed myself. I didn't know what the Vietnam war was about when I got drafted into the army, or when I got the orders to go to Vietnam. But I had to quickly find out what it was about because I had to decide whether it was something I should or could be a part of.

There was a huge movement against the war in Vietnam back then, and many involved in it were saying this was an imperialist war that was aimed at drowning the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people in blood. Groups like the Black Panther Party were saying that Black people had no business fighting for the U.S. in Vietnam while Black people were having dogs sicked on them here in the U.S. while fighting for their rights.

I became convinced that this was true off of talking to a lot of GIs who had been in Vietnam fighting. They told me about atrocities committed against Vietnamese people that they had seen and some of them had even been a part of. About how they were trained to look at the Vietnamese people as a whole—men, women, and even children—as the enemy. I learned that things like the My Lai massacre, where U.S. troops destroyed a village and murdered many of its inhabitants—most of whom were women, children, and old men—because they suspected they supported the Vietnamese liberation fighters, was a routine occurrence. That the U.S. military frequently "destroyed the village in order to save the village." That U.S. troops called in air strikes on villages if they THOUGHT they were being fired at from the direction of that village. That they killed Vietnamese people indiscriminately and raped women.

I recalled that back in basic training our drill sergeants had fed us stories about the horrible things Vietnamese liberation fighters would do. They said they'd put a grenade in a baby carriage and blow up the baby to kill U.S. GIs. The drill sergeants would call Vietnamese people gooks, dinks and slopes non-stop. They were getting us ready to be part of the U.S. imperialist killing machine that could rain death and destruction indiscriminately on Vietnamese people in order to keep U.S. global domination in effect back then.

I also learned that there were U.S. GIs who were resisting this war from inside the military. Some units marched off in the opposite direction from where they thought the Vietnamese rebels were. Other units just flat out refused to fight, and some GIs even fragged officers who tried to make them fight.

This helped me to learn that the war in Vietnam was a war to suppress the struggle of an oppressed people to free their country from imperialist domination. And that it was a war that anyone who believed in justice shouldn't support and shouldn't be a part of fighting. Off of this, I was able to develop the strength to refuse to go to Vietnam. I did two years in Leavenworth Military Penitentiary for taking this stand. Faced with this situation all over again, I'd take the same stand. What was really criminal was the war, and refusing to fight in it was the right thing to do.

The war in Iraq isn't a rerun of the war in Vietnam, but just like that war, this one is a war for empire. It's an unjust, immoral war. People shouldn't want to be a part of such a war, and people shouldn't be supporting the troops who are fighting this war. What are these troops doing that deserves the support of anybody who believes in justice? Nothing—not a damn thing!

There are U.S. soldiers who deserve the support of everyone who opposes injustice. Those who have spoken out against the war, those who have refused to go to Iraq and those who have resisted the war in other ways. They are doing the right thing, and they deserve our support.

And what do all the troops really need from those of us who know this war is wrong? Again let me draw from my experience. I didn't get the understanding and inspiration to refuse to go to Vietnam because people expressed support for the troops. I was able to do that because people told the truth about the war in Vietnam. And because the people protesting the war and the GIs who rebelled against it from inside the military challenged me through their actions to do the right thing.

Today's troops need the same thing that I needed back then. They need to hear the truth about the war they're being sent off to be a part of in Iraq—that it's an unjust war, a war for empire. They need to be challenged to take off their blinders and look straight at the atrocities the U.S. is inflicting on the Iraqi people and that they are being ordered to be a part of. And they need to be challenged to do the right thing today, just like I was challenged to do the right thing back during the Vietnam War.

Praying Won’t End Injustice

We Need to Understand the World As It Is,
and Make Revolution to Change It!

By Carl Dix, Revolution #74, December 24, 2006

What’s it going to take to stop the brutality and even murder the cops inflict on the people again and again? This question is up big-time in the streets of NY as people express their rage at the police murder of Sean Bell and several other recent police shootings. Too many people answer this by saying god will make things right for the people. This makes no sense.

So when is god going to make this right? Why hasn’t god done something already about all the injustice and misery people have been forced to endure for so long? Was he asleep at the switch while this country was being conceived in the genocide against the native inhabitants and dragging people here from Africa in slavery’s chains? Was he busy with something else during centuries of slavery followed by another century of lynchings, Jim Crow segregation and KKK terror? Has he been on vacation as the oppression of Black people continued, and even intensified, down to today? With a track record like that, why would anybody leave dealing with police murder to god?

Praying or waiting for god to take care of things has never gotten people free or ended injustice, and it won’t do that today either. The main reason is that there IS NO GOD! And praying to and relying on something that doesn't even exist will either lead people to think they don’t need to do anything about it but wait for god to bring justice—or it will lead them to do things that won’t challenge this shit while the system literally gets away with murder. Religion is a shackle and it’s been a shackle on Black people in particular since way back. And it’s even worse today. It was used by the powers back then to justify slavery, and it’s being pushed, like a drug, by the powers today to justify slavishness.

Police brutality and police murder can’t be stopped by people “getting right with god.” The police are enforcers for this rotten system. They’re out there keeping the unequal and degrading relations of American capitalism and white supremacy in effect. To get rid of this, and everything else foul people have to deal with today means you have to get rid of the capitalist system.

It’ll take revolution—communist revolution—to do that once and for all. Communist revolution would sweep away everything reactionary. It would shatter the power of the imperialist rulers and big-time exploiters, and as a first step bring into being a new state power—a socialist system in which the needs of the masses of people, not the profits of a handful of super-rich capitalists, would dictate what gets done. A system which would back up the masses in ruthlessly uprooting all the institutions and ideas that reinforce white supremacy. Where those entrusted with enforcing the laws of society would sooner risk their own lives than take the life of an innocent person. Where people could still practice religion if they wanted, but where it wouldn’t be pushed on people like it is today—and where the educational system and media would promote a scientific view of the world. Where dissent, diversity, and wrangling among the people would feed into a whole process of eventually getting to a world without class divisions, without racial and gender domination, and where people would freely decide on the future and settle contradictions among themselves, without a state standing over them and wielding coercion.

Bringing this kind of revolution about won’t be easy. But it is possible and it’s what the world is desperately crying out for. And there is leadership that is determined to lead the masses in doing what’s necessary when the time is ripe for revolution. People who are outraged by the continuing horror of police brutalizing and even murdering people, who are concerned about the state of the country and the world, have to get with the Revolutionary Communist Party and its leader, Bob Avakian. They need to check out Chairman Avakian’s writings and especially his DVD speech on Revolution, and spread them to others. And they need to be joining with people in building resistance to the attacks that the system is bringing down as part of politically preparing for revolution.

Killing to Enforce Capitalism and White Supremacy

50 REASONS TO GET RID OF THIS ROTTEN SYSTEM THRU REVOLUTION!
By Carl Dix, Revolution #72, December 10, 2006

I’m thinking about the killing of Sean Bell and how it brings to mind the police murders of Amadou Diallo, Anthony Bryant, Mingo Mason, Nicholas Heyward Jr, Anthony Rosario and many more victims of the NYPD than I can list here. And of how the cops who killed them got off scot-free.

This shit isn’t unique to NY. It happens in cities all across the country. Look at Atlanta, where cops recently broke into the home of Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old grandmother, on a “no-knock” drug raid and killed her. At first the cops claimed an undercover cop had purchased drugs at her house. Then they changed to saying a confidential informant had told them he had bought drugs at her house. Now the no longer confidential informant has come forward to say the cops are lying and he had never been to the woman’s house.

Why is it that cops brutalize and even kill unarmed people again and again, year in year out?

The answer to this comes down to what the police are actually out there to do in this society. It isn’t protecting and serving the civilian population. Nor is it making sure that justice is served. It means maintaining and even enforcing the dominant economic and social relations that exist in society, including the severe inequality that these relations concentrate. It means enforcing American capitalism and its all-too-legitimate child, white supremacy.

