Celebrating the Release of the CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America (Draft Proposal).

On Wednesday, November 10, at Revolution Books NYC, Carl Dix read a statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party on the release of the CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America (Draft Proposal).

* * *

      Welcome everyone to the release celebration for the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the Revolutionary Communist Party.  This is a momentous occasion and I’m going to read a few brief comments about the significance of this Constitution, and call on everyone here to really get deeply into this, and be part of getting it way out in the world.
     As it says in the Introductory Explanation, this Constitution was written with the future in mind.  It sets forth, “a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human history--communism--with the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and of the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise.”

     This Constitution is a framework for a radically new economic system, a radically new political system and it is also a framework through which people will be able to work their way toward and reach a communist society.  Quoting from the message and call of the campaign the Revolutionary Communist Party is currently undertaking, “the revolution we need... the leadership we have,” “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.”

     Bob Avakian’s new synthesis provides the foundation of this, and the principle of solid core with a lot of elasticity runs throughout.  Reading from the preamble, “This means that, on the one hand, there must be a continually expanding force in society, with the revolutionary communist party as its leading element, which is firmly convinced of the need to advance to communism and deeply committed to carrying forward this struggle, through all the difficulties and obstacles; and, on the basis of and at the same time as continually strengthening this ‘solid core,’ there must be provision and scope for a wide diversity of thinking and activity, among people throughout society, ‘going off in many different directions,’ grappling and experimenting with many diverse ideas and programs and fields of endeavor--and once again all this must be ‘embraced’ by the vanguard party and the ‘solid core’ in an overall sense and enabled to contribute, through many divergent paths, to the advance along a broad road toward the goal of communism.”

     The significance of having this kind of framework for day one, and then beyond after the seizure of power in a country like this, can’t be underestimated.  This is huge, and those at the core of a movement for revolution need to be living in this themselves - putting ourselves there and wrangling very broadly with both the obstacles and potential pathways of human emancipation in a socialist transition to communism given concrete expression in policies and principles in this Constitution.

     There is also great significance in what it means to have this Constitution out in the world today.

     In a world where the planet itself is in grave danger, and where the vast majority of humanity is suffering from the daily exploitation, the soul crushing scramble for survival, the lives lost needlessly around the world to imperialist wars of domination and the alienation and desperation that comes from all this... people are being snuffed out and smothered both by the weight of this system and by the idea that these conditions are permanent, that it has to be this way.

     No!  The basis exists for a radically different, a radically liberating world.  This Constitution is a declaration, it’s a concrete answer to what we mean by that, what we mean when it’s said in the message and call that “this is NOT the best of all possible worlds... and we do NOT have to live this way.”

     Today, as those of us in the movement for revolution prepare for THIS future, this constitution is also a means of presenting a real alternative to the present system; a response to the argument, in whatever form, that there is nothing that can be done to change things, and there is no viable alternative; and a challenge in contrast to the program--or the lack of program--of other forces of various kinds.  It’s an answer to when people raise questions about the objectives of the movement for revolution - or negatively raise the accusation that we are always against this or that, always negative but have nothing that we’re for or offer no positive alternative - this is an opportunity to challenge them, and prevail on them to get a copy and seriously engage this Constitution.  And again – it is most of all the framework for actually doing something good – something very good indeed! – with the new state power that will be won and forged when the revolution succeeds.

     And, as it says in the introductory explanation, it should “stimulate, as broadly as possible, such serious and substantive engagement with this Draft Proposal, and vigorous discussion and debate about what it puts forward as the kind of society and world to be not only imagined but actively struggled for.”

     As you get into this, I want to invite you be part of discussions with us on what is in here.  And I want to invite you to also be part of the work, now and over the next couple months to really get this Constitution out in society and the world with truly major impact.  Feed in your ideas and brainstorms - talk to me, or people with the buttons asking for your ideas.  You can also join us tonight after the celebration for a more formal planning session.  Come out with us on the campuses and to the neighborhoods, getting out materials broadly and selling lots of copies.  Buy ten tonight to get to friends, and tell us your ideas on where we should go and who we should reach.

