Drop the Charges on Noche Diaz and the Puerto Rican People’s Parade 7!

Hands Off the Revolution Club!
We Have the Right to Lift Our Heads!

October 14, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Seven members of the Revolution Club Chicago, including Noche Diaz of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour, are facing trial this fall, stemming from an illegitimate mass arrest by the Chicago Police Department at the 2018 Puerto Rican People’s Parade. The Revolution Club members were surrounded and violently arrested for speaking with people, at a public parade, about the crimes of this system and getting organized for revolution. This arrest is part of a pattern of very similar illegal arrests, as well as ongoing harassment, physical interference and attempted intimidation by the Chicago police of the Revolution Club for speaking in public places. All seven are charged with interfering with a police officer, a misdemeanor charge that carries possibly a year in jail. In addition, Noche is charged with a sound ordinance violation and disorderly conduct, which carry hundreds of dollars in fines.

At the Puerto Rican People’s Parade in 2018, the Revolution Club was set up along the parade route where vendors line the streets playing music and selling flags and food. The Revolution Club banner said, “This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown,” and there were posterboard displays of the crimes of this system, including the criminal actions of the Trump/Pence regime that caused the deaths of thousands of people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Members of the Revolution Club were passing out flyers with the message of how a real revolution is the way out of this mess and can actually be made, calling on people to be part of getting organized for revolution. And they had scheduled a film showing in the park for later that evening, the 2017 speech by Bob Avakian, “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible.”

For two hours before the parade arrived, the Revolution Club talked to people and passed out flyers. They often spoke over a bullhorn, powerfully bringing together how this system is responsible for the deaths in Puerto Rico, the U.S.-backed bombing of Yemen, and the ripping away of immigrant children from their parents as well as the terror and brutality of the police right here. (What should be the obvious right of the Revolution Club to speak to people at public events, has also been explicitly affirmed by the ACLU in a letter to the Revolution Club in the wake of this case, including the right to use amplified sound.)

Then suddenly a crowd of at least 12 police officers, including several commanders, showed up. Within minutes police officers had surrounded seven Revolution Club members, jumped on them, grabbed them, thrown them to the ground and arrested them. The revolutionaries were put into a suffocating hot wagon, then dripping with sweat were put in ice-cold cells. The women were subjected to invasive body searches.

Between July 2016 and September 2019, members of the Revolution Club were arrested or ticketed on 14 different occasions and nearly arrested, interfered with, or harassed an additional 20 times in that time period. The “near arrests” were times where the police were very close to arresting members of the Revolution Club but backed off after being strongly challenged by a lawyer or witnesses. In many other instances, the police have purposely maintained a close physical presence to intimidate people to try to prevent them from coming over to talk and find out more about the revolution.

These arrests are blatant political repression of a message the CPD—and their political higher-ups—don’t want connecting with the people they want to keep in line. And while Chicago’s Democratic administrations try to silence revolutionaries who envision and fight for a world free  of all oppression, the fascist regime in the White House lashes out and gains strength in its ability to crush all dissent.

This needs to be fought back against and these charges defeated, with the demand that all the charges on the seven defendants be dropped, and that the illegal attacks on the Revolution Club stop.

This is a high-stakes fight. For one, each of the members of the Revolution Club facing trial could be jailed up to a year if convicted. We need their voices out here now more than ever. Very importantly, this trial concentrates questions of who has a right to speak. Will the police be allowed to silence people and groups who are speaking out against the system and the role of the police? Will the authorities be able to isolate and crush revolutionary leadership that is showing a way out of the nightmare this system has humanity locked in? Or will we strengthen the revolution through this fight, opening up more space in society for all those fighting for a better world?

The masses of people have a right to lift our heads to the vision of a radically better way the world could be and the basis, science, strategy, and leadership to fight for that world, that is the message of the Revolution Club.

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