To All Those Who Grieve for Nipsey Hussle... and Want a Better World

By Joe Veale, Revolution Club

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

People are hurting, deeply, over the senseless killing of Nipsey Hussle. They talk about the way he wanted something better for the people and then got senselessly gunned down.

But what killed Nipsey Hussle?

Whoever pulled the trigger, Nipsey Hussle was killed by the system. A system that puts oppressed people in brutally raw conditions where they are left to kill each other off in genocidal proportions. Black against Black. Latino against Latino. One against the other. White against Black and Latino.

A system whose pig police, court system, prison system and military enforce these kinds of relations among the people—a system whose violence against the people—alongside of the horrible conditions this system has cast millions into—especially in the inner city—is repeatedly justified again, again, and again.

What will it take to not just get out of this horrible cycle but get beyond this and into a whole better world? Answer: Revolution—Nothing Less.

Revolution that leads millions to overthrow this capitalist-imperialist system—defeating and dismantling its instruments of coercion and violence—which brutally enforce this kind of shit here and even worse all over the world.

Revolution clears the ground to replace this system with a far better system and society that is outlined in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—a constitution that has been authored by the leader of the revolution who has brought forward a new communism: Bob Avakian (BA). 

We have the science, the strategy and the leadership for this revolution, in Bob Avakian (BA). And there has never been a leader like BA before—someone who has taken the science of emancipating humanity to a new level, someone who has forged a strategy for making and winning an ACTUAL revolution in this country... someone who has never lost his connection to the people and can break down this science for people... and someone who leads the revolution strategically and practically. Check out his film, WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION, at www.Revcom.us and dig into what he’s got to say... and you’ll see what I mean. We have the Revolution Club where you can be a part of and represent for the revolution as you learn more about it.

You need to get with this.

HOW Will We Get Out of This Madness?

People feel Nipsey Hussle cared about the people he came from. He was striving for a way, as he understood, to lead them out of the trap—the vicious cycle where one group is played off against the other and the system rolls along chewing up lives and spitting out bodies in the millions.

But the question is to be asked: what path, what roadway, will lead to overcoming, overthrowing the oppressor, and what road will lead you right back into the killing embrace—the real living horror of this system no matter how good your intentions are?

Let’s talk about it.

Nipsey Hussle sought to help the people by becoming a so-called “business man.” An owner of property and land. Aspiring to do what Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the tech billionaires, do.

Investing in the “new frontier” of electronics and computer science, which today under the command of global capitalism feeds like a parasite off the great mass of the world’s humanity.

Nipsey Hussle strove to develop a class of people—Black capitalist—“self-made” millionaires and billionaires.

In his view, this is the solution to the problem that those trapped especially in the inner city—and caught up in “the life”—face. Bringing their enterprising spirit and willingness to be ruthless into the legit capitalist enterprise.

The problem with this is that capitalism depends on the exploitation of the masses, here and around the world. Exploiting people, including children as young as four years old, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who work in the mines digging for minerals like coltan and cobalt. These minerals are shipped to the sweatshops in China and other places where other exploited people put them into smartphones, laptop computers, and electric cars that are then sold, bringing in hundreds of millions in profit. Meanwhile, children in the Congo have their childhood stolen from them, and other people in China are worked like slaves—their very lives used up to produce our electronic gadgets.

Yes, the Zuckerbergs and Musks have great wealth; while the people worldwide are left in conditions without running water or toilets—unable to feed themselves, and dying from diarrhea, cholera, malnourishment, starvation, AIDS, and malaria. The whip of hunger and disease keep people trapped in these relations. It’s like the whipping machine during slavery. Only now the whip that takes chunks of flesh out of your body is the whip of starvation—the whip of watching your children shrivel up and die.

The global system of capitalist-imperialism, with the USA at the top of this food chain, means that a few people consume unbelievable amounts of wealth ripped from people all over the world; that people in the U.S. parasitically benefit from this while the lives of billions of people all over the world are ground up, chewed up, and swallowed up in sweatshops, factories, mines, and plantations.

Whole nations like Congo, Bangladesh, Haiti, and Mexico are ground down. This system leads to U.S. wars killing millions to stay on top; it means the destruction of the environment as it sucks up the earth’s resources for its profit-driven system; it means patriarchy and the oppression of women horrifically woven and reinforced through all this. It means millions of migrants thrown off the land, and the destruction of the planet.

This system has its own morals, values, and culture—that shapes people’s thinking in a way where everybody is in competition and fighting with each other to “get theirs.”

Their Game... and Our Future

This is the oppressors’ game. It always has been. This is what they let you do. If you do it legit according to the rules—if you are “successful,” they will celebrate you because it validates their murderous system and keeps the masses caught in the trap of thinking everyone can achieve the great American dream of becoming an entrepreneur—that is, a small-time capitalist leading to you becoming “the man” or “the woman.” This is like what Bob Avakian says about people going to the casino and hearing all the bells and seeing all the lights going off—and everyone thinking “somebody is winning and maybe it can be me”—when in reality this is part of the game—you thinking you can become a so-called winner. And for the one in million that slips through to “win,” they become part of the system that chews up and spits out the bodies of billions.

As long as you play this game, the house always wins. Those playing are always being played... for suckers!

We need a whole different setup, a different system, where the economy is geared NOT to make a few people rich, but to uproot and overcome all exploitation and oppression, all over the world... to meet the material needs of society and the people who make it up... and to take care of the environment for future generations. We need a system where everything—the schools, the culture, everything—does not encourage and reinforce all the dog-eat-dog reality, but gives backing to the real humanity that people aspire to, but constantly find themselves up against the system when they try to live that way. We need to make revolution in this country as our part in getting to that world.

THAT is what this revolution is fighting for. The choice is this: either live with this madness, or make revolution.

Yes, We Need to Stop Killing Each Other Off—but Bringing in the Pigs Is the WRONG Answer

People feel Nipsey Hussle did a lot of different things to “give back” to the people.

In my view, one of the most significant things he “gave back” are his reflections about the way the system plays you—and gets you to participate in your own genocidal oppression.

I remember hearing an interview where he talked about when you go into another hood to shoot it up—you pass by square-looking people and you let them go—you pass by someone from another race and you let them go—then you look for someone who is rolling through this hood in the same way you roll in your hood—“that’s the one you want,” he said—“that’s the one you shoot—the one that looks just like you.”

This reflected how this system conditions you and shapes you to carry out its work—eliminating a whole section of the population that it cannot profitably use—that is, exploit. The system looks at these youth and figures it can’t any longer exploit them the way it did their parents and grandparents—as a means to make profit in the cotton fields and later as the last hired and first fired in the industrial factories—so they get some killing each other off, and they mass incarcerate the rest.

Understanding all this—what it is all part of—we can see how significant and how righteous it is when gangs are able to form truces seeking to overcome this shit.

But it must be said straight up—working with the police to do this is working with the armed force of the very oppressor who put people in this situation in the first place. These police have been killing a thousand people a year, going after Black, Latino, and Native American youth with a vengeance, and enforcing a whole genocidal program of mass incarceration. Come on people, we know what they do. We know that they incite the gangs to go after each other and stir up shit to keep this going and to have an excuse to bring down the hammer on people. The role of these police is NOT to serve and protect the people and it never can be, no matter what they tell you—as BA says:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness. (BAsics 1:24)

Making Revolution NOW

We ARE making revolution, starting to organize the thousands needed now into the movement for revolution while influencing millions. Right now the National Revolution Tour is going all over the country, spreading revolution and organizing people. We are not just waiting for the revolution, we are hastening it and bringing forward the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all out, with a real chance to win. 

