Revolution #209, August 15, 2010
This Week:
"We must spread the word to every corner of this country...giving people the means to become part of this revolutionary movement, and organizing into this movement everyone who wants to make a contribution to it, who wants to work and fight, to struggle and sacrifice, not to keep this nightmare of a world going as it is but to bring a better world into being." ("The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have," A Message, and A Call, from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA)
Every week this newspaper lets people know about many activities to plug into to help build the revolutionary movement. But some people face a lot of obstacles, of one kind or another, in getting with some of the kinds of things we talk about doing. Some can begin to think that there is no room for them in this movement unless they are able to stand on a corner where they live or work or go to school and get out flyers, or otherwise publicly represent for the movement. But we can’t let that be true!
Broadly building this movement for revolution will not be a straight line forward and cannot be done without incorporating the creative efforts of all. This movement has room and space for everyone who wants to contribute...on whatever level and in the ways they want to...inside and outside where people live, work, or go to school.
If we talk with people, together we can come up with creative ideas. Stacks of flyers may suddenly appear in a laundromat or on a bus seat─and the person who put them there may sit quietly, just observing how people react and learning from what they say. A poster may be taped up in a housing project hall or a school wall and give people a sense that the "revolution is real." Someone can turn up where they live─or in another part of town─wearing a revolutionary T-shirt. Some hand cards of the image of BA can turn up in coffee shops, bodegas, or barbershops. A person can very quietly have the backs of the "out there" revolutionaries when they rally in the streets or carry out other kinds of public activity. Someone else can have a few people over, show the Bob Avakian talk "Revolution" and raise money with a fish fry. And everyone can read Revolution newspaper regularly, donate to it, and let the RCP and its supporters know what they think of it.
All these taken together give people a sense of ferment and lend them heart. All these taken together can draw people into finding out about this growing movement. But that’s not all—these forms of today could be the embryos of days in the future, when, in a different situation, hundreds of thousands are organized to act through networks of revolution.
Of course, these are not the only ways to act. Getting out there with the revolutionary literature, boldly wearing the BA and Revolution newspaper T-shirts, fighting the power in different ways, shaking cans on street corners to raise money, boldly struggling with people at work or school or in the street to change their thinking and get with the revolution—this is part of it too.
None of these things taken separately or by themselves will reach our goals. But incorporated into and as part of a larger movement, they could be very powerful and could enable us to meet our goals. Those at the core of the movement for revolution must be good at taking in and knitting together this whole ensemble into one powerful campaign: one that really does put revolution on the map, makes Bob Avakian a household word, and brings forward new cores of revolutionary communists.
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