On my way to work on Monday morning, running on about 6 hours sleep over the last two days, I made a slight miscalculation, and broke my fucking head on the pavement. Yes, I know I'm "too old" to be skateboarding, even to work, but fuck you. The scared-ass motherfucker working in the 24 hour convenience store wouldn't even let me use his fucking bathroom. Nor did he offer to call for help, or even ask me what the fuck happened. In fact, no one in the fucking store did. They all just got the fuck out of my way because I was covered in blood. I grabbed some napkins, and skated the rest of the way to work. My co-workers were great. I insisted on staying for the entire shift, but they made me go and get stitched. I did, and came back to work the rest of it. Overall, it was a fun day. We had many laughs about the situation, but everyone wants me to start wearing a helmet. I lied and said I'd think about it. I always make my kids wear them, though. Enough about my whiney bullshit.
The October 22nd Protest Against Police Brutality went off down in the u.s., and some parts of kkkanada. There were many actions in many cities, and they will be built upon. Here's a statement the RCP put out just before the events took place.....
The October 22nd Protest Against Police Brutality went off down in the u.s., and some parts of kkkanada. There were many actions in many cities, and they will be built upon. Here's a statement the RCP put out just before the events took place.....
October 22, 2013
Statement from RCP on the Occasion of the October 22 Actions Against Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation
October 21, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The Revolutionary Communist Party salutes you who have come out here, who are part of actions going on all over the country. We salute you who have been fighting this fight for years, and you who have taken your first step today. Without the kind of resistance we're seeing here today, we have no chance whatsoever at justice, and at a better life for everyone. And we need more of this—as our Party says,
The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world... when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness... those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.
We need a mass movement, far beyond what we have here today, yes eventually of millions, that says NO MORE to this outrage. A movement that unites all kinds of people who suffer under this horror and all kinds of people who refuse to go along with it and want to act against it, even if it doesn't personally affect them. A movement that can change the ways that middle-class people are taught to fear those under the gun, and that can change the ways that the people under the gun are taught to blame themselves for what is being done to them by the system, or to feel that if they dostand up, nobody will hear and it will make no difference.
Bob Avakian, BA, the Chairman of our Party and the leader who has brought forward the new synthesis of communism, starts his epic speech REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! by asking, how long must "this nightmare of oppression and brutality that so many in the world are forced to endure, day after day, generation after generation" go on? And he goes on to say, "Let's start with just one great crime of this system—police murder… after murder, after murder, of Black people and Latinos, especially youth."
And many, many people in these past few months have expressed that very same kind of sentiment over the outrageous acquittal of the man who killed Trayvon Martin—a murder that harkened back to Emmett Till and the days of lynching. How long... how long indeed!? That is the question we're asking today.
And we also have to ask ourselves—what kind of a system, for generations now, has confined millions, maybe tens of millions, of mainly minority people into prison? What kind of a system vindicates the police who chased down an unarmed young Black man in the Bronx, Ramarley Graham, and then killed him in his own bathroom? Or who hogtied a young Chicano father in California, David Sal Silva, and then murdered him in front of witnesses from the community? What kind of a system treats those who are driven here to survive as criminals, calling them "illegal aliens" and hounding and persecuting them, and breaking up their families? What kind of a system must wiretap literally billions of people around the world in the name of "security"? The horrors we are here to fight against today—the police harassment, brutality and outright murder of young Black, Latino and other minority people, the criminalization of whole peoples, the Big Brother repression, and other horrors of an equally towering nature—will go on and keep going on just so long as the source of the problem is not dealt with and eradicated.
Let's be clear: it is crucially important to stand up and fight back against police brutality and mass incarceration, as well as other horrors and outrages. At the same time, it is just as important and even more important, that we get to the source of the problem and that we get into the real solution: revolution—nothing less.
We can do that. We can get rid of this system, and put a whole different one in its place. We can make revolution—not today, not next week... but we CAN do it. That is not just talk, it is real. And we are not just talking about it, we are working to prepare for the day when we can do it, and we are hastening that day.
This system has deep problems. Just look at this shutdown, with two camps among the rulers fighting among themselves. Why? It comes out of the very way they have to exploit and oppress the whole world, the problems and resistance of various kinds that they run into in doing that, and the bitter arguments all that gives rise to among the rulers themselves about HOW they are going to do that. When those kinds of things happen, it potentially raises big questions among millions. It can show that these rulers are NOT all-powerful, and that their system doesn't have to be permanent. And when the people decide that they are not going to keep letting the system keep them down, when and as people increasingly stand up in struggle as you are doing today, when people check out and get with and increasingly get closer to the real revolutionary alternative, it can prepare the ground and it can organize the people to bring closer the day so that when those on top cannot easily get out of their conflicts, and when people broadly see a real alternative and are ready to sacrifice for it, then millions of people will actually be able to make a revolution.
We can build a movement that can hasten that day—but you can't know how to do that, and you can't fully participate in it, without going to the revcom.us website or keeping up with Revolutionnewspaper. This site and this paper exposes the lies they tell all the time, and shows how our movement is doing and gets into WHAT it is learning about making revolution.
A whole new system can be built, one in which people are NOT subject to the myriad horrors of today—the police murder and massive systematic criminalization of whole peoples, the persecution and super-exploitation of immigrants, the oppression and constant demeaning of women, the horrible wars and the living hells of an even worse degree in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the way that the monsters who run this thing are raping the natural world we live in—we can get beyond that into a world where people can truly flourish. But you can't know that and you can't know how without getting into BA, and the whole new synthesis of communism he's brought forward, and the Constitution for this new society that's been written and that's based on his work.
Our Party is determined to bring forward and to lead the millions to make revolution and to bring in a whole new day, a whole new society where October 22 is no longer a day of protest but a day of celebration and commemoration each year so that the children and young people in the future can learn about this horror of the old society, and how people like you courageously stood up to fight it, and they will shake their heads and cry and they will echo BA and look in our faces and ask, "How long did this go on? How could people live like that? What did they do to end it?" And then they will commemorate those who lost their lives to this system and those who sacrificed everything fighting it and answer that question by saying, "Never Again!"
This cannot happen without you. But with you, it can. And there IS a role for you in this movement—there are ways for you to contribute, large and small to help make this revolution happen. Number one: get into BA. Start with this film, REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! If you have seen it, see it again. Show it to your friends. Talk with them about it and talk with people in the movement for revolution about it. Get into BAsics, the book of quotes and short essays by BA.BAsics is the handbook for revolutionaries, and we say, "You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics!"
And while you're doing that, be part of a campaign to spread this to every corner of society. We are in the middle of—and we are going to take to a whole 'nother level—a campaign to raise big money to get BA everywhere, to let people know that another world is possible and that there is someone who can lead us there.
Get with our Party. Work with it, support it, come closer to it and join it—because not only are we going to need a strong, experienced, deeply-rooted vanguard party capable of leading when the deal does go down—we need that Party right now and we need it all the way through the revolution and after.
And finally, let's continue this struggle against police brutality, repression and the criminalization of a generation, let's intensify it and let's broaden it, and let's work together to get to the day when people no longer have to say "how long" and they can walk in the liberating sun of a whole new day. There are no guarantees, and the struggle will be hard, but can we settle for anything less?
Revolution—Nothing Less!
Revolution—Nothing Less!
Revolution—Nothing Less!