We will be out there on Thursday at Nipsey’s funeral; and we will be out there after the funeral.

If YOU want to get beyond a world where masses of people are ground up and then slaughter or oppress each other... if you want a planet where all humanity gets emancipated... if you cannot wait another day or go another week under this system... then get with us.

www.revcom.us

@tuneintorevcom

Revolution Club Los Angeles:
(323) 424-6687
revclub_la@yahoo.com
@revclub_la
2716 S. Vermont Ave Unit 8
Los Angeles, CA

Nipsey Hussle

You Think You Are Woke...
But You Are Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare

Get Organized for An ACTUAL Revolution to Emancipate All Humanity

Updated November 10, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

 

 

Noche Diaz Presenting the Lifetime Fire Extinguisher Award to Al Sharpton at the Sacramento, CA State Capitol.

 

April 17-21: Be Part of a Major Effort to Spread the Revolution

Updated April 12, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The National Tour for the Revolution calls on you to help spread the Points of Attention for the Revolution (POA) everywhere. We will join with others to take the POA all over and get it up everywhere from April 17 to 21. The Points of Attention lays out the principles, methods, and goals of the revolution. We'll get those out all over, along with other materials that let people know about the need for revolution, the strategy for it, and the leader of it, Bob Avakian (BA).

We were born into this messed-up, look-out-for-number-one system. And too many people have learned to just live with it and take up the ways of thinking and acting that keep us all down and trapped in this rat race. But we are not rats. We are human beings. Not everybody loves living like this. Most important: THIS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY that is possible for people to be. We have the science, the strategy, and the leadership to make an actual revolution—to overthrow this system and bring a whole new world into existence, without all this dog-eat-dog madness. A strategy and a vision to emancipate all humanity. And we are preparing the ground, preparing the people, and preparing the vanguard—getting ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.

We live today by the morality of the future we are fighting to bring into being. Check out these Points of Attention and ask yourself: would I want to live in a world like this? Would a revolution based on this be something good for all humanity? Would it make a difference to getting to that world if more people knew about these and tried to live by them?

If you feel “yes” to those questions, the April 17-21 major effort will give you a chance to be part of bringing that different future into being, even as you are learning more about it. This will go on all over the country. You can be part of making these Points of Attention the “writing on the wall” seen and heard and felt everywhere. Post them up on walls or street poles; in your building or in your neighborhood; on your campus or in busy shopping areas; where you work, shop, or do your laundry; on social media and in real life. You’ll be able to report the response you get, positive and negative, as we all help each other make the maximum impact and bring forward many new people toward the revolution through this process.

As Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution and the architect of the new communism, has said: “...we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!” Posting the Points of Attention is a step to making the right choice.

Download, print, and spread everywhere:

 

Taking the Revolution to Northern California, Part 3:

Calling Out the Murdering Cops in Vallejo, Getting to the Roots

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

A couple days before heading to Vallejo, we called one of the young women who’s been organizing protests at the shopping mall where the police murdered Willie McCoy. Check out the statement she wrote for revcom last week, “It’s Time to Wake Up Vallejo!” Rather than just call for an action and invite her, we wanted to work with her to call a protest together... but this time, a straight-up revolutionary protest, as part of the Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour. We made a quick graphic, and she went to work right away spreading it to the networks she knows of Willie’s friends, family, and community. We sent her the BA Through the Years video and made a plan to mobilize as many people as we could to come back to someone’s house after the protest to watch more from Bob Avakian on Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution.

When we showed up at the Taco Bell at 1 pm, it was just us (the Tour), three members of the Bay Area Revolution Club, and about five others. The Taco Bell has been completely closed down since the cops killed Willie there. There’s just some candles and photos in the drive-through lane, right in the spot where six pigs shot him 25 times while he was sleeping in his car, tearing his body to pieces. The pigs, or mall security, keep taking down the memorial and people keep putting them back up and lighting the candles.

While we waited for more people to come, we did some chanting and agitation and got out the Revolution Club statement on the cold-blooded murder of Willie McCoy, along with the Points of Attention for the Revolution to the cars passing by. It was striking to us how many people rolled down their windows to get the flyer—not just Black people, but also a lot of Asian, Latino, and white people. We contrasted that with our experience in Sacramento the day before when things seemed more racially polarized.

Before too long, we pulled people together into a marching formation. This was important in terms of representing, and showing people that we are an organized and disciplined force.

#WillieMcCoy didn't have to die
We all know the reason why
The whole damn system is GUILTY!

How do we get out of this mess?
Revolution--Nothing Less! pic.twitter.com/eYBxwasNfN

— Revolution Club Bay Area (@RevClub_bay) March 18, 2019

As we marched around the shopping mall parking lot, more and more people started showing up. We took turns leading chants. And people grabbed stacks of the Revolution Club flyers to get out to the cars.

On the march by the Taco Bell in Vallejo where 6 pigs fired 25 shots into #WillieMcCoy while he was sleeping in his car! What's the problem? The whole damn system! What's the solution? REVOLUTION! pic.twitter.com/i0tI1W9dO6

— Revolution Club Bay Area (@RevClub_bay) March 18, 2019

Once we got more of a critical mass, we decided to march right into the Target store and disrupt business as usual! We can’t ritualize “protest as usual” that just ends up reinforcing the idea that all we can do is register our opposition, while these pigs keep getting away with murder. We have to show people that we’re not gonna take this shit anymore, and we’re organizing to put an end to it! Marching into Target, “disturbing the air,” with the drums and bullhorn, was exciting to everyone... even the workers and customers in the store, many of whom were smiling, and some of whom started chanting with us. And it created a moment of freedom when people in the Target and the youths who were part of the march were looking to us in a different way, and Noche Diaz really had people’s ear when he got up on a chair and told everyone who we were, why we were here, and what this revolution is all about.

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour in Vallejo today! We marched straight into Target with the message:

Justice for #WillieMcCoy
The whole damn system is GUILTY
We need a REVOLUTION! pic.twitter.com/MUZhu2xekn

— Revolution Club Bay Area (@RevClub_bay) March 18, 2019

As we wrapped up the protest back in front of the Taco Bell, we gathered everyone together and gave people a chance to speak their minds. One really powerful moment was when Willie’s four-year-old nephew got on the bullhorn and talked about how much he misses his uncle. We invited everyone to come back to a nearby house to watch BA’s film, the science, strategy, and leadership that we need to actually put a STOP to this police terror and all the other horrors of this system. At the end we got everyone to put their fists in the air and say together: I am a revolutionary! This was an important part of breaking down the us/them division and creating more of a “we” around this revolution. At the same time, we summed up afterwards that we should’ve put a sharper challenge to everyone who did that chant to step into the revolution now. And we should’ve read the Points of Attention with everyone right there, to give them more of a sense of what this revolution is all about and what it means to be part of this.

Although it was a little bit of a logistical challenge to get people from the protest to the film screening, three of the more politicized young people came through. One of them had been asking me at the protest if I thought Black people could be “racist,” cuz he wanted to distinguish between “prejudice” (which Black people can be) and institutional racism. After watching the BA through the years video, a short clip from Bob Avakian’s dialogue with Cornel West about the role of the police, and the “5 Stops” section of BA’s recent speech on revolution, we had some discussion, which everyone jumped into. In response to BA’s presentation of the 5 Stops, the guy that had been asking me about racism earlier said that he cares more about ending the oppression of Black people than of other people—even while he said that he’s open-minded and his ideas about all this are still being formed. He cited some examples of how other people of color look down on Black people. The two young women kind of agreed with him, adding some of their own experiences of being Black in America, even being treated as “less than” by immigrants from Africa. At the same time, they said they agreed with what was said in the film about how we have to end ALL this oppression. We had some discussion about how the system pits different oppressed groups against each other, and got into BA’s point about how all these different forms of oppression are rooted in the same capitalist-imperialist system. An Asian-American high school student who’s part of the Revolution Club talked about how it’s in the interests of the system to keep people of color so busy just trying to survive that they don’t have time to think about the bigger picture. She made the point that, for a lot of people of color, it’s easier and simpler to just blame your problems on other minorities, which is why we have to bring that understanding of the bigger picture to people.

