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 early, political and/or life:
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Men conceive themselves as morally superior to those with whom they differ in opinion. A Socialist who thinks that the opinions of Mr. Gladstone on Socialism are unsound and his own sound, is within his rights; but a Socialist who thinks that his opinions are virtuous and Mr. Gladstone’s vicious, violates the first rule of morals and manners in a Democratic country; namely, that you must not treat your political opponent as a moral delinquent.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)