Detroit Diary- The First 72 Hours

Revolution on the scene with the youth of the D

We called a meeting for people to come hook up with the movement for Revolution. We told people, It's for real and it's in Detroit. If you're outraged at the assassination of little Aiyana-Stanley Jones, if you're heartsick at the oil spill in the gulf, if you're angered by the murder of 14 year old Sergio Hernandez by the U.S. Border patrol, come get with us, we say another world is possible, and we have a leader and a plan, and we're changing things now.

It's always a challenge, finding concentrations of youth in oppressed communities, because there's literally no place for them. High school is out so we get on facebook and go to that great American institution, the mall, to create a scene and get out flyers. We get kicked out of the mall, and as we're walking out groups of young people are leaving anyways, there's a 6pm curfew if you're under 18.

Later we go to a park where people sit in their cars listening to music, watching the sunset, or in the case of the younger people, kick up their music, get out of their cars and begin the night. We have about an hour and a half before the cops roll through telling everyone to get out. I'm talking to a guy in his early 20s about coming out to this meeting. He says well what you're saying is true, but what is that officer thinking about at church on Sunday? I tell him I'm not exactly concerned with that as much as I am with how to get to a world without murdering police. He can see my point, and we have to go soon because they're rolling through again, but that answer isn't sufficient and he comes back and says, wait, I'm just saying, people think and feel, and what that cop be thinking when he goes to church, there are the ten commandments, “thou shalt not kill”. I said yes, there's also thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house, ox, slaves, and his wife. The bible doesn't oppose murder, it doesn't oppose oppression or even slavery, human beings-- women and slaves, are the property of men. It's not in contradiction with what this system is doing.

Then his friend a young woman came up. "Hey what you all talking about?" "About the revolution" he says. “Oh, revolution, I'll take one of those, give me that, I'm there.” She looked at the flier and the message and call from the Revolutionary Communist Party,, but we got cut off because the police rolled by again and this time they stopped to tell us it's time to go. “Okay officer” she says to them. “We're just talking about Aiyana Stanley-Jones, you know, that little girl that got killed.” The anger in her voice was defiant. Before they hopped in the car they gave us their number.

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In the midst of destruction, waking up to the revolution

Clusters of people live amongst empty houses. On some streets they are cutting off city services, like electricity. Grass grows up knee high through the porches and vines cover the sides of houses. Abandoned warehouses pepper the free ways. There's boarded up and broken windows, rust and watermarks, paint chipping emptiness, and deterioration. It's not a place where you feel people are living and thriving. Recently on the East side where some of this has been the worst, 8 women have been murdered and found dead in the rubble over the past several months. Burnt down and broken down houses cover the streets. Then flashes of color pop from the side of a wall. Graffiti art and community murals like flickers of rainbows defying the desolation with a little bit of life.

The streets are so devastated but also have flashes of beauty in them. They make your heart ache, and your mind burn with anger. They also call forth revolution. What if the people could actually transform all of this? What happens when something radical comes into the mix...

We are telling people about the campaign the Revolutionary Communist Party is on to put revolution on the map, to make the leader of this revolution, Bob Avakian, widely known in society, and to bring forward a core of fighters for this revolution. That we're distributing a million of this message and call throughout the summer, that we just got out 200,000 nationwide. A lot of people a recognizing in this- “You have to have a plan.” That's what they say, and then they have questions about that. “What kind of revolution? “ “What's your strategy?”

The music is poppin at a strip mall not far from the neighborhood where Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed. People are hanging out and shopping. There's some life here despite the fact that this is a community that is struggling, despite the fact that people have been pit against each other and blamed for their situation, by the Black mayor, and the Black police chief, and even Al Sharpton coming into town to send this message at Aiyana's funeral.

A group of young guys in baseball caps, white t-shirts and too cool sun glasses come up to us and get the message call and the flier for our meeting. One guy stops and reads the entire call right there. “I'm interested in this guy Bob Avakian.” “What's the strategy?” “Has he written any books?” “Is he here?” I reply, “Yes. He's here in this revolution talk that you can watch online, and the books that he's written, he's here in what you read in this message and call that concentrates what this revolution is about.”

