Response to BA's New Year's Message
A reader | January 12, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
A Black man in his 60s, a former prisoner for many years, and now homeless, living in a shelter and without work, just finished reading BAsics. We sat down and listened to Bob Avakian's New Year's Message. He had the following comments:
What I like about Mr. Avakian is that he is direct while many others are making excuses for this racist system of imperialism and capitalism. He's talking reality. It's so blatant out here now. There's the elaborate lies that are told to people and that they tell themselves to justify their comfortable enslavement. How can you be oblivious to the suffering and the madness? You up here bleeding to death and the man is patting you on the head while he's doing this to you! I like Bob Avakian. the way he thinks. Everybody has a right to be able to provide for themselves and their family and we can achieve that with others in a community but this ain't no community! Look at this. He says, LOOK AT THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN TODAY! LOOK AT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT! THE YOUTH! THE POLICE BRUTALITY! How can anyone just walk by and not do anything about all this?! The police. Look at what he says. This is why I like Bob Avakian. (He goes to and reads BAsics 1:24* on the role of the police.) Cause they don't serve and protect the people. It ain't about the people! It's about this system. When I was locked up I studied and tried to figure this out and I always said the police, they ain't protecting me!! This ain't the way it's supposed to be! But this puts it right out there. Like it's not like I didn't know this before but this puts it right out there. It's saying that the overseers are down off those horses and they in squad cars. Mr. Avakian is explicit. The ghetto community is under siege!
Further back to the statement he said:
He's right, why should we accept this? How can we tolerate it.It's going to be rough, but it can be done! The revolution won't be easy because there's a lot of folks out here trained and coerced into being scared and obeying. Ain't nothing else gonna do it.but revolution and these folks they gotta learn.
Again referring to BAsics, he said: I like this because this is like a guide. These are principles to live by.
*BAsics 1:24
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 order that enforces all this oppression and madness.
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