Revolution#135, July 13, 2008


From Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago Branch:

Stop the Murderous Rampage of the Chicago Police!

5 DEAD and 6 WOUNDED in 3 WEEKS
PEOPLE, WE NEED A REVOLUTION!

We received this statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago Branch:

Jonathan Pinkerton, 16, shot in back and paralyzed from waist down • Devon Young, 25, shot in the back and killed • Steven Suber, 28, shot in the back • Reginald Knight, 24, shot 8 times in the back and killed • M. Barlow, 27, shot in the leg • Shapell Terrell, 39, shot in the back and killed • Darius Nicholson, 49, shot and killed • Luis Colon, 18, shot and killed • two “unidentified men” shot • Robin Johnson, 45, shot

WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM has its armed enforcers shoot down 11 PEOPLE in a cold-blooded rampage in three weeks?!  WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM shoots down our young people—OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

PEOPLE: This is a CAPITALIST-IMPERIALIST SYSTEM that controls the wealth created by billions of exploited and oppressed people here and around the world. The power of these capitalist-imperialists is enforced by armies of police in the U.S. and armies of soldiers waging unending war and terror for empire across the globe.

This system is enforced with torturers from the Chicago jails to Abu Ghraib. This system is enforced with one in nine young Black men in prison in the U.S. on any given day, and this system is enforced by the U.S. putting far more people in prison than any country in the world.

This system is enforced with thousands of mostly Black and Latino young people killed by the police in the U.S. in the 1990s and since. And thousands lost to police bullets for generations and to night-rider nooses before that.

People are right to be agonizing about the oppressed shooting each other down. BUT IT IS THE SAME SYSTEM that sends its armed enforcers to shoot us down that also creates the conditions that set people against each other, and people are responding to those conditions in negative and harmful ways. PEOPLE: You are getting played if you buy into the lies that we are at fault. AND you're getting played if you fight each other, instead of fighting the power.

FIGHT THE POWER, AND TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE, FOR REVOLUTION!

WE NEED A REVOLUTION, a communist revolution, to get rid of this brutal system that is long past its time.  A revolution that would put state power in the hands of the people, and that power would be about getting rid of all kinds of oppression and exploitation, like racism and national oppression in all its forms, men dominating women, and one country dominating the whole world. Where the people of all nationalities, young and old, men and women, would debate and struggle with each other over how to advance society to get rid of all these outmoded relations and ideas and contribute to emancipating all of humanity. And the people's security forces would back the people up in doing this, not suppress and murder them the way cops do in the capitalist-imperialist system we have now.

In a country like the U.S., this kind of revolution could only occur once this society as a whole is in a profound crisis, and when a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions, has emerged, conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it.

PEOPLE: The time is now to get with the revolutionary movement and prepare politically to bring this kind of revolution about.

Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago Branch

CALLING FOR AN OUTPOURING OF OUTRAGE: All this must stop – a line must be drawn right here, right now. This police rampage cannot be allowed to go down without being met with powerful mass resistance. People of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities must act with conscience. It matters what we do in the face of these outrages. Powerful resistance can change the equation in a society where too many accept the unacceptable. It can give heart to those put under a constant death sentence and it can call forth many more people to join in taking this on.

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