From Carl Dix: April 14 is a day when business as usual is disrupted to STOP police murder!
February 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
I’m Carl Dix. I’m down with the Revolutionary Communist Party and I’m a co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and I have an important message about April 14. April 14 needs to be a day when business as usual in this country gets disrupted—when everybody who hates the way the police murder people and get a pass from this system when they do it, knows that that is the day to act to STOP this.
There was a meeting of 170 people in Atlanta called by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and we decided that this was the day to it—April 14. Everybody who was at that meeting, and everybody who wasn’t at that meeting but knows police murder needs to stop, has gotta get on a mission to make April 14 as powerful as it can be. We HAVE to do this. We’ve reached a crossroads in the battle to stop police murder. When people stood up in Ferguson following the murder of Michael Brown; when the defiant young people went into the streets and stayed in the streets in the face of everything that the system threw at them—tear gas, rubber bullets, and more—that reached out to people all across the country. It let people who were suffering the same kinds of problems know that we could stand up and do something about it. It opened the eyes of those who didn’t suffer it to see these horrors going down and called on them to join in to the resistance, and that went to an even higher level when the system let the cops who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York walk.
People were in the streets all across the country. It was beautiful, it was powerful, and it was very necessary. People were calling out the way this system abuses and mistreats Black people and Latino people in ways that hadn’t happened in decades, and it was challenging people to look at what happened and to take a stand on it. The ugly reality of how this system brutalizes and has its cops even murder Black people that had been covered up for so long was being ripped apart and put right out in the open. That was important, that was necessary.
Now look, the folks who run this system—THEY didn’t like it. And, in fact, they’ve been trying as hard as they can to stuff everything back, to push the resistance down. They’ve come out with mass arrests, heavy charges, outrageous bail. They’ve also tried to confuse and disorient people—trying to flip the script and say it’s the police who are heroes doing a tough job and that the people who are protesting what the police are doing are wrong. That’s BULLSHIT! The people who are right are the people who stood up and said police murder has to stop. We’re the ones who’ve got right on our side, not the brutal murdering cops and not the system that has them out there doing that stuff.
We cannot let them push us back, sisters and brothers, because they wanna continue the normal routine of America, a normal routine that has wanton police murder built into its very fabric and framework as a concentration point of a whole program of abuse targeting Black and Latino people and other oppressed people. This has gotta stop and not only do we need to continue resisting, we gotta retake the offensive—we gotta go from thousands to bringing more people out and ultimately to the point of a movement of millions of people acting to stop this.
April 14 has gotta be a very important part of doing that—it’s gotta be a day when we retake the offensive, when we build on, continue but go much higher with this. Students—thousands and thousands of students—campuses all across the country, have gotta act on that day. In the communities, people gotta gather, stand together, stand up, raise their voices, and act to stop business as usual. Everybody needs to be a part of this. Everybody who sees the horror of police murder and knows that it’s gotta stop.
We can’t wait until April 14—we gotta get on a mission right now to make this happen. A call was issued by that meeting in Atlanta for April 14 as a day of disrupting business as usual. That call has gotta be spread everywhere. Everybody’s gotta get a copy of it. Everbody’s gotta see it online and in different ways. A hashtag, #ShutdownA14, has gotta be spread everywhere. Spread it online. Put it on stickers. Get it out there. Get everybody involved in building up to this and making plans to act building up to April 14, and to act on April 14.
Look, this system has no answer for the way the police wantonly brutalize and murder people. In fact, it has the police out there doing that because the role of the police is not to protect and serve the people but to protect and serve the system that rules over the people. This is illegitimate—it’s no damn good. It’s gotta be stopped and it’s up to US to stop it. April 14 is an important day to build up to it. April 14—disrupt business as usual. Go to the website, StopMassIncarceration.net, get material there and spread it. Also go to the website revcom.us, find reports there on that meeting and materials to spread and get it everywhere. Police murder must stop and it’s up to us to stop it.
APRIL 14—SHUT DOWN! Be a part of that. Make it happen.
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