One of the young women said that she thought it was really important for people to know the laws so that they can know their rights. She talked about how many people take plea deals and end up in prison because they don’t know their rights. This was an opportunity to go back to what BA had said in his speech about the oppression of Black people and other people of color and the relationship between capitalism and white supremacy in America, and the whole structure of laws, police, courts, and prisons to enforce all that. While it is good to “know your rights” within the framework of this fucked-up system, the essential problem is not that people are ignorant of how the legal system works. The problem IS this system. It is not just that the police break the law and systematically violate people’s rights—which they do—it’s the laws themselves, which are designed to enforce this economic system and all its oppressive social relations. All this has to be replaced, through revolution, by a whole new economic system, political system, and legal system, which BA has developed in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

All this left people with a lot to think about! We talked with people about getting deeper into the film from BA and spreading it to others. The Vallejo people wanted to come with us to Sacramento the next day, but weren’t able to, so we made a plan to get together for dinner before the Tour went back to LA.

Read Parts 1 and 2 here.
Next week: On the one-year anniversary of the murder of Stephon Clark.

 

Noche Diaz from the Get Organized For An ACTUAL Revolution Tour after we marched into the Target in Vallejo talking about the strategy and leadership we have for revolution and why this system can't be REFORMED and must be OVERTHROWN!#WillieMcCoy #StephonClark pic.twitter.com/fN3N8J3kYW

— Revolution Club Bay Area (@RevClub_bay) March 18, 2019

Revolution Tour Fundraising in One Area:
$10,000 in a Month...and That's Just a Start

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

In the past month, over $10,000 has been raised in our area! At the fundraising kickoff event for the Tour in February, a compelling vision was put out about the need for the Tour, its objectives, and the impact it could have by taking out revolution and Bob Avakian (BA) straight up to thousands of people and organizing them into this revolution. At that event, seven people agreed to sustain from $20 to $200 every month, and over $400 was raised on the spot. 

People have been inspired to donate, raise funds, and sustain the Tour. A few people who have supported the revolution for many years have given very large donations. Others have donated to the Tour on hearing about it for the first time. 

Others made a commitment to sustain after a longer process of engaging more with BA’s work. For example, one person paid a lot of attention to BAs speech THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible, then listened to his Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution talk. When the call for the Tour came out, she read it, came to the kickoff event, then decided to sustain every month. The impact of these works was significant in changing this person’s understanding about the possibility of making an actual revolution and how the Tour fits into making that a reality.

Two people decided to sustain because they are really excited about the Tour. They think the revolutionaries have such knowledge, such a plan, and such leadership, but most people know nothing about it. They see the Tour as something that can stir things up and make a difference. They are especially hopeful because younger people are in the Tour and because they will be going out to reach other young people—and because they think you need youth in order to make a revolution. 

There are some immigrants who are planning to donate because they are very disgusted by the Democrats, even though they have some hope with Bernie and the new round of women and people of color who just got elected. They think reform is necessary and at the same time think the capitalist system is no good. They are drawn to the Tour and think it’s something that should be known and broadcast throughout the society.

About $1,000 was raised in March at an international food dinner with delicious Iranian, Indian, Chinese, and Italian entrees. There were over 30 people attending, mostly people we have known for a while but also with a smaller number of new people, including several Iranians. One advance was made in going out to stores, restaurants and a café that donated food and funds for the dinner. Six store owners gave who were from the Middle East or North Africa, countries that have been at the receiving end of U.S. wars and aggression. A Yemeni grocery store owner gave $100 when he found out we were not only against Trump but against capitalism.

At a Persian New Year event, Chahar Shanbeh Souri: Festival of Fire, a street fair where people jump over burning tree branches to celebrate, $90 was raised. A few people bought books from our Revolution Books booth and then donated extra for the Tour. People were glad to hear about the Tour, asking questions like “Do you think revolution can really be made here?” Someone asked, “Aren’t you afraid?” (that is, to be going up against this strong government with a message of revolution). Some people who said they were Marxists had a lot of questions about the New Communism.

While there has been sharp struggle with some, all of these examples show the potential to raise the tens of thousands of dollars needed for the Tour to travel across the country.  

What We Have Been Learning

A lot of long-time supporters of the revolution who donated still want revolution and have deep respect for Bob Avakian. They have been excited by the vision of the Tour and see it as an important way to bring forward a movement for revolution. Some were also excited by the bold approach of the Tour, especially how it aims to call out the dead-end paths and all the kinds of mental shackles that hold people back. This is also true of some people who have engaged with Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution film and see the Tour as a key part of preparing for revolution.

We have also learned that there is a section of foreign-born people who do not know much about the new communism or Bob Avakian, but they have a deep hatred of U.S. imperialism because of their experiences and what they know about the U.S. and they want to support the Tour. The experience at the Persian New Year tapped into the sentiments of some people who are still drawn to the hope of revolution in this country, even though the new communism is controversial and even as there are different summations of the revolution in Iran.

The majority of funds has come so far from people we know who support the revolution and we’ve only begun to do broad outreach. In doing so, we have found many people are outraged by one or many of the 5 Stops, and this has challenged some of them to turn their faces more towards revolution and the Tour. Some have been inspired by the bold approach taken by the Tour. For example, a couple of them donated after hearing about confronting the “fireman” Al Sharpton with the Lifetime Fire Extinguisher award! This is even while people are looking at things mainly from a framework of working for change within the system or looking towards electoral politics for solutions.

Our approach needs to be sharper in looking at fundraising as a key part of building up organized networks and bringing forward a different culture of people very broadly who see themselves and are acting as part of this movement for an actual revolution. In this we should be utilizing HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution as guidance.

Plans to Go Forward

Our plans for moving forward include broad work at fairs and festivals, yard sales and fundraising parties—and developing sustainers and fundraising projects. One idea is to talk to people who support this revolution and who are involved in organizations about developing networks of sustainers among people in those organizations and involving them in fundraising activities for the Tour.

We also want to get statements from people, written or video about why they are donating and why others should too.

We are planning an internationalist fundraising dinner on May 11 and will call on people to organize for it very broadly, bringing even more people together than the last dinner, and drawing on advances made in building support from stores and restaurants.

 

Drop the Charges! The Case of the UCLA 5
Which Side Are You On! Criminalization of Dissent and Protest at a Time of Rising Fascism

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On April 17 there will be an important court hearing which will call for all charges to be dismissed against the UCLA 5—members of the Revolution Club arrested or charged for political speech, for participating in actions on campus while representing for revolution and politically protesting and organizing against the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

This case is part of and marks an escalation in widespread attacks on the rights to protest and dissent, at a moment of consolidating fascism in this society.

Members of the Revolution Club represent for revolution while learning more, and uphold, live by and fight for the Points of Attention for the Revolution. Humanity cries out for revolution, getting rid of this system of capitalism-imperialism at the soonest possible time. The Revolution Club is a key part of organizing a movement for an actual revolution, embodying the ethos and social relations of a radically different and far better society, without the white supremacy, misogyny, and American chauvinism of this society. The Revolution Club in Los Angeles includes UCLA students and alumni, and participates in the campus life at UCLA and other colleges as part of this.