Before the Civil War, enslaving Black people was legal and much of the country’s economy was based on slavery. In fact, the great wealth of this country that they brag about so much today couldn’t have developed the way it did without slavery. It’s clearly unjust to treat human beings as property to be worked and abused as the owners of this “property” want. But the law protected and maintained this, including mandating that if any of this human “property” escaped, law enforcement had a duty to return it to its owner. And anyone who helped slaves escape risked imprisonment, torture and execution. In states where slavery was in effect, it was enforced by both the official police forces and by unofficial forces like the patrollers or “paddy rollers” who tried to keep slaves from running away. In other words, the police and other armed forces were organized to protect the open slavery of that time.

Today in this imperialist system, people all around the world, including millions in this country, work collectively to produce tremendous wealth. Yet this wealth is taken—expropriated—by a small handful of capitalists. The political and legal institutions in this society—the state—exist to maintain this situation and these relations, and the police are a part of that state structure.

Look today at New Orleans. The government failed to evacuate people before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region of the U.S. And after Katrina hit, the government failed to provide either rescue or emergency supplies for people whose lives were at risk. Yet when people took the food and water they needed to survive—that is, when they violated the “laws of capitalist private property”—they were condemned as looters and thugs by the same government officials who had left them there to die.

Police in New Orleans killed people for “looting” on the direct orders of the governor. How many people did the New Orleans cops kill? We don’t know because no one bothered to count them. What has happened to those servants of this system responsible for the deaths and dislocation in New Orleans? Nothing. They were “just doing their job ” under this capitalist system.

It’s a fact that police murder and brutality falls most heavily on Black and other oppressed nationality communities. From slavery to Katrina, white supremacy has been woven deep into the economic and social fabric of this society, and it’s a crucial part of what the police are out there to maintain.

Decades ago the resistance of Black people to the oppression they faced rocked this country and electrified the whole world. People won some concessions, but things didn’t go all the way to the revolution that a lot of people hoped and fought for, and which was and is needed. Since then some of the forms of the oppression of Black people have changed. A section of Black people have gotten ahead in this society—but even these folks face racist discrimination and police brutality and even, at times, murder. And for most Black people there is either a life of low wage labor, crime, prison, or all three. The way police patrol oppressed communities, like U.S. Marines swaggering through occupied Iraq, is aimed at keeping this shit in effect and at breaking people’s spirits and keeping their heads down.

OK, so how do we stop all this? To really get rid of this kind of injustice once and for all, we need a communist revolution, one that could sweep away everything reactionary and build a completely new and different society and world in its place.

A world where a handful of capitalists no longer expropriate the wealth produced by the millions who labor around the world, where people aren’t forced to endure oppressive and degrading social relations based on their race or gender and where a handful of imperialist countries don’t enslave and run the whole damned world and wage wars to fortify that enslavement.

A world where the needs of the masses of people, not the profit motive of a handful of super rich capitalists, are what dictates what gets done.

A world where those entrusted with enforcing the laws of society would sooner risk their own lives than take the life of an innocent person.

A world where the old order is shattered and state power is on the side of the masses and used to not only suppress the former rulers and exploiters, but to transform society in the interests of the people; where more and more of the masses are increasingly involved in the actual running of every sphere of the society; and where society is vibrant and full of wrangling and debate, where people who are not yet won to the goals of the revolution can raise their questions and even express their opposition, with all this aimed at getting to the truth of things as part of moving forward to a society without classes and states.

This kind of revolution is what the world is crying out for today. It’s the only way to break the stranglehold that capitalism has on humanity and to unleash the productive capacity that can meet the needs of people all over the world. The only way to cure, prevent or treat the many diseases that needlessly kill and disable so many people around the world. The only way to put an end to the domination of and discrimination against whole nations and peoples. And the only way to stop the police murder and everyday abuse that put Sean Bell, Kathryn Johnston, and too many others in their graves week in and week out. Nothing short of revolution can accomplish this.

Communist revolution can only be the conscious act of the masses of people, organized and led to carry out increasingly conscious struggle to abolish and take humanity beyond capitalism and all systems of exploitation and oppression. In a country like this one, revolution can only be made when there’s a major change in the situation, one where the whole society is engulfed in crisis. Today the U.S. rulers face a difficult situation. They invaded Iraq as part of making their global position so strong no one could even think about challenging it. Yet it has brought them even more opposition. In the U.S., they’re moving to remake society in a fascist direction which is driving broad sections of the people to think very deeply about what’s going on and what needs to be done about them.

All this is creating openings to bring into being another crucial ingredient for making revolution in a country like this—the emergence of millions and millions of people who are conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. It is urgent that those who are outraged by this police murder and the many other foul things the system brings down develop their understanding of why revolution is needed to end this shit once and for all and how revolution could be carried out when the time is ripe. That they spread this understanding to others. And that they join wherever people are fighting back to hasten forward the day when such a thing is possible. Right now, that means joining in with, supporting and helping to build the struggle for justice for Sean Bell and for all the other victims of police murder.

There is leadership for doing all this. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has developed a vision of the kind of world we can bring into being through making this kind of revolution and how this vision could be realized. People who are concerned about the state of the country and the world need to dig into the writings and speeches of this revolutionary leader and need to get with Bob Avakian and the party he leads.

Go to the web site revcom.us to check out Avakian’s work. And to check out Revolution newspaper, the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party that Avakian leads.

At the same time, we must be building massive political resistance to the ways the system is coming down on the people today. Look at the impact this police murder has had on people. Leading them to question why such foul things happen again and again, and what needs to be done to end them. And look at the way so many people have risen above the muck and mire of day to day life the system keeps us enmeshed in to raise their heads and join in the struggle for justice. This is righteous and must be built on.

Already hundreds of people have taken to the streets in outrage around Sean’s murder in the few days since his death. Calls to remain calm or to wait till all the facts come out must be rejected. Enough facts have already come out. A young man leaving his bachelor party and a few hours away from his wedding is dead. Two of his friends are recovering from gunshot wounds. All were unarmed when the cops fired 50 shots at them. And the police are now carrying out raids in Sean’s neighborhood, arresting family members and friends of the people they shot. That’s enough to conclude that a terrible crime against the people has been committed.

Mass political action that targets the killer cops and the officials who unleash these brutal, murdering cops and cover up and justify their crimes must continue.

Without this kind of resistance, the authorities will feel like they can do any damned thing to us, and we’ll suffer it in silence. We have to make clear we will fight to beat back this kind of injustice. And as we do this, we have to be wrangling with and spreading revolutionary ideas and building a movement that’s winning over millions to see that the system is worthless and revolution is what’s needed.

Carl Dix is the National Spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and can be contacted at P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station, New York NY 10002-0900, (866)841-9139 x2670, e-mail: carldix@hotmail.com

Interview with Nicholas Heyward Sr. on Oct. 22nd National Day of Protest

Revolution #66, October 22, 2006

“There’s So Many Innocent People Being Killed by the Police”

Carl Dix, National Spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, recently talked to Nicholas Heyward Sr., the father of Nicholas Jr. who was killed by a New York City housing police officer in September 27, 1994, in Brooklyn, NY. He is a member of Parents Against Police Brutality and of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.


Nicholas Heyward, Sr. and Juanita Young (whose son Malcolm Ferguson was shot point blank by a cop in 2000), New York City, October 22, 2005

Carl Dix: Can you tell our readers about how your son Nicholas Heyward Jr. was killed?

Nicholas Heyward Sr.: Sept. 22, 1994, Nicholas, who was 13 years old, was playing with some friends of his in the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn. They were playing in the stairwell of one of the buildings. It was first told to me that the officer was on a 911 call to the building—he responded alone, he went to the 14th floor where the children were playing. Stairwell was dimly lit, the officer heard a clicking sound in the stairwell; he fired into dimly lit stairwell, and he hit Nicholas in the abdomen. Nicholas died 8 hours later.

