19-year-old Kenneka Jenkins borrowed her mom’s car and went to a friend’s birthday party at a hotel in a Chicago suburb. When late that night after the party Kenneka’s friends told her mother they had the car but didn’t know where Kenneka was, her mother immediately began looking for her. Police refused to start searching for the young Black woman, and the hotel staff called police on the family when they went to do their own search. When authorities finally did search the hotel much later the next day, Kenneka was found dead in a walk-in freezer. Kenneka’s mother raged at the police for moving so slowly when maybe her daughter’s life could have been saved. She demanded an investigation into what happened to Kenneka, and soon thousands knew about her death, quickly spreading to millions through videos on social media.
Every woman who has ever gone out to have a good time and had fun turn into a nightmare of being betrayed and violated and humiliated had that gut-wrenching feeling when they saw the Facebook Live videos of Kenneka’s friends hours before she ended up in a freezer. Everyone who has seen over and over again the utter contempt of this system for the lives of Black women in this country was filled with fury at another instance of authorities acting like the precious life of this teenager didn’t count. Everyone who knows the police lie and cover up evidence was outraged when police refused at first to release the hotel surveillance video—especially Rosemont police with a known history of corruption and cover-up.
Millions of people want to know what happened to Kenneka and many are scouring the hotel surveillance videos that show her stumbling through the hotel and the Facebook Live videos posted by her friend during the party. Stories are being spun and debated about whether or not she was raped by young Black men and if her girlfriends are to blame for supposedly setting her up. The media coverage is used once again to portray young Black people as selfish out-of-control animals and criminals. And in a concentration of the putrid culture we live in, Kenneka’s grieving friends are being mocked and degraded through social media. Meanwhile, other stories spread of a conspiracy to harvest and sell her organs for profit with an orchestrated cover-up by the Rosemont police. Hundreds have protested demanding the release of all of the surveillance video and demanding an FBI investigation.
Here is what we can say without a doubt: the culture of rape and degradation of women, the dehumanization of and total contempt for the lives of Black people, and the cruelty with which people get trained to treat each other in this dog-eat-dog system all keep this system going and ALL SCREAM OUT THE NEED FOR REVOLUTION TO BRING INTO BEING A RADICALLY DIFFERENT KIND OF SOCIETY.
The fact is, we don’t know exactly what happened to Kenneka Jenkins.
The videos that everybody has seen don’t show what actually happened, or even really give much of any indication—despite so many people thinking they see clues everywhere. And it’s hard and frustrating to get to the truth of things in a system that exists by covering over the truth. Any time women talk about being raped or harassed, the women are treated with suspicion and looked at as whores who were asking for it—reinforced by biblical brainwashing about women needing to be “pure” and virgins and owned and dictated over by fathers or husbands. Any time something bad happens to a Black person, Black people are cast in the light of being animals and criminals. The police departments are not institutions of fact-finding, they are institutions of enforcing this way of life and all the fucked up social relations that go with it. The police aren’t trying to get to the bottom of violence against women or against Black people. Hell, a huge percentage of police officers beat their own wives and girlfriends, while Black people are regularly gunned down by police as part of the day-to-day functioning of this country and women who are seen to be vulnerable and expendable are routinely raped by police.
What all of this does tell us is we need a whole new world.
It is just for people to demand an investigation. It is just for people to want answers and want justice. But what stands out most is we need to get rid of this system at the soonest possible time. What kind of society is it where people have to numb themselves with drugs and alcohol just to try to have a good time? What kind of a society is it where it is so easy to imagine all the horrible things that could have happened to Kanneka because it is so typical of how women are fucked over all the time, from the frat house parties to the military barracks to Access Hollywood and the Miss Universe beauty pageants?
We need a revolution to overthrow this system and we need right now to revolutionize how people treat each other, as we work for revolution. The Revolution Club is doing that, living by different standards and fighting for a world where the rape and betrayal of a young woman by her friends could not even be imagined. This is being led right now by Bob Avakian (BA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party. BA has written a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, a plan for how to lead a new society after the revolution and where this can be fought for on a whole other level. Many more people are needed to throw their energy and their efforts into this, now.
The Points of Attention for the Revolution that the Revolution Club lives by and fights for, starts with saying we base ourselves on and strive to represent the interests of humanity. And Point 2 in full says this: “We fight for a world where ALL the chains are broken. Women, men, and differently gendered people are equals and comrades. We do not tolerate physically or verbally abusing women or treating them as sexual objects, nor do we tolerate insults or ‘jokes’ about people’s gender or sexual orientation.”
Read the full six Points of Attention for the Revolution, then start to live by and fight for these points of attention. Join the Revolution Club today and throw in everything you can to be part of preparing the ground, preparing the people, and preparing the vanguard to get ready for the time when millions can be led to go all out for revolution, with a real chance to win.
