Friday 29 May 2015

NO MIDDLE GROUND, NO COMPROMISE

Ever the lying statesman ( redundant?), obama is trying to find some sort of "middle ground" between the fucking murderers in blue, and the people who are fed the fuck up with pigs killing people. No dice, asshole. Kkkops are killing people, and people are increasingly rising up against this. but what do you expect from the king of the most murderous system and empire on earth?

Obama’s Three-Pronged Offensive: Fraud, Repression, and Sugar-Coated Poison

May 25, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Renewed and even more powerful upsurges against murder by police this spring have compelled Barack Obama to go on the offensive.
NOT against murder by police, but against the righteous struggle of the masses of people.
Obama has been very busy lately. One day he may be telling a gathering of cops how much he values their work, and how much this society depends on them. The next day he may speak to a group of college-bound inner-city youths and tell them he “understands” them, and wants to work with them to overcome their problems.
These efforts are not disjointed or disconnected. They are part of a full-court press intended to suppress growing rebellion and resistance among the basic people. They are intended to send a message broadly to society that “the system works” for those who work within it. They aim to isolate and marginalize people, among the basic masses as well as intellectuals and other middle class and well-off people who don’t “go along with the program.”
Obama’s offensive has three prongs. One, fraud. He is pushing programs he claims will help solve the problem of brutalizing, murdering police, but will actually do nothing of the kind. Two, repression. Obama is not only giving moral backing to the cops, he is pushing programs that step up police power OVER and AGAINST the masses of people. Three: sugar-coated poison. He is using words of concern and promises of money, designed to mislead, confuse, and derail the struggle of the people.

Losing Their Legitimacy

In December 2014, the Obama administration pulled together a task force to devise a plan for “21st Century Policing.” Earlier this month, shortly after the rebellion in Baltimore, the report of the plan was released. Obama stated that the plan’s aim is to promote “effective crime reduction while building public trust.” It calls for “improved community policing, community policing grants, body worn camera tool kits,” and other measures.
A central concern and focus of this report is that police across the country are losing or have lost legitimacy in the eyes of many people, especially Black and Latino people. The task force’s overriding goal is to “build trust and nurture legitimacy...” between the cops and the people they brutalize.
But what IS this “legitimacy” that they want to “nurture”?
The “legitimacy” of the police is the legitimacy to use force, including deadly force, under full protection of the law. Check out the Department of IN-justice report on the murder by a cop of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—towards the end it cites one court ruling after another in which U.S. law, based on the U.S. Constitution, legitimizes the police murdering unarmed people under all kinds of circumstances and with all kinds of “justifications.”
Ruben Garcia Villalpando, unarmed and with his hands in the air, was gunned down in cold blood by a pig in Grapevine, Texas. His killer was just no-billed (not indicted) by a Tarrant County grand jury. Marta Romero, Ruben’s wife, spoke poignantly about what the “legitimacy” of this system means. “If my husband had killed a police officer, he would be in jail. But since it was the opposite, will they just leave it this way? Because an officer killed a man, because he killed an illegal and nothing more? What are a human’s rights then? Now an animal gets more rights than a man.”
The police are enforcers of a system that has absolutely no future for the masses of youth. As Bob Avakian said, the police “enforce the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in.” Nobody should accept those conditions, or the “legitimacy” of the people and institutions that enforce them. Unfortunately, however, most of the time people just accept it or take it for granted, because they think there’s no other way.
So it is a fine thing indeed—one of the best things to happen in this country in a long time—that courageous, defiant youths, from Ferguson, to New York, to Oakland, to Madison, and most definitely to Baltimore, as well as dozens of other cities, have challenged and begun to reject that legitimacy. It is a fine thing indeed that many people from better-off sections of society, including many white people, came out in the streets and in other ways have expressed support for those youths.
For Obama, and the system of capitalism-imperialism he represents and enforces, this is a problem. But for revolutionaries, and anyone who wants a better day, this is a GOOD thing—because revolution and liberation require that people no longer accept the right of the rulers to violently control them and are willing to challenge that. This battle of legitimacy is a big part of what Obama is trying to deal with here.

21st Century Policing

On the one hand, the Obama program for “21st century policing” wants to make a show of changing some of the most outrageous police practices. He calls for body cameras on cops—but cameras on the scene not only did not save Eric Garner, choked to death by a Staten Island, New York, pig on video, the DA didn’t even charge him, despite the evidence right there! Or Obama makes a big deal about halting the shipment to urban police forces of massive heavy weaponry used by the U.S. occupation armies against oppressed people all over the world.
But look more closely at what Obama said when he announced this program, and at what he did. “Law enforcement agencies should create policies and procedures for policing mass demonstrations ... to minimize the appearance of a military operation.” In other words, it’s fine torun a military operation against protests, just don’t have it appear like one. He also said: “We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling that it’s an occupying force.”
Obama’s directive is deceitful bullshit on an even more fundamental level. As the Washington Post reported, “most of the militarization [of police forces] takes place outside the 1033 Program [established in 1997 to transfer military hardware from the Department of Defense to local police departments]. ... Since 2003, for example, the Department of Homeland Security has been giving grants to police departments around the country to purchase new military gear. That program now dwarfs the 1033 program.” So Obama’s grand “directive,” as he surely knows, will have little effect on the ability of police forces to continue to obtain military weaponry.
This, and other measures like it, are part of the “fraud” part of the program—making people think that what he is doing will actually get to the essence of the problem and change things.
Look at the reality, and don’t go for the fraud. People in communities like Sandtown-Winchester in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri,  feel like the cops are an occupying force because they are, and act like, an occupying force. Unarmed Akai Gurley was gunned down in the stairwell of a Brooklyn, New York, housing project by cops who didn’t even see him but had been trained to regard anyone there as an “enemy.” Beating people, arresting them for making eye contact, shooting them in cold blood, taking them for deadly “rough rides”―that’s how these pigs roll, it’s what they do. And when more is needed, they break out with tear gas, tanks, rifles, head-to-toe body armor, and more―and that’s exactly what an occupying army does.

