From a Reader:
The Stolen Lives Centerfold Gets a Lot of Attention and Sets the Right Terms
March 18, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
As we begin the ten day push to make a major leap in mobilizing people for both the premiere and online launch of the new Cornel West and Bob Avakian film and for the April 14 national shutdown to STOP POLICE MURDER (#ShutDownA14), I want to strongly recommend making use of www.revcom.us's incredible centerfold of Stolen Lives.
Download: PDF for print | JPG for web
This poster displays 44 faces of people who have been murdered by law enforcement. They capture in a vivid and undeniable way the REALITY of an ACTUAL GENOCIDE underway. Women and men, young and old, mainly Black and Latino but not only... you are face-to-face with the real human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by law enforcement.
In the neighborhoods of the oppressed, people who see this poster feel vindicated. It proves that problem really is as big as it feels. Many search the faces for those of loved ones. Some oppressed youth have even told us, “If I get killed by police, I want my face on that poster.” When members of the Revolution Club challenged them back, “No—we don't want your face on this poster. Your face needs to be on the pictures of people walking out of school, shutting down society, and making this shit STOP on April 14!” the youth lit up with smiles and threw their fists in the air. THE POINT IS TO STOP THIS!
At an elite college campus, a different member of the Revolution Club made an important observation: the Stolen Lives centerfold is the one poster that almost never gets taken down or covered up. We've even seen people take the effort to neatly re-post this poster prominently when rearranging bulletin boards to squeeze in more stuff. And when we've stood with enlargements of this image, people have invariably come up and wanted to talk, snap selfies with it, and ask what is going on with the movement against police murder.
It is striking, as well, that in Madison many of the high school students who walked out after Tony Robinson was murdered by police proudly took a banner with a similar image and carried it in their march. Then they hung it off the rotunda of the state Capitol when they took that over.
The poster sets terms. It forces people to confront the reality of the situation. And this strengthens everything about the rest of our interactions. We plan to use a huge enlargement of it along with a big enlargement of the new poster for the Dialogue premiere as a display when we set up to saturate college campuses and neighborhoods. Then, it is on us to challenge people to take up #ShutDownA14 and be part of doing something meaningful to STOP THIS! And, to invite and challenge people to attend and spread the premiere of the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian on Revolution and Religion, to get deeply into—among other things—how to bring about a world where this kind of thing never happens again.
Finally, promoting this website, www.revcom.us, gives people the most important resource for learning more about why this oppression is going on, the road to—and vision of—real liberation, and both the leadership and the movement that exists now to lead us there.
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