Carl Dix, Live from Charlotte, NC:
Look, It’s Beautiful

September 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Friday, September 23—Carl Dix called revcom.us from Charlotte, North Carolina, and gave us the following statement as he marched in tonight’s protest:

When I saw that video of Keith Lamont Scott’s wife watching and recording her husband’s murder, it made me mad as hell—and it made me want to go rushing through Charlotte to find some people and call on them to TAKE TO THE STREETS. At first I had some trouble finding people. And then I heard people are in the streets downtown, and I rushed to catch up with them. There’s not as many people as yesterday, but it is still hundreds of people. It’s mostly a youthful crowd. Look, it’s beautiful.

There are people of different races and nationalities, and they took to the streets and started marching around shutting down downtown Charlotte. But they had an aim in mind in doing that. As they marched, they made a move to Interstate 77. The police were acting as if they were in position to try to stop this, when the move happened. The police had actually blocked the highway themselves as a way to try and keep the protesters off the highway. It did them no good. The protesters had one way to get on the highway and double-downed another. And all of a sudden, hundreds of us were on the highway, marching.

The people are very determined. They are angry. They are calling for the release of the tapes. They are taking up the chant “Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail! The Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell!” There’s a lot of “Black Lives Matter,” a lot of “No Justice, No Peace.” There are a lot of very determined people in the streets. And that’s needed in the face of this onslaught of police murder after police murder after police murder—and the whole system going into motion to justify it. People standing up and resisting and saying “We’re Not Gonna Take This Shit Anymore!” and meaning it and acting on it.

And the other thing that’s needed is that this has gotta be connected with the revolution. Because we need an actual revolution. We gotta get rid of the system that does this to people again and again and is responsible for all the other horrors. Because there is no way you can solve this problem within this system. It’s built into its fabric and framework. When cops kill and brutalize Black people and Latino people, it’s not rogue cops violating the procedure—it’s police doing their job.

We’ve got to hammer that home to people and bring to them that we need revolution—and that we’ve got the leadership for it in Bob Avakian (BA), and we’ve got the strategy and programmatic approach for that revolution. And we need to connect that to how we have to get organized now for an actual revolution.

I hope I’m coming through, ‘cause I’m marching along, and there’s a lot of chanting going on. People ought to give themselves a roar for what they’ve accomplished tonight. They did it, and they’re gonna keep doing it. People are chanting, “We’re young, we’re strong, we’re marching all night long.” I got a lot of determination, but I’m not that young, so I’ll see how long I can go.

But look, this is beautiful, it’s powerful, it’s important. And it’s gotta get connected to a movement for an actual revolution to get rid of the system that’s responsible for the horrors.

 

 

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