Revolution Club at the Chicago Women’s March 2018

Joining with the Great Outpouring, Letting People Know About Bob Avakian and the New Communism

From Noche for the Revolution Club, Chicago

January 22, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Streams of people flowed into the main area of the rally for the Women’s March in Chicago. At its height you couldn’t see an end in any direction. As of this writing, early reports from the Chicago Tribune say as many as 300,000 people filled the streets of Chicago. This would be a larger turnout for the city than the estimated 250,000 for last year’s Women’s March. The crowds held all manner of creative home-made signs, as well as groups of people with signs of their organization, school, or union. Many of the hand-made signs had creative and often funny messages calling out the dehumanization of women generally, but also the overwhelming sentiment was in calling out and rejecting Trump. And it was heartening to see this expressed even in ways that were not just tied to the horror this regime means for women, but also things like calling out "Shithole-in-Chief" expressing unity with immigrant people coming under attack as well as some people who had shirts and signs defending science. And the spirit was overwhelmingly of people finding strength and joy in coming together to oppose the truly horrific oppression of women, and an element of celebrating the battles to break the silence on sexual assault concentrated in the #MeToo/#TimesUp movement.

The Revolution Club entered into the day with the guidance from revcom.us in mind. We aimed to really join in and unite with this great outpouring, while making it known to people that there is a leader, Bob Avakian, with a new communism and a movement for revolution for people to join with now. We had a stunningly beautiful handmade 12-ft banner which cohered our theme for the day with the slogan "Unleash the Fury of Women as a Might Force for Revolution" and "Revcom.us" painted on it. We had with us many of the materials suggested by revcom, and we were able to distribute many copies of Revolution newspaper, and many copies of the sampler compendium Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution also got out.

As the rally was still gathering throughout the early hours of the day, the Revolution Club started first speaking to people and engaging waves as they came in and then going into the main rally—getting to a point when a crowd had surrounded our scene with the banner and the table with materials and the contingent of people who came (or joined on the spot). And the scene transformed into the Revolution Club hosting a speak-out, and continuing to return people to the message of the banner and inviting people to learn more about and get with Bob Avakian and the Revolution Club. A few dozen people ended up speaking before all was said and done—a majority of them young people from high school through college age. Most people had not been expecting to speak, and what came forth ranged from those who had very simple but heartfelt messages to the crowd about why they were there, and others who told their stories of being abused and violated, sharing their outrage and their determination to bring about real change. This was a beautiful scene of people who would otherwise have been standing around waiting for a march to start at some point (we were too far to hear most of the rally), who were meeting each other and finding their voice. This also made many people curious to know more about the Revolution Club, to sign up with the club, to get some of the materials we had, and to support what we were doing by helping spread things and giving donations.

As the march took off, again it was a sea of people filling the streets. It seems that many or most people who came were not people who come out to protests all the time—many people, at least where we were, did not even know to chant and make noise during the march. We changed that. The two chants we used most were "BREAK, the Chains. BREAK, BREAK, the Chains. Unleash the fury, of women, as a mighty force for REVOLUTION" and "No Pussy Grabbing, No Patriarchy, No Fascist USA." At several times during the march we had circles of youth not only chanting along but dancing in the streets either while marching or just in a circle to the beat of the chant, which was helped by having a big drum on which to pound out the beat. Along stretches of the march we involved young people in getting on the mic to help keep the chants going and some really young kids marched with us a long time and really came alive helping to do the chants.

At the end of the march, we set up with our banner and made sure as many people as possible got their hands on Revolution newspaper and the cards telling them about the film of the BA talk THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible, while we also gave them the opportunity to sign up or donate. After some time as we were doing this, much to our delight, a contingent came marching down with RefuseFascism.org—and we joined together to hold a closing rally where a number of people spoke from different perspectives of the need to come together to build a movement to drive this fascist regime from power before it is too late.

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