STATEMENT FROM THE REVOLUTION CLUB, CHICAGO
Response to the release of IPRA's police review evidence

STOP POLICE TERROR! TIME TO GET ORGANIZED FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION—AT THE SOONEST POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY

June 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

For years, people in Chicago have been told that police shootings and brutality complaints were being investigated by IPRA (the so-called Independent Police Review Authority, AKA the wastebasket). For years, IPRA has buried the evidence of the Chicago Police Department’s brutality and murder. In response to months of outrage and protests, IPRA just dumped evidence in almost 100 cases, some five years old, into the public’s view. Even the way this was done was cold—released on a Friday afternoon while the mayor was out of town! More revelations will be spilling out in the days to come. But right now four things need to be said:

1. All this shows once again that the CPD is an occupying Gestapo army terrorizing communities of the oppressed, covering up their crimes and getting away with it. Year after year, and yet no punishment for these crimes, including murder after murder. In fact, it is the people the police brutalize who get charges and do time. Just one of the cases: a van carrying alleged “burglars” who were unarmed was riddled with 75 bullets, killing one person and wounding two others. When the IPRA investigator said it was excessive use of force, he was fired. The case is still being investigated over four years later!!!! This was not a “backlog” as the city claims. It was a systematic cover up.

2. NONE of this would have come to light if people had not been raising hell in the streets protesting the fact Black and Latino youth have a target on their backs and are treated as suspects and brutalized from a very early age. In Ferguson, the youth said ENOUGH and rose up against the violence of the police and the killing of Mike Brown. The protests that rocked Chicago after the video was released showing Laquan McDonald being gunned down in the street like a dog—this forced the city to release the material from these cases. There is only one “reasonable demand” in this situation—INDICT, CONVICT, SEND THESE BRUTAL COPS TO JAIL. THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY AS HELL.

3. “The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in....” (Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:24) This is why the police keep murdering and brutalizing here and across the country and get away with it. There is no reform or transparency that will “fix” the police because the system needs them to maintain a “law and order that enforces all this oppression and madness.” Until we learn this lesson, people will be fooled once again by the rulers of this system.

4. The days when this system can keep doing this must be over. The Revolutionary Communist Party is organizing NOW to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. Preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America. The RCP has the strategy and the leader in Bob Avakian—what is missing is you. Join with us, standup and learn more about this as you work with the Revolution Club and go to Revcom.us to get with the revolution.

Revolution Club, Chicago 312 804-9121 Revclub.chi@gmail.com

 

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