     Contribute funds to make this promotion possible - the printing of materials, online advertising for the web release (Monday, 11/15).  Buy copies for prisoners, sell tickets to the fundraising dinner on 11/20, buy one for yourself and invite your friends, hold a fundraising dinner in your own home and also, talk to us about your ideas for raising larger funds, including if there are people you know who we should approach.

     We ARE building a movement for revolution... and this Constitution lays out WHAT that revolution is going to bring into being, in a visionary but very concrete way.  And wherever you see yourself in relation to this Constitution, and the movement for revolution we are building to bring this society into being... and whatever this Constitution evokes and provokes in you... we very, very much want to hear your response, embarking on and keeping up a dialogue.

     Thank you again to everyone for being part of this celebration, stick around, let’s talk with each other further about this Constitution, its significance, potential impact and what it’s going to take to realize that potential.

     Thank you.

Cornel West and Carl Dix Dialogue in Harlem: What Future for Our Youth?

From Revolution #216    http://www.revcom.us/a/216/cornel_carl-en.html

     If you weren't there, you missed something electric.

     A sold-out crowd of more than 650 people at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem, largely composed of African-Americans and youth but also other people of many nationalities and ages, turned out on October 29 for a dialogue between Cornel West and Carl Dix: "In the Age of Obama, Part II... Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Mis-education: What Future For Our Youth?" The dialogue was a fundraiser for Revolution Books and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF).

     West—a prominent Black intellectual, Princeton University professor, and longtime opponent of racial oppression—and Dix—a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party who served two years in prison for refusing orders to go to Vietnam—were speaking less than two years after the election of the nation's first Black president led many to proclaim that a brighter future was ahead for youth of color. It was also less than two weeks after police 30 miles north of New York City murdered 20-year-old D.J. Henry, an unarmed Black college student; and three days after an article in the New York Times reminded us that the NYPD has stopped-and-frisked hundreds of thousands of people each year—the vast majority of them African-Americans and Latinos who had committed no crime.

     In other words, the main themes of this dialogue are badly needed, almost completely absent from the social and political landscape, and right on time. Where, for instance, in all the election debates and coverage did you hear this being discussed? The title of the event clearly resonated with, and intrigued, people walking into the auditorium.

     One man told Revolution, "I have read a couple of Cornel West's books. Carl Dix is with the [Revolutionary] Communist Party—a publicly declared atheist, which is a beautiful thing. I'm a non-theist myself. Particularly in this country, stigma goes along with one saying they're an atheist. Christ and religion —period—is so predominant in the U.S. There is a negative stigma with anyone who believes otherwise. Christ is shoved down your throat in this country whether you want to be exposed to it or not."

     He added, "The title is very good...it's complete, timely, necessary—instead of newscasters presenting supposedly what Americans' opinions are, a lot of the people here are of the opinion that don't necessarily get voiced..."

     Another said, "I am familiar with Cornel West. I've not heard him speak publicly before. And I know he's a little bit of a radical. And sometimes I feel that it's important to hear those voices. I don't necessarily disagree or agree. But I like to hear a balanced argument."

     Dix was the first to take the microphone. He began by condemning the humiliation, harassment, and murder that police regularly bring down on youth, linking these crimes to pervasive violence against women in our society, the prejudice against and violent persecution of gays and lesbians, children in South Asia slaving away in sweatshops, and U.S. drones raining destruction onto villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these crimes, Dix said, come from a common source: the capitalist-imperialist system that has a stranglehold on the planet and its people.

     However, Dix said he did not come just to expose the horrors facing this planet, or explain why these horrors occur. Rather, he said: "My message is simple and urgent. I came here to tell people: Things do not have to be this way. We have a solution. Through communist revolution, we can end the horrors of this system and bring a far better world into being. And, we are building a movement for revolution. And we have a leader—Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party—who makes this revolution immeasurably more possible." To drive home to the 650-plus people there just how serious and real this movement for revolution is, Dix held up a copy of the hot-off-the-pressConstitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). (See the Preamble to the Constitution in this issue.) Dix referred to this new Constitution throughout the evening, and urged people to buy it.

     Dix acknowledged that youth today are caught up in a lot of "bad shit," but emphasized the reason for this is what the capitalist-imperialist system does to them and the killing choices with which it leaves them. The way for youth to get out of this situation is not lectures about personal responsibility, "getting with god," or pulling up their pants: it is to get with the movement for revolution to end this capitalist-imperialist system, transforming themselves in the process. He emphatically argued that all religion promotes a slave mentality.

