From Revolution Club, Los Angeles:

Confronting the Chicago Mayor, and Bringing the Truth Out About the Fascists and the Democrats

February 24, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Monday February 12 the Revolution Club, LA went to UCLA where the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, was invited as a “thought leader” to present about what he has done to supposedly help the people of Chicago.

The Revolution Club distributed the palm card for the film of BA’s talk on fascism to students and to the people lining up outside to hear Rahm Emanuel speak. We talked to them about the importance of this talk and how Bob Avakian goes very deeply into why we can’t rely on the Democratic Party who are all on “the same team” as Trump.

We got some extra tickets to get in and decided that it would be important if some of us went inside to see what happens and see what Emanuel says. A few minutes into the speech three activists from an organization called No Cop Academy spoke out about how Emanuel worked to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald, and they chanted “money for schools, not for cops.” The police forced the activists to leave the event. Emanuel insisted to the audience that he would get into the points they brought up later in his speech.

Rahm Emanuel went on in his speech to talk about how every high schooler was going to  have to get a college acceptance letter, a job, or military enlistment papers to be eligible to receive a high school diploma. And this is where a couple members of the Revolution Club stood up and spoke out against this. One person said, “Forcing these youth to join the military so that they can go and kill and help this system oppress people all over the world, just so that they can get a high school diploma is wrong!” Another person said, “Rahm Emanuel’s plan for ‘at-risk youth,’ for the masses of Black people, is nothing more than feeding them into the meat grinder. If they aren’t shot in the back in this country sending them off to kill and drop bombs on people in other countries.”

At this point the pigs came over and roughly grabbed one of the members of the Revolution Club and wrenched on his shoulder to stop him from chanting “Trump and Pence must go” and calling on people to go to Revcom.us and to find out about Bob Avakian. The pigs took him and slammed him to the ground, and four officers ran over and put their knees on his back and neck as the crowd gasped when they heard the cries of pain. After handcuffing him the pigs dragged him across the floor all the way out of the building. He was charged with two misdemeanors. Two other members of the Revolution Club were taken into custody for filming the police as they brutalized him, and released without charges.

There were three other disruptions of the speech that came after, each from No Cop Academy. One activist chanted “16 shots and a cover-up” as he walked out of the building. Another activist spoke out about how Rahm Emanuel was shutting down schools at the same time as he was funding the construction of a police academy. He was arrested by the police. Someone else spoke out against Emanuel but it was not clear what they said.

In response and in the face of the protesters against police murder and those who were calling out the Trump regime and arrested for doing so, what did Rahm Emanuel have to say? “Who knew there were so many non-stop flights from Chicago?”

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