Taking Out the Message: "Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution"
Organizing a Focused, Coherent Force for Even Greater Societal Impact
July 11, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is from a reader who has been taking out the Message “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution.” It was written prior to the recent upsurge of struggle against police terror and murder, but its essential points should be applied to new conditions and, in those conditions, are even more relevant.
The Revolutionary Communist Party IS ORGANIZING NOW TO OVERTHROW THIS SYSTEM AT THE SOONEST POSSIBLE TIME. Preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America.
The Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is pivotal to carrying out what it calls for: “ORGANIZING NOW TO OVERTHROW THE SYSTEM AT THE SOONEST POSSIBLE TIME. Preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America.”
The Message is straightforward and boiled down to the essence... what is the problem, what is the urgently needed solution, who is the leadership, what do we do now to get organized and what are the principles to live by starting right now to convey this future society. It takes the reader of the Message to the truth of the reality humanity confronts and the 100 percent real answers. When the Revolution Club brings it in a powerful way with certitude on the street and at things like the July 4th picnics... when you sit quietly and read it together with people... when you return to it in the midst of the discussions and debates that break out in its wake—then you are focusing and re-focusing people’s attention on the big picture of reality and how a radically better world can be brought into being. We need to be more conscious of what a powerful tool this is, and we can do an even better job in wielding the content of this Message.
This is one thing everyone can do—SPREAD IT EVERYWHERE. When the Message first came out, we enlisted people in neighborhoods where the Revolution Club was getting it into apartment complexes around the area. People took it on the trains and put it under people’s doors. This made an impact. A couple of Revcoms did a little survey to see if people saw and read it in this neighborhood. It turned out one out of three people had seen it and most of them had read part or all of it. A young woman came up to people at a citywide literature festival and said she got the statement in her neighborhood and, since, she had been looking for the Revolution Club and gave people her number to pass on to the Club. We need to do more of this as we go. If someone is drawn to it or says they want to stay in contact... find out where they can take responsibility for getting it out and enlist them on the spot. Then make sure to follow up.
In this same area, the bus stops have been maintained as “mini Revolution walls”—posting new things like the call for the July 4th picnic... Revolution Club flyers... the poster of the Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave... This too is something that the people who want to be part of this, who want to be supportive, can do: keep posting things up at the bus stops in their ’hood on their way to and from work.
This spreads into other movements and all kinds of realms. A person in the above area who takes a STOP sign out to get the youth to stop the violence, also spreads the Message. A woman from a nearby hollowed-out industrial city goes to clinic for sickle-cell and finds ways to leave the statement on the literature tables, the bulletin boards, the bathroom walls. A Revcom goes to a gang truce meeting, introduces the statement, and one o.g. says, “Oh, you’re the people behind that...” then turns to the others and says, “Read it, it’s serious.”
We’ve held meetings to get into different parts of REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, introducing people who have been activated or been drawn to the statement, along with friends they bring, to Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution. We’ve gone out and shown clips of the DVD, or of “BA Through the Years.” Involving people in BA, getting them to get into BA, even in beginning ways is another way—and we need to do more to encourage people to post and spread these on social media.
We also need to appreciate how this can be the pivot for many others in big and small towns to gain consciousness of the movement for revolution and be organized into being part of it in many different ways. Summer is a time when people travel to see family and friends or to vacation. Everywhere we should be spreading this Message—these are highly charged times politically, and people need to see and hear that the choice is not pick your poison or, as one Club member put it, “Killary or Mein Trumpf.” Everywhere we should be putting forward the real alternative—revolution—and the real leadership for this—BA.
Already, members of the Revolution Club and others have taken it on the road with them, but this is something many more people can do. In one small city that is about 1½ hours away from a major metro area, there is an older revolutionary who is spreading this everywhere in his town, taking it to both the projects and the artist district. We are planning to send someone out there periodically to go around with him, talking to all the people he knows in town as well as send a representative to meet with the people he gathers up.
The Revolution Club in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived. (Photo: Special to revcom.us)
In really appreciating the impact the Message has already had so far on people who have gotten their hands on a copy, on people who have seen the Revolution Club wielding it and representing for it—in this you see some really important little shoots of new things. The people who say they want to join the Revolution Club are very, very important and really essential to this revolution we are out to make at the soonest possible time, and plans to bring them in on the spot, to systematically recruit and develop the steps for when they first join the Club, is vital. Transforming the “broader sea” of people... preparing the ground and preparing the people, is also going on but may be harder to fully recognize. Do we get the impact that this is already having? Do we see that people are checking it out... is this the force that can actually lead a revolution? What kind of world would they bring into being? One critical task of leadership is pulling the lens back to enable people to see what they are actually accomplishing, how they are changing things, what all this is building toward and how is it getting us to what is actually called for in the Message. Critical to this, we have found that serious and repeated wrangling over the first 40 minutes or so of the third disk of REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! is critical in imbuing this sense in people.
This means breaking with the notion that we are a small bunch “doing things for people” or in their stead, and grasping the power of the truth of the statement and the role of all kinds of people in taking this up in all kinds of ways. Do we first RECOGNIZE, and then NURTURE and KNIT together, all the positive ways people can be part of this revolution and the implications of this for when a revolutionary situation opens up? Are we thinking of ways to give this organizational expression, not just on-ramps to the revolution, but ways to move people forward once they do come on?
This Message speaks to people, especially but not only those on the bottom... for many, it captures their yet unspoken and unformed hope for a different and far better future. The vendor at the anti-July 4th picnic who puts the Message and Revolution newspaper on his car while he sells out of the trunk. The young man driving around playing Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Going to Come” when Revcoms were at the courthouse, three times as a show of solidarity. The activist who brings a dish to the anti-4th of July picnic. The pan-Africanist bookstore that offers space for the Revolution Club to meet. The professionals who donate money to support the work of the Club. The 11-year-old who passes out palm cards... all the people decked out in red, white, and blue garb who studied displays about the crimes of America on July 4th... these are just a FEW of the seeds of the future that we need to appreciate and not walk past but build on, on the spot, and which we really work to figure out how to draw this into a more organized way, preparing the broad ranks of the people who will be part of any revolutionary struggle in many different capacities.
If you think about it, this has strategic implications not only all the way through to a revolutionary situation and a struggle for state power when that time comes, but it also has immediate implications for the Revolution Clubs going to the Republican and Democratic conventions. Everyone needs to know that they are going to take the revolution right into the midst of the protests while the whole world literally will be watching what unfolds at both conventions. In the neighborhoods of the oppressed, people can be part of this by signing and sending banners (“South Side of Chicago,” or messages from “family members of people killed by the police”...); raising money to support the revolutionaries going to the conventions; putting on send-off dinners and report-back meetings; everyone following what is unfolding by going to revcom.us and being there to protest any repression aimed at those resisting outside the ugly spectacle of these conventions.
How do these get multiplied... but how do those taking these kinds of initiatives get marshaled into an increasingly focused and coherent and organized force... how can they be brought to bear in a way that gives an even greater societal impact...?
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