Early Political Life
Dix grew up in an African-American working class community of Baltimore, Maryland. While attending college, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. In 1970, he was one six GI's who refused orders to go to Vietnam. This was the largest mass refusal of orders to Vietnam during that war. Dix served two years in Leavenworth Military Penitentiary. It was during his incarceration that he became a revolutionary. After his release from Leavenworth, Dix returned to Baltimore, Maryland, and worked and organized at the Bethlehem Steel plant. He was active in the African Liberation Support Committee. and a member of the Black Workers Congress.
Dix cites an impromptu all-night session in 1974 with Bob Avakian, then a leader of the Revolutionary Union, where he says Avakian helped pull him firmly on the path to revolution and communism. Following this all night encounter, Dix became a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975.
Read more about this topic: Carl Dix
Famous quotes containing the words political life, early, political and/or life:
“Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Two sleepy people by dawn’s early light, and two much in love to say goodnight.”
—Frank Loesser (1910–1969)
“Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behaviour perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“At birth man is offered only one choice—the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.”
—Jean-Pierre Melville (1917–1973)