Stepped Up Repression in The Name of “Trust”

The second part of Obama’s program is founded on increasing the intense repression of the police, and backing the police and their brutal, murderous activities to the hilt. This is why he has been making such a big point of speaking to police gatherings, of meeting with and declaring his support for police in places like Camden, New Jersey. Our article on Camden shows that they have turned that city into an open-air concentration camp—and THIS is what Obama wants to uphold and spread!!
This goes further, and again, we have to look beneath the surface. He calls for a big emphasis on building trust. And everywhere you turn, people are echoing this: “Oh, we need to restore trust” and “Oh, we’ve got to work together on this problem and restore trust.”
NO!!! The one thing that the oppressed do NOT need is trust for those who have been hired and trained to oppress them. Think about how absurd and idiotic this is. Would you say that the problem of slavery was that the enslaved people and the slave drivers didn’t trust each other? Would you say that the problem in the Nazi concentration camps was that the prisoners didn’t have enough trust for the guards? Would you say that the problem with the way white people took over America and committed genocide against the Native American Indians was that the Indians didn’t have trust for the whites? Then why in the world should anyone who wants liberation and freedom and justice want to build “trust” between an oppressed community and those who so viciously oppress them?
Obama hopes that “building trust” will demobilize people and get them back out of the streets. Sometimes you hear people say, “Well, I don’t like it when they brutalize people, but the one good thing they did was the Police Athletic League”—NO! The Police Athletic League and programs like that are designed to make people accept the brutality and murder as just the result of “bad people” and to not get that the police as an institution are designed to defend a system of oppression. Any “trust-building” is designed to cover over that and confuse people and puncture their militancy. This is why it was very righteous for a crowd at a recent town hall meeting of mainly Black people in Philadelphia to drive out the Black mayor and police chief of that city when they came to “listen to grievances” and “build trust” after they exonerated the cops who killed Brandon Tate-Brown last December. (Check out the video.)
And let’s be clear. Another big thing they are talking about when they say “let’s build trust” is building snitch networks. This is not only, or even mainly, about who’s doing crime. A lot of the time the police know who’s doing crime—and half the time they’re in on it. This is about informing.
Let’s go back to this question of legitimacy—of whether people think that the cops have a right to wield this force to defend the system. When and as their legitimacy comes into question, and as a movement for revolution develops, they will use this “trust” they have built—the snitch networks and all that—to try to destroy that movement.
This is not something we’re talking about 10 or 20 years down the road. As we have said, the current upsurge against police murder of Black and Latino people has changed things to the point where a real revolutionary situation could possibly develop out of the further unfolding of that, along with other developments. So there are very high stakes indeed in going up against this and tearing the covers off it.

Brother’s (Jail) Keeper

The third part of the Obama offensive is “sugar-coated poison.” Many middle class and well-off people are actually trying to find and develop ways to help inner-city youths whose lives are mangled by this wretched system. Many of them played positive roles in the big struggles that began in Ferguson last August.
Obama seeks to channel and (mis)direct those positive impulses and weave them into systems of control that reinforce and perpetuate the very system that spawns the problem. The Brother’s Keeper program, which Obama is reviving, is a cornerstone of this overall plan. It is a vital component of the way Obama is working to strengthen the system’s ability to repress the masses of people.
How can this be so? We’ve covered this in other articles, including in this issue, and we’ll have more to say in the future. But let’s say for the sake of argument that every single program in “Brother’s Keeper” actually helped young men (for the program is ONLY directed at males!) to be more educated and all that. There would still be no jobs!! There would still be the rank and pervasive discrimination built into every level of society—not just employment, but housing... credit... education... the criminal IN-justice system. There would still be the cultural demonization and dehumanization. This shit is just so much charity, and charity don’t change shit. It may help an individual here and there, but it doesn’t begin to get to the SOURCE of the problem. Charity cannot change that—charity cannot change the nature of this capitalist system, and the way that white supremacy is a vital part of its whole functioning. (See “On Obama’s 'My Brother’s Keeper' Speech.”)
People influenced by this need to ask themselves about the cost of participating. You can’t pick and choose—this is an integrated offensive, a whole program. You may think, for a while at least, that you are using the system to do good work; but what’s really going on is that the system intends to use you to facilitate its dirty work, to pacify the masses and continue its horrendous oppression, here and worldwide. As long as this system goes on—and especially in the particularly dangerous genocidal conditions of today—this is deadly.
Obama is not “changing.” He is not “finally beginning to do something.” He is doing precisely what he was brought into the presidency to do. He is fighting to demobilize and defuse the struggle of the Black masses in a way people like John McCain and Mitt Romney could never do. He is promoting the killing illusion that this system can be reformed, for Black people and for millions more who want to see an end to oppression and inequality. He is trying to restore people’s hope in something that really is completely hopeless. And to do that, he has been inviting people to the White House, pretending to listen intently to them, making them feel a part of things, like they have influence, like they and their concerns really do “matter”—and all the while, in doing so, getting them to tone down their critique and in fact to change their concerns, and in some cases, it seems, to go after those who won’t.
All this has to be seen through and rejected for what it is: an attempt to shore up faith in something that needs not faith but penetrating analysis and revolutionary overturning.