My son was playing with a toy gun, a plastic cork pop gun. It was called pop gun; it was one them plastic guns you put the corks into it. You cock it and you squeeze it, and the corks pop out of it. And it looks nothing like a real gun—It was plastic with orange stripes.

When my wife heard what had happened, she ran across the courtyard to the building, ran up 14 flights of stairs, to try to comfort her son. When she got to l4th floor, police would not allow her to see Nicholas. Asked her who she was, asked her for ID, “who are you, you can’t go behind that door,” and that kind of stuff. They rushed Nicholas out the other exit while the officer was talking to my wife, and they took Nicholas not to the hospital 6 blocks away, but they took him into Manhattan. He died there. The district attorney never presented the case to a grand jury, there was no indictment, he basically blamed the killing on a realistic looking toy gun and said that the officer feared for his life.

In a deposition done on the officer about 2 years after the killing, the officer stated that he was not on 9ll call, that he was just basically on routine patrol, that the stairway was not dimly lit, that he was able to see very well, and that things did not happen in a split second, which was all of Charles Hynes’ reasoning for closing the case and not presenting it to a grand jury. But still they never reopened the case or presented it to a grand jury…

I was messed up for quite a while, a few years. Didn’t know who to turn to, didn’t know where to go, didn’t know who to trust. And it’s real hard in the beginning even to speak out on what happened to your children. Even today it’s still kind of hard. I still get kind of choked up talking about my son’s case. After 12 years I understand the realities of death—there’s no coming back. Just don’t understand how they just allow this officer get away with killing an innocent boy. Even though today I know how the system is, the reality is that they just don’t give a shit. I still from time to time say how the hell do they just allow the cop to get away with this?

Carl Dix: October 22nd is coming up. This will be the 11th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Can you give our readers what you see as the significance of this day and the nationwide movement that’s developed around the October 22nd Coalition?

Nicholas Heyward Sr.: I think it’s a very important event. Police brutality has been on the rise since 9/11. There are still innocent people being murdered out here in New York City and across the country. And I’m still fighting very hard—for justice for my son and because there’s so many innocent people being killed by the police, and so many people constantly justifying each and every killing, not only in New York but across this country. It’s very hard to convict the officer, even to have the officer be brought to trial.

It’s very important to let the people know what’s actually going on, what’s happening with police brutality, police murders, because there’s a lot of people who really don’t know what’s actually happening, what’s taking place, in New York City and across the country with all these killings.

So I think the October 22nd National Day of Protest is a major event for me, and a major event for a lot of the parents also. It gives an opportunity to present to the people the reality, of what happened in our cases—the cover-ups that happened in every single case involving police killing innocent people. I think that if you feel that what’s going on is wrong, if you believe that these things should not happen, you should be a part of this movement.

Carl Dix: When we began October 22 back in the mid ‘90s, we pointed out that there’s a nationwide epidemic of police brutality. This movement did a couple of things: one, it took people who were fighting cases one by one and brought them together and gave them a power they didn’t have by themselves alone. And the other thing that happened is that people who were unaware of the widespread nature of this and thought it was just a case of an isolated incident here and there, began to see that something much more broad was going on. So it both gave a platform for those families and loved ones who have been victimized by brutality and even murder at the hands of law enforcement, and it also brought to their side broader allies.

I’m looking at the Call for October 22nd this year. And it just runs down people killed by the police all across the country. So it’s still going on. Especially since September 11, it has been a struggle to continue the fight against police brutality. So October 22nd and the mobilization around it is trying to keep the reality of police brutality out there in front of people.

Nicholas Heyward: I really can remember when I first heard of October 22nd, and actually it was in an article that appeared in the Amsterdam News. It was talking about organizing the National Day of Protest, and this must’ve been in 1995 or 1996. The article was basically saying that there’s an epidemic of police violence that was going on in New York City and across the country. And at that time I wasn’t doing much of protest at that time. I didn’t know there was anything I can actually do.

October 22nd helped me and the families to organize. Back in the ‘90s, the early ‘90s we were strong. I remember the Baez family, the Calderon family, Frankie Arzuaga, a bunch of us, there was so many parents and there was so many killings that was going on. I mean one behind the other. Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega. All these parents were fighting hard for their children but they didn’t know what was going to come out from all of this rallying and all of this protest. But the thing was we found out is it had given us an opportunity to speak to the people on the realities of what happened. ‘Cause when they kill our children they constantly covering the stories up, making it look justified and trying to justify each and every case. And it’s painful enough for a parent having their son killed by those supposedly protecting them, and then to have them lies coming … it’s just too many cover ups in cases involving police killings. Lots of these cases, the innocent person don’t even have a weapon.

After 9/11 it’s almost like police brutality had heightened and got even worse. It was like a shock wave to a lot of the parents because 9/11 happened in 2001 and I just remember October 22, 2000, we had so many parents out there on October 22, 2000. After 9/11 there was just maybe a handful of parents that just came out. The reason for that, I spoke to lot of the parents, and I myself, I felt regardless of what happened 9/11, police brutality did not die on 9/11. And I wanted to continue to organize the parents to come out for the October 22nd National Day of Protest. And some of them just wanted to stay in at that point on October 22, 2001. A lot of them were fearful of retaliation from the police. This is what they told me on a personal level, that they were fearful of retaliation from the police on that day. The reality for me is that police brutality still exists and needs to be exposed so I continue to speak out on what was taking place.

Carl Dix: After September 11th there has been a lot of talk about police as heroes. And any criticisms of them are considered unjustified. This movement to stop police brutality takes on an added significance because following September 11th, George Bush said, “People have to sacrifice to keep this way of life in effect.” And when you look at this way of life, you see that one of its built-in ingredients is a green light to the police to brutalize and even murder with almost an assurance they won’t be penalized.

Nicholas Heyward: You know, Carl? I never looked at police officers as being heroes, even before my son was killed. Never looked at any police officer not even close to a hero.

You can’t consider yourself a hero if you’re going around killing innocent people, lying and covering up. Even in the course of our rallies and demonstrating, you can observe the officers laughing amongst themselves. You can hear them talking about the rally and stuff there. These are parents speaking about the children that they lost, and here the police are in the background laughing. Heroes to me are… Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks—people who stood up for a cause, for freedom, justice and equality. And that’s not something the officers are doing. The police are just here to arrest and brutalize people for violating a law.

When they come into this community that I live at, they’re not trying to help youth or seniors or anything like that. They’re looking to see if you’re breaking the law, and if you are, they’re going to lock you up, bust you upside the head. It ain’t a thing where they are trying to educate anyone, they’re not trying to helped anyone. They’re not trying to be of service to anyone–not in this community, and I don’t think they do that in any community. So as far as looking at an officer as being an hero, I have never looked at an officer as being a hero.

Since 9/11, this whole situation with police brutality has heightened so much, that it is more important today that October 22nd continues to demonstrate and bring out the reality of what’s happening. If you are someone who has fought against or spoke out against police brutality in the past, it should be essential for you to be at October 22nd National Day of Protest.

Carl Dix: People will be taking to the streets on Oct 22, 2006 in dozens of cities all across the country. If people want to get information about what’s happening in their part of the country, they can go to the website—which is www.october22.org, and there’s a phone number…

Nicholas Heyward: There’s a toll free phone number they could call which is 1-888-NO-BRUTALITY

Carl Dix: And on the bottom of the Call for Oct 22, 2006, it says, “Join the Struggle! Fight Back! On October 22nd, Wear Black!”

Nothing Short of Revolution Can Deal With the Problems this System Forces Black People to Endure!

KANYE WEST HAD IT RIGHT--AND IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN HE THOUGHT!