From this perspective, the Club has actively been part of the struggle against fascism as represented by the election of the Trump/Pence regime, uniting with other organizations like Refuse Fascism and others. In a related but separate case, members of the Revolution Club and Refuse Fascism are facing charges from two nonviolent freeway protests from late 2017 where the protesters held signs and banners across the freeway demanding the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! The fact that the Los Angeles city attorney filed ALL these charges against those arrested at UCLA and the two freeway protests several months later all at the same time reveals the political nature of the decision to file charges against all of them.

All these cases being prosecuted by the city attorney are escalating attacks against righteous protest, dissent, and political speech—and for all people of conscience, the question is posed: Which Side Are You On!

Demand ALL these charges be dropped against the UCLA 5 and the freeway protest cases. At a time where there is an existential threat to humanity and the planet, millions agonizing over what is happening and why this is happening—and with the possibility of a far different society being brought into being through an actual revolution—the criminalization and suppression of critical thinking and dissent is outrageous and unacceptable, and the right to radical and revolutionary ideas and organizing is essential and needs to be defended by all.

These legal prosecutions and persecutions of the Revolution Club have far-reaching implications for students and society overall. What kind of speech and protest will be allowed? Will those who are searching for an understanding of the problems confronting humanity and the solutions to those problems be allowed to engage with various answers and programs, including especially from those who are identifying the source of these horrors as the system of capitalism-imperialism—and that what is needed is an actual revolution to end all this madness? Or will that be censored, suppressed, and even criminalized?

Political Surveillance and Persecution by UCLA Campus Police

What has emerged in documents turned over to the legal defense team (legal “discovery”) of the UCLA 5 case is a pattern of political surveillance and persecution by the University of California Police Department (UCPD).

Campus police surveillance reports made public in discovery reveal detectives recording videos and taking photos of the Revolution Club on campus, with descriptions of completely lawful activities like “two subjects were wearing the black Revolution Club shirts and appeared to be approaching attendees of Bruin Day” (when prospective students are visiting the campus). Another surveillance report notes, “The three subjects eventually drove away without incident,” with a description of the car and its license plate number. Videos and photos turned over by the UCPD include those of club members protesting outside a program featuring anti-abortionist Kirstan Hawkins, and attending a program featuring Charlie Kirk, the founder of the fascist Turning Point USA which initiated Professor Watchlist to organize students to name and expose professors who encourage critical thinking and dissent.

With the UCPD engaged in this kind of surveillance, persecution and prosecution of revolutionaries for legitimate and legal political protest and speech on campus, the question is again sharply posed for everyone of conscience: which side are you on!”

All of the acts charged by the prosecution are protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and this is a right that has to be defended against liberal and fascist encroachment and undermining—even while recognizing the stark reality that the U.S. Constitution, from its founding, is and enshrines an exploiter’s view of freedom. The specific acts for which the UCLA 5 are facing illegitimate criminal prosecution include:

• Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s speech at UCLA was disrupted by protesters, including organizers from “No Cops Academy” and the Revolution Club. They called out Emanuel’s role in the cover-up of the Chicago PD’s murder of Laquan McDonald, a Black youth.
• Speaking out at a speech by Steve Mnuchin—U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, the first cabinet member of the Trump/Pence regime to speak at UCLA. In addition to protesters outside the event, he was booed and hissed by protesters in the audience. Three women from the Revolution Club who disrupted his speech spoke with substance and determination, challenging Mnuchin and exposing the Trump/Pence regime as “hell-bent on consolidating fascism.”
• Taking part in the National Call from Refuse Fascism for 11 Minutes of Silence in Support of 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants, which stretched across Bruin Walk. The criminal charges by the city attorney include participating in the 11 Minutes of Silence, even though they were not even arrested at the time.
• Waiting in line to attend an event with Chelsea Manning—yes, waiting in line.

The prosecutor alleges that the members of the Revolution Club violated a ban on their being on campus, even though there was never any official notification of any such ban.

It is important for all those who want to stand on the right side to:

1. Demand that the charges against the UCLA 5 be dropped immediately. Call or email LA City Attorney Michael Feuer’s office @ 213/978-8100 or mike.n.feuer@lacity.org.
2. Pack the courtroom on April 17 at 8:30 a.m. in Dept. W90 at the Airport Courthouse, 11701 S. La Cienega, Los Angeles 90045, south of the 105 Freeway.

From the Revolution Tour

Challenging Junior College Students with #BEB: “People peppered us with questions”

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

From a member of the national Revolution Tour:

I jumped into a car at 9:30 am with a thermos full of coffee in my hand and zoomed off to pick up a local member of the Revolution Club. We were heading to a local junior college to spread the word about the revolution. The car is one that is being loaned to us by someone as a contribution to the national tour—and it was stuffed full of freshly printed materials, banners, books by BA.

As we got closer to the college you could feel the air noticeably get cooler on what was a warm, sunny day. You could almost smell the ocean nearby. Having just came from South Central where Nipsey Hussle was murdered, it was a pretty stark difference driving through a middle class neighborhood full of beautiful trees and houses and an overall calm vibe.

We met up with some other members of the national tour on the campus, and we set up shop. We had a table to put all our materials on, and the giant banner from the What Is #BEB launch. We laid the banner out on the ground, and almost immediately people started coming up demanding to know what the hell is #BEB.

I replied, “Well what do you think it means?” A student pleaded impatiently, “Can’t you just tell me?” It took some prodding to get people to put their thinking caps on. The more people thought about it, the more invested they would get in the answer. “Damn... I can’t get it,” a flabbergasted student said. I replied, “Well come back at 3 pm to hear a revolutionary communist speak to why all these politicians are BEB and why you should not be!” We put this provocation and challenge to lots of people.

Students came up the whole time we were there, and there would be surges where small crowds would start forming. Libertarian types would come out to defend capitalism, people would come up and say, “I’ve been thinking about these things lately,” pointing to the 5 STOPS. People peppered us with questions about the history of communism. What will replace this system? Why are some things a part of the 5 STOPS but not others like homelessness? One young Iranian woman talked about coming here at age 14. She laid out how she had been going through a “spiritual awakening” and beginning to see “a system” behind why things are the way they are. And at the same time wasn’t sure anything was real and thought everything might be a simulation. All throughout these conversations we would drive people to the 5 STOPS and the Points of Attention for the Revolution.

At 3 pm—about five people came to hear a revolutionary reveal of what the hell is #BEB and lay out why they gotta bust out of the BEB. People would stop and listen for a second before walking on to class. We revealed that BEB is Bourgeois Electoral Bullshit—and this was really challenging for people. After the speech people started talking together. One student asked another what they thought of the speech. “Well, I think that those people on the banner are just trying to change policies, and the revolution is trying to change how people think.” He went on to say how he thought people should vote for progressives like Bernie and AOC in the meantime while we try to make fundamental change. The young Iranian woman thought that all these politicians are a part of the “same system” and so didn’t think they could provide any fundamental change.

After the speech people were eager to find out when we would be back on campus, how can they get involved—and we resolved to have a meeting on campus the next day.

As we were packing up and walking off campus, we ran into someone who we had seen earlier in the day. He was for Bernie, and a revolutionary struggled with him that Bernie just wants to give people a bigger slice of the spoils of empire. As we were walking out, we ran into him while he was with a big group of his friends. He thanked us for coming and wanted to know when we would be back. He bought BAsics and let us know what he really wanted was one of those REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! shirts. We told him about the meeting the next day and let him know we would bring him a shirt.

