Fight and Resist the Attacks Against Black Youth!
Adapted from a speech delivered on the occasion of Juneteenth and the Day of Heroism, June 19.
On June 2, Rick Chow, a small-busincess owner in South Carolina, was found not guilty for the murder of Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a Black 14 year old boy. Cyrus was accused of stealing water bottles, and Chow chased him out of the store and shot him in the back. Chow’s attorney is claiming race was ‘not a factor’ in the shooting. This case is a play-by-play repeat of what happened to 15 year old Latasha Harlins back in 1991 in Los Angeles, which helped spark the heroic uprisings in LA the following year.
On June 7 in Georgia Jeffrey Tyler Kinzer, a military base employee armed with a semi-automatic rifle and body armor shouted slurs and opened fire at a Black family reunion, with over 20 children in attendance. He received a slap on the wrist from the Georgia courts system, receiving the measly charge of aggravated assault, he bailed out county jail within a day on a $5,000 bond.
On June 9, Karmelo Anthony, aged 17 at the time of his arrest was sentenced to 35 years in prison for daring to defend himself against racist aggression while living in the far-right ruled state of Texas.
Most recently, on June 14, Mississippi pig – Hunter Foster shot and killed a 1-year old Black baby named Kohen Wiley in a Walmart parking lot. The police responded to a shoplifting call from Walmart, claiming Wiley’s mother and aunt of stealing diapers. The police approached the vehicle with guns pointed, while the mother held the baby up, the pigs opened fire, murdering baby Kohen in cold blood, and leaving his aunt critically injured. A working class mother looking out for her child’s health resulted in her son being executed, and almost losing her own life. The pigs had the audacity to claim that ‘they feared for their lives’, while Black people all across the country are being terrorized, imprisoned, and murdered with no consequences!
These are just the cases that have made it to the national headlines, we know that these attacks against Black youth are everyday occurrences in this country. Black youth across the country are being murdered and thrown into prison by the imperialist police and court system. Our classmates are being excluded and expelled. Our coworkers are being discriminated against and underpaid. Our family members and friends aren’t safe, and some never return home to their loved ones. The imperialist ruling class unleashes terror upon Black people in the forms of racist policing, the militarization of Black working-class communities through mass surveillance and the ever-growing military level funding of the police. Mass incarceration naturally follows this, where 37% of the incarcerated population is Black, where they are tortured psychologically and physically, and many are forced into working for mere pennies a day doing back-breaking labor. Through all of these measures and more, the Black population, mainly the Black workers in the US are forced into situations of economic despair and misery at much higher rates than their white counterparts.
Could it not be any more obvious that the police serve the interests of the ruling imperialist class? And that they have no care for the lives of Black youth? This lesson has been stamped into the minds of all class-conscious Black people in the US, through our four centuries of oppression since arriving in this country.
Black youth are some of the most repressed and attacked people in this prison of a country. But, because of the treatment we face – we also make up a significant portion of the frontline fighters for revolutionary change. The 2020 uprisings put this fact on full display for the entire world to see. Black youth bravely took to the streets in record-breaking numbers, and fought heroically against the police, the courts, and the entire imperialist ruling system. Our young fighters refused to be caged in by thelimits established by this brutal system, the limits designed to extinguish the flames of just rebellion rather than spread them, and they rightfully took the fight directly to the enemy – through fire and stones they set the example of what all people’s movements in this country must follow to achieve any gains.
We see people following in this example of resistance in response to the recent brutality faced by Black youth. We’re seeing this in response to the murder of baby Kohen Wiley, as masses across the country protest in the streets, facing tear gas and police repression. We see this in South Carolina, where Chow’s business was protested and vandalized immediately after the unjust killing and verdict. We find strength in the people’s uprising, and understand these expressions as the righteous anger of the masses struggling against this inhuman system.
But we need to transform our rebellion into an organized force for working-class revolution.
There were heroic actions that took place during the 2020 uprisings, but these actions were overall unorganized, and the mass movement was misled and sold out by the Democratic Party. The demands shifted from an end to racist policing to begging for paper-promises to implement ‘diversity training’ in police departments and other ridiculous non-solutions. We aren’t fighting to teach the pigs about diversity, we’re fighting to disarm the pigs and arm ourselves. Let the pigs be racist in the privacy of their own homes. If they act up, let them be racist in the prisons they designed for us. If they still won’t stop, let them be racist in the cemetery! That’s what we mean when we say that working class revolution is the only solution to racist oppression.
Without political power based on armed force, Black people in the United States will never be free. Our ancestors fought for power against the slavers of the Confederate States, they fought for power against the Klan, and they fought for power against the imperialist ruling class in the civil rights movements of the 30s and 60s and beyond. Today, we’re fighting against the imperialist ruling class for power for the working class.
We don’t want peaceful protests, we want an organized and armed working class, with Black people front and center. Until we destroy the power of the pigs and replace it with the power of the working class, we’re gonna keep facing the same problems we’ve always had.
We must place special emphasis on the organization of Black youth, as the youth movement as a whole cannot progress without more leaders being forged from some of the youth’s bravest, fiercest fighters. To stop the killings and mass imprisonment of Black youth, we need to organize for revolution, a revolution of the working class that can completely up-end and destroy this imperialist system. The old imperialist order has shown us through its centuries of oppression that there is no reason to try and reform it. The system will continue terrorizing our people until we organize to destroy it, and upend our centuries of oppression once and for all!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!
BLACK YOUTH, FIGHTERS OF THE PEOPLE!
Signed,
Apopka Revolutionary Youth
Beaverton Revolutionary Student Front
Bellevue Revolutionary Youth
Bellingham Revolutionary Youth
Issaquah Revolutionary Youth
Los Angeles Revolutionary Youth
Revolutionary Student Organization, Davis
Revolutionary Student Organization, Santa Cruz
Revolutionary Youth Organization, Oakland
Seattle Revolutionary Youth
West Lafayette Revolutionary Student Front