revcom.us, March 15, 2021 through March 21, 2021 (#691)

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

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NEW YEAR'S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN

A New Year,
The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—
For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

 

1In my statement of August 1 of last year, I put forward the analysis that, in the particular circumstances of this presidential election and the truly profound stakes it posed, if the Trump/Pence regime remained in power at the time of this election, it would be necessary and important to vote for Biden to deliver a decisive electoral defeat to the fascism represented by this regime. At the same time, I emphasized that simply relying on voting would likely lead to disaster, and that it was vitally important for masses of people to take to the streets, in nonviolent but sustained, and growing, mass mobilization with the demand that this fascist regime must be OUT NOW!, as called for by RefuseFascism.org.

As it turned out, masses of people did vote in large numbers to oust this fascist regime—and, in doing so delivered a decisive enough electoral defeat to the Trump/Pence regime that its increasing, and then massively violent, attempt at a coup has been more difficult to pull off and has finally been defeated, with Trump forced to leave (while still refusing to acknowledge his loss in the election), even as Biden had to be inaugurated in a capital city that was a locked-down armed camp.

In immediate terms, the catastrophe has been narrowly averted that would have occurred if this fascist regime had been re-elected (or in some other way remained in power) and on that basis further consolidated its fascist rule and been more fully emboldened and unleashed to implement its horrific program. The fact that the Trump/Pence regime has had to leave office is of great importance and something in itself worth celebrating! Yet the reality is that, not only in relation to this election but throughout the four years of this regime’s rule and its mounting atrocities, there has not been the massive nonviolent mobilization called for by Refuse Fascism to drive out this regime—and, in the aftermath of the election, the streets were dominated by fascist mobilizations, and not by opposition to fascism. This has resulted in a situation where, despite the Trump/Pence regime’s loss in the election, the forces of fascism are still in many ways being strengthened, and the opposition to this has remained much too passive and reliant on the terms set by the Democratic Party.

The reality has to be confronted that, as expressed through the election, nearly half this country has passionately, aggressively and belligerently embraced what is represented by “Trumpism.” The unavoidable truth is that this country, the much-proclaimed “Shining City on a Hill,” is full of fascists!—in the government at all levels and in large parts of the society as a whole. And a defining characteristic of these fascists is their fanatical allegiance to demented distortions of reality, which is extremely difficult (and in many cases impossible) to penetrate with reason and fact, because these distortions serve to reinforce their sense of threatened entitlement and render long-standing prejudices and hatreds even more virulent. This fascism is deeply rooted, in the underlying dynamics of the capitalist-imperialist system that rules in this country and in the whole history of this country, from its founding in slavery and genocide. Related to this is another critical truth: Biden will fail miserably in his attempt to bring about “healing” and “unite the country.” As I have written previously:

Biden and the Democrats cannot “bring the country together,” as they falsely claim, because there can be no “reconciliation” with these fascists—whose “grievances” are based on fanatical resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), rabid American chauvinism, and the unrestrained plundering of the environment, and are increasingly expressed in literally lunatic terms. There can be no “reconciliation” with this, other than on the terms of these fascists, with all the terrible implications and consequences of that!

There is no question that many of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration will be different than the blatant atrocities of the Trump/Pence regime, and things will definitely “feel different” with Biden and Harris, but the way they will try to “unite the country”—in line with the interests and requirements of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is something that no decent person should want, or be part of. In seeking to re-establish and reinforce “stability” at home, and to maintain the U.S. as the world’s number one oppressive power, Biden, Harris, and the Democrats (as well as other “mainstream” institutions, such as the New York Times and CNN), will make determined attempts to keep the masses of people who have righteously hated the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime, and who aspire to a more just world, firmly tied to this system—restricting their political vision, and activity, within the confines of this system, preventing them from acting in their own fundamental interests and those of humanity as a whole. And to the degree that things are maintained within the limits of this system, this will actually have the effect of furthering the horrors for humanity that are built into this system, while also reinforcing and giving further impetus to the underlying economic—and the social and political—forces that will strengthen the fascism that has already shown great strength in this country (and a number of others).

2Even as it is critically important that the voting in this election has resulted in a decisive defeat for the Trump/Pence regime and its attempts to more fully consolidate fascist rule, this must not be allowed to obscure this crucial truth: The polarization, between Democrats and Republicans, as expressed through the electoral process in this country, involves contention over how to uphold and pursue the interests of the capitalist-imperialist system and rule by the capitalist class. It does not represent the fundamental divisions in society and the world, nor the fundamental interests of the masses of people, in this country and in the world as a whole. Nor can the profound problems confronting humanity be solved—in fact, they can only get worse—within the confines of this murderously oppressive and exploitative system and the chaos and destruction it will continue to unleash on a massive scale, so long as it continues to dominate the world.

This is fact-based, scientifically-established truth. Ignoring, denying, or trying to pursue individual escape from this reality will only make things worse and hasten disaster.

The electoral defeat of the Trump/Pence regime only “buys some time”—both in relation to the imminent danger posed by the fascism this regime represents, and more fundamentally in terms of the potentially existential crisis humanity is increasingly facing as a consequence of being bound to the dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism. But, in essential terms, time is not on the side of the struggle for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be squandered—mired in oblivious individualism and political paralysis or misspent on misdirected activity that only reinforces this system which perpetuates endless horrors for the masses of humanity and has brought things to the brink of very real catastrophe.

A profoundly different polarization must be brought about, in line with the potential for a radically different and better world, representing the actual interests of the masses of people and ultimately all of humanity. A radically different approach to understanding, and acting on, the relations and problems of society must be taken up—a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach.

3Among many who have been outraged by the way Trump has consistently engaged in both pathological and purposeful lying, there has been a great deal of emphasis on the importance of science and truth, on facts and evidence-based reasoning. This has focused to a significant degree on the criminally anti-scientific approach that Trump and Pence have taken to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the encouragement of this anti-scientific madness among the fascist “base” in society at large—all of which has led to at least tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of unnecessary deaths as well as unnecessary hardship and suffering for masses of people. This emphasis on science and the scientific method is vitally important, but it is also necessary to emphasize the real need and great importance of being consistent with this, and following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads, in order to correctly understand reality, in every sphere of life and society.

This means fully breaking with and moving beyond an approach of merely embracing truths—or supposed truths—with which one is comfortable, while rejecting, dismissing, or evading actual truth which may make one uncomfortable. One important dimension of this is rising above and repudiating methodologically the philosophical relativism of “identity politics,” which does a great deal of harm through its own version of reducing “truth” to partial, unsystematized experience and subjective sentiment (“my truth”...“our truth”...) in opposition to real, objective truth, which is correctly, scientifically arrived at through an evidence-based process, to determine whether, or not, something (an idea, theory, assertion, etc.) corresponds to actual material reality. While politically this “identity politics” may be proceeding from a desire to oppose various forms of oppression—even if this is often characterized, and vitiated, by people of different “identities” seeking to claim “ownership” of opposition to oppression—in terms of epistemology (the approach to understanding reality and arriving at the truth of things) “identity politics” has a lot in common with the reliance on “alternative facts” (assertions that are in opposition to actual facts, often wildly so) that is the hallmark of the fascists. Even as it is important to recognize the political distinctions involved, the situation is far too serious, and the stakes far too high, to allow ourselves to fall into, or conciliate with, any form of opposing the scientific method and its pursuit of objective truth about actual reality.

To understand why we are confronted with the situation we are, it is necessary not merely to respond to—and in effect be whipped around by—what is happening on the surface at any given time, but to dig beneath the surface, to discover the underlying mainsprings and causes of things, and arrive at an understanding of the fundamental problem and the actual solution. This means coming to the scientific understanding that we are living under a system, and what that system actually is (the system of capitalism-imperialism); working to grasp the deeper relations and dynamics of this system and how this is setting the framework for how different sections of society spontaneously think and react to events in society and the world, and what is the possible way forward to transforming all of this in the interests of the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole. A crucial part of this is a scientific understanding of major changes, resulting from the very dynamics and functioning of this system, that have led to upheaval in society and have in significant ways fed this fascism: changes in the capitalist-imperialist economy and correspondingly in the social structure and “social composition” within this country, as well as internationally, which have undermined “traditional” forms of oppression without, however, leading to the ending of this oppression but establishing and enforcing it in new forms, while provoking what is truly a deranged, sadistic and often violent reaction on the part of the sectors of society who have identified their interests, and in effect their very being, with the traditional forms of oppression.

As an introduction, and overarching point, in regard to some of these important changes, it is important to emphasize that these changes, and especially those that have occurred in the last few decades, are bound up with the heightened parasitism of capitalism-imperialism in the contemporary world. As I explained in Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, parasitism refers to

the fact that an increasingly globalized capitalism relies to a very great degree for production and for maintaining the rate of profit on a vast network of sweatshops, particularly in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, while capitalist activity in the capitalist‑imperialist “home countries” is increasingly in the realm of finance and financial speculation, and the “high end” of (not the production of the basic physical materials for) high tech, as well as the service sector and the commercial sphere (including the growing role of online marketing).

Since the end of World War 2 (75 years ago), the situation of Black people has dramatically changed. These changes were initially based in increased mechanization and other transformations in agricultural production, and the economy overall; they were driven by a powerful upsurge of struggle of Black people, wrenching concessions out of the ruling class in this country that was anxious to maintain its image as “the champion of democracy” and “leader of the free world,” especially in its confrontation with the Soviet Union for a number of decades after World War 2. As a result of these and other factors, Black people’s oppression is no longer centered around brutal exploitation in the rural south, in conditions of near slavery (and in some cases actual slavery) backed up by Ku Klux Klan terror, but instead involves a situation where masses of Black people are segregated and concentrated in urban areas throughout the country and subjected to systematic discrimination and continual brutality and murder by the police. Over the past several decades, due to heightened globalization and automation of production, interacting with continuing discrimination, there has been the elimination of a great deal of factory employment which provided Black men (and some women) with better-paying jobs in the urban areas. At the same time, as a result of the civil rights and Black liberation struggles of the 1960s/early ’70s, and other factors, there has been the growth of the Black middle class. But there has also been an increase of the so-called “underclass,” concentrated and contained in urban ghettos and more or less permanently locked out of regular employment in the “formal” economy.

Unable to provide a positive resolution to acute contradictions bound up with these changes—unable to end systemic racism which involves degrading discrimination against even economically better-off sections of Black people—unable to integrate large numbers of Black people into the “formal” economy—the ruling forces in society have responded to this situation with mass incarceration of millions of Black males (and growing numbers of females) with arrests, trials, convictions and sentences embodying yet more discrimination and injustice, and by unleashing and backing systematic police terror, which is especially directed against Black people in the inner cities but can target any Black person, anywhere, at any time. The attempt to brutally enforce “law and order,” given that a more just solution is impossible under this system, heightens the volatility of this whole situation, leading to further upheaval—including completely justified and righteous protest and rebellion—which, in turn, is seized on by fascist forces in promoting their grotesque white supremacist portrayal of the masses of Black people as “criminals” and “uncaged animals.”

The fact that, with all these changes, and regardless of who is occupying the seats of power, systematic discrimination and murderous oppression has persisted, has led some Black people to conclude that the Democratic Party is the problem, since it has consistently sought the support of Black people but has repeatedly acted against their interests. Even as the Republican Party has become the vehicle of overt and aggressive white supremacy, it is true that the Democrats, and not just the Republicans, have presided over the oppression of Black people. But what is the actual reason for that, and what is the real answer to it? The reality is that white supremacy is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, and neither of these ruling class parties could put an end to this, even if they wanted to. The answer is not rallying to the fascist Republican Party, or trying to play these bourgeois parties against each other, or embracing “Black capitalism” and begging for a better “seat at the table”—all of which will only reinforce the existing system of oppression and perhaps benefit a few at the expense of the many. The answer is revolution, and establishing a radically different society that has the basis as well as the orientation to uproot and abolish white supremacy, and all oppressive relations.

There have been profound changes in the situation and social position of large numbers of women, both within this country and internationally. To cite one important dimension of this, much of the sweatshop labor in the Third World involves women, forced to work under horrific conditions. In this country, changes in the functioning and structure of the economy (as part of the increasingly globalized world economy) have led to extensive employment, and exploitation, of Black women (and other women of color), in the service and retail sectors in particular. At the same time, not only is there more opportunity for large numbers of women (especially white women, but some women of color as well) to find positions in the professions and in business, but this has also become a necessity in order for their families to maintain a “middle class way of life.” This situation where greater numbers of women are employed outside the home, including a significant increase in the number of women in better-paid middle class positions, has seriously strained and significantly undermined the “traditional” patriarchal (male-dominated) family and patriarchal relations in society overall.

All this has provided more favorable conditions for, and has been significantly influenced by, the struggle against the oppression of women, which was powerfully expressed as part of the overall radical upsurge of the 1960s and has continued in various forms since then. As I spoke to in Away With All Gods!:

Through the upsurge of the ’60s, many things were called into question—not just in the realm of ideas, although that was extremely important, but in practice, in the realm of political struggle—things that are foundational to this society. And many changes were brought about, partly as a result of mass political struggle and partly because of the changing features and needs of the economy. Once again, one of the most important dimensions of this was in relation to the role of women, particularly among professionals and other sections of the middle class, where it became both possible and necessary for women to work full time, in the effort to maintain a middle class standard of living. When you combine that with political and ideological expressions of feminism, and other movements that came forward out of the ’60s, this did pose a very direct challenge to traditionally institutionalized forms of oppression in this society.

Yet the elimination of male supremacy is impossible within the confines of this system. This is true because male supremacy has been deeply woven into the fabric of this society, and because this system is based on capitalist commodity relations and exploitation—things are produced to be exchanged (sold), through a process in which masses of people work, for a wage or salary, to create profit that is accumulated by capitalists who employ them and control their work—a system in which the patriarchal family unit remains an essential economic and social component and requirement, even as it is being put under increasing strains. And the fascist section of the ruling class has, over a number of decades now, waged a relentless attack on Constitutional rights, and mobilized their social base of religious fundamentalist fanatics, to forcefully and often violently assert “traditional” patriarchal oppression—with the assault on the right to abortion, and even birth control, a major focus of this attempt to essentially enslave women. What I wrote, 35 years ago, is today more true than ever:

Over the past several decades in the U.S. there have been profound changes in the situation of women and the relations within the family. In only one of ten families is there the “model” situation where the husband is the “sole breadwinner” and the wife a totally dependent “homemaker.” With these economic changes have come significant changes in attitudes and expectations—and very significant strains not only on the fabric of the family but of social relations more broadly.... The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

What has gone along with all this has been an increased possibility and “space” for the assertion of gender “identity” and relations that run counter to the traditional oppressive gender relations—and, once again, there has been the often violent attempt to reassert and reinforce the traditional relations and to suppress anything that does not conform to this.

Religion, and especially religious fundamentalism, is a powerful factor promoting and reinforcing the patriarchal subordination of women, as well as other “traditional” forms of oppression. Here is an important insight by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who grew up in a town in Iowa that was filled with white Christian fundamentalists (which she refers to as “white evangelicals”) who are the backbone of present-day American fascism. In her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, she writes:

White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole. A father’s rule in the home is inextricably linked to heroic leadership on the national stage, and the fate of the nation hinges on both. [emphasis added here]

Given the tight connection between militant patriarchy and fascism, it is not surprising that some (though clearly a minority of) Black and Latino men have been drawn to support for Trump, despite his overt white supremacy. (This includes some who are or have been prominent in rap music. While there have been positive forces and elements in rap and Hip Hop overall, what has been increasingly promoted is a culture that is full of, not to say dominated by, misogynistic degradation of women, as well as admiration for the kind of hustler gangsterism that is one of Trump’s defining “qualities.”) It is also not surprising that even significant numbers of women (mainly white women but also some Latina and other women of color) have been drawn to this fascism, as the phenomenon of the oppressed clinging to “tradition’s chains” that oppress them is unfortunately all too common. (Think of the mothers in the fatherland, written about by Claudia Koonz in her book with that title—women who actively worked for the aggressively male supremacist Hitler and the NAZIs in Germany during the rise of fascism there in the 1930s. Or listen to the words today of Black female fascist Candace Owens, who has praised Hitler for his efforts to “make Germany great”: “There is no society that can survive without strong men.... In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Of course, for fascists like Owens “strong” and “manly” men are those who embody and enforce traditional gender relations, exercising domination over women who submit to this domination—and men who do not conform to traditional gender roles and relations, men who support equality between men and women are somehow “weak,” “effeminate,” “emasculated.”) And for white women who are part of this fascist phenomenon, in which virulent male supremacy is a defining and cohering element, there is also the fact that these women can join in with the white supremacy which, particularly in a country like the U.S., is also a defining and decisive element of this fascism and is closely intertwined with the virulent male supremacy—as reflected in Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s formulation: aggressive, militant white masculinity.

As a result of the intensifying climate crisis, war and repression—and, as a driving force in all this, major changes in the capitalist-imperialist dominated world economy, including the further growth and increased impact internationally of corporate agribusiness and labor-displacing technology, increasingly monopolized control of seeds and chemicals, greater monopolization of marketing, and vast land-grabbing investments—there is massive dislocation and upheaval, particularly affecting people in the global South (the countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia—the Third World). An important feature of all this is mass urbanization: more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, with huge shantytown slums, involving more than a billion people, in the urban areas of the Third World, even as tens of millions of people from the Third World have been forced to migrate to the U.S. and countries in Europe. And the situation has developed where, in some of these countries—with the U.S. a prime example—the economy could not function without the exploitation of large numbers of immigrants, while many are subjected to the constant threat of deportation, which also makes them even more vulnerable to extreme exploitation.

The ruin of much of traditional small-scale farming in Third World countries and the dramatic increase of an urban population there (as well as in the U.S. and some other imperialist countries) which in large numbers is unable to find work within the “formal economy”—this has also fostered the growth of an illegal economy and of gangs (and, particularly in Third World countries, cartels) based on this illegal economy, in particular the drug trade, but also the trafficking of human beings, especially women and girls viciously victimized in prostitution, the “sex industry,” and literal sexual slavery.

This dramatically changed and often highly volatile situation has also been a major factor in the rise of religious fundamentalism, in the Third World and notably in the U.S., where Christian fundamentalism is a powerful negative social and political force. Interconnected and interacting with these economic and related social changes in a way that has contributed to the increased influence of religious fundamentalism, particularly in the Third World, has been the defeat, or abandonment, of movements in the Third World led by communists or revolutionary nationalists against old-line colonialists and neo-colonial oppressors, above all the U.S., in the period after World War 2—with the greatest setback being the reversal of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in China in the 1970s, which transformed China from a powerful socialist country and a beacon and bastion of support for revolutionary struggle throughout the world, into a rising imperialist power and itself an exploiter of masses of people in Africa and other parts of the Third World.

The rise of religious fundamentalism has occurred together with, and in opposition to, the increase of secularism (people who are not religious, or at least not part of traditional religions), especially among the more educated urban populations. This secularism is not in itself conceived or intended as an attack on people who continue to hold religious beliefs, but it does objectively undermine religion—and it is taken as an attack “on everything holy” by religious fundamentalists who refuse to even attempt to reconcile religious belief with the results of scientific inquiry, as strongly reflected in their irrational attack on the solidly established scientific fact of evolution.

What is essentially involved in this division is the acceptance, or the denial and rejection, of evidence-based rational thought, including the importance of critical thinking, that has, in a broad sense, been the extension of the Enlightenment, which arose in Europe (in particular France) several centuries ago. In that time, and since, the advance of science and important discoveries this has brought forward have given impetus to the questioning of religion in a way that was not really possible before, since many of these scientific discoveries clearly contradict long-entrenched religious scripture and dogma, and the scientific method rejects the recognition of things as “real” if concrete evidence for their existence cannot be shown, in the real material world. And, as emphasized by Ardea Skybreak, author of the very important book The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters, science provides plenty of evidence that human beings have invented every religion that exists anywhere in the world. (In a book consisting of an interview with Skybreak, Science and Revolution, she also emphasizes that, although at times “bad science” has been used for very negative purposes, including to promote racism, the actual scientific method itself provides the means for refuting this: “you can use rigorous scientific methods to prove that was all bad science.”)

It is true that science itself cannot put an end to religious belief, as shown by the fact that there are large numbers of religious people who consider themselves advocates of enlightenment and accept the discoveries and conclusions of science (up to a point at least) but insist that there is a realm of existence—involving a supernatural being, or beings—which is beyond the scope of science. And it is a fact that in general the representatives of the ruling class in this country, whether they are “liberal” or “conservative”—and whether they themselves personally believe in god or not—definitely regard religion as a crucial part of maintaining the “social cohesion” of the country on a capitalist basis, and work to promote religion, in particular Christianity, in one form or another. (They are all essentially practitioners of the statement attributed to Napoleon: society is impossible without inequality; inequality is impossible to maintain without a morality to justify it; and such a morality is impossible without religion.) Nevertheless (to paraphrase an important statement by the physicist Steven Weinberg), although science itself does not eliminate religious belief, it does provide a basis for people not to believe in god and to reject religion. This is in conflict with those who believe religion is necessary for an orderly and “moral” society, and all the more so with those who insist on a religious fundamentalism that is wildly out of keeping with reality and with a rational approach to reality.

Yet, while it is true that, in order to win their full emancipation, the masses of people in the world will ultimately need to cast off religious belief in general, it is important to emphasize that, in the world today, the polarization does not simply come down to those who have rejected religion in the name of enlightenment vs. those who cling to religious belief. An important polarization now is that between what can rightly be called decent people (including large numbers of religious people) who are opposed to injustice, and on the other hand those who are determined to revive and enforce traditional forms of oppression. In regard to all this, one of the important questions is whether people come to embrace, or reject, two distinguishing qualities: largeness of mind and generosity of spirit.

4All this provides an important foundation and “backdrop” for understanding what happened in the recent election, why, and what are the implications of this, now and in terms of the future. The following, from a November 9, 2020 article by Leonard Pitts Jr (“The election of 2020 has ended at last, but the celebration has caveats”) contains some important insights. The result of this election, he writes, “strips bare all the glossy claims about who we are as a country, underscoring the fact that in a meaningful sense, we are not one country at all anymore, but two sharing the same borders.” He continues:

The last time that happened [with the Civil War], it took four years and 750,000 lives to force us back into some semblance of oneness. Even then, the seams of the fracture were always visible.

Unlike that break, this one is not starkly geographic: South versus North. No, this one is city versus country, college educated versus high school educated and, most significantly, future versus past. Meaning that yesterday, this was a nation where white people were the majority, and tomorrow it will be one where they are not.

Although Pitts is correct that the division today is more rural vs. urban than strictly South vs. North, it is the case that the old (and new) Confederacy—and in particular rural white southerners—remain the anchor for an ill-founded and ill-intended attempt to restore the past (in the name of “Making America Great Again”). As I pointed out in the 2017 talk The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!:

There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw “America First” jingoism and trumpeting of “the superiority of western civilization” and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.

At the same time, the divide, and the clash, between the past and the future goes deeper than demographic changes and the prospect of a majority non-white U.S. population. The forces fighting for the past are aiming to reverse, with a vengeance, even the modest concessions that have been made to the fight against social injustice and institutionalized inequality and oppression, and to enforce a form of capitalist dictatorship that is overt and unrestrained by the Constitution and the rule of law (or which turns the Constitution and the rule of law into merely instruments of fascist tyranny and atrocity).

As I put it in my August 1 Statement, fascism is “open and aggressive dictatorship, trampling on and perverting the rule of law, relying on violence and terror, on behalf of the predatory capitalist system and as an extreme attempt to deal with profound social division and acute crises (both within the country and in the global arena).” While this might hold things together, in an extremely negative way, for a certain period, in the final analysis this cannot succeed—cannot indefinitely preserve this system of capitalism-imperialism, and cannot lead to any future but one of horrors for humanity, if indeed we have a future at all. And the supposed “alternative,” as represented for example by the Democratic Party in the U.S., involving a “more democratic” means of exercising the rule of this system, will also continue to embody and enforce terrible and completely unnecessary suffering for the masses of humanity and pose an existential threat to humanity as a whole, even if not always through the same brute and unmitigated juggernaut of horrors as the fascist form of capitalist dictatorship.

What was expressed through this recent election—what, in fact, is expressed through all elections under this system—is not “democracy” and “the will of the people” in some abstract sense but specifically a choice that is made between different representatives of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which is the only “realistic” choice that is, or can be, offered under this system. In this particular, extraordinary situation, that choice—between fascist and bourgeois democratic capitalist rule—actually made a real difference, to the point where it was right to support one side, the Democrats, in order to deliver a defeat to the attempt to more fully consolidate fascism. But that does not change the fact that this was a vote on the terms of the very system that has produced this fascism and will continue to provide fertile soil for this fascism at the same time as it continues to generate horror after horror for humanity—horrors that are hidden only from those who do not, or will not, look. The “liberal” (or “mainstream”) version of this system’s rule involves the enforcement of the exploitation and oppression of masses of people in this country and throughout the world (including the more than 150 million children in the Third World who are cruelly super-exploited in sweatshops and mines). Enforcing all this, and defeating attempts by rivals to gain a larger share of this plunder and to replace the USA as the world’s dominant power—that is what “liberal” (and other) representatives of this system mean when they speak of the “national interests” of this country. And this is the foundation for the “progressive” approach of allowing for some more “diversity” and “inclusiveness” for previously excluded sections of this society, and the promotion of certain aspects of science, on the basis of and especially for the purposes of this international plunder, of people as well as the environment.

5To emphasize this crucial point once again: It is necessary to confront the fundamental reality that there is no future worth living for the masses of people and ultimately for humanity as a whole under this system—which has given rise to a powerful fascism; which is the source of horrendous, and unnecessary suffering, not only for masses of people in this country but for billions of people throughout the world; and which poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity, through its massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons as well as its accelerating destruction of the environment. It is true—an important truth—that the Trump/Pence regime (and others like it, for example the rule of Bolsonaro in Brazil) has made the environmental crisis far worse—has, so to speak, accelerated the acceleration of environmental destruction. But the dynamics and requirements of this system are driving the climate crisis toward the point of no return, regardless of which particular person or regime is acting as its dominant political representative. Capitalism is often extolled for being a “dynamic” system, constantly bringing about changes. But this is a “dynamism” based on exploitation for privately-accumulated profit, and driven by anarchy (and anarchic competition between capitalists), and that very anarchy is rapidly propelling things toward an existential threshold—past which humanity could well be irreversibly hurtled—if this system of capitalism, in its imperialist globalized expression, continues to dominate the world.

Given how much the fascist social base in this country has been conditioned to falsely and ridiculously identify the Democrats (even “centrist” Democrats like Biden) as “radical socialists” (or even “communists”) and to viscerally hate them on that basis—largely because of the Democrats’ limited concessions to the struggle against racial and gender oppression, to the need to address the climate crisis, and to a reckoning with the real history of this country—it is highly ironic that it is only a powerful movement aiming for actual socialism, as a radically new and emancipating society and the transition to the fundamental goal of communism on a global scale, that could create the basis for significant numbers of those, and in particular youth, who have been caught up in this fascism to break with that and become part of the struggle aiming for a positive resolution of the contradictions that this system of capitalism-imperialism continually intensifies. (As any rational person can readily determine, the relatively small number of “democratic socialists” who are part of the Democratic Party are in no way “radical socialists”—or really socialists at all—but are social-democrats who are aiming not for the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist system, but for reforms within the capitalist system which would not change, or significantly affect, its basic nature and functioning.)

The fact is that there is no bringing back (or newly bringing into being) an idealized way of life that supposedly existed in the late 19th century and the first part of the 20th century in this country, no return to an imagined idyllic America, characterized by “traditional values” which somehow fairly rewarded “virtues” such as hard work, and where people occupied the place in society they deserved (or were intended by god to occupy)—something which has really existed only in the minds of those who seek an illusory “restoration” of this, and who have been conditioned to irrationally hate everyone and everything that has supposedly destroyed it. And there is no bringing back the situation that existed for several decades after World War 2 where large numbers of people (especially, though not only, white men) without a college education could have jobs in major industries like auto and steel at a wage that made possible a “middle class standard of living.” That there is no basis for this is true not because of conspiracies by “satanic liberals who drink the blood of trafficked children” but, once again, because of the workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which have led this world to be shaped as it is, and to be heading for the environmental disaster it is rapidly bringing into being, if it does not first extinguish humanity through nuclear war unleashed by the powerful possessors of massive nuclear arsenals.

And no one should want to go back to the actual past: to a world marked by massive poverty and disease, even beyond the terrible toll this takes today, especially in the Third World; with the horrendous destruction and suffering brought about through two world wars in the 20th century, in which tens of millions of people were slaughtered, and atomic bomb attacks were unleashed by the U.S. on two Japanese cities at the end of the second world war, immediately incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese people and ushering in the “nuclear age”; with the USA marked by open, institutionalized segregation, discrimination and “second class” status for people of color and women, and a brutally suppressed existence for LGBT people, and Black people in particular subjected to continual terror, marked by repeated lynchings and other depraved acts accompanying them. The future lies not with the (real or imagined) past but in going forward, to an actual socialist society, and ultimately a communist world, where the fundamental orientation and practical policy are geared to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, while giving increasing scope to individual initiative, on the basis of and within the framework of the collective and cooperative foundation and ethos of society, where age-old economic and social relations of exploitation, inequality and oppression are surpassed, and no longer does the well-being of some rest on the misery of others.

It should be clear that the present polarization and the profound problems that must be faced cannot be solved by trying to “adjust” things within the confines of this system. The example of the “Occupy” movement of the last decade is another illustration of this. This attempt to in effect repolarize the 99 percent against the 1 percent of super-rich failed, in significant part because social relations (such as the oppressive relations between different “races” and genders), and not just economic relations, are powerful material forces, and a good part of that “99 percent” is determined to maintain those unequal and oppressive social relations from which they benefit (or strongly believe they benefit), especially in this capitalist society which sets people against each other in often ruthless competition.

It is only on the foundation of a radically different economic system—a socialist economic system (mode of production), where society’s productive resources are collectivized, marshaled and utilized, in a planned way, to meet the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, on a continually expanding basis—that there can be a favorable basis for uprooting and transforming social relations that embody oppression, and the ways of thinking that go along with and reinforce that oppression, moving beyond the situation where (as Lenin so aptly put it) people are not merely encouraged but are compelled to calculate, with the stinginess of a miser, what their position is in relation to others.

6All this strongly points, once again, to the need not simply to “face reality” but to consistently apply the principle that science matters and truth matters, and therefore to seriously engage the scientific analysis (which I have outlined here) of the problem facing humanity, and the solution: where the world is heading now, under the domination of this system, and the radically different direction it needs to, and can, take. It calls for a willingness to apply this same approach—that science and scientifically-determined truth matter—to communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, and in particular to the new communism which has resulted from decades of work I have carried out. This new communism is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. Unlike those who slander and condemn, or simply ignore, communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, I myself have done, and have led others in doing, extensive, serious scientific, study—investigation and analysis—of the history of the communist movement and the socialist societies it has brought into being (as well as countries that have called themselves “socialist” but in fact are not, such as Cuba since 1959, Venezuela in recent decades, and the Soviet Union and countries of Eastern Europe, where capitalism was restored and has reigned for more than 60 years, well before they became openly capitalist countries a few decades ago). This scientific approach has led to the conclusion that with the actual socialist societies that have been brought into being, with the leadership of communists, first in the Soviet Union and then in China (before capitalism was restored in the former in the 1950s and in the latter after the death of Mao in 1976), this experience of socialism has been mainly—and in the case of China overwhelmingly—positive, while secondarily there have also been significant, in some cases serious or even grievous, errors.

