After Daniel Pantaleo, a white New York City Police Department officer, killed an African American, Eric Garner, by choking him to death on July 17 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, a New York City grand jury on Dec. 3 refused to indict him or any of the other officers involved in the murder.

But we are not surprised.

We are not surprised by the New York City grand jury’s decision – similar to the Ferguson grand jury which also refused to indict officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. It stands as an affirmation that the U.S. is a white supremacist country, whose principal character is that of being a prison house of nations. It stands as an affirmation of this country’s legacy of national oppression when it sends in an overwhelmingly white police force like an occupying army into its internal colonies/oppressed nations (communities of color). It stands as cemented proof, for those that needed it, of this country’s legacy as an imperialist, white supremacist, settler-colonial state.

Protests have erupted in response all across the country, many of which are continuing from the Ferguson and Mike Brown solidarity movements. More and more, people—the masses—are rising up in coordinated and spontaneous actions in cities throughout the U.S., from the East Coast (New York) to the Midwest (Kansas City) to the West Coast (Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland). And, still, more and more people are echoing some of Eric Garner’s final words of resistance against the racist police, “It stops today,” to which we say, yes, of course, and let’s add to that: “This doesn’t stop until we stop it!”

But, still, many think activism starts and ends with a hashtag, with a non-profit coalition, with a city-permitted demonstration.

But we think differently. We recognize the necessity of putting an end to the tragically long list of names of black and brown lives taken by the capitalist-imperialist state.

Let it be clearly understood now: the capitalist-imperialist state is waging a war, particularly against its internal colonies/oppressed nations. They want us kettled in, powerless and utterly dominated. They want us dead or controlled. Not only does the U.S. need its consumers, it also needs its surplus reserve of cheap labor, largely made up of people of African Americans, Chicanos and immigrants/migrants from oppressed nations around the world.

The state has its armed forces; this is referred to as the repressive state apparatus (RSA). The RSA is one side of state power; the other is its ideological state apparatus (ISA). The RSA is a section of the capitalist state that maintains the relations of capitalist production and white supremacy through the use of organized force: the army, the justice department, congress, police, courts, prisons etc. The ISA justifies and tries to legitimize the white supremacist and capitalist order through ideology – in schools, in the media, etc. The NYPD is part of the repressive state apparatus that maintains the order of white supremacist capitalism through organized violence. The NYPD protects the interests and property of the capitalist class along with their allies in the financial capital of the world, by repressing working class people and oppressed nationalities so as to keep us ready to be exploited.

We cannot afford to treat these killings as individual phenomena, as particularities in an otherwise smooth and frictionless existence; we exist to resist. The killings of black and brown people will not stop without calculated and protracted confrontation. The state and its repressive and ideological state apparatuses will not tire. They must be completely and mercilessly destroyed, and this can only be done with a well-coordinated and disciplined mass movement. For this, we say, we understand, that we need a concentrated effort carried out by the masses that are committed for proletarian revolution, for a Peoples’ War—this is what we call for a communist party. It doesn’t exist, but it must. And that’s why we exist.

The New Communist Party (Liaison Committee) exists simply and only for the sincerest reason to build proletarian revolution and communism. As we attempt to build the party, a new party, an authentic communist party, we encourage all oppressed and exploited people in this country to organize Cop Watches, to organize self-defense organizations, to organize for self-preservation and survival and continue to build mass organizations that seek to make revolution against the capitalist-imperialist bourgeoisie.

Revolutionaries from past history have come to several universal truths. Among them Chairman Mao Zedong understood this all too well during the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and then again during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 with the dictum: “Without a People’s Army, the people have nothing.”

Let us struggle, let us win, let us make revolution.