Letter from a prisoner:
“I am thoroughly convinced that the future of humanity and our planet depends on our collective working to learn the method and approach BA uses...”
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Editors’ note: We at revcom.us periodically publish letters from prisoners on revolutionary theory and struggle, as well as other aspects of human experience and thought, including conditions and struggle within the prisons themselves. We appreciate and learn from all correspondence from the prisons. The opinions in the letters we publish are those of the writers and not necessarily those of Revcom.us.
For over a year now, CNN’s plethora of pundits, commentators, health experts, liberal politicians, apologists, etc. have been rightfully encouraging their viewership to “follow-the-science” with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of vaccines and being vaccinated. Yet when it comes to the epidemic of Black, Brown, and other oppressed people being wantonly terrorized, brutalized, and murdered by police across the country, these same talking heads would rather lull us to sleep with euphonious catchphrases like “Re-imagine Policing in America,” than to encourage us to continue to “follow-the-science.”
What happened to George Floyd and the kind of horror and terror that was unleashed on that Minneapolis afternoon 365 days ago, could be traced directly back to when the first slave ships arrived at these shores 400 years ago.
Like so many around the country, my spirit was dancing like a firefly in the night as I watched pig Derek Chauvin be found guilty of murder and be whisked away in cuffs. The symbolism of that rare moment was powerfully captivating while being painfully short lived—especially when you consider those who were killed by police before, during, and after Derek Chauvin’s trial.
Trying to “re-imagine policing” under this system, in a country founded on genocide and slavery would be about as lofty, & fanciful, as the idea of “Levitating the Pentagon” was back in 1967 in protest of the Vietnam War.
I would like to bring this to a close by quoting Revolution’s recent article: “The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act: A ‘Bold’ Move... to Protect a System That Can’t Stop Brutalizing Black People”:
To go back to the BA quote at the start of this article:
The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian (1:24)
I am thoroughly convinced that the future of humanity and our planet depends on our collective working to learn the method and approach BA uses to scientifically analyze the source of the problem we face and the pathways to solving it, through revolution.
If possible, do you think you can arm me with the following as soon as possible:
- Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps by Ardea Skybreak
- A Declaration: For Women’s Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity
- Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America
Thank you.
Revolution—Nothing Less
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.
“You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics.”
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