The Haitian People Need Emergency Assistance NOT Suppression and Further Domination!

From the Editors of Revolution, January 14, 2010:


The world’s eyes are riveted on scenes of horror in Haiti . The world’s hearts are straining. People everywhere are trying to support the Haitian people in any way they can. Meanwhile, the clock ticks very urgently, as people literally die beneath the rubble and perish on the streets as well for lack of medical care, water, food, and shelter.

The means exist to rescue and aid the Haitian people! These must be made immediately available by the governments of the world and, first and foremost, the United States . While some governments have sent doctors and other forms of aid, as of Thursday morning the United States has focused on sending paratroopers and militarily securing the area. While Obama has now promised 100 million dollars, the U.S. government is above all concerned with ensuring the continuation of the repressive government order and controlling and/or suppressing the initiative and efforts of masses to deal with this horrible situation. (100 million dollars is less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. yearly military expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan .) The U.S. government must immediately focus its resources on getting aid directly to the Haitian people, putting supplies on the ground and marshaling the many doctors, engineers, construction workers, etc. who work for the government, as well as the many many people who would volunteer to help any way that they could. THIS IS A HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY, AND MUST BE DEALT WITH AS SUCH.

The Haitian people themselves must be assisted, and not suppressed. The media – just as it did in Katrina – is already portraying the Haitian people as animals and criminals. In fact, the masses in Haiti – as they did in New Orleans during Katrina – are in the main mobilizing to collectively deal with their situation. These efforts must be supported in all aid programs, and there must be no suppression by the U.S. troops of those who are trying with all their might to save themselves and their people. Volunteers coming from other countries must be assisted by the governments now sending aid to Haiti , and not suppressed.

History shows that there will be, and must be, a struggle against this system to demand that the needs of the masses actually be met and that there NOT be suppression of the masses. As part of this:

There must be no harassment, prosecution or deportation of Haitian immigrants within the U.S. attempting to locate, or aid, their loved ones and friends. Instead, government assistance must be made available to those trying to communicate to the island with a guarantee of at least temporary amnesty for any attempting to go through U.S.government agencies to do so.

There must be no attacks on Haitian people attempting to flee their situation through boats. Instead, the Coast Guard must help people attempting to flee to safety and if they are trying to get to the U.S. , must help them do so.

The disaster in Haiti is neither the result of the so-called “will of God” nor the fault of the Haitian people. It is the result of centuries of imperialist domination, occupation and isolation. The news reports talk about Haiti ’s poverty, but they don’t tell you why Haiti so poor. Very few people know that Haiti was the scene of the only successful slave revolution in history – when the heroic descendants of African slaves drove out the strongest army in the world at that time, the French. Very few people know that the world’s powers – especially the U.S. , which at that time feared the influence of Haiti on the slaves in this country, and France – embarked on a policy of isolating and impoverishing Haiti . Very few people know that for nearly 20 years in the early 1900's the U.S. marines occupied Haiti , suppressing a liberation struggle and implanting puppets. Very few people know that the U.S. backed the infamously cruel tyrant “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and then his son “Baby Doc,” in the middle of the century. And all too few know that it then conspired to overthrow the popular president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 1990's and then again just a few years ago in 2004. All these criminal actions – this long criminal history of oppression – flowed from the economic and political needs of the U.S. ruling classes during the time when the United States was run, first, by a coalition of capitalist and slave-holding classes, and then more recently (and up to today) by the ruling capitalist-imperialist class. Throughout the last two centuries the U.S. has backed up reactionary ruling classes within Haiti as part of this.

In other words, the fact that the Haitian people live in terrible conditions and now must face this disaster with little resources other than their own hands and minds, and up against an extremely repressive set of social relations, is the result of a worldwide system. As the message “The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have,” from the RCP,USA puts it:

Throughout the world, as a result of this system, a billion people or more go hungry every day...with many facing the threat of starvation. Hundreds of millions of children are forced to work like slaves and to live in putrid slums, in the midst of garbage and human waste. Waves of immigrants, unable to live in their own homelands, travel the earth in search of work-- and if they find it, they are worked until they can hardly stand and are forced into the shadows, with the constant fear that they will be deported and their families broken apart. Growing numbers of people cannot find work at all now, with many losing their homes as well as their jobs, while others are worked even more mercilessly.Everyone is lured and driven to consume more and more, at the cost of ever mounting debt and the loss of any sense of larger purpose or meaning to life or any deeper connection with other human beings. Many are being pushed to the edge...growing numbers are going over the edge, often lashing out in crazed desperation.

Now this system makes a terrible disaster even worse. Imperialism, of course, did not cause the earthquake. But the system of imperialism dictates how that earthquake is responded to and dealt with.

In sum: this is NOT the best of all possible worlds.

We do NOT have to live this way. To again quote the message:

And it is through revolution to get rid of this system that we ourselves can bring a much
better system into being. The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good...Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings....Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.

As we work and struggle side by side to fight for the urgent demands of the Haitian people, we call on people to also engage with us in discussion on why things ARE the way they are, and wrangling over how to get to a whole different, and much better, world and to get into the work that our leader, Bob Avakian, has been doing on the kind of revolution we need and the ways that such a revolution could be made.

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The Controversy over PRECIOUS: The Demonization of Black Men? Or, Shining a Light on the Squandered Potential of "Precious Girls Everywhere"...

... and Why Everyone Should Want That Realized

by Carl Dix and Annie Day
from Revolution #189, January 17, 2010

The film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is a brave endeavor. It explores a rarely depicted reality for millions of women in our society, in particular the ways this brutal reality is experienced by Black women. The main character, Claireece Precious Jones, is an obese, dark-skinned young Black woman whose life has been a hell on earth of physical and sexual abuse.