Drawing from this historical experience of the communist movement and a broad range of human endeavor, the new communism, as its defining method and approach, emphasizes the critical importance of science and applying the scientific method to everything—to society as well as nature. It firmly rejects any approaches that amount to applying and justifying the bankrupt and extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means,” and that “truth” is just an “instrument” of desired objectives, rather than what it actually is: a correct reflection of objective reality.

It is this same method and approach that has been applied to continually deepen the understanding of the nature and functioning of the system of capitalism-imperialism that continues at this point to dominate the world, with terrible consequences and implications for humanity and its future. And this work is continuing as an important part of developing the revolutionary movement that is needed in order to finally abolish this system and bring a radically different and much better world into being. While much remains to be done and many challenges remain to be met, a scientific analysis and synthesis of fundamental questions relating to the situation facing humanity and the possibility of human emancipation can be found—in both more concentrated and popular forms and in works of considerable depth—in talks and writings of mine and other materials that are available at revcom.us. And a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and emancipating society, on the road to the final goal of a communist world, is set forth in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored.

It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will “enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.” All this will unchain and unleash a tremendous productive and social force of human beings enabled and inspired to work and struggle together to meet the fundamental needs of the people—transforming society in a fundamental way and supporting and aiding revolutionary struggle throughout the world—aiming for the final goal of a communist world, free from all exploitation and oppression, while at the same time addressing the truly existential environmental and ecological crisis, in a meaningful and comprehensive way, which is impossible under the system of capitalism-imperialism.

Far too many have rejected this—or, more often, failed or refused to even seriously engage it—because of ignorance and prejudice which have their ultimate source in the distortion relentlessly propagated by guardians of the present order, and which serve to reinforce this highly oppressive order. Here, it has to be said (and can be readily demonstrated) that the “liberal” bourgeois attack on communism is, in its own way, as ludicrous and outrageous—crudely in violation of the scientific method and blatantly in opposition to the actual facts—as the fascist mangling of truth which the “liberals” are forever decrying. This does great harm to humanity: Refusing to apply, and acting in opposition to, an honest, scientific approach to communism, the actual history of the communist movement, and the development of the new communism contributes to closing off the only real alternative to this truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism—the only viable alternative that represents the fundamental interests and a future worth living for the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole.

The road to a better world is not, and will not be, an easy one—this cannot be accomplished without determined struggle and, yes, great sacrifice. But continuing on the current course, under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism, means a continuation of the horrors already being perpetrated in the world today, the far worse horrors that are immediately threatening, and the very real existential danger that is increasingly looming.

In the face of the fascist juggernaut that is still threatening and gaining strength, large numbers of us who are deeply sickened and outraged by this, and who aspire to something much better, have raised and rallied to the call that science and truth matter and must be our guide. Let us now be brave enough, and bold enough, to apply this in an unhindered way, determined to seek the truth and follow the truth wherever it leads, overcoming all obstacles to this, including any cherished illusions and ingrained prejudices that run counter to reality and scientifically-established truth. Let us dare to act to make a reality of what science reveals as possible: a radically different and far better world and future for humanity.

 

Download PDF of this statement (English):    Booklet    |    8.5x11 sheets


In Spanish:

Download PDF in Farsi:

(This translation reposted from the website cpimlm.org)

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/686/zoom-seminar-syllabus-en.html

Syllabus for Zoom Into the Revolution Seminars on the
New Year's Statement by Bob Avakian

| revcom.us

 

The electoral defeat of the Trump/Pence regime only “buys some time”—both in relation to the imminent danger posed by the fascism this regime represents, and more fundamentally in terms of the potentially existential crisis humanity is increasingly facing as a consequence of being bound to the dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism. But, in essential terms, time is not on the side of the struggle for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be squandered—mired in oblivious individualism and political paralysis or misspent on misdirected activity that only reinforces this system which perpetuates endless horrors for the masses of humanity and has brought things to the brink of very real catastrophe.
– from The New Year’s Statement By Bob Avakian, A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

The events of 2020 and early 2021 were a cataclysmic shock.  Why did this—the wildfire spread of COVID, the uprisings against police murder and white supremacy, the fascist reaction and then the coup attempt by Trump—happen? Where is this headed?  Where do the interests of humanity lie? 

Most importantly: is a different and better future possible?  And if it is, what IS that future... and how do we get to it?

The “Zoom Into the Revolution” seminars will focus on the New Year’s Statement by Bob Avakian: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For the Emancipation of All Humanity to dig into and answer those questions.  This statement is not just a scientific analysis—though it is that, and a unique and very profound one—it is most of all a call to fight for and bring forward a radically new world, one in which all of humanity would be emancipated.

 

There will be four sessions:

1. Applying the scientific method to society: what is this method and why is it crucial?

We’ll focus on this from the statement:

“[Following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads] means fully breaking with and moving beyond an approach of merely embracing truths—or supposed truths—with which one is comfortable, while rejecting, dismissing, or evading actual truth which may make one uncomfortable. One important dimension of this is rising above and repudiating methodologically the philosophical relativism of ‘identity politics,’ which does a great deal of harm through its own version of reducing ‘truth’ to partial, unsystematized experience and subjective sentiment (‘my truth’...‘our truth’...) in opposition to real, objective truth, which is correctly, scientifically arrived at through an evidence-based process, to determine whether, or not, something (an idea, theory, assertion, etc.) corresponds to actual material reality.”

And we’re going to dig deeply into this paragraph:

“To understand why we are confronted with the situation we are, it is necessary not merely to respond to—and in effect be whipped around by—what is happening on the surface at any given time, but to dig beneath the surface, to discover the underlying mainsprings and causes of things, and arrive at an understanding of the fundamental problem and the actual solution.”

Supplementary viewing:

Why We Need A Scientific Method and Approach to Life and Our Struggle

Session plan for the first “Zoom into the Revolution” seminar:

Further Questions for Session 1 of "Zoom into the Revolution" Seminars

 

2. Applying the scientific method to society, part 2: Why are we in the situation we’re in today?

What has changed—and what hasn’t changed, at least fundamentally—in the conditions of the African-American people, women, the economy, and the grip of religious fundamentalism (internationally, and within the US)?  What accounts for these changes—and what are the dynamics and direction of these, if we confine our actions within the political bounds of this system?  Do you think that BA’s analysis is true—that is, do you think that it accurately reflects objective reality and correctly captures the motion and underlying dynamics of how society has changed, and why?  What do you think about the quote from Leonard Pitts that BA cites at the beginning of section 4—do you think it’s true?  And what do you think about how BA responds to it?

Supplementary viewing:

What is capitalism? Parts 1, 2 and 3 (from Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What’s It All About)

 

3. Why can only revolution, and nothing less than revolution, deal with the problem(s) we face?

How do you understand, and do you agree with, the following—that is, do you think it’s true?  If so why, and if not why not?  And what are the implications of this:

“It is necessary to confront the fundamental reality that there is no future worth living for the masses of people and ultimately for humanity as a whole under this system—which has given rise to a powerful fascism; which is the source of horrendous, and unnecessary suffering, not only for masses of people in this country but for billions of people throughout the world; and which poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity, through its massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons as well as its accelerating destruction of the environment. It is true—an important truth— that the Trump/Pence regime (and others like it, for example the rule of Bolsonaro in Brazil) has made the environmental crisis far worse—has, so to speak, accelerated the acceleration of environmental destruction. But the dynamics and requirements of this system are driving the climate crisis toward the point of no return, regardless of which particular person or regime is acting as its dominant political representative. Capitalism is often extolled for being a ‘dynamic’ system, constantly bringing about changes. But this is a ‘dynamism’ based on exploitation for privately-accumulated profit, and driven by anarchy (and anarchic competition between capitalists), and that very anarchy is rapidly propelling things toward an existential threshold—past which humanity could well be irreversibly hurtled—if this system of capitalism, in its imperialist globalized expression, continues to dominate the world.”

How would you apply science to answering this question? How does BA?

Supplementary viewing:

The Five Stops: Why This System Can't Be Reformed

4. The future we need... the leadership we have—a better world IS possible—the new communism and Bob Avakian.

BA calls on people to

“apply this same approach—that science and scientifically-determined truth matter—to communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, and in particular to the new communism which has resulted from decades of work I have carried out. This new communism is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed... This scientific approach has led to the conclusion that with the actual socialist societies that have been brought into being, with the leadership of communists, first in the Soviet Union and then in China (before capitalism was restored in the former in the 1950s and in the latter after the death of Mao in 1976), this experience of socialism has been mainly—and in the case of China overwhelmingly—positive, while secondarily there have also been significant, in some cases serious or even grievous, errors.” 

We’ll dig into that experience.

Then, as the main thing, we’ll get into and break down the boldfaced paragraph that discusses the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian.

“It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will ‘enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.’ All this will unchain and unleash a tremendous productive and social force of human beings enabled and inspired to work and struggle together to meet the fundamental needs of the people—transforming society in a fundamental way and supporting and aiding revolutionary struggle throughout the world—aiming for the final goal of a communist world, free from all exploitation and oppression, while at the same time addressing the truly existential environmental and ecological crisis, in a meaningful and comprehensive way, which is impossible under the system of capitalism-imperialism.”

Supplementary viewing: 

BA Speaks: REVOLUTION – Nothing Less, from Part 2, 18:08 to 32:14

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/633/bob-avakian-a-radically-different-leader-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT LEADER—A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

| revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian is completely different than the endless stream of bourgeois politicians who are put forward as “leaders,” whose goal is to maintain one variation or another of this system of capitalism-imperialism that is founded on and perpetuates itself through cruel and literally life-stealing exploitation, murderous oppression, and massive destruction, in all parts of the world. BA is a revolutionary who bases himself on the scientific understanding that this system must finally be overthrown through an organized struggle involving millions of people, and replaced with a system that is oriented to and capable of meeting the most fundamental needs of humanity and enabling humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth.

Bob Avakian is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new synthesis of communism, which is popularly referred to as the "new communism."

BA is the author of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, an inspiring application of the new communism—a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a new socialist society, whose fundamental goal is to bring about a world without classes and class distinctions, a world without exploitation and oppression, and without the destructive divisions and antagonisms among people: a communist world.

Ardea Skybreak, a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and a follower of Bob Avakian, speaks to the importance of what he has brought forward:

Bob Avakian ... on the basis of decades of hard work [has been] developing a whole body of work—theory to advance the science of communism, to advance the science of revolution, to more deeply explain where the problems come from, what the strategy is for getting out of this mess, what the methods and approaches should be to stay on track and actually build a better world, to build a society that most human beings would want to live in. (From Science and Revolution, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak)

BA is a leader who is firmly convinced, on the basis of a consistently scientific method and approach, that the goal must be nothing less than all-out revolution, and who at the same time has emphasized:

the new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that “the ends justifies the means.” It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the “means” of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental “ends” of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis. (From Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary)

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.

A leader like this has never before existed in the history of this country, and this leadership is of tremendous importance for the emancipation of all humanity.

What is urgently needed now is for continually growing numbers of people—in the thousands, and ultimately millions—to become conscious and active followers of BA, building the revolutionary movement, based on the new communism, for which BA provides this unprecedented leadership.

Download poster and leaflet:

11x17 poster

8.5x11 two-sided leaflet

CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America

Click to read and download (PDF)

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/665/bob-avakian-for-the-liberation-of-black-people-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE
AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY

| revcom.us

 

One of the things that comes through most powerfully in Bob Avakian’s memoir1 is that a profound hatred for the oppression of Black people has been a defining part of Bob Avakian’s life from the time, as a teenager, he learned about the lives of the Black people with whom he developed deep ties of friendship. Never feeling that, because he is white, “it is not his place” to be involved in the struggle against this oppression—but, on the contrary, determined to contribute whatever he could to this struggle—Bob Avakian (BA), from the time he worked closely with the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary days in the 1960s, has made the liberation of Black people a defining part of his life’s commitment and work. As he developed as a revolutionary communist, and emerged as the foremost revolutionary leader and thinker in the world, this commitment has become even deeper and has been strongly interwoven with a dedication to the emancipation of all humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation.

As BA has written about his life’s work:

Why was I doing the work I was doing? Once again, we’re back to for whom and for what. I wasn’t doing this work for myself. When I was young, in middle school and then even more so in high school, my life got changed in a very major way by coming into contact with people that I hadn’t really known that much before, in particular Black people. I started learning about their situation and how that relates to what goes on in this society as a whole. I was drawn to the culture—not just the music and the art overall, but the whole way of going through the world—of the Black people who became my friends, and the world they introduced me to. And I came to the point of recognizing: these are my people. Now, I knew they had a different life experience than I did. But these are my people—I don’t see a separation—it’s not like there are some other people “over there” who are going through all this and somehow that’s removed from me. These are my people. And then I began to recognize more deeply what people were being put through, the oppression they were constantly subjected to, the horrors of daily life as well as the bigger ways in which the system came down on them. And as I went further through life and began to approach the question of what needs to be done about this, and was introduced to taking up a scientific approach to this, I realized that my people were more than this. I realized that my people were Chicanos and other Latinos and other oppressed people in the U.S.; they were people in Vietnam and China; they were women...they were the oppressed and exploited of the world...and through some struggle, and having to cast off some wrong thinking, I have learned that they are LGBT people as well.

These are my people, the oppressed and exploited people of the world. They are suffering terribly, and something has to be done about this. So it is necessary to dig in and systematically take up the science that can show the way to put an end to all this, and bring something much better into being. You have to persevere and keep struggling to go forward in this way. And when you run into new problems or setbacks, you have to go more deeply into this, rather than putting it aside and giving up.

So this is why I’ve been doing the work that I’ve been doing.2

Bob Avakian grew up in Berkeley, California. Unable, because of a life-threatening illness, to be directly involved in struggles taking place against racial oppression for several years after graduating from high school in 1961, BA nevertheless closely followed and strongly supported the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and at the same time was influenced by and supportive of the militant stand and role of Malcolm X. This was reflected in an article that BA wrote at the age of 19 in 1962 supporting the struggle of Black people. (This article was submitted to the liberal magazine Saturday Review. Although the article was not published, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Norman Cousins, personally replied—indicating that, although the magazine had chosen not to publish this article, he recognized that the article spoke, in a strikingly compelling way, to very important questions.)

Having recovered from his illness, in 1964, BA became actively involved in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in Berkeley, where he was a student. The central issue of this movement was the right of students to carry out activity on the campus in support of the civil rights movement. BA was among the 800 who were arrested during the occupation of the university administration building, which was the high point of the movement and led to winning its demands.

As the civil rights movement increasingly gave way to a more militant Black liberation movement in the second half of the 1960s, BA was strongly influenced by this. He left the university and dedicated his life to working for radical change. As a result of direct contact and discussions with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, and getting to know Eldridge Cleaver (who also became a leader of the BPP), BA worked closely with the Black Panther Party from its earliest days and at the height of its revolutionary role and influence.

In 1967, BA attended rallies, and spoke at one of the rallies, held by the BPP in North Richmond to protest the killing there of Denzil Dowell, part of the long and continuing chain of murders of Black people by police.

In 1968, when Huey Newton was facing murder charges as a result of a shoot-out with Oakland cops, BA spoke—along with a number of key figures in the Black liberation movement, including Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, James Forman, and leaders of the Black Panther Party— at a Free Huey rally held in the Oakland auditorium on the occasion of Huey Newton’s birthday.

BA worked tirelessly to build support, including among white people, for the demand to “Free Huey!” At a “Free Huey” rally at the courthouse in Oakland where Huey Newton’s trial was being held, BA was arrested for “desecrating” (burning) the American flag.

During this time, at the invitation of BPP leaders, BA wrote a number of articles for the Black Panther newspaper.

At a rally of thousands, led by the Black Panther Party, on May First, 1969, BA spoke of the need for revolution and called on white people in particular to more actively take part in movements for revolutionary change in the U.S., and to support such movements throughout the world.

By the beginning of the 1970s, millions of people in this country were in favor of some kind of revolutionary change, but they faced profound challenges. How could this revolution be made—or was it even possible to make a revolution here, up against such powerful forces of oppression and repression? Which were the key forces that had to be mobilized to have a real chance to carry out such a revolution? What kind of leadership was needed, and what methods and approaches should that leadership be based on? The difficulties in confronting and seeking the answers to these hard questions, combined with brutal and often murderous repression by the powers-that-be, led many revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panther Party, to split and end up departing from the road that could lead to real revolution.

By this time, partly because of the influence of the Black Panther Party, which had popularized the “Red Book” of quotations from the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, BA had become convinced not only that revolution was necessary, and was possible, but that it had to be led by a vanguard force that based itself on the scientific method and approach of communism, as it had been developed initially by Karl Marx, then further developed by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution in the early part of the 20th century, and then in turn further developed by Mao, who led the Chinese revolution and the new, socialist society in China, until his death in 1976. BA led in the formation of the Revolutionary Union at the end of the 1960s, with the aim of working toward the establishment of the vanguard party of revolution, based on the science of communism. During the first part of the 1970s, BA was both the practical leader and the leading theoretician of the Revolutionary Union, writing much of the essays and polemics for its theoretical journal Red Papers. This included major articles, particularly in Red Papers 5 and 6, that involved groundbreaking scientific materialist analysis of the situation of Black people, historically and down to the present—how and why their particular conditions of oppression had changed, from the time of slavery to the present era, and how this objectively put Black people in a potentially powerful position to be a driving force not only for their own liberation but for the communist revolution whose fundamental aim is the abolition of all oppression and exploitation. These articles included powerful polemics, arguing against positions and programs that would not lead to, but would actually work against, this liberation and the revolutionary transformation of the world as a whole.

In 1975, with BA’s leadership, the Revolutionary Communist Party was founded, with the aim of being the vanguard force for the revolution that was, and continues to be, profoundly necessary. Over the decades since then, BA has fought to keep that Party on the revolutionary road and to bring forward new revolutionary forces to revitalize and strengthen the vanguard forces for the revolution that is now, all the more urgently, required. While continuing to provide practical guidance to the revolutionary forces, BA, through summing up the experience (positive and negative) of the communist movement, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, has brought forward a new synthesis of communism (also referred to as the new communism) which, most decisively, has established communism on an even more consistently scientific basis. As BA’s Official Biography explains, the new communism “is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. It provides the basis—the science, the strategy, and the leadership—for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.”3

A defining part of this new communism is the emphasis it gives to the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and the relation of this to the ending of all oppression. And this has continued to stand out in BA’s leadership role and work over the decades, up to the present.  At revcom.us there is a special section, Bob Avakian on The Oppression of Black People & the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppressionwhich contains clips from films and selections from the writings of BA on this question. The following are just a few examples of important works and leadership by Bob Avakian, over the past few decades, that speak to this decisive question.

The book Reflections, Sketches & Provocations, written by Bob Avakian during the 1980s, contains a number of commentaries, speaking in a number of dimensions to the oppression of Black people and the struggle against this oppression, including support for rebellions following the murder of Black people by police. This book begins with the essay “Hill Street Bullshit, Richard Pryor Routines, and the Real Deal,” which powerfully exposes how terror against Black people, and other oppressed people, is “part of the job” of the police—and is “a reward” for carrying out the role of maintaining the “law and order” that keeps the oppressed in their desperate and miserable conditions. Going deeper, it speaks to how this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism, which has had this oppression built into it from the very beginning.

In the 1990s, BA raised the idea that there should be a day, every year, when people mobilized to protest police brutality, mass incarceration and repression by the government. This proposal was taken up and a broad coalition, including family members of people killed by police, was formed to initiate, in 1996, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. At its height, over the next decade, this National Day of Protest, held every October 22nd, rallied thousands of people in dozens of cities across the country. And activities by people who have been part of this coalition have continued since then.

During the past two decades, BA has given a number of filmed speeches, and written articles, essays and books, in which the liberation of Black people and its crucial relation to the communist revolution, aiming for the emancipation of all humanity, has been a major question.

BA’s 2003 speech Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, begins with a searing exposure and condemnation of lynching, and speaks to the horrific reality of slavery and the oppression of Black people down to today, including the continual murder of Black people by police.3

In 2006, BA gave a series of 7 Talks, in which once again the oppression of Black people, and the struggle for their liberation, is a major theme. One of these 7 Talks, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, begins by speaking to the experience of Black people in this country; and the question of slavery and the overall oppression of Black people is, of course, a major part of this talk. It is in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy that the following is clearly stated:

There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.

(This is also the very first statement in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution.)3

At the beginning of BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!, in 2012, this point is stated emphatically:

Let’s start with just one great crime of this system: police murder—after murder—after murder—of Black people and Latinos, especially youth.3

This is part of the powerful exposure in this speech of the role that continuing murders by police play in enforcing this monstrous system of exploitation and oppression, the system of capitalism-imperialism.

At the beginning of his October 2017 speech The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,  BA speaks powerfully to the horrors of slavery in this country—including the rape by slavemasters of huge numbers of enslaved women. This speech shows how the murderous oppression of Black people, continuing down to today, is one of the main roots of the fascism that has come to power in this country with the Trump/Pence regime; and, in this speech, BA repeatedly returns to the critical importance of the fight against this oppression.3

BA’s 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution begins this way:

In 2012 in Revolution—Nothing Less! I talked about the outrageous murder of Ramarley Graham earlier that same year—shot down in his own house in the Bronx by the New York City police. He was only 18 years old. Do I have to tell you what “race” he was?! His mother kept saying: “This has to STOP!” And his father repeated over and over: "WHY did they kill my son?! WHY did they kill my son?!" New York cops then loudly rallied around their fellow pig who murdered Ramarley in cold blood, viciously taunting Ramarley's family and loved ones, demonstrating yet one more time the ugly truth that, in the way this country has been built, and for the powers-that-be in this country, the humanity of Black people has never counted for anything—they have never been valued as human beings, but only as things to be exploited, oppressed, and repressed. Six years later, and with cold-blooded murders by police continuing in an unbroken chain, I will say again what I said then: How many more times does this have to happen? How many more times do the tears and the cries of anguish and anger have to pour forth from the wounded hearts of people?! How many more times, when another of these outrageous murders is perpetrated by the police, do we have to hear those words that pour gasoline on the already burning wounds: “justifiable homicide, justified use of force” by police?! How many more?!3

In that 2018 speech, BA not only powerfully exposes once again the horrific oppression that this system of capitalism-imperialism inflicts on Black people, and on other oppressed people in this country and throughout the world, and the grave danger this system poses to the very future of humanity; he also lays out in this speech (and in a more recent article A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win, Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution3) the strategic approach that could make it possible for this system to be finally overthrown through a revolution in which millions and millions of people are led to fight to put an end to this system and bring a radically different and much better system into being.

In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA, a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is set forth. And the principles and means for finally putting an end, at long last, to the oppression of Black people is a major part of that Constitution.3

This year (2020), BA has written as many as 30 articles in which this decisive question—the oppression, and the struggle for the liberation, of Black people—is a recurring subject.3

In the speeches and writings of BA overall, there is not only powerful, penetrating exposure and uncompromising condemnation of brutal and murderous oppression but, even more importantly, there is scientific analysis of how all this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism and of the need, the possibility, and the means for making revolution to overthrow this system and finally put an end to all the outrageous and unnecessary suffering that the masses of humanity are continually subjected to under this system.

***

It is a very precious thing for the oppressed of the earth when they have a leader whose life is dedicated to their emancipation, and who has the determination, and the scientific method, developed over decades, to point the way, and continue to carve out the path, to achieving that emancipation. BA is such a leader. As emphasized in the article Bob Avakian: A Radically Different Leader—A Whole New Framework For Human Emancipation:

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.3

One of the things that most distinguishes BA’s role as a revolutionary leader is his willingness—indeed, his insistence—on telling people the truth, even when they may not want to hear it. This comes through in the way BA exposes and refutes unscientific ways of thinking—all kinds of “conspiracy” theories and superstitious ideas—that lead people, including the most bitterly oppressed people, away from understanding the world as it actually is, and keep them from seeing not just the need, but the possibility, of radically changing the world, in a way that will lead to ending oppression. A big problem that BA has taken on, straight-up, is the role of religion as a mental chain on the masses of Black people, and other oppressed people, and the need to break this chain in order to most powerfully wage the struggle to finally be free of all oppression. BA has repeatedly emphasized that, in order to end oppression, “you have to want revolution badly enough to be scientific about it.”

Science means judging whether something is true, or not, by whether there is evidence that it actually corresponds to reality—and not believing something because it makes you feel good to believe it, or not refusing to believe something because it makes you uncomfortable. In the article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World, BA has spoken directly to this problem:

many of the basic masses, who are bitterly oppressed under this system, also are suspicious of and even are inclined to reject science and scientifically-grounded analysis. But this also leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of unfounded “conspiracy theories” and other wrong and harmful ideas, including the notion that nothing people do will make a difference because “it’s all in god’s hands.”3

In the 2014 Dialogue with Cornel West (REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion), which took place during the upsurge of protest and rebellion in response to the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, while speaking to the importance of uniting people broadly in the struggle against oppression, including people who hold religious views, BA also emphasized that the revolution that is needed to finally put an end to oppression must be led with a scientific, not a religious, outlook and method.3

From the start of the article Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression, written this year (2020), BA does not hold back in speaking to these critical questions:

In 1863, mid-way in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, as a result of the Civil War, Black people were formally freed from literal, physical slavery. But today the question is: When, and how, will Black people finally be free from all forms of slavery and oppression? And this poses straight-up this big question:

When will Black people finally emancipate themselves from the mental slavery of religion?!....

Once more, the question is sharply posed: How can Black people be finally and fully emancipated from centuries of oppression, and how does this relate to ending all oppression, of all people, everywhere?

The answer is that the possibility of this is real, but it can happen only on the basis of a scientific approach to changing the world and the scientifically-grounded understanding that this oppression is rooted in and caused by the system of capitalism-imperialism—the same system that is viciously exploiting and murderously oppressing people not just in this country but all over the world and is plundering the natural environmentand that this system must and can be overthrown through an actual revolution and replaced by a radically different and far better system: socialism, whose final goal is a communist world, without any oppression or exploitation of anyone, anywhere.3

****

From his early years, forging close personal ties with Black people and increasingly learning about their lived experience, to his development as this rare leader who has brought forth the most advanced scientific revolutionary theory with the new communism—a defining part of the life and work of Bob Avakian has been the liberation of Black people from centuries of oppression, and the understanding of how this relates to, and is a crucial driving force in, the communist revolution to finally abolish every form of oppression and exploitation, everywhere.

BA himself has expressed this in the following poetically powerful statement:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

 


1. From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary CommunistA Memoir by Bob AvakianInsight Press, 2005. [back]

2. Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, first printing, 2016, pp. 321-22. In addition to THE NEW COMMUNISM, in other recent works by BA—in particular Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summaryand Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and its relation to the emancipation of humanity as a whole, is a prominent subject. These works are available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. All of these works are available at revcom.us. (Information about how to acquire the print and e-book editions of BAsics can be found at revcom.us. Audio of the 7 Talks is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us; and Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy has been published in a print edition, the text of which can also be found in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)

The film of the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, is also available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.

The article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World (longer and shorter versions) is available at revcom.us as well.

The importance of Bob Avakian as a revolutionary leader, who has further developed communism as a consistently scientific method and approach, is a central theme in SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak. Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, who is also the author of the important book THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION AND THE MYTH OF CREATIONISM, Knowing What’s Real And Why It Matters. Each of these books by Ardea Skybreak is published by Insight Press, and the Interview with Ardea Skybreak (SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION) is also available at revcom.us

The following articles, written by Bob Avakian this year (2020), which speak to the oppression of Black people and the struggle to end this oppression, are available as well at revcom.us:

Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist (Parts 1-10) 

Racial Oppression Can Be Ended—But Not Under This System

Police And Prisons: Reformist Illusions And The Revolutionary Solution

Anything But The Truth—Bob Avakian Exposes Lies, Distortions, Distractions and Evasions About the Murderous Oppression of Black People

Lynching, Murder By Police—Damn This Whole System! We Don’t Have To Live This Way!

Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression

Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James And The Whole Truth

Donald Trump Isn’t “Tough,” He’s A Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces

Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces Trump Isn’t “Tough”—Part 2: Who Really Has Heart?

Trump And Pigs: A Racist Love Affair

Fucker Carlson, Fascist “Fox News” And The Broadcast Of White Supremacy

Bob Avakian on Black Trump Supporters: What If Jews Had Supported Hitler?!

Bob Avakian On: A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles

On Statues, Monuments, And Celebrating—Or Ending—Oppression

Fascists Today And The Confederacy: A Direct Line, A Direct Connection Between All The Oppression

Patriarchy And Male Supremacy, Or Revolution And Ending All Oppression

Sounding Like Southern Segregationists: It’s Not Just Trump—It’s Democrats Too

Bob Avakian Brings Out the Truth: Barack Obama Says Police Murdering Black People Should Not Be Normal—Unless He’s President

Bob Avakian On Ugly Words & Phrases

Bob Avakian On Tulsa Racist Mobs

A Real Revolution--A Real Chance To Win: Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution

[back]

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/683/the-more-i-engaged-ba-i-could-not-wait-to-get-out-of-prison-en.html

"The More I Engaged BA, The More I Could Not Wait to Get Out of Prison"

by Joe Veale, revcom, former member of Black Panther Party

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received the following from Joe Veale.

I’ll start like this. I “knew” BA even before I met him. We grew up in the same city, in Berkeley, California. The Black Panther Party had started in Oakland which was right next to Berkeley. I knew a lot of the rank and file Panthers, once they got going. They were telling me what they were doing—they had developed this organization and they were trying to make revolution to overthrow the system and to put an end to the oppression of Black people. They were straight up about the fact that racism went with the capitalist system, working to overthrow the system and not working within the system. And they made it clear to me that they was trying to build the revolution not only among Black people, they was trying to build support for it among whites, you know, support for this among whites as well as other different races and nationalities. And in that context, BA’s name always came up. It was “Bob Avakian.”

I hadn’t met him yet, I wasn’t a Panther yet, but I knew about him. That’s what they were saying—this is the main person who supported them when they first began. Then when I started to go to Panther rallies, that’s what I would see on the stage with these Black revolutionaries, Black militants—BA would be right up there speaking with them about Black liberation and revolution, and supporting the Panthers.

Joining the Panthers

Then when I joined the Panthers—it was in Richmond, California, that’s the branch I went in. BA and the Revolutionary Union, which he led, were also there as well. I didn’t know this at the time, but they were in Richmond doing their political work. They were answering the call from the Panthers and others to take revolutionary politics out to poor whites. He talks about it in his Memoir (excerpts from the Memoir available here).

Richmond was a proletarian city of different races and nationalities. So out in Richmond, I would see him come by the office to talk with the Panther leadership. At times I’d have assignments at the National Office in Berkeley and I’d see him come through there talking to some of the national leaders and everything.

I remember on one occasion it was at this community college, Contra Costa College. BA talks about doing work there and the Panthers did work there also. This is when I first ran into BA face to face. And one of the things that really struck me, because up to this point, I had never met anyone who was white that was so passionate about Free Huey! Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were the two founders of the Black Panther Party. Huey was facing a murder charge for a shootout with Oakland police and they were trying to put him in the gas chamber. BA had Free Huey buttons all over his clothing—it was really striking to me. He also had Mao Tsetung buttons all over him.

