Revolution Online Edition, August 17, 2009
Bringing Forward a Communist Core in the Spanish-Speaking Community
Dear Revolution,
In Part 8 of "Ruminations and Wranglings", Bob Avakian speaks to "the crucial importance of bringing forward and continually strengthening the communist solid core of, in turn, a broader revolutionary movement." In light of what he is putting forward, there was a meeting with some of the Spanish-speakers who have been taking out the message and call, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" to the Spanish-speaking community.
The purpose of the meeting was to learn from their experience in going out to achieve the three inter-related objectives of this campaign. How they understand it. What questions, ideas, and suggestions they have about who and how to advance and spread out this campaign, and then we wanted to get into how to continue to take out this campaign in a way that will continue to build on the three objectives—to change the situation where there IS a broad revolutionary movement in this country that everybody in society is responding to one way or another, that the leader of this movement (Bob Avakian) is known broadly throughout society, and within that there is a growing militant core who are on a mission to emancipate all of humanity.
One of those who have enthusiasm for taking this out, talked of the receptiveness from the masses to revolution we need. He told a story on how he would take out the statement to people, telling them about how god did not put us in this situation and how thinking that way would stop people. He said some would give money and take small bundles. He also spoke about a regular group of people he gets the paper to weekly, including some bundles, but he was having difficulties in figuring out how to be further organizing of such people.
A short clip was played from the DVD, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, where the Chairman talks about the masses need for leadership in order to strengthen the way this group takes that out and enables them to struggle with the people around it.
A question was posed, why is communism alive in the world and why is it possible for it to get some strong legs under it? To get into it, we read that section on the leadership we have.
One person spoke to the fact that he was running into some anti-communism but he thought most were receptive. At the same time, people in the group were coming up against how to make distinctions between movements in Latin America and the revolutionary movement we are trying to build. We discussed that in order to do this, we need to be using the message and call, as well as much more use of the DVD and Bob Avakian's memoir [From Ike to Mao and Beyond] (though only the first 6 chapters are in Spanish). It was also emphasized that we should be using the "Imagine" part of the DVD to give people a living sense of how the "wretched of the earth" have done this before, and how this is fundamentally different from what is currently being done in Latin America, by people like [Subcomandante] Marcos in Mexico.
Another person has shown a lot of enthusiasm for this whole campaign and felt that he has not been taking out the message and call correctly. He said that he has being taking this to smaller groups of people, rather then getting it out in bold and broad ways, which he felt was the more correct approach in terms of conveying the seriousness of what we are trying to do in projecting this movement as one that needs to grow by leaps and bounds. He said that we need to get the DVD out there, project it on walls or in the parks where there are soccer and basketball games, be in the t-shirts, with 10-12 people going into the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, with our tables, raising funds with buckets like the picture on page 3 of the special issue, and put more emphasis on being bold.
There was a discussion about how to do both—being out there broadly and boldly, as well as having discussion with smaller groups of people—where the small needs to grow, and even the big needs to get bigger—with an emphasis on the broadly and boldly as was laid on in the editorial in the paper on taking out the message and call. The group came to the conclusion that our vision has to be more in line with having a bold and broad approach to bringing people into the revolutionary movement, where people will find their level of how to enter this movement.
Throughout this discussion there was a lot of emphasis on making more use of the DVD to show people who this leader is and the part in the statement about the precious and rare leader and what makes him so.
The group broke up with a determination to make plans, based on the discussion, for how to continue to take the message and call to the Spanish-speaking community and find ways to organize people on the spot.
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