"What is going on is wrong, and we need to do something about it."
August 4, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This is from an interview with a Black woman in her 30s at the “What to the Slave Is Your 4th of July?” picnic in Chicago. The interview has been edited for publication.
Q: What did you like, learn here today? Compared to what you expected?
A: I really enjoyed the introduction, the Frederick Douglass, and what does the 4th of July mean to the slaves? [Referring to the video clip from Bob Avakian’s 2003 talk Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, and What It’s All About where he quotes Frederick Douglass.] Because every 4th of July I feel the same way. What really astounds me is the number of minorities celebrating the 4th of July, running around with American flag shirts. It really feels like... a nightmare when some of these holidays comes up, from Thanksgiving on down.
I’m always connecting with my roots, my ancestors. Well, I’m a minority... so they say in today’s world, even though I feel like we’re in the majority.
That video, it made me proud, because I was like, wow! I’m not the only person that knows that something is drastically wrong when a bunch of people are getting excited over a day that really means a lot of bloodshed for people of color.
I watch people celebrate the 4th of July in my neighborhood, spending all they money on fireworks, and they don’t even have money where I live. But they have hundreds of dollars on fireworks, they’re so excited—Independence Day, and I don’t think they know what it means. So a lot of people, they take it like family day. That’s what I do with my kids, if I do do fireworks, that’s what I do. That’s what I got out of that video, it made me really proud to be here. And that’s what I got out of the entire event today, there was a lot of truth that was spoken.
A "Revolution Wall" on Chicago's South Side. Photo: Special to Revolution
It lets you know you’re not insane, it lets you know you’re not alone, it lets you know you’re not crazy... I’m 30+ years old, and if you’ve been a revolutionist all your life, which I think I was about 5 to 9, when I realized nothing was right... and I was wondering why was my family so excited to be celebrating Thanksgiving. I used to tell my grandma, “They murdered all the Indians on this day, (now we say Native Americans, but back then, I said Indians)—they murdered all the Indians, so what are you guys so happy about?” Pretty soon you feel like the world wants you to shut up. Coming to this was a connection, a spiritual and mental connection: I’m not crazy, I’m not alone, there are people that know the truth about this system, and that America is not right... Those were a couple things I connected to.
I was in agreement with the entire thing, from beginning to end, especially when [the speaker from Stop Mass Incarceration Network] got up there and talked about, how if you’re for revolution or you’re not, we all got to come together, if you’re tired of seeing people go to jail.
In my community, all of my best friends are dead or in jail. All of... my male family members are... my little brother is in jail. I’m very familiar with the system, I’m very familiar with police brutality, I’m very familiar with things being normal in Englewood, where I’m from, on the Southside. Where, when I go to the Northside, in the better neighborhoods, they don’t allow it, the people don’t allow it, the police don’t do it.
In my neighborhood, people keep walking, and they look the other way, because police brutality it normal to them, because it has been going on since before birth.
There’s this energy, when we see the police messing with somebody, keep walking, mind your business, so they won’t mess with you. That’s how everybody’s living.
I would get in a lot of trouble, I’d say something like “Why are you messing with him?” But these days, I don’t even say nothing, because the energy, you almost get killed and they’ll shoot you right now. Maybe 10 years ago I would say something, when I was in my early 20s... I’d walk past and yell, “Get his badge number!” or I’d drive past in my car and roll down my window and yell, “Get his badge number.” Now I’m scared to do any of that, I don’t say anything, I just drive right past, like I don’t see it, too. So to come here and hear people saying “Don’t allow (this), don’t ride past,” it fills me with a sense of hope, that maybe change really can occur if we were giving this message to everybody.
Then they got up there, what really made me happy is... the Revolution Club, talking about taking it to Englewood. Because if you live in Chicago, that’s where the police were tormenting people at. That’s where I grew up at. If you live in Chicago that’s where all the crime is. And to hear people say, “These are not [criminals]. These are our youth, these are children, these are human beings, these are...” just a matter-of-fact tone of this event...The matter-of-fact-tone is “what is going on is wrong, and we need to do something about it.”
It’s not no ... Even me talking to other Black people, I don’t want to argue, but people are really brainwashed... you don’t want to argue, but I’d be in an argument with a Black person sometimes, and they’d say, “That nigger shouldn’t have did it.” They don’t realize the system is already set up for them to do it. It’s already preplanned for them to go to jail. They don’t realize that it’s things being done behind closed doors, AND in your face, both ways, so that our youth can kill each other, from the music to the television to the so-called food system—it’s a jail cell. People are brainwashed.
