Carl Dix is a courageous freedom fighter from the 1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Today, Carl is a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. Carl Dix and Cornel West co-founded the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City demanding a stop to police terror.
October 22: The National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation!
Take a Knee Against White Supremacy and Get Ready to Stand Up on November 4 to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime
by Carl Dix
October 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Police continue to brutalize and murder people—Patrick Harmon in Utah and David Jones in Philadelphia, Black men shot in the back by cops; Justine Ruszczyk killed by police in Minneapolis after she called 911, Kiwi Herring, a transgender woman in St. Louis killed by police. Juries continue to allow cops to get away with murder by exonerating killer cops even when there are videos of their murderous deeds. Police are on track to kill as many people this year as in 2016. And the victims of the police continue to disproportionately be Black people and other people of color. Hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown people continue to be warehoused in prisons across the U.S.
This police terror and mass incarceration is the spearhead of an overall assault this system is inflicting on Black people that amounts to a slow genocide. This slow genocide is built into the very way this capitalist-imperialist system works, and it will take revolution, nothing less to end it and all the brutality and misery this system enforces on humanity, once and for all.
And now comes Trump, accelerating this slow genocide and intensifying other horrors people suffer in this country and around the world.
Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have called for taking the gloves off the police. At a gathering of police in Long Island, NY, Trump said police should stop being too nice to the people they arrest. Sessions has re-instated mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes—sentences that played a big part in the growth of mass incarceration. Deportations, which hit record highs under Obama, have been intensified by Trump. Trump has called for professional football players who protest how police get away with murder to be fired. As far as he is concerned these players are nothing more than well-paid gladiators who should beat each other’s brains out in the arenas—football stadiums—and never speak out about injustice.
This is part of an overall program that includes restricting a woman’s right to have an abortion or access to birth control, a Muslim travel ban, taking newly won rights from LGBTQ people, attacking freedom of the press and the right to protest, and threatening to destroy North Korea. If we don’t stop this regime before it’s too late, the Trump/Pence regime will consolidate fascist rule in this country, and it will be far more difficult to do anything about any of the horrors being enforced on humanity.
It is crucially important that people stand up in resistance to these intensified attacks. And October 22 is a day to do that. Family members with Stolen Lives banners, students and youth who refuse to accept growing up in a society that has put bull's eyes on their backs, formerly incarcerated people, Black Lives Matter activists, professional people who don’t want to live in a world where the color of a person’s skin can determine whether they live or how they live—everybody—needs to be out in the streets, out at NFL games, everywhere taking a knee against police terror and white supremacy and delivering a message that police terror must stop.
And as we do this, we must be gathering strength for taking to the streets on November 4 in cities across the country. As the Call issued by Refuse Fascism for November 4 says: We will gather in the streets and public squares of cities and towns across this country, at first many thousands declaring that this whole regime is illegitimate and that we will not stop until our single demand is met: This Nightmare Must End: the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
If you’re one of those who say you would’ve resisted the horrors of slavery, or Nazi rule in Germany, or the savage oppression Black people suffered during Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror—you need to stand up NOW and engage in massive non-violent resistance.
STOP POLICE BRUTALITY, REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION!
TAKE A KNEE AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY!
TAKE TO THE STREETS ON NOVEMBER 4 AND STAY IN THE STREETS UNTIL THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME IS DRIVEN FROM OFFICE!
New and revised poster ** DOWNLOAD PDF ** DOWNLOAD JPG **
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