From Revolution Club Chicago

Speaking to an African American History Class

November 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

When students at a predominantly Black community college arrived at their African-American History class last week, the professor announced there would be a guest speaker. A member of the Revolution Club introduced herself and began to talk about why the Trump/Pence regime must go.

It was a small class, not more than 20 students. The professor asked the speaker, a Black woman, to talk about what this has to do with the history of white supremacy in this country. She brought to bear some of that history, and how the Trump/Pence regime is now establishing open white supremacist rule and also other aspects of what the regime means for humanity, that we have to act to drive it out, not just for ourselves or for one people, but in the interests of humanity.

The Revolution Club member was soon joined by her comrade, who talked about the movement of protests that began Nov 4 to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power, and the urgent need to join into this movement, including coming and spreading the word about the upcoming protest on Nov 18, “Break the Silence—Bring the Noise!” A student asked for more information about Nov 4 and what is this movement of protests. We described 4,000 people in 24 cities coming out into the streets to demand Trump and Pence Must Go. Then, we highlighted how brave people were to do this, the threats flooding the internet they had to go up against; places where people had to march in the face of armed white supremacist fascists; the people who came by themselves even though they couldn’t get any friends to come with them. We connected this to what happened in Charlottesville, and what it means that a violent fascist movement is being unleashed and why this makes it even more urgent to step forward NOW before it is too late.

We asked students for their thoughts and questions. One asked if the murderer of Heather Heyer would be punished for this murder. Another student asked for a definition of fascism. We responded and also pulled up the “What is Fascism?” definition from RefuseFascism.org on the screen behind us. The same student responded with what she understands fascism to be, and interchangeably used the terms fascism and communism. We told her that these are actually polar opposites, that we in fact are communists which mean ending all oppression for all of humanity, whereas fascism is a more openly violent form of capitalism that shreds basic rights and dehumanizes and targets groups that are not the dominant group that sees itself as superior. We told them about Bob Avakian, the leader who has developed a new communism and is leading a Party and movement for revolution today. We showed the trailer for his talk, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible, and passed out cards for the film and really encouraged people to watch the whole thing. We made the point, and the students understood it from the trailer, that we all must come together to drive out this fascist regime, and we can disagree on things like communism and revolution as we do this together. The student who had asked about fascism said she agreed that we can and need to come together from different viewpoints in order to meet this danger.

One student in the class had come to Nov 4 and very strongly hates everything Trump and Pence represent. She is a Latina student taking an African American History class with all Black students and feels this experience has taught her a lot, including rupturing some of her own stereotypes. She was the reason we were speaking in that class. We had talked with her after Nov 4 and she had the idea that we should speak in this class and asked her professor if he would invite us in. In the class, we asked her if she would speak about her experience on Nov 4. She said she had already reported back to the class about it, but she would talk about it again. She described a scene where some Trump supporters had mixed in with the marchers and at one point one of them tried to punch her in the face. Somebody with blue eyes jumped in between before she was hit and was hit himself and fought off the person trying to hit her. She said this really moved her, and made her think differently about who “her people” are. These are “her people” that she was marching with and we were looking out for each other.

Towards the end of the class we put the challenge directly to everyone there, who would be coming to Bring the Noise on Nov 18? One older woman who had been very engaged said she wants to be part of this, but wasn’t sure she could make it Saturday because she had plans already. A younger man said if he had time he would come. We responded that this is the time for people to change their schedules. After everything we’d discussed together about the danger of this regime to humanity—the genocidal talk of unleashing the police to be more violent, the needless deaths of people in Puerto Rico, the threat of nuclear devastation to Koreans and the whole world, the unleashing of fascist storm troops, the “joke” of Pence wanting to hang all the gay people, the disgusting assault on the humanity of women.... This is moving forward, we must stop it, and the time is now. The man said he would change his schedule to come on Saturday, and he did.

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