Chicago South Side: Pigs Gun Down Another Black Man—People Get into the Streets in Outrage:
“The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Saturday late afternoon, July 14, the Chicago pigs shot and killed yet another Black man—37-year-old Harith Augustus—on the city’s South Side. Augustus, known as Snoop to people in the neighborhood, worked at a barbershop nearby, and he had a five-year-old daughter.
Immediately, a large crowd—100 and growing—gathered in outrage at this criminal act by the Chicago pigs. There were all kinds of people from the neighborhood, from the youth to older folk. This is the latest in a string of killings of people by the Chicago police—the third time in just the last two weeks they’ve shot someone. The police immediately mobilized a huge force to try to intimidate and squash the protest—one reporter said there were about 100 cops on the scene.
Members of the Revolution Club, Chicago were out in the protest almost from the beginning. Their organizing center is not far from where Snoop was killed, and members were out in the neighborhood taking out the revolution to people that very afternoon. Club members told revcom.us that among the people who came out into the street, there was a widespread feeling of “fed-up-ness” and “fuck all this” with the repeated police murders and terror. One older woman talked about how she worries all the time for her son and grandson—are they going to come home alive? “They don’t care about our youth,” she said. “Our youth need to be able to grow.”
In the face of people’s outrage, the police acted like the pigs that they are—repeatedly attacking the people, trying to force them back and scatter them. The cops stormed a parking lot where protesters had gathered, punching people, throwing them to the ground and hitting them with batons. At least four people were arrested. Lots of people videotaped the police attacking the crowd and tweeted things like, “CPD just charged their own barricade and attacked the peaceful demonstration at 71st & Chappell where CPD killed someone earlier today.” One woman said that the cops were attacking some people as they were trying to run away. A Chicago Sun-Times reporter tweeted, “I have my press badge on and identified myself as a reporter but I got shoved to the ground by two cops who smacked my phone out of my hand.” People shouted, “Murderers, Murderers!” There were chants of “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”
Revolution Club members told revcom, “People didn’t back down—they regrouped and came back. They were clear, ‘No, we’re not gonna take this.’” At one point, some protestors got up on the hood of a police car and were dancing on it in defiance. For some five hours through the evening, the people faced off against the police, and at 11:30 pm, they marched to the 3rd District police station. The next day, Sunday, there was another march through the streets.
Through all this, the Revolution Club joined with the righteous protest, and agitated and organized for an actual revolution. Ten or more people got the Revolution—Nothing Less! T-shirts and put them on during the protests. The HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution pamphlet got into many hands. The Club brought out how the genocidal persecution, mass incarceration, police brutality and murder of Black and Brown people—along with other crimes of the rulers—come from the system of capitalism-imperialism, and the need for people to get with the revolution that aims to actually overthrow that system.
Revcom will be covering this situation further—so stay tuned.
From HOW WE CAN WIN —
How We Can Really Make Revolution:
Those who catch the worst hell under this system, and those who are sickened by the endless outrages perpetrated by this system, need to join up with this revolution. Thousands need to get organized into the ranks of the revolution now, while millions are being influenced in favor of this revolution .We have seen the potential for this in the protests that have taken place against police brutality and murder, and other ways in which large numbers of people have gone up against the established authorities and the political “rules of the game.” But this needs to be transformed, through struggle, into revolutionary understanding, determination, and organization.The organized forces and the leadership of this revolution must become the “authority” that growing numbers of people look to and follow—not the lying politicians and media of this oppressive system—not those who front for the oppressors and preach about “reconciliation” with this system—not those who turn people against each other when they need to be uniting for this revolution. While many people will do positive things in opposing the crimes of this system, we need to approach everything—evaluate every political program and every organized force in society, every kind of culture, values and ways of treating people—according to how it relates to the revolution we need, to end all oppression. We should unite with people whenever we can, and struggle with them whenever we need to, to advance the revolution.
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