We NEED a Revolution

The Obama program for “21st Century Policing” is a program of viciously intensified, heavily militarized policing; extensive snitch networks; surveillance and spying everywhere; coupled with a few feeble “charitable” and educational programs for some inner-city youth. Even on the face of it, this is not even an attempt to address the underlying “social problems,” as Obama put it. It is an interwoven program of fraud, repression, and sugar-coated poison pills. It is, in fact, a program to strengthen the system’s ability—through its police, its jails, and its system of laws—to suppress, contain, and control a section of people for whom it has absolutely nothing to offer.
This 21st Century Policing will in fact contribute to the slow genocide of Black people, and position the system of capitalism-imperialism to hasten the pace of that genocide. It must be opposed. As we wrote last week in the article “High Stakes in Baltimore:” “This genocide has been and is being caused by a SYSTEM—capitalism-imperialism—and relying on charities or even talking about ‘structural change’ is meaningless and worse without the MAIN STRUCTURAL CHANGE that must happen: the radical overturning of this ruthless system of capitalism and white supremacy, through revolution, and its replacement by a whole new system in which the power is devoted to eliminating all oppression and exploitation, meeting the material needs of the people as it does so, and supporting revolution all over the world.
“And this gets back to the point: We NEED a revolution, we need to get organized for an ACTUAL revolution. What the masses have done in Baltimore has increased the possibility of that... and increased the challenges that revolutionaries must recognize and meet to actually move closer to being able to make that revolution.”


Tuesday 26 May 2015

GO AHEAD AND JUDGE

Say whatever the fuck you want about Revolution Newspaper and the RCP, but they are relentless and on fucking point about the pigs and what needs to be done. Most of the idiots who like to point fingers and nag are the one person "revolutionary" internet parties, and other imbeciles who like to talk shit and do nothing. Fuck off and go back to your gossip and gaming.

In One Week:
Murdering Police Go Free All Over the USA
MURDER AND ABUSE BY POLICE MUST STOP

May 25, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us



In a single week, from Grapevine, Texas to St. Louis, Missouri; from San Francisco to Camden, New Jersey; and now in Cleveland, Ohio, the system let murdering police go free, and the President of the United States gave a pat on the back to one of the most fascist police forces in the country. THIS MUST STOP!
On the night of November 29, 2012, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, a Black man and woman, were driving in downtown Cleveland when the police began chasing them, joined by the highway patrol, sheriffs and two other communities' cops. After a 25-minute chase, the two ended up trapped in a cul-de-sac in East Cleveland, a poor, mainly Black community. As the car was stopped, 13 Cleveland pigs shot 137 bullets into the car, 23 bullets hitting Russell and 24 bullets hitting Williams. The police claim they heard a gunshot coming from the car Timothy Russell was driving, but no gun or shells have been found in the car or along the route of the chase.
On May 23rd, a judge acquitted the only policeman charged with a serious crime in this horrific murder of all charges because he said he could not determine which of the pigs fired the fatal shots.
On February 20, Ruben Garcia Villalpando was pulled over by a cop in Grapevine, Texas.  Fernarndo Romero described what's recorded on the pigs' video camera: “My brother-in-law is out of the car with his hands up, and the first thing he asks is, 'are you going to kill me?'” The pig first cursed at Ruben, then shot him twice in the chest at close range, murdering him.
On May 18th, a Tarrant County Grand Jury no-billed Robert Clark, the pig who gunned down Ruben Villalpando in cold blood.
On October 8th in St. Louis, 18 year old Vonderrit Myers was murdered by a St. Louis pig who claimed  he was acting in self defense. Vonderrit was with several friends and, as his aunt Jackie Williams said, “My nephew was coming out of a store from purchasing a sandwich… I don’t know how this happened, but they went off and shot him 16 times. That’s outright murder.”
On May 18th, a St. Louis County attorney announced that no charges would be filed against murdering pig Jason Flannery.
In August 2008, San Francisco police barged into the room of a group home where Teresa Sheehan lived; their “job was to transport her safely to a mental health facility”. The cops claimed Sheehan had a knife, and shot her six times, severely disabling her. (See “The REAL Record of the Holder Department of IN-Justice: Supporting Police Violence in EVERY CASE Before the Supreme Court.”)
On May 18th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cops cannot be sued for shooting at severely mentally disabled people who allegedly “threaten violence”.
Also on May 18th: Barack Obama traveled to Camden New Jersey – an impoverished city notorious for its brutal police and relentless oppression of Black people. He held up the police there as a “symbol of promise” to the rest of the country, and vowed to help bring methods used in Camden – methods that have brought a huge increase in arrests for low level “offenses” like not having lights on a bicycle. Arrests have reached their highest level in years in Camden, and at least a dozen people have filed claims of “excessive force” against the police.
There is an epidemic of police brutality and murder. Murdering police are almost never arrested. When they are they are usually let go. A recent Washington Post analysis revealed: "Among the thousands of fatal shootings at the hands of police since 2005, only 54 officers have been charged ... [and] most were cleared or acquitted in the cases that have been resolved." ("Thousands Dead, Few Prosecuted," April 11, 2015).
And this is not going to change without even more massive, more defiant and more widespread struggle. And we NEED a revolution, we need to get organized for an ACTUAL revolution. What the masses who rose up in Baltimore did has increased the possibility of that... and increased the challenges that revolutionaries must recognize and meet to actually move closer to being able to make that revolution.
This SYSTEM cannot do away with MURDER BY POLICE
But REVOLUTION can do away with this SYSTEM


Sunday 24 May 2015

IT ALL SEEMS SO OBVIOUS.....

...but it isn't, at least not to most people. You regularly hear people saying, " Well he must have been doing something to have the police chasing him", but of course, that is not the case. Pigs are pigs, and know they can get away with murder. They have the entire power structure backing them up, and they are the frontline enforcers of this system. Bastards.
137 Shots—The Whole Damned System Is Guilty!