The film looks unflinchingly at all Precious has suffered—raped by her father, pregnant with his second child, HIV positive, abused by her mother, subjected to disrespect from classmates and an uncaring school system. She feels, for good reason, invisible to the world. But, as Annie Day's review in Revolution newspaper put it, "The film also traces through a transformation for Precious. She is helped, nurtured and challenged by Blue Rain, a literacy teacher in a pre-GED program. And she is surrounded by young women like herself―some who are poor, formerly strung out young mothers, others who are beaten and cast out but all of them caring for each other in what is otherwise a largely uncaring world." (Revolution #184, November 29, 2009)

It's also beautifully made, with stirring and complex performances, putting you in the shoes of one of society's downcast and demonized. And, like powerful art, it is truly soul stirring.

Many, many people have welcomed this. Lines at theaters showing the film snaked out of the building and around corners. And commentary about the power of the impact of this film went on for weeks in print, on the radio and blogs.

The Controversy over Precious

The Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund received the following letter from a reader in prison:

"Had to stop and reflect on my crime..."
But some have responded with sharp critiques of the film, saying it's like "ghetto porn" and contributes to negative stereotypes of Black people. One widely referenced critique is from Black author Ishmael Reed. In a lengthy review titled "Hollywood's Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator: The Selling of Precious," Reed condemned the movie for both "demonizing Black men," and for having "the worst depiction of Black females I've ever seen." Reed also said, "I would argue that it [Precious] makes D.W. Griffith look like a progressive." (Griffith was the director of the film, Birth of a Nation, a glorification of the early 20th century KKK.) Reed also charged the film with "minstrelism."

The promotion of minstrelsy is a pervasive part of American culture—images that negate the humanity and real creativity of Black people, reducing them to stereotypes that reaffirm in the minds of whites their own sense of superiority. These take form today with things like the parade of pro athletes and rappers portrayed as mindless criminals and thugs or Black women being depicted as sexually promiscuous gold diggers. So concern about the portrayal of Black people is understandable. But does Precious do this? No. Precious takes people who are usually only depicted as stereotypes, hated and looked down at, if looked at at all—overweight, dark-skinned Black girls and women on welfare—and shows them as they are, full humans with complexity and humanity. In this way it contributes to understanding more deeply the depths of the oppression people like them face and the impacts of those stereotypes. This is the exact opposite of minstrelsy.

Reed's Argument

It would take reams to take apart all of Reed's argument, but the essence of what he says is that Precious was made by white people—with Black artists as fronts—to market negative images of Black men to white audiences.

From Reed's article: "[D]id Daniels direct Precious or is he really playing the flak catcher for this heinous project like [executive producers] Oprah Winfrey and [Tyler] Perry? When he went on the set to exercise his role as ‘director' did the white people who own the movie and provide the crew for this film call security? Hard to say."

He develops this further: "They [white people] want to peek behind the curtains of black life to seek confirmation that all of the myths they've heard about black life are true. Richard Wright said that ‘The Negro is America's metaphor.' More like America's anti-depressant. People who are miserable in their own lives getting off by consuming black depravity, a big business."

And towards the end of his article, Reed writes, "Will the ‘niche' audience for which this movie is intended ever become weary of the brothers being a symbol of universal male misogyny? The face on the bull's-eye at which disgruntled feminists from all ethnic groups aim their arrows, women who are scared to challenge the misogyny practiced by males who share their background? Judging from the box office receipts, maybe not."

What Reed Ignores, and Erases

First, Reed never once asks if the film reflects reality. He never asks what it is actually like for young women and girls—of all nationalities—who are raped and molested in our society. And the particular ways this impacts Black women who are doubly oppressed. He never suggests that these stories should be told. By making this solely about a "marketing strategy" to sell "images of Black male depravity," Reed erases the brutal and undeniable reality of what it means to walk the earth as a woman. In the U.S. alone, 1 in 4 women are raped, a woman is beaten by her partner every 15 seconds, 3 women are killed every day by lovers and husbands, and almost 220 children are sexually abused every day―most of them by a relative or family friend.

Reed even criticizes the Pulitzer prize winning play, Ruined, about rape in the Congo, for contributing to this demonization. (Rape was systematically used as a weapon of war in the Congo and this play depicts the harrowing reality. There are no comprehensive statistics, but hundreds of thousands of women were raped in the Congo in the last 10 years and this is continuing at a frightening rate. The play also alludes to the role of the West in fueling the conflict in order to gain control of coltan resources, which are used in electronic devices such as cell phones. (Raymond Lotta discusses this in his powerful, short video: The Rape of the Congo and Your Cell Phone, youtube.com/raymondlotta.)1

Now do something Ishmael Reed refuses to do—stop and think about the lived impact of those numbers. The dreams of young girls crushed and broken and the lifetimes of nightmares that fill young girls' sleep. And think what it means that on top of this, like Precious, women are told in a thousand ways that they brought this torment on themselves. Annie Day wrote, "The story of Precious is not an anomaly but a distillation." And this reality reflects how this is so.

Reed also ignores the way the film has touched many, many people, especially (though not only) thousands of Black women who responded to seeing the film by telling anyone who would listen their own stories of abuse. Across the country, on Internet forums, schools and theatre lobbies Revolution distributors have talked to people. Even if not experienced with the same extremity, many women said they felt Precious gave a window into what they experience.

Third, Reed erases and ignores the development and personhood of Precious. She confronts horrific sexual and physical abuse, illiteracy, being infected with AIDS by her father and more, but isn't broken by them. He ignores the relationships Precious forges with her classmates, and with her teacher, who nurture and challenge her. They develop bonds of friendship, respect, struggle, and caring. While the film does not go easy on the brutality Precious suffers—it also shows her with humor, humanity, curiosity, a vibrant imagination, intelligence, and heart. This is not some faceless victim. But not once does Reed talk about her this way.

