Pigs Mob and Arrest Revolutionaries for “Putting Up a Sign”
Revolution Club Calls Rally Today to Protest Pig Harassment
July 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Twice on the morning of July 21, 10 cars of pigs from Chicago’s 7th District came out to mob and arrest at least five members of the Revolution Club on 57th and Racine. People in the neighborhood not only objected to this attack, but took videos of it. Later that day, Carl Dix, Rev. Gregg Greer, Mark Clements and a young witness from the community wearing the Revolution Club tee-shirt held a press conference right at the front of the 7th district police headquarters.
The arrested comrades were all released later that night, with charges, court dates and in some cases injuries. The Revolution Club has called a rally for July 22 at 3 p.m. in the very area in which the revolutionaries have been organizing people and the police have been cracking down.
What was the “crime” these revolutionaries were committing?
Standing with a sign urging people to defend and exercise their rights, and to learn about, and get into, the movement for revolution. This neighborhood has been the target of what can only be described as “unofficial” martial law for the past several weeks, with police forbidding people to even be on the streets, harassing people for wearing revolutionary tee-shirts or blowing whistles when police appear, carrying out raids on simple holiday parties, etc. The Revolution Club had vowed to defy, and to lead others to defy, this illegal and illegitimate unofficial martial law, and that's what they were doing when the police assaulted them.
Think about it. The Revolution Club, Chicago has been on a mission to get the youth OUT of the madness of killing and maiming each other and INTO making revolution against the system that got them in this situation. It’s connecting the youth and oppressed of Chicago with Bob Avakian, BA, the leader of the revolution, who says:
Why should we do what they want us to do—killing and crippling each other, trying to beat down or beat out each other, ending up in jail, or paralyzed, or dead at an early age—instead of joining together to go up against the system that has got us in this mess in the first place?
And BA also says:
Those this system has cast off, those it has treated as less than human, can be the backbone and driving force of a fight not only to end their own oppression, but to finally end all oppression and emancipate all of humanity.
These ideas, and people listening to and taking them up, is apparently what these police find so threatening. The Revolution Club is bringing to people a way to scientifically understand the world... a strategy to win... a Constitution for the new society... once-in-a-lifetime leadership in Bob Avakian... and a way to get organized into the Revolution Club, and the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The police have worked overtime to prevent this message from getting out to the masses of people. They’ve tried to intimidate the revolutionaries, they’ve threatened them, and now they’ve arrested five revolutionaries on the ridiculous charges of hanging a poster and using sound amplification. And these same pigs have been harassing threatening and attacking people in the neighborhood who DO support this in different ways or who simply want to hear about it.
These pigs have been running roughshod in the neighborhood. In the weeks before the June 10 public rally called by the Revolution Club, two youth were murdered in cold blood by Chicago pigs. On June 2, 17-year-old Corsean Lewis was shot down in the Washington Park neighborhood on the South Side. Just over 24 hours later, the Chicago pigs shot and critically wounded someone for just trying to get away after police harassed him for supposedly drinking. And on May 17, Cook County sheriffs killed another 17-year-old, Rashad Wells Jr., in Englewood on the South Side. On July 4, over 100 pigs from three different police districts raided a 4th of July family party. They came in like an army, kicking in doors, dragging and beating people, terrorizing children who were hiding in fear in the bedroom, and arresting 13 people, some who now face serious charges. These come on top of incident after incident, murder after murder by Chicago pigs: May 13: Tywon Salters, 21 years old; April 3: Jack Burris, 66 years old; February 15: Chad Robertson, 25 years old; February 10: Michele Robey, 55 years old.
None of this is the “exception” to the rule. All this harassment, terror, and murder fits into everything this system has done to Black people since Day One: from the whips, chains, and shackles of slavery to the KKK lynch mobs of Jim Crow, to the murdering pigs and the massive dungeons of the “New Jim Crow,” and to the even worse horrors that they have in store now with Trump. Trump, who’s threatening to send in the feds and to give these cops even more backing to repress, harass, abuse and murder people—all part of a reactionary offensive by this system and the fascist regime now running it against other people in this country and all over the world.
A Notice to One and All…Including the 7th District
The Revolution Club, Chicago, declares: We mean what we say, and we will not back off or turn our back on what we have started, on the people who need this revolution. We will keep coming back and digging in, to strengthen this movement for revolution, to build up the bases, spread the influence and organize the forces we need to make revolution. We will not be scared off, backed down or driven away.
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