     Cornel West was next to speak, and there were both differences and extremely important points of unity between him and Carl Dix. West began by saying that whether he agreed with everything he said or not, Dix—as well as Avakian—should be praised for a fierce commitment to the oppressed. He referred to himself as a "Jesus-loving free Black man," and responded to Dix's sharp critique of religion by saying the god he (West) envisioned and believed in was one that sustains those who advocated for poor people and empowered themselves.

     West's speech exuded anger, compassion and love for the oppressed, and moral clarity. He poignantly condemned the degradation, isolation, hatred, hopelessness and violence this system imposes on its youth, several times explicitly linking these things to capitalism-imperialism and the culture that this system spawns. He angrily denounced the criminalization and demonization of impoverished youth, while challenging these youth to reject a culture of "superficial titillation" and "moral constipation," and to give their lives meaning by fighting for justice and the oppressed. West told the young people in the room not to strive for success if they defined success as accommodating to injustice. "Justice," Cornel told the audience, "is what love looks like in public."

     And West said that if the youth choose to be revolutionary communists, "that's your choice," and that if they choose to fight for justice, they would find themselves alongside revolutionary communists.

     Following moving and successful appeals for funds, audience members posed questions to the speakers, including: Why is there so much violence among the youth, and what can be done about it? What steps can students take to learn critical information being denied to them in school curricula? What are some concrete things that individuals can do to resist the system? How should we view the question of Black nationalism?

     As they took turns speaking to these and other questions, Dix and West embraced their shared hatred for this system's crimes, while also engaging their differences with honesty, liveliness, principle, and mutual respect. After the dialogue, several people said they were struck by the way Dix and West related to each other. One student said that at her high school, too often people with different views believe that because someone thinks differently they have to be separate and stay apart. And she was impressed to see an atheist and a religious person on stage discussing and engaging their differences; this showed her a different way that society could be. This was an insightful comment. This whole event was a model of the kind of debate and contestation of ideas that will go on in the new socialist society all the damn time.

     After the event, the lobby was full of people who were clearly inspired, moved, provoked, and intrigued—by the dialogue, and by the experience of being in a room full of people passionately engaging the issues at hand.

     A 23-year-old African-American student summed up her reactions to the event by saying: "I've been motivated, entertained, and uplifted all in one. Fantastic."

     "Everything that they talked about is exactly the things that I think are prevalent to me right now as a teenager, as a student, as the youth that they were talking about," said a 17-year-old white high school student from Brooklyn. "This is what I feel—that this is a moment in time where we have the future ahead of us and we have to seize it, and it's our decision what we're gonna do with it."

     The student said he had just gotten a copy of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal), and said: "To say: 'There's another way'? Very powerful." "It's so common to say 'The way things are done is wrong'—to denounce the government, to denounce the way we're doing things, to say 'this is fucked up, we can't be doing this.' It's so common to be contrarian that it's almost meaningless. What is meaningful is to offer a solution to those problems.… You can read this."

     Many people expressed being very fired up and inspired and at the same time were still taking in and sorting through what they had heard, and grappling with how to understand what type of movement for revolution was being put forward, and what they could do as an individual.

      A college student was asked what sense he had gotten of what the Revolutionary Communist Party and this movement for revolution are all about.

     "Hmm, let me think for a moment," he said, pausing. "I think I would have to look into more of the Party's readings to truly understand what they—like how they want to do things. 'Cause I know what they want. It sounds like they want a more collective organized system of equality for the people in an economic way. But I would have to read more about their means of doing it. 'Cause I understand it only on a surface level, I think, after tonight. But I do understand the urgency of change on a deeper level."

     A young boxer, one of whose parents is from Puerto Rico and the other from Guam, said he had long been passionate about the themes West and Dix were addressing: "I connected to everything...This is my life. This isn't just an event for me. This is already a cause I'm already actively pursuing. So to know that I'm not alone, it's the most amazing feeling. The most amazing feeling. Like I cried—I'm not a crier, I'm a fucking boxer."