You know, the Panthers were into popularizing Mao’s Red Book, but BA was just as passionate, if not more so, about Mao and revolution. I hadn’t met anybody—anybody white, to be frank—who was so passionate about Black liberation and communist revolution.

Then I found out that me and BA, we had some of the same friends. He talks about one of these friends—Billy Carr, who was also a friend of mine. Billy was a very good athlete, and a really nice person—he was a little older than me. Billy ended up being in “the life”—I had gotten into it too and I kinda idolized Billy.

But he was a friend of BA’s that he knew really well. BA was struggling with Billy trying to get him to do something else with his life. He wasn’t blaming Billy for being in the situation that he was in, he was blaming the system and trying to get Billy to see that. He really understood and he had a lot of real affection for people like Billy generally. When I realized that and I learned that BA had genuine friends like that, that they had potential to do something great with their life, this had a big impression on me—I just have to be straight up about it.

Studying Revolution in Prison, Going Up Against Identity Politics

In the early ’70s when I was sent to federal prison, these revolutionary prisoners (seven prisoners known as Leavenworth Brothers) struggled with me to read BA’s writings. Because I was really angry like [another person in this discussion] was talking about. I was cocky and angry, and nobody could tell me shit. I had a certain attitude towards other prisoners: “y’all trying to win a longevity contest but you need to be out here trying to make revolution.” Anyway, some people were struggling with me: “if you’re really serious you got to read BA.” The first thing they had me read was Red Papers issues #5 and #6, both issues were about the Black National Question or Black liberation. I knew BA had wrote these.

I had already read, studied, and listened to Malcolm X, all of his speeches/recordings over and over. I had read Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. I had read all this stuff from the Panthers and the Panthers’ leaders about this contradiction—the oppression of Black people—and what’s the solution to it. But when I read Red Papers 5 and 6, I recognized that I had never seen this kind of approach, this kind of systematic and scientific approach that BA took to understanding and analyzing it: from the time of slavery, to sharecropping and Jim Crow, to moving into the urban cities, into the proletariat still facing discrimination, segregation, and police terror—the implications of all that for revolution. Black people was now potentially in a more powerful position to contribute to communist revolution to emancipate humanity. I had never read anything like that.

But at that time some people were saying (at least some people that I knew—it was one of the things that was in the movement at that time): “don’t read anything from somebody white that’s trying to tell you about the struggle of Black people or any other oppressed people because its social chauvinism.” It means they are trying to take over “your” struggle. They are trying to “own” it. No! If it is true and scientific it is getting to the root of the problem so that this oppression can be uprooted and overthrown.

You hear a lot of this today in identity politics lingo—it’s white privilege, white racism, therefore white people are automatically disqualified and they have no business in here trying to tell you about what is real or not real. That is bullshit! It’s a way of avoiding the central point which is whether what anybody says is true or not, does it correspond to reality or not? You can determine that by taking the evidence-based scientific approach.

It’s bullshit on another level. I knew BA, and I knew where his heart was.

And then when I got to reading his writings—I got to know his method of thinking, his thinking process, how he went about engaging reality. When I received that pamphlet while I was in prison, Revolutionary Work in a Non-Revolutionary Situation, I thought it was a masterful grasp of the dialectical materialist method—understanding how a thing of one quality can be transformed into a whole different kind of quality. How a non-revolutionary situation can be transformed into a revolutionary situation.

I was in prison and we had our Marxist study group. We were comparing all these people that were saying they were communists and communist leaders. You had different ones—October League, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Black Workers Congress—all these different organizations. You had ’em all, they were all around. We were looking at all of them, what they were saying in relationship to what BA and the RU were saying, as well as comparing it to how Mao, Lenin, and Marx took up the scientific method, how they engaged reality, and who here came the closest to that. Even at that time BA stood out.

The method that he was applying, even though he has developed it and made different ruptures since that time—but you could see, if you was looking for it, that there was some real systematic and a scientific way of getting to the roots of things. He did not put forward or say something just ’cause it was something to make people feel good, he just told people the truth whether they liked it or not. It was something I really appreciated. He applied this to everything including the oppression of Black people and how it had changed over the years.

Getting Out of Prison and into the Movement

The more I engaged BA, I could not wait to get out of prison. Before that, I didn’t give a fuck whether I got out or not. Before that I was saying: if I only live five more minutes it’s going to be on my terms, whether I’m in here or whether I’m out there—fuck it! But once I started getting into... I wanted to get out. I wanted to get with the leadership of BA. I wanted to meet him, I wanted to get with the Revolutionary Communist Party because I thought: hey, we have the leader and the leadership to really make revolution that we was trying to do in the ’60s.

When I came out of prison in the late ’70s, what immediately happened was the Bob Avakian and Mao Tsetung Defendants court case. He was part of a demonstration in DC that was viciously attacked for defending Mao and revolution in China and was calling out the capitalist coup after Mao’s death. BA himself was facing hundreds of years in prison. Because I knew that we had something special here in terms of a leader, I volunteered immediately to go to DC to be one of the volunteers. I said: we can’t allow BA to be snatched away from us. I’ll go anywhere, do anything politically, to prevent that from happening. And 200 of us volunteers went to DC. We went there to politically “turn DC upside down”—again, this is in BA’s Memoir. We were passionate about that, even as we were just beginning to grasp what we have in the leadership of BA.

I was brand new. I had just got out of prison, my parole had just ended the day before and the very next day I was on the plane to DC as a volunteer. So, I’m there, and I think it was a speech BA had just given to the volunteers. I’m standing in the back talking to somebody, he comes up to me. He starts talking to me about some of things we were all studying at that time about the Collapse of the Second Communist International. We studied why during Lenin’s time, Lenin was the only one who led the masses to go for revolution. They had other parties that were bigger and had even greater influence but were capitulating and leading the people in different countries to take up guns to defend the fucking imperialist fatherland and shit like that, during World War 1.

BA just walked up to me and started talking to me about that and some of the lessons that we should draw from that. I was just kinda... I have to say I was kinda taken aback because he came up and was talking to me. But BA was so genuine, he had no airs, he was just so genuine. I was just talking to him... even though he’s this really advanced world-class leader, when you’re talking to him it’s like you’re talking to your best friend, it’s like talking to a friend—that’s just how he comes off to me, which again, just really struck me. This always has struck me about him.

Back to what I was saying about his friend Billy, even the thing with the Panthers, when I listen to BA talk about it, he understands it better than I do. I was in the Panthers, I went through it, but he understands it. When I went to prison that’s why I was so angry because of what had happened to the Panthers. But BA had a rational and a scientific understanding about why they split apart, and departed from the road of revolution. Again, not blaming them, appreciating the very brutal and murderous repression they faced—but more so, recognizing how they didn’t make the leap to become scientific about revolution.

Nobody in the ’60s came up with a real strategy that can lead millions and millions to defeat and overthrow this system, what to replace it with, what kind of leadership do we need, what kind of methods and approach does that leadership needs to be based upon.

So it’s the same thing like what I was saying about Billy or with those youth in Chicago when we showed them the video clips of BA Through the Years. BA resonates when people hear him, especially the basic masses, as well as others. When they hear him it resonates so profoundly because he understands their situation, what they are going through, and what is the way out—better than you do.

You may be going through and suffering in this way, but it is like going to a doctor, a good doctor. You’re the one suffering but they understand what the solution is to put an end to that suffering better than you do and better than you can. Because he has done the work. People need to engage this work and become followers of BA.

“There has never been a leader like this”

But these are some of the things that have really always struck me about BA. It always struck me on a real personal level. Anytime I was ever able to talk to him, and then read and study his works, it’s so striking that there has never been a leader like this. I think it’s really rare. Especially when I was in prison, and other times, I would just hope that we could get a leader that could really lead the masses to get out of this shit and really navigate through all the twists and turns. Because in any revolution there are always difficulties, there’s always unanticipated things that pop up, but you got to have a method and approach that allows you to be able to work through that and not be thrown by that. And that’s what I see with BA.

When I was in my prison cell, I used to think that either I was going to do something crazy when I got out or I was just going to go to China and live because Mao was still alive at that time. But I hated this system, I hated what it was doing to the masses, not just here but all around the world. But I didn’t think we could get that leadership on that level of a Mao, a Lenin, or a Marx. Then I started realizing that we had it, we have it. And now, it’s developed more beyond what it ever had been in the history of the communist revolution, because BA has made this science much more thoroughly and consistently scientific, to be in synch with reality and how it is changing, and how it CAN be changed to emancipate humanity.

I would read some of things from the first wave of the world revolution—Marx making the first great breakthrough in our understanding in the struggle for human emancipation—but there were definite limits and weaknesses in the first stage of communism. Sometimes I would read those things and get to a place where I’d say, “oh yeah, now we can relax because there’s a kingdom of peace and forever harmony”—that’s a vision would come to my mind. But I don’t ever get that from BA.

Through this revolution humanity can surpass being divided into antagonistic groups—but there’s always going to be matter in motion, there’s always going to be struggle, even if it’s not always antagonistic, that’s just reality. That’s what’s so fucking refreshing. Because when I was in prison people would talk... some of these people, they was eloquent, they’d been studying Marxism—but it was really dogmatic. And I’d listen to them talk and my jaw would just drop because they’d be talking about how the working out of history is pre-determined, that feudalism would be negated by capitalism, and capitalism is going to be negated by socialism—and it was all a kind of worked out in a one/two-step harmony. Real dogmatic and shit like that. Some of that was in that first phase of communism, and BA has gotten rid of all of that with his new synthesis of communism. You don’t find none of that religiosity, religious mantra and shit like that in it and stuff. To me, that’s why I think we can do this—with him, and with his leadership, because of that.

 

BA Through the Years 1969,1979, 2003

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/bob-avakian-shakespeare-and-strategic-commanders-of-the-revolution-en.html

Bob Avakian on
SHAKESPEARE AND STRATEGIC COMMANDERS OF THE REVOLUTION

| revcom.us

 

One of the people in the "Get Organized For An ACTUAL Revolution" Tour has recounted her difficulties as a high school student in reading the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. Having difficulty in reading this, and not seeing why it was important for her to do so, she was met with denunciation and insults, rather than help, from her teacher. So, what does all this have to do with the new communism and being a strategic commander of the revolution based on this new communism?

As Ardea Skybreak has emphasized, in an important article on the question of strategic commanders of the revolution: “You don’t have to have been formally trained as an intellectual to be bright, engaged, curious about all sorts of things, able to think on lots of different levels, and to play with lots of different elements.”1 As one application of this, you don’t have to be formally trained as an intellectual to read, and get some important things out of reading, Shakespeare (and no one deserves the title, or the position, of “teacher” who discourages someone from learning by insulting them because they do not find Shakespeare easy to read, or do not immediately understand why he is worth reading).

With regard to Romeo and Juliet in particular, one way to “get into” this is to make the comparison between their situation and what it is like for two people who fall in love while their families are part of rival gangs. Something similar to that is essentially the situation, and ultimately is decisive in determining the fate, of Romeo and Juliet. (And the musical play West Side Story is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to just such a situation.)

Many of the writings of Shakespeare reflect, in very rich ways, significant contradictions of a society in which elements of bourgeois (capitalist) relations, and the corresponding ideas, are beginning to have an impact, while the society overall is still dominated by feudal relations and “values.” Among other things, this is reflected, in a number of Shakespeare’s works, such as Romeo and Juliet, in the contradiction, often acutely posed, between romantic love and feudal/patriarchal authority and “duty” imposed by that authority (including the patriarchal authority of the father/husband, in the family).

At the same time, there are deep philosophical/existential questions posed in Shakespeare’s works—including Hamlet (“To be, or not to be...”) or Macbeth (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day...”—a passage that was often recited by Huey Newton). This is true even as this is shaped by the prevailing ways of thinking—and the underlying relations they reflect—of Shakespeare’s time (about 400 years ago), and is speaking to these existential questions in a decidedly different way than what is said about this in Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, where I emphasize that devoting your life to revolution aiming for the emancipation of humanity is indeed a life worth living and one full of meaning.2

While some of the language of Shakespeare is archaic (from earlier times, and with words and expressions common in those times but not necessarily today), there is a richness and liveliness to the language that is very rewarding to “take in.” This requires work, but the work is well worth it and the reward very real.

I am speaking to this not because everyone—or in particular everyone striving to be a strategic commander of the revolution—needs to start (or resume) reading Shakespeare right now, but because, as Skybreak emphasizes, being “curious about all sorts of things” is one important dimension of being a strategic commander of the revolution based on the new communism, and this “curiosity” certainly can and should involve an interest in engaging literature and art, of many different kinds, including the work of a towering literary artist like Shakespeare.

 


1. The article by Ardea Skybreak, “Strategic Commanders of the Revolution,” is available at revcom.us.  [back]

2. This refers specifically to the section “Differing Views on the Meaning of Life, and Death: What Is Worth Living and Dying For?” in this work by Bob Avakian, Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism, which is also available at revcom.us.  [back]

Click to read.

See also:

Strategic Commanders of the Revolution

by Ardea Skybreak

Read more

 

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Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/683/strategic-commanders-of-the-revolution-en.html

STRATEGIC COMMANDERS OF THE REVOLUTION

by Ardea Skybreak

| revcom.us

 

What distinguishes the strategic commanders and what they have in common with each other, despite different particularities, is the ability (and the inclination!) to wrangle with the biggest questions of the revolution (before and after the seizure of power), to understand what it means to apply evidence-based scientific methods to assess and evaluate ever changing reality, to be increasingly able to sort out a complex of contradictions and rank and prioritize them correctly, to consistently proceed from the loftiest strategic objectives and work back from that to figure out what needs to be done at any given time to move the process forward. In short, well-rounded, all-sided revolutionaries, rooted in and proceeding from the New Communism—the most advanced iteration to date of what is needed in the world and how to get there—and with a willingness to go out and FIGHT with masses to get with all this if they ever want to get free.

Properly understood, an illiterate peasant in a 3rd world country or an unschooled basic person from the inner cities can be trained to be a strategic commander of the revolution (not just a tactical commander, and certainly not a “movement activist”!). You don’t have to have been formally trained as an intellectual to be bright, engaged, curious about all sorts of things, able to think on lots of different levels, and to play with lots of different elements. And you don’t have to be a highly trained intellectual to learn the basics about what is wrong with the world, what needs to (and can) be done about it, what it is going to take, what it is that BA and the New Communism are about, and why you, and many, many others, need to become followers of this person and this scientific approach to emancipating humanity. You can learn to understand better why it is that so few people are currently with this, what obstacles you are going to encounter, why the key right now is to go wage ferocious struggle with and among the people to get on board, but all the while modeling and demonstrating the right methods.

So... not a movement activist. Also not an armchair “marxist.” But definitely steeped in the core methods, approach and objectives of the New Communism and eager to go fight for this out in society, with the requisite passion, substance, determination and conviction.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and an advocate of the new synthesis of communism—also known as the New Communism—brought forward by Bob Avakian.  Important works by Skybreak include The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters; Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps: An Essay on the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Women’s Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation; and an interview with Skybreak, Science and Revolution, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/rnl-show-episode-43-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 43 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show!

Let's Get Down to Basics: We Need a Revolution...

Episode 43 of The RNL Show comes after this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) protests and celebrations around the world. It is also in the middle of the trial of pig Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd last year. All eyes are on this trial, and the need to continue to fight for a world where this brutality and degradation are put to an end is crying out—Nothing Less! 

Join hosts of the show Andy Zee and Sunsara Taylor this week as we dive into these topics and get deeper into why revolution is what humanity needs, with excerpts from Bob Avakian’s New Year’s Statement: "A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity" and other key works including part 2 of "Bob Avakian For The Liberation Of Black People And The Emancipation Of  All Humanity."

This Episode Features: 

Let's get down to basics: We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't unite with people in all sorts of struggles short of revolution. We definitely need to do that. But the proffering of any other solution to these monumental and monstrous problems and outrages is ridiculous, frankly. And we need to be taking the offensive and mobilizing increasing numbers of masses to cut through this shit and bring to the fore what really is the solution to this, and to answer the questions and, yes, the accusations that come forth in response to this, while deepening our scientific basis for being able to do this. And the point is: not only do we need to be doing this, but we need to be bringing forward, unleashing and leading, and enabling increasing numbers of the masses to do this. They need to be inspired, not just with a general idea of revolution, but with a deepening understanding, a scientific grounding, as to why and how revolution really is the answer to all of this.

BAsics 3:1 from BAsics, the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

*Andy Zee’s commentary—flowing from BAsics 3:1, “Let’s get down to basics...”—this is an introduction and challenge to step into and take up revolution. Learn about the 5-2-6 and how you can step in. 

*"Bob Avakian For The Liberation Of Black People and the Emancipation of All Humanity": part 2 of the illustrated series inspired by the article featured on the website revcom.us.

*An Interview on Bob Avakian and the contributions he has made to the struggle for the liberation of Black people and all humanity with Joe Veale, former member of the Black Panther Party and a revolutionary communist, conducted by Pete from The RNL Show team.  

*International Women's Day 2021 in review. 

*The history of International Women’s Day (including a small correction of last week's episode)

*”Worthy,” by India.Arie, sung by Maggie Brown. 

*Hosts Andy Zee and Sunsara Taylor in conversation on the Derek Chauvin trial, the role of the capitalist system & the need to continue the fight to end all oppression flowing from lessons drawn from Bob Avakian’s New Year’s Statement.

*Bob Avakian’s statement “Nothing Less!” A message given during last summer’s beautiful rising.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/522/skybreak-a-party-on-the-basis-of-the-new-synthesis-en.html

Excerpt from SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak

What Does It Mean, What Difference Can It Make, To Have A Party Organized on the Basis of the New Synthesis?

December 18, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In the early part of 2015, over a number of days, Revolution conducted a wide-ranging interview with Ardea Skybreak. A scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and an advocate of the new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob Avakian, Skybreak is the author of, among other works, The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What's Real and Why It Matters, and Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps: An Essay on the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Women's Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation. This interview was first published online at www.revcom.us.

Ardea Skybreak Science and Revolution excerpts A New Theoretical Framework for a New Stage of Communist Revolution What Is New in the New Synthesis? The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic--A Visionary and Concrete Application of the New Synthesis Serious Engagement with the New Synthesis--The Difference It Could Make An Explorer, a Critical Thinker, a Follower of BA Some Thank Yous That Need To Be Said Aloud Order the book here Download the full interview in PDF format here

AS continues: Once again, think of the real difference it could make if the new synthesis were to spread, were to be broadly engaged with, throughout society, and were taken up by revolutionaries everywhere. Many of the revolutionary communists today are people who came out of the great upsurges of the 1960s, including Bob Avakian himself. This was a very rich period. But there’s a tremendous need now for younger generations to take up this new synthesis, to work with it, to contribute to further advancing it, and to spreading it around the world. Again, I would use the example...besides the U.S. itself, I’ll use the example of the Middle East. What a difference it would make if significant numbers of people, including young people in these Middle Eastern countries that are in such turmoil...if, instead of choosing between either promoting American-style democracy and aspiring to either move to America or to build up a similar system in their own country (with all the horrors that are involved with that), or joining in with these nut-case Islamic fundamentalists and all  their horrible ways of trying to restructure society–if, instead of choosing one or the other of those no-good options, there were some significant blocs of people, including significant numbers of young people, who were delving into the new synthesis of communism, studying it, debating it, really grappling with it and figuring out how to apply it in the context of their own countries–this could provide a real alternative, a genuinely positive alternative. They would, of course, have to figure out what it means concretely to apply the new synthesis to the particular conditions of their particular countries and societies. But the key methods and principles of the new synthesis would apply anywhere. They could take that up, and it would provide a positive alternative to both those bad alternatives. It could become a rallying point in places of the world that are in turmoil, of which there are many.

Q: Continuing with the point you just made about the difference, the tremendous difference, it would make if younger generations took up this new synthesis, I did want to ask specifically what you think  it means that  there’s this vanguard party,  the Revolutionary Communist Party, led by BA, that bases itself on the new synthesis of communism that BA has brought forward, and the need for that party to grow and for people to join that party.

AS: Well, again, I would refer people to the website revcom.us, where there are some articles that get into why a vanguard party is needed. Why you can’t make a revolution without one. I think people would get a lot out of digging into some of that. And your question is a good question, because I think  it’s a question that  people don’t discuss  a lot, or not enough. How are you going to help make an actual revolution without being really disciplined and really organized into a revolutionary organization, in other words, a revolutionary party?  It’s not going to be enough just to function as atomized individuals or even to just get together with handfuls of like-minded individuals in a somewhat disorganized manner.

There’s a statement on the revcom.us website, Get Organized for an Actual Revolution. If you understand what an actual revolution is, what it involves–that it actually does require getting to the point where you can dismantle the existing state apparatus and replace it with a completely different state apparatus, different organs of power, that you have to seize power and organize society on a new basis with new institutions–how are you going to do all that without a very tightly cohered and organized body of people, who are very committed and dedicated to doing that and who are willing to function in a very disciplined and organized way? Many people would probably recognize the need for tight and disciplined organization later on, when things get to the point of military struggle, or things like that–people think about disciplined armies, and so on. But what about for the current phase  of things, where what’s mainly  involved is political  struggle, fighting the power primarily politically for now, working to unite people on that basis, and working to transform the thinking of the people, but doing so in a way that will lay the basis for being able to “go for the whole thing,” for the actual  seizure  of power, when the conditions exist for doing so? Even now, under the conditions of today, you’d better not just function in an individualistic way, or in a scattered way, like a bunch of disorganized individuals who sometimes work together and sometimes don’t, and who are constantly pulling in different directions and end up undermining even their own best efforts. Making revolution is a complex multi-faceted process which needs to pull together many different components of the struggle and keep them all pretty much on track and advancing in a certain direction. So you’d better be as unified as possible, you’d better all be pulling  in the same basic direction, and you’d better be recruiting more people and constantly expanding the ranks of the disciplined, organized body that can provide ideological and political strategic guidance and direction to ever broader people in society.

Q: And what does it mean  to have a party that’s based on the leadership of BA and this framework of the new synthesis?

AS: Well, a party is obviously made up of a lot of individual human beings, and not all of them see eye to eye on everything or understand things the same way or function all at the same level. And, as I said before,  I think  there’s a tremendous “gap” between Bob Avakian and pretty much  everyone  else. He’s like “miles ahead  of even the best of the rest,” as someone once said, in terms of people in the RCP as well as people outside the Party. That’s just objective  fact. But OK, we can work with that–first of all we can learn to more deeply value and appreciate what it is that BA has developed–that he has come to concentrate and that he is constantly modeling for others–which objectively puts him so far ahead of the rest of the pack, so to speak. We can do our best to learn from him, in particular by closely studying his whole method and approach to things. And we can work to at least significantly “narrow”  the gap, in an ongoing  way, including by having a good attitude about being led and learning from advanced leadership, and by actively contributing ourselves to continual grappling with the new synthesis and how to apply its key principles and methods in an ongoing way to further developing and advancing the movement for revolution.

People should understand better both what it means to be willing to lead, and what it means to be willing to be led. It should be a two-way street of mutual and inter-dependent responsibilities and the furthest thing from a passive or one-sided process. Being provided leadership, if it’s good leadership, doesn’t mean  that  you’re just being bossed around or given orders all the time! [laughs] That’s not leadership. Good leadership consists primarily in training people in overall orientation and method and approach, and in this way giving them the tools to contribute as much as possible themselves to the advance of the overall larger process and objectives, and to in turn train others to do the same.

And again, a revolutionary party has to function as a unified  body, which is why there’s a concept, democratic centralism, that people can read about in the Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Democratic centralism is not just a question of people following orders or being disciplined, although it is that, too, for instance in relation to things like carrying out assignments and responsibilities. But, democratic centralism involves much more than that. Democratic centralism is, most fundamentally, a scientific concept about epistemological discipline. It doesn’t mean  that  people are slavish. But it means that when analyses and syntheses are developed at leading levels, and strategies and methods for a particular period of work and for prioritizing things are being developed, then the Party as a whole should function as a unified body to take this out to the best of their ability into the world. Like good scientists who are working in a coordinated and disciplined way on a scientific  project. In this case, they’re working  on the project of transforming society, transforming the thinking of blocs of people, of fighting the power around egregious outrages, all in a disciplined and unified way along with the broadest numbers of people that can be united to do so, and doing all this in a coherent way. And then,  if Party members have differences and don’t agree with certain things, they have a responsibility to raise their questions or disagreements, in a systematic way, through the appropriate channels. This, too, is part of the scientific method and process.

You function in a united, unified way, but then internally people discuss and wrangle and debate and raise questions or disagreements and modifications, and so on, so that there is actually  a genuinely collective process. You know, there’s that  formulation of the RCP, that  the Party’s collectivity is its strength. It is of course being given centralized guidance: Guidance is being provided regularly to the Party and to the people around the Party who are interested in learning about this guidance and orientation. So, yes, the Party is being guided, it is being led. It is being guided by BA, including through his works, and it is being guided through the website revcom.us, through Party documents, and so on. So there’s definitely guidance, there’s definitely leadership, being provided. At the same time, people are not–and should not be–passive. People in the Party, at every level, as well as people outside the Party, should definitely be raising their own thinking, their questions, their disagreements, but in a substantial way, and in an appropriate manner. In a manner that will likely contribute in a positive way to the overall process. This doesn’t mean  that  you have to have a whole deep analysis of something before you can raise a question or possible disagreement, but whatever you raise should at least be with the right spirit. What I mean by saying that this should be raised in a substantial way and with the right spirit, is that it should not consist of a bunch of “nyaa-nyaa, crotchety-crotchety, complain-complain, I don’t like this, I don’t like that.”  You know what I mean? That doesn’t get anybody  anywhere. Even if it’s a simple question or a simple disagreement, it should be raised in the spirit that we’re all trying to get to a better world, and that’s what we should all be doing together.

That’s why, once again, I feel that  in the Dialogue,  Bob Avakian and Cornel West set a good example that other people should follow. They have some substantial disagreements, which they made clear. But they also identified substantial points of unity, and manifested a sort of joint moral conscience, in terms of fighting oppression. And so they could find the way to work together while still talking to each other and talking to the general public about what some of their differences are, and challenging people to grapple with that, not being afraid of seeing people grapple with that.

Q: So the Party enables people to collectively, in a unified way, apply the new synthesis of communism to reality, to grapple over that new synthesis and its application, and to further develop it.

AS: Right. Like a good team of scientists, with BA in the position of team leader, overall team leader, and with other people playing their roles to the best of their abilities, in accordance with their experience and understanding, and with the development of their ability to grasp and apply the scientific  method. It’s very much  as if you were trying to solve a huge scientific problem in the natural sciences–for instance, if you were trying to find a vaccine for Ebola, or trying to cure cancer, or trying to figure out how to turn back global warming, or trying to stop the deforestation of rain forests–and, in order to increase your chances of succeeding, you set about organizing and unifying a whole bunch of scientists to work together, at different levels, with different abilities, different levels of experience, but all united in their willingness to: work coherently together, using the best possible scientific methods; study and build off of the accumulated knowledge in their field so far; bring their own creativity and initiative to bear; and follow the lead of a team leader, who is best able to provide overall guidance and direction for the project as a whole, and who has demonstrated, and models for others, an especially advanced and developed level of knowledge, expertise, and methods relevant to the particular field, and to the problem to be solved.

Well, in the “field” of applying scientific  methods to “solving the problem” of emancipating all of humanity from the bone- and soul-crushing system of capitalism-imperialism, the person today who is best imbued with these qualities and most able to assume the responsibilities of team leader  is clearly BA. Again, this isn’t just my personal opinion–I believe this is a clearly demonstrable fact. There’s simply nobody else today working at quite this level. So we should consider ourselves lucky to be able to work with, to take guidance from, the person who happens to currently be “the most advanced expert  in the field,” and we should take full advantage of his overall guidance and leadership if we are serious about making revolution, in the right ways, and with a real chance of succeeding.

But everyone  does need to pitch in. Look, you go out into the world and you’re trying to transform material reality,  you’re trying to transform society, and of course sometimes you’re not sure what you’re doing, or you run into obstacles or you start going off track, or whatever. But you can learn  from all that,  too. Don’t step over it. If you do go off track, or if you run into problems, don’t just try to skirt it, ignore it, finesse it or just move on to the next thing. Instead, leave your ego out of it [laughs] and confront it, face it, figure it out. There are bound to be lots of problems and lots of mistakes made, and the problems you are having are probably shared by quite a few others. So let’s just talk about  it, let’s collectively learn from it, in order to keep getting better at what we need to do.

And if, on the other hand, people are doing things that are making breakthroughs, are making advances, don’t keep this to yourself  either. Don’t just think,  “Oh, how cool!” and then keep it to yourself. Report on what you are encountering, on what you are learning out in society, on what is actually advancing things and connecting with things. Because there will be important insights and new experiences that come from every level, including from people at the base of the Party and from the people outside the Party who work closely with the Party. But knowledge of this needs to be shared. You don’t want to squander any of that.

So, again, there’s the responsibilities of leadership and the responsibilities of the led, at whatever level. The responsibility of leadership at every level is to lead. The responsibility of the led is to take leadership, to follow leadership, with the orientation of not being slavish but of fighting oppression and working towards the emancipation of humanity. And, in the course of taking leadership, learn to be a leader yourself and spread that leadership and that revolutionary consciousness and organization throughout society.

Q: So, with the Party there’s a basis for this new synthesis to become  a material force in the world in a way that  wouldn’t be possible without this Party.

AS: Yeah, without an organized party, without an organized revolutionary movement, it would just end up being small numbers of people talking to each other behind walls.

Q: Returning to the work and the leadership of Bob Avakian, and the role he plays in the world, as you have said, this is very contended. There are some people who really love Bob Avakian and what he’s brought forward and represents and the role he plays in the world, and there  are some people  who really don’t like this. And I wondered if you could get into that further.

AS: I think that’s actually  a very important thing  to dig into more deeply, because there’s a lot you can learn  from digging into the reasons why so many people do love Bob Avakian and his work, and, at the same time, the reasons why so many people hate Bob Avakian and his work–or at least hate Bob Avakian, because, again, many of the “haters”  hate him without really knowing  his work–they typically don’t really study his work, they don’t really get into the specific arguments, they don’t really engage the analyses and the syntheses, they don’t come up with serious, substantial criticisms. What prevails, at least these days, among most of those haters is more in the nature of petty slanders, insults and personal attacks. It’s very low-level, low-minded kinds of attacks, and there’s a real shortage among most of those haters of any kind of substantial analyses of the societal problems that are being tackled and the solutions that are being proposed.

