CHICAGO, IL. Aug. 17, 2015 – Today in Chicago, members of the Bob Avakian Revolutionary Communist Party joined forces with the Chicago branch of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, to participate in a political protest. The march, which included around 75 people, started in Millennium Park and concluded outside of Chicago’s City Hall.
Today’s action was intended to promote a much larger upcoming political event titled “#RiseUpOctober, Which Side Are You On?” This political march is scheduled to take place in New York City, on October 22-24, 2015, and could draw people from across the country.
What is the political aim of the October 22 to 24 action according to the Stop Mass Incarceration Network website?
The situation is this: thousands of people have risen in the last year to demand that the police stop their wanton and repeated killings of Black and Latino people. But the police, backed up from on high, have continued this onslaught and lashed back harder. This is a plague, this is the spearpoint of a genocide. Yet way too many people still sit on the sidelines. In the face of this, Rise Up October has called for militant and mass mobilization on October 22 to 24, focused in New York City, to STOP this.
Just in case you didn’t know, Bob Avakian is the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which includes a small band of Maoist sympathizers who worship Avakian. Followers help run several branches of a store called Revolution Books, and have worked with groups such as #BlackLivesMatter, to bring about destruction in Ferguson, Mo., as well as other places.
Chairman Avakian has an odd cult following, with a local chapter here in Chicago. Avakian has created a mystical aura around him, while he remains in his mysterious self-imposed exile in France.
His small band of cult followers actually believe that Avakian’s “new synthesis” of Maoism is such a threat to the US Government, that he is being hunted down by the powers-that-be, and that his free speech is being oppressed.
Pointing out the facts that, Bob isn’t actually under any threat of arrest here in the US, and that, anyone is free to read his rhetoric in the Revolution newspaper (which is openly sold at Revolution Books), and free to hear his presentations on video and audio recordings, will have no meaning to his starry-eyed followers.
A few years back, I spent several weeks getting to know many of the local Avakian members here in Chicago. I went to several events at Revolution Books Chicago. I found their cult-like following of Avakian to be downright creepy, and their ability to explain away and justify all the dead bodies created by Chairman Mao’s little experiment, to be quite remarkable.
It seems odd that groups such as Stop Mass Incarceration Network and #BlackLivesMatter would hitch their ride to a Communist group with such a violent agenda.