      Asked if there were things that surprised him, a high school student said:

"You know, I was surprised by how enthusiastic everybody around me was. It was inspiring to see everybody so into it. To see people feeling—and not just sitting around and listening... People taking it in and feeling it and feeling like they can go out and do something. You can tell this isn't something where people are going to listen to some really nice radical notions and ideas and go home and say, 'Well, I saw Cornel West and he said some very interesting things.' You can tell these are people who want to do something about this and start this revolution and make things happen in the world. To stop eating all the crap that they're fed and go out and make something of this, take that power, because the world belongs to us. And people in this room realize that. It's all about community, and that feeling of community, I think, was my favorite thing here tonight."

IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, part 2
Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Miseducation:
What Future for Our Youth? 
A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST and CARL DIX

October 29, 2010 7:00 PM at the Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall 
on the campus of the City College of New York, 135th & Convent Avenue, New York NY

A Benefit Evening for Revolution Books and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund
Location: HarlemStage, Aaron Davis Hall, 135th & Convent

TICKETS: $20 General Admission, $100 Premium, $250 Friends of Revolution Membership

Cornel West & Carl Dix Trailer: Get Ready for Dialogue Part 2!

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IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, part 2
Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Miseducation:
What Future for Our Youth? 
A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST and CARL DIX
October 29, 2010 7:00 PM at the Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall 
on the campus of the City College of New York, 135th & Convent Avenue, New York NY

A Benefit Evening for Revolution Books and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund
Location: HarlemStage, Aaron Davis Hall, 135th & Convent

TICKETS: $20 General Admission,
$100 Premium
For more info and buy tickets

Carl Dix is a Signatory to World Can't Wait's "Crimes Are Crimes" Statement

The "Crimes Are Crimes" Statement was published in the New York Times last week.



It has become common knowledge that Barack Obama has openly ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar al-Aulaki. Without trial or other judicial proceeding, the administration has simply put him on the to-be-killed list.* 

Whistleblowers in the military leaked a video showing U.S. troops firing on an unarmed party of Iraqis in 2007, including two journalists, and then firing on those who attempted to rescue them, including two children. As ugly as this video of the killing of 12 Iraqis was, the chatter recorded from the helicopter cockpit was even more monstrous. The Pentagon says that there would be no charges against these soldiers; and the media absolves of blame. “They were under stress,” the story goes; “Our brave men and women must be supported.” Meanwhile, those who leaked and publicized the video came under government surveillance and are targeted as “national security” threats. 

The Pentagon acknowledged, after denials, a massacre near the city of Gardez, Afghanistan, on February 12, 2010. 5 people were killed, including two pregnant women, leaving 16 children motherless.  The U.S. military first said the two men killed were insurgents, and the women, victims of a family “honor killing,” but the Afghan government accepts the eyewitness reports that U.S. Special Forces killed the men, (a police officer and lawyer) and the women, and then dug their own bullets out of the women’s bodies to destroy evidence. Top U.S. military officials have now admitted that U.S. soldiers killed the family in their house. 

Just weeks earlier, a story broken in Harper’s by Scott Horton carried news that three supposed suicides of detainees in Guantánamo in 2006 were not suicides, but possible homicides carried out by American personnel. This passed almost without comment.** 

In some respects, this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of “terrorism,” merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly. Second, Obama says that the government can detain you indefinitely, even if you have been exonerated in a trial, and he has publicly floated the idea of “preventive detention." Third, the Obama administration, in expanding the use of unmanned drone attacks, argues that the U.S. has the authority under international law to use such lethal force and extrajudicial killing in sovereign countries with which it is not at war. 

Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested.  But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as anomalies under the Bush regime, have now been consecrated into “standard operating procedure” by Obama, who claims, as did Bush, executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of aggressive war. 

Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby making their actions acceptable for him or any future president, Democrat or Republican. 

End the complicity of silence. 

* On 9/24/10 the Justice Department asserted that “state secrets” bar any examination of Obama’s order. 

** On 9/29/10 a U.S. federal court dismissed a suit by the victims’ families on grounds of “national security.”

Get Ready for October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality!

From Revolution Online: October 10, 2010

Fighting Police Brutality, and Transforming the People, for Revolution!

NY-October 22nd Coalition's Stolen Lives Banner at Justice for Sean Bell demonstration.