Read here

Find artwork for social media, posters here

We met up with some other members of the national tour on the campus, and we set up shop. We had a table to put all our materials on, and the giant banner from the What Is #BEB launch.
Photo: Special to revcom.us

We laid the banner out on the ground, and almost immediately people started coming up demanding to know what the hell is #BEB.
Photo: Special to revcom.us

You Can’t Change the World If You Don’t Know the BAsics

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

 

Every week, revcom.us features one quote from BAsics, by Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution. We encourage Revolution Clubs and other readers, everywhere, to take the time to discuss the quote—the whole quote—and to write us at revolution.reports@yahoo.com with accounts of these discussions, or thoughts provoked in yourself by reading the quote.

 

With Trump's "Blessing" Netanyahu calls for Israel to annex West Bank settlements

Updated April 8, 2019 | Originally posted March 25, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On March 21, Trump declared “it is time” for the U.S. to “fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty” over the Golan Heights—a militarily strategic region of Syria seized by Israel in a war in 1967. A story on the announcement in a leading Israeli newspaper was headlined, “Trump’s Golan Declaration: Blessing for Netanyahu, Message to Russia.” What that article didn’t say is that this “blessing” has genocidal implications for the Palestinian people. And the “message to Russia” is a Mafia-style provocation and threat that ratchets up the danger of war.

A “Blessing” with Genocidal Implications

Israel is literally built on the blood and bones of the Palestinian people, whose land was stolen through terrorist ethnic cleansing. In 1948, almost a million Palestinians were violently forced from their land, villages, and homes, fleeing with only the possessions they could carry. First-hand accounts by the founders of Israel document that Palestinians were raped, tortured, and killed in that orgy of terror (see the special issue of Revolution on Israel). Since then, the violent ethnic cleansing has continued.

In a one-sided war in 2008-2009, Amnesty International concluded that Israel killed 1,400 people in Gaza, including some 300 children and several hundred other unarmed civilians. Three Israeli civilians were reported killed in that “war.” In an even more deadly massacre in 2014, Israel killed more than 2,000 people in Gaza, including targeting people seeking refuge in United Nations schools. The UN estimated that 65 percent of those killed by Israel in 2014 were civilians. These massacres were carried out against people who have been locked down in a densely packed, open-air prison, denied construction materials, electricity much of the time, and ability to travel for medical care, education, or to see loved ones even in other parts of Palestine. And in the West Bank region of Palestine, degrading checkpoints, terror by Israeli settlers and dehumanizing and violent abuse by the Israeli authorities are a daily fact of life.

Trump’s “blessing” for Netanyahu was that the timing of this announcement was taken by all as an endorsement of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition in Israel’s upcoming elections. That coalition is increasingly dominated by fanatic Jewish fundamentalists who openly call for the violent extermination of the Palestinian people. As documented in the New York Times, this includes forces with “a long history of expressing support for violence against Palestinians, expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories, and a ban on intermarriage or sex between Jews and Arabs,” and whose “platform calls for annexing the occupied territories, rejecting a Palestinian state, [and] expelling ‘enemies’ of Israel—a euphemism for Arabs.” This is the coalition Trump “blessed” with his endorsement of the annexation of the Golan Heights.

Beyond that, Trump’s announcement has specific, ominous implications for the 2.8 million Palestinians living in the “occupied territories” of the West Bank, territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war. It was a signal to the Israeli right to pursue their agenda of annexing some or all the West Bank. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition includes hard-core Zionist fascists who demand, and are organizing to carry out, the violent expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. Israeli annexation of any or all of the West Bank would dramatically ratchet up the danger of a whole new level of genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

And Trump’s “blessing” was accompanied by a literal blessing by Trump’s Christian fascist, “end times” lunatic secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who posed in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network that it was possible that God raised Donald Trump to be president of the United States in order to protect Israel from Iran, and who declared “the Lord is at work” in Trump’s announcement.

A Mafia-Style “Message” to Russia

The “message to Russia” in Trump’s announcement is that as the war in Syria winds down, the U.S. will aggressively defend and expand its domination of the Middle East. The bloodbath in Syria involved a wide range of competing reactionary forces including ISIS and other fundamentalist jihadist forces; pro-Iranian militias from Lebanon; Iranian military operatives; Russian airstrikes; Israeli airstrikes; groups organized and armed by the U.S.; and U.S. troops. This was, on all sides, a massive crime against humanity and the people of Syria in particular. Framing this hellish mix was contention between Russia (which has a very significant military base in Syria) and Iran, on the one hand, and the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Trump’s backing for Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights—land conquered from Syria in 1967—is a slap in the face to Russia. And this move by Trump comes as the U.S. rulers have Iran in their crosshairs. They see it as a major threat to their domination of the Middle East. Trump’s message to Russia, which has close relations with Iran, is that of one Mafia boss to a rival: don’t stand in the way of whatever moves we make against Iran.

And this “message to Russia” comes from a demented bully in the White House with his finger on the nuclear button. It ratchets up the danger of a potentially catastrophic war in the Middle East and beyond.

If you were expecting outrage from the Democrats in the face of Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu and his genocidal allies, and his trampling on international law, their muted—at most—response tells you something about their fundamental unity with Trump even as they have differences in how best to prop up Israel and contend with rival imperialists. Some Democrats, mainstream commentators, and “non-partisan” former U.S. diplomats complained that in trampling on international law that is supposed to prohibit countries from annexing territory seized in war, Trump took away a diplomatic weapon the U.S. needs, for example to use against Russia’s seizure of a part of Ukraine. They fear what might come of tearing up global norms that have served to keep the U.S. at the top of a world of exploitation and oppression for decades. And they argue that Trump’s uncritical embrace of the most openly racist and genocidal forces in Israel endangers the stability of Israel and its ability to portray itself as a bastion of enlightenment while it serves as a regional fortress and global hit man for the U.S. empire.

But again, these disagreements with Trump are over how to maintain Israel as a vicious, nuclear-armed power to dominate the Middle East, because the U.S. empire does need Israel as a vicious, nuclear-armed hit man for its interests in the region and around the world.

The Interests of Humanity

For the Palestinian people, for the people of the Middle East, and for the vast majority of the seven-plus billion people on this planet, Trump’s backing of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights is an obscene endorsement of crimes committed by, and worse crimes coming from, Israel. And it accelerates the threat of an utterly unjust war that could be a disaster for humanity.

Those crimes must be exposed and opposed, especially by people in the U.S.—not because they cut against the interests of “our” country but because we live in the belly of the beast that needs Israel to serve as a vicious hit man to continue to crush bodies and spirits around the world to feed it. And as we expose and oppose Israel’s crimes, and U.S. backing for them, we are called on by humanity to do this as part of seriously organizing and preparing for the actual revolution that will do away with the oppression of whole peoples, wars of empire, armies of occupation and crimes against humanity.

 

Map: Dank Chicken

Q&A: The rise of fascism & struggle in international communist movement.

A Q&A following the speech: Why We Need An Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution.

Refuse Fascism Protest Breaks Into Mainstream Media

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

With the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, RefuseFascism.org organized protests in several cities with the message: “The Mueller Investigation diverted, bamboozled, and stupefied people into waiting passively... The Trump/Pence Regime Is More Dangerous Than Ever, It Must Be Driven from Power By Sustained Mass Protest By the People. On April 5, Refuse Fascism in Los Angeles brought that message to Beverly Hills where Trump was holding a fundraising “party.” The action broke through into mainstream news coverage including on the LA CBS station, Univision, and the Daily Beast which reported: “’For the past two years, people have been sitting passively and waiting for the Mueller report and for somebody else in power to do something,’ [Refuse Fascism’s Michelle] Xai said. ‘We need to shake them awake and say this is already a very dangerous situation and we can’t just sit back and wait for two more years for something to happen.’”

