Revolution #259, February 12, 2012
BAsics Bus Tour Underway!
By the time many of you read this, the BAsics Bus Tour (pilot project) will have hit the road! The tour is part of the campaign to Get BA Everywhere... a campaign aimed at raising big money to project Bob Avakian’s vision and works throughout society.
For two weeks, the BAsics bus—covered with banners advertising BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian—will travel hundreds of miles around California. It aims to introduce tens of thousands of people, from all walks of life, to BAsics and Bob Avakian.
And this pilot tour will accumulate important experience that can be fed into plans for a national bus tour later this year.
“You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics.”
The central focus of the BAsics Bus Tour is broad promotion, distribution and discussion of BAsics itself—selling it on the streets and campuses, and getting it into libraries and bookstores; broadly posting up copies of sharp and controversial quotes from the book, and then holding both organized discussions and street corner debates.
In some areas a welcoming committee will meet the bus as it pulls up. In others, interest and controversy will be sparked by getting BAsics into the hands of numbers of people, creating a buzz and audience as people check out large photo displays depicting the crimes of U.S. imperialism here and around the world—and the struggle against these crimes. And opinions will divide out—some will be hungry to discuss the possibilities to bring a whole new world into being, while others will want to sharply debate or just raise questions about what makes the world a horror today, what it’s going to take to change it, and whether revolution and communism are the way to get there. At every stop, the bus riders will be raising funds to take out BA Everywhere!
And all this will be punctuated by screenings of the DVD of Avakian’s historic talk, Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About.
Making the Tour All It Can Be
The tour begins in Los Angeles on February 7. There will be street corner rallies and skits in Pico-Union and Watts, neighborhoods with long histories of resistance to the oppression this system brings down on a daily basis. The highlight of the day is a noon send-off party, with music, speeches and more at Revolution Books/Libros Revolución in Hollywood.
From there the tour heads to Riverside County for two days—site of the University of California at Riverside, which has been the scene of determined resistance to tuition fee hikes and the attacks on the Occupy movement, as well as home to many basic people suffering from rampant police brutality, attacks on immigrants, and some of the worst unemployment and housing foreclosures in the country. And then on to Orange County, one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. but also one filled with millions of immigrants and the place where Kelly Thomas, a white homeless man, was beaten to death by the police last year, sparking widespread outrage and protest. Interest in the tour is growing—students from one local campus are helping to figure out where the bus should go, both on campus and in off-campus gathering spots; a progressive church is planning a potluck dinner.
From February 13-18 the bus will travel to northern California, including the city of Davis, where university students that were part of the Occupy movement were pepper-sprayed by campus cops (the YouTube video of the brutal attack went viral within hours), and to the Oakland-Berkeley area, where the Occupy movement has been repeatedly attacked by the authorities.
And then the weekend of February 19-21 will be spent in Fresno, home to some of the largest agribusiness operations in the world as well as the huge numbers of impoverished and oppressed immigrants who these conglomerates depend on to plant and harvest the crops. The bus plans to hit a local swap meet, go to areas where youth hang out, and spend a day at the local college campus.
Finally, back to Los Angeles for a celebratory finale and fundraiser at Revolution Books/Libros Revolución.
Be Part of Making This Happen
- Send an email to the tour coordinator at BAeverywhere_LA1@yahoo.com to volunteer to help organize a support or host committee to share ideas on the best places the bus can go in your area, or just to find out how you can be there when it comes to town.
- Make plans with friends to print up dozens or more of your favorite BAsics quotes and plaster them in the area before the tour rolls into your town or campus, or find appropriate places to hang a banner or put up a photo display.
- Talk to a neighborhood coffee shop or recreation center and set up a time and place for the bus riders to meet with people who got BAsics and want to explore these ideas more fully.
- Donate funds to make all this happen—and go to others to get them to contribute as well.
- People everywhere can—and should—contribute to the success of this tour. Organize fundraisers and send the money to the address below—and send reports to Revolution newspaper. (See "Post-Holiday Yard Sale: Raising Money for BA Everywhere".) Go to revcom.us and look for frequent reports on what the bus riders are experiencing and learning.
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
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