Seven members of the Revolution Club are facing trial from an illegitimate mass arrest by the Chicago Police Department at
the 2018 Puerto Rican People’s Parade. They were surrounded and
violently arrested as part of a pattern of arrests and harassment by
Chicago police against constitutionally-protected free speech activity
of the Revolution Club. All seven are charged with interfering with a
police officer, a misdemeanor charge that carries possibly a year in
jail. Noche Diaz, part of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL
Revolution Tour, is also charged with a sound ordinance violation and
disorderly conduct, which carry hundreds of dollars in fines.
The Revolution Club
was on the side of the parade route with signs and a literature table
talking to people and passing out flyers before the arrival of the
parade. They spoke over a bullhorn (which the ACLU has affirmed their
right to do), about how this system is responsible for the deaths in
Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, the U.S.-backed bombing of Yemen, and
the ripping away of immigrant children from their parents as well as
the terror and brutality of the police right here. They brought out a
way out of this madness through revolution and the new communism of Bob
Avakian. After two hours, a group of at least 12 police officers
including several commanders, came up and surrounded 7 Revolution Club
members, grabbed them, threw them to the ground and arrested them.
Between July 2016 and September 2019, members of the Revolution
Club were arrested or ticketed on 14 different occasions and nearly
arrested or harassed an additional 20 times. These arrests are
blatant political repression of a message the CPD—and their political
higher-ups—don’t want connecting with the people they want to keep in
line. And while Chicago’s Democratic administrations try to silence
revolutionaries who envision and fight for a world free of all
oppression, the fascist regime in the White House lashes out and gains
strength in its ability to crush all dissent. This needs to be fought
back against and these charges defeated, with the demand that all the
charges on the seven defendants be dropped, and that the attacks on the
Revolution Club stop.
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