With a few exceptions, you don’t see people writing  papers or giving speeches that are really engaging what Bob Avakian is saying about the strategy for revolution, how to develop a revolutionary movement in the United States, why revolution is necessary and possible, how we could have a realistic chance of winning, what kind of society we could build up, and just how would we go about  it. You know, there’s a whole body of work that Bob Avakian has developed, over decades, with very substantial documents and analyses of these questions, and he’s done a tremendous amount of work to make this readily available. And yet these haters are not so much, in this period at least, characterized by people who really develop counter-arguments and substantial counter-analyses. It really is much more gutter talk and snark. And this has something to do with the prevailing culture. There are many people in the culture generally these days who seem to make it a hobby to tear down other people with petty slanders and insults. It’s all over the internet and stuff. But, with regard to Bob Avakian specifically, this takes the form of a tremendous amount of passionate vitriol against him. And you have to ask yourself: Why would some people so passionately hate someone who has spent his whole life dedicating himself to trying to serve the people, and to the emancipation of humanity? You can agree or disagree with his specific arguments and analyses, you can have substantial differences, and so on, and you can debate these and discuss these in a principled manner. But why on earth would you be trying to personally attack and tear down someone who has not been trying to promote himself or sell you anything or feather his own nest, or anything else of that  nature? Quite the contrary, he’s dedicated his entire life to serving the people and trying to come up with solutions to the horrors of the system and to being able to bring into being a new society that would be better for the vast majority of people in this country and the world. So why would anyone actually have such passionate hatred for someone like this?

And it’s important to make a scientific assessment of those kinds of tendencies, besides just recognizing the prevailing culture of snark, which is a disgusting feature in society more generally these days. Again, I feel you have to further explore why some of these haters, most of whom today don’t even bother to familiarize themselves with BA’s extensive body of work or engage it with any seriousness, are nevertheless so bent on spewing so much hateful vitriol in his direction. Why is that, really? And I think that, to get at what’s really going on with this, you have to ask those people  some pointed questions: What’s YOUR analysis  of the problem? What’s YOUR analysis of the solution? What are YOU putting forward, and arguing for? What kind of resistance are YOU organizing? What are YOUR strategic objectives? What kind of new society are YOU proposing and how are you proposing to get there? If you don’t think  this system  needs  to be overthrown and dismantled through revolution, then what program and solutions are YOU proposing? What is YOUR plan for getting rid of the incessant outrages and abuses generated by this system and built into its foundations, such as the police murders of Black and Brown people and the slow genocide of mass incarceration; the patriarchal culture of rape, degradation and dehumanization of women and denial of the right to abortion; the wars of empire, armies of occupation and crimes against humanity perpetrated on a regular basis by imperialism; the closing and militarization of borders and brutalization and dehumanization of immigrants; the accelerating and multi-faceted degradation of the global environment that is being driven by imperialism towards a literal tipping point of no return. What is YOUR solution to all this? What do YOU propose?

We should be confronting those haters with such questions. We shouldn’t let them  get away with spewing hatred to try to tear down and diminish BA, and by extension everyone working with BA, just because they themselves have nothing much of substance or value to propose. If they don’t like what BA and the RCP are analyzing and proposing, why don’t they just go do their  own work on solving the problems of humanity!

I think some of these people just want to keep one foot in the system, you know? Why are they kicking and screaming at the prospect of going towards a new society that could benefit the vast majority of people? Would they actually prefer to keep things as they are? This is particularly characteristic of some of the petit bourgeois strata, in other words, the people in the middle classes. Not all of them, of course, but some of the people in the middle strata want to keep at least one foot...Look,  by definition, that’s what the petite bourgeoisie is, right?  It’s the class that  sits in between the proletariat and the most oppressed at the bottom of society, on the one hand, and the ruling  bourgeois, the ruling  capitalists, on the other  hand. So they’re kind of in an in-between limbo, and it’s pretty common for many of them  to hedge their bets and try to keep one foot in both worlds–one foot in the current system,  because, if they’re being honest, they still kinda like living under this system, from which they still derive quite a few advantages and privileges; and one foot which, at least in their better moments, might be willing to step into the future, because many of them do recognize that this system is a horror for the people at the bottom especially, and many, again in their better moments, would sincerely like to get to a more just and equitable society. But they are often reluctant to upset the applecart and do what needs to be done to get there. So they remain torn. Some of them end up playing very positive roles and contributing  in various ways to the overall process aimed at emancipating the oppressed, the exploited, and ultimately all of humanity. But some of them get downright nasty and try to hold back, and tear down, those people and forces that are actually going forward and working on getting organized for an actual revolution and a fundamental change in the system running society. So judge for yourself.

And we can talk about  that  some more. But, I guess I’d like to ask people to think  for a minute about respect and about disrespect; about people who prove, over and over again, that they have principle and integrity, and a generous and broad-minded spirit, and who are trying to change the world for the betterment of humanity, versus, on the other hand, people who seem to spend a great deal of their time mainly tearing other people down, and spreading petty, snarky, vindictive slanders and insults and launching personal attacks while themselves having very little to offer people in terms of a viable and realistic way out of the horrors of the system, and very little to offer people in terms of a concrete plan for how to remake an entire society on a basis free of institutionalized exploitation and oppression. So, please, people, think about this contrast. Because it is burdensome and damaging when there are people who are always kind of nipping at your heels, trying to get in the way, and especially trying to get in between Bob Avakian and the people he’s trying to speak to–constantly nipping, nipping, back-biting, trying to tear down. Is this really what should be going on?

Have some principle, have some integrity. If you have disagreements on matters of substance, by all means write them up, make speeches, make analyses, make them known. If you have alternative programs and approaches, by all means bring them forward. But do it in a principled manner, with principle and integrity. Don’t go down in the gutter, nipping at people’s heels and trying to get in the way, trying to prevent them from connecting to the people they are trying to reach.

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/updates-george-floyd-trial-blog-en.html

Updates on the Derek Chauvin Trial from Revcom.us

A Blog

| revcom.us

 

The trial of Pig Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis is underway. Chauvin is now charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.

The outcome of this trial—and what the masses of people do in an effort to determine that outcome—will have consequences. The system must not be allowed to let Chauvin off, or to give him a slap on the wrist—Chauvin must be punished for straight-up murder of George Floyd. So it is very important that people have begun to stand up and fight to prevent what could be a terrible injustice on top of an utter horror from going down.

But to really get free... to put an end to the kind of horror that the world saw go down on that Minneapolis evening but that goes on and has gone on all the time, year in and year out, over the centuries... to end the oppression of Black people as part of ending all forms of oppression and exploitation all over the world, people need science and they need leadership. So the most important thing is that through this struggle for justice, more people are enabled to learn about, to get into, and to get organized around the scientific understanding of the problem and the road to the solution—to revolution, nothing less—brought forward by Bob Avakian.

Last summer Bob Avakian wrote a number of important works going into issues raised by the murder of George Floyd and the massive struggle against police brutality and institutionalized racism that arose in its wake, as well as other critical issues in that period, including the struggle against Trump-Pence fascism. Go here for some of those articles; and go here for other seminal works by Bob Avakian on the oppression of Black people, the possibility of ending that oppression through revolution, and its connection to revolution. And go here to learn more about Bob Avakian’s historic relation to this struggle.

A statement from Bob Avakian:
NOTHING LESS!

To all those who have risen up so powerfully and are demonstrating to say “No More!” after the murder of George Floyd, and all the other cold-blooded murders by police.

To all those who have drawn inspiration from this righteous uprising.

To all those who have had the blinders forced from their eyes and have been provoked to think anew about what kind of country it is that we live in.

This has raised the biggest questions about what is needed for people everywhere to live fully as human beings:

AN END TO INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM
AND MURDER BY POLICE—NOTHING LESS!

AN END TO ANY WAY PEOPLE ANYWHERE ARE
USED, ABUSED, AND BRUTALIZED—NOTHING LESS!

We need a world without white supremacy and male supremacy—a world where no one is regarded as “alien”—a world without war, where people from all over the globe, with a beautiful flowering of diversity, act together for the common good and are truly caretakers of the earth.

THIS IS NOT JUST A DREAM.

The possibility for this is being powerfully demonstrated in this uprising of the people, of all different races and genders, from all parts of the world—refusing to remain silent or stay passive while all this oppression and brutality goes on.

To Make All This Real
We Need: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

A strategic plan for how to make this revolution, and a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and much better world, where all this can become possible—can be found in the work I have done, including the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

You can learn more about this revolution and become part of making it a reality by going to revcom.us and joining with the revcoms.

We do not need to live in this world where so much of humanity suffers so unnecessarily under this system of capitalism-imperialism that cannot exist without exploiting and degrading people, suffocating their humanity and killing them without mercy. We can do much better! Don’t listen to talk about how “it can never happen.”

Look around you—what seemed impossible yesterday is happening right now! Revolution, why should we settle for anything less?

Days 12 and 13 of the Trial of Derek Chauvin (Tuesday and Wednesday, April 13 & 14)

The Dishonorable Defense of Derek Chauvin: George Floyd Could Have Been "Resting Comfortably" Under Chauvin's Knee, But Instead Chose to Kill Himself With Heart Disease, Drugs and Carbon Monoxide, and by Struggling to Breathe

For 11 days the prosecution presented powerful testimony and evidence that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd: eyewitnesses, medical experts, use of force experts, and extensive video of the murder.

On Tuesday, attorney Eric Nelson launched Derek Chauvin’s defense. So far, the key to this has been two witnesses: Use of force expert Barry Brodd, and forensic pathologist Dr. David Fowler. These “experts” asserted that what the cops did to George Floyd was not only legal and justified, but also had nothing to do with his death.

Barry Brodd:

Brodd—a former cop steeped in the murderous outlook of the police—literally tried to turn reality upside down. For instance, it took the prosecutor several minutes to get Brodd to admit that Chauvin was on top of Floyd! Then Brodd asserted that “maintaining of the prone control is not a use of force” and “it does not hurt.” When the prosecutor showed Brodd video of Floyd’s face, contorted in pain as it was crushed into the pavement by Chauvin, Brodd acknowledged that it “could be” a use of force. Brodd argued that Floyd crying, “I can’t breathe” was proof that he could breathe (a fallacy [false belief] that had been previously exposed by a world-renowned pulmonologist.)

Brodd went so far as to claim that Floyd was “struggling” for several minutes after he was face down, handcuffed and under three cops. The prosecutor asked if Brodd meant, “struggling or writhing?” Brodd answered, “I don’t know the difference,” [!] and then followed this up by saying that Floyd should have been “resting comfortably” instead of struggling to breathe!

Brodd was forced to walk some of this back: ultimately he agreed that prone restraint “could be” force, that cops have known for 30 years that it is dangerous, and that after Floyd lost consciousness, Chauvin “would know that he’s not resisting.” But he still stuck to his position that Chauvin “was acting with objective reasonableness, following Minneapolis Police Department policy and current standards of law enforcement.”

Dr. David Fowler:

Dr. Fowler, a forensic pathologist, is the former chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland.11

Fowler argued that “Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia... due to his atherosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease... during his restraint and subdual by the police.” In other words, Fowler says that Floyd died of heart disease “during” police “restraint and subdual” but not because of restraint and subdual. As the prosecutor put it, Fowler was arguing that it was just coincidence that Floyd was under police restraint when he died.

Fowler went at this in two ways. One was that he played up—or outright made up—various health issues that he said, “could have” led to Floyd’s death. Floyd did have high blood pressure, a slightly enlarged heart, and narrowing of his coronary arteries.12 A respected cardiologist13 had already testified that there was no evidence that any of these was the primary cause of Floyd’s death, and video showed him walking around happy and healthy minutes before his encounter with the police. But Fowler claimed that heart disease was the main cause of death.

Grasping at other straws, Fowler went on at great length about the role of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning because Floyd was being held down [Note: held down] near the exhaust pipe of the police patrol car. Under cross examination it came out that there was zero physical evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning in the autopsy, and that Fowler didn’t know how much CO the car emitted, or even whether the car was turned on while Floyd was being held down. Similarly, Fowler spoke extensively about a paraganglioma in Floyd’s abdomen—a type of tumor that in 10% of cases may at times secrete adrenaline that may speed up the heart rate, so… “heart attack!” The prosecution pointed out that there are only six recorded deaths in the entire world from paraganglioma!

Fowler was somewhat more effective in attacking the prosecution theory—put forward by a series of renowned medical experts last week—that Floyd died of lack of oxygen due to positional asphyxiation. (That is, that the combination of Chauvin’s pressure on Floyd’s neck, coupled with the weight of the cops pressing him down on the sidewalk while his shoulders were pulled back by the handcuffs—sharply restricted his ability to get oxygen, leading to his slow death over five or six minutes.) Fowler did this largely by citing studies done by Dr. Mark Kroll14 and others that supposedly showed prone restraint was safe. As the prosecution pointed out, these experiments were done on gym mats not concrete, used young and healthy volunteers who knew that they would be let up if they felt any distress, and, crucially, none of them was done for nine and a half minutes and none involved a knee on the subject’s neck.

Fowler was forced to concede some important points, particularly that if the cops had given Floyd “immediate medical attention” when he no longer had a pulse, that could “well have reverse[d] the process.”

Still, Fowler’s efforts to discredit the reality of prone restraint being dangerous may have created enough confusion—enough un-reasonable doubt—to provide a justification for one or more pro-police jurors to dig in their heels around. And the defense only needs one such juror to prevent a conviction.

 

Ex-Medical Examiner Witness for Chauvin Called the Police Killing of a Black Man in a Similar Case an “Accident”

One of the key witnesses called by Derek Chauvin’s defense is David Fowler, who was the chief medical examiner for Maryland until 2019. Fowler claimed on the stand that George Floyd died because of pre-existing heart problems and drug use, not because of Chauvin and other cops holding Floyd face down on the ground, with Chauvin’s knee on his neck for over nine minutes.

Two and a half years ago, when a young Black man died after being held down by pigs in a case that echoes the police murder of George Floyd, Fowler officially categorized the death as an “accident.” On September 15, 2018, in Greensboro, Maryland, 19-year-old Anton Black—an aspiring actor and model—ran from the police. According to his family, Black was having a mental health crisis. Body cam footage from one of the cops—which was only released months after the incident—shows Black being tased, handcuffed and forced face down onto the ground. Then multiple cops along with a white “civilian” put their weight on him for over six minutes. Struggling to breathe, Black—like George Floyd—cried out for his mother before his life was crushed out of him.

A report on Anton Black’s death signed by then-medical examiner David Fowler declared that Black died of “cardiac arrest while being restrained by law enforcement” and that bipolar disorder was “a significant contributing condition.” The report said that “no evidence was found that restraint by law enforcement directly caused or significantly contributed to the decedent’s death; in particular, no evidence was found that restraint led to the decedent being asphyxiated.”

The family of Anton Black has been fighting for justice, and in December 2020, they filed a federal lawsuit against Fowler and a number of police and local officials involved in the case. The lawsuit accuses Fowler and his office of having covered up “the obvious cause of death—prolonged restraint that prevented Anton from breathing.” Attorney Sonia Kumar of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said, “The medical examiner blamed Anton for his own death—peppering its report with false claims about laced drugs, a heart condition, and even Anton’s bipolar disorder—instead of the police who killed him.”

As reported by Intercept, Fowler’s decisions exonerating police in killings have been challenged in other cases, among them the following:

* In 2016, Tawon Boyd, a 26-year-old Black man, called 911 for help. Instead of providing help, the Baltimore County cops who responded punched him and restrained him in a prone position. Boyd became unresponsive after being administered antipsychotic medication and died three days later. Fowler’s office cited drug use and “excited delirium” and classified Boyd’s death as an accident. An independent pathologist retained by the family said Boyd “died as result of asphyxia after restraint.”

* In 2013, Tyrone West, 44-year-old Black man, was beaten and kicked in the head by Baltimore pigs, who then pinned him to the ground in a prone restraint position similar to Floyd and Black. West’s breathing became erratic, and he later died. Fowler’s office blamed West’s death on his heart problems “complicated by dehydration.” A forensic pathologist who conducted an independent investigation concluded, “The main cause of death is that [Tyrone West] was restrained in such a way that he was unable to breathe.”

 

11. Fowler is being sued by the family of Anton Black, a teenager who died in 2018 while being held down by three cops, struggling to breathe, and calling out for his mother. The family accuses Fowler of covering up the police role in his death.  [back]

12. Arteries carrying oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart.  [back]

13. A doctor specializing in the heart.  [back]

14. It is worth noting that Dr. Kroll sits on the board of Axon Enterprise, the company that makes Tasers and has over three million dollars of stock in the company. Tasers themselves are frequently implicated in police killings.  [back]

 


 

Week Two of the Trial of Derek Chauvin
Expert Witnesses Confirm What the World Saw on Video: Chauvin Murdered George Floyd

The first week of testimony painted a devastating picture of a crime—the cruel murder of George Floyd at the hands of police—through the eyes of bystanders who witnessed it. And it brought out Floyd’s humanity, especially through the testimony of his girlfriend, Courteney Ross.

The second week focused on expert testimony on two issues: whether police use of force against Floyd was legal under Minnesota law, and whether this force was the cause of Floyd’s death. Police in the U.S. have a mandate from the authorities to exercise brutal force—including deadly force—on a routine basis, and the legal system almost always backs them up.4,5 In that context, this week’s testimony will likely have a big impact on the outcome of the trial.

 

Police Use of Force:

Was the police use of force against Floyd allowable under MPD policy?

Derek Chauvin and two other cops held George Floyd face down on the pavement, hands cuffed tightly behind his back, with Chauvin’s left knee on his neck and another cop on his back, for 9 minutes 29 seconds. This fact is largely undisputed.6 But Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, is arguing that this use of force is legal under Minneapolis Police Department rules.

Ten police witnesses testified for the prosecution about this. MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo said once Floyd “stopped resisting and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that ... and was no longer responsive, and even motionless, to continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back, that, that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy, it is not part of our training.”

This was backed up by other witnesses, including Sergeant Jody Stiger, a use-of-force expert with the notoriously brutal Los Angeles Police Department: “He was in the prone position, he was handcuffed, he was not attempting to resist, he was not attempting to assault the officers—kick, punch or anything of that nature.”

Nelson pushed back by pointing out that MPD rules do allow cops to brutalize people like this for periods of time, and that all MPD rules allow “officers on the scene” to use their discretion as to how to apply the rules, depending on the situation. The prosecution’s witnesses mainly did not dispute this overall, but held to the position that in this case, it went on too long, and that after Floyd was unconscious it was no longer authorized.

Were police required to provide emergency medical aid once Floyd became nonresponsive?

All police are trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and Chief Arradondo testified that “the defendant violated our policy in terms of rendering aid” in emergency situations. Nelson claimed that this requirement didn’t apply because the cops had called an ambulance, but other witnesses said the policy was clear that aid must be provided while waiting for the ambulance. (Paramedics reported Floyd was dead when they arrived.)

Nelson also argued that the “loud, excited” and “hostile” group of bystanders protesting Floyd’s murder prevented the cops from providing CPR. He got some support on this from the MPD officer who trains police in medical care; she said that such a crowd makes care “incredibly difficult.” But Sgt. Stiger pointed out what is obvious on the video—the so-called “hostile crowd” is actually a dozen “concerned” people—including four children and an older man—who did not threaten the cops. Likewise, the defense argument that the situation was so “chaotic” that the cops didn’t realize Floyd needed aid disintegrates in the face of the fact that the police themselves took Floyd’s pulse, found he didn’t have one, and continued to brutalize him.

Did George Floyd Die as a Result of Police Force?

This was addressed by several highly experienced medical professionals. World-renowned pulmonologist7 and critical care physician8 Dr. Martin Tobin walked the jury through the video, pointing out all the indicators that Floyd was being deprived of oxygen and how that killed him. Tobin pointed to Floyd struggling to free up his lungs from the suffocating pressure, fighting for air, gradually losing consciousness, and even the point at which he passed away. He refuted the cops’ claim that “If he can talk, he can breathe,” pointing out that people can talk until they are at the very brink of suffocation death.

The former chief of the Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, forensic pathologist9 Dr. Lindsey Thomas, testified along similar lines. And (like Tobin) she also point-by-point refuted defense arguments that Floyd had died of a pre-existing heart condition, or of a drug overdose. These experts pointed out that an overdose of opioids is a “peaceful” and rapid death—victims fall asleep, go into a coma and die.

Dr. William Smock, the surgeon and at-the-crime-scene doctor for the Louisville, Kentucky, police department, put it this way: “He’s breathing. He’s talking. He’s not snoring. He is saying, ‘Please, please get off of me. I want to breathe. I can’t breathe.’ That is not a fentanyl overdose. That is somebody begging to breathe.”

As Dr. Thomas said “There’s no evidence to suggest [George Floyd] would have died that night except for the interactions with law enforcement.”

The last witness was Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical Examiner for Hennepin County, who performed the autopsy on Floyd. That autopsy labeled Floyd’s death a homicide (which in medical terms means “death at the hands of another”—i.e., the police.) And in a confusing way it did say that police “subdual, restraint, and neck compression” killed Floyd. But the report also raised drug use and other health issues as “contributing factors.” As a whole it did not make clear that police force caused Floyd’s death.10

When asked direct questions by the prosecutor, Baker did clarify this somewhat—reaffirming that Floyd’s death was a homicide, and saying straight up that neither heart disease nor drugs was “the direct cause” of his death, and that police force was the trigger to his death. But he also continued to fudge these questions whenever he could, saying things like “the law enforcement, subdual restraint and the neck compression was just more than Mr. Floyd could take by virtue of those heart conditions.” [emphasis added] His testimony left some openings that the defense is likely to exploit when they present their case next week.

Conclusion:

The week’s testimony presented a very strong argument for the fact that Chauvin’s actions were illegal and caused George Floyd’s death. But testimony from some of those witnesses (from those witnesses who are themselves part of the law enforcement apparatus), also provided openings for the defense to attack when it presents its case next week. And as noted earlier, the scales in cases of police murder are tilted very heavily towards the police.

 

4. Out of roughly 15,000 police killings since 2005, 121 cops have been charged with manslaughter or murder. Of these, 44 were convicted, often on lesser charges. (New York Times, September 24, 2020). [back]

5. SeeAdvantage Cops! in the Injustice System of these United States.” [back]

6. Chauvin’s attorney has tried to make hay out of the fact that at a few points, Chauvin’s knee moved from neck to shoulder for a few seconds, but this in practice is a trivial point. [back]

7. A doctor specializing in the lungs and respiratory system. [back]

8. An intensive care unit doctor. [back]

9. A forensic pathologist is a doctor who performs autopsies to determine the cause of death. [back]

10. Baker also noted that no drugs were found in Floyd’s stomach, undercutting a major defense argument that Floyd died as a result of swallowing a large quantity of drugs when confronted by the police. [back]

 


 

Day 5 in the Trial of Derek Chauvin (Friday, April 2)
MPD Homicide Lieutenant Testifies: “If your knee is on someone’s neck, that can kill them.”

The main prosecution witness on Friday was Lieutenant Richard Zimmerman, the most senior officer in the Minneapolis Police Department, with 35 years on the force.

Zimmerman’s testimony was damning:

  • He described Chauvin’s violent restraint of George Floyd as “totally unnecessary ... pulling him down to the ground facedown and putting your knee on the neck for that amount of time is just uncalled for. I saw no reason why the officers felt they were in danger, if that’s what they felt. And that’s what they would have to feel to use that type of force.”
  • He said that “Once a person is cuffed, the threat level goes down all the way to, they’re cuffed, how can they really hurt you? That person is handcuffed, and the threat level is just not there.”
  • He pointed out that in the face of little or no threat from either Floyd or the bystanders, the cops were deploying the “highest tier” on the “force continuum” that all MPD cops are trained in on a yearly basis. “If your knee is on someone’s neck, that can kill them.”
  • He also said that “Once you handcuff a person you need to get them out of the prone position as quickly as possible, because it restricts their breathing.” Prone position means having someone face down, which puts pressure on their lungs. And on top of that, being handcuffed “stretches the muscles back through your chest and it makes it more difficult to breathe.” Zimmerman asserted that this is part of training and is well-known—meaning that Chauvin knew that what he was doing could kill Floyd.
  • Zimmerman also said that officers are “absolutely” trained to provide emergency medical assistance, even if an ambulance is on the way.

Coming on top of the testimony of Sergeant Pleoger (Chauvin’s supervisor) yesterday that Chauvin should have ended his knee-choke of Floyd when Floyd was not “offering any resistance,” Zimmerman went even further in driving home the fact that Chauvin was consciously employing deadly force in a way that was not justified by the situation and in violation of MPD training.

 


 

Day 4 in the Trial of Derek Chauvin (Thursday, April 1)
George Floyd, a human being full of life who died at the hands of the police

The witnesses on Thursday included George Floyd’s girlfriend, the two paramedics who attempted to resuscitate him after Derek Chauvin murdered him, and the MPD sergeant who was Chauvin’s supervisor.

  • Courteney Ross, 45, opened the day with moving testimony about her three-year relationship with George Floyd, painting a rich picture of Floyd as a human being, a sweet person full of love and full of life, in spite of being plagued with many problems. She started by telling “her favorite story” of meeting Floyd when she was at a low point in her life, while she was “fussing in a corner of the lobby” at the Salvation Army, and George coming up and offering her comfort. She talked about his love for his kids, for the outdoors and for sports, and how broken up he was when his mother died in 2018. And she bravely shared their struggle with opioid addiction, which for both of them had developed from using pills legally prescribed for chronic pain, and which they tried “many times” to shake.

    Each time Courteney started to talk about George, her face would light up with joy as if her words brought him back to life, joy which quickly turned to pain and tears as she confronted again the magnitude of her loss, and the loss to all who loved him.

    This testimony went up against the dehumanizing portrait painted by the Defense of George Floyd as a “dangerous drug addict.” Ross also made clear that in spite of his addiction and other health issues, George was very active physically, lifting weights, running, playing sports with neighborhood kids, which undercut the Defense argument that Floyd's death was caused by his own ill health and addiction, rather than by Chauvin’s nine-minute chokehold.
  • Paramedics Derek Smith and Seth Bravinder were both in the ambulance that arrived at the scene of George Floyd’s murder. Both noted that there were three cops on top of Floyd when they arrived. Bravinder saw as soon as he got there that Floyd was still in handcuffs even though “I didn’t see any breathing or movement.” Smith – working around Chauvin’s knee which was still on Floyd’s neck – searched for a pulse and couldn’t find one. “In lay terms, he was dead.”

    The paramedics first had to get Chauvin up off of Floyd, and then loaded him into an ambulance. They described a harrowing period of trying desperately to resuscitate George Floyd, but Floyd never again had a pulse. As Smith testified, “When I showed up he was deceased, and when I dropped him off at the hospital he was still in cardiac arrest.” Asked why they persisted so desperately with their resuscitation efforts, Smith said “He’s a human. I was trying to give him a second chance at life.”

Up to this point, the trial has focused on establishing the facts of what happened, and people have been given a vivid picture of the sustained violence the cops unleashed on George Floyd, and on his death during this encounter. But on Thursday attention began to turn to the legal issues that will ultimately determine whether Chauvin is found guilty by the jury.

The first of these issues is the question of whether the cops were legally justified in using the knee-to-neck restraint hold on Floyd for an extended period of time.* In this case, the Prosecution is not arguing against police violence in general because the law allows for a great deal of police violence. But it is saying that Chauvin’s actions were “excessive.” 

  • Sgt. David Pleoger (now retired) was the first witness to address this. Pleoger was the supervisor for Chauvin and the other three cops involved in Floyd’s murder. 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry called Pleoger during the incident because she was alarmed by livestream video of the arrest and felt compelled to alert Pleoger to an extraordinary situation. Pleoger went to the scene of the murder, and then to the hospital where Floyd was officially pronounced dead.

    In much of Pleoger's testimony he seemed reluctant to say anything that could counter Chauvin’s defense. Finally—over fierce objections from the Defense—the Prosecution was allowed to ask Pleoger directly when the use of force (i.e., the knee-on-neck) against Floyd should have ended, according to MPD policy. Pleoger said: “When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers.” [Emphasis added.]

    Pleoger also confirmed that cops are required to provide emergency medical aid to people in their custody when necessary—which they did not do with George Floyd.

    Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, tried to turn things around. Cross-examining Pleoger, he “creatively” attempted to show that the small crowd of people demanding that the police not murder Floyd were the reason that the police did not give Floyd medical attention. As NPR reported, Nelson asked Pleoger "If during an arrest, a crowd of bystanders grows increasingly volatile ... should an officer focus on the arrest or the crowd?" Or, "if Pleoger were involved in a gun battle and a person was injured, would he deal with threat or perform CPR on the imaginary victim?"

    But, to be real, this was not the situation. Nelson's imaginary violent mob actually consisted of 12-14 unarmed people, (mostly) on the sidewalk, including three high school girls and a 9-year-old, a 61-year-old-man and a Minneapolis firefighter, none of whom were threatening or physically confronting the cops.

* Note: The fact that something may be legally justified in an oppressive society such as this one does not mean it is right, but it is the focus of the trial. [back]

 


 

Eyewitness Charles McMillian, a 61-year-old Black man from the neighborhood, watches pig videocam and breaks down on the stand.

Day 3 of the Trial:

Today’s testimony was a study in the contrast between the mind-numbing cruelty and indifference of the pigs who murdered George Floyd, and the humanity of George Floyd himself, as well as a wide array of people he encountered in the final hour of his life.

In store surveillance video from Cup Foods* that was entered as evidence on Wednesday, Floyd “chatted with a store clerk about playing football. He grabbed a banana off a shelf, flipped through a wad of cash, and hugged and exchanged pleasantries with a woman, laughing with his hand on her back.” [New York Times]

Christopher Martin, a 19-year-old Cup Foods employee, said that Floyd was “friendly” and “talkative.” Floyd asked to buy cigarettes, paying with a twenty-dollar bill that Martin immediately thought was counterfeit. But he also thought that Floyd was unaware that the bill was bad and so he (Martin) initially decided he would accept it, knowing that it would later be docked from his own pay. He said he felt like doing Floyd—a stranger—“a favor.”

Later Martin had second thoughts and reported the counterfeit bill to his supervisor, who insisted that Martin and another employee go out to Floyd’s car and ask him to come in and talk to the supervisor. Floyd and the two other people in his car declined to do that, and after a second attempt, the supervisor called the cops.

Now flash forward to the arrival of the pigs. In video taken by eyewitness Christopher Belfrey and even more damningly in the body cam video of the four MPD pigs who murdered Floyd that was entered in evidence, these videos reveal aggressive cruelty from the opening moments. Even though Floyd was only suspected of a misdemeanor and had not behaved in a threatening manner to anyone, two cops go up to his car, bang on the widow with nightsticks, and almost immediately pull a gun on him. Floyd, clearly terrified, pleads repeatedly “please don’t shoot me.” Cops handcuff him, even though they could have issued a citation. Then they violently force him into a patrol car even as he cries and pleads that he is claustrophobic. And then we see it all again, from the angle of the pigs themselves, the slow grinding out of Floyd’s life, the complete disregard for the pleas of bystanders to save him.

From the opening moments of arriving at the scene the cops demonstrated aggressive cruelty towards George Floyd.

Charles McMillian, a 61-year-old Black man from the neighborhood, saw Floyd being forced into the patrol car, and his initial reaction was to try to convince Floyd to go along. As he explained in court, he told Floyd that “you can’t win” – meaning the best hope for surviving the incident in one piece was to do whatever the cops said. McMillian persisted with this advice for a while. Even when the three cops were on top of Floyd, holding him down and choking him, McMillian testified that “I’m trying to tell him, just cooperate with them. Get up, get in the car. Go where you can win.”

But soon it became clear that this strategy would not work. "Even I said to the officer, I said, 'man, he said he can't breathe.' They said, 'if he keep talking, well, he can breathe,'" They kept on with their torture. McMillian said that "When the paramedics arrived for Mr. Floyd, I knew then in my mind and in my instinct, it was over for Mr. Floyd. That he was dead,"

Watching the video in court, at the point where Floyd was calling out for his mama, McMillian broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, saying “I couldn’t help but feel helpless. I don’t have a mama either, but I understand him.”

