BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Van Tours Hits the Streets in Four Areas
July 28, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In mid-July, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Van Tours hit the streets for a week in four areas simultaneously—New York, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. The Van Tours' objective: spreading the revolutionary vision concentrated in the work of Bob Avakian more widely and deeply among all strata in society, and involving people in the activity of raising really big money over the summer and into the fall so that BA truly becomes known everywhere.
Van Tour, Oakland, California
Money to rent vans and video/sound equipment to show clips from BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! and other expenses for the tours came from the successful online Indiegogo fund effort (see Over $24,000 Raised! BA Everywhere Online Fund Campaign Surpasses Goal). Volunteers were on board for a few days or for the whole week, taking out the film to different areas. These Van Tours were out among the people in the midst of the outrage and protest across the country around the verdict freeing Trayvon Martin's killer.
The scene in one area, the San Francisco Bay Area, gives a picture of how these Van Tours got out BA in the midst of all that's going on:
At the Revolution bookstore one night, there was an overflow crowd for a program on the prison hunger strike¸ with three ex-prisoners, a National Public Radio reporter, and Revolution writer Larry Everest speaking. The audience included many people new to the movement for revolution, including a number of university students. In the midst of the "jolt" in society around the Trayvon Martin verdict, revolutionaries have been going out and bringing forward new people into the mix—around the fight to stop mass incarceration, the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS Van Tour, and the overall BA Everywhere campaign. A couple of young women who are new to the movement for revolution took out the BA Everywhere campaign to a protest around Trayvon Martin in Oakland—the first time they had taken up the campaign themselves.
The day after the verdict, the Van Tour went out to an intersection in a neighborhood of Black and Latino people. Youth who before this had been watching but had not engaged with the movement for revolution stopped and talked with the revolutionaries—about the injustice of the Trayvon Martin verdict, about what's the real source of the problem, and what is this revolution all about. People are being shaken and moved by the verdict, and many are looking for answers and leadership—while at the same time there are lots of contradictory views among the people.
Across the bay in San Francisco, the Van Tour met someone who watched several hours of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! on the video equipment set up in the van. The next day, he—along with several other young people—joined the tour for a day as a volunteer in another neighborhood.
People involved in the Van Tour report that doing this in the midst of all that's going on was "exciting and challenging." Plans were adjusted several times so that the van and the volunteers would be in the midst of those who are resisting and seeking solutions. The tour went out to different areas of middle class and well-off people, including a resort area north of San Francisco to get out BA to the vacationing gay crowd that mainly characterizes that area. A couple of young people, relatively new to the movement for revolution, went out with the van every day of the tour.
For more on the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Van Tours, go to the "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution" section of revcom.us—look for the BA Everywhere page, where you can find reports on the Van Tour and a lot more on the BA Everywhere campaign.
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