Writing in Salon.com, Erin Aubry Kaplan made an insightful point about why a young woman like Precious would be ignored and the importance of the film in telling her story, "Far from being some exploitative spectacle for whites, the hard-hitting tale of Precious is a film for blacks and a challenge to drop our own emotional armor and embrace a real-life story we have been minimizing for a long time—that of a big, black, sullen-faced, illiterate girl who lives in the depths of the ghetto and in all likelihood will stay there. She is the bogeywoman not just of white society but of black society, too, especially for a middle class that's been trying for years to rescue its ‘negative' racial image from the likes of Precious. But while we in the real world preach community ad nauseam, it's girls—and boys—like her who remain at the bottom of the well. In making the bottom dweller eminently human, the movie forces blacks to assess their own humanity. And I found myself squirming in the seat more than once."

The other thing that stands out in Reed's article is the way he talks about women generally. He refers to young Black women professors who have commented positively on Precious at the web zine The Root as "...[T]he types who are using university curriculum to get even with their fathers." He suggests that the poet and author Sapphire and the filmmaker Lee Daniels have falsely remembered histories of abuse. He hardly ever mentions a woman without saying something about her looks. Mariah Carey, who plays a welfare case worker, is "firm," "the camera favors" Paula Patton, who plays Precious' teacher, Blue Rain; he says three times that the actress who plays Precious is 350 pounds (a fact which he is clearly bothered by), and he describes one of the film's financial backers as "manicured" and "buffed," and one who "doesn't go lightly on the eye shadow." And in linking Oprah Winfrey's backing of this film with what he sees as her other efforts to demean Black men, including backing and starring in The Color Purple (which he calls a "black incest product"), he quotes someone as saying, "like her addiction to food," Oprah can't help demonizing Black men.

His defense of patriarchy also bubbles over in relation to gay people. Here he gets the basic facts of the film wrong. He says a male nurse, John John, played by Lenny Kravitz, is gay. In actuality, the film makes clear that John John is straight, but Reed's vision is so distorted he can't seem to fathom a soft-spoken male character who isn't gay. He goes on to say Precious is "a film in which gays are superior to Black male heterosexuals," creating some sort of patriarchal totem pole and then seeking to determine where "his group" sits in relation to the top.

Not everyone who has raised concerns about the film contributing to stereotypical portrayals of Black people or the demonization of Black men would uphold this kind of straight-up misogyny. But you have to ask why Reed's argument goes there and why his argument has resonated.

The Reality of Emasculation, Its Source and What Is and Isn't the Solution

"Women are not breeders. Women are not lesser beings. Women are not objects created for the sexual pleasure of men. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. When women are held down, all of humanity is held back. Women must win liberation, and they can only be liberated through the revolutionary transformation of the world and the emancipation of all of humanity, and through being a powerful motive force in that revolution."

—A Declaration: For Women’s Liberation and the Emancipation of All of Humanity

Is there a reason to be concerned about the portrayal of Black men in popular culture? Absolutely. America was built on this—during slavery, the spectre of Black men as sexual predators was used to justify brutal subjugation. During the Jim Crow era, it was used to justify hundreds of lynchings of Black men. Birth of a Nation, which we mentioned above, is a celebration of the KKK, which was responsible for thousands of those lynchings and for creating a situation of literal terror for Black people. It was given a world-premiere at the White House and a ringing endorsement by the president at that time, Woodrow Wilson. (Wilson was reported to have commented that "it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.")

Today, everywhere you turn are images of "young Black super-predators" and "irresponsible gangsters"—reality TV shows like COPS and even sports reports on ESPN are full of depictions of Black men as criminals and thugs. And the only "positive" images offered up are of Black men as cops, soldiers and Navy Seals. We don't need any of this!

And this system has sought to "emasculate" Black men throughout history. Literally, in the case of many lynchings where Black men were tortured (in the case of Claude Neal who was accused of murdering a white woman, his penis and testicles were cut off and he was forced to eat them before being barbarically killed2). And figuratively. Under slavery, any white man connected to a plantation could rape any female slave on that plantation, and her husband or brother or father or other loved ones could do nothing about it (to say nothing of what women slaves faced if they fought back). And Black men were treated like children, forced to scrape and shuffle, and bow their heads at any white person who crossed their path, with the threat of death if they didn't.

One of the examples Reed cites is the Central Park Jogger case. In 1989, five Black and Latino youth were falsely charged of raping a white woman in Central Park. The media and authorities whipped up an ugly racist fervor around this case, painting these youth as if they were uncontrollable animals. Despite DNA evidence that showed none of them were linked to the crime, they were convicted and spent years in prison on these false charges.

Reed seizes on a poem written by Sapphire at the time called Wild Thing, where she writes about the rape from the alleged rapists' perspective. It was controversial at the time—many charged that she was attempting to "humanize" the alleged rapists because she painted a real and powerful sense of their anger, and from where it arose though she didn't idealize or uphold them. It is true, and a problem, that she, like most people at the time, did not question their guilt. This is a necessary thing to learn from, but we encourage readers to look up the poem, as she is attempting to speak to an important contradiction, and was not out to "demonize Black men" or make great financial gains, as Reed cynically states.


What Is the Source of All This?