Shortly after the murder, McMillian saw Chauvin as he was getting in his patrol car to leave. Referencing an earlier encounter, he said “‘Five days ago, I told you the other day to go home to your family safe and let the next person go home to their family safe. But today I gotta look at you as a maggot.’”

 

* A busy “groceries plus” store on the corner where Floyd was murdered. [back]


 

March 31, 2021
Testimony of Minneapolis Fire Fighter Reveals Pigs’
Depraved Indifference to the Life of George Floyd

Genevieve Hansen, 27, is a white fire-fighter with extensive training as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). Hansen indicated that she has been a first responder on at least 100 medical emergencies .She testified on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Out for a walk on May 25, trying to chill out after her 48-hour shift, Hansen saw flashing lights and went to the scene where George Floyd was being brutalized. She quickly assessed “that [Floyd] was in an altered state of consciousness. What I needed to know was if he had a pulse." She identified herself to the cops as a Minneapolis fire-fighter, asking if they had taken his pulse, and then urged, insisted and pleaded with them that they do so.

Hansen saw Floyd’s condition deteriorating. "He wasn't moving, and he was cuffed. And three grown men putting all of their weight on somebody is too much." She offered to provide treatment, or to walk the cops through treatment. In return Chauvin threatened to Mace her, and she was belittled by Officer Thao, who she recalled "said something along the lines of, 'If you really are a Minneapolis firefighter, you would know better than to get involved.'"

Hansen said that she became “totally distressed” realizing that the cops would not allow Floyd to receive medical treatment. And she was outraged by Thao’s comment: “I got there and I could have given medical assistance. That's exactly what I should have done." Finally an ambulance arrived, but Floyd was apparently already dead. Hansen called 911 to report that she had just seen a man murdered.*

Derek Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, tried to shake, provoke or discredit Hansen. But she stood up with great courage against this and came back with both reason and defiance. Regarding Nelson’s contention that she should have waited quietly for the ambulance, Hansen said “There was a man being killed. I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was denied that right.” When Nelson tried to denigrate her for being angry and upset at the scene, she shot back defiantly: “I don’t know if you’ve seen anybody be killed, but it’s upsetting.”

 

* Hansen also testified that after the ambulance left she remained on the scene for a while out of fear that the remaining cops might attack other Black men who had been in the crowd protesting Floyd’s murder. [back]

 


 

March 31, 2021
Trial Opens with Devastating Portrayals of Cold-Blooded Murder

Since opening arguments in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin finished on Monday, the jury—and the world—has heard from eight witnesses. While they are very different from each other—ranging from a Minneapolis fire-fighter to an MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter to a nine-year-old girl—they tell an incredibly consistent and horrifying story of three pigs choking the life out of George Floyd for over nine minutes while a fourth pig held back a small crowd of distraught and angry people who demanded that they stop.

Almost every witness was in tears at one point or another as they relived the trauma of that day.

Here are brief reports on some of the witnesses:

  • Jena Scurry, the 911 dispatcher who sent the cops to the scene where Floyd was murdered. She watched the live stream of the cops from her workstation and said that they were sitting on Floyd’s motionless body for so long that she thought the screen must be frozen. When she found out it wasn’t, she became alarmed and called the cops’ supervising sergeant to get him involved, saying “You can call me a snitch if you want to...”.
  • Jena Scurry testifies at Derek Chauvin trial.

  • Alisha Oyler, a 23-year-old white woman working at a gas station across the street, who left work to film what was happening, “Because I always see the police messing with people and it’s wrong, it’s not right.”
  • Donald Williams, a 33-year-old Black MMA fighter and security professional, was coming back from a fishing trip with his son. Based on his martial arts training he quickly assessed that not only did Chauvin have Floyd in a “blood choke” (a choke that cuts off the flow of blood—and therefore oxygen—to the brain through pressure on the neck) but also that Chauvin kept ratcheting up the choke through a method called “shimmying” that increases the pressure on the carotid artery. Williams also observed the stages of Floyd’s passage from extreme distress to losing consciousness to death, which Williams called “torture.” "You could see that he was going through tremendous pain ...You could see his eyes slowly rolling back in his head...”
  • Donald Williams testifies at Chauvin trial.

  • Darnella Frazier, the then-17-year-old Black girl who courageously shot the video that told the whole world of this murder. She was at Cup Foods with her 9-year-old cousin (who also testified) buying her treats. Seeing what was happening Darnella hustled her cousin into the store so she wouldn’t see it and then went herself to film it. Frazier described Floyd as "scared," "terrified," "begging for his life." "It wasn't right. He was suffering. He was in pain. I knew it was wrong. We all knew it was wrong."
  • Alyssa Funari, an 18-year-old white girl and classmate of Darnella’s was there with a younger friend (who also testified). She told the Court: "'He looked like he was fighting to breathe. I slowly knew that if he were to be held down much longer, he wouldn’t live." Then, in tears, she said she felt she was failing because she wanted to intervene but was unable to because "there was a higher power there"–meaning the cop “controlling the scene.” "There was nothing I could do as a bystander there. I couldn't do physically what I wanted to do." (USA Today)
  • Genevieve Hansen, 27, a white fire-fighter trying to chill on her day off. She came upon the scene and immediately saw that Floyd’s life was in danger, identified herself to the cops and asked, urged, begged and pleaded with them to take Floyd’s pulse, to get off of him, to let her provide medical treatment... for which she was taunted, insulted and threatened with Mace. She spoke to what she saw, as a Firefighter and EMT, and saw George Floyd was dying in front of her. The Defense was not able to get her to back down from her account. In the days ahead, we will be posting a more in-depth report on her testimony.
  • Genevieve Hansen testifies at Derek Chauvin's trial

In the face of all this, Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, tried to flip the world on its head and imply that this small crowd of bystanders pleading for Floyd’s life somehow caused Chauvin to murder Floyd. In this twisted view, people trying to save the life of a fellow human being are “angry” and “dangerous,” while murdering cops are good people just doing their job. Cross-examining Hansen, Nelson had the nerve to compare the people defending Floyd with a “hypothetical” crowd of people trying to stop fire-fighters from putting out a fire. These pigs are saying that just as people shouldn’t interfere with firefighters doing their job (putting out fires), no one should interfere with the cops doing their “job”—oppressing, beating down and even murdering the people!

What’s It All About?

Despite the terms of the legal trial and courthouse confined to just being about what happened on May 25, 2020, the larger context and what emerges through the testimony is that the murder of George Floyd was not an “aberration” but a concentration of the role of the police and the treatment of Black people. Quite a few witnesses (Black and white) spoke to this in one way or another, but none more powerfully than Darnella Frazier, who closed her testimony with these words:

When I look at George Floyd, ... I look at my dad. I look at my brothers. I look at my cousins, my uncles because they are all Black. I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them....

It's been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life. But it's like — it's not what I should have done, it's what he [Chauvin] should have done.

Darnella Frazier testifies at Derek Chauvin trial

And it’s about what we do. As we posed: will all those who were part of the Beautiful Rising—in the face of police repression and vigilante violence—and all those who care about the police brutality and murder of Black and Brown people, stay vigilant? Will they have their voices heard during this trial, in diverse, creative and bold ways, from the pulpits and from the stage, on media and in the streets?

 


 

March 30, 2021

Minneapolis on Edge as Trial of Pig Chauvin Starts—People Demand “Justice for George Floyd!”

Minneapolis remains on edge. After the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, tens of thousands took to the streets across the country and the world. Now, on the eve of opening arguments in the trial of the pig, Derek Chauvin who murdered George Floyd, people took up different actions—to honor the life of George Floyd, demand justice, and call attention to this important case.

Family members of other Black men killed by cops attended a prayer service, including Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner who was killed in NY with a pig’s chokehold in 2014; and the family of Daniel Prude who was murdered by the Rochester, NY cops putting pressure on his head and body—just three months before George Floyd was killed. George Floyd’s brother Terrence talked about the emotional experience of seeing cops who have killed Black men, going free—like the pig murderers of Sean Bell in Queens, NY, where Terrence lived at the time. “To see no justice in that situation, it made me furious, he said, “We need justice, we need it now!” Another brother of George Floyd, Philonise, said, “He [Chauvin] killed my brother in broad daylight, it was a modern day lynching.”

Dozens of local organizations also rallied at the Minneapolis Government Center on Sunday. Chauntyll Allen of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities said, “We want to give folks a space to come together and talk about what we’ve been experiencing through the jury selection process. And we want to let the system know... We are not sleeping. We’re paying attention and we’re here until the end.” A march downtown temporarily forced light rail service to stop when protesters blocked the tracks at two stations. People then rallied at the Hennepin County Government Center (where the Chauvin trial is taking place), chanting and shouting at the Minnesota National Guard troops stationed inside.

On Monday morning, before the trial started, the Floyd family, Floyd family attorney Ben Crump, Reverend Al Sharpton and others took a knee outside the courthouse for eight minutes and 46 seconds—to mark the time Chauvin pressed his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing him. At a news conference just before this, Ben Crump talked about what he thinks this trial means for the Floyd family and the country, saying, “George Floyd galvanized cities all across America and all across the world when that video, that video of torture was viewed millions and millions of times.” He said now, “The whole world is watching.”


On Monday morning, before the trial started, the Floyd family, Floyd family attorney Ben Crump, Reverend Al Sharpton and others took a knee outside the courthouse for eight minutes and 46 seconds—to mark the time Chauvin pressed his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing him.

Monday evening, after the close of the first day of the trial, there was another protest in downtown Minneapolis, organized by over 20 groups. People marched behind a banner that read, “Justice for George Floyd and all stolen lives.” People are calling for the conviction of Derek Chauvin with the maximum penalties.

The city is saying it will respect people’s right to protest. Meanwhile, officials are putting in place means to repress the people. There is fencing and concrete barriers around the County Government Center, Minnesota National Guard are stationed outside the courthouse, and nearby businesses have been boarded up. Police have said they are planning on increasing their presence with the beginning of the trial.

People in Minneapolis and around the country and the world have their eyes on this trial and are demanding, “Justice for George Floyd!” Stay tuned at revcom.us for coverage of the trial and protests.

 


 

March 22, 2021

The Need to Stay Vigilant
Recent Developments in the Trial of Pig Chauvin for the Murder of George Floyd

Editors’ Note: This article captures recent developments shaping the legal terrain in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the brutal murder of George Floyd. For all those who participated in the Beautiful Rising last summer, and for all those horrified by the oppression of Black people and the epidemic of police brutality and murder, it is important to follow the trial and stay vigilant. Justice for George Floyd matters! And is far from guaranteed, despite the uprising or the promises and anxiousness (real or pretended) of liberal politicians.

Introduction

First, let’s remember the original incident:

On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis cops approached George Floyd in his car on suspicion of using a counterfeit 20-dollar bill to buy cigarettes. Almost immediately one cop pointed a gun at Floyd. Cops screamed contradictory orders at Floyd as he begged them not to shoot him. Within minutes, Floyd was handcuffed and forced face down on the ground, three cops on top of him, including Derek Chauvin, who put his knee on Floyd’s neck in a hold that restricts blood flow to the brain. Chauvin kept it there for five minutes as Floyd pleaded for his life, crying “I can’t breathe,” and then for another four minutes after Floyd was unresponsive, and even after another cop was unable to find a pulse.

If you saw this, you might conclude that a Black man who posed no threat to others or himself had his life stolen for no good reason. And you would be right. And you might conclude that the cops who did this must be held fully accountable, not only because of the injustice done to George Floyd and his loved ones, but also because of the chilling message that it would send to pigs everywhere if they faced no serious consequences. And you would be right again.

And you might conclude that even in the United States, with its sickening record of allowing killer cops to walk free again and again, that in this case, with a crime is so brutal, facts so plain, and all caught on video that drew millions into the streets in protest... that this time the cops will be convicted of murder and given lengthy jail terms.

But this is by no means certain.

Selecting—and “Shaping”—a Jury

The pretrial stage of the trial of Derek Chauvin is drawing to a close. It seems likely jury selection will be completed early this week. In addition, on March 19 presiding Judge Cahill ruled on a number of pending pretrial motions. So, barring the unexpected, the actual trial (presentation of witnesses and evidence) will begin on March 29.

The jury so far is reasonably diverse in terms of age, gender and race. There are five men and eight women. Eight are under 50 years old, four are in their 50s and one in her 60s. Four are Black; two are mixed race, seven are white. And generally they come across as well-meaning and decent people, including many who say that racism and discrimination are real problems in the U.S. and that police sometimes treat people of color unfairly.

But through the process of jury selection, two things have been going on.

First, some potential jurors have been “weeded out.” For instance, the judge has dismissed people who said they had intense emotional reactions to the video of Floyd’s murder. The defense seems to be dismissing people who have had personal experience with how police treat Black and Brown people. On the other hand, a number of jurors have been seated who have cops as close relatives, and/or have strong feelings that “the police keep us safe.” In other words, the jury seems to be made up mainly of people who appear to buy into the system’s narrative that police are good people doing a tough and dangerous job, but “they are only human” and may make mistakes in the heat of the moment.

Second, the judge and defense keep hammering at—and getting jurors to verbally commit to—the idea that they are “finders of fact” and not of law, and that they must be ready to vote to acquit on the basis of the law as the judge instructs them on it, and not their emotions. This may sound good on the surface, but the problem is that the law in the U.S. (as explained in our March 15 “Advantage Cops...” article) is designed to give very wide latitude to cops to violently oppress people in the service of their role as enforcers of the unjust order of capitalism-imperialism.

For instance, Chauvin used an extremely dangerous knee-to-neck restraint that is legal for Minneapolis police to use under some circumstances. So you can already envision the defense argument that Chauvin was using a legal restraint in a “difficult” situation. And then the jurors are boxed in to arguing about whether Chauvin exercised good or bad judgment in using it and for how long ... which leaves a lot of room for any juror inclined to sympathize with police to argue “well, it was a tough call, and maybe he should have stopped sooner, but we weren’t there ...” Or in other words, “don’t believe your lying eyes; it wasn’t murder, it was a ‘mistake.’”

Cahill’s Rulings on Pretrial Motions

On March 19, Judge Cahill ruled on several pretrial motions. First was a defense motion to admit as evidence reports and video from an incident on May 6, 2019 in which Minneapolis cops had pulled over Floyd on suspicion of drug activity. In that incident too, the cops quickly and for no valid reason pulled guns on Floyd, dragged him out of the car, and restrained him, while Floyd begged for his life and said he couldn’t breathe. The defense argument for introducing this incident was so slippery and convoluted it is impossible to sum up, but the prosecution correctly characterized it as “a desperate attempt” to “smear Mr. Floyd’s character.”

Nonetheless, Judge Cahill ruled to allow some of this into evidence. Cahill said that as a result of this incident—in which the cops allege that Floyd swallowed drugs when confronted by the police—his blood pressure shot up to a dangerously high level, and a medic said that he could die without treatment. So, Cahill ruled, this was relevant to one of the defense’s main potential arguments about the 2020 killing. As reported in the news, the defense may argue that Floyd died of heart failure due to a drug overdose suffered when he swallowed drugs to avoid arrest—one of the earlier rationalizations floated by the pigs for George Floyd’s death.

This ruling was unjust on two levels. First of all, in January Cahill ruled that most of Chauvin’s record of at least 15 civilian complaints, and his involvement in three shootings, one of which was fatal, could not be admitted at trial2. These records are closed, but if they do establish a pattern of brutality, that would obviously be relevant to the trial.

Secondly, and even worse, by declaring that Floyd’s high blood pressure in 2019 is relevant to his death in 2020, Cahill is essentially validating the defense’s ludicrous contention that Floyd died of a drug overdose. For one thing, there is no evidence that Floyd’s high blood pressure in 2019 was caused by drugs—it could just as well have been caused by being brutalized and terrorized at gunpoint by pigs. And there is even less evidence that Floyd’s death in 2020 was caused by drugs. (See Court TV interview with renowned pathologist Cyril Wecht.3) This is once again setting up a situation where the jurors are being fed “reasonable doubt” that has no basis in reality.

At the same time, Cahill ruled against the defense’s very insistent motions for the trial to be moved out of Minneapolis and/or postponed, because pretrial publicity (videos of the murder, protests, and the recent agreement by the City of Minneapolis’ to pay Floyd’s family 27 million dollars to settle their federal civil rights lawsuit) made it impossible to seat an impartial jury. Cahill has consistently stated that there is no place they could move the trial and no amount of delay that would substantially eliminate the problem of pretrial publicity in such a high-profile case. But that it could be—and is being—dealt with through a rigorous jury selection process.

It is important to keep in mind that while the prosecution, judge, and in this instance, the defense, are all—ultimatelyrepresentatives of the same system, a system that depends on the police and all their brutality to enforce its rule, there are contradictions within all this, and a lot will depend on the evidence, the arguments and back-and-forth of the actual trial, and how well they are fought for—all in the context of the larger and changing political climate. The outcome of the trial is not determined. The Beautiful Rising, the struggle of broad numbers of people who went into the streets to demand justice, did shake this system. Now, as this trial proceeds and there is potentially further exposure of the nature and workings of this system, what is at stake is not only whether Chauvin is convicted and goes to prison, but the larger struggle to end this oppression once and for all through an actual revolution. This poses two challenges:

First, will all those who were part of the Beautiful Rising—in the face of police repression and vigilante violence—and all those who care about the police brutality and murder of Black and Brown people, stay vigilant and have their voices heard during this trial, in diverse, creative and bold ways, from the pulpits and from the stage, on media and in the streets?

Second, will those same masses be challenged to grapple with the revolutionary analysis of Bob Avakian (See Bob Avakian For The Liberation of Black People And The Emancipation Of All Humanity) as to why this deeply-rooted, centuries-old, horrific oppression cannot be ended under this system, no matter how hard people protest and struggle, unless and until that fight is transformed into one that becomes part of building for an actual revolution to overthrow this system, and that CAN actually END this oppression?


2. Cahill is admitting evidence from two incidents that show Chauvin was aware the knee-to-neck hold could be fatal. [back]

3. Wecht points out that while Floyd had a dangerous amount of drugs in his stomach, drugs must be absorbed into the bloodstream before they can cause an overdose. To this we will add that even if Chauvin’s claim were true, and Floyd lost consciousness because of drugs, and not because Chauvin had been choking him for five minutes, Chauvin continued to choke him for another four minutes while he was unconscious. That’s still murder! [back]

 


 

March 15, 2021

As Chauvin goes to trial for the murder of George Floyd:
Advantage Cops! in the Injustice System of these United States

Last spring, millions of people rose up in protest against the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black and Brown men and women brutalized or killed by this system’s pigs. In the vast majority of these police murders, the cops are not even charged, and in the handful of cases in which they are, most of these pigs are given a slap on the wrist or let go entirely.1

Even the very laws are set up to advantage killer cops. Some examples:

Jury selection in this trial involved prospective jurors filling out a long questionnaire about their views on a wide range of issues related to the case, and then going through “voir dire”—a process in which the judge and the attorneys for the defense and for the prosecution question prospective jurors to make sure the jury is “fair and unbiased.”

Jurors—particularly people of color—have been repeatedly disqualified for things like having “an intense emotional reaction” to the video of Floyd’s death. But think about it—who wouldn’t have an intense emotional reaction to seeing a defenseless man brutally killed? Hardcore racists? People who have no sense of human empathy at all? That is not a “fair and impartial” juror, that is a juror primed to acquit the defendant.

Another example is that jurors are asked (on the questionnaire) to respond to the following statement: “Because law enforcement officers have such dangerous jobs, it is not right to second guess decisions they make while on duty.”

The problem here is that this statement is not some random opinion—it is a key doctrine of U.S. law when dealing with charges of police misconduct. This statement is drawn from a ruling by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 in Graham v. Connor, as follows:

The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.

And the ruling goes on:

With respect to a claim of excessive force, the same standard of reasonableness at the moment applies: Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers ... violates the Fourth Amendment. The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation. [All emphasis added]

The meaning of this doctrine is that jurors are instructed by the judge when they go to deliberations to give very wide latitude to police violence. So even if the video, the bystanders, and experts all show that George Floyd was unarmed, not aggressive, not a danger to himself or others, and that there was no good reason to subject him to violent restraints, much less to kill him... jurors are supposed to imagine themselves as cops dealing with a “dangerous” situation and making a “split second decision.”

The effect of this doctrine is that even in the rare cases where cops are charged and prosecuted, it is very difficult to get a conviction, in spite of all the evidence.

The police play a crucial role and must not be discouraged or punished for exercising extreme violence in the service of that role. As BA puts it:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

BAsicsfrom the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, 1:24

 


1. Out of roughly 15,000 police killings since 2005, 121 cops have been charged with manslaughter or murder. Of these, 44 were convicted, often on lesser charges. (New York TimesSeptember 24, 2020).  [back]

 


 

March 9, 2021

People Take to the Streets, Demanding Conviction of Killer Cop, Justice for George Floyd

May 25, 2020: People watched in horror as a Minneapolis pig, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while other cops joined in this modern-day lynching or kept bystanders away. People screamed in horror as George Floyd cried out, “I can’t breathe.” Millions would see the view of this cold-blooded murder. For weeks people all over the country and the world took to the streets in sustained protest. The trial of pig Chauvin has now begun, on March 8. People are taking to the streets once again. And the powers that be have geared up to come down with repression. Barricades and barbed wire have been put up around the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall. And other measures are being taken to protect other buildings like Chauvin’s pig precinct. Security measures will also be going up around other city infrastructure, such as the police precinct buildings. The Minnesota National Guard has been called in to stand by.


Sunday, March 7. Many hundreds gathered in Minneapolis, demanding justice for George Floyd. People carried a white coffin as the protest marched in silence through downtown. They held photos of George Floyd and flowers. There was a scroll of the names of more than 470 people who have been killed by Minnesota cops, including other murders that Chauvin was involved in. There was a banner with George Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe.” The music of Bob Marley, Prince, and Sam Cooke filled the streets. When the march got to the Hennepin County Government Center plaza, where the trial was set to begin, people put down the coffin and placed flowers around it.

About 150 people, including many family members of people killed by the police, marched and rallied in St. Paul, at the house of Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Organizers of the protest, from Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, are pushing for the reopening and investigations of other cases of people murdered by the police.

In Boston, people rallied for George Floyd and also to demand justice for people murdered by pigs in the Boston area. Some 200-300 gathered for a second rally in the afternoon outside Boston City Hall. People demanded that Chauvin be convicted of second-degree murder, but many said they believe the jury will end up acquitting him and that is why people have to keep protesting.


Monday, March 8. Hundreds gathered again at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis as the trial began—demanding the conviction of Chauvin. People chanted, “Say his name, George Floyd,” “The whole world is watching,” “No more killer cops!” and “Ain’t no power like the power of the people!” 

As night fell in Seattle, members of the Seattle Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression gathered in Westlake Park. They were demanding justice for George Floyd, but many don’t think this will be delivered at Chauvin’s trial. A speaker at the rally said, “We see these murders in the streets and we see officers get off, and we’re not holding our breath for a guilty verdict.”

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, protesters who gathered downtown clashed with police who said the sound equipment was too loud and people were blocking traffic. As people were arrested, others chanted, “Let them go.” Eight people were charged with obstructing traffic, causing a public disturbance, and refusing the command of a police officer.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/652/bob-avakian-racial-oppression-can-be-ended-en.html

RACIAL OPPRESSION
CAN BE ENDED—
BUT NOT UNDER THIS SYSTEM

by Bob Avakian

| revcom.us

 

Everywhere we go, and in everything we do, we revcoms boldly put forward: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

This is not just a slogan—though it is a very good and very important slogan. It is the concentrated statement of a very profound truth, which is also captured in our slogan: This System Cannot Be Reformed—It Must Be Overthrown!

But what do we mean in saying that this system cannot be reformed, and why is that true? In Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, I speak to the “5 STOPS”—deep and defining contradictions of this system—and all the terrible suffering to which this system of capitalism-imperialism subjects the masses of humanity, and why all this cannot be ended under this system.1 Here I am going to focus on the systematic and murderous oppression of Black people, and racial oppression overall—which has been sharply exposed with the outpouring of outrage sparked by the murder of George Floyd—and discuss the basic reasons why this oppression cannot be eliminated under this system, but can (only) be ended through revolution.

The continuing terror and murder carried out by the police particularly against Black people (as well as Latinos and Native Americans) is not fundamentally because the police are racist—although, speaking of the police overall, that is certainly true. The fact that the police are racist is itself an expression and a function of the fact that terror and murder against Black people (and other people of color) is required by this system—is necessary in order to maintain the “order” of this all-around oppressive system—and this would be much more difficult to carry out if the police were not racist.

The Fundamental Causes of This Oppression

But, going deeper, why is this terror and murder necessary for this system, in order to ensure its “order” and its ongoing functioning? The answer is that, from the beginning of this country, white supremacy has been poured into the foundation and built into the institutions and the ongoing functioning of this system. Specifically with regard to Black people, the centuries of oppression they have suffered—from slavery days to the days of Jim Crow segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror, to the present time, with the continuing systematic discrimination against Black people, in every part of society (employment, housing, education, health care, and on and on)—all this has resulted in a situation where masses of Black people today, and in particular youth, have been robbed of a means for a decent life, with many maintained in conditions of desperate poverty and deprivation. This, again, is not simply because those who are in the seats of power and deciding government policy are racist (though that is true of most of them). It is fundamentally because of the nature of the system itself and the historically-evolved requirements and dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

Now, that is a big mouthful (“the nature of the system itself and the historically-evolved requirements and dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism”), so let’s break it down. This country was founded on the enslavement of masses of African people, as well as the genocidal subjugation of Native Americans and theft of their land (and its further development involved the conquest of huge parts of Mexico, reducing people of Mexican origin to second-class status as well). This required the propagation of racism to “justify” all the horrific oppression. Then, when the Civil War broke out over the question of slavery, and even when slavery was abolished as a result of that Civil War, given that white supremacy had been, and remained, such a crucial part of the “glue” holding the country together, the only way to “put it back together,” on the foundation of the capitalist system, was to once again forcefully assert white supremacy. That is why, very soon after the end of the Civil War, Black people were subjected to the system of Jim Crow segregation (backed up by systematic terror, punctuated by repeated lynchings), while the genocidal aggression against and theft of the land of Native Americans was stepped up, and immigrants from Mexico were subjected to ongoing discrimination and violence by the enforcers of this system.

Generations later, during World War 2, because of the needs of the rulers of this country in waging that war, large numbers of Black people were able to migrate to the North and get jobs in industries that served the war effort. And then, largely as a result of the fact that the U.S. was on the winning side of that war—and the fact that the war was not fought on its territory and it experienced no damage to its industrial facilities and infrastructure—there was an expansion of the economy in this country after the war. In this situation, significant numbers of Black people were able to continue getting employment in large numbers, including some better-paying jobs in factories (making steel, cars, and so on).

But, at the same time, because of the white supremacy built into the system over centuries—and the fact that really moving to overcome this would tear apart the fabric of the system and crack its very foundation—Black people continued to be subjected to systematic discrimination, including in employment (with “last hired and first fired” an accurate description of the situation of Black people with regard to employment). To cite another ugly example, government policy with regard to housing involved conscious, deliberate discrimination: after World War 2, loans were given to white people to enable them to buy their own homes, and increasingly move to the suburbs, while this was denied to Black veterans (and others) and instead Black people were piled into segregated housing projects in the inner cities. And this was part of the continuing systematic segregation and discrimination to which Black people were subjected.

As a result of the Civil Rights movement and then the more radical Black liberation movement in the 1960s, some concessions were made, and there has been an increase in the number of “Black faces in high places” and a growth of the Black middle class, although their situation is far more precarious than that of white middle class people (something which was cruelly demonstrated in the 2008 crisis, which resulted in large numbers of Black people losing their homes and much, if not all, of any savings they had). And, in more recent times, huge numbers of factories and other sources of jobs for people in the inner city have closed down, often moving their operations elsewhere—particularly to countries in the Third World (Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia) where the desperate situation of masses of people, including children, has left them vulnerable to being super-exploited, at near-starvation wages.

All this, together with increased automation and “cybernation” of production, when combined with the ongoing segregation and discrimination built into this system, has led to a situation where huge numbers of Black people, and especially youth, have, for generations now, not only been unemployed but are left with no prospect of meaningful employment in the regular (“formal”) economy.

The “Toxic Combination” of Capitalism and Racism

Here we see the “toxic combination” of systematic, historically-evolved segregation and discrimination, enforced with brutal violence by the powers-that-be, together with the basic functioning and requirements of the capitalist economy—which involves the greater and greater concentration not just of wealth, but of the means of production (technology, factories and other physical structures, sources of raw materials, and so on) in the possession and under the control of large-scale capitalist enterprises and financial institutions, which are locked in cut-throat competition with each other, not just within a particular country but increasingly on a global scale, and are therefore driven to ruthlessly exploit people and constantly search for ways to even more viciously super-exploit large numbers of desperate people, including children, in a worldwide network of sweatshops. (For example, cell phones and computers depend on the mineral coltan which is mined under horrific conditions by people, including large numbers of children, in the Congo in Africa; and a large part of the clothes that are bought in the U.S. are produced by huge numbers of women working in horrific conditions in the Asian country of Bangladesh.)

In this situation, and especially with the growth of the international drug trade, and its deep penetration into the U.S., many of those, in particular youth, who found themselves locked out of the “formal economy,” have turned to drug-dealing, as well as other criminal activity—something which has been encouraged by government policy that has actually resulted in the movement of large amounts of drugs into the inner city, even as the authorities seize on this situation to carry out systematic repression against the youth in particular, with such things as “stop and frisk.” The result of all this has been a huge increase in mass incarceration, as well as the continual murder of large numbers of “minority” youth by police.

At the same time, the way that the U.S. has continued to dominate Mexico, as well as other parts of Latin America, and to distort the economies, corrupt the governments and bring ruin to the social relations among the people in those countries—all this has resulted in large numbers of people being forced to flee those countries and migrate to the U.S., where they are vulnerable to being viciously exploited in factories and farmlands, and other parts of the economy of this country. And large numbers of the younger generations of these immigrants have also formed (or joined existing) gangs and become involved in the drug trade and related crime.

More recently, however, in at least many of the inner-city neighborhoods, for a number of reasons—including the fact that the “crack epidemic” had taken a terrible toll on people—there has been a decrease in the trade in cocaine and the high profits this brought for the relatively small number of “higher-ups” in the drug trade hierarchy. For a period, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, given their desolation and desperation, the drug trade was a “major employer” of youth in the inner cities, female as well as male, and a major source of at least a basic income for many (even if the promise of “getting rich” remained an illusion for most). Now, even this source of employment and income—as perverse and harmful as it is—has dried up or greatly diminished for many. This has further added to the miserable situation of massive numbers of inner-city youth in particular who have no future—under this system—no future but prison, an early death or a life of desperate hustling, in one form or another, in the attempt to survive and care for loved ones.

All this cannot be changed—cannot be transformed and overcome—within the confines of this system. Despite what any politician (“liberal” or outright fascist like Trump) may say, there is no way that this system could “reverse itself,” bring large parts of industry back to the inner city and provide meaningful employment, with “a living wage” for all those it is now depriving of this. Even if the government had the “political will” to try to do this, doing so (with the employment of millions of formerly unemployed or “underemployed” people at a “living wage”) would seriously undermine the competitive positions of American capitalists in the global economy. And, if they attempted to do this while at the same time trying to seriously overcome the whole historically-evolved relations of white supremacy, this would completely disrupt the social “cohesion” that “holds this country together,” with white supremacy a crucial part of this.

