Launching the New Call from Refuse Fascism

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: Revcom.us received the following letter to Refuse Fascism organizers from RefuseFascism.org. It lays out their plans to launch their new Call to Action (linked here and at the bottom of this page). We are sharing this with our readers because it is of tremendous import to people all over the world that this effort succeeds. We will have more on this effort in the next week.

April 1, 2018

To Chapters and Organizers:

Trump’s recent appointment of a team of torturers, war criminals and eager-to-be war criminals—coming on top of more than a year now of the regime’s fascist assault on many different sections of the people as well as many norms and institutions of society—make the mission of RefuseFascism.org more urgent and necessary than ever before.

People all over the world need for us to succeed very soon in launching a movement of sustained mass nonviolent protests that start with many thousands and grow to millions and do not stop until the demand—The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!—is met.

To this end, it is of tremendous importance that we now have a new Call to Action. This new Call captures in a single piece the scope and magnitude of the danger we face 14 months into a fascist regime and compellingly puts forward the only way that this can be stopped.

This Call provides a unified understanding and mission around which RefuseFascism.org can go out and struggle to win hundreds, soon thousands, and then tens of thousands and more to the understanding and determination to act together to stop the catastrophe that is the American fascism of the Trump/Pence Regime.

The following are plans for all of us—in different parts of the country and in different ways—to work together to launch this Call with the greatest impact and in a way that builds both greater unity of will among broader numbers of people and, very importantly, greater organization and participation in RefuseFascism.org. This “launch plan” is to provide more detail and direction as to how to implement the first phase of the overall plan for 2018 which chapter organizers received two weeks ago, and which we encourage everyone to return to.

This launch plan includes “soft launch” of grassroots efforts that begins to get the new Call out hand-to-hand and prepares momentum and participation in a bigger launch on April 11, with heightened buzz, distribution, and organizing around the new Call in the two weeks to follow that.

Through this entire four week period, RF will be spreading our basic message far and wide through the Call and getting out our main slogans (This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! and, NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!). This spreading of our Call and slogans will be integrated with three additional things: [1] building organization and raising funds, drawing forward and involving new people through meetings, discussions, watching the film of the talk by Bob Avakian: “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible”; [2] preparing for a month of actions that will put the basic objective and message of RF before the world; and [3] doing all of this in the midst of the swirl of struggle against the regime around the danger of war, the assault on immigrants, and other key fronts where RF intervention would contribute to achieving our objective. Key in this period is stepping out with the Call, the slogans/posters and organizing masses into RF preparing for the struggles to come.

TODAY TO APRIL 10—”SOFT LAUNCH”

For this concentrated period, chapters and volunteers should focus on grassroots efforts of mass distribution of the new Call to Action and uniting beginning cores of people around the content of this Call (this should include existing members, folks who have been in and out of the chapters in recent months, and new people you are meeting).

a) Focus on mass distribution of the initial Call/layout. This should include not only distributing this at protests, but also at high schools (students are extremely politicized right now and very receptive), at theater events, forums, mass transit hubs, and other places. Aim to get out thousands—even tens of thousands. Collect new sign-ups and volunteers for the next phase. Always have a donation can and ASK EVERYONE to donate (the more you ask, the more people give).

b) Through this, build a buzz for and invite very aggressively to mass meetings on (or, if your chapter needs to do it near) Wednesday, April 11th.

c) Begin discussing the content of the new Call with the members of your chapter, with clusters of friends and family, with students and others you are meeting. The more people wrestle with and are united around the content of this Call, the more they can be involved in the next phase of launching this to an even greater audience. Again, ask people to donate to getting this Call printed in mass quantities, advertised online, and for the movement being built around it to succeed.

d) Take this Call to Action to people who have disproportionate influence and ask them to sign it and to donate. Send in records of people who sign this to the National Office. Once we garner a critical mass of prominent signers, we will announce the initial list in the second phase.

e) SOCIAL MEDIA: During these 9 days, RF social media (and those it can unleash) should build anticipation for the April 11th launch of the new Call to Action. This should include a series of anticipation-building posts all week (memes, short videos from RF and folks RF is meeting, clips from the BA talk, and more), perhaps a thunderclap prepared for the 11th, lining up the participation of people with larger platforms for the 11th itself, and other ideas generated by the social media team in conjunction with the National Office. This should incorporate asking people to donate and popularizing the reasons people give for donating.