Cleveland Judge Lets Cop Involved in Murder of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams Walk!

by Carl Dix

May 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Another killer cop walks—Michael Brelo, a Cleveland cop, was pronounced not guilty on May 23 by Judge John O’Donnell. Brelo was one of about 100 Cleveland area cops who, on November 29, 2012, pursued the car Timothy Russell and MalissaWilliams were in after cops heard the car backfire and decided shots had been fired at police headquarters in downtown Cleveland. He was one of 13 cops who together fired 137 shots—yes, they fired 137 shots—at Russell and Williams, who were unarmed. Brelo fired 49 shots during the chase, the last 15 of them while standing on the hood of the car.
Brelo was the only cop charged for the killing of Russell and Williams, but he was only charged with manslaughter. And now he has been exonerated.
In letting this cop walk, Judge O’Donnell drew from the playbook the system uses to exonerate killer cops again and again, AND wrote some new pages for that book. The judge accepted the magic words cops always use when they kill someone—“I was in fear for my life.” In accepting this justification, the judge said this fear was reasonable because the shots fired by the other 12 cops could’ve led Brelo to think Williams and Russell were firing at him. (To do this, the judge had to conclude that someone in fear for their lives would reasonably climb onto the hood of the vehicle of people who were shooting at him to fire at them.)
The judge also said he couldn’t convict Brelo for manslaughter because he couldn’t determine beyond a reasonable doubt that either Russell or Williams would’ve survived if Brelo hadn’t shot them. In other words, the judge let this cop get off for killing two people because other cops were also shooting them! On top of this, the prosecution put a use-of-force “expert” on the stand who testified that Brelo was wrong to shoot at Russell and Williams from the hood of their car—not because he was shooting at unarmed people, but because in doing so he was putting himself in harm’s way, which may have meant that other cops would have to risk their lives to save his if he got shot!
This amounts to the system saying that its modern-day enforcers have a free rein to inflict the same kind of torture, brutality, and murder on Black people that the slave chasers used to inflict on runaway slaves.
What can you say about a system that has cops out there who fire 137 shots at unarmed people, whose prosecutors can’t build a case against these killer cops, and whose judge thinks all this is reasonable and justified?
That it’s no damned good; has been around too damned long; and needs to be gotten rid of as soon as possible in the only way this can really be done—through revolution.
We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or injure an innocent person. It will take revolution, nothing less, to bring that world into being, and we in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and our leader, Bob Avakian (BA), exist to bring that revolution about.
This society gives cops the benefit of the doubt when they kill or brutalize people. All they have to do is say they were in fear for their lives, and they get a pass for their murderous deeds. Darren Wilson used this to justify the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Matt Kenny, a Madison, Wisconsin, cop, used it to justify the murder of Tony Robinson. And now Brelo uses this and walks for the murder of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.
This is outrageous, and it must not be tolerated. City officials and “responsible leaders” have called for people to respect the judge’s ruling. NO! This ruling invites disrespect. Everybody should respond to it with scorn and outrage. In Cleveland and all across the country, if you were enraged when the cops murdered Russell and Williams, and are enraged anew by the system letting one of those killer cops walk, you need to take to the streets and deliver a clear message that these kinds of horrors will not be accepted! People have to throw themselves into building up massive, determined resistance to these horrors whenever and wherever they occur. And we must bring our outrage and determination together into a powerful and growing nationwide movement of resistance, numbering in the millions, that is aiming to STOP this shit.
And if you’ve had it with hearing again and again that cops have gotten away with murdering somebody and want to see it ended, you need to get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building. Run with us as we fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution. Watch the DVD of the dialogue between Bob Avakian (BA) and Cornel West, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion. Get into BAsics, the book of quotations and short essays from the work of BA. Be part of getting ready and in position to make revolution when the time is right and bring a totally different and far better way for people to live into being.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

WEASELS

You know those people with the smug condescending signs on their lawn saying " We're voting CBC"? Yeah, the same six people who come out to protest the loss of the most boring radio and t.v. on earth everytime asshole harper threatens to sell it off, because they need to keep listening to some monotoned idiot analysing jazz to death?
   My point is that I'm sure these people consider themselves "progressives", and consider recycling to be a revolutionary act. Where do you think they would have been while the shit was going down in Baltimore? Hiding behind the pigs, like I'm sure so many other bourgeois "progressives" were doing. Useless assholes.

West Baltimore: “I Take a Lot of Pleasure Being Part of This... Even Though It’s in the Beginning Stages”