Not only does Bush hate Black people -- he and the Christian Fascists grouped around him have a program that has murderous implications for Black people! Look at it: Jobs have been sucked out of the Black community and at the same time more Black people than ever are being locked down in jail! Hospitals are being shut down in the inner cities as health and welfare benefits are being cut to the bone and more and more people, especially more Black and Latino people, are dealing with diseases like diabetes and AIDS. As the economy shifts to being more hightech-based, public education is being degraded, resulting in millions of Black youth being tossed on the scrap heap.

To get a clear sense of what this system has in store for Black people, look at the government response to Hurricane Katrina. Tens of thousands of people, most of them Black and almost all of them poor, were left to die in the wake of Katrina. When people did what was needed to save their own and others' lives, Bush led the charge, calling them "looters and criminals." One of Bush's Louisiana Republican allies said: "We've been trying to clean up public housing for years. Now God has done it for us with this hurricane!"

If these were the only foul things this system was responsible for, it would be reason enough to want to get rid of it once and for all through revolution. But there's much, much more. War and occupation in Iraq. Backing Israel to the max as it kills and maims people in Lebanon and Palestine. Undermining and even taking away rights that people thought they had won decades ago. Enforcing a repressive agenda that has many people smelling the odor of a police state. The Bush crew has their sites set on nothing less than enforcing a fascist theocracy, a government where the Bible as interpreted by suckers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson is the law of the land, a set-up where abortion is outlawed and gay people are in camps or worse.

Nothing short of revolution can deal with all this once and for all. Revolution -- meaning millions of people rising up and taking away from these capitalist rulers the power to inflict brutality and misery on countless millions here and worldwide, and going on to build a whole new world on the ashes of this messed up one. The Democrats can't be relied on to mount any serious or effective resistance to all this. The best you can expect from them are half-hearted objections and minor amendments.

This is the starting point of the message being delivered by a project called the Revolutionary Communist Tour. Carl Dix, Joe Veale and Clyde Young are on this tour. They are three veteran revolutionary communist leaders who have lived through the hell this system forces Black people to endure and have come out of it leading the fight to get rid of this system. In addition to indicting this system for the crimes it commits against Black people, and everything else foul it does, they argue that proletarian revolution and communism can deal with the problems imperialism has caused for so many worldwide. see note below They expose how the rulers of this country have lied to people about what communism is and what it has accomplished when working people held power in the Soviet Union and China, before both those countries were taken back down the capitalist path. This Tour also introduces people to Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a leader who has re-envisioned the communist future and the way to realize it.

The Tour challenges Black people and others to break with all the things that hold people back from taking responsibility to bring a different future into being. It challenges men to stop dogging and degrading women. It calls on the youth to break out of the gangster, bling-bling "look out for #1" mentality. It says people got to stop looking for some "god" to take care of our problems, or saying that "whatever happens is his will" and there's nothing we can do about it. It calls out the Black preachers who are skinning and grinning with Bush's Christian Fascist crew, selling out Black people to the Bush regime's murderous agenda in exchange for a spot at the "faith-based" funding trough. People who are tired of the hell this system forces millions to endure have to break with all this crap and join the emancipators of humanity.

This tour has already hit LA, Chicago, Houston and Washington, DC, and it's coming to New York. To set up interviews with the speakers or for more information call: (866)841-9139 x2670. Or e mail the Revolutionary Communist tour at: rc_speaks@yahoo.com

The Haditha Massacre Concentrates the Nature of the US War on Iraq

June 4, 2006

The foul massacre perpetrated by US Marines at Haditha must be condemned by everyone who opposes injustice. This incident concentrates everything that's wrong with the US war in Iraq,including the attempt to bury the murders with the lie that the victims of the massacre were killed by bombs exploded by Iraqi insurgents. (Do these lies remind anybody of Bush's claims of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq?)

After a US soldier was killed in a bombing, Marines gunned down several men who were near a check point. They went into a house and killed an entire family. And then went into other houses. When the massacre was over, five hours later, 24 people -- men, women and children, ranging in age from two-years-old to grandparents had been killed, some of them execution style.

Despite government claims to the contrary, this was no isolated incident. Stories about other massacres committed by US troops are starting to come out. These atrocities reflect the nature of the war the US is waging. Remember how they began the war with massive bombing runs they called "Shock and Awe?" Remember the times that Iraqis were gunned down at US-manned check points? Remember the leveling of Falluja? Remember Abu Ghraib?

This is what an unjust war comes down to. An imperialist power wielding high tech weaponry to pound an oppressed country into submission. Occupying troops committing atrocity after atrocity against the people.

We've seen this before -- I know about this from the Vietnam war. I was in the US army back then, and they gave me orders to go to Vietnam. I decided I had to find out what I would be a part of if I went. I talked to everyone I could find who had done time in 'Nam. I already knew about the My Lai massacre where US troops destroyed a whole village-killing hundreds of men, women and children and burning down the whole village. What I learned from talking to GI's was that the foul massacre at My Lai concentrated Standard Operating Procedure for US troops in Vietnam - that it seemed like everyone over there was the enemy, so everyone was fair game to be killed or brutalized, including women, children and old people. All this is why I refused to go to Vietnam--because I refused to be a part of the criminal war the US was waging in Vietnam.

I got sent to jail for two years for refusing to go to Vietnam, while the real criminals--the officers who ordered the My Lai Massacre, the GI's who participated in it, to say nothing of the architects of the whole war -- basically went unpunished. But I have no regrets. The stand I took, to refuse to fight in an unjust war, was the right stand to take during the Vietnam War. And this experience was a big part of how I came to see that this system is rotten to the core -- and a big part of how I became a revolutionary communist.

The war the US is waging in Iraq is, like the war in Vietnam, a criminal war. No one should be a part of this kind of war. And people who oppose this war need to support the troops who refuse to fight in it.

May 1: Another World--A Communist World--Is Possible!

Proclaim Our Vision, Celebrate Our Achievements, Intensify Our Struggle

May 1 is the revolutionary holiday. Red flags flying, we proclaim our vision:

A world free of the rule of capital; a world, instead, in which the needs and wants of the people--and NOT the never-ending search for ever more profit--determines what and how things get produced and distributed; a world where the planet is cherished, rather than plundered and even destroyed...

A world free of the social relations that divide people into exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed... a world free of the prisons, the torturers and cops, and the armies that march over the planet to extend and enforce those social relations; a world, instead, in which people confront each other as freely interacting human beings...

A world free of the thinking that flows out of and reinforces the division into classes and the institutions of oppression--free of the fear and ignorance spread by religion; free of the bigotry that can imagine nothing higher than lording it over someone else; free of the constant me-first calculations imposed by daily life under capitalism... a world, instead, where people come together to confront and understand reality with open inquisitive minds, taking joy in the search for truth ...

A world free of the division between those who work with their minds and those who must work with their backs, free of borders, free of the domination of women by men ...a world, instead, where people come together cooperatively and voluntarily, working with both hand and mind, to transform the world. . . and to transform themselves in the process...

In short, a COMMUNIST world.

The Dream Can Be Realized
Humanity can do this. The class divisions and oppressive institutions and ideas that weigh on people today have NOT been here forever. Nor are they part of “human nature.” They came into being at a certain point in history--and they can also go out of existence and be replaced with something far better.

For tens of thousands of years people lived in small, communal societies, unable to produce much beyond their immediate needs. But as people’s knowledge developed over generations, it became possible to create a surplus over and above what was needed for survival. With that, the basis arose for one part of society to compel the majority to work for it, and to control the wealth they created. And that’s what happened, in several different parts of the world--humanity divided into antagonistic classes: master and slave, exploiter and exploited.

The new ruling classes monopolized knowledge for themselves, and generated new oppressive institutions--from the subordination of women in the family, to the rise of armies and prisons, high priests and kings. And they generated new oppressive ideas to justify those institutions. Through all the history which followed--as capitalism replaced slavery and feudalism as the dominant mode of production, and as presidents and parliaments took command of the instruments of repression from kings and emperors--people have never stopped fighting to get free, and never stopped dreaming of a better world.