The Deadly Intertwining of Misogyny and White Supremacy

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Letter from a reader:

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago (March 18, 2019) which really shook me. It is titled “‘Replacement Theory,’ a Racist, Sexist Doctrine, Spreads in Far-Right Circles,” which I strongly recommend that people read. The article starts out: “Before the massacre of 50 people in New Zealand mosques last week, the suspect released a document called ‘The Great Replacement.’ The first sentence was: ‘It’s the birthrates.’ He repeated it three times.” He isn’t talking about the birthrate of humanity—he is murderously railing against the falling birthrate of white women. Here is the deadly intertwining of hateful misogyny and a vicious expression of white supremacy—both foundational to capitalism-imperialism unleashed in particularly vicious and unfettered ways in a fascist movement which is both being fostered and modeled at the highest levels in this country and gaining dangerous momentum internationally.

The birth rate among white women in the U.S. and Europe has been dropping. Sperm counts and testosterone levels are declining, some women are working and not raising families, some women are out-earning some men, even women having the right to vote—all of these are fueling the white power fears of these, usually, young white men. Increasingly women are working in offices, creating as artists, learning in schools, and particularly recently, women have been stepping forward to expose the ugly misogyny—in the workforce, at school, in society at large. The backlash to even these tentative, and perhaps temporary, advances has motivated these fascist, patriarchal, and white supremacist movements to go on the offensive. Arun Kundnani, author of a book on anti-Muslim sentiment, observes: “They are saying, ‘Look, Muslims have got their women where they need to be, and we’re not doing a good job at that.’” Ideas like banning women from the workplace start out as “jokes and memes” as in the New Zealand suspect’s manifesto. The New York Times article quotes someone saying that even reversing a woman’s right to vote used to be confined to overtly neo-Nazi spaces, but it is spreading: “[N]ow I’m seeing it introduced in less extremist spaces. First introduced as a joke, of course, then as an acceptable policy that maybe not all users agree with but is worth discussing.”

I was aware of some of this reaction, but what I didn’t fully recognize was that beyond the attacks on women’s right to abortion, and even birth control, even the imposition of Christian patriarchal “family values,” as oppressive and reactionary as all of this is, there is a whole other level of misogyny and patriarchy which this New York Times article is exposing. They are not just defending individual domination or “male rights,” not just demanding that individual women are subservient to their husbands and to men in general. For this fascist movement, “women as breeders” is not just an expression of individual patriarchal privilege, but is a foundational principle where Western Civilization as they define it (white Christian) is at stake. These storm troopers of the fascist right, the minions of the white power movement like the New Zealand manifesto writer, see the dropping birthrate of white women, and the changing role of women overall, as a truly existential threat. As they see it, there is a clash of civilizations in which white men and the Western Civilization which they say they created are in danger of being exterminated. It has to do with how central the role of women is to society, how fundamental the family is to the structure and ethos of capitalist society, how critical patriarchy and white supremacy are as the social glue to this society. This is the context of the tweet by Iowa congressman Steve King, who has gotten elected and re-elected since 2003: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

There is the potential for all the dystopian novels to come to full realization—the toggle between fascism and bourgeois democracy in action—as long as capitalism-imperialism itself is the system that rules. And right now, all of this fascist thuggery is getting nurtured and magnified at the highest levels of society in the fascist regime now in power in the Trump/Pence regime. As BA says in Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution: “And, in fundamental terms, we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!”

As BA has stated*: “The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today's extreme circumstances.... It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms....The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement?”

* Cited in A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity, a special issue of Revolution, #158, March 8, 2009.

The following flyer was translated from the blog of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, accessed on April 2, 2019.

The Disappearance of Giselle, the Courage and Participation of the People Against the Patriarchal System

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, received the following flyer about these important protests from the initiative “End Patriarchy and the War Against Women.”

Male domination (patriarchy) permeates the entire world and oppresses women in very cruel ways from the most subtle to even death: Femicide, rape, disappearance, sexual slavery, war booty, sexual torture, child pornography, beatings.

11-year-old Giselle Garrido Cruz was disappeared near her home in San Lorenzo Chimalhuacán, State of Mexico, on January 19, 2019. Eight days later, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico informed the parents that they had found her lifeless body with signs of rape in a place in Coatepec, municipality of Ixtapaluca, State of Mexico.

Relatives of Giselle, neighbors and friends took to the streets the day after the disappearance, held a rally and marched chanting, Giselle we want you back home! They made posters, hundreds of flyers were pasted on posts, and banners with the girl’s photograph were at the head of the mobilization. Much solidarity was expressed, breaking with the idea that “as long as this doesn’t happen to me”; that kind of selfishness was swept to the side. The demonstration went forward and one of the stops of the Mexibus was blocked. At that point, Lidia, Diana Florencio’s mother, victim of a feminicide in 2017 also in Chimalhuacán, said, “I am here in solidarity with Giselle’s family,” “They must look for her now and we have to do it ourselves,” and called out that, “because the authorities are not going to do it, they did not search for my Diana.” Then, Elena, the mother of Lupita Hernández and the aunt of Evelin Marisol Martínez, young girls eight and nine years old disappeared in 2017 in the same area as Giselle, said, “I join the search for Giselle because I know the pain of losing a daughter and that to date, in my case the police have not told me anything.”

These brave denunciations unleash more of the people’s fury, anger and indignation at this kind of crime, and the actions of these authorities who are not negligent but criminal. For example, in the femicide of Diana Florencio, when the experts found her body thrown in the street raped and murdered, they reported that the body was a male. It was at the insistence of the family that they could identify it. In the case of Lupita and Marisol, a family member exposes that when they went to pick up the disappearance certificate, the authorities responded, “The certificate cannot be issued, because the computer system crashed.” And two years after the disappearance, their answer is “nothing.” In the femicide of Mariana Lima Buendía in 2010 at the hands of her partner and police agent in the State of Mexico, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Mexico claimed that the autopsy had been performed and it ruled that Mariana had committed suicide, denying all the scientific evidence that proved that this had been a femicide. And in the case of Giselle, when the family went to report her disappearance that same Saturday, they were held for more than five hours and the response was, “The AMBER alert will not be issued until Monday because today is Sunday.” When asked for the videos of the public cameras installed where Giselle passed by, the answer was, “They don’t work.” In all these cases, you can see the systematic actions of the authorities trying to hide the femicides, the disappearances of women and girls, criminalize raped women and persecute families and cover up for the criminals.

The combative actions of the people and the determined exposure by the relatives outraged and mobilized many more people, like Giselle’s friends from her elementary school in a second march that departed from the Port to the Municipal Attorney’s Office. On social media, the news of the disappearance of Giselle had gone viral. The media came all the way out to Chimalhuacán to document the case. In the streets, the criminal actions of the state and its patriarchal institutions were exposed. The truth is that MORE OF THIS IS NEEDED. These protests and broad exposure of the crimes against women need to continue and grow more and more. By relying on the people and by acting independently from the system and its institutions this can shake up society and create conditions for great social condemnation of the perpetrators of these misogynistic attacks, including the state and its system. A significant contingent from Chimalhuacán expressed its solidarity with the January 26 march in Mexico City around the disappearance of the 43 students from the Rural Teachers College Ayotzinapa where they joined other families of disappeared and murdered women. All this forced the authorities to look for Giselle and to find an alleged culprit. We demand punishment with scientific evidence that proves the guilt of the detainee, not some supposedly guilty people to derail people's anger.