May 18, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolution correspondents have been listening, learning, and engaging with people who were at the heart of what happened in Baltimore. Following is an interview conducted a little over a week after the April 27 rebellion.
We sit down with D to talk in a neighborhood in West Baltimore. Small stores which sell soda, chips, and some basic necessities are carved out of the bottom floors of houses. Nearby is a lot covered with grass, which constitutes the local park.
D is in his 50s and has lived in Baltimore all his life. He has seen police brutality and experienced it first hand. When he was just about to enter high school, his older brother was shot in the face and murdered by the police. Now the murder of Freddie Gray by Baltimore police not only brings back all the pain he and his mother experienced, but is moving D to act.
Revolution: How are you looking at what happened with the rebellion, and what needs to be done?
D: Do I feel like something needs to be done? Yes I do! Something should have been done a long time ago. Do I feel like it needs to be done the way they want it to be done, the police department and the powers that be in the city? It’s just sad that it took a whole bunch of rhetoric through the police department, the powers that be, the city officials, the government officials that turn their back on what is visible and tangible. It’s a dead end. Because the closer you get to taking care of something, the further you get from it—the way that they have it set up. We don’t get the results that we need to get. The powers that be get the results that they need to get. And as a consequence, we continue to suffer. Until we do something about it, we gonna to suffer. And I’m actually tired of suffering.
Revolution Club in Baltimore, April 25 Photo: Special to revcom.us
I got a chance to meet this gentleman [from the Revolution Club] and he was telling me about the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary club. I can remember how it felt just meeting them. Is anything gonna come out of it? But at the same time, I told myself—if you don’t make a move still nothing will happen. So I came to the meeting. You called me like you said you would. We had a conversation. Now I’m here.
A gentleman spoke to me the other day when we had the meeting. And he was talking about how it’s not religiously connected. It’s not politically per se connected even though, to some point, we gonna have to deal with politics to deal with these people, you know what I mean? ’Cause that’s the way they have the arena set up. It sound good to understand that revolution is just not about one thing.
Revolution: How do you see that?
D: I’ve been reading that book [BAsics]. I’m somewhere in the middle of the book now. And I understand that something has to be done. I understand that it’s not a racial thing; it’s not a religious thing. As a human being, our human rights are being violated on various different levels. I understand that we have to combine forces in different walks of life in order to get this thing done. Am I willing to do that? Yes I am.
I take a lot of pleasure being part of this organization, even though it’s in the beginning stages. There’s some things that has to be done because of what happened to my brother. There’s things that has to be done because of what happened to people before him. There’s things that need to be done because of what’s gonna happen. There’s some things that need to be done because of what just happened. There’s gonna be more Freddie Grays. There was Freddie Grays before Freddie Gray, you know? Baltimore is in a state of urgency, a state of emergency. It has been that way for a long, long, long time.
It’s not totally about me, but it is. I mean God willing, I don’t know how many more years I got left, but I do have sons. And my sons have friends. My friends have children. And I think that my generation has somehow let them down. But it’s not too late because I’m still here! I got a chance to meet you all. I feel like we can initiate something. I feel that something big, huge, and powerful can come out of that. I understand that I need be serious about getting this thing done. I can’t do it by myself. It’s a pleasure to see some other people that’s on the same page that I’m on, that wanna do some of the same things.
Something has to be done. If it had to start in Baltimore, then so be it. If it had to start in another state, then so be it. But it has to start somewhere.
Revolution: Talk about your experiences with the police.
D: You have a concept that turns into a mis-ideology of what the expectations supposed to be coming from police. I was coming up a teenager. You know, they would introduce officer friendly in the school. Trying to get you acquainted with the police. But that didn’t work because at school it was one thing, home it was a whole different reality.
Even though I know it’s not a racist thing, in my experience there’s been so many people in Baltimore city that is Black or African descent, that’s been brutalized, murdered, treated badly, disrespected, their human rights being disrespected. And it’s not actually the man that’s standing next to you that’s disrespecting you. It’s the person that you’re putting your trust in to protect and serve you. And these are the people...we pay these people to do a job but they show us something else. They show us that they are no more better than who they call the thugs on the street. They’re no better than the gang members that’s on the street. And because of that, we have the Freddie Gray situation, the injustice that was done to him. I understand that the police have a job to do, but I would like to see them do it, because I have not yet seen them do what they’re paid to do.
Revolution: Some people like us might say that they actually are doing their job. That that’s what their job is: to keep people down. Murder, after murder, after murder, and all the other harassment and brutality that goes on is in part to control a whole population for whom they have no future whatsoever. Look at these young people, what future actually do they have in this society? Prison, jail, going into the military. The man in the Revolution Club was talking earlier about young men they’ve met. They’re out there every day hustling, struggling to survive. But there’s a certain hopelessness...
D: ...to get anywhere.
Revolution: to get anywhere. And that’s a very volatile situation. What people’s lives are like in this society, with the whole system and setup, but the police play a certain role and keeping people down, threatening them if they dare to rise up.
D: One of the things that got my attention—the gentleman [BA] was talking about the proletariat. And I was already into another book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed. And when I was [reading] the BAsics, and it was talking about the system was set up to just keep us proletarians stuck. I work and I work, and I work, and I work and I work. I make my earnings off of my sweat, off of my ability to use my hands, my eyes, all my faculties physically. I work till I die. But my sweat and tears and my labor is really not beneficial to me. It’s beneficial to the other person. So I’m here to work all my life just to die. It’s not gonna produce nothing. The way that they have it set up, it’s not supposed to.
After a while when we continue to be a part of that systematic structure, we adapt to it. And then, we become complacent. Like, OK, now this is a way of life. I’m just gonna work until I’m dead. I don’t like that. [Laughter] I really don’t. And I think I’m here for much, much more. I think we all are here for much, much more. I think we are not gonna get more if we just sit here and do nothing, especially once I’m given certain information, I’m not being given that information for nothing, especially when my heart feel like it’s been convicted.
I had a conversation with two of my sons. I am raising two boys by myself. I take pleasure in doing that because this is what I am supposed to do as a father.
We were talking about Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I can remember the look that they had on their face. You got one that’s going to college and after getting that information, it’s like what am I going to college for? I’m already gonna have to pay a debt for the rest of my life. The system is set up for you to give me money, but when I do get a job I am gonna have to pay you back for the rest of my life. I’m working for the rest of my life for you. And I can remember when they came to that reality, the way they were looking, they were frightened, they were disturbed and they wanted answers.
So that was telling me that young people, they think like we do. But they don’t have a voice. Sometimes, when they don’t have someone to talk to or someone to share that thought with, they get in this real explosive state, like when stuff continued to build up and build up. You know you supposed to do something, and it done built up so high that it comes out in a way that people don’t understand because they think that we supposed to react a certain way, like what they call the riot here in Baltimore. We call it the uprising, they call it the riot. The young people reacted ’cause they felt like they needed to express theirself whether somebody agree or disagree.
Now when they start flipping buildings, and running up in stores and taking things, everybody wants to listen now.
Is we gonna have to work, work, work, until we die? It’s not right. And it’s far bigger than working and dying. There’s changes that’s have to be made in a whole lot of areas that affects all of us.
What if...? An excerpt from REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN
Revolution: The world actually could be a different way. If this was all that could exist, then I guess we’d all live with it. That’s part of that clip you saw the other night; what if the world doesn’t have to be this way and people didn’t have to live this way...
D: He put that real nice. You just couldn’t get around it. I thought about that too, when I left here. What if... we’re entitled to more, you know. The world could be a better place.
Revolution: And all of humanity could be living like what he spoke to—not just from a perspective of us here, actually you could change the whole world.
D: I want to say this: a lot of times, the way things are has something to do with people’s belief system, let’s say like religion. My mother, she raised me as a Christian, and from that point I chose to be a Muslim and then from that point it’s the spirituality. And I asked myself: why do I move from one thing to another thing, to another thing, what am I seeking out, what am I searching for? I am seeking a better life. We should be able to look and identify with each other as human beings without all these other negative entities interfering.
When you try to sort out what you want for your future but you can’t entertain one thought because there’s so much distraction and busy-ness around you. It was meant for you to be side tracked, it was meant for you not to be able to contemplate one thought of doing the right thing for you and another human being. It’s almost so clear it’s tangible, you can touch it.
And it’s... like you said, we live in a world that can be a better place. The way things are, you know it should be better. And we can change that. We can change that. And I believe, whatever has to be done, whether it be sacrifice, whether it be just bringing it to the table, whether it be discussion or whatever level, it’s just necessary. ’Cause what am I gonna do, just be here and wait for my expiration date? No. ’Cause then life would be in vain. I am gonna finish BAsics. It has my attention.
He [BA in BAsics] clarified and he shared some things, some revolutionaries before us. What our perspectives should be, how we obtain things, and the forces coming against us, and trying to get some certain things done. It was just so clear.
Revolution: He’s done a lot of work. And there is something concentrated in BAsics. He really is a very precious leader, and he’s made real breakthroughs on whole approach to communism—what that is, and how to get there, how to make revolution, including a strategy for this.
D: That’s something I wanted to ask.
Revolution: Look we are up against a very powerful force. So we actually have to develop the ways to get from here to there and make revolution. And that’s not all of what he’s about. The Revolution Club leader was mentioning the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America  and the new socialist society and how it would function, proceeding from the whole world comes first. We are internationalists. But part of that is actually developing a whole strategy for revolution. There’s a whole chapter in BAsics that’s based on the strategy Bob Avakian’s developed.
D: From what I’ve read, that’s been like the stopping point. When we get to the point of how do we do this? How do we initiate? I mean, dealing with a giant like that, you know the powers that be. There’s so many areas they can come from to actually hurt you without putting their hands on you. That’s the part of the book I am at now, where he was talking about how, one of the important things, is how do we do this? And I was in deep thought, ’cause I was like how do we do this? Because it seems like it’s a lot of work. You talking about dealing with a force that’s already strategic. They’ve been doing this for years. They the best they ever done, put it like that.
Revolution: But they have their weaknesses.
D: Yes they do. Absolutely. That’s what we seek out.
 Revolution: In order for a real revolution to occur, there must be a revolutionary crisis and a revolutionary people numbering in their millions. Clearly this is not the reality now, so how can this come about? So, it’s important to dig into the supplement in BAsics that addresses this.