He tells us the revolution is happening in Detroit, that we have to come out and see the community garden they have going on. We say we'd love to, and that we'll come out that evening and we can also sit down and watch some of this revolution talk and they can get into what this revolution is all about...

It's early evening and the streets appear mellow with the warm sun in patches through cool shady trees and green everywhere, we pull up to the community garden, in the same area as where Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed.

We knock on the door and rouse some one from their nap, it's Ronny the brother of Tyrell who we met at the strip mall. He walks us through the garden pointing out the vegetables he knows. He says his mom and her husband wanted to do something for the community, that they'll give anybody vegetables that need to eat. He says he doesn't always listen to what they're saying, he's got a lot on his mind, but that they have all kinds of people out working on the garden, coming from all over to volunteer, and that they just wanted to do something good.

We walked through the rows of potatoes and greens, and we told him about the U.S. Social Forum that was happening, that a lot of people that really hate the way things are and are doing this kind of thing are coming to Detroit and talking about "Another World Is Possible", that we're bringing revolution into this mix, because while people do a lot of important things and we want to learn from stuff like this community garden and what people are doing, there needs to be a revolution, a real revolution, because you have this whole environmental emergency, and like the oil spill in the gulf, and it's a capitalist oil spill, it's not necessary to go on in this way, that we are building a movement for revolution to get rid of this, and that what's required is a struggle against this whole set up.  We talk about how in a different system, a different context, imagine all that you could do with the energy and knowledge of people, if the state power was backing all that up instead of coming down on people. And things like this garden, and like having a different kind of consumer culture, and way of relating to the whole planet, the masses of people and the leadership of the revolution would have a whole new freedom to be working on all this through a revolution and establishing a socialist society.

“I agree.” he said. So we figure he should check out the revolution talk and learn more about this. One thing that I learned from him and just the initial experience of checking out this garden, is that this is something that's not just a place where people can do something for the community, but Ronny and Tyrell were coming up in this environment and it was giving them some space to begin to look at the world in different ways and question things and begin to explore ideas. Ronny tells about staying up into the night with his brothers and friends talking about their different thinking about the way the world is and politics and stuff, and how their Dad suggested that they start up a book club. Ronny shows us the book shelf that he built and all the books they filled it with to start this up. “We haven't read any of them yet.” he says. “But that's for our book club.”

We get on the computer and go to the revolutiontalk.net and tell Ronny he could pick one of the clips to watch or we can start at the beginning of the full talk. He picks the one that was just released, “Not fit caretakers of the earth,” that talks about the way in which capitalism is plundering the planet.

I won't try to render it less profound, just listen to it:


So the first thing Ronny said after watching this clip was, “Where's the full talk?” And we asked him what he thought and he said, “My man's deep.” And then he started the speech from the beginning, and said, “I might watch the full thing. I just might watch it all tonight,” knowing, because we told him, that this is a nine hour talk. He bought a copy of revolution newspaper and gave a dollar donation, and we left him about 30 minutes in to part one. He was groggy when we had first come in and he was napping on the couch. But he was totally awake now and getting into this. What a way to wake up!
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Further Ruminations on how it got to be this way, and doesn't have to remain this way

You can't get anywhere without a car in the city of Detroit or the whole metro Detroit area. There's scarcely any public transportation and a plethora of freeways, avenues and back roads leading to any one location. A bus might not ever come if you decide to take a gamble and wait for it. In the suburbs, there's an abundance of gas guzzling SUVs. Getting a license when you turn 16, and if your lucky getting a car, is a major right of passage. You finally have some way to get around, even if there's no where to go. It's spread out, expansive, wide avenues, blue sky, strip malls stretching into parking lots onto fast-food restaurants and gas stations.. In the ghetto, so I've been told in the last few weeks, there's old broken down and breaking down cars everywhere, and people drive them despite their precarious condition, because you'll take what you can get, otherwise you're just screwed. They even have a name for them-- Hoopdies. I don't know why that's the name, I'll get back to you on that.