The perpetrator of all this is not women. And it's certainly not women who have spoken out about the oppression they've faced as women. The capitalist system is what's really responsible for the oppression of Black people, and it's what's holding down all of humanity. The brutal subjugation of Black people has been built into the very fabric of U.S. society from the beginning. The system of white supremacy has gone through many changes, but it has NOT gone away and has in fact been integral to the economy, the politics, the culture and the psychology of America since Day One. It was on the basis of the enslavement of Black people that the wealth of this country, both that of the slaveholders in the South and of the merchants and factory owners of the North, was built up. The exploitation of Black sharecroppers was a pillar of continued development of the U.S. economy during the Jim Crow period. And Black workers being limited to the bottom tier of the U.S. work force was a source of superprofits for U.S. capital post-WW2. Today, the other side of the images of Black people as inner city thugs and welfare queens is a reality based on the very operation of the capitalist system, which has sucked the jobs out of the cities across the country, as capital moves around the world in search of higher rates of profit.

Along with this grinding exploitation has been denial of the very humanity of Black people, both men and women! This may seem obvious, but when Reed looks at it, the heart of what he sees is the denial of Black manhood. In this view, depicting the ways Black men participate in the subjugation of Black women is offensive and harmful because it undercuts their ability to be unfettered dominators of "their" women.

Striving to enable Black men to assert their "manhood" in a society saturated in the violent and systematic oppression of women will only lead to keeping this system with these relations intact. What meaning does manhood even have in this society except one that involves the assertion of strength and power over women, whatever the intention? It means asserting the privileges that historically are granted men and in this case, Black men wanting their share of that privilege. It would be as if a slave were to assert his/her right to be a master—as opposed to being free.

And far too often, this "privilege" of being a dominator is upheld and even celebrated. Oppressed men of all races are conditioned and taught to act as the agents of the oppression of women and to gain gratification from this. Men are told, and take up the view themselves, that women are inferior beings over whom they have dominance, who exist for their sexual pleasure or to serve them as mothers or wives. These ideas have deep roots in the centuries old development of human societies into class societies with the oppression of women as one of the most essential divides.

From Annie Day's review: "We are told and taught that the family is a divinely inspired eternal institution, forged out of love and caring. In fact, the form of the family has changed over the centuries.

"Our ancestors traced the lineage through the mother and lived in kinship units that did not involve relations of domination, ownership or suppression. Only with the development of society's ability to produce a surplus over what was necessary for mere survival, and the rise of private property and the division into classes on that basis, did the modern family arise. Once that had happened, it began to matter which child belonged to which father so the surplus wealth, or lack thereof, could be passed down. The family enforced a division of labor where the woman was responsible for providing the man with children and the raising of children, and the women and children were the property of the man."

One of the things that confuses people is that patriarchal structures and views are often maintained and defended by women as well. Mothers are expected to prepare their daughters for the role society expects them to play. In many semi-feudal societies, the mother-in-law plays a dominant, and often direct, role over her son's wife. Or in many Black families, grandmothers have often been seen as, and celebrated for, playing the role of an enforcer (for an example of this, go back to Richard Pryor's routines about his grandmother and the switch). Nonetheless, all this is still part of, and part of maintaining, the overall patriarchal setup.

Precious depicts this powerfully and painfully. Mary Jones, Precious' mother, abuses Precious—sexually, physically and mentally. In the film, she is monstrous, and through the story you come to understand the monstrous choices she faced—if she was going to keep her man, she would have to exchange her daughter. This cruel choice then shaped everything about who she was. Bound up with this, she adopted the view that since she'd been sexually humiliated, and fucked over for someone else's pleasure, she deserved the right to humiliate and fuck over her daughter for her sexual pleasure. This is a calculation, it is about property and domination in our most intimate spaces. And it drives all too much of male sexual behavior, even as in this case it is clearly shown animating a woman abuser.

All this is actively inculcated in, and far too often taken up by, people today. Through the increasingly violent pornography where women are literally empty shells to be demeaned and degraded for men's sexual pleasure and through the ceaseless speculation about prominent women's baby bumps in celebrity magazines—women are told they should find their meaning in being a sexual commodity or breeder for men. And in books, magazines and advice columns—women are told, often by other women, to shape their lives around attracting and keeping a man.

This comes down in particularly sharp and painful ways among Black people because "the traditional two-parent family" has, in many ways, broken down—most Black children are raised by single mothers. But this too is a product of the workings of the system itself—the economic base for two-parent families was undercut with the outflow of jobs internationally to further exploit people around the globe, there was an influx of drugs consciously directed at the Black community, then brutal repression leading to there being almost a million Black men in prison today. On top of this, there is an ideological assault that turns this situation on its head and blames Black people themselves for these conditions which are not of their making. You hear this poison trumpeted all over—that the source of the problems in the Black community is irresponsible Black fathers. And it's even coming from the commander-in-chief of the American empire, Barack Obama, blaming "absent Black fathers" for the way this system has written off now generations of youth, unable and unwilling to provide jobs or decent education or any kind of future at all.

Lots of people think the solution to all this is "strong male role models and father figures." And many have pointed to Precious in that light as well—that it's harmful because, whether it depicts reality or not, these are characters that shouldn't be highlighted. But art like this, art that depicts the oppression of women—and the role men play in that—should have, as one of its effects, the posing to such men of the real human cost of this oppression and should propel them to not only renounce "their part" in it but to fight against it.

Here we'll quote a special issue of Revolution, "The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of This System, and the Revolution We Need": "Black children don't need ‘male role models'—they need an end to the crippling conditions that hem them in at every point. They need revolution, and they need revolutionary role models, women no less than men. They need to see men and women who model the mutual respect and equality that reflects the world we are fighting for: a whole new liberated world where girls grow up strong and without fear of being raped, degraded or abused, where no child is ever deemed ‘illegitimate,' and where men―like everyone else―find their worth in contributing to the betterment of all of humanity through the revolutionary transformation of all society rather than by getting in on even a little of the oppression of this nightmare world."

