Revolution #177, September 27, 2009
Revolutionary Exercise at Curves
Revolution received the following letter:
People participate in this revolutionary movement in a lot of different ways. At Curves, where I work out, I usually leave 3 copies of the Revolution newspaper in the “borrow and return” area of the club. Recently the owner of this particular Curves went through a series of shut-downs of this, which I suspect was due to the paper being out there with the glamour and fashion magazines and one or two ecology or news magazines on occasion. (Gary Heavin, the founder of Curves—the largest fitness franchise in the world—is a Christian fundamentalist and large donor to anti-abortion causes.) First the club owner put up a sign saying “magazines only, no newspapers”; then, when I continued to put the paper there anyway and a young woman who works there started reading it and came to support this, the owner put up a sign that said something like “glamour and fashion magazines only.” When I still continued to put the paper out, she discontinued the “borrow and return” area all together. The person working there and I had been discussing this, and she made the decision after this “last straw” to talk to the owner and tell her that people were asking for the reading materials, and that not everyone was interested in glamour and fashion, some people were interested in news and what is going on in the world. The owner opened up the magazine section again with no restrictions.
The young woman has since begun paying for her paper (she previously just borrowed a copy and returned it), got an e-sub, read the RCP Constitution, and is currently reading Bob Avakian’s memoir. She has also been talking to her boyfriend about communism and trying to get him to come out to events at Revolution Books with her. They haven’t made it yet, but she is definitely part of this revolutionary movement we are building.
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