You won't find the factories and industry that make the cars and made the city what it was decades ago. Only the empty shells of huge expansive factories, plants, and warehouses abandoned or the grassy lots bulldozed years ago. Like you see in Michael Moore's movie, Capitalism, A Love Story, when his father takes him to show him the car factory he used to work at and in his recounting of this bygone era, the contrast of the increased desolation and instability of these times, is pronounced.

And not only have the factories and the meaningful work moved to other parts of the globe where capitalism can more viciously exploit and super exploit the labor of people and reap greater profits and compete in a global market, but in addition to that, an economic crisis has further gripped the U.S. And in the city of Detroit in a concentrated way.

A capitalist system with it's foundational pillar of white supremacy, has shaped this city, molded it like a sculptor. Black cultural neighborhoods demolished in the early 1960s to make way for the roads to the suburbs. White flight that came as Black people moved up from the south during the great migration and spiked following the rebellions in 1967, which saw tremendous righteous anger of the people, and the terrible repressive force of the system. You just have to hear the story of the Algiers motel to know this so called land of the free home of the brave is a big lie, and the real nature of it. That alone is reason enough to sweep this system off the face of the earth.

Now, the stability and meaningful work, that existed for previous generations has been ripped out from under people, especially Black people, who even while they worked the worst and most low paying jobs and could be fired and hired easily, there were some jobs, and there was also a civil rights movement and a Black liberation struggle, shaking the foundations of this country and emboldening Black people to hold their heads up high, putting revolution on the agenda, and changing some shit.

But then America betrayed Black people again, and this meant almost nothing for people, other than some upward mobility for a few and further oppression for the majority, now coming up on three generations, where most Black men have little hope of ever finding any meaningful job and little hope for the future. Where we get choices like, selling drugs and getting into the gangs, prison, church, or going and fighting and killing in this system's imperialist wars of domination. It's as desolate as the broken down streets, each house as empty and rotting as the next.

However, there was one thing that came out of this era and the tremendous and righteous struggle of Black people and other sections of people at that time-- A real revolutionary party. That party was founded by Bob Avakian and other revolutionaries at that time, and Bob Avakian has fought for this party to stay revolutionary in the face of great obstacles, and it has stayed revolutionary, and the work that Bob Avakian has done, leading that party and summing up the whole historical experience of communism, and learning from all streams of human thought and endeavor, has developed a whole new framework, a new synthesis of communism, even more fully scientific, and opening up the possibility of a new stage of communist revolution today throughout the world. This is what came out of the 60s and far too few people know about this and far too few have checked it out and got with it.

I didn't know any of this, the first time I drove down Woodward Avenue and saw the city streets with my own eyes, from behind the windshield of a red Volkswagen, and heard parts of the story of the 1950s and then the 1960s and how there was a thing in this world called racism. On some level I learned that there were some people who lived a life very different from the one I had, and on some level I felt that this should not be. I was only seven years old, the same age as Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

But now I know how we got into the situation we're in today, in America. I know that it's not just racist white folks, it's a whole system. I know that it's not just that Black people have been abandoned but it's worse than that, this oppression is enforced by all the institutions of the state, and especially the murdering pigs like the ones that went into Aiyana Stanlyey Jones house like the troops in Afghanistan, like an occupying army, and carried out a most depraved assassination of a little girl and the humiliation of her entire family.  And I know it's no longer necessary to remain this way.

I know this because I got into the work of Bob Avakian, and I know this from reading revolution newspaper. I also know it's way past time that this can all continue.  And as angering as it is to see the conditions of the masses of people here, and as challenging it is to challenge everything people have been told in this society, it feels really good to be on the other side of the car windshield, in the neighborhoods with people, and bringing this revolution out to the world.