Spreading the New Message from the RCP in the Projects

May 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last week, six people got up at 4am to get organized to spread the new Message from the RCP in a housing project. They knew they were part of a larger local effort, an even larger national effort, and ultimately the largest interest of humanity, to accumulate forces for an actual revolution.

We met before sunrise in hats and hoodies, determined to create a situation where the people in this project, who are under constant surveillance, harassment and threat from several police agencies, and routinely criminalized and treated as less than human, would wake up to the message that another world is possible. Where everywhere they went on the way out to wherever they were going, they would see that there was a world-class leadership hell bent on emancipating humanity, calling on them to play a special role in the most radical revolution the world has ever seen!

By the time the sun came up, there was a Message on every door: Time to get organized for an actual revolution. On every car parked on the surrounding streets. Posters up on the gates and walls. On the way out the door, walking down the street, and getting into your car, you saw this serious and inspirational invitation to join the revolution. When they were done, everyone expressed how meaningful it was to take the extra effort to make sure these messages appeared overnight, in force, unavoidably, to some of the people who need it most.

Before the Revolution Club went out as a force into this housing project, they met together in a park. They practiced getting in step, literally and politically: marching together, organized and in uniform, and discussing and deciding how best to bring alive the statement in chants, in agitation, and through living out and breaking down the world we are fighting for through the points of attention for the revolution.

When the Revolution Club made its first foray after the Message appeared, they marched in uniform, in step, chanting loudly and announcing itself as the mighty mighty revcoms, fighting for a new world. People came to their windows or porches, some raised fists, while half a dozen small children ran alongside with a combination of awe and smiles. When the Revolution Club stopped, they agitated for people to come out of their houses and get with the revolution. The problem? The whole damn system. The solution? Revolution, nothing less! Get with the leader of the revolution, Bob Avakian, and be part of fighting to overthrow this rotten system and bring into being the New Socialist Republic of North America.

The Housing Authority pigs, who patrol the place like it is a prison, tried to stop the Revolution Club from calling out to people this way, to overthrow the system. One pig grabbed at the bullhorn and another Revolution Club member blocked him. The pig said “You are under arrest” and we all starting shouting about how illegitimate that was. A girl maybe 13 years old came out yelling “This is what they do!” about the police and their reign of terror. The Revolution Club marched off and a bunch of pigs in cars pulled up and camped out nearby, but left us alone. While people were nervous about this, they still stopped to talk about the statement, watch the video clips, and to tell us, “This is what they do to us every day: follow us, threaten us, for no reason.” We said we know what they are about, what else this system does to people here and around the world, and how unnecessary it all is, in light of the possibility of revolution and communism, and in particular the new synthesis.

The Revolution Club returned the following day, and the day after, too. We talked to angry youth, older women, and others. One woman with several children was moved by the BA Through the Years video, and in particular the clip from the 2003 talk about how people are made to think they are “regulating” when they are really being regulated, and if someone is breaking everybody’s legs, maybe we should get together and stop him! Several others had seen the Message, read it, and gone to revcom.us already. One young man said, if you keep coming back here, you will find a lot of people who want to get with this. Another young man, in the middle of a “transaction,” heard the Message being read and said, “That’s the realest shit I ever heard.”

Overall there is a warm reception to the revolutionaries. We are connecting more deeply with about half a dozen people every day, who are going to revcom.us and are being challenged to seriously engage with the solution to humanity’s unnecessary horrors, and the leadership of Bob Avakian. Some have taken copies of the Message to spread around. Others want to make art around the phrase “Actual Revolution.” The Revolution Club is challenging everyone to join the Revolution Club and act to spread this now while learning more about what is necessary and possible. The message is clear: This system lies about everything, but the biggest lie is that this world is the best we can do. Bullshit. Get with the revolution.

We had several conversations about why it matters to know who your real friends & enemies are, and cut through the bullshit, by really taking up the scientific method of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. About why it matters to live now by the Points of Attention in the statement, because that is what it will take to get to the kind of world that is possible, without masters and slaves. One former prisoner wanted to know how we could actually win, so a Revolution Club member broke down what a revolutionary situation looks like, and also emphasized why it matters that we get organized now around this leadership, for anything good to come out of that situation. Another young man pondered about how hard it was to imagine anything really different from what exists today, where everybody is forced to look out for themselves and their family. A young mother reflected on how fighting with each other is just going along with what the system wants us to do, and we can do better, if we can really make a revolution. An older woman who sells candy to kids in the complex took a stack of Messages to distribute to people who come around. A woman in her fifties told the story of marrying an 80-year-old man, thinking her life would be better with a man to take care of, and as soon as they were married he began to treat her just like a housekeeper and an extra income for more beer. We told her one of the crimes of this system that divides everyone into masters and slaves, is to brainwash men into thinking with all the shit they put up with the police and everything else, they can treat women like their own personal slaves. This revolution is about breaking ALL the chains, and she sighed with relief, saying she wanted to go to revcom.us to find out more about “that kind of revolution.”

There’s more to say, but for now—the Revolution Club is getting connected to people in these projects, and working to re-imagine how many different people with different constraints can throw into meaningful revolutionary work, who else can be involved in this work who may not live in that complex, and how to bring together a first gathering of people here to watch BA speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! discuss and wrangle, and increase all this impact and transformation exponentially going forward.

 

 

 

 

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