Any other approach to this will only strengthen the chains that keep us all bound.

What It Will Really Take for Humanity to Triumph

In many ways, particularly for men, the oppression of women and whether you seek to completely abolish or to preserve the existing property and social relations and the corresponding ideology that enslave women (or maybe "just a little bit" of them) is a touchstone question among the oppressed themselves. It is a dividing line between "wanting in" and really "wanting out": between fighting to end all oppression and exploitation—and the very division of society into classes—and seeking in the final analysis to get your part in this.

Bob Avakian, A Horrible End or An End to the Horror?, p. 140

A final point in all this: one of the controversies around Precious has been whether the film ends on a high note. And here we need to unravel some things.

Ishmael Reed quotes writer Courtland Milloy: "Strangest of all, many reviewers felt the movie ended on a high note. Time, for instance, wrote that Precious ‘makes an utterly believable and electrifying rise from an urban abyss of ignorance and neglect.' Excuse me, the movie ends with the girl walking the streets, babies in her arms, having just learned that her father has died of AIDS—but not before infecting her."

But this ignores, or doesn't recognize, the way Precious does triumph on one level. This is captured in the gift from Precious of an orange scarf to a small girl with a black eye, also beaten by her family, whose friendship Precious had earlier spurned. Precious found this orange scarf discarded, though in her dreams it was a gift from a Black fairy godmother and in the film, it is ever present—a piece of brightness in her otherwise dark life. She passes this on to help this little girl make it through. Precious is determined to move forward, she does not return to the familiar confines of her mother's dark apartment, she does not return to the brutal and bloody as so many women in our society do. She strikes out—into the unknown and uncertain. As the film closes, we are certain her life will be a struggle, but we also know she will not go back to what was.

It is the case however that this alone will not lead her to the victory we hope for her. And here is where there is bitterness at the film's end—but it is a bitterness made of the world today, and the film is an honest depiction of that. One of the things we heard from many people in interviews or on online forums after the film was that this showed that making good choices can get you out of a bad situation. This is not true, and we don't think this is the lesson to draw from this powerful story.

Annie Day's review spoke to this: "[T]his situation is not a product of one individual's poor choices or irresponsible behavior. People do not choose the society into which they are born. They do not choose the structure of that society's traditional relations between different groups of people―relations in which people of one gender, or one race or nationality, possess privileges and lord it over the others. They encounter these relations from even before they begin to speak, so that it can seem as natural as the air they breathe―but they do not choose them. They do not choose to be in a situation where everything―and everyone―is seen as a means to profit and more profit by those who have power, and where this outlook saturates and permeates everyone else. All this is thrust upon them, and they must find their position within it.

"The only real choice we have is whether to resist this, to make our peace with it, or to respond to being demeaned by reaching back, demeaning and brutalizing others. To either fight against being made meaningless as ‘black grease,' or to try to get your own piece of that domination."

Reed's answer to this choice is clear and wrong, but a radically different answer is required from all those who want to see the potential "of Precious girls everywhere" realized.

We need a revolution. The most radical revolution of millions bringing into being a radically different system. A total revolution, aiming for the emancipation of all of humanity—putting an end to a situation where people are crushed down and crushed under by the millions, putting an end to class divisions, the oppression of whole peoples and the supremacy of others and the brutal and ubiquitous subjugation of women—literally half of humanity.

As a part of fighting for, and fueling, that revolution, we need to be bringing forward today a radically different morality—new ways of being and of treating each other. Where instead of an ideal of asserting one's "manhood," there is an ideal of asserting and expressing one's humanity. A morality of equality and respect among different nationalities and cultures, between men and women. An appreciation and encouragement of the outpouring of bitterness at what it means to be oppressed in the world today, tsunamis of speak-outs about the otherwise all too hidden pains and abuses. A fostering of friendship among men and women, boys and girls without seeing each other as commodities to be gained or gotten over on. Sexual relations that explore the full range of human pleasure explored mutually by fully present equals. A spirit of debate and struggle, curiosity and learning, imaginings and resistance—all as part of really building a movement for revolution to change the whole world once and for all.

1. See also www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/nov/14/congo.chrismcgreal and www.vday.org/drcongo/background#1.

2. This case is discussed powerfully in Bob Avakian’s talk, Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, youtube.com/revolutiontalk.

2009 Year End Letter From Carl Dix

Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party USA
P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station
New York, New York 10002-0900

Phone: 866-841-9139 x2670 E-Mail: comradecarl@hotmail.com
_______________________________________________________________


December 26, 2009

Dear Friend,

We’re nearing the end of a year that has been marked by war, crisis, misery and unspeakable brutality. The year to come needs to be one of hope, based on a solid foundation, for a radically different world where the indignities of today have been ended. The problem is that for most people revolution is off the map. They don’t think there’s anything that could be done to fundamentally change things, and this reduces them to working on the margins of this rotten set up in futile efforts to achieve incremental change. I have spent much of the past year, and will spend the coming year, throwing myself into the efforts of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) to break humanity out of this situation. Revolution needs to be put back on the map and people need to know there’s leadership for this revolution. (There’s more on this below.) This is something I feel passionately about. I’m writing you to let you know what I’ve done this past year and what I plan for the year to come to help achieve these goals.

The opening of 2009 found many people filled with hope that America's election of a Black president signaled turning the corner on America’s legacy of aggression around the world and oppression at home. Yet on New Years Day 2009, police in Oakland, California, gunned down Oscar Grant – a foul murder caught on cell phone video and seen round the world. And the wars continued in Afghanistan and Iraq. I opened the year writing two articles for Revolution Newspaper: "Don't Be a Buffalo Soldier" and "Condemn the Police Murder of Oscar Grant – Enough Is Enough." Go to Revolution Online at www.revcom.us to access these articles.

