The following is taken from a recent talk given by Bob Avakian

Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of "Painless Progress"

Updated October 11, 2019, originally published July 29, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Note Added by the Author, Fall 2019

This work is the edited text of a talk given in the spring of 2019, and the following section (“Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of ‘Painless Progress’”) has been published (posted at revcom.us) beginning in the summer of this year.  In late September 2019, Nancy Pelosi (and the Democratic Party leadership of which she is a prominent representative), after a prolonged stubborn insistence on refusing to impeach Donald Trump, reversed course and announced that an “impeachment inquiry” of Trump would be undertaken. This reversal was hinged upon—and Pelosi and Company have made an attempt to focus this “impeachment inquiry” overwhelmingly, if not solely, on—the revelation (stemming from a report by a government “whistleblower”) that Trump has been involved in an effort to pressure the government of Ukraine to do Trump the “favor” of digging up (or “cooking up”) dirt on Joe Biden, former Vice President (under Obama) and a leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidential election in 2020.  Pelosi and the Democrats have identified this as an abuse of presidential power, in pursuit of Trump’s personal interests (particularly looking ahead to the 2020 election) and have given emphasis to their insistence that, in making this “favor” the basis (and the price) for the continuation of the U.S. military aid to Ukraine, in its confrontation with pro-Russian forces, Trump “undermined U.S. national security,” particularly in relation to its major adversary Russia.  In other words, while, from their bourgeois perspective, their concern is very real in regard to the imperialist “national interests” of the U.S., the “norms” of how this system’s rule has been imposed and maintained, the importance to them of a “peaceful transition” from one administration to another through elections—and the danger posed to this by Trump’s trampling on these “norms”—Pelosi and Company, in focusing this “impeachment inquiry” on this narrow basis, have underlined the fact that they are acting in accordance with their sense of the interests of U.S. capitalist imperialism and its drive to remain the dominant imperialist power in the world, and that they continue to refuse to demand Trump’s ouster on the basis of his many outrageous statements and acts directed against masses of people, not only in the U.S. but internationally:  his overt racism and promotion of white supremacy and white supremacist violence; his gross misogyny and attacks on the rights of women, including very prominently the right to abortion, and on LGBT rights; his repeated calls for and backing of intensified brutal repression and suppression of dissent; his discrimination against Muslims and his cruel targeting of immigrants, involving confinement in concentration camp-like conditions, including for those fleeing from persecution and the very real threat of death in their “home countries” and seeking asylum on that basis, and the separation of even very young children from their parents; his assault on science and the scientific pursuit of the truth, including denial of the science of climate change and continuing moves to undermine and reverse even minor and completely ineffective protections of the environment; his threats to destroy countries, including through the use of nuclear weapons—in short, his all-around drive to fully consolidate fascist rule and implement a horrific, fascist agenda, with terrible consequences for the masses of humanity. 

While, as of this writing, it is not clear what this “impeachment inquiry” will lead to—whether Trump will actually be impeached in the House of Representatives, and what will happen then in the Senate to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office—it is already clear that the way in which the Democrats are seeking to narrowly focus the move to oust Trump emphasizes yet again the importance of these basic points of orientation:

The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent.  We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.

This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers that be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, “the struggle from below”—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.

Clearly, the removal of not just Trump, but also the Christian Fascist Vice President Mike Pence, and indeed this whole fascist regime, is of urgent importance.  But this will only serve the fundamental interests of the masses of people—not just in this country but in the world as a whole—if this is achieved, not on the basis of confining things within the terms of and through the furthering of the “national interests” of the monstrously oppressive U.S. empire, but on the basis of the mobilization of mass opposition to the fascism of this Trump/Pence regime, which has been produced by and risen to power through the “normal functioning” of this system, of which it is an extreme but not somehow an “alien” expression.

~~~~~~~~~~

Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of "Painless Progress"

All this—even the seemingly more “benign,” or oblivious, individualism—links up with the repeated and stubborn insistence on chasing after the illusion of painless progress. If something makes people uncomfortable—and still more, if it holds out the prospect of sacrifice, necessary sacrifice, on their part—far too many people turn away from it. As I’ve pointed out before, there’s this whole attitude of approaching reality as if it’s a “buffet,” or approaching it like a consumer: “Well, that makes me uncomfortable. I’ll just leave that to the side. I don’t want to look at that because that makes me uncomfortable.”

I am going to talk later about some of the more ridiculous and outrageous forms of this. But just to give a little preview, as I pointed out in The New Communism, some people went on one of the college campuses a couple of years ago with a poster of Stolen Lives, people who’d been killed by police (not all of them, by any means, but dozens), and someone came up and started whining: “I don’t like that poster, it makes me feel unsafe.” As I commented at the time: Oh, boo-hoo! Let’s get out of this boo-hoo shit and start talking about and engaging seriously what’s happening to masses of people, one significant part of which is represented by what’s on that poster.

One of the most common and problematical forms of this repeated and stubborn insistence on chasing after the illusion of “painless progress,” particularly among people who consider themselves somewhat enlightened (or progressive, or “woke,” or however they want to put it), is what we very rightly term BEB—Bourgeois Electoral Bullshit—and the phenomenon that people continually confine themselves to the narrow limits of what is presented to them by one section of the ruling class, as embodied in the Democratic Party: “These are the limits of what I’ll consider in terms of possibly bringing about change”—because this is the well-worn rut of what is, at least up to this point, relatively safe in terms of political engagement. It may even become not-so-safe in the future, depending on how things go with these fascists who are working to consolidate their power right now through the ruling regime of Trump and Pence. But for now it seems relatively painless. It is also completely ineffectual and doesn’t bring about any kind of change that’s needed, but it’s a way to feel that you’re doing something while avoiding any sacrifice, and even any real discomfort.

One of the ways this gets expressed, along with the BEB, is people, in their masses, not confronting the reality of Trump/Pence fascism, and therefore not acting in a way commensurate with the danger and the potentially even greater horrors this represents.

Just to step back, and to speak to a very important element of this that I’ve touched on before, Trump’s election—through the electoral college, not the popular vote—is, in a real sense, an extension of slavery: the people who voted for Trump are the kind of people who would have been pro-slavery, had they been around at the time of slavery in the United States. And those who find it acceptable to have the overt white supremacist Trump in the White House are the kind of people who would have ignored or would have openly accepted and justified or rationalized slavery when it existed. And here I have to invoke what I thought was a very insightful comment by Ron Reagan (yes, Ronald Reagan’s maverick son, who is also, to his great credit, an unabashed atheist): Trump’s much-analyzed, over-analyzed, “base” will continue supporting him, no matter what he does, Ron Reagan has pointed out (and this is very insightful), because Trump hates all the same people they hate.

As opposed to all the obfuscation about the economic difficulties people are going through, blah, blah, blah, that is often used to rationalize why people voted for and continue to support Trump, what Ron Reagan has sharply pointed to is the essence of Trump’s “base.” And, by the way, notice how all the mainstream media, CNN and so on, continually use this term: Trump’s “base.” This is a neutral term, “base.” These are a bunch of fascists, okay? And by using these euphemisms, or these neutral terms, like “base,” you’re obscuring and keeping people from seeing what is actually represented by Trump and those who support him, and the depth of the real danger this poses. Ron Reagan’s comment is very much to the point. He went on to elaborate: They hate LGBT people, they hate women (independent women, and really all women), they hate Black people, they hate immigrants, they hate Muslims, and so on. And Trump hates all the same people they hate.

