A World of Savage Inequality:
NO MORE!
December 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This world we live in is (to borrow a phrase from author Jonathan Kozol) one of savage inequalities. In the shadow of New York City’s gleaming skyscrapers, nearly half the population lives at or below the poverty line, with tens of thousands of homeless people living on the streets or in squalid, dangerous, vermin-infested “shelters.”
On the other side of the globe, the lives of tens of millions of black South Africans are in many ways no better than they were under apartheid—without access to jobs, or education, slaving in the mines or as maids.
And this is all part of a world where the lives of the majority of humanity are a living hell. Numbers don’t begin to tell the story, but one in three women alive today—1 billion women—will be raped or assaulted in their lifetimes. Ten million children die needlessly each year from preventable causes. Millions of people live in terror of drone attacks, billions are spied on, and the planet faces an environmental emergency.
All this is enforced with savage violence and repression. The heroic hunger strike that involved, at times, over 30,000 prisoners in California shined a light on the psychological and physical torture of endless solitary confinement. In New York City, the demand to end apartheid-style “stop-and-frisk” has been met with the appointment of a police chief with a resume of overseeing thuggish brutality against Blacks and Latinos. An abandoned Detroit takes on the feel of a concentration camp for hundreds of thousands of people.
All this is justified with lies: That billions of people have no access to clean water, or millions are locked in jails because they made “bad choices.” That all of this is the will of an imaginary (and sadistic) god, or an eternal “human nature.” That the best one can do about all this is to pass out a little charity. And, the biggest lie of all—that any alternative to capitalism is off limits—that “communism was tried and failed.”
Under California's three-strikes law, Donald Jones, 42, was sentenced to 76 years to life after being convicted of having a stolen lawnmower and an illegal knife when on parole in 1996. Photo: AP
In the face of the great divisions in the world, and all that lies behind them, both those who catch the most intense kind of hell every day, and those not so directly in the crosshairs of oppression and repression, need to make common cause to say NO MORE. The world does not have to be like this. There is very developed theory and a vision for a radically new society in Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism—a world without exploitation and oppression of any kind, and a strategy to make that a reality. People need to know about this.
At a time of year when people reflect on the state of humanity and their relationship to it, make, or step up, your commitment to refuse to accept all this. Two things you can do right now that will actually contribute to REAL change: First: learn more about and get with Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism and his leadership of a movement for revolution. Donate generously, and raise big money to get BA Everywhere—from the prison cells to the suburbs and beyond. Second: read, spread, and financially sustain Revolution and revcom.us—where tens of thousands of people around the world connect with this movement for revolution.
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In the hellhole prisons of AmeriKKKa, home to over two million people, prisoners—who society calls the "worst of the worst" or "irredeemable"—are standing up and resisting the inhuman conditions in which they are enslaved. And, as they do, they are going through transformation in how they understand the world and their role in changing it.
This past summer, 30,000 prisoners in California asserted their humanity by starting a hunger strike against the torture of long-term solitary confinement. Earlier, a group of prisoners had issued an inspiring statement calling for unity and a halt to hostilities between people of different nationalities in the prisons. After 60 days, the prisoners collectively decided to suspend the hunger strike—but the struggle to end torture continues. Other hunger strikes and political struggles against the dehumanization of American prisons have occurred in other states in recent years.
Within this emerging new generation of rebellious slaves is a significant section of prisoners across the country who are looking for a deeper understanding of why this world is a horror, how we can get out of it, and what it means to be human—and are engaging with the challenging vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world presented in the weekly Revolution newspaper, in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, and in other revolutionary literature sent to them by the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund. Bob Avakian, BA, is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and his BAsics is a handbook for revolutionaries in this time, speaking powerfully to the big questions of revolution and human emancipation.
From the notorious "Special Housing Unit" (SHU) at Pelican Bay in Northern California to the notorious Texas prison system to Sing Sing in New York and across the country, the PRLF sends approximately 800 English and Spanish subscriptions of Revolution and has sent over 1,200 copies of BAsics so far to prisoners in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
YOU play a vital role in the PRLF not only continuing this vital work but expanding it to many, many more prisoners (see poem).
DONATE: The existing Revolution subscriptions for prisoners cost $28,000/year. Each copy of BAsics costs $10. Imagine if the PRLF could significantly increase the number of Revolution subscriptions and copies of BAsics making their way to prisoners.
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