In the spring, Dr. Cornel West and I had a talk over dinner. We discussed the situation in the U.S.and around the world. In this context, we dug into what role we saw the Obama administration playing in relation to the foreign policy thrust and the domestic agenda of the Bush regime. Through the course of discussion we discovered we had a good bit of unity on this assessment, and Cornel suggested we have this conversation at a public event.

That suggestion led to the important dialogue Cornel and I had in July on the campus of the City College of New York in Harlem. Our theme was: “The Ascendancy of Obama … And the Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation.” This exchange broke the ice on a question too many people who yearn to see an end to the injustice the U.S.inflicts on humanity had held back from addressing – Does Obama represent a way to deal with this injustice, or a way for this system to cover up the crimes it commits worldwide? In this Dialogue, I addressed the way Obama has continued the foreign policy thrust of the Bush regime and how his “tough love” speeches blame Black people for what the system does to them. The DVD of this Dialogue has just been released. You could get a copy of it by contacting Revolution Books in NYC. (Website: www.revolutionbooksnyc.org. Or you can contact them by phone: 212-691-3345.)

In the fall, as Obama planned to escalate the war in Afghanistan, I began a national speaking tour titled: “From Buffalo Soldier to Revolutionary Communist.” So far this tour has stopped at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Atlanta and Houston. On it, I speak of my personal history, refusing to go to Vietnam and being imprisoned in Leavenworth Military Penitentiary. And I bring out how this, and a desire to get to the root of the war of aggression in Vietnam and the hell the U.S. was inflicting on Black people, led me to become a revolutionary communist. I also bring to today's youth an important message: Don’t Be Modern Day Buffalo Soldiers. Don’t fight in this system’s wars for empire. And, the world doesn’t have to be this way. We could end once and for all the wars, the starvation and disease, the way women are seen as either breeders of children or sex objects, the oppression of Black people through revolution. You can view the YouTube promo for this tour at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ03EIBgTwI

Obama’s recent announcement that 30,000 more troops will be sent to Afghanistan makes this message even more timely. In the year to come we will see even more death and destruction rained down on the people of Afghanistan, and we will continue to see people all over the world subjected to the misery and deprivation imperialism means for the majority of humanity.

I will be continuing and expanding my tour, going to more Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other campuses. I will be going on the airwaves, getting in print and into the blogoshpere with this message that this is not the best of all possible worlds, that a far better world is not only necessary but possible. I believe this is a key thing that’s needed right now. Helping people see that they don’t have to limit themselves to working for incremental changes on the margins of this rotten set up.

This brings me back to a theme I opened this letter on—that people need a source of hope that is based on a solid, scientific foundation tht a radically different, and far better, world could be brought into being. The work of Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) can provide that foundation. He has reassessed the revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, before both those revolutions were overthrown and capitalism was restored in both those countries. Through doing this work, through identifying what these revolutions did right and fearlessly identifying their weaknesses, he has re-envisioned communist revolution and how to bring it about. People need to know about this. Which is why I’ve thrown myself into the effort of the RCP to put revolution back on the map and to introduce people to Bob Avakian. The Revolutionary Communist Party issued an important statement on all this titled: “The Revolution We Need … And the Leadership We Have.” You can view this statement by going to: www.revcom.us/a/171/statement-en.html

I’m also in the process of writing a response to the controversy around the movie Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. One of the most disgusting features of US society is the brutality and degradation women are forced to endure in this so-called “best of all possible worlds.” This movie – Precious – comes out which concentrates some of the ways Black women are subjected to abuse in the US, and the response is to condemn it as “ghetto porn” that “demonizes Black men.” This reminded me of the storm of condemnation heaped on the movie and book, The Color Purple; and I thought I had to speak to it. (I wrote “Thoughts on The Color Purple” to address that controversy. It’s available online.)

I’d welcome hearing from you on what you’re thinking, how you look at the past year, and what you’re looking forward to in the year to come. And what you think of what I’ve had to say here.

With Love, and In Struggle,


Carl Dix



__________________________________________________________

Vietnam Era Veteran Brings Revolutionary Message to Houston, November 11th

From Buffalo Soldier to Revolutionary Communist

In a time of war abroad, economic dislocation and continuing oppression in the US, Carl Dix is coming to Houston, and he's on a mission. On Nov 11th, he will speak at Texas Southern University (TSU) on the theme of "From Buffalo Soldier to Revolutionary Communist." Carl will deliver 2 challenges and talk about the real way out of the madness the country and the world is confronted with today.

*Carl challenges anyone in the ROTC, the American Legion, the VFW, anyone, who believes the war in Afghanistan is, as President Obama has called it, "a good war," to come out and make that case. But he warns any takers that they better come armed with facts and analysis because he's going to tell the truth about the murderous war the US is waging there.

*Carl challenges anyone who believes the election of Barack Obama, the 1st Black president, means America has turned the corner on its legacy of inflicting brutal oppression on Black people to come out and make that case, too. Again, any takers need to be ready to talk about what's really going on because it's too late and too much is at stake to be talking falsely.

Carl Dix has the experience to speak to these questions. In the 1960's he was drafted into the US military and given orders to go to Vietnam, but he refused those orders and was sentenced to 2 years in Leavenworth military penitentiary. This stand put him on the path to becoming a revolutionary and a communist, a path he remains on today. And it has great relevance for today's youth who face a similar question--should they go kill people for this system, and maybe be killed themselves.

