Five years ago, cold-blooded cops choked George Floyd to death on a Minneapolis street as he pleaded for his life. People across the country—Black people and people of all nationalities who watched the video of this heartless murder with fury, who recalled decades of other similar outrages—said “Enough!” and rose up in what revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) called a “beautiful uprising.” Through the year 2020, millions of people defied violent police repression and armed fascist thugs to pour out into the streets against intolerable injustice and to demand fundamental change.
A week after the beautiful uprising began, BA issued a powerful statement:
A statement from Bob Avakian
revolutionary leader, author and architect of the revolutionary new communism.
June 1, 2020
To all those who have risen up so powerfully and are demonstrating to say “No More!” after the murder of George Floyd, and all the other cold-blooded murders by police.
To all those who have drawn inspiration from this righteous uprising.
To all those who have had the blinders forced from their eyes and have been provoked to think anew about what kind of country it is that we live in.
This has raised the biggest questions about what is needed for people everywhere to live fully as human beings:
AN END TO INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM
AND MURDER BY POLICE—NOTHING LESS!AN END TO ANY WAY PEOPLE ANYWHERE ARE
USED, ABUSED, AND BRUTALIZED—NOTHING LESS!
We need a world without white supremacy and male supremacy—a world where no one is regarded as “alien”—a world without war, where people from all over the globe, with a beautiful flowering of diversity, act together for the common good and are truly caretakers of the earth.
THIS IS NOT JUST A DREAM.
The possibility for this is being powerfully demonstrated in this uprising of the people, of all different races and genders, from all parts of the world—refusing to remain silent or stay passive while all this oppression and brutality goes on.
To Make All This Real
We Need: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
A strategic plan for how to make this revolution, and a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and much better world, where all this can become possible—can be found in the work I have done, including the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
You can learn more about this revolution and become part of making it a reality by going to revcom.us and joining with the revcoms.
We do not need to live in this world where so much of humanity suffers so unnecessarily under this system of capitalism-imperialism that cannot exist without exploiting and degrading people, suffocating their humanity and killing them without mercy. We can do much better! Don’t listen to talk about how “it can never happen.”
Look around you—what seemed impossible yesterday is happening right now! Revolution, why should we settle for anything less?
A statement from Bob Avakian
revolutionary leader, author and architect of the revolutionary new communism.
June 1, 2020
To all those who have risen up so powerfully and are demonstrating to say “No More!” after the murder of George Floyd, and all the other cold-blooded murders by police.
To all those who have drawn inspiration from this righteous uprising.
To all those who have had the blinders forced from their eyes and have been provoked to think anew about what kind of country it is that we live in.
This has raised the biggest questions about what is needed for people everywhere to live fully as human beings:
AN END TO INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM
AND MURDER BY POLICE—NOTHING LESS!AN END TO ANY WAY PEOPLE ANYWHERE ARE
USED, ABUSED, AND BRUTALIZED—NOTHING LESS!
We need a world without white supremacy and male supremacy—a world where no one is regarded as “alien”—a world without war, where people from all over the globe, with a beautiful flowering of diversity, act together for the common good and are truly caretakers of the earth.
THIS IS NOT JUST A DREAM.
The possibility for this is being powerfully demonstrated in this uprising of the people, of all different races and genders, from all parts of the world—refusing to remain silent or stay passive while all this oppression and brutality goes on.
To Make All This Real
We Need: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
A strategic plan for how to make this revolution, and a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and much better world, where all this can become possible—can be found in the work I have done, including the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
You can learn more about this revolution and become part of making it a reality by going to revcom.us and joining with the revcoms.
We do not need to live in this world where so much of humanity suffers so unnecessarily under this system of capitalism-imperialism that cannot exist without exploiting and degrading people, suffocating their humanity and killing them without mercy. We can do much better! Don’t listen to talk about how “it can never happen.”
Look around you—what seemed impossible yesterday is happening right now! Revolution, why should we settle for anything less?
For more see:
Bob Avakian: Writings in 2020–A Momentous Year
In the following weeks and months, BA came out with a series of articles digging into a number of crucial, timely questions that came up in the course of the beautiful uprising. As we mark five years since the police murder of George Floyd, we have collected on this page some of the works from BA during that period, which continue to be of interest and relevance today.
Here I am going to focus on the systematic and murderous oppression of Black people, and racial oppression overall—which has been sharply exposed with the outpouring of outrage sparked by the murder of George Floyd—and discuss the basic reasons why this oppression cannot be eliminated under this system, but can (only) be ended through revolution.
And then there is the whole “cancel culture.” Especially in the all-too-common form of poring over the entire history of an individual’s life, looking to find one negative thing which can then be seized on to obliterate (“cancel”) that person, this is an extremely cancerous trend, which does a great deal of harm, not only to individuals targeted in this way but often to crucial social causes and struggles.
...does this idea of changing institutions and shifting priorities and funding, within this same system, really represent a way to put an end to police brutality and murder, and at the same time overcome the conditions of discrimination and poverty that cause people to be caught up in continual violence—both the violence carried out by the police and the violence among the people themselves, and in particular the youth in the inner cities?
No.
Donald Trump—
GENOCIDAL RACIST
Part 1
by Bob Avakian
August 31, 2020
Genocide means killing off a whole people, or a large part of that people. Genocide is what the Europeans did to the native peoples in America, while stealing their land. Genocide is Hitler and the NAZIs murdering six million Jews. Donald Trump is a genocidal racist.
Donald Trump hates Black people and everybody who is not a “white, English-speaking, Christian American.” If he could, he would kill off a whole lot of them, and put many of the rest in jail for life, or drive them out of the country.
Trump has spouted and shouted vicious racism for years, and decades.
Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, who knows him well, said this about him:
“I can only imagine the envy with which Donald watched” the cop killing George Floyd. “I can only imagine that Donald wishes it had been his knee on Floyd’s neck.” (emphasis added)
Think about that.
Genocide means killing off a whole people, or a large part of that people. Genocide is what the Europeans did to the native peoples in America, while stealing their land. Genocide is Hitler and the NAZIs murdering six million Jews. Donald Trump is a genocidal racist.
Donald Trump hates Black people and everybody who is not a “white, English-speaking, Christian American.” If he could, he would kill off a whole lot of them, and put many of the rest in jail for life, or drive them out of the country.
Trump has spouted and shouted vicious racism for years, and decades.
Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, who knows him well, said this about him:
“I can only imagine the envy with which Donald watched” the cop killing George Floyd. “I can only imagine that Donald wishes it had been his knee on Floyd’s neck.” (emphasis added)
Think about that.
If you really want to abolish prisons and police that embody and enforce terrible, murderous injustice—if you really want to abolish systematic, systemic and institutionalized white supremacy—why not dedicate your efforts to abolishing this whole system that requires all this, and replacing it with a system that does not?