Today, we can do more than dream--and the freedom we dream of and fight for can be something very different, and on a far higher level, than even the loftiest aspirations of the past. Today’s forces of production--which include the technology and the knowledge that people have, and people themselves--could produce abundance for everyone. Moreover, these productive forces are, for the first time, highly socialized. That is, many people must work together to utilize and even create these means of production. But these productive forces, though now socialized, are still privately owned and dominated by capitalists, and this fetters, distorts and perverts their great potential.

Confronting these capitalists is the proletariat--the new exploited class whose members work together on the huge, globally integrated productive forces, but own nothing. Before the proletariat arose the oppressed classes of earlier times could fight heroically, but their victories ultimately resulted--and due to the relatively crude and small-scale nature of the productive forces, could only result--in new forms of exploitation. But the proletariat can only achieve its emancipation by seizing today’s highly socialized productive forces for all of society, and by leading society to put an end to all forms of exploitation and all forms of oppression and all the ideas that correspond to and reinforce them: a revolution to emancipate all of humanity.

May 1 is a day to renew and deepen and proclaim everywhere that vision--that this communist world IS the other world that is possible, the new world straining to be born within the death-agonies of the old, the red flower pushing up through the concrete.

Revolution--And A Radically Different State Power
To do all this requires a revolution, led by the proletariat and involving tens of millions of people, to establish socialism. That revolution would be a great and liberating leap in and of itself, and an opening of the pathway to full emancipation. And that revolution--and the whole historical epoch of transformation which it begins--in turn requires a Party, drawing in people from all parts of society who take up and dedicate themselves to the communist outlook and cause. The exploiters and oppressors of centuries must be overthrown: their instruments of dictatorship--their armies, their prisons, and so on--must be shattered, and their grip over the people broken. And all this must be led.

Surrounded by imperialist countries and contending with overthrown exploiters, dealing with the “birthmarks” of the old society, the victorious proletariat will still need a state and instruments of suppression, or dictatorship. But this must be a state of a radically different kind--a state that serves the masses and suppresses the exploiters, one that fosters the elimination of exploitation and exploitative relations, and the elimination of all oppressive divisions, institutions and ideas, and NOT their fortification and extension. A state that meets the basic needs of the people for housing, healthcare, education etc, and doing this in a way that builds up the material and the social and ideological foundations for communism. A state that not only defends itself against attack, but also supports revolution all around the world, aiming for a global society of freely cooperating people. It must hold firmly onto power--and it must go as far as it can, at every point, to involve the broadest numbers of people in wrangling over and running things, as part of getting toward communist society, where neither state nor party will any longer be required. But until communism is reached, there must be a state: and this state must be the dictatorship of the proletariat. It means democracy for the masses on an unprecedented scale in conjunction with the suppression of exploiters, old and new.

On May 1, we celebrate our achievements in this world-historic struggle and especially the first great milestones on that path: the October Revolution of 1917, where the proletariat for the first time seized and held power for nearly 40 years in what became the Soviet Union; and the Chinese Revolution, and especially the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in which the proletariat not only seized power but in which the masses themselves, led by Mao and revolutionaries within the Chinese Communist Party, later rose up to prevent the restoration of capitalism by new exploiters who arose within the communist party itself. Both of these revolutions emancipated people in a way never before seen in history, achieving incredible things; but both were eventually defeated by the still-remaining and formidable strength of imperialism.1 We draw inspiration from these revolutions, and we must learn all we can from their amazing achievements under severe fire; that isoverwhelmingly the main thing. At the same time, we must analyze their shortcomings and push further in our thinking, and in our practice.

Today Bob Avakian, Chairman of our Party, has re-envisioned communism and developed a “new synthesis”--that is, a new comprehensive and systematic understanding--of the experience of the whole first wave of proletarian revolutions and of Marxism itself. He’s developed a model of socialism in which the proletariat both holds firmly onto power but also fosters and promotes dissent and critical thought and “struggle from below” as essential elements in the struggle to reach a communist society. The leadership of the new society would encourage and fight for a critical and scientific approach to understanding and getting at the truth--with plenty of room for awe and wonder and imagination. As part of that, this radical new kind of state would embrace scientists, intellectuals, and artists--they would do intellectual and artistic work, raising questions and searching for the truth, even as they were led to contribute to breaking down the barriers with other sections of society, especially the formerly exploited and oppressed.

The new society would forge a new morality, one that rejected the me-first dog-eat-dog ways of capitalism and instead cherished the lives of the people of the world and stood for equality between nations and peoples and between men and women. This new morality would value and encourage struggle against the oppressive relations that would still remain, not resignation and surrender to them. There is a complexity to Chairman Avakian’s thinking on this that we cannot do justice to in a short essay like this. But we can say that engaging deeply with Bob Avakian’s thinking on all this is absolutely essential to getting to a better world, and his crucial, critical contributions are also something to celebrate on this day.

Two Worlds In Struggle
May 1 is, finally, a day to take the next steps in this monumental struggle. To make a revolution, you need millions of people who are willing to put everything on the line, a party with a correct strategy and deep ties among the masses, and a deep crisis in society itself. We don’t have that situation now; but we do have the opportunity and the urgent necessity to do the political preparation that can hasten that time.

Things today are very sharply posed. You could almost see it as “two universes.” Their universe poses a future--and a present--of greatly heightened worldwide exploitation and the destruction of whole peoples in the process; of imperialist war and occupation, with threats of even worse to come; of religious fundamentalism running amok all over the planet, including the real threat of a Christian Fascist theocracy within the U.S. itself, all serving to tighten the chains on women and to clamp the blinders of ignorance on everyone; of intensifying racist oppression, especially within the U.S., as shown by the government response to Katrina and the attacks on the immigrants; and of the destruction of the environment in a profit-driven frenzy to plunder the earth.

But there is another “universe,” one made up of people whose most fundamental interests stand opposed to all this and many of whom already want something different, something better. People who are sick of the lies and brutality and suppression. Who can’t stand the way that this society exploits and dogs and diminishes people, and who want to see--who yearn for--a society where people in their great masses could really flourish. Who have been shaken by the events of the past several years, and hunger for new directions and new thinking. Who are willing to dream of, and critically think about, what a different world might look like and how we might get there. People who say no and, in saying it, say yes very profoundly. People who resist. People who are ready to reach out to and challenge those still in the grip of the system’s madness, or locked in fatalism and paralysis, and win them over.

The stakes in all this are very high. There is the horror that “life as usual” under imperialism means for billions; and there is the intensified horror of all that wedded to a new Dark Ages, as the imperialists move to make radical changes in the ways in which they’ve carried out their domination. But as these imperialists move to radically restructure their rule, there is a real chance to wrench out a revolutionary opening for a different kind of radical change. But only if the people struggle, and only if they do so increasingly conscious of their own interests, reaching out ever more broadly and resisting the pull back to the confines of the system that got us in this situation in the first place.

* * *

It is fitting that May 1 takes place in the heart of spring, when the new and arising defies--and triumphs over--the dead hand of winter. So let us celebrate this occasion as we should--in the streets, banners high, proclaiming our vision, new life surging in our voices as we get the word out far and wide. There is a world to win!



1. Even though China still calls itself socialist, and even though the ruling party there still claims the name of “communist,” they have since a coup in 1976 been a capitalist country with communist trappings. back to article

Support March 14 Washington DC March Against Katrina Evictions!

For a report, go to www.KatrinaMarch.org/; and for more photos, go to www.isisimagery.blogspot.com/
March for Justice

This was a march on March 14, 2006 in Washington, DC, to demand housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina and a moratorium on evictions. This is a march to save lives, and to prevent thousands
from homelessness.

NO EVICTIONS! REAL TRANSITIONAL & PERMANENT HOUSING FOR ALL TO RETURN HOME!