Recently Carl participated in a historic dialogue with Cornel West of Princeton University on "The Ascendancy of Obama ...and The Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation." Before a packed house in Harlem, Carl and Cornel exchanged perspectives on the meaning and significance of America electing its 1st Black president and what needed to be done to continue to advance the fight against injustice in this country and around the world. And now Carl is on this tour. At TSU, Carl will deliver a revolutionary message--that the world doesn't have to be this way, and that thru making revolution it would be possible to end the wars, the torture and government spying, the starvation and disease humanity is forced to endure today.

Carl says, "If you like what's going down in the US and around the world, you should come out and explain why any rational human being would feel that way. And if you hate all the misery, brutality and indignity the capitalist system is enforcing on the planet, you should come out and engage in the conversation about why all this continues to happen and what must be done to end it once and for all.

YouTube promo for the tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ03EIBgTwI Spread the link

Check us out on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/From-Buffalo-Soldier-to-Revolutionary-communist/187211004281?ref=mf

Carl Dix Campus Speaking Tour: From Buffalo Soldier to Revolutionary Communist

From Buffalo Soldier to Revolutionary Communist

From the Buffalo Soldiers, former slaves who were sent off to fighting the “Indian Wars,” to Vietnam in the 60’s, to Iraq and Afghanistan today, there is a long legacy of Black youth fighting in America’s wars. Carl Dix is coming to Atlanta University Center as part of a campus speaking tour to deliver an urgent message to today’s youth, and everyone else interested in justice:

DON’T BE A BUFFALO SOLDIER – The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still about keeping the American empire in effect, not about expanding freedom and democracy, despite Obama’s “re-branding” effort. Don’t go off and kill people in other countries to expand the stranglehold of the same system that oppresses Black people in this country and people all over the world.

Carl is also issuing a challenge – he challenges anyone in the ROTC or the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who thinks the war in Afghanistan is any good, to come out and argue that position.

And Carl is talking about a solution – Revolution. All the problems people face around the world and here in this country stem from the way this capitalist system operates, chasing after profit for a few. We can solve all those problems by getting rid of this system through revolution, and going on to build a whole new world in place of this messed up one.

This system offers no future for youth, but the revolution does!

Thursday, October 1st, 6:30 PM
Clark Atlanta University
Thomas Cole Science and Research Center Auditorium

*Sponsored by: Political Science Department at Clark Atlanta University

More Info: nobuffalosoldier@yahoo.com

NO VACATIONS FROM BODY BAGS

August 27, Cindy Sheehan set up “Camp Casey on the sea” at Martha’s Vineyard to challenge Barack Obama, who was vacationing there. This was in memory of her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq, and to protest Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan and the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq. Sheehan was joined at a press conference announcing the protest by Missy Beattie, whose nephew, Chase Comley, died in Iraq; Matthis Chiroux of Iraq Veterans Against the War; Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party; and others. This protest is especially important because far too many others have been paralyzed into inactivity around the wars or have even been drawn into embracing these criminal wars because they’re being presided over by the first Black president.

From Revolution #175.

Carl Dix: Making Revolution, Fighting Police Brutality

Check out and circulate Carl Dix’ new YouTube video,

“MAKING REVOLUTION,FIGHTING POLICE BRUTALITY!”

Carl puts the challenge to people to take part in the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality,Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation.

Search YouTube for “Carl Dix” and “making revolution, fighting police brutality” or link it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40dodNHMMko

Carl Dix to join Cindy Sheehan at Martha's Vineyard press conference-- now on August 27th

8/26/09: Flash Update: Press conference postponed to Thursday, August 27th, at 11:00 pm.

* * *
Carl Dix, a long time revolutionary activist and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, will be joining Cindy Sheehan on Martha's Vineyard on August 26th for a press conference at Oak Bluffs Elementary School. Carl was one of the Fort Lewis 6, 6 GI's who refused to go to Vietnam in 1970. Carl served 2 years in Ft Leavenworth military penitentiary for this stand. Carl recently participated in a dialogue in Harlem with Cornel West on "The Ascendancy of Obama ... and the Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation."

Press release below:

MARTHA'S VINEYARD – CINDY SHEEHAN, Peace Activist, Gold Star Mother, Organizer of 'Camp Casey' memorials and a nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, will be arriving on Martha's Vineyard on Tuesday August 25, to confront President Obama on his engagement in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. She will issue a challenge to Obama on his escalation of troop presence in the Middle East and his continuation of war policies around the globe.

Her schedule of public events is as follows:

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 11am, Press Conference at Oak Bluffs Elementary School.

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 8pm, Peace Vigil, Ocean Park Bandstand, Oak Bluffs.

Thursday, Aug. 27, Friday, Aug. 28 and Saturday, Aug. 29: Boat trips with Cindy for peace movement leaders, press and public. These 'shipboard peace summit' meetings will leave Vineyard Haven twice daily on the 105 foot sloop 'SS Camp Casey' in the afternoons. Call for details. No charge, so reserve ahead. 207-604-8988 or email: mailto:lauriegdobson@yahoo.com

Saturday Aug. 29, 9 to 5 Peace Vigil Ocean Park, Oak Bluffs and Walkabout around the Island

Saturday, Aug. 29, 8pm Cindy Sheehan speaking event "Peace Now, Again", Katharine Cornell Theater, 54 Spring St., Vineyard Haven.

Cindy is scheduling press and media interviews throughout the week. Call Laurie Dobson at 207-604-8988 or email: "mailto:lauriegdobson@yahoo.com" lauriegdobson@yahoo.com or Bruce Marshall at 802-767-6079.

In addition to these planned events, there will be impromptu gatherings during the week. A memorial site will be present on the island with an outdoor area designated as 'Camp Casey', a living tribute to her son Casey Sheehan, who died in the Iraq War, as well as honoring others who were war casualties.

