Revolution #203, Posted June 8, 2010
How to really SATURATE and really meet our 200,000 in 10 goal
Many of us who attended the conferences on the campaign “The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have” came out with a heightened sense of purpose to put this revolution and the leadership of Bob Avakian on the map – and as a key part of that to get the RCP’s Message and Call out in a big way all over the country. The opening speech at the conference is now available at revcom.us and gives real substance to the stakes of what we are setting out to accomplish.
We’ve set out to get 200,000 copies of the Message and Call out in 10 days, to blanket key communities and create the kind of situation where people are seeing the flier 5 or 6 times – at the bus stop when they get off work or coming out of the store where they shop it’s being thrust before them; they’ve seen it posted up all over the neighborhood; they found it on their doorstep or in the laundromat or barbershop; it’s posted in the window of the corner store. Everywhere they look it’s there.
A heightened politicized atmosphere is starting to be created. And people are really starting to think: Who are these people? Why are they out here? What is this revolution they keep talking about? Do they really think they could do that? Who is this leader they’re talking about? Let me see what they actually have to say about all this.
Or maybe they’ve heard someone on a bullhorn or in a sound car driving around their neighborhood talking about how this is NOT the best of all possible worlds and we do NOT have to live this way, then someone is handing them a flier and then a few steps later they come upon someone with a great big can asking for donations – telling them that we’re building a movement for revolution and they should contribute to it.
This is the kind of atmosphere we need to create, an atmosphere that demands people’s attention, let’s them know that something different and something very important is going on here and they better find out what it is. Different kinds of communities require different kinds of methods to accomplish all this – but THIS is what we’re setting out to accomplish.
Maybe they’ve seen a giant enlargement of the Message and Call or a whole string of the fliers strung across the street, or they’ve seen a big banner or t-shirt that says REVOLUTION, or seen a bunch of people wearing those other t-shirts and they’re wondering: Who is that man? Or they’ve heard about or seen the Revolution Talk.
This is a very concentrated effort we’re setting out to do for 10 days – to have a very visible unavoidable presence – so that THIS revolution and THIS leader get out in some key neighborhoods and communities and so that all the questions that people have about that start bubbling to the surface and being talked about among them. This is not just going out to routinely get the fliers out – this is setting out to actually make THIS revolution and THIS leadership the unavoidable topic of conversation among the people in some key communities.
There are lots of different festivals going on this time of year and other ways that we could get out 200,000 fliers in 10 days. But that’s not the focus of what we’re aiming to do in these 10 days. For these 10 days THIS blanketing of key communities is what we’re setting out to achieve.
When we go out in the communities, there’s lots of lengthy conversations and discussions we could be having with people about the fact that a movement for revolution is being built and that they need to be part of it. But THIS is not the time when we’re doing that. Immediately after this 10-day period we should get on the phone with all the people who gave us their names and we should talk to them about it; and we should go back out and take the paper out and meet people who’ve seen this Message and Call everywhere and have actually read it and we should make sure they see the Revolution Talk and ask them to sustain the newspaper. But THIS is not the time when we’re doing that. THIS is the time when we’re handing out and posting up as many fliers as fast as we can and as thoroughly as we can in key concentrated areas and raising funds to support this – out there on the weekend, back out after work during the week – so that people are seeing this many times over and feeling compelled to read it and talk about it with others.
Doing this in the way that needs to be done takes persistence and it takes creativity and it takes a vision of what we’re really trying to do here. It requires some teams who are taking responsibility and are on a mission to accomplish this goal, drawing in more experienced people and newer people and putting their thinking into how to make THIS happen: brainstorming, making plans, summing up the plans. What worked? What didn’t work? What’s another way we could go at it? How much money did we raise? How can we raise more?
And many more people need to be part of this whole effort. Everyone who came to the conferences and was part of the vision and determination that was generated should be part of this – everyone who wanted to come but couldn’t, and everyone who wants to see this campaign out there in the world. We need to tell them what we’re setting out to do here, and ask them to be part of it. And then go out and have some real fun doing this – finding the most creative ways to make the biggest splash and get out the 200,000 in these key communities.
This 10-day saturation is just the beginning of getting this campaign into higher gear, drawing more people in to be part of it, and putting this revolution and this leadership on the map. This is a beginning that needs to be made and it is one key element in a whole process of carrying out the three objectives of the campaign which taken together are all part of the larger strategic objective of BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION and transforming the political and ideological terrain and polarization in a more favorable direction in relation to the goal of actually making revolution.
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