March 14, 2006 in Washington, D.C.
1-2 p.m. Press Conference, Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2237
2-3 p.m. Mardi Gras Style March for Justice from Capitol South Metro Stop to White House
3-Midnight Rally & Protest at Lafayette Square Park

Send messages of support and solidarity to protest@hiphopcaucus.org. More more information: 202-545-0113 or 888-545-0113. Go to www.KatrinaMarch.org/

International Women's Day 2006 Speech by Carl Dix in Solidarity with the Great Walk Against Anti Women Laws In Iran's Islamic Republic

Photo: The Great March in Dusseldorf on March 7th

Editor's Note: This speech was delivered on March 8, 2006 in Jackson Heights, New York.

It is of great significance that we're out here today marching in solidarity with the Great Walk Against Anti-Women Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic. This MARCH opposes the inequality that the Iranian regime and other Islamic fundamentalists are imposing on women. And it opposes imperialist domination all over the globe and the oppression this domination brings down on women. And it's significant that we're doing this on March 8, International Women's Day, one of the most important holidays of the revolutionary proletariat.

Today women all over the world face lives full of poverty, brutality and misery. In many parts of the world, women are subjected to mass rape in military conflicts. Many women are forced to watch their children die of diseases that could be easily prevented or cured. Today in countries like Iran where Islamic fundamentalists hold power women severe restrictions like--death by stoning for violating anti woman laws, public lashing of women, forced veiling and more.

US imperialism and its mouthpieces give us a steady drum beat of claims that their set up is the best of all possible worlds, and they say especially the best set up for women. They tell women, and men, that if you are outraged at the subjugation Islamic Fundamentalists impose on women, then you have to support them and their "War On Terrorism." These are cruel and deceitful lies. The US rulers enforce outrageous oppression on women here in this country. Women constantly face the threat, and reality, of physical violence & sexual abuse. And the Christian Fascists grouped around the Bush regime have their sites set squarely on eliminating the right to have an abortion. And they also are backing up and further unleashing forces they subjugate women in the name of Islamic fundamentalism, like the rulers of Saudi Arabia or reactionary forces in Iraq. The imperialist rulers of the US are essentially saying to people, whose form of slavery do you want, ours or theirs?

As RCP Chairman Bob Avakian has pointed out, "While it may take some different forms, brutality against women, inequality and subordination and degradation in every sphere of society is no less a fundamental and indispensable feature of 'modern' bourgeois-imperialist countries than it is in 'Islamic' and other societies where there are significant aspects of pre-capitalist forms of oppression and exploitation."

Things don't have to be like this. We don't have to choose between regimes where Mullahs search the Koran for justification to enslave women or a regime where the Bible as interpreted by suckers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell is enforced as the law of the land and used to justify the subjugation of women. There is a real way out of the madness imperialism inflicts on the people of the world today, all the ways it subjects women to inequality and degradation and all the other oppression and exploitation it forces the world's people to endure. That way is proletarian revolution, millions of people rising up to get rid of this imperialist system all over the globe and building a whole new world on the ashes of this messed up one. A world where the division of society into a handful of rulers and the great majority of people who get ruled over is ended once and for all. And where all the exploitative economic relations, degrading social relations and backward ideas that were promoted under imperialism are also done away with.

The oppression of women is an integral part of the kind of world imperialism forces people to live in. Subjugating women is an integral part of the morality that imperialism enforces. And the liberation of women is a cornerstone of proletarian revolution. The revolution that it is the mission of this class to bring about, and that our party, the RCP, exists to give leadership to, aims at breaking all the chains of oppression. It cannot and must not break all the chains except the one that binds women into subjugation.

This kind of revolution is not a pipe dream. The masses in the Soviet Union and China rose up in revolution and overthrew their ruling classes and began the process of totally transforming society and themselves. These societies achieved miraculous things while the working class held state power, and one of the miracles was that the situation and status of women was greatly changed.

Before the revolution in the Soviet Union women could be bought and sold as brides and servants. Women were treated as beasts of burden, on farms and in menial sweatshop jobs. In the new socialist Soviet Union, the question of womens liberation was widely discussed and struggled over. Oppressive and patriarchal customs were criticized and challenged. Measures were taken to free women from the tasks of childcare, cooking, and cleaning.

In revolutionary China a new marriage law put an end to arranged marriages and child brides and gave women the right to divorce. Women's associations struggled against those who expected women to do all the housework and childcare. Women organized to confront and take strict measures against wife beaters. Practices like binding the feet of women, which broke the bones in the feet and crippled women in the name of making them more attractive to men were ended. And there were many more great achievements made when our class held power.

We can accomplish miracles like this through making proletarian revolution today. And we can go even further in remaking society and uprooting the oppression of women than was achieved in past revolutionary societies because today we have the leadership of Bob Avakian who has re-envisioned the Communist future and how to get there.

Bob Avakian has re-envisioned a future socialist society as one where people are educated in a scientific outlook that will enable them to find real solutions to the problems of transforming the conditions of the people and overcoming the great, historic divides between city and countryside, mental and manual labor, women and men. He has put forward that in this society the revolutionary leadership must foster an atmosphere of diversity, initiative and creativity that not only allows dissent but encourages and fosters it. Because it is only in this way that we'll be able to get the deepest possible understanding of reality and on that basis be able to transform it.

In today's world where the alternatives are posed as either imperialist so-called liberation or suffocating feudal tradition, our choice must be -- NEITHER. Neither reactionary alternative has anything in common with the emancipation of women -- or anything in common with the interests of the great majority of people of the world, men as well as women.

Our choice must be to fight the oppression of women and all the other shit imperialism brings down on people around the world. And we in the RCP do this as part of building toward the time when people can rise up and get rid of this system once and for all through revolution.

Acting on this is very urgent. The Christian Fascists grouped around the Bush regime are moving rapidly to enforce a fascist theocracy in the US, which would pose great danger for the world's people. At the same time, their moves to impose this theocracy are jolting many, many more people into political life and into opposition to their foul agenda. This is creating real openings to drastically alter the way forces in society are lining up in ways that are more favorable to building resistance and making revolution. The future is not yet written. whether we end up having a fascist theocracy shoved down our throats or are able to fight through to bring a better world into existence is up to us.

Break the Chains!
Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

IWD Solidarity 2006: IWD Event NYC- Solidarity with the Great Walk Against Anti Women Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic"

IWD Solidarity 2006: IWD Event NYC- Solidarity with the Great Walk Against Anti Women Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic"

Break the Chains!
Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

Here in NYC, on March 8th, 2006, International Women's Day:

Stand in unity and solidarity with the "Great Walk Against Anti Women Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic" in Europe!

This week, starting March 4 in Frankfurt, Germany, women and men are marching through city centres and will rally at the Hague on March 8th. The call from the organizers of the European Great Walk (Campaign for the Abolition of All Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation & Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran) starts with:

"If you are against death by stoning!
If you are against forced veiling!
If you are against the prosecution and imprisonment of women!
If you are against lashing a woman's body!
If you are against any form of patriarchy!
If you are against the medieval laws of Iran's Islamic Republic of Iran imposing inequality on women!-
Join the [European] great walk against anti-women laws in Iran's Islamic Republic on 8 March 2006!"

(European Great Walk: www.karzar-zanan.com, www.8mars.com)

----

In New York on International Women's Day, March 8, we will bring together a multinational gathering of women, men and young people in solidarity with the Great Walk in Europe.

A future of Islamic Fundamentalism vs. the Bush regime's "McCrusades" is a brutal disaster for the world's women and people, and we cannot and will not accept it. Support those risking their lives to oppose barbaric Islamic fundamentalist laws and practices against women -- be part of bringing forward movements of women and people the world over to reject both deadly and crushing ruling orders, instead fighting for relations of equality between women and men, and against domination and plunder of the world's nations and countries by a handful of imperialist powers.