The SS Camp Casey will welcome all those who wish to come to meet Cindy.She will be also available on the Vineyard for gatherings of visitors, which will be open to the public, the press, and anyone desiring to connect with those for whom the costs of war are a daily reality in their lives.

For information on the events, please contact Chris Fried at (508)-693-7741; and for information about Cindy, please contact Laurie Dobson at (207)-604-8988 or email: lauriegdobson@yahoo.com

No Vacations for Body Bags!

http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-have-moral-high-ground-by-cindy.html

Carl Dix in Defense of Juanita Young

Monday, August 10th 2009 -- Carl Dix kicked off a press conference and rally by community residents, supporters and activists, and several family members of Stolen Lives, who joined in solidarity with anti-police brutality activist Juanita Young and her family.

The press conference denounced the continuing police violence and abuse against Juanita's family, and its latest incident when plainclothes cops crashed a outdoor cookout and arrested Juanita's son and neighbors. After the press conference, people marched to the 43rd Precinct demanding an end to police terror and harassment of Young and her family.

Carl speaks at the press conference/rally front of Juanita's house below:



Also speaking at the press conference were Juanita Young, Lynne Stewart, and Sunsara Taylor. For a complete viewing, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/ricoism. Much thanks to Brother Carlos for the video documentation.

For the Alice Woodward article from Revolution, go to http://www.revcom.us/a/174/juanita_young-en.html.

Post Racial My Ass!

ON THE ARREST OF HENRY LOUIS GATES IN HIS OWN HOME!
July 24, 2009

Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates is arguably the most prominent Black intellectual in the US. On July 14th, cops in Cambridge, Massachusetts forced him to do a perp walk from his own home to a police car in handcuffs. The charge was disorderly conduct, but Gates’ real offense was being Black and unwilling to bow and scrape when ordered to do so by a white cop.

The cop responded to a report of a daytime break-in into the home Gates rents from the University and asked the professor to step outside. Gates refused to do so and demanded to see the cop’s ID. This challenge to the cop’s authority led to the arrest, which happened AFTER the cop had found out that Gates was indeed inside his own home! In this cop's mind, a Black man questioning his authority and asking to see his police ID constituted "loud and tumultuous behavior" punishable by the humiliation of being taken you’re your home in handcuffs.

The charges have since been dropped, and the Cambridge police department has issued a statement saying Gates should not have been arrested. But this incident was very serious. Had Gates not been able to quickly call his secretary who got his lawyer down to the jail in short order, there’s no way to know what this could’ve escalated into.

Those who blame Gates for escalating the situation and causing his own arrest are saying he should’ve been more servile, with his head bowed and shuffling. These people either don’t know what all too often happens when cops confront Black people, or are trying to cover this reality up. Black people are disproportionately stopped, harassed, beaten, arrested and even killed by cops. The Stolen Lives Project of the Oct 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality documented over 2000 cases of loss of life at the hands of police in the US between 1990 and 2000. Most of the people killed were Black or Latino and most weren't involved in any criminal activity when they lost their lives. Some of the people this has happened to were well off, had played by the rules and done everything they were supposed to do to make it. Yet none of this mattered. Black people face inequality and discrimination in virtually every facet of life in this country. This oppression is built into the very fabric of this country, and it will take revolution and going on to build a whole new society to replace this messed up one to eradicate it once and for all.

Right wing talk radio, Fox news and other such forces were quick to charge racism in response to this incident--against Gates! These people were upset that Gates not only questioned the cop, but that he had the audacity to say he was being targeted because he was a Black man. They also took Barack Obama to task for saying during a news conference that the police acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates inside his own home.

There's multiple irony involved in all this. Some of the very people who cite the election of Obama as proof that the US has become a post racial society respond to cops arresting a Black man in his own home by calling the Black man racist. At the same time, the president who has repeatedly lectured Black people to stop using racism as an excuse for the inequality and oppression they face gives a white cop a verbal slap on the wrist for the way he treated this Black professor.

Obama and his team felt compelled to address this only because he has been called out for carefully avoiding even addressing the hell Black people continue to catch in the US. Obama's tsk-tsk to the Cambridge cops doesn't address the seriousness of this incident. And this mild rebuke to the cops for this incident (which the white house began to back away from the next day with “clarifications.”) in no way makes up for the way in which he has blamed Black people for the conditions the system he presides over enforces on them.

Obama’s “No Excuses” speeches (See his speech at the recent NAACP convention for an example of this) have never been about tough love. The problem with them isn’t that they don’t go far enough. They go in the wrong direction! They say Black people face the problems they do because of their own faults and shortcomings. They cover over the oppression brought down on them by this system. And they threaten and justify the even more vicious attacks this system has in store for Black people.

What was done to Gates opens a window into the way this system oppresses Black people. This ugly and continuing reality needs to be fully dragged out into the light of day, and all who oppose injustice need to condemn it unequivocally and build opposition to it. And those who are sick and tired of it for real need to check out the revolution and understand that THIS system has always thrived on and reinforced oppression of Black people, in one form or another; never has, never can and never will create a society where Black men and women can truly breathe free, day in day out; and must be replaced with a revolutionary communist one where this, and all other forms of oppression, can finally be eliminated.

Cornel West and Carl Dix on Race and Politics in the Age of Obama


One week after the NAACP’s 100th anniversary celebrations, we speak to Princeton University professor Cornel West and Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party about the current state of Black America. West is a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University and the author of numerous books on race. Dix is a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and was one of six GIs in 1970 who refused orders to go to Vietnam and served two years in prison for his stance. [includes rush transcript]

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!”