DARE TO FIGHT TO END PATRIARCHY AND THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN!

fin.patriarcado@gmail.com

End Patriarchy and the War Against Women, People’s Revolutionary Movement, Norma Esther Andrade; Víctor Rogelio Caballero Sierra, Colectivo Aequus.-Promotion and Defense of Human Rights and Coordination of Relatives of Students Victims of Violence; Justice for Diana.

Giselle Garrido Cruz

From A World to Win News Service:

Berlin: Rousing Internationalist Concert for Iranian Women Follows March of 10,000 on International Women's Day—Revolution and the New Communism in the House!

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

A rousing internationalist concert in solidarity with the struggle of Iranian women against the enforced wearing of the hijab (Islamic head scarf) was held in Berlin on March 9, organized by the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group and Osyan, an underground women’s collective in Iran. On the previous day, International Women’s Day, recently declared a public holiday in Berlin, the organizers led a very multinational and multilingual revolutionary contingent taking part in a fresh development, given past local International Women’s Day (IWD) events, an impassioned march by some 10,000 women and men in the context of rising fascism in the country. Today’s ideological, legal and physical offensives against women and immigrants are two prongs of a drive to make the country more “German” by forcing “our” women back into their traditional role as “homemakers” and baby producers, and getting rid of those defined as “foreigners.”

The contingent’s three main banners, “We Support the Revolt of Iranian Women Against Forced Hijab,” “Down with Imperialism, Down with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Fight for a New Socialist Republic in Iran” signed by the Communist Party of Iran Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, and “Humanity Needs Revolution and the New Synthesis” (with an image of Bob Avakian), along with sound truck agitation, sparked controversy, interest and discussions among the broader march participants, predominantly secondary school and university students and young health workers and other professionals, many of whom were new to the streets. In the weeks before, the organizers had gone to refugee centers, feminist meetings and other venues to bring out the new communism.

The concert featured Shakib Mosadeg, the lead singer in a popular rock band in Afghanistan who was stopped in the middle of a concert and forced to flee into exile in 2010. Since then, his YouTube videos and live concerts in Europe have made him a favorite among young Farsi speakers and others in Iran, Afghanistan and other countries. In addition to reprising traditional international revolutionary anthems like “Bella Ciao,” now enjoying a resurgence among rebel youth in Europe, his own songs, from a broadly humanist perspective, take aim at imperialist war and all forms of injustice and oppression, such as the destruction of his country by the Western powers (including Germany), the torment of the millions of refugees forced to flee their homelands, and the oppression of women everywhere. The concert also included several sets by locally based revolutionary musicians, a speech about revolutionary culture and excerpts from the film of the cultural event that marked the launching of Avakian’s book BAsics. Book tables presented BA’s The New Communism in Turkish, Farsi, English and Spanish.

 

On March 17, 2017, A World to Win News Service (AWTWNS) announced its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. Read its “Editorial: Introducing a transformed AWTWNS” here.

Berlin, March 8, 2019, a very multinational and multilingual revolutionary contingent took part in an impassioned march by some 10,000 women and men who turned out to celebrate International Women's Day in the context of rising fascism in Germany.

Mass-Murdering U.S. Government Continues to Persecute and Torture Chelsea Manning

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Last week, it was reported that Chelsea Manning—who blew the whistle on vast U.S. war crimes in Iraq—was released into the general population at a Virginia prison after being held in solitary confinement for 28 days for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Chelsea Manning was a U.S. soldier and intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq in 2009, with access to files revealing war crimes committed during the U.S. occupation. In 2010, Manning put her life on the line by providing these files to WikiLeaks, which published the files (after the New York Times and the Washington Post expressed little interest), so as to incite, in her words, “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms.” Manning was convicted in a military trial and sentenced to 35 years in military prison. After seven years—almost a year of it in isolation that a UN Special Rapporteur on torture deemed “cruel and inhumane”—the rest of her sentence was commuted in 2017.

In early March of this year, Chelsea Manning was brought before a grand jury reportedly investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange (currently in exile at the Ecuadorian embassy in London). The judge ordered her to testify, under threat of being thrown into prison until she agreed to testify or the grand jury concluded its proceedings. Manning refused to testify, saying, “In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available. My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.”

Although Chelsea Manning is now out of solitary confinement, she is still being held in prison because of her continued refusal to testify to the grand jury. Manning’s lawyers had asked that she be held under home confinement instead of jail because of medical and safety complications she faces as a transgender woman, but the judge denied the request. Manning should be broadly supported for her courageous and principled stand, and the cruel repression against her at the hands of the mass-murdering U.S. government and the courts must be broadly condemned by all those opposing injustice.

Chelsea Manning

Share this quote

The “Yellow Vest” Movement in France, Populism and the Danger of Fascism

April 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Editors’ note: We received the following contribution from a reader. Since the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement in France is significant, we thought it important that people have access to an understanding of this movement, and where things could go. While the reader alerts us to the dangers that fascists seize on this movement toward their aims, it is important to recognize that the future is unwritten.

We really encourage readers to engage with the following from Bob Avakian: from his talk last summer, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, a Q&A clip on the rising fascist trends across the world; and the orientation captured in his 2011 statement on the Arab Spring in Egypt, on what is sorely needed at such times of upsurge and ferment.

The “yellow vest” movement that exploded unexpectedly last November plunged France into more intense political turmoil than Western Europe has seen in many decades. It’s marked by the particularities of French society and somewhat unique. Yet it’s very much a manifestation of the same economic, social, political, and ideological changes driven by the workings of the global imperialist system that are roiling every country. As such, it’s full of lessons.

The movement arose and remains based in people who consider themselves “lower middle class”—small-business owners and their employees, tradesmen, health workers, early retirees, etc.—in towns and small cities geographically and socially remote from the capital. The industrial jobs many small towns used to depend on are gone. So have many of their inhabitants. They moved to Paris and the country’s few other big cities where globalization has brought some good-paying jobs and lots of gigs serving the better off.

These people have found their lives increasingly centered on their vehicles as health care and other services, local stores, and public transportation vanish in vast rural areas. The spark that set them on fire came from President Emmanuel Macron’s edicts reducing the speed limit on rural roads and especially hiking diesel fuel prices. People who ordinarily live without much sense of community were called together by social media. With little organization and few recognized leaders, they gathered in supermarket parking lots and then paralyzed traffic by occupying roundabouts and blocking strategic roadways, wearing yellow safety vests. When the police began destroying their encampments, and seeing they had broad support among working people in general, the yellow vests began to “occupy” Paris and regional capitals every Saturday, often trashing symbols of power and wealth, fighting pitched battles with police and sometimes beating them back, seeking to take over parliament and other main government buildings, and even threatening to bust into the presidential palace and forcibly eject Macron.

Over time the movement’s demands evolved to include “fairer” taxation, “decent living standards” for all, and the holding of citizen referendums to determine major government policies. Still the most surprising thing is the contrast between the ferocity of the struggle on both sides and the movement’s limited aims that, instead of radical change, harken back to the way France used to be, or at least was supposed to be.

So far, the police rubber bullets, stun grenades with deadly shrapnel, beatings, and point-blank teargas spray have injured thousands of protesters. At least 17 have died, 21 lost an eye, and 10 a hand. The extent and level of officially ordered bloody repression is common against oppressed people in places like Palestine, Egypt, and Bangladesh but seldom aimed at predominantly “white” crowds in Europe.

The movement has persisted in the face of that because it’s driven by something much larger than its demands—a bitter sense of injustice, a resentment that people like them “don’t count anymore,” a need for dignity instead of feeling looked down upon by those at the top of a society who unfairly refuse to share the wealth. People are willing to take risks because they consider that what they call “the system” has become illegitimate and refuse to accept it anymore.