Fourteen years ago I said there was a nationwide epidemic of police brutality. That epidemic is still in effect today. Youth get stopped and frisked by police all the damn time. Black or Latino parents worry when their teenagers go out: Will he be the next Sean Bell or Oscar Grant? Will she be the next Tyisha Miller? Black parents have to talk with their kids about how to survive being stopped by a cop—no matter whether they are straight A students or street youth who sag their pants. All too often, such an encounter ends with a young person beaten down, arrested or even dead. Just ask the families of any of the several thousand innocent victims murdered by the cops since 1990.

Or just meet some of them, sit down and talk with them, and work with them, like I have. Nicholas Heyward Sr. will tell you what it feels like when the police kill your 13-year-old son for having a toy gun. Or Margarita Rosario will tell you what it's like to hear that your son and nephew were shot in the back by cops while they were lying face down with their hands up. And they and other family members of police murder victims will tell you what it's like to watch the cops who committed these crimes get off with no punishment.

Some thought Obama's election would lead to a reduction in police abuse, but what has happened? September 5: Manuel Jamines is gunned down by cops in L.A. in broad daylight on a busy street. July 8: Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot Oscar Grant in the back as he lay face down and handcuffed, is let off with a conviction for involuntary manslaughter, which is like saying it was an accident. May 16: Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year-old girl, is killed by Detroit police who conduct a midnight raid into her apartment searching for a suspect who lived in the apartment upstairs!

The dogs are still in the street.

Some people blame our youth for all this, or say it's our own fault. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said the cops have to come into the neighborhoods the way they do because of the violence the youth are involved in. Speaking at the funeral of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Reverend Al Sharpton said: "I'm looking at the man in the mirror. All of us share some of the blame for Aiyana's death." This is plain wrong, and it's poisonous! We need straight talk on who's really to blame for the situation our youth face.

Neither Oscar Grant nor Aiyana Stanley-Jones did anything to cause their murders. Neither did most of the people who were killed or brutalized by police. And the system itself is responsible for the crime and violence our youth are caught up in. It was the capitalist system that stripped the inner cities of jobs that pay a living wage. The capitalist system that wrecked the educational system. That in 1,001 ways, spreads the message that the lives of our youth are worthless. That promotes the mentality of look out for number 1 and being for yourself, and for your group before anything else. Yet when our youth take up this outlook and apply it to the ways the system has out there for them to survive—whatever hustle they can find, legitimate or illegitimate—the authorities use this to demonize the youth.

As the Message and Call from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), "The Revolution We Need ... The Leadership We Have," puts it:

"Look at what this system is doing to youth right here in the USA. For millions in the inner cities, if they are not killed at an early age, their likely future is prison (nearly 1 in 8 young Black men is incarcerated, the prisons are overflowing with Blacks and Latinos, and this country has the highest rate of incarceration of women in the world). This system has robbed so many youth of the chance for a decent life and has got far too many living, dying and killing for nothing—nothing good—nothing more than messing up people and murdering each other on the streets of the cities here...or joining the military, being trained to be murderers on a mass scale, massacring people in countries across the globe."

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

We need to make this revolution. We are building a movement for revolution to get us to a whole different world. A world where the majority of people are no longer forced to slave for the benefit of a wealthy few. A world where there are no more divisions between women and men or between people of different races or nationalities. A world where the backward ideas that help keep this dog eat dog setup in effect are no more. And as a first step in that, making revolution and building a revolutionary society that values the youth as representing the future, instead of criminalizing them like this one does. A revolutionary society that unleashes them to contribute their thinking, spirit and energy to advancing society, and doesn't pen them in, beat them down and kill them off like this one does.

Things don't have to be this way. Through communist revolution, we could bring a totally different and far better world into being. We are spreading revolution and communism everywhere. And we are mobilizing people to resist the attacks this system brings down on the masses as part of getting ready for revolution. And the youth need to be in the forefront of this movement for revolution, and they will be a backbone of the new structure that runs the revolutionary society!

Now I'm not saying these youth could help lead a revolution and build a new revolutionary society the way they are today. No, they couldn't do that, but our youth weren't always into the things they are now. The conditions created and enforced by the capitalist system itself are what changed our youth from beautiful children to gangbangers and criminals.

