High school students engaging BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! in class, and taking up the fight for October 22
October 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
We decided to talk to teachers about showing BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live in their classes. A teacher in an inner-city high school who has watched the full DVD and has a lot of appreciation for it liked the idea of showing it to the students and brought to bear his thinking about the difficulty for them to get what BA is saying. He said BA is fighting for a complete change economically, politically, culturally and in how people treat each other, and the students' life experiences are so narrow that that's hard for them to grasp.
The person meeting with him brought up the point that BA makes in the talk, that people with very little education can understand what's in his book BAsics. The teacher said he doesn't mean the students can't understand it but that they don't have a context that facilitates grasping the totality of the change BA is fighting for. This is an important insight raised by this teacher and is something we want to explore further with him.
The teacher invited us in to speak to three classes of 12th grade government/history classes. The classes are each 1 hour and 45 minutes long, which gives time to get deeply into some things. In making the plans to go to these classes, we took into account what he was saying about students needing the context to understand what BA is saying. We decided rather than showing a short clip and having a lot of discussion, or showing a clip from the middle of the talk speaking to particular questions that would be good to address, we needed to show students as much of the first hour of the talk as possible.
We also had thought about making the October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation more of the focus of the classes, but as we talked it through we realized that we have this opportunity for students to engage BA and we need to make the most out of it, and that they need to be able to learn and think about this very important day of protest and the need to act in relation to it in the context of learning and thinking about the larger picture this flows from. We decided to show the first 40 minutes of the film to students and link in O22 along the way.
The students were drawn in by our intro to really engage BA. Not everyone did, but students were compelled by what we said. A young member of the Revolution Club read out loud the short piece "Who Is BA" found on page two of Revolution newspaper to kick it off.
The teacher opened up the class asking students to take 10 minutes to write down their thoughts on two words: revolution and love. Love, which is found (backwards) in revolution. By giving the students a definition of both words, he asked them to write down what they thought and asked if they went together.
Students would say things like revolution brings people together against a common enemy (the government) and out of that comes love because they are in it together... that was just one response to give an example of how students were thinking. We used that as part of the intro in speaking to who BA is, having a deep love for humanity he has forged a path out of this horror based on a scientific understanding which allows the needed space and wrangling to get at the root of the problem.
We split the video clip into two parts, showing the first 18 minutes. We would stop there and allow the time for questions. Then we would go on to show the next clip.
There was some laughter during the film. Students liked the fact that BA used curse words to express himself. A student who talked individually with one of the presenters said he had never heard a white person say that before, followed by the realization that he doesn't know too many white people other than teachers. You could tell just by looking at the students that they were feeling what BA was saying, and a number of them had things to say in response to what was said.
Students had an intimate understanding of the horrors, the murder and brutality that takes place around them, and different views of where this comes from. One student expressed that "they [government] are the ones doing this to us." He followed that by saying "the government does a lot of bad things and then they do some good things to try to make themselves seem like the good guys." Other students agreed with what the student put out about this.
There was some blaming the people put out by students too. One example in the same class was someone saying that "the way people have tried to change is the wrong way by 'rioting,' so they bring it on themselves."
In another class this was posed more sharply, with anger directed at BA by a young Latina who asked "why does he [BA] think he has the authority to talk about Latinos?" and followed this with an argument that it's mainly ourselves causing the problem and not the police. She also said, "What has BA done to help Black and Latino people, besides pointing out all these things that we already know?"
We briefly went at this by saying that BA is getting at the source of all the suffering and fighting for truth which is not something that you own but is objective (speaking to her narrow outlook that sees the oppression of "my people" as something to try to own, instead of something that is part of reality and can be understood objectively as part of understanding and changing the whole world). In response to her second question, we responded that BA is not feeding or housing people, he is leading people to make revolution to get rid of the cause of all this. In relation to what students were saying about "ourselves" causing the problem, in the next 20+ minutes of the film we showed BA speaks directly to this and it seemed they were engaging this answer. However, we summed up this would have been important to lead some discussion of after watching it.
Students raised many examples of how this system keeps them down: stop-and-frisk, gang injunctions, court system, criminalization, etc. They wanted to understand why there is no future for them and why couldn't they be given a chance. One way this was brought out by the students was realizing that "Trayvon Martin could have been anybody here, he was a normal kid in school, could have been any one of us!" Many of the students were upset at the verdict acquitting Zimmerman but voiced that they and many others think it's never gonna stop.
One thing we put forward is the need to dig into BA and get connected with this movement for revolution. As part of our intro to the film, we spoke about the framework with which he is analyzing shit, and thru this film, the basis it provides for many like them (students) to do the same, opening doors for ways to go up against this that furthers the cause of ultimately doing away with this system.
The students and teacher saw the problem that what you make revolution against is the government and not a whole system. We spoke in each class to how this is not just the government but the system of capitalism-imperialism (in some classes highlighted with examples from the DVD like how the IMF—Institute of Misery and Famine—sets policies that raise the cost of firewood in places like Peru which results in cholera epidemics). We also made clear, drawing from the statement on strategy and "Some Crucial Points of Revolutionary Orientation—in Opposition to Infantile Posturing and Distortions of Revolution," what a revolution is and is not.
