Revolution Club, Los Angeles: Out in South Central After Police Murder of Alton Sterling
July 11, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From the Revolution Club, LA:
Photos: revcom.us
As video of the police murder of Alton Sterling went viral, the LA Revolution Club gathered to make immediate plans to be at a major historic intersection in South Central where the LA Rebellion of 1992 kicked off. The Revolution Club lined up in formation and agitated about people getting into the streets and getting with the revolution that is needed. A Black woman joined us and grabbed a poster of Alton Sterling and began showing it to the cars passing by. Cars honked and people raised their fists from outside of their windows. The woman exuberantly went out into the street and waved the poster at cars for all to bear witness the name of another Black man executed in the streets by the police. Another Black man and another video and a world of evidence that showed the ugliness and the utter illegitimacy of this system.
Flyers of the revcom.us article on the police murder of Alton Sterling were distributed to people walking by and through windows of cars. A Latino man in his 40s walked by slowly and stopped to watch for a few minutes. The woman with the Alton Sterling poster went up to talk to him and came back to report his question: “He wants to know if it’s time to set the police station on fire.” The comrade responded over the bullhorn: No, now is the time to fight, to get into the streets right now, and get organized now to tear this whole system down as soon as possible—join us right now. His face lit up in a big grin and he joined as the Revolution Club marched in formation.
The agitation continued and our heads turned to see a younger Latino man approach us directly. “Hey! Give me one of those flyers! FUCK THE POLICE! FUCK THE POLICE!” The man had pulled over to the curb with his girlfriend, got out with the door still open behind him and demanded a flyer.
We had a sound-truck with a big-screen TV and played the video of Alton Sterling being shot and then showed the video clip “There’s a conspiracy to get the cops off” from BA’s Revolution Talk. An older Black man, after watching the Alton Sterling video, shouted out that this city needed to be burned down. A few other people came over as the BA video played and nodded as they watched the leader of the revolution talk about how the prosecutors who ferociously prosecute our youth all of a sudden forget to prosecute when the pigs are on trial.
Moments later, the pigs came oinking down the street with their lights flashing as they stopped some youth and lined them against the wall, handcuffed. The Revolution Club announced we were marching over to not allow the police to kill anybody and called on people on the street to join us. We marched to the spot of the harassment and called out that we were there to prevent illegal activity by the pigs under the color of authority. The pigs got on their radios and quickly more pig cars began to roll up. The comrade on the bullhorn called on people not to allow the police to kill people, and not just sit in their car and film but get out and stop it from happening. Cars began pulling over to the side of the busy street and people got out of their cars, filming from across the street. The comrade agitated about the illegitimacy of the cops and the whole system they enforce and that they had no right to do this. She hit at the whole history of what America has done to Black people for 400 years, what it’s doing to people all over the world right now, and that now is the time to get organized for an actual revolution and get with the leadership that is leading people to do that, BA and the RCP. She called on people to fight and stand up and said when they do this it has an effect on the whole society and is part of how we build up our strength and accelerate the time when millions can be led to go all-out to overthrow this system and replace the USA with the New Socialist Republic in North America. Four or more pig cars had rolled up and the pigs got out smirking and nervous, lining up facing the street standing next to where they had the two handcuffed men.
Many people were thankful of the force that was there to watch the pigs who terrorize the community everyday unchecked. One person came up to the comrade on the bullhorn afterward and commented they had never heard a white person talk like that about what happens to Black and Brown people every day. A woman from across the street who was filming and saying “Hell yeah I’m going to put this on Facebook!” came by our sound-truck to watch BA in the film Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, A Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian. She nodded and responded as BA spoke about what if the world doesn’t have to be this way—and when the clip was over, she commented: what that man’s saying is beautiful.
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