America Was NEVER Great—We Need Revolution

Revolution Club Chicago Disrupts Memorial Day Ceremony

May 28, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Memorial Day any year in this country is a disgusting celebration of slaughter and torture for U.S. world dominance and empire. It is a weekend of propaganda and ceremonies to instill patriotism and train millions of people in blind support for whatever the U.S. military does.

This year it comes as the Trump/Pence regime is making serious moves toward war and consolidating a fascist regime: Mafia-like threats against North Korea, sanctions on Iran, enforced patriotism in the NFL, and horrific demonization and violence against immigrants, including children.

In the midst of all this, in Chicago there was an intervention that broke through like a breath of fresh air. On Saturday, May 26, the official “wreath-laying ceremony” that kicks off the biggest Memorial Day parade in the country was disrupted right as it began, with the Revolution Club Chicago chanting “1, 2, 3, 4, Slavery, Genocide and War; 5, 6, 7, 8, America was NEVER great!”

They kneeled on an American flag on the ground and handed the mic to an Army veteran of the Vietnam War who rebelled against the Army while he was in it, joining a movement of soldiers who were recognizing the crimes they were carrying out and refusing to fight.

He yelled out, and could be heard over the voice of the person opening the ceremony: “People you are being lied to! We (America) have never been the good guys. Look up My Lai massacre, 300 people murdered... torture, massacre again and again.... Carrying out torture and atrocities is not heroism.” He pointed to the importance of soldiers who rebelled and refused to fight in America’s wars, and said, “Humanity first, not America first.”

The disruption got on the evening news and a short video was tweeted out by the Revolution Club. The next day the Revolution Club held a press conference about the disruption and announced the “America Was Never Great—We Need Revolution, American Crimes Memorial Day BBQ” in Chicago that is part of Revolution Club picnics across the country.

All of this is an application of what is in the working document for how to make revolution—HOW WE CAN WIN, How We Can Really Make Revolution. Taking up the tasks of what we need to do now to hasten the necessary conditions to go all-out for revolution, including “protest and resist the injustices and atrocities of this system, and win people to defy and repudiate this putrid system and its ways of thinking, and to take up the outlook and values, and the strategy and program of the revolution....”

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