In one class, there was discussion about atheism and religion, and about how revolution would actually solve the problems people are up against by bringing in a new state power. When we stopped the film after the first 18 minutes, a Black student in the middle of the class raised his hand and said—in a way that indicated both excitement and nervousness—BA's an atheist, he doesn't believe in God because why would God make a world with all this suffering? A Black student sitting behind him spoke up, "Well I believe in God, and everything that's happening now was already talked about in the Bible."
We walked through this a little bit with him. He said the Bible says you're not supposed to pass laws for gay marriage. We told him he should go back and read his Bible—which doesn't say anything of the sort, but does say gay people should be killed and along with that people who believe in other gods should be killed, the women raped, and the babies' heads bashed in. And we told the class, in any book you have to look at the content of what it's putting forward and whether it is something that should be upheld or not—and the Bible reflects the morality of the slave society that produced it.
We went on to say something about the essential question of how to determine what's true. We pointed to what BA said in the film about evidence. How there is no evidence for a god, but there is a lot of evidence for how different societies at different times made up different gods to try to explain things they didn't understand. We asked students how many of them had taken a science class. All raised their hands. We asked them what kind of science. They answered, biology, physics, and chemistry. We said in all and any of those classes, if you had science teachers that were worth anything, they taught you about the scientific method and about how there has to be evidence to determine what's going on. You can't see the air but you can know there are molecules of oxygen and other things in the air because this can be tested. Students nodded along, understanding this. This scientific method can be applied to understanding human society, and it is in contrast to faith-based. In church they tell you to believe in God and not ask any questions and not look for evidence. By definition, you are just supposed to have faith. These are two different approaches to understanding the world and we need to apply a scientific approach to really understand and change the world.
The student who had said he believes in God didn't want to say anything else, but he was clearly unhappy with what we were saying. We said there is a need to fight against injustice and you shouldn't turn away from that because of your belief in God—if you stand up to fight injustice, we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, and keep discussing this as we fight together. He was still angry and when we turned the film back on, he wasn't paying very close attention. When BA did exposure and ridicule of the bankruptcy of the "pull up your pants" line, and said sarcastically, "these Black youth must be really stupid," the student didn't catch the sarcasm and shouted back at the film, "You're stupid!" As BA continued to explain in the film the way that in reality it is NOT the fault of the Black youth—that they have no future under this system—the expression on his face changed and his demeanor changed. By the end of the class period, he was engaging the question of how to go up against and stop police brutality and the criminalization of a generation, and he was asking about and commenting positively about having run into revolutionaries building the movement for revolution on a street corner he passes by.
Other students in this class had questions about what revolution is and what is the goal of this revolution. A young Latina asked, "You want to get rid of this system, what would you build up after doing that?" We told them about the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and gave some examples of how a new state power, immediately after the revolution, would change things. We started with what neighborhoods like the one we were speaking in are like under this system—these neighborhoods are left to rot, they don't give a fuck about these places. The guy in the middle of the room blurted out, "That is the truest thing I've heard anybody say." We described how immediately after seizing power, the first thing would be resources and attention being put into these neighborhoods to enable people to build them up, to overcome the legacy of oppression, to make beautiful housing and playgrounds and schools.
Several students were paying very close attention and nodding along. We went on to talk about education, how in this system they don't teach people anything about the truth of the history of this country and in particular people don't know about each other and each other's history—so you have Black people and Latinos fighting each other and don't know anything about how this country and this system has oppressed and exploited them in different ways and then pit them against each other. This is something we would teach people about, and the schools would be places where students together with teachers talk about what should be taught in the schools. The young woman who'd asked the question jumped in to say there are some states that don't even teach about slavery, and she was nodding with a big smile when we talked about what the schools would be like in a new society.
The guy in the middle really liked what he was hearing, but then asked hesitantly, "Is this a cult?" He had a hard time explaining why he asked the question, and kind of felt bad about asking it because he thought it was insulting and didn't want to insult us. We told him it was good to ask about this and in answering it we returned to the discussion of science vs. faith and that this is not a movement or leader who is asking people to follow blindly, but in fact to themselves take up a scientific approach and ask questions and think critically about and challenge what we say. He was satisfied with this answer, but we went on to say a little about how some things get labeled as cults (like the people who commit mass-suicide based on religious beliefs are considered a cult, but Christianity is not, even though the beliefs are just as little founded in reality) and the way in which the charge of "cult" has been used to attack communism.
In the last part of the discussion, we tried to dig back into what BA was talking about in relation to the gangs and people fighting each other, but didn't have enough time to do the work to really get people opened up about this. We spent the last 10 minutes talking explicitly about October 22nd and the need for students to take this up and the ways it can and needs to reverberate throughout their school and throughout society.
We asked for a show of hands of people who know someone in prison and at least half the class raised their hands. We asked for a show of hands of people who know someone beaten or killed by police and a third of the class raised their hands. We told them that what happens on O22 can change people's thinking about why this is happening and what we can do about it, and standing up to this is a very important part of getting to the point when we can make a revolution. This is a school where the wearing of hoodies has been banned since the verdict exonerating Trayvon's killer—and when we said there should be a fight over this on O22, with lots of people wearing hoodies, there was an immediate audible response of appreciation from much of the class.
In each class, students bought copies of Revolution newspaper, which we'd drawn from and referenced throughout the classes, and they took fliers and lots of stickers for O22 to spread everywhere. They also got the postcard for the Revolution—Nothing Less! DVD and a flier for an upcoming screening of part of the film. A handful of students from all three classes wanted to learn more and go to the screening. Students mentioned they would like to have us back.
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