Friends, RiseUpOctober (RUO) powerfully impacted society. It brought together students and youth, people who had lost loved ones at the hands of the police, prominent voices of conscience and others to deliver the message: STOP Police Terror – Which Side Are You On!.

Controversy raged in the wake of RUO over the reality that police get away with murder. Attacks by police organizations on Quentin Tarantino for telling the truth about this, Tarantino refusing to back away from his stance and others defending him helped fuel this controversy.

In the weeks since RUO, there have been intense struggles around police murdering people – Chicago, Minnesota, Baltimore, San Francisco, etc. Important victories have been won, like forcing out the police chief in Chicago and putting the whole city in the grip of a legitimacy crisis. But the killings are continuing – there are new videos of police murdering people every day. The whole system still works to get the killer cops off. This means we must make good on our pledge to build this fight until the genocidal assault of mass incarceration and police terror is STOPPED!

We need conferences right away to plan how to do that. I propose we hold 1-day regional conferences MLK weekend, either January 16, 17 or 18. Regional conferences will allow for greater involvement by everyone in and around the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and all those who got involved in or were impacted by RUO. We could have a northeastern conference in NYC, a Midwestern conference in Chicago. Other conferences could be held in the southeast and perhaps several conferences on the west coast. We have called for a Stolen Lives tour at RUO, and Cornel and I have ideas for taking this fight higher. We need other ideas on this too, and we need to consolidate the organization needed to make this happen. We need to get going on this right away. We need to consolidate chapters of SMIN in as many areas as possible, including forming chapters on college campuses.

Myself, the party I’m part of – the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and its leader, Bob Avakian, are all the way down with the struggle to STOP police terror and mass incarceration. We take this up as part of fighting for revolution, which is the solution to this and all the other horrors this system enforces on people. From that perspective, we throw in to build a determined movement of resistance on this front, involving broad and diverse forces. We do this to contribute to preparing for revolution and to build resistance that can STOP the terror police and the whole system enforce on people. The RCP summed up RUO in On the Significance of RiseUpOctober: Building on Strengths, Overcoming Weaknesses... And Fighting to Actually Put an End to Police Terror and White Supremacy Through Revolution.  I encourage everyone to read this.

We need to pull together real soon to figure out our next steps in building a movement of determined resistance that can STOP police terror and mass incarceration. Which has been what SMIN has been about doing since its formation in 2011. The proposed dates for the 1-day conferences is either Jan 16, 17 or 18. Get back to me with your feedback and ideas right away, by phone or via email.

Carl Dix
carlmdix@gmail.com
347 423 8854