That is why they’ll never desert him, whatever he does. That is why he could very rightly make the comment: “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in New York City and these people wouldn’t turn against me.”

At the same time, it has to be bluntly said: For the millions, and tens of millions, who say they hate everything Trump stands for and what he is doing but who, after all this time, have still not taken to the streets in sustained mobilization demanding that the Trump/Pence regime must go, this makes them collaborators with this fascist regime and themselves guilty of the egregious crime of tolerating this regime when they still could have the possibility of achieving the demand that it must go, through such mass mobilization!

To paraphrase Paul Simon: They are squandering their resistance for a pocketful of mumbles—and worse—from the Democratic Party.

It is long past time—and there is still time, but not much time—for this to change, for masses of people to finally take to the streets, and stay in the streets, with the firm resolve that this fascist regime must go!

And here are some very relevant questions for the millions and tens of millions who hate everything Trump stands for but have failed or refused to mobilize, in their masses, in non-violent but sustained action around the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power, as has been called for by Refuse Fascism: If you will not take to the streets now to demand that the Trump/Pence regime must go, what will you do if Trump is re-elected (perhaps through the electoral college, even if he again loses the popular vote)? And what will you do if Trump loses the election (even by the electoral college count) but then refuses to recognize the results and insists he is still President?!

At the same time, it is necessary to point to the very serious problems with the dangerous naiveté and “left” posturing of certain “progressive” intellectuals. For example, someone like Glenn Greenwald, who has done some good things in exposing the violations of people’s rights under this system—human rights, civil rights and civil liberties—but who, whenever anything’s brought out about the terrible crimes and horrors that are represented by the Trump/Pence regime, insists upon immediately saying things like, “Yes, but what about Hillary Clinton, and what about the Democrats, and the terrible things they have done?” All of which is true. As we have pointed out: The Democratic Party is a machine of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. And this does need to be brought out. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that the Republican Party is fascist, and if you don’t understand that this has real meaning and real importance—and every time someone speaks to the outrages and horrors perpetrated by these fascists, you insist on immediately raising, “Yes, but what about the Democrats?”—you’re leading people, or pointing people, away from an understanding of the real dynamics going on here and the real dangers.

And then there is Slavoj Žižek. As is very bluntly, and very accurately, put in the article by Raymond Lotta, “Slavoj Žižek Is a Puffed-Up Idiot Who Does Great Damage”:

Slavoj Žižek, an influential fool-of-a-philosopher who often poses as a “communist,” declared his support for Donald Trump on British TV. A victory for Trump, according to Žižek, will help the Republicans and Democrats “rethink themselves”—and could bring about “a kind of big awakening.” And speaking from his “what-me-worry” perch [Lotta goes on], Žižek pronounced that Trump “will not introduce fascism.”

As Lotta then succinctly states: “This is wrong, this is poison.” And it is similar to the kind of wrong and dangerous thinking that people like Glenn Greenwald fall into and propagate. Similarly to Glenn Greenwald, it involves playing down the actual reality and danger of what’s represented by fascism, even as, once again, the Democratic Party is an instrument of bourgeois dictatorship, and a machine of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This kind of wrong thinking is also exemplified by someone like Julian Assange, who actually, from all appearances, and it does seem to be the case, contributed to the machinations that went on around the Trump campaign, involving, it does seem, the Russians in this, and who did so with the same kind of rationalization that Žižek put forward, as cited by Raymond Lotta—that Clinton and the Democratic Party represent the old establishment, the old ways of doing things, and if they’re defeated and somebody who’s outside the establishment gets in, it will shake things up. I have heard Assange saying (his own words, not just others characterizing what his position is): “Maybe this will lead to a negative change, or maybe it will lead to a positive change, but at least it will lead to change, or it will hold open the possibility of change.”

Well, what kind of change is it actually leading to? There’s no room for agnosticism or ignorance about what kind of change it is leading to. Yes, bourgeois dictatorship in any form is very bad for the masses of people, very oppressive and repressive of the masses of people, and needs to be overthrown. But an overt fascist dictatorship that tramples on any pretense of upholding rights for people is not something that should be put in the category of “maybe it’ll be a positive change, or maybe it’ll be a negative change.”

Now, at the same time as making this sharp critique, particularly with regard to Julian Assange, it is very important to emphasize the need to oppose the persecution of Assange by the U.S. imperialists, whose persecution of him is in response to and revenge for his part—not in something to do with the Russians, but overwhelmingly in exposing just some of the monstrous crimes of this system. In this regard, there was an interesting article called “Julian Assange and the Woeful State of Whistle-Blowers” by Edward Wasserman, who’s a professor of journalism and the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. (This article appeared in the New York Times on Saturday, April 27 of this year, 2019.) Wasserman points out that, with whatever his failings are, political and personal, Julian Assange, through WikiLeaks, “enabled spectacular disclosure of official secrets,” including, as Wasserman himself puts it, “war crimes, torture and atrocities on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan” by the U.S. And this is why he’s being attacked in the legal arena and politically by the U.S. ruling class. This dimension is where people need to rally to Assange’s defense, even with his limitations and failings. And the need and importance of defending Assange, particularly from political/legal persecution by the U.S. government, has been greatly heightened by the fact that this government (headed by the Trump/Pence fascist regime) has now piled on very serious charges of espionage in this process of persecution, with dire implications not just for Assange but for any and all who would dare to uncover and expose the war crimes and crimes against humanity continually carried out by U.S. imperialism and its institutions of violence and repression.

Yet, without in any way failing to give due importance and emphasis to opposing these repressive moves by the U.S. government, it remains necessary and there is also great importance to criticizing this outlook and approach embodied in the thinking of people like Assange and Glenn Greenwald, as well as Žižek. The idea that these bourgeois (or “establishment”) politicians are just “all the same,” without any analysis of the nuances, or even the blatant differences, between them and the consequences of this for the masses of people, the masses of humanity—this is very harmful.

Here it is worth looking at the criticism that was raised of the German communists in the period of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. The slogan was attributed to the German communists: “Nach Hitler, Uns,” (meaning: “After Hitler, Us”). In other words, the same kind of thinking—that Hitler actually heading up the government would shake up things and would cause such a crisis in society that, then, the communists would have a chance to come to power. This represented a very serious underestimation of what was represented by Hitler and the Nazis, and the terrible consequences of this for humanity. Yes, the communists there should have been consistently and firmly opposing the whole system on a revolutionary basis, but it was also very important and necessary to recognize that Hitler and the Nazis were a particularly perverse and extreme representation of all the horrors of this system, and would carry them out in very extreme forms.

