October 22nd, 2009: NO MORE! No More Stolen Lives!
Statement by Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Corey Harris, a junior at Dyett High School, a star basketball player and captain of the baseball team, was the first Chicago student to be killed by gun violence this school year - shot to death on September 11. He was killed after school, shot in the back as he ran away from a man with a gun. There was no media outcry over Corey’s murder, no statement from the White House about their distress over it. Hundreds of students and adults who loved Corey attended his funeral, but there was no parade of politicians there. The name of his murderer is known by the Chicago Police Department and yet he walks the streets today, uncharged for this murder. Why? The man who executed this unarmed student was an off-duty Chicago cop.
Last year the Chicago police killed 21 people.
The death of Derrion Albert, an honor student at Fenger High School in Chicago, is also a horror for the people. On September 24, the nation was stunned by vivid images of the Fenger High School melee resulting in his death. People are agonizing over how did we get into a hellish situation where parents watch students being killed over nothing, where kids grow up haunted by images of gunfire. Everyone talks about responsibility. But who and what is responsible for this situation?
Oscar Brown Jr’s poem, “Children of Children,” includes these lines:
The children of children trapped by dark skins to stay in and play in a game no one wins
The children of children while still young and sweet are all damned and programmed for future defeat
The children of children are trapped by adults who fail them then jail them to hide the results…
It is a crime of this system that our youth internalize the message they get every day through the worthless schools and degrading conditions and brutalizing cops - the message that this system has no future for them and that they don’t even deserve a future - and then they act it out against each other. More police are not the answer, as the police murder of Corey Harris shows.
Youth need to be inspired, encouraged, organized and unleashed to stand up against and resist the conditions they face, including degradation, dehumanization and outright murder they face at the hands of the police. In the course of this, and joining with others to throw off oppression throughout the world, people can and will change themselves.
“The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.” (“The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have,” Revolution #170, July 19, 2009)
October 22nd is the National Day of Protest to STOP Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. It is the day to begin to stand up and resist the outrage of police brutality and police murder. FIGHT BACK! WEAR BLACK!
For assembly points, go to october22.org/Assembly2007.html
