“Either prove us wrong, or join the Revolution Club.”
A Mass Debate at a Community College

May 20, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Editor’s Note: Following is a lightly edited excerpt of a “field” report from the National Tour

We held a mass debate at a community college. In addition to putting our table and displays in the middle of campus, two of us went around the campus making short announcements to students gathering at tables, in the cafeteria, perched on busy walkways during class changes, and posted in a bathroom.

The content of the provocation to debate involved posing the 5 STOPS and asking people to tell us how any of this is going to be reformed under this system, reading BAsics 3:2: “There is nothing more unrealistic than the idea of reforming this system into something that would come anywhere near being in the interests of the great majority of people and ultimately of humanity as a whole.” We ended with: “Either prove us wrong, or join the Revolution Club.” A couple times, we got a big applause but I feel we could have done more to challenge those applauding to step into the revolution.

We had one person at the table, where some people were stopping to look at the 5 STOPS displays. We were stepping up to people with the debate at 1pm and also that we are building the Revolution Club, which drew interest in the Club. A recurring question was people asking “Is this a club at school?” 

There was contestation around the POA on “jokes” which one woman was trying to frame as a question of censorship. She also wanted to pick a fight on POA #3, that we should fight for a world without borders. This was good, as we were able to get going a scene where people were also speaking to each other. This sharpened up with more intense debate whether America is a force for good, and why people have to leave their homelands in the first place to come to the U.S. to survive. We got into the actual role and history of what the U.S. has done to people all over the world. It got more heated and this drew more people’s interest and excitement.

One woman who played a really good role in the exchange started off from a place of disagreement, saying that we need a revolution of the mind and that people need to change themselves in order to care about others. By seeing the more backwards positions being argued, she transformed through this debate, and at the end said that through the course of the arguments she had to say things and take positions on things she didn’t even know she had (on immigration and borders, on jokes, on the U.S. military and role of the U.S. around the world).

Off of this, we signed up several people who are interested in joining the Revolution Club and took copies of the Points of Attention to distribute.  When we went back to the campus on Thursday, we made a point of setting up in the same place and introducing people we’ve been talking with to each other, to develop more of a sense of people collectively stepping into the revolution and joining the Revolution Club.