So, in relation to all this, there is a need for a scientific approach to building opposition to the fascism embodied in the Trump/Pence regime in the U.S. today, in a way that is based on and proceeds from the understanding that’s captured in works of mine like “The Fascists and the Destruction of the ‘Weimar Republic’... And What Will Replace It” and “Not Being Jerry Rubin, or Even Dimitrov, but Actually Being Revolutionary Communists: THE CHALLENGE OF DEFENDING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS—FROM A COMMUNIST PERSPECTIVE, AND NO OTHER.” (These articles are available at revcom.us. They are part of the Collected Works of Bob Avakian.)

As I have stressed several times, and as concentrated in the slogan we have brought forward: “The Republican Party is Fascist, The Democratic Party is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.” This emphasizes the importance of both aspects of things: recognizing the particularity of what’s represented by the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime and the Republican Party as a whole, and confronting the nature and massive crimes of the whole system, and all those who are functionaries and enforcers of this system, definitely including the Democratic Party.

In an article in the New York Times (Tuesday, July 16, 2019), “Racism Comes Out of the Closet,” Paul Krugman makes the point that not just Donald Trump but the Republican Party as a whole has gone from “dog whistling” racism to overtly and crudely expressing it. Krugman concludes this article this way, referring to the Republican Party’s dropping of even any pretense of opposing racism:

It’s tempting to say that Republican claims to support racial equality were always hypocritical; it’s even tempting to welcome the move from dog whistles to open racism. But if hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, what we’re seeing now is a party that no longer feels the need to pay that tribute. And that’s deeply frightening.

Krugman does have a point—an important and relevant point—here, as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn’t go far enough, and in particular does not break out of the constricting terms of contradictions and conflicts among ruling class parties (the Republicans and the Democrats). The stance of hypocritically pretending opposition to such outrages as racist oppression, while in fact acting as the representatives, functionaries and enforcers of a system that has this oppression built into it and could not exist without this oppression—this does not just apply to the Republican Party in the past (if it ever applied to that party at all over the past 50 years and more) but also applies to the Democratic Party. What is concentrated in this situation is the need to recognize, and correctly handle, a very real and acute contradiction: the fact that, on the one hand, the Democratic Party, as much as the Republican Party, is a party of a system that continually commits, and cannot help committing, massive crimes against the masses of humanity and embodies an existential threat to the very future of humanity; and, on the other hand, the fact that (to paraphrase what is cited above from Krugman’s article) there is a very real difference and very direct danger embodied in the fact that one of these ruling class parties (the Republicans) openly abandons much of the pretense of being anything other than a rapacious, and yes racist, plunderer of human beings and of the environment. This requires the correct synthesis of, in fundamental terms, opposing the whole system, of which both of these parties are instruments, and actively working, in an ongoing way, toward the strategic goal of abolishing this whole system, while also, with the same fundamental strategic perspective, recognizing the acute immediate danger posed by the fascist Trump/Pence regime and working urgently to bring forward masses of people in non-violent but sustained mobilization around the demand that this regime must go!

Failing to really recognize and act on this understanding, in its different aspects and its full dimension, is very much related to individualism—particularly in the form of seeking the illusion of painless progress, rather than being willing to confront inconvenient and uncomfortable truths and to act accordingly, even with the sacrifices that might be required.

With all the nuances and particularities of contradictions that do have to be recognized, this crucial truth can be put in this basic and concentrated way:

The Democratic Party Is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution.

Here a challenge needs to be issued to all those who insist on the position that “the Democrats are the only realistic alternative”: On the website revcom.us, there is the “American Crime” series, which chronicles and outlines many of the most horrific crimes of the U.S. ruling class, going back to the beginning of this country and right up to the present, carried out under Republican and Democratic administrations. Here is the challenge: Go read that “American Crime” series and then come back and try to explain why it’s a decent thing to do to be caught up in supporting the Democrats.

Along with its other crimes, and its particular role in maintaining and enforcing this system, in the current circumstances the Democratic Party is also an active facilitator of fascism because of its refusal, even on the terms of the system it represents, to do anything meaningful to oppose the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime. This is concentrated in the insistence by Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi (or Piglosi, as she should be called) that impeachment is, once again, off the table. Some people may not remember (or may have chosen to forget), and others may not even know, but there was a massive sentiment to impeach George W. Bush back around 2005-2006, in particular because of the way he took the country to war, attacking and invading Iraq, causing massive destruction and death in that country, on the basis of systematic lies that were very consciously perpetrated by his whole regime, including Colin Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the rest, who deliberately and systematically lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and supposedly threatening the U.S. (and “allies” of the U.S.) with those weapons. These lies were the rationalization for perpetrating the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq—which, in fact, was an international war crime. There was a mass sentiment toward impeachment of George W. Bush largely on that basis. Well, when the Democrats, in the 2006 election, won control of both houses of Congress, immediately Nancy Piglosi said impeachment is off the table. And now she’s doing the same thing again—and she’s doing this not just as an individual, but as representative of the leadership of the Democratic Party. To borrow a term from the gang scene, the “shot-callers” of the Democratic Party are saying: “We shouldn’t impeach Trump because that will just serve him; he’s trying to goad us into impeaching him.” As though it would not be a good thing for Trump to be impeached. Piglosi insists: “We’re not gonna fall for that, we’re gonna hold Trump accountable.”  Oh yeah? How? How are you going to hold him accountable when you refuse to use one of the most powerful instruments you have, impeachment, to actually do something meaningful to oppose what he’s doing?

I saw a commentator on one of the networks the other day who made an observation which (along with and despite a bunch of nonsense that she was also spouting) was actually somewhat insightful and important. She said: “Laws don’t enforce themselves. If you can do something and get away with it, the law is meaningless.” Well, Piglosi, your “accountability” (holding Trump “accountable”) is meaningless because you are refusing to exercise the most effective means you might have to “hold him accountable.”

Now, some people say that this is just being done by Piglosi and the rest because they have the 2020 election in mind, and they don’t want to feed the Republican Party ammunition for their insistence that “this is a witch hunt” against Trump and the Republican Party. That may be a secondary consideration on the part of the Democrats, but if you listen to Piglosi she’s telling us what the deal actually is. She’s saying it would further divide the country to impeach Trump—as if the “country” is not already very deeply and very intensely divided, at this point, which is precisely why someone like Trump could get elected in the first place.

But there are really three reasons, or we could call them “three fears,” that Piglosi and the rest have. They’re afraid of Trump and the Republicans, so they’re allowing Trump and the Republicans to set the terms of what they can do. Their “logic” goes like this: “Since Trump would lash back if we tried to impeach him, therefore we shouldn’t try to impeach him.” This is the logic of what they’re saying, even if they don’t directly and explicitly articulate it like that. So they’re letting the Republicans set the terms—which, of course, only causes the Republicans to be even more aggressive in pursuit of their agenda and in defying and trampling on the “norms” of this system. Even according to their own bourgeois “principles,” the Democrats should be acting on the basis of what’s in their Constitution, not according to what the Republicans will allow them to do.

Secondly, along with being afraid of Trump and the Republican Party, they are afraid of the reality that laws don’t enforce themselves. They’re afraid that if they impeach Trump—and if, somehow, they even succeeded not only in impeaching him, but actually getting him convicted in the Senate—that Trump might well declare: “Fuck you, I’m the President, I don’t recognize this impeachment.” Then, what and whom can they turn to? This brings up the other dimension of this second point: They’re afraid of Trump’s “base.” They’re afraid of these fascist forces out there who are being encouraged and goaded by Trump to increasingly act in a violent manner and who (as I’ll speak to shortly) do have a lot of weapons and are demonstrating not only their willingness, but their eagerness, to use them. So Piglosi and the rest are afraid of that.

