Revolution #258, February 5, 2012
BAsics Bus Tour Departing from Los Angeles on February 7
Picture this scene:
A bus rolls up to the entrance of a local college or into a high school parking lot. Or it pulls into the center of town and sets up big displays. Or maybe it appears at a club where the youth hang out or a neighborhood church where progressive people go. Or a homeless encampment of people driven into the hidden corners of society because they no longer have anywhere to live, or a place where farmworkers gather before heading out to another day of field work under the pounding hot California sun.
But this is no typical bus. It is covered in giant replicas of the front and back covers of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. “You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics.” A crew of revolutionaries pours out the door with brightly colored T-shirts emblazoned with the BAsics logo or the BA image. Bob Avakian’s “All Played Out” blasts out of loudspeakers. The bus riders come with copies of BAsics.
In some places a welcoming committee meets the bus as it pulls up; in others, through getting BAsics into the hands of numbers of people, interest and controversy is sparked. And a buzz and audience is created. Some people check out the large photo displays depicting the crimes of U.S. imperialism around the world that are quickly and boldly erected outside the bus. Some grab up materials on BAsics, on works by Avakian, and on the possibilities to bring a whole new world into being based on the new vision of communist society that he’s brought forth. Still others, not convinced or maybe not even fully aware of what they’ve stumbled upon, raise questions about whether a better society really is possible, whether it could really work, and whether revolution and communism are the way to get there. But all along the way, BAsics will be getting into people’s hands and lots of interest will be sparked by the arrival of this bus on the scene.
This is the BAsics Bus Tour. This is real. And the Los Angeles launch of the BAsics Bus Tour is just days away.
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On Tuesday, February 7, the inaugural pilot run of the BAsics Bus Tour will kick off in Los Angeles. Over the next two weeks, the tour will make its way from the southern to the northern parts of the state. There will be stops in neighborhoods filled with the basic people. It will go into the midst of those situations where things are sharpening up and raising big questions about the oppression people face and the road out of this madness. It will visit Occupy encampments on California college campuses and go into some of the richest farming areas in the state. It will touch down briefly in the Berkeley/Oakland area where people took to the streets after the murder of Oscar Grant and returned to the streets again and again when the Occupy movement was attacked by the powers-that-be.
A Revolution reporter will be on the tour to send back reports and photos so readers can go to the Revolution newspaper website and follow the tour as it goes from town to town. There will be efforts to get local progressive and mainstream media to cover the bus as it rolls through a community. And there’s a possibility that there may be live streaming video at key junctures of the tour, or postings on YouTube.
By the time the pilot tour is over, the bus will have racked up hundreds of miles and introduced thousands of people to Bob Avakian. It will have involved many new people in the “BA Everywhere ... Imagine What A Difference It Could Make!” campaign, from donating funds to hosting a discussion with the bus riders to maybe getting on board the bus for several days themselves. It will have provoked controversy and challenged many of those who are met to go deeper, to look at the revolutionary work Avakian has been doing for the past four decades and why what he’s brought forward is so crucial in understanding the reasons why the present-day world is so messed up, why it doesn’t have to be this way, and what it will take to get to a whole new world of possibilities for humanity.
And last but not least, the California pilot tour will accumulate important experience that can be fed into plans for a national bus tour later this year.
We have already met people in some of the far outlying areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco who know about us, like the woman who lives hundreds of miles from L.A. but saw people taking out BAsics at the Rose Parade in Pasadena when she came to join the Occupy contingent. She told us how impoverished the area where she lives is, how it is “surrounded by three prisons, full of poverty and no culture, nothing to do.” Others in outlying areas have been giving us their contact information so they can be a part of the BAsics Bus Tour when it comes to their area, some of whom have been buying BAsics. Still others are passing on suggestions of where to go and who to reach.
One striking similarity about these people is how disturbed they are at the way things are and how hungry they are for something different. Most have never met a revolutionary before or encountered people with serious, worked-out ideas on how to overturn the existing horrendous state of affairs and bring something far better into being in its place. The bus tour aims to begin to change all that. In short, the potential impact of the tour is significant. Now imagine how much bigger the impact can be if every one of the people reading this figured out how you can be part of the tour in some way.
- Maybe it means sending an email to the tour coordinator at BAeverywhere_LA1@yahoo.com with suggestions or proposals for tour stops, or volunteering to help organize a support or host committee, or working on a fundraising event when the bus comes to your area.
- Get with your friends to take responsibility to print up dozens or more of your favorite BAsics quotes and plaster them up in the area before the tour rolls into your town or campus, or make a display with a few of the quotes and pictures helping others to understand what they’re getting at.
- Maybe one of you or someone you know has a small sound system, or a generator, or a portable projector you can loan or donate to the bus tour. Or maybe you know someone else you can talk to about making such a donation.
- What about people with the capacity and equipment to take good-quality video of the tour at various spots, or to help take photos as the tour mixes it up with different groups of people along its route?
And then there’s the question of funds to make all this happen. As Revolution reported a couple weeks ago, $7,000 has been raised for the initial budget for the pilot tour. Several thousand more is needed.
It will make a huge difference if those who want to be on this bus can take two weeks off work. The money needs to be raised to support them so they can see the tour through from beginning to end.
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This tour will be a beginning for one of the linchpin components in the “BA Everywhere...Imagine the Difference It Could Make!” campaign. Together with the massive fundraising efforts on all fronts, this tour will take a big step in impacting society as a whole.
Readers who want to be a part of the tour, to learn more, or to provide much needed funds for this historic beginning to a national “BA Everywhere” Bus Tour should contact the Los Angeles tour coordinator at BAeverywhere_LA1@yahoo.com. Donations for the tour should be sent to:
Revolution Books
5726 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 463-3500
Updates with more tour specifics will be appearing at revcom.us soon.
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