We need to get our youth out of this shit and into something in the interests of humanity. But lectures about pulling up your pants or sermons won't do anything to change them for the better. Neither will threats of intensified repression. The only way that they can get out of all the bad shit they're caught up in now is by getting clear on the real cause of the misery and brutality inflicted on the masses—the capitalist system. And by joining in the struggle against this system and what it does to the people. We know that these youth are impatient and defiant. Given what the system does to them, this is a good thing. The movement for revolution can tap into that impatience and defiance and give it positive expression, right now. This can play an important part in getting to revolution. In this way, they can join the emancipators of humanity and become a part of bringing into being a totally different and far better way for people to live here and around the world.

As the statement from the RCP, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" puts it: "The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

October 22, 2010, the 15th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, needs to be a day marked by determined resistance. It needs to be a day when young people and older folk too pour into the streets and manifest their outrage at the brutality and murder this system's enforcers inflict on the people. It needs to be a day when the victims have a platform to expose how this official brutality has devastated their lives, and when people from different backgrounds and of different races come together to say NO MORE to these outrages. We in the RCP, who throw our hearts and souls into building this movement for revolution, will be there that day and in the days leading up to this to build this resistance as part of that movement.

To repeat, there IS a movement for revolution out there that the youth can get with now. A movement that can tap into their defiance and anger and show them how to direct it to building resistance to the ways the system comes at the people. Resistance that gives people a sense that things don't have to be this way. Resistance that exposes the illegitimacy of this system and the horrors its enforcers inflict on the people. Resistance that shows people another way for people to relate to each other than the dog-eat-dog mentality this system promotes.

And again, anybody who is really concerned about what the youth are into and wants to see them doing better needs to be helping them see that the system is the real problem and encouraging them to join those who are fighting the power and transforming themselves and others, for revolution. Not giving them lectures about pulling up their pants and taking personal responsibility, or getting into god.

All Out for October 22nd, the National Day of Protest To Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation! Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution! This System Has No Future for the Youth, But the Revolution Does!

Send us your comments.

October 29: IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, Part 2

October 29, Friday, 7 PM

IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, part 2

Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Miseducation:

WHAT FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH?

A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST and CARL DIX

A Benefit Evening for Revolution Books and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund

Location: HarlemStage at Aaron Davis Hall, City College of New York, 135th & Convent Avenue

TICKETS: $20 General Admission, $100 Premium

Call (212) 281-9240 x19 or 20, or online www.harlemstage.org (go to "Get Tickets")

Sept 25, 2010: At the Lincoln Memorial -- "Redeem Aiyana's Dream" March

Carl Dix joins Minister Omar Wilks at the "Redeem Aiyana's Dream" march and rally in Washington, D.C. At the top steps of the Lincoln Memorial Carl speaks the truth of the murder of 7 year old Aiyana Jones by Detroit police and its coverup, and of the violent reality of police brutality in the inner cities, and for the need to build a movement for revolution!

JUSTICE FOR MANUEL JAMINES! Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, Los Angeles Branch

Revolution #211, September 12, 2010

Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, Los Angeles Branch
JUSTICE FOR MANUEL JAMINES!
PROTESTS AGAINST POLICE MURDER ARE JUSTIFIED AND MUST BE SUPPORTED!
THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY

For several days and nights, the people of Pico Union have been in the streets demanding justice for Manuel Jamines. The outpouring of righteous anger over his murder by LAPD is telling the world Basta Ya! No More! This determined resistance has inspired people everywhere.

Manuel Jamines was 37 years old, an immigrant from Guatemala known by many people in the neighborhood. Like so many others, he left his two young children and wife to come to El Norte in search of the American dream, only to find the reality of the American nightmare.

The cold-blooded murder of Manuel Jamines by the LAPD on Sunday, the complete disregard for his life by cops who shot him in the head only 40 seconds after they confronted him, is a screaming injustice. Adding further insult, they left his body in a pool of his blood on the sidewalk for 4 hours. Like a dog.

It was such a total outrage that - this time - people would not allow it to go down quietly and unanswered. Immediately, crowds surrounded the killer cops and chanted “Asesinos!”

There is a sense broadly that the police murder of Manuel Jamines is part of the epidemic of police brutality, especially aimed at Black and Latino people all across this country - from Harlem to Pico Union to Oakland. There is a sense that this is part of the fascist atmosphere and attacks against immigrants unleashed by laws like Arizona’s SB1070.