But at least as much—and here is the “third fear”—they are afraid of the people on the other side of the divide in the country, the people who tend to vote for the Democrats, especially the basic masses of oppressed people. They are afraid of the very people, basic masses and others, whom the Democratic Party is responsible for “corralling” into the BEB and “domesticating” their dissent. They’re afraid of the people who are angry about what’s represented by Trump and Pence. They don’t want those people out in the street, unless it is contained within the narrow confines of what the Democratic Party, and the system it serves, can allow. And they don’t want the confrontation between those people and the fascists who have rallied behind Trump. You think they want to see masses of Black people, immigrants, and others, including masses of people from different strata who are furious over Trump—you think they want to see them in the streets in direct and determined opposition to what is represented by Trump and Pence? That’s one of the worst nightmares of Piglosi and Company, not only because of the potential for militant confrontation with the fascists, but because people could then get completely out of the control of the Democratic Party, and the whole system of which the Democrats are representatives, functionaries, and enforcers. A big part of what they are representing and enforcing would be seriously jeopardized.

So this is what’s really going on with Piglosi and the rest in stubbornly resisting a move toward impeachment.

And then we come to one of the main aggressively fascist functionaries in the Republican Party, the Congressman from Iowa, Steve King. Recently, along with all of his other outrageous postings and overtly racist, misogynist, and crudely derogatory statements about Muslims and immigrants, and so on, King recently posted a meme, with this comment, on his official campaign page:

Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.

Now, it has to be said that there is a “demented insight” in this comment. Obviously, this is a vicious attack on trans people, as well as those supportive of their rights. So, on the one hand, this is an outrageous statement, a thoroughly reactionary and vicious statement. But it does express a certain demented insight, or a demented representation of some truth, because while people are rightly supporting the rights of trans people, gay people, women and others, there are real limitations and problems with the spontaneous outlook prevailing among those on the correct side of the divide. There is a narrowness along lines of “identity,” and an ignoring of, or a not paying sufficient attention to, the larger dynamics that are shaping up in the society (and the world) as a whole, and the implications of this, as represented, once again, by the fact that, while people are fighting around or raising some resistance around this or that particular instance of oppression, discrimination and prejudice, they are not rallying to take on the whole massive assault that’s embodied in the Trump/Pence regime, let alone the whole system that has produced this regime. There is the serious problem that, as a whole, people who consider themselves “progressive” or “woke” have, to put it mildly, not made any real rupture with American chauvinism (about which I will have more to say shortly). And, related to this, there is the fundamental problem of attempting to resolve the conflict with what is represented by the Trump/Pence regime and its fascist “base,” with its “8 trillion bullets,” through relying on (or seeking a return to) what have been the “norms” of the bourgeois order in this country (and, on the part of some, this involves a call for “restoring civility”) while the fascists are determined to trample on and tear up these “norms” and are perfectly happy to have those who oppose them adopt the stance of “civility” (accommodation) toward their unrelenting fascist offensive. Although this does not apply absolutely, it is far too much the case that the words of the poet William Butler Yeats describe this very serious situation: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” And so, while things could be heading toward a civil war, and it could come down to that even in the not-too-distant future, the present lineup is very unfavorable for anybody who represents anything decent in the world.

All this is, in a demented kind of way, represented in King’s statement that one side has about 8 trillion bullets while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use. Again, it’s not that the question of bathroom use and the larger questions it encapsulates is unimportant. It is important. But there’s a larger picture here of this developing trend or motion toward a civil war which right now is very one-sided in a very bad way, and if things continue on this trajectory the outcome could truly be disastrous.

So that should be serious food for thought—and not only that, but also a serious spur to action for people who do care about all the various ways in which people are being brought under attack and oppression is being intensified all across the board against large sections of the people who need to be brought together to fight against the offensive from these fascist forces—and, in more fundamental terms, need to be brought forward on the basis of recognizing that it’s the whole system, out of which this fascist phenomenon has arisen, and which embodies such terrible oppression of people not just here but all around the world, that needs to be swept away.

Now, another element of this that we can’t overlook is that, while a lot of what King describes applies in a certain demented way, particularly to progressive or so-called “woke” middle class people, there is another kind of problem with regard to more basic oppressed people, and in particular the youth—a big problem that their guns are now aimed at each other. And without going more fully into this right now, this is something that needs to be radically transformed in building a movement for an actual revolution.

So here we come to the question of the relation between building for an actual revolution and the still very urgent question of driving out this fascist regime. The following from Part 2 of Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution remains extremely relevant and important:

The relation between the struggle against this fascist regime and building the revolution is not a “straight road” or a “one-way street”: It must not be approached, by those who understand the need for revolution, as if “first we must build a mass movement to drive out this regime, and then we can turn our attention to working directly for revolution.” No. It is crucial to unite and mobilize people, from different perspectives, very broadly, around the demand that this regime must go, but it will be much more difficult to do this on the scale and with the determination that is required to meet this objective if there are not, at the same time, greater and greater numbers of people who have been brought forward around the understanding that it is necessary to put an end not only to this regime but to the system out of whose deep and defining contradictions this regime has arisen, a system which by its very nature has imposed, and will continue to impose, horrific and completely unnecessary suffering on the masses of humanity, until this system itself is abolished. And the more that people are brought forward to be consciously, actively working for revolution, the growing strength and “moral authority” of this revolutionary force will in turn strengthen the resolve of growing numbers of people to drive out this fascist regime now in power, even as many will not be (and some will perhaps never be) won to revolution.

 

Fascists and Communists:
Completely Opposed and Worlds Apart

By Bob Avakian

July 22, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Fascists stand for and are determined to intensify, to grotesque and hideous dimensions, every dimension of oppression and exploitation and all the horrors perpetrated by the system of capitalism-imperialism. Communists, and in particular the advocates of the new communism, are determined to put an end to all these horrors, and potentially even worse horrors, through the overthrow of the system of capitalism-imperialism and the abolition of all relations of exploitation and oppression, throughout the world.

Look at the 5 STOPS—fascists and communists, and in particular the advocates of the new communism, are on diametrically opposed sides of these crucial dividing lines: The fascists are determined to fortify and extend to even more monstrous proportions, and with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity, all the horrors embodied in those 5 STOPS, while the communists, and in particular the advocates of the new communism, stand for and fight for precisely a STOP to all this.

Fascists base themselves on and actively promote blind adherence to hateful prejudice, willful ignorance and aggressive paranoia, in opposition to rational thinking and discourse, science and the scientific method. Communists, and in particular the advocates of the new communism, base themselves on and seek to apply the most consistent scientific method, including the importance of learning from and critically assimilating the insights, criticisms, etc. of others who disagree with or even ardently oppose them.