It is one thing for “good-hearted people”—and in particular many white people—to say (and sincerely mean) that it is wrong for the police to just wantonly, cruelly murder people, and to mobilize in protest against this. But imagine what would happen if, under this system and with the way its economy functions, the government tried to adopt policies that would deal with the long-term unemployment of Black people in the inner cities, who have not only been denied jobs but also the training for the jobs that do exist—imagine what the reaction would be of many white people who would in fact lose their better-off positions as a result of these policies. Imagine what would happen if these kinds of policies were applied not just to employment, but to education, and on down the line. (We have already seen the “backlash” that was fostered in response to even minimal efforts to implement “affirmative action” programs in employment and education.)

Again, this is not simply a matter that “white people are racist.” Many are racist, although many do not want to be. But the deeper problem is that given the basic way the capitalist economy works, and how everyone is encouraged to be “out for yourself”—and, more fundamentally, the fact that people are actually driven and compelled to compete with each other in every significant part of life, including employment and education—it would actually create destructive chaos and conflict among the people, and tear apart the “cohesion” of the society, to try to really and fully undo and overcome the reality and effects of centuries of racist oppression—under this system.

This most definitely and emphatically is NOT an argument for holding back from struggling against every form of discrimination, inequality and oppression in every part of society. Fighting back against oppression, and wrenching concessions from the powers-that-be, is very important—in enabling masses of people to feel their own strength in standing up and standing together in opposing oppression, and drawing people from all parts of society to join in this struggle—rather than feeling isolated, beaten down and hopeless. And it is important in contributing to the ability of masses of people to gain the understanding and build up the organization necessary for the final all-out struggle to bring down the whole oppressive system. But that is just the point—as important as these mass struggles are, if they are not built toward, and do not finally get to the point of, taking on the whole system, with the aim of bringing it down, and bringing something much better into being, then, as I have emphasized before, even where concessions are won, “so long as this system remains in power, there will be powerful forces who will move to attack and undermine, and seek to reverse, even these partial gains,” and people will remain oppressed and once more weighed down with a feeling of demoralization, as they are once again divided and pitted against each other.2

The basic and crucial point is that the fight against racial oppression (and all oppression) must not remain confined within the limits of this system, and instead must be carried out and carried forward as part of the overall struggle toward the goal of abolishing this system. The fact that this oppression cannot be abolished under this system is not a reason for giving up in despair—it is a compelling reason why this system must be and can be abolishedand it is the fundamental basis for why people can be won to wage the revolutionary struggle to finally bring it down!

All this is why there will not be any real and meaningful move by the powers-that-be (and any of its politicians and political parties) to overcome the centuries-long experience and legacy of brutal racist oppression and the situation it has led to today, where millions and millions of Black youth and other youth of color have no prospect of a decent future—under this system.

As I have pointed out before: “So what does this system do with youth that have no future and no prospects? It contains them.... contains them violently.”3

And all this is why there is systemic and systematic police terror directed at Black people and other people of color. It is why this is brought down not only on the youth (and others) in the inner cities, but why it can and does lead to harassment, brutality and murder of any Black person, anywhere, even those with more education and status in society. If the system needs the police to “violently contain” the masses of people in the inner cities—and it does—then this is bound to “spill over” and be applied to Black people, and other people of color, more generally. The police have neither the interests, nor the ability, nor the will to make distinctions between “good” ....... (fill in the blank as to what racist terms they use) and “bad” ones. And, beyond that, the “random” nature of the brutality and murder makes it all the more effective in terrorizing people—making everyone, even the “better off,” feel, correctly, that they could be a target of this.

There IS a Solution: Revolution and a Radically New and Different World

It is for all these reasons that racist oppression will continue so long as people are living under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism. It is not only right but crucially important to rise up and wage a determined fight against this, but it is also crucial to recognize that this racist oppression will never be, can never be, eliminated under this system—and, to finally put an end to it, we need a radically different system.

We need a radically different economic system—a socialist economic system (mode of production) that is geared to and proceeds by developing and utilizing the means of production collectively, to meet the needs of the masses of people, materially (for employment, food, housing, health care, and so on) as well as their needs intellectually and culturally, and to provide them with the means not only to live a life worthy of human beings, but also to scientifically understand the basis and need, and to more and more consciously take part in, carrying forward the transformation of society to finally and completely eliminate all relations of oppression and exploitation, and to support that struggle throughout the world. And, as one of its highest priorities and goals, this will involve the determined struggle to overcome and finally eliminate racial oppression in every aspect of society.

The radically different socialist economy (mode of production) will provide the foundation on which the ongoing process of uprooting racial oppression, and all oppression, can be waged on favorable ground, and can finally succeed in overcoming all this. The following from my work Breakthroughs speaks to this key relation and process:

Ultimately, the mode of production sets the foundation and the limits of change, in terms of how you address any social problem, such as the oppression of women, or the oppression of Black people or Latinos, or the contradiction between mental work and manual work, or the situation with the environment, or the situation of immigrants, and so on. While all those things have reality and dynamics in their own right, and aren’t reducible to the economic system, they all take place within the framework and within the fundamental dynamics of that economic system; and that economic system, that mode of production, sets the foundation and the ultimate limits of change in regard to all those social questions. So, if you want to get rid of all these different forms of oppression, you have to address them in their own right, but you also have to fundamentally change the economic system to give you the ability to be able to carry through those changes in fundamental terms. To put it another way: You have to have an economic system that doesn’t prevent you from making those changes, and instead not only allows but provides a favorable foundation for making those changes.4

The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America provides a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for such a radically different economic system, and for government institutions, laws and a legal system, as well as an approach to education, science, art and culture that go along with this mode of production and contribute to its continual development, opening the way to finally eliminating all oppression and exploitation.5 And in Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution (as well as other works of mine) the basic strategy is spelled out for carrying out the revolution that will make it possible to apply this Constitution in working to bring about a world free of all the unnecessary suffering and madness to which the masses of humanity are subjected under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

This is why, and this is how, racial oppression, and all the oppression, which is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, can be ended—but only through a revolution to abolish this system.

This is why we continue to emphasize this basic truth: we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!

This is why we continue to boldly raise the slogan: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

 

1. The text and video of this speech by Bob Avakian (Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution) is available at revcom.us. [back]

2. The statement quoted in this part of this article is from Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution. [back]

3. Bob Avakian On Police Brutality And Murder: Consent Decrees Won’t Stop This—We Need A Revolution! This excerpt from a Question and Answer Session with Bob Avakian, after his presentation in 2018 in Chicago of the speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, is also available at revcom.us. [back]

4. This statement is contained in Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, by Bob Avakian, which is available at revcom.us. It originally appeared in the book by Bob Avakian, The New Communism: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, 2016. Italics in the original. [back]

5. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, is also available at revcom.us. [back]

Watch BA's whole speech:

Watch clips from speech

THE NEW COMMUNISM

The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, by Bob Avakian

Download PDF of book here

 

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Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/650/bob-avakian_nothing-less-en.html

| revcom.us

 

A statement from Bob Avakian

revolutionary leader, author and architect of the revolutionary new communism.

 

To all those who have risen up so powerfully and are demonstrating to say “No More!” after the murder of George Floyd, and all the other cold-blooded murders by police.

To all those who have drawn inspiration from this righteous uprising.

To all those who have had the blinders forced from their eyes and have been provoked to think anew about what kind of country it is that we live in.

This has raised the biggest questions about what is needed for people everywhere to live fully as human beings:

AN END TO INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM
AND MURDER BY POLICE—NOTHING LESS!

AN END TO ANY WAY PEOPLE ANYWHERE ARE
USED, ABUSED, AND BRUTALIZED—NOTHING LESS!

We need a world without white supremacy and male supremacy—a world where no one is regarded as “alien”—a world without war, where people from all over the globe, with a beautiful flowering of diversity, act together for the common good and are truly caretakers of the earth.

THIS IS NOT JUST A DREAM.

The possibility for this is being powerfully demonstrated in this uprising of the people, of all different races and genders, from all parts of the world—refusing to remain silent or stay passive while all this oppression and brutality goes on.

To Make All This Real
We Need: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

A strategic plan for how to make this revolution, and a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and much better world, where all this can become possible—can be found in the work I have done, including the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

You can learn more about this revolution and become part of making it a reality by going to revcom.us and joining with the revcoms.

We do not need to live in this world where so much of humanity suffers so unnecessarily under this system of capitalism-imperialism that cannot exist without exploiting and degrading people, suffocating their humanity and killing them without mercy.  We can do much better!  Don’t listen to talk about how “it can never happen.” 

Look around you—what seemed impossible yesterday is happening right now!  Revolution, why should we settle for anything less?

WWW.REVCOM.US          

Share everywhere.

Download PDF of this flier, print and spread:

 

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/one-year-since-the-police-murder-of-breonna-taylor-en.html

One Year Since the Louisville Police Murder of Breonna Taylor: Still NO Justice

| revcom.us

 


Breonna Taylor

One year ago, on March 13, 2020, Louisville pigs suddenly forced their way into the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency technician, and killed her in a burst of gunfire. Six months later, the Kentucky attorney general announced a grand jury decision that held none of the cops involved in the raid accountable for Breonna's murder. On the one year anniversary, people were out in the streets of Louisville and other cities around the country to demand justice for Breonna Taylor and other victims of murder by police. As Breonna's mother, Tamika Palmer said, "She deserves justice—but there's so many people that deserve justice."


Breonna Taylor and Tamika Palmer


Breonna Taylor was murdered March 13, 2020

The Killing of Breonna Taylor, a documentary by Yoruba Richen, and presented by the New York Times streamed on Hulu and FX in September 2020.

The Outrageous Facts Brought Together Reveal...

The TRUTH About How Louisville Pigs Murdered Breonna Taylor

Read more


Protest in front of the Louisville Mayor's office, May 26, 2020.


In Louisville, protesters take a knee on Breonna's birthday, June 5, 2020.


September 23: LOUISVILLE PIGS GET AWAY WITH MURDER


Louisville, Friday, September 25. Photo: AP


Press Conference, September 25 with the family of Breonna Taylor and Benjamin Crump, their attorney. Photo: AP


Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: AP


Chicago, Illinois. Photo: AP


Detroit. Photo: AP


Boston. Photo: AP


Athens, Georgia. Photo: AP


On the Anniversary of Breonna Taylor's Murder, Protests Across the Country

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/basic-points-of-orientation-en.html

BASIC POINTS OF ORIENTATION

| revcom.us

 

1. This system of capitalism-imperialism is the source of endless horrors for the majority of people in this country and all around the world, and it is increasingly threatening the very existence of humanity. We are actively working for an actual revolution—to bring down, to overthrow and completely abolish, this whole system as soon as possible and replace it with something radically different and much better, a new society built on an entirely different foundation. That, and nothing less, is what is needed. So that is what we are all about—and we have the necessary scientific method, the plan, the strategy, and the leadership to succeed in this. But there aren’t enough people committed to this yet. So... this is what you need to be about. Anything else will completely fail to deal with the root of all the problems or lead to the actual solution. Given the situation facing humanity, we don’t have time to waste, so we need to get busy working for this revolution, in an organized way, and winning more and more people to do the same.

2. We are followers of BA. And you need to become followers of BA too. He is an old white guy—yes, deal with it! He is providing ongoing leadership for this revolution, and he has a whole body of work that contains the scientific method to analyze the problem and the solution, the strategy for the revolution to bring down this system, and the vision and concrete plan for that radically different and much better society, on the road to emancipate all of humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation, and to enable humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth. He’s even written a Constitution that concretely maps out what to do starting right after the seizure of power, so we can actually work on building up that whole new emancipating society. There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/there-is-the-powerful-positive-potential-en.html

There is the powerful positive potential...

| revcom.us

 

There is the powerful positive potential of what it is that Revcoms are—and need to be—fighting for, consistently, boldly, compellingly bringing forward and bringing alive. In this context, the following passage is worth reviewing and reflecting on, from Bob Avakian’s The Coming Civil War and Re-polarization for Revolution in the Present Era, Religion and the Right to Religion, DARK AGES MENTALITY AND THE LIBERATING OUTLOOK AND METHOD OF COMMUNISM”:

The religious fundamentalists, of various kinds, make a point of recruiting in the prisons, and they come with a heavy ideological message. There is something very important to be learned from the “Losing My Religion” article that appeared in our newspaper within the past year. The author of the article, who comes from a family steeped in religious fundamentalism, says that his own life experiences had provided plenty of reasons to reject religion, but it was only when there was another coherent ideology that he could take up that he completely broke with religion. And that coherent ideology wasn’t another religion—it was the scientific outlook and method of communism, which he was introduced to through writings of mine which he encountered in college. He also commented on that: he said that these writings, and the outlook and method they embody, taught him to do what religion never did—to think critically. It is not at all the case that people can only “lose their religion” by replacing it with another religion in some form. But there does have to be another explanation about the world and existence and why this is the way it is, and how it could be different. And how an individual relates to that. If you want to rupture people out of shit, not only stuff that lands them in prison, but the daily shit they are caught up in, in the society, you have to have a really strong hardcore ideological thing to bring to them. It doesn’t have to be dogmatic—it should not be dogmatic, and it should not be religious—but it has to be coherent and systematic. It has to explain the world—and in our case we can actually explain it in a scientific way [BA laughs]. That ’s an advantage of communism over religion, even though religion has certain short‑term advantages because it can appeal to things we can’t appeal to, things that go along with spontaneity. But we have the advantage of actually being able to make reality make sense for people. That’s a very powerful thing.

We should not underestimate the importance, not only with prisoners but in general, of doing a lot of ideological work to really enable people to see the world in a wholly different way— really the way it is. To take the pieces of this puzzle that are all out of whack and don’t fit together— it’s like looking through a weird kaleidoscope the way most people see reality. And then it’s misinterpreted for them by all these different bourgeois and reactionary ideologies and programs, and so on, including various religious views. But communist ideology and its application to the world is a way of taking reality and having it make sense for people. That’s what the CD1 of my speech on religion aims to do, that’s what we urgently need to do in general. [Emphasis (boldface, italics, and underlining) added here]

 


1. This refers to a talk on religion given in 2004 by BA which was later encompassed in Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (Insight Press, 2008)  [back]

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/reflections-on-underestimating-the-challenges-of-a-ghastly-future-en.html

Scientists Issue Urgent and Righteous Call to Face Up to the Environmental Emergency...

Our Invitation and Challenge: There IS a Path for "Avoiding a Ghastly Future"

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: This is a slightly revised version of the article "A Challenge to the Challengers... Reflections on 'Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future'" that appeared on revcom.us on March 8.

Seventeen well-known international researchers in biology and the environment recently issued an urgent analysis and call to squarely confront the ecological emergency. Their widely commented on paper is titled  "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future."1 It brings together evidence from many scientific fields and pointedly observes that “the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its life forms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.”

The authors of “Avoiding a Ghastly Future” synthesize critical research findings about biodiversity loss—from the threat of impending extinction to some one million species to the severe damage to ocean and freshwater environments... the dangerous trends of global temperature rise, now exceeding earlier scientific predictions... and the already disruptive effects that climate change and environmental degradation are having on life and human health and well-being on the planet.

It must be said at the outset that “Avoiding a Ghastly Future” represents a highly important and much-needed call from noted scientists who are emphasizing and marshaling science to summon attention to the environmental emergency. Their paper goes on to declare that: “It is incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and ‘tell it like it is’. Anything else is misleading at best, or negligent and potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst.” 

We agree. And if indeed we are to “avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and 'tell it like it is,'” then we must confront and act on a stark but liberating truth:

We have two choices: to let humanity and the planet hurtle uncontrollably towards environmental disaster and other horrors—or to make an ACTUAL revolution to overthrow the system and, on the basis of a radically different economy and social-political system, go to work on addressing this crisis!

I. The Challenge of Being Consistently Scientific... About the Problem and Solution

In his New Year’s Statement "A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation of All Humanity", Bob Avakian speaks of those righteously calling for science in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. He writes:

This emphasis on science and the scientific method is vitally important, but it is also necessary to emphasize the real need and great importance of being consistent with this, and following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads, in order to correctly understand reality, in every sphere of life and society....

As Avakian goes on to point out, a crucial part of this means to:

...dig beneath the surface, to discover the underlying mainsprings and causes of things, and arrive at an understanding of the fundamental problem and the actual solution. This means coming to the scientific understanding that we are living under a system, and what that system actually is (the system of capitalism-imperialism)...

“Avoiding a Ghastly Future” indicts current governments for failing to respond in any way commensurate with the danger to humanity and the planet: “we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action...”

There IS such a political and economic system—genuine socialism, a transition to communism, as part of a worldwide process to get beyond all exploitation, oppression and antagonistic social divisions.

While genuine socialism does not hold power anywhere in the world right now, there is a concrete vision for this society in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, and with the blueprint and working principles of such a society—including as it pertains to the environment. There has never been any founding or guiding document of any government like this in history. What is needed to establish this is a real revolution, to overthrow and get rid of this system of capitalism-imperialism and bring about the only alternative that has a chance. Such a system and socialist society would be “capable of such action” necessary for and commensurate with the existential challenges of global warming and environmental destruction.

And there IS such leadership in Bob Avakian (BA), the most important political thinker and leader in the world today. BA is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new communism.

BA is a leader who is firmly convinced, on the basis of a consistently scientific method and approach, that the goal must be nothing less than all-out revolution, and who at the same time has emphasized:

“the new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that ‘the ends justifies the means.’ It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the ‘means’ of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental ‘ends’ of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis.”2

The question is whether those concerned about the future of humanity and the planet are going to be consistently scientific, willing “to go there,” to seriously engage and get with the only real solution and alternative to the “ghastly future” under this capitalist-imperialist system.

This is the challenge, and the invitation.

II. Some Particular Ways “Avoiding a Ghastly Future” Falls Short in Applying Science to Society

While “Avoiding a Ghastly Future” squarely confronts and calls to attention major environmental challenges, it falls short in crucial ways in being consistently scientific in how this relates to the underlying economic and political system and overall society. Given the stakes for humanity, the planet and its ecosystems, it matters greatly to get clarity on this. Here is some food for thought:

*Whom do the governments of the world actually represent?

“Avoiding a Ghastly Future” states: “If most of the world’s population truly understood and appreciated the magnitude of the crises we summarize here, and the inevitability of worsening conditions, one could logically expect positive changes in politics and policies to match the gravity of the existential threats. But the opposite is unfolding.”

It is certainly true that politics and policies are not matching “the gravity of existential threats.” But it is NOT the case that even if the world’s population understood the magnitude of the crisis, we could or should “logically” expect the governments to act in the interests of the people anywhere in the world or in the world as a whole. In basic terms, any evidence-based approach would show that the world’s current governments do not represent the fundamental interests of the people—rather, they represent rule over the people, rule of the exploitative and oppressive capitalist-imperialist system and its rulers.

*“Avoiding a Ghastly Future” calls for “changing the rules of the game.” But what is “the game”?

“The game” is a system, capitalism-imperialism, which operates according to its rules. It is driven by the expand-or-die logic built into its foundation. This is a system of privately organized units of capital—organized around profit based on exploitation—anarchically competing against each other to cheapen costs to capture greater market share for survival and dominance. As a consequence, private capital does not and cannot take into account its “externalities of production” (the broader, destructive effects on the environment) like the greenhouse gases emitted, the waste and pollution it generates, or damage to biodiversity. This system does not and cannot take into account the longer term. The rivalry among the imperial powers for global control and influence makes sharing of scientific and technical knowledge and cooperative planning impossible.3

All of this drives increasing lopsidedness in the world, with massive and growing inequality and misery among the most oppressed, especially among the people of the Third World, and global refugee crises of unprecedented—and genocidal—scales.4

Any evidence-based approach would show that this system reacts to serious challenges to its rule, and to its “rules,” with massive force, repression, and violence. To act as if fundamental change of the kind needed to have any realistic chance of dealing with this emergency can happen short of overthrowing this system flies in the face of all the evidence. Attempting to “change the rules of the game” with anything short of a real revolution squanders time that humanity simply does not have!

To “change the rules” in any meaningful way requires a revolution to establish a socialist system, a radically different political and economic system than capitalism-imperialism. 

On the basis of socialist state-public ownership of the means of production and conscious economic-social planning—and forging a radically different society that promotes dissent and intellectual ferment, “enabling people to pursue the truth wherever it leads,” and a conscious approach to and appreciation of nature—it becomes possible to unleash people to protect and repair the environment and to work for a liberating future. See the box “It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like...” and Some Key Principles of Socialist Sustainable Development for a vivid picture.

*Population growth is not the primary cause of the ecological crisis

“Avoiding a Ghastly Future” lays a big part of the blame for the crisis we face on population size itself: rapidly expanding numbers of humans absorbing and degrading finite resources. But population size is not the principal factor driving environmental degradation, global warming, loss of biodiversity, and the overall, escalating ecological emergency. What is essential and determining is how the populations of human society are organized and interact with nature. Certainly, a larger human population has larger impacts on the environment. But the “environmental footprint” of world humanity would be qualitatively different under a socialist economic and social system that aimed to consciously and sustainably interact with nature.5

*The reality of fascism and its assault on science. 

“Avoiding a Ghastly Future” warns of “the continued rise of extreme ideologies” internationally, “potentially accelerating a vicious cycle of global ecological deterioration and its penalties.” This is true and is concentrated in the worldwide emergence of fascist movements and governments. As Bob Avakian writes about the U.S.: “The unavoidable truth is that this country, the much-proclaimed ‘Shining City on a Hill,’ is full of fascists!—in the government at all levels and in large parts of the society as a whole.” One post-Trump example: in 23 states, Republicans (most of them climate-deniers) control the office of governor, and both houses of the state legislature. They are rapidly passing laws against protesting at fossil-fuel energy facilities. All this gravely threatens the environment.

But in the face of this, “Avoiding a Ghastly Future” calls for a “universal mode of self-preservation and planetary protection.” This is a dangerous illusion that papers over both the reality of capitalist-imperialist class domination and the fact that a powerful section of the U.S. ruling class has opted for fascism as a solution to the grave crises this system confronts. It has fanned a fascist movement that attempted a coup to overturn an election, a movement that is increasingly unhinged and in basic opposition to the Enlightenment, rational thought, and evidence-based science. In the case of other countries like Brazil, with Bolsonaro, it is fundamentally no different. 

In the U.S., this fascism is deeply rooted in American history and culture. We need a revolution to get rid of the system that spawns this.

III. Let us think and act in ways commensurate with what the times truly demand of us.

The revolution humanity needs—to get rid of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is not a utopian dream. It is the real-world and the only solution to the deepest crises that humanity has faced. There is an actual scientific method and pathway that Bob Avakian has forged... that can lead to a radically different and far better future for humanity and the planet.

We challenge scientists, and everyone who has a sense of the magnitude of the environmental crisis, to act in the spirit of your own deep concern for humanity and the life on this planet—and to consistently and thoroughly apply and carry through with your scientific curiosity and critical spirit. Start with the New Year’s Statement by Bob Avakian—and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian.

The hour is late; and the whole world really is at stake. We end with these words of caution and urgency:

The electoral defeat of the Trump/Pence regime only “buys some time”—both in relation to the imminent danger posed by the fascism this regime represents, and more fundamentally in terms of the potentially existential crisis humanity is increasingly facing as a consequence of being bound to the dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism. But, in essential terms, time is not on the side of the struggle for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be squandered—mired in oblivious individualism and political paralysis or misspent on misdirected activity that only reinforces this system which perpetuates endless horrors for the masses of humanity and has brought things to the brink of very real catastrophe. (From the New Year’s Statement by Bob Avakian)

 


1. The text of the paper is available at the Frontiers in Science website.  [back]

2. From BOB AVAKIAN: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT LEADER—A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION, available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. Agreements on climate change and biodiversity are voluntary (and even if they are not voluntary the powerful countries can bow out of them when it suits their interests). But private ownership and decision-making of blocs of capital are built-into (indeed sacrosanct) to capitalism and impossible to “bow out” of. Renewables make “scientific/environmental sense” and the costs are going down dramatically—but 80 percent of the energy used today comes from oil and other fossil fuels. They remain foundational to profitability and are strategic jugulars of this global system. For fuller analysis, see Raymond Lotta, “50 Years Since Earth Day 1: Reflections on the Catastrophe That Is Capitalism-Imperialism.”  [back]

4. See the video of the talk by Bob Avakian, Why We Need An Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution—in particular, the clip “Bob Avakian On the Environment: Why Is the Problem NOT Greed As Such, And What Must Actually Be Done To Prevent Catastrophe?”  [back]

5. In mis-identifying human population growth, especially high birth rates in the global South, as a principal factor driving the environmental crisis, the authors downplay how capitalism-imperialism plunders nature. In this regard, note that in the early 2010s, the wealthiest 10 percent of the world's population, concentrated in the heartlands of capitalism-imperialism, were responsible for half of all carbon emissions. On the other hand, the poorest 3.5 billion, mainly in the global South, accounted for just one-tenth of those emissions, while suffering the worst consequences of global warming. See Oxfam, Extreme Carbon Inequality, 2015.

The socialist society envisioned in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America would right away be altering its “ecological footprint”: decisively transitioning away from fossil fuels; transforming how we live and produce the means of life; and putting an end to the environmentally wasteful “consumer society” that exploits the global South. This society would be working urgently to repair ravaged ecosystems and biodiversity. Further, a liberatory socialist revolution would ensure reproductive freedom for women, safe and subsidized access to birth control, and socialized child and health care as part of the ongoing struggle and societal transformations for the full emancipation of women.  [back]


If current trends—including climate change, loss of biodiversity, devastation of both land and sea environments—continue...this will likely result in a devastated planet. Here, the lakebed of Colombia's Suesca lagoon sits dry and cracked after years of very little rainfall, resulting in diminished biodiversity. (Photo: AP)

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.

"You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

Order the book HERE
Download the book in ePub format HERE

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/yemen-plunged-even-deeper-into-hell-of-mass-starvation-and-disease-en.html

Yemen Plunged Even Deeper Into Hell of Mass Starvation and Disease

| revcom.us

 

Yemen is a small country of 30 million people on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. In 2015 it was bombed and blockaded into what most experts call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed war of aggression against Yemen’s Iran-supported Houthi movement.

The war itself has killed some 130,000 people in Yemen—and in recent weeks, the humanitarian crisis has gotten even more deadly. The World Food Programme (WFP) warns Yemen is on the brink of “the biggest famine in modern history,” with much of the country a “hell on Earth” of hunger and devastation. The WFP estimates that some 400,000 Yemeni children under 5 years old could die from acute malnutrition this year.

One UN aid agency says more than 16 million Yemenis face a significant risk of going hungry in 2021, that 500,000 already live in famine-like conditions, and that the danger of large scale famine “has never been more acute.”

In 2018, the UN Security Council denounced the use of starvation as a weapon of war and demanded that access to water, fuel, and other goods needed for food preparation and medical care not be impeded. But Saudi Arabia continues to block ships carrying fuel needed to run generators and keep hospitals and other vital facilities in operation. As a result of the blockade, the World Health Organization says it will have to halt life-saving medical services impacting over 9 million people. Under Obama and Trump, the U.S. enabled Saudi Arabia to blockade Yemen’s air, land, and seaports—and to date, the Biden administration has continued to do the same.

 

Sources:

“Hell on Earth”: Yemeni Children Starve to Death as U.S.-Backed Saudi Blockade Devastates Nation, Democracy Now!, March 12, 2021

Famine has arrived in pockets of Yemen. Saudi ships blocking fuel aren’t helping, CNN, March 11, 2021

‘This is hell’: UN food aid chief visits Yemen, fears famine, AP, March 10, 2021

Yemen’s humanitarian crisis grows as UN warns of mass famine risk, Daily Sabah, February 28, 2021


The World Food Programme estimates that some 400,000 Yemeni children under 5 years old could die from acute malnutrition this year. This 7-month-old boy gets treatment for malnutrition at a food clinic. Photo: AP


Bodies lie on the ground amid the rubble of a Houthi detention center in Yemen destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes, that killed at least 60 people in September 2019. Photo: AP

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/emergency-on-the-us-mexico-border-en.html

Emergency on the U.S.-Mexico Border—Unaccompanied Children Detained in Inhumane Conditions

| revcom.us

 

A record number of migrants—mainly unaccompanied minors—children—are now in detention on the U.S.-Mexico border, being held in conditions unfit for human beings. The U.S. Border Patrol “facilities” that these children are being kept in are effectively jails, and their stays there are increasing in length—with many detained far past the legal limit of 72 hours. Border Patrol is supposed to work with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to look after the children and place them in more permanent shelters after leaving Border Patrol custody—but this effort has been hampered by the ongoing pandemic, which has necessitated new protocols to slow the spread of COVID-19, including decreased capacities in these shelters, causing a bottleneck and resulting in overcrowding at the Border Patrol detention centers. In scenes reminiscent of those that sparked widespread and justified outrage under the Trump/Pence fascist regime, AP reports that in Donna, Texas, “Hundreds of immigrant children and teenagers have been detained at a Border Patrol tent facility in packed conditions.... Despite concerns about the coronavirus, the children are kept so closely together that they can touch the person next to them, the lawyers said. Some have to wait five days or more to shower, and there isn’t always soap available, just shampoo, according to the lawyers.”

This is just one damning scene among many in this world of 70+ million refugees and immigrants driven from their home countries by climate change—fueled droughts and crop failures; hurricanes and other natural disasters also strengthened and made worse by the climate crisis; and other devastating effects of imperialism, whether they be trade “agreements” like NAFTA or USMCA,1 or coups and invasions.

As Bob Avakian has said:

...it should be clear that there can be no solution, under the system of capitalism-imperialism, to the situation involving masses of immigrants and refugees. The only solution lies in the revolution to overthrow this system—a revolution aiming not just to abolish oppression, exploitation, poverty, and misery in one country but having as its fundamental goal the abolition of all this throughout the world, and the elimination of all borders and boundaries that erect walls between different parts of humanity.
Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution

We Need Revolution, Nothing Less!

 


1. NAFTA is the North American Free Trade Agreement, implemented in 1994. Under the signboard of “free trade,” this was in fact a predatory treaty whose effect was to ratchet up the U.S. plunder of Mexico and its people. A new version of the treaty, named the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), was signed in 2018. See the 2-part article in the American Crime series on revcom.us: “The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA (Part 1)” and “NAFTA (Part 2): Deepening the Plunder and Domination of Mexico and the Exploitation and Oppression of Mexican Workers, Especially Women.” [back]

children separated at border with foil blanketsThe U.S. Border Patrol "facilities" that these children are being kept in are effectively jails, and their stays there are increasing in length. Above: Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center, Texas, in 2018. Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection/AP

The demonization, criminalization and deportations of immigrants, by Bob Avakian, an excerpt

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/prisoner-letter-thoughts-provoked-by-bob-avakians-new-years-statement-en.html

From a prisoner in the Southwest

Thoughts Provoked by Bob Avakian's New Year's Statement

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ note: We at revcom.us periodically publish letters from prisoners on revolutionary theory and struggle, as well as other aspects of human experience and thought, including conditions and struggle within the prisons themselves. We appreciate and learn from all correspondence from the prisons. The opinions in the letters we publish are those of the writers and not necessarily those of Revcom.us.