To those who still wonder whether George Bush and his regime can deliver some kind of liberation to the women and people of the Middle East or any corner of the globe -- as one of the Great Walk statements says: "The American government has declared that it seeks to liberate the women of the Middle East from the yoke of Islamic fundamentalism. This is a ridiculous claim that makes a mockery of real liberation and is an insult to the women of the Middle East. The march of events in Afghanistan and Iraq should have helped those who were taken in by these self-styled liberators of Middle Eastern women to realize how badly they were fooled. If anyone still believes that George Bush and his ilk are liberators of women, please talk to American women fighting to prevent him from taking away their right to abortion as well as against the efforts of the Christian fascists to dominate every aspect of the lives of women in the U.S. What George Bush is taking away from the women in the USA he will not deliver to women in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country."

Join with us in supporting the Great Walk in Europe. As their material states: "In this rally there is a place for all freedom-loving women and men, all political and progressive and revolutionary forces, who want equality between men and women in every aspect of life, a place for all those who oppose gender discrimination in any form." And: "Celebrate 8 March 2006 with us and help us to build the independent ranks of women against U.S. imperialism as well as the reactionary states governing these countries."

Wed, March 8th, 2006
March: 5:00 PM Starts at 83rd and Roosevelt Ave.
(7 train to 82st St.)
Rally: 6:30 PM 73th Street and Broadway
(7, E, F, R, G trains to 74th St/ Roosevelt)

Join up with us immediately!
Tel: (917) 553-4704

Email: iwdsolidarity2006nyc@yahoo.com
Website: http://iwdsolidarity2006nyc.blogspot.com

Break the Chains!
Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

February 4th Speech at the Bush Step Down and Take Your Program With You! Rally, Washington, DC

Note: Go to http://www.worldcantwait.net/ for reports on WCW actions on January 31st and February 4th.
* * *

First off, I want to give big props to everybody who's thrown themselves heart and soul into this effort to forge this movement. A movement that aims at nothing less than Driving the Bush regime out of power. What we are doing is historic. We're aiming at nothing less than forging a movement that can drive a sitting president out of power.

We are locked in a political battle for the future. We face a tough fight, but what we're doing is right. We are speaking for and acting for millions out here today. There's nothing too horrible for them to inflict on the people. As the World Can't Wait call states, "the Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come." In the wake of the wiretapping revelations and the Alito appointment, can anyone doubt it?

If you want further proof, look at Bush's state of the union speech. He began it by going on the offensive and justifying the war and his wiretapping. Then he declared that the only people he would listen to are those who are trying to help accomplish the goals he has set out. And as he neared his conclusion, he vowed to deal with the AIDS epidemic by channeling money for treatment through faith based organizations. Based on the dictates of the Bush regime, this approach has been implemented in places like Uganda, and it has led directly to the deaths of thousands of people.

Yet with all this being shoved down our throats, most of the top democrats support the war and the Patriot Act. Even on things they differ with Bush on, they almost never put up a real fight. And even then the fight they put out was pitiful.

We have to rely on the only thing that has ever changed this world: the people, struggling for their real interests against their real enemy. If we are to really drive out this regime brothers and sisters we must reach out to those millions; and we must mobilize thousands upon thousands of them to join in this movement. And together with them we have to take up the kind of actions that can tap into the dreams of those millions to change the direction of society and can inspire them to join in the resistance. Our actions today can do the same.

That's why it's so important that we're out here today. And that we carry thru and build off of what we do today to continue to mobilize people to drive the Bush regime from power. Our unity in this fight and our determination to carry it through till Bush & Co. are gone must challenge and inspire many, many others to join in.

BUSH STEP DOWN AND TAKE YOUR WHOLE PROGRAM WITH YOU!

Crimes Against Humanity IS the Issue!

January 20, 2006

Friends,

I'm writing to let you know about an exciting and important event--the final session of the International Commission of Inquiry into Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. This session will be held on Jan 20-22, this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The first two days, the session will be at Riverside Church (see details below), and the final day it will be at Columbia Law School. It will hear testimony from government whistle blowers, experts and eyewitnesses speaking about the war and occupation in Iraq, torture and indefinite detention, attacks on global public health, destruction of the global environment and the lethal nature of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina. At this peoples' tribunal, people who know will speak the unspeakable--that the many foul things the Bush administration is doing aren't the result of well meaning mistakes or inept bungling. That they come down to crimes against humanity and war crimes!

Participants will include: former Abu Ghraib commander, Gen. Karpinski, former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, attorneys for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention center, Iraqi journalist, Dahr Jamail. The Katrina session will feature survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Attorney Chokwe Lumumba will head this prosecution team. The judges at the session will include South African author, Dennis Brutus, and former US diplomat, Ann Wright. Harry Belafonte will make opening remarks on Friday night.

The content of this tribunal can play an important role today. It can help give shape and further impetus to the debate that's raging in the US and around the world about how to look at the Bush administration and what to do in response to its actions. And it has added significance because of the times it's occurring in. Coinciding with the confirmation vote on another fascist Bush is putting on the Supreme Court, the exposure of Bush's domestic spying program, court cases over secret camps, torture and indefinite detention. Also this weekend, as controversy rages over New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin having said that his city should be a majority Black one, this tribunal will present witnesses who will make clear that Bush & co are looking at Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to drive Black people out of New Orleans.

All this points to the danger Bush & Company pose to people around the world and in the US as well. And it underscores the critical importance of the kind of testimony that will be presented at this tribunal. I want to especially call to your attention the session on an indictment of the Bush administration for the lethal nature of the Bush response to Hurricane Katrina on Sunday at 3 PM at the Columbia Law School. We will hear from survivors of the hurricane, from experts on flood control and the environment and from activists, who will lay bare how the actions and inactions of Bush & Company caused massive suffering and loss of life before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.

I urge you to spread the word on the Bush Crimes Commission to everyone interested in justice and everyone who wants to know what's really going on. The Commission's sessions this weekend are as follows:
Friday, 5:30-9:00 PM at Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue entrance at 119th Street, Manhattan. (#1 IRT to 116th or 125th Stations.)

Saturday, 10:15 AM - 5:00 PM at Riverside Church (see address above).

Sunday, 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM at Columbia Law School, 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan. (#1 IRT to 116th Street Station.)

For more information, please go to www.bushcommission.org.

In Struggle

Carl Dix, national spokesperson, Revolutionary Communist Party
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Crimes Against Humanity IS the issue

Jan 20-21 The Riverside Church
Jan. 22 Columbia University Law School
Friday 6:00 Keynote by Harry Belafonte
On January 20, 21, and 22, 2006 an unprecedented line-up of witnesses will present their evidence before the International Commission on Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.
The Commission hearings will be held at The Riverside Church and the Columbia University Law School in Manhattan
The proceedings will powerfully raise the central issue of our day, the issue those in power have declared out of order and out of bounds: Is the Administration of George W. Bush guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity? This act of conscience, defiance and truth can change the way millions see this administration, and help reshape the entire debate about the Bush administration.
Testimony from internationally-known experts and whistle-blowers, including
former commander of Abu Ghraib prison Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former British ambassador Craig Murray (speaking for the first time in the U.S., and quoted January 16 by Al Gore), ex-UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, and many others, will be delivered before a distinguished jury of conscience.
Go to www.bushcommission.org for the full schedule and to register online.
FRIDAY EVENING and SATURDAY: The Riverside Church , 91 Claremont Avenue , Manhattan
SUNDAY, January 22, 1 - 5 pm, Columbia University Law School, 116th Street & Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan
The indictments allege war crimes and crimes against humanity authorized by the Bush Administration in relation to:

1) Wars of Aggression, particular reference to Iraq and Afghanistan;
2) Torture and Indefinite Detention ;
3) Destruction of the Global Environment, distortion of science and obstruction of efforts to stem global warming;
4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights , potentially genocidal effects of enforcing abstinence- only, global gag rule; and
5) Failure of Bush administration, despite foreknowledge, to protect life during and after Hurricane Katrina.
The commission was organized by the Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience and is endorsed by: Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street.org and others, including Former Sen. James Abourezk, former British MP Tony Benn, authors Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and actor Edward Asner.

www.bushcommission.org

THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT--DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!

