Fall 2013 Drive to Financially Sustain revcom.us
October 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Right now, you are needed to become, or renew being, a regular financial sustainer of revcom.us with a regular monthly contribution. This can be monthly commitments of $500, $100 or $10, depending on your capability. All of it matters.
In Revolution #318 we announced the Fall 2013 Sustainer Drive for revcom.us. A great deal rides on how well the revcom.us website can play its role, enabling humanity to understand and radically change the world. It is really indispensable. On revcom.us a visitor can find what this whole revolution is about and find their place in it. And it’s the main way people around the world can encounter and engage the new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob Avakian.
Consider the need to not only maintain revcom.us but dramatically improve and expand its influence and reach. Financially contributing, on a regular monthly basis, really is a critical way for a great variety of people to be part of this. And it can make all the difference in the world.
Pledge today online at revcom.us (click through to “Sustain”), or go to your local Revolution newspaper distributor, or the Revolution Books store or outlet nearest you. You can also send checks or money orders to: RCP Publications, Box 3486 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654. Make checks payable to “RCP Publications.”
If this is the first time you’ve considered sustaining revcom.us, start now. If you are a sustainer, consider increasing your amount. If you have sustained in the past but are not sustaining now, pick it up again. If you have been a sustainer but have missed some payments, help figure out how those funds can be systematically turned in. Let others know, and think big.
With this issue we're sharing some contributions from readers about this Sustainer Drive. While reading this correspondence, think of the contrast between the thinking and culture that predominates today, and what that needs to, and can, change into when masses of people get into Bob Avakian, and get into revcom.us. Both these correspondences are about reaching out to others with this need. Let's learn from that, too.
Sustain revcom.us—Broadening Horizons and Deepening Understanding
I was recently talking with a young member in the Revolution Club who graduated from college a couple years ago. We were talking about what's wrong with the culture in society, and on campus. One thing he was emphasizing was how people, including college educated youth, know very little about the world, and he was describing how everything in our society reinforces that. He included in this the role of the Internet. Often, students get their news from the headlines at yahoo or gmail when they're going to check their email. But these sites are designed—or you design it yourself—to only show you what you're already interested in, "my news." So you are rarely confronted with something that is outside of what you already know.
This is a big problem! And reinforces small-mindedness and individualism. An ever-narrowing understanding of the broader world with your horizons squashed and your thinking gets more and more segmented.
revcom.us—in its substance and in its structure is just the opposite, cutting against the grain of our society—taking you broader and deeper.
Anyone considering a regular contribution to revcom.us—take some time to explore this website.
In everything about revcom.us it is leading people—to understand not just what is happening but why, the deeper mainsprings giving rise to any one particular outrage, how any single outrage is connected up more deeply to other outrages of this system that they may not experience or even be aware of. It gives people a way to be part of fighting the power today, getting connected with the movement for revolution, and most importantly it takes you to the deepest level of theory concentrated in the work of Bob Avakian and the Party he leads.
The whole design of the site goes up against the spontaneity of a lot of internet culture which too often leads people to deal with surface-level phenomenon, information with no analysis and a narrowing of the questions. Overall in the culture there is a deep under-appreciation and opposition to theory. But without a theoretical understand of what is happening, why and what the potential is for transformation—in a world that is moving and changing—we will, as Revolution newspaper put it recently, end up groping blindly in the dark.
If you arrived at revcom.us because you are agonizing about the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, you would find not just deep analysis of the case itself, exposure of what happened in the trial and why, but on-the-ground reportage from the courtroom that challenges people's false and fundamental assumptions about the legal system in America. You would find sharp critiques of all the ways this system and those who fight for its interests were trying to demobilize people's outrage—from getting them to rely on the Justice Department or thinking we should rely on a nonexistent god. At revcom.us and in the pages of Revolution newspaper, you are asked to question not just what you are being told to think but how you are trained to come to that understanding. And you are led to ask the biggest questions about the source of these outrages and the most fundamental solution in the need, basis and possibility of real revolution. In the case of Trayvon Martin, we were digging in deeply to the source of the oppression of Black people, what this is part of and the roots of this in the whole system, and we are driving people to get more deeply into the solution to all this—the deeper theoretical questions of revolution, communism, and the leadership and strategy to make revolution in the world today.
Contribute and sustain revcom.us
The Leadership Provided by revcom/Revolution—And Why You Should Sustain This Website and Newspaper
From a reader:
Everyone I know has been agonizing over what the hell is going on with this shutdown. I must admit I did not see all that is revealed in this article from revcom.us, the website of Revolution newspaper, AND what we need to be doing if we want to radically change the world, including for those of us who are part of a movement for revolution: "The Shutdown, the Showdown, and the Urgent Need to Repolarize... for Revolution."
This article is an excellent example of the leadership provided by Revolution newspaper/revcom.us AND why you should support financially the paper and website, including by doing a monthly sustainer. In the article "Fall 2013 Drive to Financially Sustain revcom.us" it tells of how in the few days after the verdict letting George Zimmerman walk after his trial for murdering Trayvon Martin, the number of visits to revcom.us tripled. I'll bet there will be a big increase around this shutdown.
And the article on financially sustaining revcom.us ends with this, which tells sharply the role of revcom.us: "As people lift their heads, because of that verdict or because of other jolts in the mix right now, their ability to find revcom.us and learn how what has moved them relates to all the outrages people face around the world; how this is the result of the system we live under, how this can be resolved with revolution; that there is a strategy for that revolution, that there is the vision, understanding and leadership we have for this; and that they can find their place in it—this depends on you. Support revcom.us!"
The following note came from someone who already sustains, with a check for $1,000:
"I just finished reading the article on the Gov. Shutdown and didn't realize that it was more than just Republican dicking around. I figured you could use 10 pigs so here's a check. Use it where you need it most."
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.