As pointed out in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, it is not that people calling themselves communists have never acted in opposition to the basic principles of communism, and it is not that there have been no shortcomings and errors, even some grievous errors, in the history of the communist movement and socialist society; but a scientific approach and analysis shows that this has not been the main trend and character of the communist movement and socialist society led by communists; and the notion of communism as representing a “totalitarian nightmare” is fundamentally in conflict with reality and is on the contrary the invention and distortion of functionaries, enforcers and intellectual camp followers of the exploitative and oppressive system of capitalism and imperialism, which the communist revolution aims to overthrow and advance human society beyond, through the abolition of all exploitation and oppression. (If anyone is sincerely interested in actually understanding what is represented by the “theory” of “totalitarianism,” and in particular the use of this “theory” to distort and slander what is represented by communism, in Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That? they can find a systematic discussion, dissection and refutation of the basic thesis and methods in The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, whose work is the most celebrated embodiment of this “theory” of “totalitarianism” and its use to distort and slander what is represented by communism.)

And, once again, there is the further, qualitative development of communism with the new communism which I have brought forward—which involves a scientific analysis and synthesis of the historical experience, positive and negative, of the communist movement and the first great wave of communist-led revolution and socialist society, and the significance of which is highlighted and concentrated in particular in the first of the Six Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

From THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible – A Talk by Bob Avakian

A Critical Challenge, an Urgent Appeal

July 22, 2019 | revcom.us

 

[W]hether we consider ourselves revolutionaries, convinced of the need for a radical overturning of the system and thorough transformation of society, or we believe that it is possible to bring about changes that will lead to a more just society within this system; whether our understanding is that America is not, and cannot be, a force for good in the world, or we hope it still can become that—all of us need to come together, and act together, with the urgency that corresponds to the terrible present and the gravely imperiled future that this fascist regime represents for humanity, and with the conviction that something far better is necessary and possible.

We may have differences about what that “something far better” is, and how it can be brought about—and we should continue to discuss and debate this, with the orientation of seeking the truth, whether convenient or inconvenient, comfortable or uncomfortable, and following the truth wherever it leads—but it is not only possible but crucial and urgent that we unite—and actively go forward to win truly massive numbers of people—to act, in a really meaningful way, to bring about the removal of this fascist regime before it can fully consolidate its rule and bring down the full effect of its horrific agenda. In the “Paul Krugman” article, I put it this way:

“Krugman is a proponent of capitalism, whereas I am an advocate of communism, a new communism, who is convinced that what is ultimately and fundamentally required to deal with the current horrors facing the masses of humanity, and the looming threat to the very existence of humanity, is a truly radical and emancipating revolution. But that is not the immediate question and challenge before all of us at this present moment. Rather, it is to deal with the grave danger posed by those now in power, through nonviolent but massive and sustained political action—the mobilization of first thousands, growing into millions, determined to get and remain in the streets until this regime is removed from power. Does not the common recognition that this regime ‘may end up destroying civilization,’ demand of us—of all those, of many divergent viewpoints, who can recognize that these are the stakes for humanity—that we act together, and do everything in our power, to bring about the massive political manifestation that is urgently needed to drive out this regime?”

And, in concluding, let me go back to what I wrote at the end of that article:

“It is in this spirit and with this understanding that it is crucial for everyone—those, like Paul Krugman, with a prominent platform from which to influence public opinion, as well as those without such a platform—who do recognize and agonize over what is at stake for humanity to act, from their own perspective, to give meaningful support to, and indeed to become actively involved in, the critical work building toward November 4: publicly endorsing and promoting the Call from Refuse Fascism, helping to break through what is effectively a white-out of this by the mainstream media, donating and raising funds, directing people to the RefuseFascism.org website, and in countless other ways helping to develop the necessary political and organizational basis for what RefuseFascism very rightly calls ‘this great cause.’ For it is the massive and sustained political mobilization called for by RefuseFascism that truly represents the prospect of forging a positive path through and beyond this extremely dangerous and potentially disastrous situation.” 

February 12, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“You Think You’re Woke...
But You’re Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare —

This System Cannot Be Reformed,
It Must Be Overthrown!”

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

 

To you who are fed up with this society and “solutions” that are no solution...

To you who are angry and defiant and want to see an end to the white supremacy, the patriarchy and its many forms of gender oppression, the persecution of immigrants, the imperialist wars and occupations and threats, and the capitalist plunder and destruction of the environment—an end to all, or any, of the horrible forms of oppression and exploitation that define and intertwine with this capitalist-imperialist society...

To you who seek not justice for yourself or even just your own people, but the Emancipation of ALL Humanity...

To you who hate the fascism of Trump and Pence, but see through “vote for me and I’ll set you free” and any road that just makes the present horrors a little more tolerable for some within the U.S., while people around the world suffer even more...

To you who choke on “I’m woke,” “I’m good,” “No worries” when the world is being torn asunder and who have no patience for the putrid morals and relations of this culture...

To each and every person who senses that none of these horrors will be solved by this dog eat dog capitalist/imperialist system and that something radical—a real revolution—is needed... even as you have a thousand questions as to what that revolution would look like and whether it is even possible:

There Is a Way Out of This Madness!

“Let’s get down to basics:
We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.”
—Bob Avakian

We are constantly told, openly and by implication, that there is no alternative to the present order. But that is wrong!

There is a scientific approach that makes clear this madness is unnecessary and indicates the potential pathways for change. There is an actual plan for a radically different—and radically better—society, on the road to wiping out all exploitation and oppression, and emancipating humanity. There is a strategy to draw forward the millions and millions needed to make that happen. There is the leadership, in Bob Avakian (BA), the architect of the new communism and the leader of the revolution. These are great strengths on the people’s side. But, what is now missing and urgently needed is YOU—to get with, support, and become an organized part of the revolution.

There is a project to put this revolution before millions and organize thousands into it. That project is the Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour—starting out in Los Angeles in March and going around the country for the rest of the year. We’re going to boldly bring forward that science, strategy, and leadership for revolution and go right up against all the bullshit—the outmoded, petty, self-deceiving, and self-seeking bullshit that just ends up perpetuating the outrages of today.

But that’s not all. There’s no revolution without organization. We’re going to work: organizing for a revolution—enough now of everyone in “their lane,” with eyeballs glued to their screens. We’re gonna go everywhere, from the hard streets to the suburbs, from the hardscrabble rural areas to the campuses, and to wherever people are creating the new or debating the future. We’ll be giving people the concrete ways and means to support, contribute to, and join this revolution, in many different ways, big and small—with ideas and with practical involvement, with support and with questions and criticisms.

The tour will go far and wide, spreading and showing the film of the historic 2018 speech by Bob Avakian, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, that deeply answers the two questions in its title. And, the tour will get out the pamphlet, HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution, which concisely lays out the principles for how we get from the situation we are in today to actually winning an actual revolution.

Busting the People Out of Mental Shackles

We’ll call out the dead-end paths and mental shackles:

• The identity politics and all the similar rationales that end up with people looking out for themselves or their group, while the system grinds on, taking lives and crushing spirits, and dividing those who should oppose it;
• The religions that preach reconciliation and serve to keep minds away from confronting and changing reality as it really is;
• The entrepreneurialism—whether “legit,” gangsta, or NGO-style—that keeps everyone locked in the destructive, horrific capitalist present;
• The phony “socialism” that raises people’s hopes but only aims at repackaging and dividing up the spoils of U.S. domination of the world.