In a climate where immigrants are demonized, denied basic human rights, dragged away and deported at any moment, brutalized by sadistic border patrol agents, attacked by a fascist anti-immigrant movement, viciously exploited at every turn – the protests in the streets demanding justice speaks for millions and is a breath of fresh air.

In the past few days, the people have repeatedly and bravely gone into the streets demanding justice and to say that the police do not have the right and legitimacy to come into the neighborhood and assassinate someone like Manuel. People have refused to be silenced in the face of lies and threats from the authorities, from the police chief to the mayor to their riot cops. People are refusing to accept this crime committed by the LAPD. The lies and threats cannot cover up the truth that they all knew their killer cop, Frank Hernandez, had a long and ugly history of brutalizing people, shooting two other people before this.

This complete disregard for Manuel’s life is not an isolated incident. This whole system acts as if the life of ordinary people such as Manuel is not even worth the bullet that killed him. Their whole damn system is guilty. As it says in the Message and Call from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA “The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have”:

It is a system of capitalism-imperialism…a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower…a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor…torture and rape…while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is "justified," as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future.

The continued upsurge of resistance in Pico Union to demand justice for Manuel Jamines - to demand a stop to police brutality and murder, to demand to be treated as human beings - has brought hope to millions. It is a hope that the world can be different, that the people do not have to accept being constantly abused and degraded by this whole system and their enforcers like the LAPD and ICE. It is a hope that a better world is possible. From the RCP’s Message and Call “The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have”:

The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.

The recent protests in the streets of Pico-Union have answered, YES!

Justice for Manuel Jamines!
Indict and Jail the killer cops!
Drop the charges on all protesters!
No raids or deportations!

Send us your comments.

"Put Revolution On The Map" National Fundraising Web-a-thon, Aug. 8th

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Save the DATE... DONATE... MOBILIZE your FRIENDS...

Sunday, August 8
4-10 pm EST / 1-7pm PST

Fundraising Web-a-thon to "Put Revolution On The Map" #2
http://revolutiononthemapwebcast.blogspot.com/
Hosted by Annie Day, Will Reese & Sunsara Taylor

Back by popular demand and real necessity, on Sunday, August 8, the campaign around "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" will hold a second fundraising web-a-thon, from 4pm - 10pm, EST.

Every week the headlines scream out at us that we need a radically different world. Thursday, July 29th, Arizona will begin enforcing an unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional law that threatens the lives of immigrants. Yesterday, 90,000 secret military documents that paint a devastating picture of the brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan were leaked from inside the U.S. military. The cop who shot Oscar Grant in the back as he was detained, lying face down on a subway platform, killing him, was convicted only of "involuntary manslaughter" showing the reality behind the "post-racial society."

This is not the best of all possible worlds and we do not have to live this way! We are building a movement for revolution, now, and you should be a part of this.

So, start organizing your friends to watch together on Sunday August 8. Spread this email to your lists, make a donation and challenge your friends to match it and join the movement for revolution.

On June 20, several hundred people watched the first webathon. 160 people donated and we surpassed met the goal. $10,048 has been raised. This was a success and showed the potential of "giving people the means to become part of this revolutionary movement, and organizing into this movement everyone who wants to make a contribution to it, who wants to work and fight, to struggle and sacrifice, not to keep this nightmare of a world going as it is but to bring a better world into being." [From Message and Call]

This time, with your help spreading the word and challenging others to donate we want to triple the number of people who watch online, and double the number of donors. Our goal is to raise $12,000 towards special projects to popularize Bob Avakian's leadership, including:
online advertising of The Revolution Talk; New York City "Revolution in the Park" outdoor film series; initial promotion and publication of BAsics; and more.

