Activists Say NO! to Trump's Threat to “Send the Feds” to Chicago
March 9, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
A press conference and rally was held at the Chicago Police Department headquarters on Wednesday, March 8, to sound the alarm on an emergency situation in relation to the Trump/Pence regime’s plans for Chicago, and on the need to stop these plans. The Trump/Pence regime is seizing on the horror of young Black people killing each other to make Chicago ground zero in their assault on Black people as part of their overall fascist onslaught on humanity. The press conference was initiated by Carl Dix, of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism, and Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, murdered by the Chicago police.
Carl Dix said the Trump/Pence offensive “will bring down a reign of terror on top of the hell that has been coming down on Black people for centuries.” He cited the Chicago Tribune columnists John Kass and Dona More who called for the National Guard to be federalized, concrete barriers to be built around Black communities and those areas to be flooded with police and National Guard. He said this would be “a 21st-century version of Hitler’s ghettos the Jews were forced to live in. Those ghettos were step one of the Nazis—step 2 was the trains to the death camps.”
Carl Dix said, “The way out is not to go back to the way it was before Trump. It is to make revolution and get rid of the system causing all the horrors.” He also pointed out how at this point, the revolution must unite all those who hate the Trump/Pence fascist agenda to oust the regime.
Tio Hardiman of Violence Interrupters spoke about Ben Carson, Trump’s head of Housing and Urban Development, who said that African people brought to the U.S. in slave chains were “immigrants” who were “looking for a better life in America”! Hardiman said these “immigrants” were brought in the bottom of slave ships, and millions of them died. “They were kidnapped and brought over here, and we had to fight for over 400 years for a better life. We need to really stand on this man and get him to resign.”
Another speaker was Eric Russell, a spokesperson for the families of Bettie Jones and Jose Nieves, who were both murdered by the Chicago police. Russell opened by saying, “Bettie Jones did not deserve to die. A killer racist police officer who killed her will be set free on our community. We are not standing in front of a police department, we are standing in front of a hunting lodge. A hunting lodge because those of us kissed by the sun, we have targets on our backs.” Russell went into great detail about the experts who had testified that it was impossible that the cop’s story could be true. He concluded with, “We have to continue to cry for justice for our dead because they can no longer speak.” Also speaking was Mark Clements, a survivor of torture by police.
Returning to the mike, Carl Dix called on everyone to think about Bettie Jones and multiply that by hundreds killed by police across the country each and every year. “Then think of Donald Trump and Attorney General Sessions saying we gotta take the gloves off the police. They are telling us there will be more brutality and murder.... We're gonna stand up to that, we're gonna build resistance. That is what we are initiating and launching with this press conference.”
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