Monday 18 May 2015

REALITY

There are times when you are reading about something happening to other people, and you can FEEL it as if it were happening to you. From civilians being bombed in the Middle East, to police murder right here. The tears of parents and children losing those closest to them is so fucking real it hurts. Because the loss is real. As Bob Avakian said, " Just because it isn't happening to you, doesn't mean that it's not happening!"

Interviews in West Baltimore:
Living Amid Poverty and Police Violence...and Fighting for a Whole Different World

May 18, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Baltimore, Maryland is a major city in this country that is not only marked by extreme poverty and degradation for hundreds of thousands of Black people, but as a central part of that oppression, by brutal treatment and murder at the hands of the police. Anger and outrage boils all the time and has risen to the surface. As people have lifted their heads, stood up, a core of people have been drawn to the revolution and to fighting for a different world, free of all oppression. Recently, in the wake of the uprising and rebellion protesting the murder of Freddie Gray, reporters from revcom.us had the unique opportunity to interview Black people of different ages who are living and working in West Baltimore.
As we arrive in West Baltimore, the first thing that jumps out are the boarded up row houses everywhere—and then every block or so amidst a row of houses, there will be one place with a wreath on the door or a plant on the stoop. Families are still living there. But what about the places where people used to live...where are the people now? How are they surviving? At a stoplight, you see homeless people trying to eke out an existence on the streets.
Baltimore
"In West Baltimore, the first thing that jumps out are the boarded up row houses everywhere—and then every block or so amidst a row of houses, there will be one place with a wreath on the door or a plant on the stoop. Families are still living there. But what about the places where people used to live...where are the people now? How are they surviving? At a stoplight, you see homeless people trying to eke out an existence on the streets. "
Photo: Revolution/revcom.us
It’s not hard to figure out what the backdrop for the rebellion was—as one youth from the Revolution Club said: “People are just struggling to keep up above, you know, just alive, basically out here. It’s real hard for people. Ain’t no jobs. Ain’t shit out here, just abandoned shit. It’s a wasteland. It’s like a prison, it’s like a outside prison, for real.”
The unemployment rate for Black youth in this part of the city is 50 percent. Another Revolution Club youth put it this way: “What really stands out here is this whole third world reality of how people live in the first world reality, and the tremendous poverty... I mean this is a big U.S. city and... out here there’s some working class, but there’s also a lot of just totally cast off sections of the people.”
And in the midst of this, the people are constantly harassed, brutalized, and worse by the pigs who act like an occupying army. One recent statistic that came out gives just one outrageous indication of what the people face: Between June 2012 and April 2015, the Baltimore city jail refused to accept nearly 2,600 people brought to them by cops because they had injuries that were too severe for them to be admitted to jail.
In the wake of the murder of Freddie Gray, the scene is still tense—and people have stood up and said NO MORE! Enough is enough. We are excited and anxious to talk with people from West Baltimore—to learn about their lives and the rebellion itself and how they are looking at the revolution.
First off, the leaders of the Revolution Club are “educating” us: “It’s like the big city of Baltimore but it’s like an old Southern city or something. It’s like the Jim Crow era for real, you know. Black are just like beat down here, badly. We’ve gotta lift these people up. When I drive through I can see everything closed down. Abandoned buildings with wind blowing through ‘em and shit. It’s just depressing as hell. That’s my picture of Baltimore—there’s nothing here. So that’s why I’m like: they ain’t got nothing to lose. But they changed this motherfucker. You ain’t got nothing’ to lose here, you know. And then like you saw how Monday like they rose up and they was like: fuck the police!”

