"Aiyana Jones She Has A Name" -- Detroit Protest Against Police Murder Demands Justice

Saturday June 26th over a hundred people joined together in downtown Detroit to oppose the murder of Aiyana Stanley Jones by Detroit police. People came from all over including, Chicago, Kentucky, New Orleans, Indiana, and New York City, to take a stand including dozens of people who came over from the U.S. Social Forum to join the march. The march was largely youth and even young children who were angry and distraught about what happened to little Aiyana. The march was multinational with Black, white, Latino and Native American people joining together.

Protesters went through the streets of Detroit, some with their fists in the air and signs opposing police murder and “no knock” raids, to the city county building. Chants included “No Justice, No Peace”, Justice For Aiyana Jones, The Whole Damn System's Guilty", and a chant from a vigil in Aiyana Stanley Jones' neighborhood earlier that day: “Aiyana Jones she has a name. Her family is not to blame. The system is wrong. We gotta be strong,” passers by honked their car horns when they saw and heard this.

Featured speakers were Jewel Allison, and Reverend Omar Wilkes, as well as Ron Scott from the Detroit Coalition against Police Brutality and Carl Dix from the Revolutionary Communist Party.

There was a sense of collective determination to go forward and fight this outrageous police murder and the attempts by the authorities to cover this up. Those who spoke put forward that this was only the beginning and there would be further demonstrations demanding justice for Aiyana and her family later in the summer in Detroit, as well as New York and other places around the country. People from different parts of the country spoke out about why they came including an 11 year old who said she is afraid to sleep on her couch in New York City, and a woman from a local organization that brought up another outrage in the city, the bodies of at least 8 women murdered and found dead on the east side this year, as well as revolutionaries that are in Detroit building the movement for revolution and pointed to the whole system of capitalism imperialism as the problem. The march ended with poetry from Jewel Allison, opposing racism and oppression.

Detroit has never seen anything like this!!!

The USSF is kicken' and more people are still coming in for it, correspondence on the last couple days coming later tonight, but I had to get this up!  If you happened to be traveling in via U.S. 10 aka "The Lodge Freeway" today you were welcomed by this:

The building directly behind the billboard in this picture to the right happens to be the train station, one of the most well known empty and abandoned buildings in the city, now a popular graffiti site.

Getting to know the mean streets and bringing the bigger picture

Out here in these streets, people are traumatized. Some one told a story of a car chase that ends with a car through the side of your house and you spend weeks trying to get the report from the police so you can try and get if fixed and they taunt you and tell you, you need to move out the neighborhood and they never give it to you. Another person told us about the police coming into the neighborhoods brutalizing and harassing their teenage daughters. Another of expecting to see their kids at the end of the night and finding themselves looking at their lifeless bodies because people are killing each other. And then there are the womens' bodies found in the abandoned houses and tall grass, eight women killed in this year in the area, and really where is the official outcry about the violence amongst people there, it's barely audible, because it's just accepted that's what happens to women. A community organization has passed out flyers making people aware of this and telling them ways to be careful and all the police have done is applaud them for cooperating with the police. I tell you, it has not always been this way and it's the conditions people are in, the set up of this system of capitalism that's responsible for that, and what kind of fucking society have we got then?

Too many people live by the outlook of “I gotta look out for me and mine at all costs.” We are fighting for them to see there's a bigger enemy than even those who have actually done terrible things to each other. That enemy is a system and can only be done away with through revolution. A couple people out here in the projects told us, “Don't come around here, this is my mothers house. Don't talk to us about your revolution, and you don't believe in god.” One woman with us, who also lives in a housing project in another city in the U.S. and has seen 17 cop cars pull up to evict a single mother and her children, said she wanted to say to her, “You think that's your momma's house, that's the system's house.”

People are traumatized and angry, and it really breaks your heart, but it doesn't break us. Because we know, that's just the morality of the system that's got people thinking a certain way, the wrong way. And it's not people's fault they're in this situation, they aren't the ones that said some neighborhoods, where yes, mostly white people live, would be built up, and others where people living in Black and brown skins are, would be allowed to rot and filled with police, and deprived of any jobs or education.

And this revolution is not about revenge. I was talking with another young revolutionary here from Detroit, about growing up in the far suburbs of Detroit, and he told me, “You know what we call it? White People Land.” And it's kind of true on the one hand. For example, on my basketball team at a majority white high school, if you used language that was influenced by the lingo and style of Black culture and if you adopted that swagger that a lot of defiant Black youth have,because you aren't a racist and it's cool and you appreciate it, the coach would take you out at practice and tell you to stop talking “like a nigger.” People, that was in the 1990s.

