"Don't people deserve to gain an understanding of what someone has brought forward as a way out of all this madness!?"
A Letter to My Family About Donating to the BA Everywhere Campaign
February 7, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From the Editors: The following is a copy of a letter a young revolutionary wrote to their family during the holiday season. The writer has decided to share it with other readers in order to encourage as many people as possible to contribute to the BA Everywhere—Imagine the Difference It Could Make! campaign and to join the writer in taking BA and this campaign out to everyone they know.
Oh hi family =)
So as many of you already know, I am a big fan of the truth. I have never understood why only some truth is allowed to come out, is put on the table, is valid. I have come to understand that only certain people have been granted the right to tell the truth, to redeem themselves, and to be rewarded for getting beyond their bad decisions. While some people are forced to confront their bad decisions on a constant basis; and others never, only forced to confront them when necessary, in moments of desperation.
What I have laid out here is both true universally in society, but also as characteristics of this family. That may be hard to hear but it does reflect a larger reality that most people have never had to confront because it makes them uncomfortable... and so just like the larger world they will not and cannot confront, this way of approaching reality is then reinforced in families. I am attempting to change some of that with this letter.
As someone who has been brought up by a woman who defies gravity by refusing to fall despite everything against her, I have become someone who also attempts to defy some things... i.e. the ways of thinking this system puts on people. I strive for the truth, and the ways in which what is true today can be changed for the better tomorrow. What I mean by this is, the reality we face today, i.e. 10 million children a year dying of malnutrition and preventable disease, 1/3 of women being brutalized in some form, wars for empire, mass incarceration, destruction of the environment, ALL of those things need to be put to an end, and what I have found in my time here, is a way out of this madness. And look, these are all major things, and you might not think they directly affect you, but in fact they do. They affect all of us.
Imagine a world where people didn't have to escape from the everyday realities through drugs and alcohol. Imagine a world where women could walk down the street at night alone, without fear. Imagine people relating to each other on the basis of seeing each other as full human beings, not on the basis of their conditioned gender roles. Imagine everyone having a say in how society was run, everyone having a role to play, everyone having a responsibility to the flourishing of society. We can get there, and it is going to take a revolution. There is a basis to get to a whole other world, a far better world, and right now it takes people raising their sights, and it takes a vision and a strategy that can lead us there. Bob Avakian is a revolutionary that came out of the movements of the 1960s, and has forged a party, a strategy, and vision, through a scientific understanding of how revolution was made throughout history, what went wrong, what advancements were made, and how we could go farther, today. And look I don't literally mean today, but it is going to take people going out into society, taking out the works of Avakian, and engaging people in the understanding that he has brought forward. This is not the best of all possible worlds, it just isn't. This system is run by a handful of people who control all the wealth, power, knowledge, and means of production, while the rest of us get to live by what they deem to be beneficial to this system remaining intact. Knowing what I know today, I cannot sit idly by and allow people to believe there is no other way the world could be, or no real way out.
This year, I have been all over the country, fighting for women's right to abortion, which is being stripped away state by state, restriction by restriction, under the false pretenses of being about women's 'health and safety.'. NO! Not only are these attacks not at all based on any reality (i.e. fetal pain, health risks of abortion, etc.), this assault on women's right to abortion is ultimately about hammering women back to a place where it can be made no mistake that the sole reason they exist on this earth is to reproduce. Along my travels I have met many people who truly believe this is all women are good for, and who are doing their damnedest to make sure abortion is inaccessible to women all over the country. This is absolutely outrageous and needs to be exposed and opposed if women are going to be viewed and treated as full human beings. The group Stop Patriarchy has been out on the front lines fighting back against these attacks and other forms of degradation of women and is a movement that will not stop short of the full liberation of women. Fighting on this front is something Bob Avakian has noted as key to any revolution worth making. People need to start shaking off these ways of thinking about women, and it needs to be on the basis of science and reality. None of this is impossible. Throughout my travels, I have seen for myself, the ways in which people can transform when they are shaken to the core and begin to understand how so much of what they thought to be true has been imposed on them!
ALL TRUTH needs to be spoken about, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes you. No matter what you think in this immediate moment, abortion is a necessary procedure, and it matters what people do now, as far as keeping it safe, legal, and accessible to all women who need it. No matter what you think in this immediate moment, you know women in your life who have been raped. No matter what you think in this immediate moment, slavery has taken new form in mass incarceration and it is affecting how you look at oppressed minorities, as well as how they look at themselves. No matter what you think in this immediate moment, we are living off of the exploitation of Third World nations.
Make you uncomfortable? GOOD =)
So why am I saying all this? Besides the fact you should all know about this guy and check him out and at least gain an understanding of what I'm into!? I urge you, this holiday season to DONATE to getting the works of Bob Avakian out into society. This is someone who cares so much about the future of humanity, and its potential, that he has put his life on the line, and worked nonstop over decades leading, inspiring, and rallying people to revolution, and even if you don't agree with the need for revolution right now, I ask you... why not allow masses of people to engage with this and determine whether or not it is the way out? Don't people deserve to gain an understanding of what someone has brought forward as a way out of all this madness!? This year, I do not want anyone spending any kind of money on me for things I do not need. I have everything I could need and much more. What I do want you to do is to donate to this, because this world is a horror, but it doesn't have to be this way.
http://revcom.us/movement-for-revolution/BAE/index.html
I love you all
SO MUCH! xoxoxoxox
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