Life in West Baltimore and the Constant Brutality by Police

How are people surviving?

Get with the 
Revolution Club
 here

Revolution Club, Baltimore, May 2
Revolution Club, Baltimore, May 2. Photo: Special to revcom.us
One of the Revolution Club leaders says, “It’s a good question. It is a lot of young people, you see some of them and what they do, they raise their money, enough to get like some soda and chips and that’s how they do it. And they’re working for somebody. And we hear story after story after story about how much the police are in on a lot of the drug economy, including controlling what market gets to run more freely than others. In other words, in certain parts of town people are picked up if they’re caught dealing and their product is taken and delivered to the other part of town where it’s more regulated by the police. So that’s some of what goes on.
“A number of the women that we’ve met are nurses And that seems to be what employs a good number of people, is the hospitals around here.”
We ask, “You think more of the women have jobs, actually, than men?”
Revolution Club: “Seems like most of the women work and most of the guys are hustling, always hustling trying to sell a shirt, t-shirt, a CD, whatever.... Cuz I don’t see no jobs out here. You might see a corner store but it’s so small, who’s working there? You got like one or two people, maybe working. It’s crazy. I’ve been in other cities too and I ain’t never seen nuthin’ like this. So that’s why I’m like: they ain’t got nothing to lose. But they changed this motherfucker. “
As we talked with people, we learned more about what life is like with the constant police harassment, brutality and murder. Freddie Gray died when he established eye contact with the police—and then ran. People said, “Who would not do the same?”
One woman in her 30s who does volunteer work in the community described the following scene: “It’s really hard. A couple of weeks before Freddie passed, the teenagers were out here running. They were playing hide and seek. It was the sweetest game of teenage boys playing hide and seek ever in the field. But I told them, I was like: ‘You guys really shouldn’t...’ I didn’t want to tell them to stop playing. But I was like, ‘You really shouldn’t run around because they may think that you’re running from something that you didn’t do.’ You can’t tell them to not play. Teenagers playing hide and seek, are you serious?!... These are all straight A students. They’re all straight A students.
“So I just saw them running outside, and all I could think was they might be killed because they’re just playing. That’s something that you don’t want to, as a volunteer, think about. I don’t want to think about that when they’re outside playing. But that’s real. Like even the coach at the recreation center in this neighborhood, some days he doesn’t have practice because you just never know.”
C is a young man in his mid-20s who grew up in Baltimore. He works as a cook. He describes the daily harassment and brutality from the police: “I been working since I was 10, selling newspapers, anything I could get my hands on, to touch something. But we’re not looking for a dollar any more. It’s crazy. I think they just trying make us fellows be nothing because they take from us. And for us to lash out like we did last week, to show them that we’re tired of it. Cause we tired, we’re human beings, cause overall we’re getting scrutinized by somebody that think that just because we are Black we gonna go out and commit a crime. There’s thousands of millions of brothers and sisters that go out there that make an honest living, not to commit crime.
“Last week I got stopped five times. What’s that? I can’t go out to the corner store, if I put something in my pocket, they think it’s drug money. I got victimized by the police. I got brutalized by the police in 2012. All because I was walking in a drug neighborhood. So they thought I was a druggie, chased me, dragged me across the asphalt. I didn’t reach out to do nothing cause it happens every day. They not going to get in trouble for it. They are not going to answer for it because there’s a brotherhood within the brotherhood within the police department.”

The Youth Rose Up—and Changed Things

Baltimore, May 2
Baltimore, May 2. Photo: Special to revcom.us
The youth and others made a statement in rebelling. It started off when the police shut down the major transportation hub at the mall at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon. At the same time, the high school forced the students to leave. The consequence? The Revolution Club reports: “All these youth, and some regular people from the neighborhood, were all gathered there because everything was shut down and they had nowhere else to go. People were mad and they didn’t know why the riot cops were there. And whatever people came there thinking that they were going to do or not do, what the police did actually drew some lines about what was going to happen. People just took all the Stolen Lives posters we had and started walking right up to the line of riot cops with the posters. They were just holding it up. People would walk up to the line and run back because the police would move like they were going strike or pounce on people. So there was a lot of that—people testing how close they could get with the posters.”
The youth refused to back down in the face of the police repression—and they rose up and changed things.
From the Revolution Club: “That rebellion was something great. It uplifted people here and around the whole world. It uplifted people everywhere. And now people thinking that after this rebellion, they thinking a lot of the police gonna get off. And they like: what we gonna do next? They thinking about what’s next. They feel it. But then there’s also people who don’t feel it, you know, that are trying to ignore it, trying act like it’s not going on and will just go back and be happy in their safe, regular lives...
“Since Ferguson it’s kind of been a whole political situation that’s been in a lot of motion—and then there is Baltimore. The rebellion here was quite a bit more fierce. Overwhelmingly the rebellious youth were confronting the police. The news showed videos of the police cars trashed and burning. There was even this scene where we were walking and some of the kids started throwing stones at the construction workers for a second, and other people were like: Nah, they ain’t police. Stop that! And some people grabbed them and said no, that’s not what we’re doing.
Baltimore
Baltimore. AP photo
“What was the rebellion about? People were just tired of living this way. It’s not the case that it had nothing to do with Freddie and the murder, but it was the case that it was about more than that. It was about how that crystallized how people actually live out here.
“We heard the police was throwing rocks at the people, going for people’s legs. Then the police go running one way and all the kids go running this way yelling to each other as they went: the police coming that way! They were working together, you see. Then you had some guy come out there like: They goin’ kill y’all. He didn’t want them to be fighting the police—they gone kill y’all out here. The reality: the police already killing people. You need to be standing with them. And the youth were like: we’re standing up. The youth didn’t want to hear that shit.
“It was joyous times. Police cars went running through the middle...they would just speed through and all hitting people. It was a lot of high school and some younger that were part of some of the main action. And older dudes, some of them were joining in at different points, but the driving force of it was these high school youth. The police was running from the kids. The kids were just chasing them. I was just like, man...it was so beautiful, you know what I’m saying, to see the police running like that. I never seen the police run like that.
“A matter of fact, in terms of the ‘looting’ that went on: a lot of what you saw in the street of people carrying, you know bussing around a lot of stuff, you saw a lot of Pampers, children’s shoes, laundry soap, diabetes medicine—insulin shots. A lot of that kind of basic necessity stuff. It was also clear like some people were getting this to help other people. You don’t shoplift Pampers for yourself, or the diabetes medicine is probably for your grandma or something like that. And that was a big part of what people took. I’m sure people took sneakers and things like that but it was...”

