“What IF the world doesn’t have to be this way?”
Because of how people have responded around the U.S. to police murder since Ferguson, and because of the horrifying exposure of torture in the Senate CIA report, the contempt and brutality that the U.S. government has for human lives here and around the world is coming to the fore.
A government that tortures people and doesn’t restrain its police from killing Black youth in the U.S. causes people to question. People are beginning to stand up with great determination, starting with the brave protesters in Ferguson. This spirit is spreading all over the U.S.
People’s disgust at police abuse needs to be joined with opposition to US drone strikes on civilians in at least 8 countries and the illegitimate spying.
This disgust and righteous outrage must be connected up with a major “what if.” I got to hear Bob Avakian in dialogue with Cornel West last month, where he asked, “What IF the world doesn’t have to be this way?”
I, like many others, have been out in the streets protesting for the last weeks with those who are boldly and bravely standing up to police murder. Like others, I was targeted for arrest for doing so. When I was in jail, I met young women who were beaten down, treated as less than human, by their husbands and the entire justice system. What if these women begin to get a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, this determined resistance that is only just beginning will go somewhere?
The powers that be are targeting people with repression because they see the potential of this moment when people are becoming an organized force. They fear this becoming connected up with a heart for the people of the world, and this organized moral force becoming more legitimate in the eyes of millions, than the current system we live under.
Many moments like these are possible around the destruction of the environment; the ongoing wars on Iraq, Afghanistan & Syria; the attacks on women’s rights and maybe other developments that we are not even seeing right now.
To have an organization like World Can’t Wait, an organization that has been relentless in hammering at the crimes of the U.S. government and giving people a way to act is irreplaceable in these times.
Not only has World Can’t Wait not wavered in the face of repression, but it’s building the kind of organization necessary to defeat the crimes that this government is responsible for.
My challenge to people of conscience: if you are disgusted with the revelation of “rectal feeding” in the torture report; if you watched the video of Eric Garner being choked to death or 12 year old Tamir Rice being executed in cold blood, or of the drones strikes that kill and terrorize childen, give generously to World Can’t Wait.
If you see your own father or your own children in the the faces of these victims, give generously to World Can’t Wait.
In 2015, help World Can’t Wait organize people’s outrage, give those who have no voice a voice, give joy and hope to millions in the possibility of a different world. Now is the time where we can reach millions and involve thousands. We need the funds to really do this, to make this real.
Have you raised your voice today? Do it by donating to World Can’t Wait.