Make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again . . . until their doom- that is the logic of the imperialists and all reactionaries the world over in dealing with the people’s cause and they will never go against this logic. This is a Marxist law. When we say “imperialism is ferocious”, we mean that its nature will never change, that the imperialists will never lay down their butcher knives, that they will never become Buddhas, till their doom. Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again . . . until their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic. This is another Marxist law. – Mao Zedong, “Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle”

America has an insatiable appetite for the blood of the people. It bombs weddings in Yemen, it dragged hundreds of thousands of Africans here to build it, it ethnically cleaned the indigenous people, eradicating or viciously subduing entire tribes and nations of people. It’s made coups, enslaved or driven into peonage and penury hundreds of millions of people. The direct and indirect blood debt of America is undoubtedly in the tens of trillions, and the list of every one of its individual victims, if written on a single piece of paper, would twist and wrap around the world a thousand times.. Such is the nature of capitalism-imperialism and settler colonialism. This week, it claimed two more. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The first, killed on July 5th in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge while selling CDs to feed his family. Apparently, he had a record of sexual abuse in the past, and this has led many comrades who are survivors of such crimes to refuse to struggle in his name. This is their right. Those who have not been through such have no right to demand or order those who have experienced this type of abuse to subject themselves to struggle in the memory of someone who may have been an abuser. No buts or debates with those who refuse. Sterling, in the broader scheme of things, was not killed for his past anti-people activity, however, he was killed by an institution and a state that is in a state of antagonistic contradiction with the toiling masses of people and with the nations of oppressed people that it has captured and imprisoned. He was brutally murdered on the ground by the Baton Rouge pig-police officers (overseers) Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake II while selling CDs to feed his family. He was 37 years old. This activity, selling mixtapes, is reproduced countless thousands of times by people who live in ghettoes and barrios across the country and world, and is part of the fabric of social, cultural and economic life of the New Afrikan masses in this country. Capitalism drives us to take up many diverse activities to survive, whether it be doing hair or tatto0s, selling CDs, or fixing cars. No bourgeois training or certificates needed, this is learned through practice. The masses have unlimited and boundless creativity. The police use their pig powers against loitering, etc. to suppress and oppress the masses in the process of making their living.

Castile was killed on July 6th, a day after Sterling, in front of his girlfriend (who recorded the whole thing, which I will not share here) for a broken taillight in Falcon Heights, Michigan, He notified the pig that pulled him over that he was a concealed carry firearm owner, and went to reach for his ID. The pig proceeded to shoot him 4 times, and he died at the hospital. He was 32 years old, a week and a half before his 33rd birthday. Castile was a well loved and remembered supervisor at a local school and was a role model for those youth who came in contact with him. Even the bourgeois pig governor of Minnesota admitted that he would not have been killed if he were white. Two lives were taken, a day apart from each other, for simply being black. This is nothing new, and will continue to happen.

The pigs have power over us, material power, and the only antidote, history shows us, to pig power is people’s power, Communist power. Even then, incorrectly and toothlessly displayed people’s power operating within the ideological and structural confines of the bourgeois system can not combat and defeat armed pig power with a state behind it. Darren Wilson and the police apparatus of Saint Louis were objects of vigorous, nonviolent struggle for months after he murdered Michael Brown, Jr. on August 9th, 2014. I and thousands of others marched and organized and planned and showed our displeasure and yelled about how our lives matter until our feet and voices were tired, and Wilson still got off, and the material situation in North County still hasn’t changed. The police are the most visible representatives of the bourgeois state in the United States. We see them every day, they harass, fine, steal from, beat, and kill us. A state is simply an instrument, backed by violence, for exerting the rule of one class over another, and over the oppressed nationalities within its borders. The United States is an instrument to dominate and oppress the working class and the captive Chicano/Latinx and New Afrikan nations. It cannot be reformed, it must be destroyed. When two classes struggle and are locked in a combat to the death, this is an antagonistic contradiction. An antagonistic contradiction is resolved only through the destruction and subduing of one or another of the elements, or sides, of the contradiction.

Build people’s power institutions, offer self defense training, copwatch programs, and neighborhood/community conflict resolution teams. The cops have no business or purpose in ghettoes and barrios, and when they come, somebody goes to jail or gets shot. Build revolutionary mass organizations, tenant unions, women’s unions. Study examples of these from the past and present, look at what comrades across the world are doing and learn from and adapt them to your situation. Investigate the needs of our people and figure out how we can meet them ourselves. Thieves, robbers, rapists, and other parasitic individuals will continue to exist and plague the masses, and there’s nothing saying that they can’t be dealt with ourselves. People call the police because they think they can solve their problems. To get people to stop calling the police, build effective and active institutions in the community to negate the necessity of having alien elements invade our communities and harass our people. Activists and “woke” people: Stop channeling the energy of the masses into pointless exercises and displays of street theater. Stop calling the cops to protests. Stop calling the cops to demonstrations. Stop calling the cops to actions. Stop calling the cops, period. The nice cop is still a cop. The police are one hundred percent enemies. They have nothing to offer, they won’t listen, they won’t and can’t help. Their function is to arrest and kill us, and protect the wealth and hegemony of the class that this State serves. Stop forcing your nonviolence and academic constructions and concoctions on the masses. Stop running for office and using the struggle to build up your campaign and your resume. Listen more, learn more talk less. Realize that on the police question and on the question of building people’s power, the masses are far ahead of you. The masses want and must have power. They don’t want to roll around in the street and play dead. A demonstration is useful as a show of strength and a threat, showing the full force and militancy of the people. It’s not an opportunity to get on television or push your own opportunistic ends, the masses should be the focus. After all, they’re the ones that will resolve this shit once and for all.