But the real system is not just a government of “the rich” and their politicians. France is ruled by representatives of French capital and what it needs to survive by amassing ever greater amounts of capital. The situation the yellow vests are revolting against was created by rapid development of capital itself on a world level, including increasingly intense globalized capitalist competition. This is tearing apart the old social fabric in country after country, making them unrecognizable to their inhabitants. In Western Europe, it’s undermining the social democratic “social contract,” established amid the post-World War 2 political turmoil, in which people accepted subordination to capital’s needs in return for a secure basic standard of living and the expectation of better days for their children. Social changes have challenged the traditional values that held society together and hollowed out the civic institutions that structured people’s lives, from the Church to trade unions. This has major consequences for how people are tempted to think, including what they consider a just society and political legitimacy. These are among the factors at work in the rise of fascism in continental Europe, the popular appeal of Brexit in the UK and, of course, much of the social base of Donald Trump.

This doesn’t at all mean that the yellow vests are fascists. But when a movement proclaims that its goal is a “revolution,” the content of that has to be judged differently than, say, strikes against pay cuts. In fact, its stubborn and self-proclaimed “non-ideological” character signals a problem: it welcomes the participation of everyone who supports its demands, including open fascists, and in the name of that “unity” refuses to take a stand on today’s major dividing-line issues in France: whether new immigrants should be welcomed or drowned; whether people from immigrant backgrounds and others should be confined to housing project ghettos, brutalized by the police, and kept at the bottom of society; whether women exist to be sex objects and mothers, and people of non-traditional gender orientations should get rights or beatings; stepped-up French intervention in West Africa and the Middle East; and whether or not the planet should be saved from environmental catastrophe. Some people from other social movements have flocked to the yellow vests, but this movement stays aloof.

As for “share the wealth,” that’s a reactionary slogan. The wealth of France, like all imperialist countries, was not created mainly by the generations of hard work of “the French.” It first came from the slave trade and hideous plantation slavery in the French Antilles, and the centuries-old and ongoing pitiless plunder of French neo-colonies that enabled France’s current top-ward position in a globalized economy and a world divided into oppressor and oppressed countries. The objective question is: stand with the people of the world and ultimately humanity, or cling to the relative and petty privileges that come from being considered part of “the people” in an imperialist country and stand with “your” ruling class as part of its efforts to unite “our people” against the world’s peoples and other imperialists. Populism tends toward nationalism, and this is where imperialist-country nationalism takes people.

Without overthrowing and uprooting this imperialist system, no country anywhere can become a place fully fit for human beings. Otherwise, people will never be free to fully satisfy their desires to escape the confinement of stultifying conditions, subject to the rule of money and the disdain of their “betters,” spending their lives in enforced backwardness, and forbidden to take part in transforming a hateful world and bringing into being a truly new one where everyone can realize their potential as full human beings as part of the collective emancipation of humanity. The movement’s biggest problem is not where it came from but its own extremely limited horizons. It represents an outlook that can’t break capital’s hold on society, and capital’s objective needs make the movement’s aims impossible to realize.

The objective political context makes this even more dangerous. A powerful part of the old political mainstream has embraced the fascism long espoused by the politician Marine Le Pen, at this point Macron’s only real political rival. Among yellow vest figures calling for an “insurrection,” one of the most prominent is counting on fascist sympathizers at the top of the military. Unlike the yellow vests, the fascists do have a realizable program: a different, fascist form of capitalist rule that claims to embrace yellow vest demands. The more France is embroiled in crisis, the more a fascist solution could become acceptable to a now divided ruling class. This situation, more than the yellow vest movement itself, explains why the Macron government feels its survival is at stake. What comes out of the current political crisis is not going to be up to the yellow vests.

 

 

From RefuseFascism.org:

Our mission: Millions in the streets demanding In the Name of Humanity, Trump/Pence Must Go

Updated December 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Our singular demand:

In the Name of Humanity, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

How does that happen?

Every fascist move by the Trump/Pence regime should be met by more struggle and involve more and more people and diverse political forces opposed to the moves of this regime. And this struggle needs to be aiming at and preparing for nothing less than driving out the whole regime through the non-violent massive struggle of people staying in the streets day after day, creating the kind of political crisis that could drive out the whole fascist regime.

[1] The most defining thing about the recent elections is that the fascist program of the Trump/Pence regime became more consolidated and its fascist social base was more fully unleashed. Pipe bombs sent to leading Democrats and CNN. A hideous antisemitic massacre. Racist murders of African-Americans. Vicious anti-immigrant lies of an “invading caravan” to be met by US Troops who Trump said should shoot if the refugees throw rocks. Trump whipping up his rallies – Nuremberg style. On top of two years of the regime eviscerating what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, banning Muslims, locking in a majority fascist Supreme Court, stoking violent white supremacy and xenophobia, hateful misogyny, and ripping up international alliances and ramping up the threats of war. The Trump/Pence regime and the forces within it have said they view this presidency as the “last chance” to secure their vision for this country. This will continue and grow worse – with Trump now firing Sessions, attacking reporters, doubling down on his racist nationalism – unless and until it is stopped by the masses of people acting in fierce and sustained opposition outside the confines of politics as usual.

[2] The Democrats winning a majority in the House did not change this. The Democratic opposition throughout the elections and Nancy Pelosi’s post-election speech, refused to confront Trump’s fascism, but instead normalized, accommodated, and then promised to collaborate with the regime that is bringing an American fascism. About the Democrats, it could be said:“ First they came for the Muslims, and I protested once and then let it happen… Then they came for the immigrants, and I voted for healthcare and stayed mum.” They are determined to maintain order – even if that is the order of fascism – rather than risk the instability that it would take to confront and drive out the fascist regime and the nightmare they are hammering into place.

[3] The people who hate and fear this whole fascist nightmare and direction must now ACT with great determination in the streets – while organizing to move tens of thousands and soon millions to join them in the streets – with sustained determination until we drive this fascist regime from power in the name of humanity.  This is why we are organizing a movement – aiming to bring hundreds of thousands and millions into the streets – to say: In the Name of Humanity, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

Check It Out:

Climate Change, the Torture of the Immigrants by the U.S., and a Whole Different—and Far Better—Answer to These Horrors

April 10, 2019 | revcom.us

 

We urge our readers to check out two recent articles in the mainstream media. The article “How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis,” from The New Yorker magazine, shows how the climate crisis—largely created and driven forward by the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system—has been pushing immigrants out of their homes to make the dangerous journey to the U.S. The main forms of this system’s oppression are bound together by a thousand chains. And an opinion piece by a migrant from Honduras, “We Fled the Gangs in Honduras. Then the U.S. Government Took My Baby,” from the New York Times, shows the effects of the heartless policy pursued by U.S. imperialism, and the Trump/Pence fascist regime in particular, toward the victims of this crisis.

These articles shed some important light on the horrors caused by this system, in particular the environmental emergency that is a big factor in the refugee crisis (and threatens the very future of humanity and other life on earth) and the cruel, deadly repression by the U.S. against immigrants. The system that rules over us now has NO answer to these and any of the other problems confronting humanity and causing the needless suffering of billions worldwide.

But as the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, brings alive in very concrete ways, a radically different state power proceeding from the interests of humanity can go to work on these problems in real ways. We urgently need a revolution to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist system and to bring the new socialist state into being. For more on HOW such a socialist state would approach and tackle the questions of the climate crisis, immigration, and relations with nations formerly oppressed by the U.S., go to these sections in the Constitution for a New Socialist Republic in North America: Article I, Section 2B, The Environment, p.21; Article II, Section 3H, Immigrants, Citizenship and Asylum, p.60; and Article I, Section 2E, International Relations, p. 37.