Revolution #247, October 9, 2011
We are building a movement for revolution…
That movement needs a website…
We need your help to make it happen
This is a world crying out for revolution. Over a billion people on this planet live on less than $1 a day. The earth’s critically endangered ecosystem is under profit-driven assault. In one form or another, everywhere in this world women are degraded as commodities. Creativity is marginalized, coopted, or squashed. And killer police and unjust wars serve and protect all this…
This is a world crying out for revolution. But it is a time when revolution, and specifically communist revolution, which is the only thing that can deal with problems so immense and deeply rooted, is the furthest thing from most people’s minds. We aim to change that. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and he has brought forward something very new and critical in the realm of ideas—something that anyone who cares about the future of humanity has to really check out seriously. Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done over several decades, summing up the positive and negative experience of the communist revolution so far, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, there is a new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward—there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal.
Revolution newspaper, which is the voice of the Party he leads, takes this work as its foundation and framework and takes as its mission building a movement FOR this revolution. Hot on the heels of developments in the world, Revolution cuts to the bone to tell WHY things are happening... to show HOW it doesn’t have to be this way… and to give people the ways to ACT to change it. The website revcom.us will be the place to access the current issue of Revolution newspaper as well as its archives. If you haven’t read our paper, visit revcom.us or pick up a print copy from sellers on the street or at Revolution Books. You’ll be surprised and intrigued...and challenged.
For more on Avakian and his new synthesis on communism, bobavakian.net; for more on Revolution newspaper, revcom.us.
Revcom.us is also a site where people can find out about the RCP—and it is the place where people from this country and all over the world can access major documents put out by the Party like COMMUNISM: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW STAGE, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. And this is where people can learn about, engage with in many different ways, and become part of the movement for revolution we are building.
This revolution needs a website which will make the whole of this revolution and its leadership accessible to all those who want to know why the world is the way it is—and all who dream of changing that world. A new revcom.us will be a way for people to access and explore the key dimensions of this revolution... to find out what they need to know about its theoretical and political foundations and principles... its leadership... its activities.
We are embarking on a major re-design and re-development of revcom.us. We need your help to get it done.
Here’s an intolerable irony: At a moment when the world needs revolution, all the unique revolutionary content of this newspaper is essentially buried online! A reader of Revolution recently wrote to us: “Right now, the [revcom.us] website as it is currently constructed is a fetter on involving more people. I’m not saying a bunch of flashy animation needs to be created each week (or ever). I’m saying, a simple, straightforward, easy to understand structure… [which] incorporates the principles… pertaining to visual assimilation of written material needs to be put in place. And that will go on to enable more people, not less, to engage with the material and want to be involved.”
We agree.
The mission of this web project is incorporate the current content at revcom.us and to radically re-frame and redesign that in an inviting and accessible form that really brings the message to life. To be attractive and compelling to students at elite universities and inner city residents… to rebels in England, Egypt, Greece and Spain.... to dissidents, peasants, oppressed and outcasts in every realm of society, in every part of the world. The site will be fully bilingual English/Spanish.
Some of us have been working at this project for a while. We’ve found template-based technical solutions and approaches problematic in relation to the message, and the flexibility, creativity, attractiveness, and grassroots involvement this site needs to incorporate and project. We have some ideas and plans we want to discuss for addressing these challenges—in the realm of artwork, page design, technical production, and (Spanish) translation. We need experts, and we need people regardless of Web design and development skill level (or lack of). And to do this the way it needs to be done, we need to raise substantial funds through both all kinds of fundraising activities and donations from people with financial resources. All of this is essential to accomplishing the mission of bringing this website to life, and to building the movement for revolution.
We’re calling on YOU to be part of this. To quote from "On the Strategy for Revolution" from the RCP:
“For those who have hungered for, who have dreamed of, a whole different world, without the madness and torment of what this system brings every day...those who have dared to hope that such a world could be possible...and even those who, up to now, would like to see this, but have accepted that this could never happen...there is a place and a role, a need and a means, for thousands now and ultimately millions to contribute to building this movement for revolution, in many different ways, big and small—with ideas and with practical involvement, with support, and with questions and criticisms. Get together with our Party, learn more about this movement and become a part of it as you learn, acting in unity with others in this country, and throughout the world, aiming for the very challenging but tremendously inspiring and liberating—and, yes, possible—goal of emancipating all of humanity through revolution and advancing to a communist world, free of exploitation and oppression.”
Contact us at new.revcom@gmail.com .
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