Revolution is NOT an "Outside Agenda"
by Carl Dix | April 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The seemingly never ending horror of police murder of Black and Latino youth poses the question—“How Long?”—as in, “How long do we have to endure the capitalist system’s enforcers, the police, murdering our youth and almost never being punished in any way for their crimes?” I feel that question every time I hear that the cops have killed another youth, another life stolen by those sworn to “Protect and Serve.” And this is a question we’re hearing from people in the East Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn from people who took to the streets for days filled with rage after the NYPD murdered 16-year-old Kimani Gray.
See clip "The police, Black youth and what kind of a system is this?" from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a Film of a Talk by Bob Avakian in 2003
Maybe they don’t always voice those exact words, saying instead that they are tired of how the cops treat them, tired of hearing of young Black people dead at the hands of the police, Kimani coming a few months after Shantel Davis was killed in the same neighborhood, coming within a year after Ramarley Graham, Reynaldo Cuevas, Tamar Robinson and many more people. And sometimes, we hear those exact words—“How Long?”
That question is the backdrop against which the March 24 protest called by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) with the theme of “Justice for Kimani Gray,” and the dangerous and divisive actions engaged in by those who threatened physical attacks on people associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party at that protest should be examined. Those threats were made against me and my comrades because a few people felt we had brought what they considered to be an “outside agenda” to this protest.
What did these people consider an “outside agenda"? The truth that this seemingly never ending chain of police murder of Black and Latino people was a horror built into the very fabric of this capitalist system and that it would take Revolution—Nothing Less! to end it once and for all. And that we challenged everybody at this protest who wondered what if anything could be done to stop this horror to get serious and get with the revolution. And even worse in the eyes of those issuing the threats, we gave people a real way to do that, by getting Revolution newspaper and checking out the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
This is no “outside agenda.” It is the real answer to “How Long?”—“How long are we going to have to endure the cops murdering our youth and almost never being punished for their crimes? Until a revolutionary people numbering in the millions is brought forward and unleashed to lead millions more in doing away with this system thru revolution and building a totally different and far better world in its place.” The seemingly never ending chain of police murders points you in the direction of this answer. But this answer so angered a few people at the protest that they responded with threats of physical attacks.
What answers did these people have to “How Long?” One called for making the police more accountable and for giving the cops better training. In other settings, people have spoken of getting a new mayor and a new police chief as the way to deal with the horror of police murder. These come down to nothing more than tired, played out bullshit! I’ve been dealing with police murder for four decades now, and I’ve heard all this crap put forward as ways to deal with police murder.
Let’s be for real. The police are the front line enforcers for the capitalist system. That’s what they’re accountable to. Their role is to keep the inequality, exploitation and oppression that system inflicts on the people in effect. They get recruited and trained to play that role, and they get promoted and rewarded for playing it. These ways of dealing with the horror of police murder come down to telling people asking “How Long?”—“Forever”!
That’s what is at the heart of the controversy brewing over the dangerous and divisive actions engaged in at the March 24 “Justice for Kimani Gray” protest called by SMIN and over the Statement “Our Movement of Resistance Needs a Lot of Room for Dialogue and Discussion, But NO ROOM FOR ATTACKS AND THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE!” (See the statement online at revcom.us.) The revolutionaries came to that protest with an answer of “Revolution—Nothing Less!” to the question of “How Long?” A few people responded by trying to shut down that answer as being something imposed from the “outside.” Their answers to “How Long?” come down to condemning the masses to suffer this injustice, and all the other horrors this system enforces, “Forever.”
Carl Dix speaks at the March 24 protest against the murder by the New York police of 16-year-old Kimani Gray. Photo: Special to Revolution
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