We face a Perilous road, with many obstacles in the way. But that is no reason to lose hope. We must assess the ground that has been covered. We must keep nurturing the land as the conditions are further advance for a Revolutionary Situation.

Bob Avakian said on pg 18

“An important polarization now is that between what can rightly be called decent people (including large numbers of religious people) who are opposed to injustice, and on the other hand those who are determined to revive and enforce traditional forms of oppression.” This polarization, these contradictions found in American Society have no choice but to further collide with each other. What must be done, What the Revolutionarys and communists are tasked with is preparing the masses for such collision impact.

It is true as Bob Avakian said, time is not on our side, and we, at the moment, lack the necessary numbers of people needed for a successful Revolutionary mobilization, or even a successful fascist resistance should the fascists choose to “go all the way” in their mobilization to fully consolidate power. That may be the present case, but lets not fail to not only acknowledge our setbacks and disadvantages, but our advantages and the potential possibilities that are before us.

One advantage I wanted to Point out to my comrades is that we have an actual scientifically grounded and disciplined leadership—in Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party. They, the fascists, have what they have, but they lack an actual stomp down leadership. Donald Trump, as loud as he was, proved to be spineless as he abandoned his supporters and got “cold feet” in taking his fascist coup all the way. The Republican Party proved to be more disunited and scattered than we thought originally. This led to the failure of their full fascist coup (for the time being). It is this dis-orientation on the part of the fascists that we must take full advantage of. To further elevate the sights of the masses, especially those opposed to the injustice perpetrated by this Capitalist-imperialist system, its state and its upholders. Revolutionarys must take all measures and options now made clear and in a sense, open, by not having a fascist Jackboot on our necks.

We can’t deny that the events of these past couple of years has further removed the blindfolds of many people, to the blatant open white-supremacy enforced in American Society. Where what hate they don’t say out loud, they showed in action. They showed in the ongoing discriminatory and senseless, needless murders of Black people at the hands of the police. Where numerous people rose up and should continue to rise up every time a police officer is not held accountable for ruthlessly gunning down innocent Black people, Black men, women and even children [are] mercilessly murdered on the daily by the police.

Those righteous uprisings thrusted politics in the lives of many people. The numbers are not yet at the favor of an emancipatory revolution. I believe, thats in the making, we are still confined to this capitalist system and its white-supremacist state. We are still under the same police who will continue to show the world that Black lives don’t matter, not to the Republicans who praise the murderous police. Or the Democrats who do nothing! but shrug their shoulders and shed crocodile tears. As they continue to run business as usual, of the oppressive capitalist-Imperialist system who’s very foundation and machinations rely on Black lives not mattering, any lives mattering, as that being the fuel that keeps the machine moving. Many people now know this, and once you see you can’t unsee it.

What they need to be assured of, what needs to be spread is the good news. The good news that there exists a different and better way. A scientifically founded and organized socialist system where Black lives and the lives of humanity do matter. This is something the masses will have to come to realize, as the conditions in society changes for the worst under this capitalist system, and as reactionarys further threaten more lives. But the people would even less realize this if the Revolutionarys and Communists fail at not contributing in the wave of this new cultural revolution currently manifesting, we must tip the scales in the culture leading it away from un-scientific, cynical, oppressive “gangsterism” and outright fascist culture. To that of the peoples liberation through the struggle against white supremacy and the Capitalist system. Further reviving in the heart of the masses, the revolutionary communist movement that is scientifically proven to be the means to finally emancipating humanity from the chains of oppression.

Yes the road in front of us is full of obstacles, we face many external contradictions as well as internal contradictions within the masses themselves, who need this revolution the most. It will take arduous work and strict dedication and many sacrifices in more ways than one imagines. But as Fred Hampton once said, and I don’t have the exact quote but I remember listening to the speech on the internet before I got locked up, and I’ll always remember how his words, though spoken in a different time period, reached through time and space and impacted my very being in a major way. He said “Yes I could of chose to be part of the high class, I could of chose to live in the mountain top with the rest of them, I could of chose to be a doctor and lived at the mountain top, but I chose to live in the valley with the people! and among the people So I can help and struggle with the people! I am a revolutionary,!! I chose to be a revolutionary!”!

Forgive me for butchering the quote, but it went something like that.

Well, those are some of the thoughts that came to me as I read BA’s New Year’s Statement. Also let me add, the Part where BA mentions how the communist had to endorse the vote for the Democratic Party to out vote the Trump fascist regime reminded me of how Mao and the Chinese Communist Party had to unite for a moment with the Kuomintong Party against the Japanese imperialist invaders. And after the Japanese where ousted, it was back to struggling with the Kuomintong Party. In a smaller yet major way is what can be said happened during the 2020 elections. Where it was crucial to defeat fascism at the polls in order to delegitimize any attempt at the fascist retaining Power. As the fascist in chief stepped down, and as the Democrats with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris holding the reigns now. It is back to the communists struggling with the Democratic Party as they too are ruling class representatives of the Capitalist-Imperialist system. Though not as vicious as the fascist in exercising their capitalist class dictatorship. The Democrat Party is still Part of the Problem as they represent and enforce, the very capitalist system at the root of oppression and suffering that the masses are facing on a daily.

Yes, the Democrats tend to show that they favor concessions, that benefit to help alleviate some of the oppression and discrimination their capitalist system dishes out on the masses. As helpful and as necessary as they are to the masses, it is the equivalent to feeding amazing and delicious food, throwing a bone in a sense, to an abused dog that you continue to abuse! Those stimulus checks, as necessary as they are to the masses, am I alone in saying that 1,200$, 1,400$ is no where near enough? That barely covers rent for some People! let alone other necessary expenses. But the ruling class would rather bribe the masses (cheaply at that) with a little money and grant a couple of necessary concessions here and there, in the effort of the ruling class representatives to pacify the masses. As certain liberal ruling class circles are also highly aware of the shortcomings of the capitalist system and the potential those shortcomings cause in the masses, that would lead the masses to question the legitimacy and the right to rule of the capitalist system. Something the upholders of capitalism, whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. All hold in common the strong desire to pacify and blind the masses to any alternative way that would spell the end of the Power and luxuries that come from oppressing and exploiting the masses. The Democrats aim at pacifying the masses through honey words, crocodile tears, and bribery. In the hopes to save their capitalist system. While the fascist-Republicans, in order to save the capitalist system, Aim at forcing the masses to submit through repression and amp up oppression, On both instances, and under both capitalist class representatives Partys, Democrats or Republican. The only ones who continue to lose and suffer, is the masses.

The only hope humanity has had at a real chance at liberation from the mental slavery and outright oppressive chains that keep the people in a deplorable state we find ourselves in. Is and has been, the pursuit of science and the science of organizing society under the mode of production of Socialism-Communism. That is scientifically developed and Proven, to once Successfully implemented. To evolve and coincide with the betterment and further advancement of humanity as that is the essence, the fundamental dynamics and machinations of Socialism-Communism. It is the reason for its conception being the polar opposite to Capitalism-Imperialism, and the answer to the contradictions in the form of the oppression and exploitation Society is condemned to and caused by its organization of Production under the capitalist system.

Science, Socialism-Communism, is the only real threat to the rule of the capitalist class and the capitalist system. It is the only real and Profound Power and the only effective weapon the masses could have to overthrow the capitalist class and its oppressive capitalist system. It is the reason and only reason why socialism-communism and how even science is so Demonized and distorted in America and in other capitalist-imperialist countrys. So as to plant that negative Seed and influence in the minds of the masses to be discouraged and never take up, that which is the key and tool for the emancipation and liberation of the masses. A true threat to the oppressive capitalist rule—It is no wonder the extra effort on behalf of the ruling class to bury and distort communism.

It is another reason why the capitalist class and its government further fuel the division among the oppressed people, in the form but not limited to, the harboring and facilitating a Black market, an illicit mode of living as a main, and for most, only means at making a living. Taking advantage of the desperate conditions and blind ignorance of the masses, both white and people of color, so as to keep them distracted, fighting each other to the death in order to survive, as is the case of Black people and people of color and poor sections of white people. In the case of many white people, the ruling class has fed them and further harbored for them the lies in response to the real economic grievances and calamities that are wrongly blamed yet encouraged on people of color like Black people and Latinx immigrants. When in fact, the blame lays at the feet of the capitalist system that oppresses and exploits as well as abandon just the same, white people, even if they refuse to acknowledge this. White people are made even more the fools of the capitalist class, as white people are cleverly manipulated to uphold and fight for their own chains of oppression. It is this political and historical ignorance and scientific blindness that propel many misguided white people, people in general to join criminal, reactionary, and fascist ranks, consequently pitting themselves against the communist revolution and the people who’s life’s work is dedicated to the breaking of those oppressive chains.

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.

"You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

Order the book HERE
Download the book in ePub format HERE

THE PRISONERS REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE FUND

Graphic imagePRLF is an educational literature fund that sends Revolution newspaper (www.revcom.us), works from Bob Avakian, and other revolutionary and scientific literature to hundreds of prisoners across the U.S.

To donate to the work of the PRLF, go HERE.

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/prisoner-letter-en.html

From a prisoner in Illinois

“Wielding and embracing scientifically determined truth continues to be a challenging, wildly fun, and liberating experience”

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ note: We at revcom.us periodically publish letters from prisoners on revolutionary theory and struggle, as well as other aspects of human experience and thought, including conditions and struggle within the prisons themselves. We appreciate and learn from all correspondence from the prisons. The opinions in the letters we publish are those of the writers and not necessarily those of Revcom.us.

“Following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads” is an essential requirement that we all have to continue to collectively grapple with and adhere to in order to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate and dynamic world around us, as well as enabling us to be on more solid ground as we navigate and deal with the existential threat humanity and our planet now face.

Being buried alive beneath cold steel and concrete for most of my life, I was once plagued by the false sense of bravado. Drawing from my own “unsystematized experience” and “subjective sentiments,” my unnecessary suffering was my identity, my essence, my scar of honor, etc. I reveled in my ability to withstand any of the brutal and harsh conditions life in prison had to offer... both the physical and psychological aspects. I owned my suffering and no one was going to take that from me, or convince me otherwise.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to the revolutionary leadership and works of Bob Avakian—leadership and works that span over 40 years—that I began to question, think critically, and make necessary ruptures with unscientific methods and approaches in my own outlook. I still remember the deep and visceral connection I felt with Iraqi prisoners who were being tortured and murdered by the CIA and U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib.

Wielding and embracing scientifically determined truth continues to be a challenging, wildly fun, and liberating experience for me. I am no longer weighed down by a feeling of hopelessness.

One should read and ponder Pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First they came for the communists” statement written about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis for a sober reminder of the great deal of harm that could be done by failing to rise above and repudiate methodologically the philosophical relativism of identity politics.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left to speak out for me.

Should the oppressed people of Syria be celebrating the fact they are now being bombed by “the most diverse cabinet” in Amerikkkan history? Should the immigrants of Mexico and Guatemala be relieved to know that they are now being detained and deported by a “child of immigrants” Mayorkas? As BA so scientifically and unapologetically put it in his New Year’s Statement:

There is no question that many of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration will be different than the blatant atrocities of the Trump/Pence regime, and things will definitely “feel different” with Biden and Harris, but the way they will try to “unite the country”—in line with the interests and requirements of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is something that no decent person should want, or be part of.

Revolution—Nothing Less!

THE PRISONERS REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE FUND

Graphic imagePRLF is an educational literature fund that sends Revolution newspaper (www.revcom.us), works from Bob Avakian, and other revolutionary and scientific literature to hundreds of prisoners across the U.S.

To donate to the work of the PRLF, go HERE.

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/points-of-basic-principle-sexual-harassment-allegations-against-governor-cuomo-en.html

In Light of the Allegations of Sexual Harassment Against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo:
Some Points of Basic Principle

| revcom.us

 

There is a groundswell of New York Democratic Party figures and mainstream media calling for the resignation of Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. Part of the impetus is revelations that Cuomo distorted and suppressed counts of nursing home deaths from COVID-19. Another rationale driving and being offered for these calls to resign is that multiple women have come forward alleging sexual harassment by Cuomo. On the latter, Governor Cuomo’s office has asked the state attorney general, Letitia James, to open an independent investigation, and she has appointed two lawyers to the inquiry.

In this light, as we have stressed before, some points of basic overall principle:

* Accusations alone are not proof of guilt, including in sexual harassment claims.

Accusations are part of the evidence, but determining the truth and proving it requires a serious and scientific sifting of concrete evidence, and subjecting the body of evidence to rigorous examination. Such accusations and allegations should be adjudicated by standards of due process. Even though sexual harassment is rampant in this society, including its halls of power, it does not follow that every single—or any particular—accusation is true. The truth of the accusation, the proof of guilt, need to be determined through a systematic, impartial, and rigorous scientific process.

Sexual harassment pervades every corner of this society and makes it virtually impossible for women to work and live without having to navigate a culture of misogyny and male domination. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from inappropriate and unwelcome sexual remarks to physical advances, all the way to threats of sexual assault—or pressure to submit to sexual “favors” by employers or people in authority. It is important to create the conditions where women are encouraged to come forward with claims of sexual harassment, which should be subject to an evidence-based scientific investigation, instead of either being intimidated, ignored, and shamed, or “automatically” believed on the basis of accusation alone.

* The “court of public opinion” has little to do with truth or justice.

Trials and summary judgments in the “court” of public opinion, in media and social media, are wrong and harmful, precisely for the reasons listed above. The “court” of public opinion does not afford the forum to give people necessary access to the body of evidence nor the scientific sifting through and examination of evidence. In the “court” of public opinion, judgments are assessed and rendered by populist will and majority opinion, completely lacking in correct scientific methods of assessing evidence, and greatly influenced and skewed by politics and prejudices, such as whether one “likes” or “dislikes” the person, instead of an impartial, systematic and rigorous scientific process. This has nothing to do with truth or justice!

Resorting to such methods—including destroying someone’s reputation, driving them from public office and public life, or generally “canceling” them on the basis of accusations alone, without due process to determine the truth of the accusation and defend oneself—violates basic principles of a just society and ultimately leaves everyone at risk and vulnerable to the “takedown” cancel culture.

“...the new communism, as its defining method and approach, emphasizes the critical importance of science and applying the scientific method to everything—to society as well as nature. It firmly rejects any approaches that amount to applying and justifying the bankrupt and extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means,” and that “truth” is just an ‘instrument’ of desired objectives, rather than what it actually is: a correct reflection of objective reality.”

—From NEW YEAR’S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/visually-accurate-picture-of-red-blue-polarization-en.html

A More Visually Accurate Picture of the "Red-Blue" Polarization in the U.S.

| revcom.us

 

Letter from a reader:

Even though Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential elections, and secured seven million votes more than Donald Trump, mainstream media continues to show a “Red-Blue” map of the U.S. by county that is highly distorted. It shows a sea of Red for the Republican-fascists, with small oases of Blue, especially in the urban and suburban areas.

Lara Trump used a similar map in 2019 to demonstrate support for Trump, with the challenge, “Impeach This!” A Belgian designer, Karim Douïeb, took up the challenge to creatively refute and depict a much more visually accurate picture of the relative support for Republican-fascists and the Democrats—by population. He created a similar map after the 2020 presidential election. As seen below, it portrays a whole different picture than the ones that the media inundates people with, stemming from the fact that large areas of the country don’t have much of a population. I thought it important to share with revcom.us readers, as it is more visually accurate, and helps break the false impression of fascist encirclement and domination that the more mainstream maps may convey. This has potential strategic implications for revolution in this country.

At the same time, what is more decisive and scientifically underlying is what Bob Avakian states in his New Year’s Statement: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity:

Even as it is critically important that the voting in this election has resulted in a decisive defeat for the Trump/Pence regime and its attempts to more fully consolidate fascist rule, this must not be allowed to obscure this crucial truth: The polarization, between Democrats and Republicans, as expressed through the electoral process in this country, involves contention over how to uphold and pursue the interests of the capitalist-imperialist system and rule by the capitalist class. It does not represent the fundamental divisions in society and the world, nor the fundamental interests of the masses of people, in this country and in the world as a whole. Nor can the profound problems confronting humanity be solved—in fact, they can only get worse—within the confines of this murderously oppressive and exploitative system and the chaos and destruction it will continue to unleash on a massive scale, so long as it continues to dominate the world.

This is fact-based, scientifically-established truth. Ignoring, denying, or trying to pursue individual escape from this reality will only make things worse and hasten disaster.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/cheers-to-the-creighton-basketball-players-en.html

Cheers to the Creighton Basketball Players for Righteous Response to Racist Statement by Their Coach

| revcom.us

 

From a reader:

Creighton University men’s basketball team head coach Gregg McDermott told his players, in the locker room after a loss to Xavier University on February 27, “I need everybody to stay on the plantation. I can't have anybody leave the plantation.”

In response to this racist statement by their head coach, the Creighton players created a video that was played before their game with Butler University on March 6. The video included five Black players making a statement. A report from the Associated Press described what was on the video:

“James Baldwin said not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed without being faced,” forward Christian Bishop said at the start.

Guard Shereef Mitchell then said, “For slaves, life on a plantation was filled with mental, emotional, physical, psychological and sexual abuse. You were owned as property and not human. Slaves had no rights and no voice. They were branded like cattle, forced from their homeland and stripped of their culture, language and basic human rights. They worked 18 hours a day six days a week. Any sign of wrongdoing such as lack of productivity, not following instructions or resistance would result in beatings or death and that is why ...”

“What Coach Mac said hurt me and my teammates,” guard Denzel Mahoney said.

Guard Antwann Jones then said, “People speak about inequalities and equalities but don't truly know what it means to be equal. And I feel like this is the start for a new conversation to be had in the future. Let's continue to educate each other, and let's continue to grow.”

Forward Damien Jefferson said, “If I was your son, would it matter then? Let's not be OK with racism. Let's start the conversation.”

The video ended with all the Creighton players locked arm-in-arm on the court. Afterward, "Lift Every Voice and Sing,'' also known as the Black national anthem, was played. It was reported that neither team was on the court for the U.S. national anthem.

The university suspended coach McDermott for one game and said that “additional sanctions were under consideration.”

There is a new generation of Black athletes that will not keep silent about racism in this country, including when it comes out of the mouth of their coach. We can add the Creighton ballplayers to that list. Cheers to them.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/ocr-defiance-and-protest-against-violence-and-patriarchy-against-women-en.html

From Aurora Roja, Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico:

Defiance and Protest Against Intensifying Violence and Patriarchy Against Women

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: The following are several recent articles published on the website Aurora Roja, the voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR), Mexico. There has been a horrific epidemic in Mexico of femicide—murder of women because they are female. This is a concentrated expression of the extreme and intensifying patriarchy and oppression of the half of humanity born female. In response to intense protests against the femicides and other crimes against women, police and government officials have unleashed violent repression. As these articles discuss, the defiant protest and rebellion in Mexico against all this is part of the “growing insurgency of women internationally that nurtures hope and demand for radical change”—and to actually put an end to the oppression of women, “it is necessary to sweep away the entire patriarchal system and the current capitalist system which needs it and supports it in a thousand ways.” The English translation is by revcom.us.

Mexico: State Repression Against Women Fighters and Crimes Against Women Go Unpunished—What Kind of System Does This?


Police opened fire on this demonstration against femicide in Cancún, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

“These are times of war, sisters... These are times of crisis and emergencies. They are killing us, they are raping us, they are forcing us to give birth, they are condemning us to death for not obeying.” Words that resounded in Mexico City’s Zócalo [main downtown plaza] in the November 25 protest around hate crimes against women. And there was no shortage of chants about the patriarchal system responsible for this: “This is going to fall. We are going to knock it down.”

Ten women a day on average are murdered in Mexico, with more than 90% of the cases unsolved, while the forces of “order” are dedicated to their repression of protests against this horrendous wave of violence. The same thing happens, no matter which party is governing. This is due to something deeper, to a system, the patriarchal, macho, male supremacist system which, now, is predominantly capitalist [in Mexico]. The horrors generated by this system can be ended, but to achieve this, a revolution will be needed.

Behind the figures are thousands of lives cut short. Like Mariana Sánchez, a 24-year-old medical intern assigned to a rural clinic in Nueva Palestina, Chiapas. Shortly after arriving, she was harassed by a fellow doctor who even forced open the door to her room and tried to grope her while she slept. She filed a complaint for harassment and sexual abuse with the police and also reported this to the director of the clinic, requesting her transfer and even trying to resign, but no one paid any attention to her.

She spoke to her mom on the phone for the last time on the last Thursday in January. She was distraught, she talked about harassment, and she was urgently trying to leave the clinic. By the next day, she was found dead, a victim of murder. The authorities rushed to declare this as a supposed “suicide” and to remove the evidence, burning the body, in flagrant violation of their own laws. They also lied, saying they were unaware of any complaint about sexual harassment and abuse. All of this is completely unacceptable and criminal.

Intense protests have forced the authorities to open an investigation into the murder, but it is not certain that justice will be served even in this blatant case. In so many other cases throughout Mexico, the same story of indifference or frank collusion by the authorities of all electoral parties is repeated, at the same time that they keep unleashing repression against people who protest so many misogynistic, women-hating crimes.

In Cancún, the police open fired on the protest of about 3,000 people on November 9, 2020 against the femicide of Bianca Alejandrina Lorenzana Alvarado, known as Alexis. Two protesters and two journalists were shot and wounded. One of the injured journalists refuted the lies of the authorities, “The police never fired into the air... [it was] like they were hunting us down.”

As the police attacked, they shouted, “Now these fucking women ain’t gonna be worth a rat’s ass.” They also savagely beat up and kicked people. They sexually assaulted the detained women, such as María Elena, who reported that, in addition to repeatedly hitting and kicking her, they rammed their fingers up her vagina. Defiantly, she exclaimed: “They beat me lot and I am angry because we were sexually assaulted. Even so, they are not going to stop us. This was my first march and now I will march much more.”

All authorities at all levels, from different political parties, denied their responsibility and tried to blame each other for the attack. Mexican President Manuel Andrés López Obrador tried to deny that the National Guard had participated, despite the fact that they actually formed a barrier to hold back part of the protesters and help the police in their aggressions. Although he criticized this blatant attack, he has encouraged the aggressions by denouncing other protests against misogynistic crimes as provocations by vandals instigated and exploited by “conservatives.”

Furthermore, all authorities have promised an investigation, as they always say, “that gets to the bottom of things,” but in fact they have not even wanted to examine the physical evidence of the people shot.

Other recent incidents of repression have occurred, among other places, in:

* León, Guanajuato: Repression by police with extreme violence and sexual groping against women who protested, in August 2020, the sexual assault of a young woman by the same police;

* Ciudad Juárez, ChihuahuaThe police violently attacked a protest around the attack in León, gender crimes and crimes against the LGBT community, with a toll of 28 women and eight men arrested, severely beaten and without access to their lawyer. The protesters said, “The police protect monuments, advertisements and walls, but not me; they rape me.”

* Tijuana, Baja CaliforniaThe police brutally beat women who were demanding the right to abortion on September 28, 2020, and put the detainees in unofficial vehicles without license plates and without informing about their whereabouts.

* Ecatepec, State of Mexico: The police violently evicted an occupation of the Human Rights Commission of the State of Mexico (COHEM), in addition to attacking journalists on scene. When they went to demand reports about their sisters who were forced into unmarked pickup trucks, the officers fired tear gas, and threw steel bars and benches at them that they ripped off the street.

* Mexico City: In addition to trying to stop several protests by means of aggressive encapsulations, jets of fire extinguishers and tear gas (although the authorities deny these were used), 11 women have been called to appear under indictment for alleged crimes for the simple fact of having been present at the demonstrations or of having favorable posts on their Facebooks.

It is no coincidence that the same pattern of impunity for horrendous misogynistic crimes and exemplary repression of people who are demanding an end to such barbarism is repeated, regardless of location or electoral party. This is not simply about bad authorities, this is about a whole system of patriarchal oppression of women, male supremacy and machismo. Basically, this is not a situation of the authorities “not doing their job.” This is their job, as representatives of the system, which is to defend the system that cannot do without the oppression of women.


Women's March

This is a system of oppression that permeates every aspect of society, from inequalities, machismo and beatings in the family (which have increased a lot with the pandemic, although the authorities try to deny or downplay this reality); through the ordeal of harassment, discrimination and contempt at school and work; to the deadly pandemic of femicides, disappearances and rapes, as well as the multi-million dollar industry of trafficking in women and girls, and of prostitution and pornography in society as a whole.

The growing rebellion and protest of women has exposed the incessant machista violence and the hand of the state in committing and covering up these crimes and is unleashing the repudiation of male domination and “traditional” patriarchal morality. This is part of the growing insurgency of women internationally that nurtures hope and demand for radical change. This has raised the question of what kind of radical change is needed.

The fight for certain reforms in the current system is necessary and possible, such as the right to abortion or the struggles to demand justice in cases of femicides and other crimes. With struggle, it has been possible to wrench out sentences against some murderers. Thousands of other murders remain in total impunity, and no women escape the patriarchal relationships and ideas that attack, humiliate and degrade women.

To put an end to the oppression of women, it is necessary to sweep away the entire patriarchal system and the current capitalist system which needs it and supports it in a thousand ways.

The oppressive patriarchal system is so present in every aspect of society that many people doubt that it can be eliminated. But science has shown that oppression of women has not always existed. In the early days of the human race, people lived for millennia in groups in which women participated equally. The subjection of women to men and the patriarchal family was accompanied by the emergence of classes, the exploitation of some human beings by others, which continues today in the capitalist form, in which a few big capitalists and imperialists exploit and oppress the vast majority of humanity.

The bases exist in today’s oppressive society for a very different and much better society: A socialist society as a transition to communism, the abolition of all forms of exploitation and oppression and the emancipation of humanity.

The fury of women in their millions has enormous potential to drive this radical revolution to liberate women and all human beings. The recent and inspiring awakening, protests and rebellion of women in Mexico and around the world are the first waves arising from a deep sea of fury and hatred against what it means to be a woman in this macho and patriarchal society. The fury of women must be unleashed even more as a powerful force for revolution.

Let’s now forge a movement for revolution that promotes and lives the values that will guide the future revolutionary society, fighting all forms of oppression and emphatically rejecting all forms of contempt, discrimination and harassment of women. With everyone, and particularly with men, you have to insist that either you are part of the solution or you are part of the problem.

Let’s fight for a new society not only with full legal equality for women but also with a profound struggle to

overcome all “tradition’s chains” embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions, and all the oppressive relations bound up with this, in every sphere of society, and to enable women, as fully as men, to take part in and contribute to every aspect of the struggle to transform society, and the world, in order to uproot and abolish all relations of oppression and exploitation and emancipate humanity as a whole.

This is in the words of Bob Avakian, the architect of the New Communism.

A new and much better world is struggling to be born from the rancid belly of the society in which we live. It takes the courage, determination and struggle of everyone to open up this new revolutionary dawn. Get in touch with us.

Long Live International Women's Day!

Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

Aurora Roja
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

Download PDF in flyer format (Spanish): DIM2021.pdf

Download PDF in reading format (Spanish): DIM2021_texto.pdf

auroraroja.mx@gmail.com | http://aurora-roja.blogspot.com


Mexico City: March 8, 2021, Powerful Torrent Against Patriarchy


Demonstration in front of the barriers protecting the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, March 8, 2021. Photo: Raúl Martínez.

In many parts of the world, women took to the streets to repudiate the patriarchal system, on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

In Mexico, there were demonstrations in almost every state. Everywhere, fed up, outraged and furious women demanded an end to femicide, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, harassment, beatings, and degradation against women—all products of this patriarchal and capitalist system. They also demanded the right to legal abortion.

In Mexico City, women expressed their outrage with great creativity. Since the day before, the barriers that protected the Palacio Nacional [the seat of the executive branch of the Mexican government] were painted with huge letters “Victims of feminicide” and then more than 2,000 names representing the tens of thousands of murdered women. For hours women arrived one by one and in small groups, some with flowers, to write the name of a woman or girl who no longer appears, or who was killed by her boyfriend, husband, by a policeman, or some stranger.


Names of victims of femicides, disappearances, and other causes, on the barrier around the Palacio Nacional.

They covered the ugly gray wall more than two meters high with the names of the stolen lives and fighting slogans. That wall was a symbol of the power of the state that has covered up feminicides and rapists, and whose own agents have committed many of these crimes, no matter which political party is in power at any level. This was one more grievance, which thousands of women turned into a powerful condemnation of male supremacy. The fence in front of the cathedral read “Get your rosaries out of our ovaries.” At night, on the walls of the Palacio Nacional, enormous slogans were projected, including “Mexico Femicide” and “Legal Abortion Now.” These actions were the prelude to March 8.

On March 8, thousands of women marched from the Monument to the Revolution to the Zócalo [main downtown plaza] in Mexico City. Almost from the beginning of the afternoon, small and large contingents, or groups of women, were heading out for the Zócalo. Perhaps there were more than 50,000 people, although the authorities talk about 20,000. Throughout there was an atmosphere of joy, sisterhood, indignation, and fury. These expressions could be seen and heard for almost the entire length of the march. The slogans were shouted with joy and fury: “Not One More, Not One More Woman Murdered,” “The Oppressive State Is a Macho Rapist,” “Listen, Women, This Is Your Fight,” “This Was Not Suicide, This Was Femicide.” There were posters of all colors held high with the same slogans and others such as “I am the voice of those who are no longer here,” “They sowed fear in us, we grew wings,” “If they touch one woman, all of we women will respond” (lines of Vivir Quintana’s song), as well as “Enough already with your fucking cynical government full of impunity.” Likewise, the protective barriers were painted with “Femicide State,” “It is not going to fall, we are going to knock it down” (in reference to patriarchy), “Not one more woman murdered, not one woman less missing.”


Names of victims of femicides, disappearances, and other causes, on the barrier around the Palacio Nacional.

There were also performances such as “Un violador en tu camino” [A rapist in your path], women ballet dancers in front of the barrier that surrounded the Palace of Fine Arts, women singing the song “Live without fear” that inspired chants from those who were listening, a group of women dancing and singing “Bella Çiao” with a contagious enthusiasm among those people who were listening and watching. In sum, a wide variety of creative expressions against all the horrors that women experience. And the participation of young girls accompanied by adult women, men who also accompanied their daughters; contingents of indigenous women. The participation of victims of rape or harassment demanding justice was notable, as well as relatives of victims of femicide and forced disappearance, who in many cases have been mobilizing for years to demand justice, punishment for femicides and the presentation alive of their disappeared daughters. 

Some contingents, especially young women, dressed in black and hooded, were “encapsulated” by the police for a long time, to try to prevent them from advancing to the Zócalo, but they were able to break out of the encirclement in a strong onslaught against the shields and gases used by the police, and thus they were able to continue their march.

Thousands of young people arrived and congregated in the Zócalo, very lively and also enraged when they found those large metal barriers, which the [Mexican president Andrés Manuel] López Obrador government erected in response to this beautiful demonstration. A provocation that screamed “No!” to the powerful outbreak of fury demanding justice and liberation. This could not contain the fury of the young women, in the face of so much indifference, impunity and complicity of the state, defender of a system that due to its nature, needs to maintain this oppression of women.