Check out the schedule and get your friends organized to watch. Tune in for special topics; design your own appeals based on this schedule:

4-5 EST / 1-2 PST Introduction; We Are Building a Movement for Revolution

5-6 EST / 2-3 PST Make Bob Avakian a Household Name: Hear the Revolution Talk & More on BAsics

6-7 EST / 3-4 PST A Capitalist Oil Spill: A System Not Fit to Be Caretaker of the Planet, And the Revolution We Need! featuring Raymond Lotta

7-8 EST / 4-5 PST Prisoners Connect with the Revolution
Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund programming

8-9 EST / 5-6 PST Arizona Freedom Summer featuring Travis Morales & Why Do People Come here? by Bob Avakian

9-10 EST / 6-7 PST The Revolution We Need; The Leadership We Have
So, hold the date, make your plans, and tune in on Sunday August 8!
Instructions for tuning in at "Put Revolution on the Map" next week.

Some ways in which proceeds from the June 20 webathon spread revolution:

Detroit: A billboard high over inbound I-75, and also right in sight of thousands of commuters leaving Detroit on a major street announced the Revolution Talk by Bob Avakian. As thousands of participants in the US Social Forum poured into the city, they got the Message & Call; they had a chance to hear deep and varied presentations from Revolution newspaper correspondents, learn that the revolution is real, and join Carl Dix and others standing with the people in the wake of the police execution of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

Arizona Freedom Summer: "We don't have an immigration problem. We have a capitalist problem!" Their call says, "Come join us in Arizona. This is a summer of resistance and revolution. Come with a spirit of defiance and a determination to stop the ugly white supremacy and repression being put into law and unleashed on immigrants and anyone that "looks illegal!" SB 1070, the fascist anti-immigrant law, goes into effect in Arizona on Thursday July 29. Carloads are going to join the protests now, and to spread Revolution. Reporter's notebook from Arizona Freedom Summer.

Bob Avakian, "Why do people come here from all over the world?"

INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER: UNACCEPTABLE!

From Revolution Books, Berkeley

INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER: UNACCEPTABLE!
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
The Whole Damn System is Guilty!

The killing of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old Black man, was a cold-blooded murder. It was a towering crime. This verdict is a slap on the wrist. It is another crime of the system.

Under the law, 2nd degree murder is the unjustified, intentional killing of a human being. Involuntary manslaughter is a much lesser offense, and carries a much lighter sentence. We saw the videos. From the beginning, the cops were the ones driving the action. Detained, lying face down, putting his hands behind his back while one cop kneeled on his neck, Oscar was shot in the back. Cold-blooded murder, a totally unjustified and brutal act.

Think about it: If this case did not involve police, the situation would be completely different.

Imagine if seven ordinary people had swarmed the BART platform that night, rousted people off the train—cursing them with racist epithets — kicking, and shoving people to the ground, and then killing a man who was lying face down — shooting him in the back. Imagine if dozens of people had seen it. If they videotaped it. What had happened wouldn’t even be a question. It would be obvious. Murder.

This involuntary manslaughter verdict tells cops everywhere they can kill and get away with it. And this verdict tells the people that when we or people we love are gunned down, a slap on the wrist to a cop is the best that we can get.

Let's tell the truth — this system lets cops get away with brutality and murder every single day. The only reason that Mehserle even had to face murder charges at all — and everyone should know this almost never happens — is because the people rose up and fought for justice. And now the defenders of this system are saying that the battle for justice hurt the people. Bullshit. It’s the system the cops enforce with their brutality that hurts the people.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to live in a society where our youth are gunned down by the police who get away with it over and over, where immigrants are criminalized by just the way they look, where oil gushes into the gulf and marshes week after week killing rich sea life and a whole way of life for many thousands. We could build a society where police brutality and other injustices are done away with and people work together to build a new society. Building that kind of society would take a revolution. We need such a revolution and right now we are building a movement for revolution.

The system is rotten. We don’t have to live this way. We need a Real Revolution!

REVOLUTION BOOKS, Berkeley
2425 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
510-848-1196 revolutionbooks.org

Bob Avakian, "What to the slave is your fourth of July? From the past to...

Check this clip from Bob Avakian's landmark Revolution talk, "What to the Slave is Your Fourth of July? From the Past to the Present" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljXoAfxTMdg and in Spanish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCTE5sLUSMk

On the Ground in Detroit: June 21

Revolution in Detroit - June 21 - Part 1 & 2
Follow Carl Dix on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Carl_Dix
and also follow the on the ground reports by Revolution correspondent Alice Woodward on the revolutionaries in Detroit at www.revdetroit.blogspot.com



Part 2

Revolution in Detroit-June 18th