The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relat… - Bob Avakian

The police, the armed forces, the “intelligence agencies,” the courts, and so on—all this represents the dictatorship of the capitalist-imperialist system.

In taking up the revolutionary struggle against the system and taking up the most revolutionary ideology to guide that struggle, people can and do change themselves. In rising up and overthrowing the system, they begin to make themselves into new people.

If we're going to achieve our objectives in the most fundamental sense, if we're going to win in both senses—that is, if we're actually going to seize power and be able to carry out transformations and if we're going to do that guided by what our objectives are, to get to a whole different kind of world— winning in both those senses requires this kind of outlook and methodology, this kind of openness to the ideas, to the efforts, of others—and to their criticisms. Which doesn't mean we should tail people and doesn't mean we should agree with what we don't agree with. In other words, you can criticize me all day long, but if your criticism isn't valid to me, I'm not going to agree with it—and I shouldn't. Now, I may be wrong. Your criticism may be valid, but I'm like everybody else (everybody is this way, or should be): you have to be convinced. And it is true for everybody that, if you're not convinced, then eventually that's going to show up. You can be intimidated, or you can be overwhelmed, or you can be cajoled, but if you're not really won over, eventually the negative consequences of that are going to show up. So we shouldn't agree with people just because we want to be open. It's not a game we're playing; it's not a tactic; it's not a gimmick; it's not diplomacy. It's a question of fundamental methodology.