And we will definitely take on complicity with the Democratic Party, which poses as “the only alternative.” When in fact:

The Republican Party Is Fascist
The Democratic Party Is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
This System CANNOT Be Reformed—It MUST Be Overthrown!
We Need an Actual Revolution

The tour will IMPACT everywhere it goes—opening up debate, stirring up controversy, shaking up society so that people no longer feel they have to accept the unacceptable and adjust to injustice, and instead are inspired to get organized for a revolution to change everything.

The tour will work with the Revolution Clubs where they exist and help form new ones where they don’t. The tour will connect with people protesting and resisting this system’s crimes, especially those that concentrate the deep conflicts of this system. Stepping to people with revolution straight up, and coming from that place, we’ll unite in fighting injustice and oppression, and we’ll struggle with them to see the need and possibility for revolution. This is what it means to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution. The tour and the Revolution Clubs are where you learn about the revolution while leading—contributing to building vanguard organization necessary to lead a revolution.

The tour kicks off in March in Los Angeles and Southern California. Your participation and your support are needed to start, sustain, popularize, and defend the tour.

What You Can Do NOW

• DONATE: Without hype, absent fundamental change, without revolution, the future of humanity and the planet hangs in the balance. This tour cannot be sustained without your contribution. Become a MONTHLY SUSTAINER and make it possible to keep the tour on the move through the rest of the year. People are pouring their money into politicians of the Democratic Party—who are nothing but war criminals or war criminals-in-training, competing to be commander in chief or representatives of this bloody empire. Make a Profound Difference and DONATE to the possibility of something that could get beyond this horror and radically change the whole world.
• Learn about this tour. Go to www.revcom.us to view the speech by Bob Avakian and to learn more about the tour, the movement for revolution, Bob Avakian, and the new communism.
• Get onboard. Go to revcom.us to see ways you can spread the word, get with the tour, and get organized.

A Radically Different and Better World IS Possible!

Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

 
Donate to
The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour:

 

 

Ten Basic Principles of Organizing

June 24, 2019 | revcom.us

 

These 10 points were prepared for a workshop at the June 9 organizing conference held by the National Revolution Tour in Los Angeles. While still a work in progress, people found these to be a helpful outline.

Keep these as an informal guide for your Club. Are you doing these? Are you staying on track?

1. The two principles of the Revolution Club are: Humanity Needs Revolution and the New Communism and Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.
2. 5-2-6—the 5 Stops, the 2 Choices, and the 6 Points of Attention (POA)—are essential. Spread these everywhere...
3. Boldly challenge people to live by the POAs and recruit into the Revolution Club those who agree with the 5 Stops and 2 Choices and who will strive to live by and fight for the Points of Attention.
4. Bob Avakian’s leadership and work is a tremendous guide and amazing eye-opener. Get into BA and put BA before people—use BAsics (the book, quote cards, and posters [e.g., 1:13]), watch and show the films and question/answer sessions, get into the books, and discuss these in the Revolution Club...
5. HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution is the strategy for revolution. The filmed speech of Bob Avakian, WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION, along with the questions and answers, expands on this. Read this pamphlet and watch the film, discuss them with others, read and watch them again and again, and as you come to understand them more deeply, increasingly use them to guide your work.  
6. Don’t “meet people where they’re at.” Instead: disturb the air, bring them the truth, and generate controversy with a good spirit.
7. Break down the barriers between the movement for revolution and the people; take the problems of the revolution to the masses.
8. Put the revolution before people straight up, then let them find their own level of commitment. Building this movement is a process of unity as well as struggle.
9. Accumulate new people into the revolution... then organize people to have impact on crucial struggles or big events... then accumulate more people... and on and on.
10. This is a nationwide movement with the whole world in mind... use the web presence (the revcom.us website, social media, etc.) to learn how to understand what’s going on in the world and to get guidance for building the movement for revolution... to amplify what you or your group does... to raise questions... and to send your thoughts and actions.

Special REVOLUTION newspaper issue, March 2020

"You Think You're Woke...
But You're Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare

This System Cannot Be Reformed,
It Must Be Overthrown!"

A Message from: The National Get Organized
for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

March 2, 2020 | revcom.us

 

To you who are fed up with this society and “solutions” that are no solution:

There Is a Way Out of This Madness!

Get Into Bob Avakian (BA)

A Radically Different Leader
Who Has Developed
A Whole New Framework
For Human Emancipation

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.

 

What People Are Saying about the Tour

Updated May 13, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Field Reports From The National Revolution Tour

Updated April 23, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Tala Deloria and Lenny Wolff talk about The National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour, and about the May 20 speaking event at UCLA on The Michael Slate Show

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Andy Zee and Michelle Xai "Grand Experiment... As Serious As Your Life"

On The Michael Slate Show

LISTEN HERE

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

Revolution Club at the State Capitol in Sacramento

 

Social Media Posts and Graphics for

The National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

July 1, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On this page are the key graphics that can be taken up everywhere to spread
The Get Organized for an Actual Revolution Tour

---

• POSTERS

• SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA

The Crucial Importance of the New Communism and BA's Leadership

June 17, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The following is a summation of some group study and discussion of the new communism and the leadership of Bob Avakian (BA).

First of all, I want to say that it has been truly great, deeply meaningful, critically important—and a lot of fun!—digging into the work, leadership and method of BA together. I have been thinking recently about some key themes and lessons that occur to me regarding our study and discussions and their purpose and importance. There is obviously so much that I could highlight—in terms of the key points we have gotten into in these sessions and the significance of these sessions—and trying to cover it all would be well beyond the scope of what I have written here (which ended up being longer than I envisioned when I started). However, I wanted to frame our work together with two overall themes.

The first of these themes is drawn from the beginning of a quote from BA: “Let’s get down to basics: We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.” (from BAsics 3:1)

The second theme is the critical role of revolutionary theory.

Let me briefly get further into each of these themes—in general, as it relates to the role and importance of BA and his leadership in the world, and also as it relates to our study and discussions.

Given how much there is to say on each of these two themes, I can only really scratch the surface here. But let’s start with the first one:

“Let’s get down to basics: We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.”

The understanding captured in this quote not only speaks to the state of the world and of humanity—and to what is urgently needed in light of this—but also, relatedly, illuminates WHY we have been engaging in this study and discussion together and WHY this is so important.

We have often talked—and very correctly so, to be clear—about having “cool” discussions. But it’s important to understand that this is NOT fundamentally about having “cool,” “interesting,” “fun” or “mentally stimulating” discussions, even though these discussions definitely ARE all of these things!

Rather, our work together has a specific purpose: to deepen our understanding of the world not just for the sake of knowledge in some academic sense, but in order to radically CHANGE the world. And, more specifically, to deepen our understanding and application of the science of revolution and communism, as this science has been qualitatively advanced in groundbreaking ways through the new communism brought forward by BA—deepening our grasp and application of this science as a key part of contributing to the process of making revolution on the basis of this new communism.