Accumulating Forces for Revolution

 “The youth have the defiance in them: fuck this society and fuck this system because they don’t give a fuck about me anyway. They grab our posters of Stolen Lives—they show them everywhere. They just don’t have a way out. But we do. They don’t want to get their hopes up too high to think that there’s a way out. They want to see if we really down for revolution—and we are. And taking this to them, that’s the great thing I see. I see them as a base to raise up and influence the world—these young people, and the older people too.
“I see them all as a base to do something, even though they not doing nuthin’ now, and they caught up in all this other shit. I just see them as being changed, but it will take struggle, a lot of struggle with these people to change. I see like myself in a lot of these people cuz I see like they went to prison, and I just think that they can do so much better, you know what I’m saying. I know they can. But it’s going take struggling with these people and just...it’s just steady hard struggle to get people out of what they in and it’s going to take work. It’s going to take some time to do this.
“Like what Carl Dix been saying: we gotta make shit clear to people. What is this state prosecutor doing, what is going on? Get into that. Make people aware of that, and more—let them know the problem, the system of capitalism, letting them see how it really works, why does this keep happening. And we’re showing people how serious we are, basically. And just bringing all that we have—our Revolution newspaper, the book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian,everything we have... I think we got a chance to raise people’s sights to something bigger because I see the potential in a lot of these people out here. So that’s why I think they can change and do something a lot better.
“And then we got BA [Bob Avakian] in the world—it’s like the youth and people don’t even know about BA. If they had time to sit down and study the theory of revolution, what the science of communism really is, they could understand the world a lot better. Right now they don’t understand the world. They think a lot of Illuminati, they think a lot of different bullshit that we gotta shake them out of—this religious shit, this gang shit.
“But what we bringin’ is bigger than all of this. It’s just something great. I just think it can change people because I know how it changed me. You know, I could be one of them, just hopeless, you know. But I got hope in this science of communism—that’s the hope I’ve seen.”

Sunday 17 May 2015

FUCKING PARASITES

The blood drenched maggots who created the crisis in Libya that thousands are trying to flee, refuse to accept any of the responsibility for what they have done. These fucking parasites, also known as the leaders of the fucking "free world", are also behind the rise of isis, the horrible conditions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and pretty much any other country which is rich in natural resources and/or cheap labour. And yes, the u.s.a. is behind the vast fucking majority of it. Hurray for their fucking democracy.

French PM rejects EU refugee quota initiative

Published time: May 17, 2015 05:01
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls (Reuters / Charles Platiau)
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls (Reuters / Charles Platiau)
France has joined a list of nations opposing the latest EU initiative on tackling the immigration crisis in Europe by issuing strict quotas to member states for accepting refugees over the next two years.
“I am against the introduction of quotas for migrants. This has never been in line with French proposals,”the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, said in regards to the European Commission Plan unveiled Wednesday to grant 20,000 asylums across the EU in the coming years.
“Asylum is a right granted by international standards applied to all countries of the European Union. It is also for this reason that the number of beneficiaries cannot be the subjected to quotas,” Valls said in Menton, on the Italian border, where French police in the last four days detained a record 944 migrants and arrested 54 people smugglers.
Valls called for a fair distribution of refugees between all member states, but pointed out that currently 75 per cent of migrants are settled in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.

France, Valls said, has already done plenty, offering asylum to 5,000 Iraqis and 4,500 Syrian refugees since 2012.
Meanwhile he said that migrants should be expelled unless they have a genuine cause to fear reprisal at home, as he called for an EU-wide system of border guards and more“preventative measures” in the migrants’ countries of origin.
Dealing with an increasing number of migrants in the EU became a hot topic after the surge of illegal Mediterranean Sea crossings from North Africa to Libya in recent months. More than 5,000 migrants have died over the past 18 months while trying to cross to Europe.
Under the Commission’s proposal, France and Germany would host the highest percentages of those trying to cross the Mediterranean – 14.17 and 18.42 percent respectively.
The distribution criteria rests on a number of factors such as economic output, the size of the population, unemployment rates and the number of refugees residing in EU country. Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom are not part of the EU distribution migrant quotas as they are not members of the appropriate EU treaties.

Yet despite this the European Commission clashed with Britain earlier this week after the British interior minister Theresa May called for economic migrants to be sent back.
“Such an approach would only act as an increased pull factor across the Mediterranean and encourage more people to put lives at risk,”she said.
Hungary, too opposed the quota system with Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff saying,
“Hungary will under no circumstances receive such refugees based on the EU's decision.”
“The Hungarian government will do everything to prevent this in Brussels,” Janos Lazar said.