APRIL 11—OFFICIAL LAUNCH

On April 11, there will be a new, more compelling and attractive print layout of the Call to Action available for distribution and “unveiled” online. There will be a 30 minute livestream from the NY meeting that will include: a dramatic reading of the Call, a presentation of the national plan, and likely a short presentation on the present danger of war (about 10 minutes each), as well as a fund-pitch. This launch should be built up in the week ahead of time on social media, and through the mass emails from RF, getting people to tune in live online and spread the livestream as it happens.

Chapters and other clusters of people around the country—everyone met through the “soft launch”—should gather to watch this live in mass organizing meetings (or on video later in the day, or later in the week). Everyone should be asked to donate on the spot online, or by filling out a pledge card indicating how much they will give and by when (which organizers will have to follow up on to collect).

This should then kick off a much more intense and wide-reaching effort to mobilize many new people to work together to mass distribute this Call to Action to an even greater range of people over the next two weeks. This should include a movement of readings of the call at pertinent locations—in front of Trump properties, in school cafeterias, from the pulpit, in senior centers, on public transit, etc. These should be filmed and promoted through social media (and creative splices of different readings could be created to spread momentum and involvement). Chapters and organizers must plan this well so this becomes both a way to reach many tens of thousands of new people with the Call and a means to concretely organize scores of new organizers to work together with, and become part of, RefuseFascism.org as they do. This must include plans for fundraising on an even bigger scale—both mass fundraising and the development of more significant donations and regular donors.

April 12 – April 25—Mass Campaign to Distribute and Get Organized Around the Call to Action

Distribute hundreds of thousands of copies of this new Call to Action across the country, creating a grassroots buzz, growing organization, setting political terms, and garnering prominent signatories that can disproportionately shape public opinion.

Fundraising: Major funds need to be raised in this period. Millions are being mobilized to donate funds and time to elections which hold no chance of stopping the nightmare Trump/Pence are imposing. We have to aggressively and boldly go out and win many thousands to very soon become donors—one time donors as well as ongoing sustainers—of RefuseFascism.org, the one organization and movement that is accurately assessing the problem we face and has a plan to move the millions required to stop this nightmare. Donating and raising funds for RF are among the most important ways of strengthening this movement—enabling us to reach millions more with the funds that are raised and organizing people by winning them to become donors and sustainers and to, in turn, take up fundraising themselves. Fundraising must be woven into every activity we undertake (always shaking the can when going out broadly, for example) and there must be specific fundraising efforts planned and persevered in (phone-banking, fundraising potlucks, bake sales, targeted outreach to develop higher level donors and sustainers, etc.).

Posters, stickers, T-shirts, hats and more. New materials are being developed to be ready for April 11. Important: We need more designers and volunteers to help develop these materials—please contact us if you, or someone you know, can volunteer.

Social media: Unleash a campaign that wields the content of the Call (entering into hot conversations and in its own right) and calls on others to sign it. Show images of posters getting up, stickers being worn and getting out, the Call being mass distributed. Work to involve more and more volunteers met online to participate in spreading this (mass emails should also include regular instructions for spreading on social media). Fundraising intensifies—including through sales of merchandize online.

Preparations for next phase: During this period, plans also must be developed for—and people organized and won to take part across the country in—forms of political protest and action that project this Call and its mission much more dramatically into society.

The National Office will write with more thinking on this soon, but in the meantime we strongly encourage you to think and strategize among your chapters and to share—in appropriate ways—ideas and suggestions (or questions) that you come up with.

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.