Police Murder, After Murder, After Murder:
What's MOST Urgent Right Now
September 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
September 25—Over the last 10 days, again, police executions snuffed out three precious Black lives, and gut-punched millions and millions across the U.S. On Wednesday, September 14, it was 5-foot, 100-pound, 13-year-old Tyre King in Columbus, Ohio, murdered by police for having a toy gun. Then on Friday, September 16, it was 40-year-old Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his car stalled, video showing him unarmed, unthreatening, hands in the air, doing all the “right things”—and still shot down like a dog. Then, on Tuesday the 20th, it was 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, as he waited quietly in his car for his son to get back from school, his wife there screaming at the pigs that he was unarmed and unthreatening—still cut down within seconds, stripped of his pants, left on the pavement. All victims of naked, outright, state-sponsored MURDER.
At this writing, for six straight nights and days, people in Charlotte have been standing up against Keith Lamont Scott’s murder by police. Against rubber bullets and tear gas; against non-stop justifications by police and officials for the murder and their refusal to release video evidence; against demands they stay home; against charges they’re the violent ones.
Now the Charlotte police have been forced to release some of their video footage, footage which underscores just how needless Scott’s death was. Ask yourself, if people had not risen up and if, in particular, they had not righteously defended themselves against the violent police assault on Wednesday night, and if Rakeyia Scott hadn’t courageously videotaped the police operation against her husband and then released it to the world, does anyone really think that the murder of Keith Lamont Scott in particular and the issue of the police murder of Black and Latino people would have hit society as hard as it did, becoming the number one topic of debate, and entering into the whole presidential campaign?
Millions have taken notice and thousands have taken actions in cities and towns from Atlanta, Georgia, to Portland, Oregon... from those on the meanest streets to those on college campuses to those of prominence. They’ve marched, sat in, died in, shut shit down, and “took a knee” against Keith Scott’s murder and that of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa. All this is intertwined with an emerging movement of refusing to stand for the national anthem, and campus resistance and shutdowns against racist venom and a “toxic climate” overall. It comes after two years of fierce resistance against police murder and terror, and profound questioning among millions of all strata in society that’s going on. The oppression of Black people, an explosive fault line at the very heart of the USA from its founding till today, is profoundly roiling society.
This “moment” includes many white people joining this upsurge, responding to the bold and daring resistance by breaking with silent complicity and standing up, including even at “Ole Miss”—once famous for white students rioting against the admission of the first Black student in 1962! (See: "Police Murders, Uprising in Charlotte, Spark Protests Across the U.S.") These are very important glimmers of how we can begin to overcome the rulers’ vilification and encirclement of Black and other oppressed peoples today, and the enormous potential for the much greater and more positive repolarization of society that would need to go into making a revolution—if we work on it! Yes, the polarization of society—how the sides line up—is spontaneously very bad; but this can change through struggle.
People ask: Why do the police keep murdering Black and Brown people, over and over? Because police murder and the oppression of Black and Latino people is built into the system of capitalism-imperialism. That’s not just rhetoric: Bob Avakian has done the work, over 40 years, to scientifically show how and why this is so (See: "Bob Avakian on the Oppression of Black People and the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppression") and to work through how a new socialist society could forge the road to overcoming this, and all, oppression and exploitation.
Resisting police terror and this system’s many other crimes is urgently needed, on an even greater scale. We certainly need to be out there agitating in ways that sharply call out the crimes of this system, uniting people broadly to act against them, and going on the offensive, against all those who counsel patience, reconciliation, or sticking to the system’s channels! But ABOVE ALL AND MOST OF ALL, we must bring to people the truth that these struggles must become part of and build toward an actual revolution. Why? Again, because there’s a system at work here.
People need to know this: The horrific outrages like police murder and the oppression of Black people and the whole genocidal program that’s a part of—and the other horrors from environmental devastation, to unending international slaughter in service of U.S. empire, to the subjugation and degradation of the female half of humanity—are all built into that system of capitalism-imperialism. Because of this, no matter how many people protest or how courageously they resist, as long as that system remains in place these outrages will go on and on—and often escalate horrifically. These nightmares are unnecessary, but the only way they’ll end is through a revolution that overthrows the system causing them. This revolution is necessary, and it’s possible. And most important, “There is a way that we can make a real revolution—and bring into being a radically different and better society: we have the strategy, program, and leadership for this revolution, in the work of BA and the Party he leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party.” (From “A Basic Point of Orientation”)
We need—right now—to be organizing people INTO the revolution. This means going to the website www.revcom.us. Go there to get into BA’s work and leadership, concentrated in his pathbreaking new book THE NEW COMMUNISM, and readily accessible in his many works, videos, audios, and quotes. And go there to learn about how major events in society are linked together and linked to revolution, how we can make the revolution we need at the soonest possible time, and what we must do now to push this process as far as we can.
It means seriously digging into and wrestling with the crucial new messages from the Central Committee of the RCP, USA: “HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution” and “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution”—and spreading them to others.
It means connecting with the revolution and becoming part of the organized forces for revolution by joining the Revolution Clubs. Be part of the process of changing everything: get organized into the revolution.
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