Revolution #173, August 16, 2009
Spreading the Word in Watts
A large group of us, all wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the REVOLUTION masthead in English on one side and Spanish on the other, went to Watts, in South Central Los Angeles, with a sound truck playing Joe Veale reading the shortened version of the message, The Revolution We Need.... The Leadership We Have. We got a very good response overall, especially among high school-aged youth. This is just a small slice of what happened that day.
Some parts of the area are more polarized in a negative way with reactionary Christian forces pretty outspoken and yelling at some of our grouping, like one woman driving by who stopped, asked if this was a revolutionary newspaper and if we are atheists; and when she heard us say "Yes!" she yelled, "You're going to hell!!" and then drove off!
Then we found others who hate that shit and just want them to shut up. We ran across an older Black man who had come out of his apartment looking for the woman among us who had just knocked on his door. He said he wanted to apologize because he was rude to her. "It's just that I thought she said 'Revelations' and I am sick and tired of these Christians coming around—I'm not a religious man. And now I realize she said 'Revolution'! and I want to apologize to her."
He took out a dollar to get the newspaper because he said he is familiar with it. And he said he knows of Bob Avakian because about two years ago a good friend of his had given him some CDs by Avakian. It turns out he was talking about Mobile Shaw. He said he supports this revolution, but more from the sidelines. He feels he's too old to get involved and has never joined any organization before. He bought the special statement issue, and then was interested in Avakian's memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey From Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, but didn't have the money to get it right then.
He didn't give us a way to reach him; we'll be back in the area again soon and will look him up. One thing we summed up is if we are regularly at an outlet or a place in his area with discussions and showings of the DVD Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian, people who are checking us out can find us and come with their hard questions, engage more deeply, and join in the revolutionary movement to emancipate humanity.
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