URGENTLY NEEDED, MASSIVE RESISTANCE ON NOVEMBER 2ND!

Editor's Note: The below op-ed piece was a late submission to the Final Call newspaper, and was not printed.
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With all that's going down today, massive resistance is indeed urgently needed. George Bush and co. are inflicting untold horrors on the country and the world. And they have plans to enforce even more horrendous things if they're not stopped. Stopping them needs to begin immediately, and there's a call for the kind of resistance that's needed. There's call to mobilize massive resistance to everything the Bush regime represents on November 2nd. On that day, in cities across the country, people will take to the streets in determined action to drive the Bush regime from office.

There are many, many reasons why this is what urgently needs to be done today. Already the US is waging an illegitimate and immoral war and occupation in Iraq, and they're threatening war against Syria and Iran. The Bush regime has decreed that it has the authority to detain without charges or the possibility of review by any court anyone they deem a threat as an enemy combatant. They have also legitimized torture. And much more.

What happened in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina underscores the horrors the Bush agenda have in store for Black people. 10,000's of people, most of them Black were left in the path of the hurricane without emergency evacuation. After it hit, they were left for days without food, water or message, and the authorities made no attempts to rescue them. Kanye West said that this showed Bush doesn't care about Black people. This is true, and it's even worse than that. Bus drivers from Houston organized a convoy of several hundred buses and came to New Orleans to bring food and water to people and take 1000's of them to safety. But they were stopped and sent back to Houston without being allowed to rescue anyone. Health professionals who volunteered to treat people were blocked from doing so. Companies that donated emergency supplies for people weren't allowed to
bring them in. And when the people of New Orleans organized themselves to get the emergency supplies they needed to save their own and others' lives, Bush called them "criminals" and "looters."

And I'm not hyping this one bit. Look at what Bush & co had to say about the situation in New Orleans. Bush told Michael Brown, the crony he appointed to head up Federal Emergency Management Agency, "Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job" while untold numbers of people were dying and suffering needlessly. Republican Congressman James Baker of Louisiana said: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did" The general in charge of the troops who came into New Orleans right after the hurricane when 1000's of lives were at risk from flooding and lack of food and water said: "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. this will be a combat operation to get this city under control." Bush's own mother had this to say about the horrendous conditions the survivors of Katrina faced in the Houston
Astrodome: "So many of the people in the arena here were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." The genocidal implications of all this should be clear.

The events in New Orleans represent a murderous coming together of the oppression this system has forced Black people to endure since the 1st African was dragged to these shores in slavery's chains and the concentration and of that oppression that the Bush regime represents. Clinton contributed to the misery people faced in New Orleans thru his role in ending welfare as we know it. But it is real that Bush's agenda represented an intensification of all this. And his regime is moving to intensify it even further. Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and George's brother, has just received federal authorization to impose an annual cap on Medicaid payments. This means that more poor people will die from lack of access to medical treatment. We can't go thru 3 more years of this. New Orleans can't wait. Iraq can't wait. The World Can't Wait!

All this is why people need to join the mobilization on November 2nd. Our actions on that day must make it the beginning of the end for the Bush regime. Doing anything good for the people requires that Bush & co. be repudiated and driven from office. To get more information on the November 2nd mobilization, go to www.worldcantwait.org, or call (347) 693-3319.

* * *

Carl Dix is the initiator of the statement--New Orleans - A Time To Resist. He is also a co-founder of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation and the national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party.

October 22, 2005 Message: 10th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality

Photo by www.suzakaphoto.com: October 22, 2005 National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality March in New York City

Editor's Note: This statement from Carl Dix, national spokesperson of the Revolutionary Communist Party; a co-founder of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, and member of its national executive committee, was read at the New York City rally on October 22, 2005.
* * *

First, I want to send Revolutionary greetings to everybody taking to the streets today on October 22, 2005, the 10th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Can't be physically with you today because I'm involved in a hearing being held to determine whether Bush & Co. are guilty of crimes against humanity for their actions and inactions re Katrina. [Editor's Note: This is in reference to the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, which met at its first session from October 21st through 22nd. For information, go to www.bushcommission.org/]But rest assured, I'm with you in spirit.

In its nine years, our coalition has hammered home the fact that we're dealing with a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and police murder. In fact, we have documented this in the book, Stolen Lives. Our coalition has provided the victims of police brutality and police murder and their families a platform from which to speak the truth about how their lives have been devastated. And our work has helped bring forward allies from many different sections of society to stand together with those who live their lives under the guns and billy clubs of brutal murdering pigs.

This wasn't easy to do -- when our coalition was formed it had to contend with those who said you couldn't fight Police Brutality on a nationwide level. More recently we've had to go up against an atmosphere where the authorities have, in the name of their War On Terrorism, unleashed an all encompassing repressive clamp down. And a situation where even criticizing the actions of the police has become taboo.

Well that's a taboo that the October 22nd Coalition has never bowed down to, and must continue not bowing down to. The events in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane show how timely our coalition's themes remain. Police Brutality -- Again we saw it live and on video tape when the cops beat a 64 year old Black teacher in New Orleans. We've seen the militarization of the police big time as the cops there collaborate with an all out military occupation of the city. Criminalization--You had every level of government joining in the demonization of Black people who heroically took it upon themselves to get the emergency supplies -- food, water and medicine -- they and others needed to survive. Emergency supplies that the authorities refused to provide and even tried to stop others from providing.

It is more important than ever that the fight to stop police brutality, repression and the criminalization continues and even gets stepped up. The agenda of Bush & Co. -- an agenda that has at its heart a drive to impose a Christian fascist theocracy, where the bible as interpreted by assholes like Pat Robertson becomes the law of the land -- involves a whole lot of brutality, repression and criminalization. This must be fought. They aim to, and have gone a long way towards, putting in place so many foul things that people will never be able to reverse what they've imposed. We can't let that happen.

I want to bring to everyone's attention a CALL aimed at doing just that -- the call FOR a massive mobilization on November 2nd -- The World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime! This day must mark the beginning of the end for the Bush regime. And everybody who hates the war on and Occupation of Iraq, who hates the USA PATRIOT Act and sees the many other foul things Bush & Co. have inflicted on the people here and around the world needs to be out in the streets on November 2nd. As a revolutionary communist, I am working to mobilize people to be out on the streets on November 2nd working to drive out the Bush regime as part of building toward being in position to seize any chance that arises to go on to rise up and make revolution and end once and for all the rotten capitalist system that is responsible for police brutality and all the other foul things that people are forced to endure here and around the world.

In closing, let me say again that the work out coalition has done -- in making October 22nd the day to take to the streets, to organize in our communities, schools and work places, to hold teach ins and cultural events--all aimed at building resistance to police brutality -- is very important. It saves lives today, and it can be part of the work that needs to be done to put the people in a position to seize a bright future out of the madness of today.

Stop police brutality, repression and the criminalization of a generation!
The capitalist system is the problem, and revolution is the solution!

[For more information on the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Police Brutality and the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, go to www.october22.org/, and to www.octber22-ny.org/.]

As a matter of record...

Akil Bomani was, for a certain period time, part of the Revolutionary Commust Tour as a member of the Chicago Revolutionary Writer's and Artists Collective. However, after a certain point it became clear that Akil Bomani actually has very significant disagreements with the viewpoint and aims of the Tour and of the RCP, and since early October 2005, he has no longer been a part of the Tour and has had no political association with the Tour or with the RCP or Revolution newspaper, nor does the Tour or the RCP have anything to do with any artistic or other endeavors Akil Bomani may have undertaken.