From Revolution Club Chicago

The Saga of a Banner

November 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A couple of us in the Revolution Club recently met up with two students at Columbia College and showed them the front page of their own campus newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle. “Do you see that banner? It says ‘Hey Trump, From those you like to Demonize: You and Your GANG in the White House Are the REAL Thugs and THREAT to Humanity. In The Name of Humanity We Will DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!’ But look closer. Do you see the signatures? Those are from some of the people demonized, on the South Side and in the high schools, who put their name on the banner.” One of the students’ eyes swelled with emotion when she realized what she was looking at and as we told them the story of the banner.

The Revolution Club has been working among people who are most oppressed under this system, consigned to a future of being blown away by police, put in prison, or brutally exploited. These are youths who are right now trapped in doing what this system wants us doing, killing each other off. We have been working to win people to see their real enemy and common cause with people of the world to make revolution to overthrow the system that has them in these conditions, and to connect them with the leadership we have for that revolution, Bob Avakian. These are people constantly demonized by Trump and Co. and threatened in ways that literally echo Hitler’s genocidal talk of dealing with Jewish criminals and cleaning up the Jewish Ghettos.

So in the lead-up to November 4th, when RefuseFascism.org called for protests around the country to begin a movement of mass mobilizations to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime, we made this banner to cut through the bullshit way Trump and his fanatics use the youth in Chicago as a punching bag to justify just about anything, including KKKlansmen and neo-Nazis (who have actually killed people) marching in the streets, and to silence people who protest.

We took this banner all around Chicago, working to get people to see that this was the stage they were acting on when they add their name. We took it mainly to the South Side and to high schools. Many people who signed their name to the banner had some sense of how they and others are looked at and wanted to take the opportunity to add their name to this message to Trump, and then we involved some of those people and others in a special delivery of this banner to Trump Tower.

One of the first stops of the banner was Kenwood High School, where police drove up, blared sirens, and pushed students to leave—and in the face of that a number of students walked up and signed the banner. In one neighborhood, a number of young men in “the life” eagerly signed it when they saw what it said and heard we would be delivering it, even as we struggled sharply with them to get out of the trap of seeing each other as enemies and get into revolution to emancipate humanity, revolution that has leadership and a strategy to win.

At the banner delivery, Trump Tower security refused to call the manager to accept the banner, calling the police instead, and as police gathered, people who had come to deliver it shouted out its message in unison.

The banner was then brought to the protest on November 4th, where it was part of the banners at the head of the march that day. Not enough of the people who were part of signing the banner and delivering it to Trump Tower made it to the march that day in person, but it is important not only that some were there, but also that this crucial voice and message was there.

This impact was magnified at the next stop on this banner’s journey when, over a week later, a picture of the November 4th march with the banner front and center appeared on the front page of the Columbia Chronicle along with an article about November 4th.

A couple of us in the Revolution Club went out to Columbia College in the aftermath of this front-page article and got 100 copies of it to distribute in the South Side where the paper never usually reaches, both to show people what impact they were having, how this is strengthening the very needed movement to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime, and the potential of students and basic people to mutually influence each other in a positive way.

There is also important beginning brainstorming going on over how to maximize this mutual influence. One idea that got thrown around, for example, was telling this story to more students and getting their responses to share with people on the South Side and vice versa. Another idea is having a student banner standing with the people who are demonized this way that gets signed by students.

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