Key Points to Hit—and Hit HARD—When We Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!

May 14, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The movement for revolution is going everywhere with HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution, the strategy for revolution, and recruiting people into this revolution. This is urgent. In the face of the horrors of the fascist Trump/Pence regime and the need to drive it out through mass nonviolent action... in the face of a situation of tremendous suffering here and around the world in which the forces for revolution are still hemmed in... we urgently need to BREAK OUT and start to grow by leaps and bounds.

The keys to this are agitation all over and all the time, and organization. This article focuses on the agitation part of it. For more on organization, go here.

What is agitation? The dictionaries define it as to arouse public opinion to take some action. Bob Avakian describes the importance of revolutionary agitation that exposes contradictions drawn from real life, from reality. In an article, “Putting Forward Our Line—In a Bold, Moving, Compelling Way,” after BA vividly exposes a police murder of a Black man, he says:

How do we do the most hard-hitting, penetrating exposure around things like this, really bringing this alive? Not just cursing the enemy as they deserve to be cursed, but how do we do it so as to really bring these things alive, so that masses of people, even those who don’t know that this goes on every day, are really moved by this—like we really reach inside them and make them really feel this, from the “inside out,” so to speak—really be “grabbed on the inside” and moved by the outrage that’s been committed here and how this connects up with and has something essential to do with the very nature of this system. Because unfortunately, in a certain sense, life is continually providing us with hundreds and thousands of these occasions, these outrages, and our agitation about them is one very important part of arousing the masses to struggle around these things as well as exposing the system and contributing to the overall process of moving people to the position where they’re willing to put everything on the line to bring this system down because they understand that these things are integral and indispensable features of this whole system—that this system cannot do without these things and needs to do these things, and why it needs to do them.

You can agitate as part of a group going out with posters and pamphlets and flyers in busy areas... or you can agitate one-on-one, handing out materials or just getting into it with people in your daily life. This agitation digs into the contradiction that the world is a horror, but it doesn’t have to be that way; that those who are listening to it will have to change their lives and throw in with this revolution, to actually end these horrors.

There are five key points to keep in mind and bring out: why we need a revolution; what a revolution really IS; what needs to be done right now to build that revolution; the strengths of the revolution and, in particular, the leadership of Bob Avakian—“BA”; and the challenge to people that THEY must join the revolution.

Sometimes you’ll focus on one, sometimes on all five. The more you do this, and the more you talk with others about how you’re doing, the better you’ll get at reaching inside of people with this message—cutting through the static they’re caught up in and touching their highest aspirations for a different world. What you have below is not a script, but guidelines.

• The system we live under—the system of capitalism-imperialism—is a nightmare for humanity. Unjust wars of the United States that obliterate millions of lives in the Middle East and beyond... violent white supremacy against Black people and others by police... a worldwide epidemic of rape against women and bigotry against LGBTQ people... the terror of raids and immigrant families torn apart and hurled across oceans and borders... the destruction of the environment that threatens the very existence of life on this planet... all this is woven into this system of capitalism-imperialism. These things cannot be reformed away, they cannot be fixed with a new policy or by electing a new politician. But there is absolutely no reason why any of this shit has to keep going on. All this can be ended through an actual revolution. The question is: What are YOU going to do about it? Will you join together with us to build an organized movement, a force, which can prepare now for a real revolution?
• Revolution is not just militant noise-making, changing or “healing” yourself, or voting for Bernie or some wannabe politician. Revolution means the actual overthrow—yes, the overthrow—of this system of capitalism-imperialism, through actually defeating its armed forces of oppression and repression, when the necessary conditions (a revolutionary situation and a revolutionary people in the millions) have been brought into being. This is possible! Revolution means dismantling the institutions of capitalism-imperialism and building a whole different society, laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, based on radically different economic and political relations, digging up slavery in every form.
• Right now is not the time to make that revolution, but now IS the time to hasten and prepare for this revolution. We need to prepare the ground, prepare the people, and prepare the vanguard—to get ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out with a real chance to win. Everything we are doing is preparing for THAT, and working to bring that closer—but to really make that happen YOU need to be part of this work, today, right now, and help the revolution grow by leaps and bounds.
• And the revolution has real strengths as well. We have tremendous strength in the leadership of Bob Avakian—BA—and the vision of the new society he’s put forward, the strategy for revolution he’s developed, and the scientific ways of understanding the world that he has brought forward for everyone to learn from. There’s never been a leader like BA—breaking through in the science of revolution and leading the revolution itself, right here in the belly of the beast, and at the same time having deep feelings for and connection to the masses of people. You need to get into BA and find out what he’s done... and as you do, work with us to spread the word to others.
• We are here not just to tell you about this revolution, but to recruit YOU into this revolution. We are calling on you to become one of the thousands today who are working to influence millions and getting trained to lead millions when there IS a revolutionary situation. We are calling on you right here and now to join in spreading this revolution to every corner of society, to let people know about the leadership of Bob Avakian and that the world doesn’t have to stay this way, and that there is a role for them—even as you are led to change yourself in the process. We are calling on you to stand up against this system’s attempts to beat us down, carry out its murder, and encircle our people—by bringing forward wave upon wave of people rising up in determined opposition to this system—to “encircle” them. We are calling on you to become a leader yourself, a leader FOR this revolution.

Conclusion: Your life is going to be about something—or it is going to be about nothing, and there is nothing more important your life can be about than joining this revolution. If you want a world where never again is a Black person beaten down or murdered by the police, where never again does a child have to dig their parent’s body out of the rubble left by a U.S. bomb, where never again does any woman anywhere on this planet have to fear being beaten or raped, where never again are families torn apart and sent thousands of miles across borders as refugees desperate and alone, and where the planet is cared for and preserved for future generations, then YOU need to join the revolution today. There is a role for you. There is leadership to train you. There is a whole new world to make real.

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