July 20, LA Central Library:
Major Screening of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live
July 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Saturday, July 20, Revolution Books LA is hosting a major screening of the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles. Pacifica radio station KPFK has signed on as a media sponsor for the event, and a host committee has been formed with journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan, filmmaker Dave Zeiger, Prof. Dennis Loo, actor Harry Lennix and revolutionary communist radio host Michael Slate as initial hosts.
LA Artwalk, February 2013. Photo: Special to Revolution
This is a very big deal! Bob Avakian has said that “THIS MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION MUST NOW BECOME A REAL FORCE, POWERFULLY IMPACTING AND INFLUENCING ALL OF SOCIETY....” “RNL@CL” can make important contributions to this, not only in LA but reverberating around the country and even internationally.
The Central Library is the second-largest public library system west of the Mississippi. It is a respected public cultural institution in Southern California that features important writers, artists, and public thinkers, yet also one where basic people from some of LA’s poorest neighborhoods feel welcome. RNL@CL has the potential to reach many, many people who know nothing about BA and this revolution... to give them an opportunity to meet the revolution “up close and personal” ... to take the movement for revolution into a physical and cultural space where Bob Avakian’s vision could reach sections of society on a whole other level than it has up to now.
Just think what it means to have this film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! and BA in the mix in the context of everything that is going on in the world today—massive demonstrations in Brazil and Turkey, a military coup in Egypt, Edward Snowden’s exposure of massive NSA spying on people of the world, the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, attempts to eliminate abortion in this country, torture of prisoners in Guantánamo and U.S. prisons and the U.S. prisoner hunger strike to stop the torture, the Keystone Pipeline decision and what that will portend for the current environmental catastrophe the world is facing.
Against the background of these momentous events, as people watch this film, the urgent need for and real possibility of a radically different world can begin to come into focus.
The opening speech at the BA Everywhere Conferences held on June 1 and 2 in many cities captured the power and impact this film can have:
“BA opens BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live asking ‘How long must this nightmare of oppression and brutality go on?’ Then he breaks down why the horrors of the world of today need not be forever—how they flow from the capitalist-imperialist system, and how they can go out of existence through revolution. This is because of real reasons—actual contradictions in the way society works and how it has developed, why it continually gives rise to crisis, to war, to profound inequalities, to degradation and devastation. And this system also gives rise to those who have nothing to lose, who have been cast off and cast down, who can become the backbone of making revolution.
“People can learn and understand this. What is the problem? This system. And what is the solution? Revolution—Nothing Less! BA breaks revolution down: why it is possible, how to build up the people’s understanding and strength, and how to win in a country like this—providing a strategy for making revolution. This is farsighted leadership that is scientific—probing reality from different angles to come to understand the world as it actually is, applying that understanding to changing the world, and then measuring results by again looking back at reality and learning again”
This summer the BA Everywhere Committee is pushing out in a big way throughout the country, and as a major part of that, aiming to introduce BA to a wide audience by having thousands see this film through showings of all kinds—on the streets, in the parks, playgrounds, project courtyards, as well as suburban town centers.
A key highlight of all this will be the Central Library showing in LA, aiming to bring together an audience of hundreds from all-walks of life—people from the neighborhoods, professors, students, artists, the unemployed, men, women, youth, retired folks, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, white people, revolutionaries, non-communists, those seeking answers to the biggest questions in the world—all watching the film together and providing a social setting for people to grasp that they are not by themselves or are the only ones who are hungering for a different future and a different world.
A successful screening at the Central Library, together with a whole summer of activity of getting BA out everywhere, can open the door for showings in other libraries and community centers in LA, and very importantly should help open the way for similar major showings all across the country. Tens of thousands of people across the country seeing all or parts of this film, beginning to engage with BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian and becoming acquainted with the revolutionary leadership of Bob Avakian can be part of cracking things open and beginning to put REAL revolution onto the political terrain in this country and the world.
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
Saturday, July 20, starting at 12:30 pm
Los Angeles Central Library—Mark Taper Auditorium
630 West 5th Street, downtown Los Angeles
For more info or publicity material, call Revolution Books LA at (323) 463-3500.
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