You Can't Jail the Revolution

DSA Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky stand in unconditional solidarity with our comrades in the Spokane and Portland DSA chapters against police repression.

The kidnapping of Spokane DSA’s co-chair by unidentified law enforcement officers and the arrest of several Portland DSA members, including members of the local steering committee, on fabricated felony charges, is part of a broader pattern of police repression directed at socialist organizers across the US.

Even as masses of people take to the streets to protest police racism and brutality, police continue to beat, brutalize, and gas peaceful protesters. These violent agents of the state terrorize working class neighborhoods with impunity, acting on behalf of the landlords and bosses seeking to crush any manifestation of dissent.

The US political project is built on settler colonial genocide, chattel slavery, and fascist violence directed at people of oppressed nations. The movement to abolish prisons and police provides the only morally clear and workable framework to address not only the harm created directly by police officers but the harm at every level in our communities that take the form of systemic and interpersonal violence.

As socialists, we recognize that capitalism and racism are intertwined and interdependent, and the police are the enforcers of these oppressive systems. In the face of repression, we continue to stand against police violence and call for a total defunding and abolition of the police state.

By targeting DSA members and other organizers in oppressed communities, the police seek to behead our movement and limit its potential for growth.

But, as Fred Hampton said, “You can jail revolutionaries, but you can't jail the revolution.” Our movement, our organization, is larger than any one individual and we stand in complete solidarity with all those facing state repression. An injury to one is an injury to all!