Just look at the world! We have talked about the “5 STOPS,” which speak to five key, defining contradictions of this capitalist-imperialist system. These 5 STOPS are: “STOP Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality and Murder of Black and Brown People!”... “STOP the Patriarchal Degradation, Dehumanization, and Subjugation of All Women Everywhere, and All Oppression Based on Gender or Sexual Orientation!... Stop Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation, and Crimes Against Humanity!... Stop the Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!... Stop Capitalism-Imperialism from Destroying Our Planet!”

A quick glance at the news from the past few weeks alone will reveal that the contradictions spoken to in these 5 STOPS—and the staggering level of suffering and misery caused by these contradictions—are only intensifying.

This is on top of the countless other forms of tremendous poverty, deprivation, misery, exploitation, oppression and suffering spawned by this system and heaped upon literally billions of human beings and humanity as a whole every single day that this capitalist-imperialist system continues.

A key point to understand, which BA’s work illuminates so sharply and powerfully, is that NONE of these outrages are accidental, isolated or disconnected from each other. They have a common source—this SYSTEM of capitalism-imperialism. These outrages and horrors for humanity are woven into this system’s rules, its operation, its “DNA,” its roots, its historical and ongoing functioning. For this reason, the system CANNOT be reformed—it must be overthrown through revolution.

This point about the NEED for an actual revolution—as opposed to attempts to “fix” or “heal” or “reform” a system that in fact CANNOT be fixed, healed or reformed—in order to put an end to the countless ways that humanity suffers needlessly is, I believe, one vital takeaway from our study and discussions of BA’s work; it is one critical point on which our collective understanding should be significantly deepened.

Another one of these vital points that I think has been a theme of our study and discussions—especially recently, as we have watched the most recent film from BA (Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution) and listened to the Q & A from this film—is what an actual revolution IS, what it involves and what it requires.

An actual revolution does NOT just mean “a big change”—in one form or another—which is how many people think of it or try to define it. Rather, an actual revolution means overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist system, meeting and defeating its repressive force, dismantling its institutions and setting up a new, socialist system and state power and society—and, accordingly, new institutions—on the road to communism. Right now is NOT the time for an actual revolution, because the necessary conditions for this revolution do not yet exist. But right now IS the time to be working for, hastening (i.e., working to accelerate the emergence of) and preparing for an actual revolution.

This point leads us to the question of what we ALREADY do have, and what we DON’T yet have and therefore need to urgently work on bringing into being, in terms of the necessary factors and conditions for revolution.

In terms of what we DO have: By far the biggest positive factor we have is BA. Through decades of work, BA has forged the new communism, which is the framework—and, most fundamentally, the scientific understanding and method—that humanity needs to make revolution and continue that revolution all the way to communism. Think about this: Just as the first round of communist revolutions would never have happened without the initial scientific breakthroughs and framework forged by Marx, so the next round of communist revolutions will not happen without millions of people taking up the further scientific breakthroughs and framework forged by BA.

The framework of the new communism includes: a comprehensive and further developed scientific understanding of the nature of the problem, that is, the nature of capitalism-imperialism, how it specifically operates, historically and in the world today, why and how it is responsible for the many different forms of suffering that humanity faces and why this system cannot be reformed and must be swept away through revolution; a viable strategy for revolution—for working now to hasten while awaiting a revolutionary situation and then winning in that future situation; and a concrete, vivid and thoroughly developed vision and “blueprint” for a radically different socialist society on the road to communism, as put forward in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA.

Most fundamentally and importantly—and this is a thread running through and underlying the understanding, strategy and vision—is the scientific METHOD of the new communism.

The new communism forged by BA builds upon—but also goes far beyond, and in some key ways breaks with—the past experience in theory and practice of the communist movement.

Speaking in depth to the totality and specific dimensions of the new communism is also beyond the scope of what I am writing here, but to quickly highlight some key points of this.

In terms of the totality of what is represented by the new communism, I want to quote the first of the Six Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which we have previously discussed. This first resolution makes the point that the new communism

represents and embodies a qualitative resolution of a critical contradiction that has existed within communism in its development up to this point, between its fundamentally scientific method and approach, and aspects of communism which have run counter to this.

This point is important enough that I think it bears repeating in order to help facilitate ongoing further reflection: The new communism “represents and embodies a qualitative resolution of a critical contradiction that has existed within communism in its development up to this point, between its fundamentally scientific method and approach, and aspects of communism which have run counter to this.”

While—as this quote from the first resolution points out—communism’s method and approach has been FUNDAMENTALLY scientific, there have been important ways in which past socialist societies along with the communist movement, past and present, have taken up unscientific and even ANTI-scientific ways of thinking, methods and approaches to understanding and transforming reality, with very harmful effects.

The new communism brought forward by BA qualitatively resolves this contradiction, putting communism on a more firmly scientific footing and therefore carving out the method and framework that makes it possible—not inevitable, but possible—to confront and transform the many contradictions involved in making revolution and continuing that revolution all the way to communism.

Needless to say, this is a big deal in terms of the possibilities this new communism opens up for humanity!

While, once again, it is not possible to review in depth the various specific dimensions of the new communism, I want to highlight here three examples of this.

*First, the new communism breaks new ground—and breaks with unscientific approaches within the communist movement—in terms of its approach to the TRUTH, the process by which the truth should be pursued, understood and arrived at, and the importance of going for the truth not just in a general sense but specifically in terms of the goal of getting to communism.

The new communism’s approach to this breaks with the unscientific and harmful ideas—which have far too often and to far too great a degree infected the past and present of the communist movement at different points—that a particular section of society, such as communists, or the most oppressed and exploited, have a monopoly on truth; the idea that whether or not a statement is true should be evaluated based on the class (or social) position of the person making the statement; the idea that different classes have their own versions of the truth, i.e., that the proletariat has its truth and the bourgeoisie has its truth; the notion of “populist epistemology”—that whether or not something is true should be evaluated based on the numbers of people who believe it at a given time; the notion of “political truth”—the idea that whether or not something is true should be evaluated based on whether or not it is viewed as convenient at a given time.

Once again, all of those wrong ways of thinking are not just prevalent in society more broadly but have been significant problems in the past and present of the communist movement.

In opposition to all of this is the understanding encompassed in BA’s new communism that truth is... TRUTH! That it does NOT have a class character, nor is it determined by whether it is viewed as politically convenient in the short term, nor is it determined by the number of the masses who recognize it as truth at a given time. That truth is determined by whether or not something corresponds to objective reality, and it must be fully confronted in all of its dimensions—including those that might be unfortunate or inconvenient in the short run—as an essential part of actually getting to communism.

These points are encompassed in this very important quote from BA that speaks to a key breakthrough in understanding concentrated in the new communism:

Everything that is actually true is good for the proletariat, all truths can help us get to communism. (BAsics 4:5)

Once again, as BA has pointed out, the new communism’s breakthroughs in regard to the truth are not just a matter of recognizing that going for the truth is essential in general—though this understanding is encompassed, too—but that going for the truth is essential IN ORDER TO GET TO COMMUNISM.