The marchers at the barrier around the Palacio Nacional. Photo: Ariadna Ortega

Many young women, who took turns at times, managed to knock down part of the barriers encircling the Palacio Nacional. It was a furious battle that lasted perhaps four hours, where the majority of women and some men kept trying to tear down other barriers. They did not succeed because from within the police, or perhaps the military—since you could not see inside—were throwing tear gas and spraying with fire extinguishers. Hundreds of young women were banging with whatever they could all along the barriers. As hundreds more supported them, they chanted a variety of slogans, especially “The López Obrador government is a macho rapist,” “They are afraid of us, they are afraid of us.” They did not stop expressing their joy for all the compañeras who kept trying to knock down other parts of the barriers.

This really was a defiant attitude, overflowing with hatred of oppression, by thousands of women who with a lot of justice and right, repudiate everything that they experience, and who yearn for all this to end, that they can live as human beings, and not as objects which can be degraded and discarded whenever. This represents an enormous potential for radical change and a totally different world.

The outrage expressed by the authorities who condemned the “violence” of the protests is totally hypocritical. What really outrages them is not just a few graffiti, a few broken windows, but the fury of women who no longer accept patriarchy and its hate crimes. You never hear such outrage from the authorities over the ten femicides a day [in Mexico], the countless disappearances, rapes, and abuses! This clearly demonstrates their heinous role as defenders of this criminal patriarchal and capitalist system!


Banner: "Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!"

To get rid of this system, a whole revolution is necessary, which will make it possible to put an end to all the horrors that this system generates. As the banner carried by we communists and the compañeras of the Francisco Villa Popular Front-Independent says, “Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!” The leaflet “State Repression Against Women Fighters and Crimes Against Women Go Unpunished — What Kind of System Does This?,” from the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, was also handed out.

Even with the pandemic, we salute everyone who was in the streets on International Women’s Day throughout the world, and throughout Mexico. The just rebellion of women who no longer let themselves be mistreated, and who rather go out in society to fight to demand another world, represents a hope for all those who hate oppression and yearn to live free. And this is also a challenge to take your place in the fight for the emancipation of women and all of humanity.

As Bob Avakian, architect of the new communism, has pointed out:

The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

Download this article in Spanish in PDF format:
March 8 torrente vs patriarcado.pdf

Aurora Roja
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

auroraroja.mx@gmail.com | http://aurora-roja.blogspot.com


Porvenir Community March on the Occasion of International Women's Day


March 7, 2021 march. Banner: "End Patriarchy and the War Against Women."

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the “Porvenir Community March” was held, circulating through the Santa Ana Poniente and Zapotitla neighborhoods, in the Tláhuac Borough, in Mexico City on March 7, 2021.

The march stopped in some places to make callouts with a mobile sound system. During the march, two flyers were distributed: “A World with Equality for Women Today” by the Francisco Villa Popular Front-Independent (FPFVI); and “State Repression Against Women Fighters and Crimes Against Women Go Unpunished—What Kind of System Does This?” by the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico. And posters were pasted up on posts, with combative images of women and the slogans Abortion is a right, it is not a crime!! Forced motherhood is slavery!!

At the head of the march a banner was carried saying “End Patriarchy and the War Against Women” and a cross adorned with large ribbons that called out, “Femicides, Sexual Harassment, Rapes, Beatings, Insults, Indifference.” Young enthusiastic people shouted out the slogans: “The oppressive state is a macho rapist,” “Listen, Women, This is Your Fight,” “Revolution, revolution to end oppression,” “This was not suicide, this was femicide,” and “Freedom, freedom, for women who are in prison because they had abortions,” among others.

It was very important that the women and men from this FPFVI Porvenir Community took to the streets to express their repudiation of the patriarchal oppression against women, on the eve of March 8, International Women’s Day. This was an important contribution to the fight against this patriarchal system, for truth and justice for all women victims of male supremacy, and for the revolution to finally end all forms of oppression of women and all of humanity.

See video of the march:
Computer: March 7 march
Cell phone: March 7 march

Aurora Roja
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

auroraroja.mx@gmail.com | http://aurora-roja.blogspot.com

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/gcr-colombia-break-all-the-chains-for-liberation-of-women-and-all-humanity-en.html

From the Revolutionary Communist Group, Colombia

Break ALL the Chains! For the Liberation of Women and the Emancipation of All Humanity!

| revcom.us

 

International Women’s Day 2021.

Women’s day around the world! Day of rebellion! March 8 has to be a revolutionary holiday to declare our firm determination to break ALL the chains that hold women down and to fight and work for a radically new world, in which all traditional relationships and relations and old ways of thinking that keep humanity enslaved no longer exist.

The presence of women on all fronts in the fight against oppressors around the world is becoming broader and more powerful. This International Women’s Day, the struggles of women are vibrating all over the planet: struggles against rape, sexual harassment, prohibition or restriction of the right to abortion, pornography, beatings, insults and humiliations, genital mutilation, compulsory hijab, murder in the name of “love,” “jealousy” or in the name of “honor,” sex trade, poverty, and misery... all struggles that show how much women want to end gender oppression.

The situation of women’s oppression is getting sharper and so is the struggle of women in the world to combat this. Now entering the third decade of the 21st century, this International Women’s Day, however, a genuine revolutionary struggle for the liberation of women is still needed. The role of women in the world and in the home has profoundly changed since the second half of the 20th century, but why is it, even after so many changes in society (such as the participation of women in professions and in public life), that the oppression of women has not ended but on the contrary has taken on new forms (even with fascist overtones)?

The situation of women in different countries may be different, but they all have something in common: They are all enslaved in the patriarchal system that dominates the world. Even today, women are considered and treated as slaves who, more than other oppressed people, suffer from the utter monstrosity of this system. They are considered and treated as slaves that exist for the pleasure of men. They are considered and treated as slaves who are born to reproduce and provide labor power to ensure the continuation of this system of exploitation. They are considered and treated as slaves whose bodies and minds are dominated by men. In this world, behind every oppressive man stands the dominant patriarchal capitalist system with political, ideological, cultural, military, and legal power. Women are the people who are most oppressed by the system and therefore they bear the greatest burden in the fight against the depraved and ruthless aspects of the same system against women.

As the revolutionary thinker and leader Bob Avakian so accurately points out, 

male supremacy is... completely interwoven and tightly “stitched together” with the whole historical development of the division between exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, throughout the world, including the capitalist-imperialist system which is dominant in the world today. Thousands of years ago, with the development of human societies in such a way that means of production (land, domesticated animals, tools, and so on) were no longer the common resource of people but instead became privately owned—and with the “division of labor”... this led to the dominance of the patriarchal family, with the man having power over his wife (or wives) and children, and women in society overall being subordinate to men, with all the brutality and terror, both mental and physical, that has been used to enforce this and the whole ideology and culture of male supremacy and misogyny... that has rationalized and reinforced this inequality and oppression. (Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution)

Avakian has broken new ground in understanding the dialectical relationship between the oppression of women and the system of capitalism-imperialism, and the radical revolutionary solution! Other trends of revolution and communism (“somewhat” economist) treat the oppression of women as a tangential contradiction. And a significant current of feminists completely discounts the mode of production (its base and its superstructure), fighting many times against real sexism and discrimination, but not against the whole capitalism-imperialism system that needs to be OVERTHROWN. Such feminists discount the mode of production due to the fact that some of them are caught up in identity politics and “intersectionality,” seeking their part under this system.

“Identity politics” in reality boils down to “me.” “We see all the time that, even while this identity is associated with a group, in fundamental terms it’s really about ‘me’ and ‘mine’; it is posed, at least objectively and often consciously, against other people, even other bitterly oppressed people, in a way that smacks of disgusting individualism and petty rivalry based on that outlook.

“‘Identity politics’ distorts, corrupts, misdirects and undermines the exposure of and the needed struggle against what are, in fact, horrific forms of oppression.” The “identity standpoint” is 

a phenomenon that has also provided a convenient target and vehicle for the growing fascist forces to attack the struggle against very real oppression and injustice, while this ‘identity’ politics and ideology offers no real solution to that oppression and injustice and no real alternative to the system that has bred this fascism. 

(Bob Avakian, Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism)

And intersectionality, despite the fact that it appears to be an apparently radical and universal framework that can encompass and experience multiple oppressions suffered by billions of people on this planet without all the “chaos” of overthrowing the system that generates and imposes these oppressions—and in which supposedly the truth is confirmed and injustice is remedied by designating the most oppressed as the authority and leadership in the struggles for reforms—in effect, this intersectionality does not see the fundamental and deep-rooted social divisions and the lopsided gaps in the world, like between rich and poor nations. Thus, supposedly the “intersections” that are identified and the “direct experiences” that are shared through “lanes” are enough to change the world.

We don’t need more people to be manipulated—to waste their desire for real change by following those who seek to turn oppressed “identities” (gender or ethnic, age, etc.) into political capital, at times with a seemingly radical facade, pretexting harmful illusions and hollow reforms, and at other times promoting supposedly “progressive” candidates from the ruling class. We do not need them to legitimize the “right to speak” and to “lead” through identities and narratives, but rather to judge revolutionary projects according to the content of what is being said and towards what is being led. What is URGENTLY needed is to fundamentally and radically change the world and all its oppressive social relations. That requires serious dialogue and debate about reform or revolution: What is the source of these horrors and what is the solution, what is it that will emancipate all of humanity and what will be simple tweaks within the same system!

On a world scale the cry of women resounds to change the situation of subjugation in which they are trapped. The enormous energy for such struggles stems from fury and hatred for an oppression that weighs and forcefully beats down billions of women. Everyone must refuse to accept a world where women are subordinated, dominated, degraded, beaten, mutilated, and murdered in order to keep women “in their place,” and everyone must stand up in unity with the women who are taking to the streets, from Argentina and Chile to India and Iran, to demand an end to sexual assault, femicide and more. Right now there is an urgent need to support women who are casting off their hijab in Iran and are being repressed. We call on women who a fighting to expand the battlefield against the oppression of women and to fight against the entire capitalist system and on the path to liberation for ALL humanity (not just “flip the system in our favor”), and to get into revolution and become liberators of humanity.

This March 8, we call on all truly progressive and revolutionary movements in Colombia and around the world, on those who are fighting against patriarchy, racism and fascism, religious fundamentalism, the destruction of the environment, poverty, national oppression, political repression, and imperialist wars, to join with all those who are standing up in other places more acutely as in Iran. We call on all those who oppose any form of oppression under the capitalist system to unite around the demand for freedom for all political prisoners in Iran. Today’s women and men political prisoners are the freedom fighters of our society. You cannot fall into the pettiness of fighting for “me” and “mine.” We must unite against ALL patriarchal, repressive and oppressive governments. The liberation of women and the end of their oppression, which is a worldwide question, can and must be a unifying factor that links women’s movements around the world. The liberation of women also makes possible the fight to liberate all of humanity.

Revolutionary Communist Group, Colombia | March 8, 2021 | @ComRevCo


"Fight for the Liberation of Women and the Emancipation of All Humanity!" Bucaramanga, Colombia


Cartegena, Columbia


La Plaza de Bolivar, Bogota, Colombia

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/rcmg-europe-break-the-chains-unleash-fury-of-women-for-revolution-en.html

From the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe):

Break the Chains!
Unleash Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

Another World Is in Birth—
We Can and Will Transform Everything!

| revcom.us

 

International Women’s Day 2021 takes the center stage on March 8 resounding a battle cry across the globe to sweep away all that enslaves women—as fundamental to the struggle for human society worldwide rising on entirely new foundations.

A mighty force of women in rebellion against patriarchal enslavement is in evidence everywhere. From inspiring examples of women’s rebellion in Iran’s streets defying the ferocious dictatorship of the Islamic fundamentalist state of the IRI even in its own dungeons and torture chambers, to the heroic women’s street battles in the heartlands of “modern” secular Europe, there is a gathering storm of women’s fury. Women embody a determined opposition in Poland to Kaczynski’s “Law and Justice” Party that has been trying to hammer in a program of religious fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship with virulent patriarchy and all the chains of traditional values, stripping away the right to abortion, to insure forced motherhood and submission of women to men and the Catholic Church.

Everywhere the militant masculinity that typifies the patriarchal fascist movements is tied with a thousand threads to aggressive reactionary patriotic nationalism—the head of the nation and the head of the household are joined in a reactionary knot that is a binding force in the capitalist-imperialist system itself. Germany’s AfD are in practice reviving the old Nazi patriarchal programme of Kinder, Kuche, Kirche and bellicose chauvinism and xenophobia which is echoing around the continent, from France’s re-branded National Front to Britain’s belligerent Brexiteers. What the outmoded Western capitalist-imperialist powers and the fascist forces hatching up in their bosoms have in common with the equally outmoded religious fundamentalist forces in the Third World—whether in power such as the IRI or other jihadist forces such as ISIS and others—is the outlook and exercise of brutal misogyny and violent subjugation and dehumanization aiming to maintain women in chains. The political campaign to free the political prisoners and imprisoned women fighters in Iran is a powerful front of struggle against the deadly reinforcing link of the worldwide enforcers of patriarchal oppression [see Burn the Cage, Free the Birds @burn_the_cage Instagram].

The electoral defeat and the failed coup attempt of the forces backing the fascist Trump/Pence regime was a sigh of relief, yet this should lull nobody to sleep, for the fascists are emboldened and ever more determined to impose their program of male supremacy, white supremacy, xenophobic patriotism, demonization of the LGBTQ people and their imperial “entitlement” to lord it over others by force, encouraging the kindred fascist forces in Europe and elsewhere. This becomes evident in the increasing threat and influence of the fascist forces swarming the political stage, infiltrating deep into the state structures, parliaments and the armed forces as conveniently revealed in Germany that claims to be the “can do” manager of the European Union gang of imperialist powers.

Resistance and rebellion is crucially important as is the indispensable role and power of the unrelenting struggle of women against the system’s patriarchal oppression and degradation. Yet as pointed out by Bob Avakian,

A profoundly different polarization must be brought about, in line with the potential for a radically different and better world, representing the actual interests of the masses of people and ultimately all of humanity. A radically different approach to understanding, and acting on, the relations and problems of society must be taken up—a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach.

People come out on the streets and fight courageously defying all odds and are willing to recognize the need to rely on science to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic or environmental devastation but all too often fail or even refuse the necessity to use the same type of evidence-based scientific method and approach to understanding and acting on the changes and developments of human society in dealing with its contradictions and problems. Bob Avakian, the architect of the New Communism, has brought forward a new framework for human emancipation more soundly grounded in scientific methodology and outlook for bringing about the needed revolutionary transformations of human society.

A key part of Avakian’s work includes an unsparingly scientific analysis of the transformations in different dimensions of human society wrought in recent decades by the capitalist-imperialist system. This analysis lays bare how all this is ripping apart the relations typical of the existing structures of bourgeois democracy and giving rise to the intensifying efforts to impose fascism, a different openly dictatorial form of bourgeois rule. This also includes significant transformations in the conditions of women and the re-imposition of patriarchal oppression and traditional values with a vengeance. Bob Avakian’s analyses and methodology in his New Year’s Statement, “A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity,” is of great relevance worldwide:

Over the past several decades ... there have been profound changes in the situation of women and the relations within the family. In only one of ten families is there the “model” situation where the husband is the “sole breadwinner” and the wife a totally dependent “homemaker.” With these economic changes have come significant changes in attitudes and expectations—and very significant strains not only on the fabric of the family but of social relations more broadly.... The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

Analyzing the harmful dead-end influences of liberal forces, “mainstream” institutions and reform-seeking forces peddling “identity politics” straitjacketing the struggle of the masses to limits and terms of the existing system, Avakian underlies the dangers:

...to the degree that things are maintained within the limits of this system, this will actually have the effect of furthering the horrors for humanity that are built into this system, while also reinforcing and giving further impetus to the underlying economic—and the social and political—forces that will strengthen the fascism that has already shown great strength in this country (and a number of others).

Avakian demonstrates that only by wielding the scientific method of confronting reality in its complex structure and dynamics will people be able to overcome the killing confines of the existing capitalist-imperialist system:

Only through the revolution aiming to overthrow this system—to defeat and dismantle this system of capitalism-imperialism and all its institutions of oppression and violent repression, replacing them with institutions that can serve the cause of emancipating all of humanity and enabling human beings to become fit caretakers of the earth—only in this way can each and every form of oppression, plunder and exploitation be finally ended.

Imagine what it would mean if there were a growing force of people here in Europe and around the world, engaging with this emancipating scientific approach—discussing and debating the burning questions facing humanity, from the ever more rapidly approaching environmental catastrophe to the wars for empire, from the deeply rooted white supremacy and patriarchy to the uprooting of hundreds of millions of migrants being driven out of their homes, especially in the poor, oppressed countries of the Global south. It’s way past time to break out of the shackles on our thinking—shackles that keep people hoping for the reform of this unreformable system, and liberate us to envision the radically new world that is necessary and possible—if we dare to seize it. Go to revcom.us and check out the New Communism, and write us to become part of a growing community of revolutionary emancipators of humanity!

Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe)

Email: rcmanifestogroup@gmail.com

Check out revcom.us


Hundreds of thousands of women are taking to the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities and towns in outraged protest against an October 22 decree by the Constitutional Tribunal banning abortion. (Photo: Twitter)

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/from-a-reader-in-europe-stop-violence-against-women-en.html

From a reader in Europe:

Stop Violence Against Women! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

| revcom.us

 

The brutal murder of a young woman has sparked an explosion of protest in the United Kingdom against violence inflicted on women. Sarah Everard, 33 years old, had been walking home from a friend’s place in south London on the evening of March 3 when she disappeared. Her body was found several days later, and a few days after that a member of the elite police unit that protects diplomats and parliamentarians was arrested and charged with her abduction and murder.

Sarah’s murder touched a deep vein of anger and resentment at the condition of women in British society that took over the public debate. What kind of society is it where women have to fear for their lives simply for walking down the streets? How outrageous was the initial response of the police, who told women to stay home, as if they, and not male violence, were the problem? A call for a vigil Saturday night, March 13, on Clapham Commons, near where Sarah had disappeared, tapped these deeply held feelings, and within 24 hours, vigils were announced in dozens of cities throughout the country, with thousands signing up to attend.

The police, rather than cooperating with the organizers to figure out some way to hold the vigils in a safe way, banned them outright, a move that got backing from Britain’s High Court. This only strengthened the determination of many women to turn out, saying they refused to be silenced, and several thousand women and hundreds of men, almost all wearing masks, showed up on Clapham Common at 6 pm. The sorrow and rage was palpable, as chants rang out—“Say her name—Sarah Everard,” “How many more, how many women!?” and simply “97%,” referring to the percentage of young women who, according to a recent survey by UN Women UK, have been subject to sexual harassment. Many brought flowers and candles.

And then the police struck. A squad of cops barged onto the bandstand where the organizers were speaking, seized their megaphones and banners, and arrested several. Pictures of a young woman thrown to the ground with a cop kneeling on her back went viral, and were all over the front pages of the next day’s mainstream media. The crowd exploded in anger: “Police go home, leave us alone,” “You are the problem!,” “Arrest your own”—and, echoing the cry of last summer’s protests against police brutality on Black people, “No justice, no peace.”

A leaflet was eagerly snapped up that cited Bob Avakian’s critical analysis that

The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

The vigil organizers, Reclaim These Streets, issued a statement Sunday morning denouncing the police attacks, and pointing out the outrageous picture of young women being manhandled by police at a protest against male violence. Prominent politicians issued demands for the resignation of the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick. The enforcers of a capitalist-imperialist system have struck out to defend a pillar of the dominant relations in the society, a patriarchal order in which half of humanity is subordinated to the other half... but the fury boiling close beneath the surface is spilling over.


Sarah Everard

Bob Avakian: What If the World Doesn't Have To Be This Way?


Vigil Saturday night, March 13, on Clapham Commons, London, near where Sarah Everard disappeared.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/revolution-books-nicole-fleetwood-exhibit-marking-time-en.html

| revcom.us

 

One week only! March 22-29

Special Benefit to Support Revolution Books

Online video guided tour
by Dr. Nicole Fleetwood of the exhibit
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration 

We are excited to announce that Dr. Nicole Fleetwood and MOMA-PS1 (Museum of Modern Art Queens Annex) are sharing with the Revolution Books community Dr. Fleetwood's video guided tour of the exhibit she curated: Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Big thanks to MOMA-PS1 and Dr. Fleetwood. 

Your donation at Eventbrite will give you online access to Dr. Fleetwood's 56-minute video tour at any time between March 22 and March 29. She offers this online video tour so viewers can experience this wonderful exhibit during the pandemic, and to support Revolution Books: the bookstore that is the beacon for a whole new world. 


Seven selected works from the Exhibition

Open at MOMA-PS1 through April 4, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration shows the powerful and inspiring art created by 44 men and women in the hellish conditions of the U.S. prison system — holding more than 2 million people, more than any other country in history, in the "land of the free." 

This art is full of feeling and meaning...it is beautiful...and a passionate declaration of the humanity of those, mostly people of color, whom this system degrades, despises, and casts off. 

Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, noted art scholar and Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, curated this unique exhibit. Her book documenting this art work was selected by The New York Times as one of the best art books of 2020. More about Dr. Fleetwood here


Dr. Nicole Fleetwood presents her exhibit at MOMA-PS1, as seen in the video tour

How it will work:

When you donate at Eventbrite you will receive a link to view Dr. Fleetwood's 56-minute online video tour of Marking Time any time between March 22-29.

All donations matter! 
Give as generously as you can so that Revolution Books can be sustained and supported as an even more powerful and accessible resource to bring about a world where the chains are no more.
 

Revolution Books also carries Dr. Nicole Fleetwood's book online and in our physical storefront. 

Everyone: thank you for supporting Revolution Books, and we look forward to sharing this extraordinary experience with you!

Revolution Books is the political, intellectual, and cultural center of a movement for an actual revolution. A place that values critical thinking, the poetic spirit, and the search for the truth. Whose beating heart is the work and leadership of Bob Avakian—the architect of a whole new framework for human emancipation, the new communism.

“Those this system has cast off, those it has treated as less than human, can be the backbone and driving force of a fight not only to end their own oppression, but to finally end all oppression, and emancipate all of humanity.”

Bob Avakian, from the film 
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION NOTHING LESS” 
also in BAsics 


Humanity Needs Revolution
Revolution Needs Revolution Books
Revolution Books Needs You

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/rnl-show-episode-44-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 44 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show!

Two Systems, Two Choices: Which One Will You Choose?

Premieres Thursday, March 18, 2021
5 pm PT / 8 pm ET
YouTube.com/TheRevcoms

Last episode, host Andy Zee brought out the quote from BA stating that   “...we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!.” This is true but who are we to say this?  And why is this so pressing in the time we find ourselves in today?  

Join hosts Andy Zee and Sunsara Taylor as we dig into these questions today through looking at the changed situation of Black people and the brutal lesson concentrated in last year's uprising and the situation of women in the world. These two key questions are volatile and are a crucial part of the revolution we need that is concentrated in the new communism developed by the Revolutionary Leader Bob Avakian (BA). We will  dive into these topics and get deeper into revolution with excerpts from Bob Avakian’s NEW YEAR' S STATEMENT, "A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity" and other key works including "Birds Cannot Give Birth To Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond The Horizon" by Bob Avakian.

This episode will include:

*An illustrated piece on the changed situation of Black people from the end of WW2 to today excerpted from Section 3 of Bob Avakian’s New Year's Statement.    

*A commentary from Host Andy Zee on the two different systems and choices confronting humanity and "who are we to say that there are only 2 choices.” Why revolution is the solution and how Bob Avakian is a different kind of leader up against the leaders put forward today. Featuring excerpts from the seminal work by Bob Avakian titled "Birds Cannot Give Birth To Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond The Horizon."

*A conversation between host Sunsara Taylor and members of The National Revolution Tour Noche Diaz and Lucha Bright on the fight against police terror and the stifling nature of the system of capitalism. A discussion in the wake of the pig Derek Chauvin's trial, and flowing from Avakian's New Year's statement, speaking to the changed situation of Black people, the volatility of this question and the strategic implications for the revolution we need.

*An illustration of an excerpt from Bob Avakian for The Liberation Of Black People And The Emancipation Of Humanity featuring a key part of the new communism and the work BA has been putting his life to.

*An excerpt from an interview with journalist Ruchira Gupta and host Sunsara Taylor on sex trafficking from Nepal to India.

*Bob Avakian speaks to "The People's Security Force" and how things could be different after we make revolution in the filmed talk, Revolution And Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between Cornel West & Bob Avakian.

 *Annie Day, member of the revolution tour shares what is happening with uprisings of women all over the world.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/the-lives-of-irans-political-prisoners-hang-in-the-balance-we-must-act-now-en.html

An Emergency Appeal

The Lives of Iran's Political Prisoners Hang in the Balance—We Must ACT Now

Updated | revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received the following from the Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners.

A brutal campaign of arrests, torture and executions is now taking place in Iran. This is an emergency. The lives and dignity of hundreds of political prisoners are in imminent, mortal danger.

All those who stand for justice and yearn for a better world must rally to the cause of freeing Iran’s political prisoners NOW. 

Beginning in October 2020, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) launched a massive new wave of arbitrary arrests against labor, women's, and human rights activists; dissident intellectuals and artists; protesters and revolutionaries; and members of religious and oppressed minorities.

Many are now being tortured, held in solitary confinement, and denied legal rights, assistance or medical aid, as the IRI attempts to force “confessions,” conducts sham “trials,” and carries out brutal floggings.

Amnesty International (AI) warns of an “alarming rise in executions,” with 49 prisoners executed between December and February. This regime has a blood-stained record of attempting to violently crush any form of dissent or resistance—including sudden mass executions of political prisoners as happened in 1988.

We cannot allow this to happen again. 

Importantly, this repression has been met with inspiring heroism. Many prisoners, their families, supporters and various Iranian organizations have been speaking out and demanding freedom for ALL Iran’s political prisoners—at great risk to their own safety.

The Iranian Writers Association (IWA) has denounced the execution of prisoners of conscience, even as it is under extreme repression. Several members are imprisoned, including Arash Ganji, sentenced to 11 years for translating a book on the Kurdish struggle in Syria. Journalist and Defenders of Human Rights Center member Narges Mohammadi was imprisoned for eight and a half years. She is calling for protest against the solitary confinement of the two brothers of Navid Afkari, the Iranian wrestling champion executed last year for being part of the 2018 mass rebellion. The brothers are sentenced to 54 and 27 years.

The documentary film Nasrin (about imprisoned attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh) is an example of this nightmare of detentions and this implacable spirit of resistance.

Iran’s political prisoners face a dire, life-threatening, immediate emergency. Here are just a few other examples:

A number of dual nationals from Europe, Australia and the U.S. are being held in the “political ward” of the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Amnesty International (AI) recently sent out urgent action alerts on two of these prisoners:

Women prisoners are increasingly transferred to more remote prisons, limiting access by their family and lawyers. They include:

All of Iran’s political prisoners must be unconditionally and immediately released.

The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran.

We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW

We say to the U.S government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS

Write to the Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners at: FreeIransPoliticalPrisonersNOW@gmail.com

ENDORSE


Photos of political prisoners from @burn_the_cage Instagram

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/anti-trump-protester-attacked-by-fascists-targeted-for-prosecution-en.html

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Anti-Trump Protester Attacked by Fascists Now Targeted for Prosecution and Jail by LA DA George Gascon

Press Alert  
March 19, 2021  
Press Liaison, Contact: 323-671-9839  
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LA District Attorney George Gascon’s office is prosecuting a member of the Revolution Club with misdemeanor battery, a charge which could mean up to 6 months in jail and a $2,000 fine.  The arrest stems from a protest during Trump's fundraising visit to Beverly Hills on September 17, 2019.  At the protest, the Revolution Club burned an American flag, declaring America Was Never Great!  The Beverly Hills Police allowed the protest to be attacked by a fascist mob, trying to prevent the revolutionaries from their legal and righteous political action.  The person arrested was protecting the flag burning from this violent assault yet they're being charged with “battery!”

Refuse Fascism called for this protest action in Beverly Hills one block from Trump's fundraiser to demand the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! During the protest, the Revolution Club formed a safety circle and burned an American flag, challenging Trump’s fascist America-first agenda along with his demand that anyone carrying out constitutionally protected flag burning should “lose their citizenship.” Revolution Club members chanted “1, 2, 3, 4, Slavery, Genocide and War, 5, 6, 7, 8, America Was Never Great.” “Humanity First!” “How Do We Get Out Of This Mess? Revolution, Nothing Less!”

Videos show the Beverly Hills PD standing aside while a number of pro-Trump fascists repeatedly attacked the circle of protesters formed to ensure the flag burning would be carried out safely.  The fascists used physical violence and threats.  When one member of the Revolution Club stepped in front of a fascist charging the circle, he was put in a headlock by one of the fascists. As the protester attempted to extricate himself from the headlock, the police moved in with scores of police and even an armored police assault vehicle – not to stop the fascists, but to stop the legally assembled protest. The only person arrested? The Revolution Club member – now charged with battery even though he was the actual victim of the assault.

Even the police report makes clear who was waging a violent assault: “in an attempt to stop the flag burning, a 15-year-old male juvenile later identified as the victim (sic) attempted to grab the flag away from the protester trying to burn the flag.” The so-called victim attacked a legal protest and the person attacked was arrested and charged!  This is a scene played out repeatedly over the last years: fascists attack a legally assembled anti-fascist protest and it is the protesters who the police target, giving fascists a free reign.

 

This Beverly Hills incident calls to mind a similar action in July 2016, outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on the day Trump was selected as their presidential candidate. The Revolution Club held a protest at the gates of the convention in which Joey Johnson (defendant in the 1989 Supreme Court decision which said flag burning is protected by the First Amendment) burned the US flag. Joey and the Revolution Club members were assaulted and brutalized by the scores of police as well as fascist Trump supporters. In this case, two fascists including Joe Biggs (leader of the Proud Boys) admitted in an interview with Alex Jones of InfoWars that they attacked and assaulted Johnson. In this case, the city of Cleveland charged Johnson with assault claiming Biggs and a cohort were victims of the flag burning! 15 other members of the Revolution Club who were part of that safety circle were charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor criminal charges. All criminal charges were ultimately dismissed and the City of Cleveland was forced to pay over $900,000 for violating rights of those arrested.

========

A recent article in the New York Times entitled "Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol — Two Proud Boys accused of leading a mob to Congress followed a bloody path to get there. Law enforcement did little to stop them." highlights this pattern and practice of law enforcement giving fascists the green light to attack constitutionally protected flag burning while the protesters who are attacked are prosecuted.

In addition, here in LA, this same Revolution Club member was arrested for participating in two political protests on the Hollywood freeway with other Revolution Club and Refuse Fascism members, who unfurled a banner “Trump/Pence Must Go” in the Fall of 2017. LA City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office vigorously prosecuted these cases for two years even as it was revealed that the LAPD was illegally spying on Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club, sending a Confidential Informant into meetings of Refuse Fascism. These charges were finally dropped after 2 years and two mistrials.

 

DA Gascon and the Beverly Hills PD in this case, as well as the LAPD, continue to target political protesters and revolutionaries, while giving fascists a green light.

   

There will be a legal hearing on Monday, March 22, 2021, to dismiss this outrageous prosecution based on discriminatory enforcement.  Call LA DA George Gascon’s office and demand this prosecution of the member of the Revolution Club be dropped immediately: 213.974.3512.

   

DROP THE CHARGE AGAINST BEVERLY HILLS PROTESTER NOW!

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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