Today its Mike Brown and Eric Garner. Forty five years ago, the cops and FBI mounted a systematic assassination campaign to murder the leaders of the Black Panthers. Today is the 45th anniversary of the killing of 21-year old Fred Hampton who died in a hail of bullets at 5am as he lay sleeping on his bed at home in Chicago. Hampton was a socialist revolutionary and therefore hated and feared by the US establishment who were well aware of the potentially explosive consequences of the anti-racist struggle fusing with the class struggle. Heres a speech he made in the year he was killed: We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, Im talking about the white masses, Im talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. Weve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you dont fight racism with racism. Were gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you dont fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism. We aint gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; were gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and were gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. Thats what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people. Today as thousands take to the streets to protest continuing police murders of African Americans, we need the likes of Fred Hampton more than ever.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 09:58:21 +0000
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