Showing BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! at a Barbershop
August 18, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Photo: Special to Revolution
A few days ago, a barber hosted a showing of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live in front of the barbershop he works in. Off the back of a pickup truck, we played the film in the early evening on a flat-screen TV. A couple of his friends gathered round to watch, while some others came around for parts of it. People inside the shops were listening.
The main crew who stayed to watch it were Black men in their 40s. As they watched, they responded out loud about the rampant police murders and blatant lies used to justify these murders. We started with a planned shorter clip, but they wanted to keep watching so we watched the first 35 minutes together and then stopped to talk. The initial response from two of the people was that Bob Avakian is speaking to what's real, that everything he said was true. One guy said, "What can I say—he just said it all." The discussion quickly turned to violence among the youth and how to deal with a situation where so many are caught up in gangs and it is so difficult for them to get out of it, including because of the older guys in the gang who tell them what to do and don't want to let them out of it. We talked about the violence of this system, how it operates and what it brings down on people and also how it shapes people's lives and choices.
Photo: Special to Revolution
They wrestled more with how to be able to affect the youth and we showed the 13-minute clip from the end of the first disc, "The Revolutionary Potential of Those Most Oppressed Requires Scientific Leadership." This had a big impact on them (and on a woman nearby who heard some of it and came back a short while later to buy BAsics). One had earlier said, "We are fighting the system and we are fighting the gangs," but after watching this he said, "People have to get into the fight [against this system] to be able to start changing themselves—that point I got from watching this." We talked with them about the prisoners' hunger strike to stop torture and Gregory Koger in Chicago—a young revolutionary who had been caught up in the street life, was tortured with solitary confinement for several years, became a revolutionary in those conditions through reading revolutionary literature, and now is being targeted by this system for becoming an emancipator of humanity. They were very moved by hearing about both of these things. We walked through the pages of Revolution newspaper and the men got a sense of what the movement for revolution looks like, how people are building this across the country in ways big and small, and how it is something they too are part of. They got a vision of this and of their role in connecting people up with BA, especially youth. Together we decided to do weekly screenings in front of those barbershops, with a larger screening when the van tour comes through. The barber is making a flier so they can get the word out broadly. We went through the vision, plan, and needs for the van tour and one of them said, "I'm glad you told us what's happening so now we know what we can do."
Photo: Special to Revolution
A few lessons from this experience: 1) we hadn't done an introduction to BA at the beginning; early in the film they started to break out in conversation instead of continuing to dig into what BA was saying, so we stopped the film and told them who he is, the leadership he's providing, and it made a very big difference in terms of how seriously they engaged; 2) through this engagement, and the discussion we had, they were able to connect into a different framework of the problem and solution and see a pathway for real change; 3) following what BA says about the role of Revolution newspaper in people seeing themselves in this movement for revolution and how what they do makes a difference, was very important in how we used the paper and the effect it had on them; and 4) people need to be given a way into building the movement for revolution, not just for a one-time thing and then get back to them later, but in a way that is sustained and taking up more responsibility so that we are actually accumulating forces for revolution.
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