Normally when I talk about it I try to say it fairly, say it without hurting anybody’s feelings. But here, just say it: Fuck that, it’s wrong, it shouldn’t be being done, we tired of them killing our kids and locking people up. That’s what we need to hear, we just need to hear it like that. I think if we put that out in the ’hood, and we’re saying that to our young Black men, Latino people, young white men, anybody who lives in an impoverished community, telling them, “You are a great person, and what’s going on to you is wrong, it’s not your fault, but you have to wake up and do better.” I think that would work more than anything.
Q: [Someone else, listening in on the interview]: Are you signing up with the Revolution Club?
A: [Laughs.] Of course... Look, I’m PRLF [Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund]. When I was up there reading “From A Former Prisoner Who’s Answering the Call to Contribute to ‘1000 Years – $1000 for BA Everywhere,” I’m like “I’m PRLF.” [Laughs.] I mean... everybody needs to be involved in this.
I love when there’s something quick to the point like this. It hits home...
It was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom! This is something I could have brought 20 teenagers to. They would have lasted. They wouldn’t have got bored, they wouldn’t have got up and walked away, they wouldn’t have been asleep. Something like this, this is what Englewood is going to need. They gonna need boom, boom, boom, boom, boom at first....
Q: Now, having heard all this, what ideas do you have for you, for others, contributing?
A: I want to teach adults. In a fun, creative way. It was amazing. Using the book, BAsics, and using the video, especially the artistic video, because that’s what my community needs.
A: Yes. They’re going to need to see the poetry... They’re going to need that.
I want to do speeches. I want to public speak. I want to help out at events. I want to do as much as I can, from meetings on down. But I know what my strong suit is—reading, writing and speaking. To me, all of this is reading... writing... and speaking. And then I’m a rap artist, I do music. I need about 20 of those BAsics books. I got the videos already, I can incorporate it [my ongoing project] and I create a whole ’nother class for this. I honestly see myself doing that.
Q: Who would the classes be made up of?
A: It would be made up of youth and their families. Ages 5 to 21, and then adults.
Q: In the communities you’re in? Englewood?
A: Englewood, [a south suburban community], Northside. I’d like to travel with it. I would like to do six to eight week sessions. I would like to be a traveling revolutionary teacher.
... All the way [south suburban poor communities], where they pulling the young rappers from. Or Chief Keef, he’s the biggest rapper right now, he ain’t nothing but a teenager, talking about a hundred guns, a hundred killings, killing niggers, all the youth in [south suburb] are going crazy listening to him. Beating up each other, killing each other, but they’re bumping him because he represents their community. They feel like they got somebody to look up to...
Q: He’s being promoted...
A: Yes. I’m tired of all of that. I would like to wake up people about the music industry and the jails, how the music has driven the majority of my community straight to prison.
Q: That’s very important... Anything else?
A: ...I just think it’s time to “up the cultural stuff.” This is a cultural thing here. And bring it out here. We’re out south right now.
...We need to meet in Englewood. We not the violent ones, we already know peace. They don’t know peace, they don’t know this. They look at each other, and think they’re each other’s enemies. They don’t see a system, because when they get in trouble, people say, “That’s what you get, you shouldn’t have did this.” Or even if they didn’t do it, they don’t get any understanding. Once you get in trouble, people... once people are paying for people in jail, and trying to take care of people in jail, families look the other way now. Because you’re beat down, by the time you get... my little brother right now ask me for all this money in jail. Do I want to send him all this money? No, because I’m tired. I don’t have no money to send him. But at the same time, I know his entire upbringing. And I know it was all around him—violence and tragedy, it was all around him. So really, I saw him and all his friends going straight to prison. Because there was nobody helping him or teaching him anything else, like what we’re doing here, there was no PRLF, there was no Bob Avakian to talk to him. Nobody! The people talking to him was the people who knew what he knew—nothing!
I LOVE “the time is now.” Trust me, every day on Facebook, my friends in Englewood are getting murdered. Every day, I see a friend posted by another friend, who just got shot in the head. It’s an alarming rate. Ain’t no time to be up north. We need to be marching in the ’hood—with that [bull]horn, or something and talk to people. You know, I’m ready...
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