But as I've been emphasizing repeatedly in this blog, individuals are not the cause of this, there's a whole set up. So on the other hand, we decided even though it was kind of funny and got at something, we aren't going to just say that like we don't have issue with it, because we don't want to promote the more narrow revenge people might feel. We want to break down all these divisions this system's created, in people's attitudes and outlook and the real physical divisions where you stand on Gratiot Avenue at the northern border of Detroit and look in the direction of Detroit and it looks like a third world country. You look in the direction of the suburbs and it's comfort and privilege at the expense of others. We want people on both sides of that border to get with this revolution and become emancipators of humanity.

Then there's Aiyana. Every time I think about it, it's hard to wrap my mind around it. This was the State (the government and institutions that maintain this set-up) with its air of legitimacy and all its lies about serving and protecting, coming in and massacring a little girl, putting her father down on the floor in the still-warm blood of his daughter, arresting her grandmother and drug testing her. And they do this kind of thing to our people, our children, again and again and again. What kind of a fucking system have you got then?

And the mayor says, “It's quite demoralizing. I don't know how to stop it.” We know how to stop it. It's not a pipe dream, it's not just a nice idea. We could put an end to this, and we are building a movement for revolution with our sights set on just that. The only reason this goes on is because we have a system that's made to do this, it's like, in the rule book. That's why the cop who killed Aiyana is on administrative leave. That's why they went into a Detroit neighborhood like they are an occupying army and didn't have a second thought that it might look bad on the cameras recording them. That's why there is a conspiracy in the courts and the media to get these cops off, to cover it up and lie when some shit does come out--because they are doing what they are supposed to be doing, and will keep on doing as long as they exist because they serve and protect a system that has as one of it pillars the subjugation of Black people.

So tonight we will be taking revolution out to the Freedom Festival fireworks display in Detroit and I'm reminded of the quote from Frederick Douglas that Bob Avakian reads in his speech:

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. “

And I am thinking about the stories in BA's memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey From Mainstream America To Revolutionary Communist  about hanging out with the Black kids at school and going into their neighborhoods, singing doo wop in “street corner symphonies”, playing sports, going to dances, talking philosophy. A lot of the experience in his life does bring out how people can go against the tide and come together in a different way. That was Berkeley, California in the late '50s and early '60s. And here we are in Detroit in 2010 and people need this revolution, and we're finding the ways to have “street corner symphonies” where people from different backgrounds and different races and life experiences and level of intellectual training “from the marine biologists to the guy on the block” mix it up and take up the cause of emancipating humanity. That's why we're bringing people from these neighborhoods to the U.S. Social Forum, and that's why we are bringing people together from the Social Forum to watch BA's revolution talk at a screening in the neighborhood this week. And that's why we will be out challenging everyone at the Freedom Festival fireworks to demand Justice for Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and to get with the revolution.

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.

Answering the Call

Detroit. A crew of revolutionaries are here in the wake of the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, responding to a call "Detroit June 15-30 BE THERE! Put Revolution On The Map". This call is to spread revolution with the campaign from the Revolutionary Communist Party, and its message and call, The Revolution We Need.... The Leadership We Have.  We're going to bring people the leadership of this revolution- Bob Avakian and the party he leads. We're also going to unite with people to stand up and resist, and let it be known throughout the country that we are not gonna let this shit go down- the assasination of a seven year old girl and the humilation of her family, and to bring the people from the neighborhoods of Detroit, and the people coming into town for the U.S. Social Forum together mixing it up in a way they rarely have the chance to do, all as part of a movement for revolution.

When I read this call, I thought, this is really right on, this is really in line with what this revolution is all about, and this stirs me, how can I not help to make this real? When I was in college, before I became a communist, there were a lot of questions about why the world was the way it was, about how to change things, how to contribute to the betterment of human society. But it was clear in my mind then, I would be part of “saving Detroit” rescuing all the squandered potential of the people. Now, what exactly did I mean by that? How do you do it?

I used to think it could be done with the arts, bringing theater, poetry, cameras, ballet shoes, and a space to think and dream into oppressed communities. For people to be exposed to things they wouldn't normally be exposed to. For artists to come into these communities and not only dream but be part of changing reality. Now I am convinced it will take a total revolution- the kind that Bob Avakian has brought forward, to emancipate humanity. And that such a revolution would embrace spheres like the arts, and put them in a radically different context, with a radically different kind of state power that's about empowering people to transform the world and get beyond all exploitation and oppression. I say this, because I think my experience, and what compelled me, are many of the same sentiments that push and pull on the hearts and minds of people all around the country right now to get in their cars, rent buses, and even hop on their bikes so I'm told, to come to the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. “Another World Is Possible. Another U.S. Is Necessary. Another Detroit Is Happening.” That's what the message of the conference is. I can't wait to meet them and hear their stories and discuss and debate what it will take to get to a different world.

So a group of us answered the call to put revolution on the map in Detroit, and here we are. “This is NOT the best of all possible worlds. And we do NOT have to live this way.” That's what we say. And we are bringing this revolution to the people on these languishing city streets. So here we go, stay tuned.