From the Revolution Club NYC

Fighting for Another Future, and Forging A Future People:
'I woke up to the true America today... but I didn't wake up alone'

May 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Basics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian Let's imagine if we had a whole different art and culture. Come on, enough of this "bitches and ho's" and SWAT teams kicking down doors. Enough of this "get low" bullshit. And how come it's always the women that have to get low? We already have a situation where the masses of women and the masses of people are pushed down and held down low enough already. It's time for us to get up and get on up.

Imagine if we had a society where there was culture—yes it was lively and full of creativity and energy and yes rhythm and excitement, but at the same time, instead of degrading people, lifted us up. Imagine if it gave us a vision and a reality of what it means to make a whole different society and a whole different kind of world. Imagine if it laid out the problems for people in making this kind of world and challenged them to take up these problems. Imagine if art and culture too—movies, songs, television, everything—challenged people to think critically, to look at things differently, to see things in a different light, but all pointing toward how can we make a better world.

Imagine if the people who created art and culture were not just a handful of people but all of the masses of people, with all their creative energy unleashed, and the time were made for them to do that, and for them to join with people who are more full-time workers and creators in the realm of art and culture to bring forward something new that would challenge people, that would make them think in different ways, that would make them be able to see things critically and from a different angle, and would help them to be uplifted and help them to see their unity with each other and with people throughout the world in putting an end to all the horrors that we're taught are just the natural order of things. Imagine all that.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 2:8

The Revolution Club had been out on day 3 of protesting in front of Trump Tower with Refuse Fascism, responding to the escalation of moves to consolidate a fascist America with the firing of FBI Director James Comey. At the end of this day 3 we invited people we had been marching with to Revolution Books for our monthly scheduled open mic “Future People.”

We hold this every month, where people are invited to come together to create, share and express different forms of art including singing, poetry, rap, guitar playing, ukulele playing, readings, tap dancing, and more. All this, shared on a stage where the six Points of Attention (POA) for the Revolution set a foundation, and are promoted as both the basis for coming together in this space to contribute to a culture of radical revolt against this revolting culture, and also representing an alternate authority for what to live and fight for in the larger world.

About 20 people gathered at Revolution Books for the Club's open mic. It was a mix of all kinds of people, mostly young but older as well, all nationalities and from different strata. Students, professionals, people from the neighborhoods, Refuse Fascism volunteers and the Revolution Club. Some were supporters of the store or the club, and some we had just met by being out in the world fighting the power and transforming the people for revolution.

Several of the pieces (Including songs, poems, and readings) were dealing with the contradiction of just trying to be a Black person in this society, both speaking to the brutality and open oppression of this system that comes down on Black people, and also having to go up against the stereotypes and view of how Black people are “supposed to be.” There were pieces on fascism and Trump, with one featured song that had been sung out in front of Trump Tower at the marches with the refrain “I don't support your wall. I don't support your ban. And if you ain't a fan say FUCK THE ORANGE MAN!” There was a poem about veganism. There were two beautiful pieces in Spanish, one of them was from a member of the Club in the style of Canción protesta, with a message to the persecuted to gather the strength to say !Basta Ya!/Enough and stop fascism. The other Spanish piece was a moving song about a longing to see the world change its colors. Another Revolution Club member did a poem expressing disdain with the many ways this system traps up especially the most oppressed with ideas of chasing stardom and the American dream, instead of how we all get free. Another young man who started getting closer to the Club recently read a poem he had written there about waking up to the true America, and confronting its towering crimes, which ended with the lines “I woke up to the true America today... but I didn't wake up alone.” Raymond Lotta gave a message from the bookstore and included a story about going out with Refuse Fascism the night before to a performance at Town Hall where actors performed selected transcripts from the confirmation hearings of key Trump appointees, and how we were welcomed and invited in by the theatre to watch, and some actors were proud to hear we had come, and it turned out that the show included, in it, reenactments of what Refuse Fascism, members of the Revolution Club, and others had done to interrupt the confirmation hearing of Jeff Sessions!

This whole night was MC'd by several Club members who would intersperse announcements about why and how to get involved with the Club, what the Club had been doing in the world including working with Refuse Fascism to drive out this fascist regime, telling people about the Revolution Club in Chicago going to work on a key problem of the revolution, getting people out of fighting and killing each other and into the revolution. Bringing up and breaking down the importance of the POAs, directing people to revcom.us both generally and specifically to the prisoner's letter about digging the POAs. And letting people know that the leadership of Bob Avakian and The New Communism is what is at the heart of all this, and how people could learn more about that in the store and with the Club, including setting up with some people an informal reading and discussion of the introduction to The New Communism.

This was a whole day of struggle, in the streets and on the stage. Up against the way the world is, and reaching for a whole other way the world could be.

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Fighting for Another Future, and Forging A Future People:'I woke up to the true America today... but I didn't wake up alone'

Fighting for Another Future, and Forging A Future People:
'I woke up to the true America today... but I didn't wake up alone'