*A second example of a specific key dimension of the new communism is its breakthrough in regard to internationalism—the understanding that “the whole world comes first.” This is not just a moral stand—although it is ALSO that—but represents a more fully scientific understanding of internationalism and its importance in the process of making and continuing revolution, and a rupture with and departure from unscientific understandings of internationalism in the past and present of the communist movement. This breakthrough developed with BA’s new communism includes the understanding that the world situation is principal—in other words, that it is the most important factor setting the terms—in regard to the process of making revolution in any particular country; that there can sometimes be a sharp contradiction between the needs of a particular socialist state and the need to advance the world revolution, and that advancing the world revolution must come first; and that in past revolutions there were sometimes important errors made by failing to recognize this and putting the needs of particular socialist countries above the world revolution. Here again, this is not just a matter of an abstract idea of internationalism, but principles based on the work BA has done to deeply engage and synthesize the correct understanding of and approach to the actual contradictions involved in consistently applying internationalism, with all the complexity and difficulty involved in this. (In this regard, the discussion of internationalism in BA’s book THE NEW COMMUNISM is very important.)

*A third example of specific dimensions in which the new communism has broken new ground is in terms of the method of “solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core,” which is a scientific understanding which in fact ruptures with the past understanding and approach of the communist movement in important ways, including in the application of this method to the process of making revolution and leading the future socialist society.

In terms of epistemology (theory of knowledge) and method, “solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core” intertwines with some of the key points made earlier in regard to truth and comprehends that while the communist method and approach is the most systematic, comprehensive and effective means of getting to the truth, this does not mean that communists have a monopoly on the truth and are always correct or that those NOT applying the communist method and approach are always incorrect; rather, those coming from other outlooks, methods and approaches can discover important truths and shed important light on elements of reality. Therefore, the METHOD of solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core involves applying the communist outlook, method and approach to reality with a specific goal, making revolution and getting to communism, while also understanding the need—ON THE BASIS OF APPLYING THAT METHOD—to learn from, sift through and sort out what is brought forward through many diverse streams of human activity and by people coming from a broad range of perspectives, including those that are not communist and even opposed to communism in some cases.

Applying this understanding of solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core to the process of making revolution and then continuing that revolution in the future socialist society on the road to communism, BA’s new communism recognizes—on a level far beyond and in some cases in opposition to the way this was understood prior to the new communism—the complexity and diversity of human activity and thought that must be involved in the process of making revolution and leading a socialist society to communism. This includes recognizing in a whole new way and on a whole other level the importance of dissent, debate, experimentation, ferment and individuality—not individualism but individuality—in socialist society.

To contrast this with one example from the first wave of socialist societies: In socialist China—which, again, overall represented an enormous leap for humanity in so many different spheres and overall—Marxism was in essence viewed as an “official ideology” that people in socialist society should profess, while the new communism, and in particular the approach of “solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core,” embodies the understanding that the leading element in socialist society needs to be communism, but this should not be enshrined and institutionalized as, in effect, an “official ideology” but put forward and struggled for as something people need to be won to and to consciously and voluntarily take up, while at the same time recognizing the importance of giving space to and engaging, and learning what can and should be learned from, the insights of others who have not, yet, been won to communism.

As positive as the overall experience of socialism in China was, BA’s new communism represents a very different vision of socialist society that involves a radical leap forward from even the best of the past.

So, these three examples—related to the approach towards truth, internationalism and solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core—are just that: three of many examples and points that could be offered to illustrate just how profoundly new BA’s new communism is, and the ways in which this new communism (to go back to the quote from the first of the six resolutions):

represents and embodies a qualitative resolution of a critical contradiction that has existed within communism in its development up to this point, between its fundamentally scientific method and approach, and aspects of communism which have run counter to this.

The works that we have read, watched and listened to from BA have been an application and illustration of the new communism—and this has immersed us in this new communism, in an overall way, as captured by the quote from the first resolution as well as in various specific dimensions, including the three highlighted in this letter.

Accordingly, our study and discussion of this work should have deepened our understanding and application of the new communism and its scientific method. Many of our discussions, in fact, have involved studying BA’s scientific method and seeking to take up and apply this method ourselves, to the best of our ability, even while not being able to do this on anywhere near the same level that BA himself does. This focus on method has been extremely important and instructive, manifested, for instance, in the way that we have studied and sought to emulate the way that BA boldly confronts, plainly presents and systematically unpacks the key contradictions and questions of the revolution, involving and inviting others to join him on that journey.

So, once again to return to the question of what we HAVE in regard to the factors and conditions needed to make revolution, the biggest positive factor we have by far is BA, the scientific framework, breakthrough and understanding that he has forged with the new communism, and the ongoing leadership he is providing. This leadership, as highlighted in the second of those six resolutions, involves an extremely rare combination: the ability “to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to ‘break down’ complex theory and make it accessible to the masses of people.” Our viewing, listening, reading and related study/discussion has also driven home this rare combination point repeatedly and powerfully.

In terms of what we don’t yet have, and therefore urgently NEED to work on bringing into being in order to make an actual revolution: We don’t yet have masses of people, first in the thousands and then in the millions, who are won to this revolution and its leadership and developed as an organized force for this revolution; we don’t yet have a situation where the party that is needed to lead the revolution has grown and been expanded and strengthened to the point where it has the necessary ties and influence in society to actually lead a revolution; and we don’t yet have a revolutionary crisis in which the system is unable to rule in the traditional way.

So, the urgent task before us—not just us, but certainly ALSO us—is to take the critical things we DO have and go to work on bringing into being what we DON’T yet have.

This theme—of what we do have, what we don’t have, and what we therefore need to get busy doing—has been another theme both directly spoken to and objectively posed by the works of BA that we have dug into and by our discussions of these works.

Bringing into being the conditions that we don’t yet have is urgently necessary, absolutely possible and in line with reality and how it can be changed, and there is a strategy for going to work on this, as we have discussed recently. But this will not be easy—it will take lots of STRUGGLE, repeatedly and fundamentally on a societal level.

This understanding, too, is another theme that jumps out in reflecting on our study and discussion.

We should understand that we are not operating on an “empty playing field.” There can be a tendency, especially when people are young and still relatively inexperienced politically, to think that everyone with a decent heart will immediately rally to the correct understanding of reality as soon as they are exposed to this understanding. And without question, there is a tremendous basis to win MILLIONS of people to this revolution and its leadership because it DOES, in fact, correspond to reality and to what humanity needs, and no other program and line does.

However, the understanding of BA and the new communism is, to put it simply, contending with all kinds of wrong ways of thinking, on all kinds of questions, that are spontaneously called forth and actively and repeatedly promoted by this system, and it is contending with all kinds of wrong LINES—i.e., wrong outlooks and methods applied to reality—that keep people trapped within this system. This includes, but is not limited to, people in society who call themselves “socialists” or “communists” but are actually about nothing that has anything to do with actual socialism and communism and really just want to reform capitalism and perhaps slightly redistribute the wealth generated by the capitalist system of exploitation. These reformists have nothing to do with an actual revolution and bringing into being a radically different world—and in some cases they will even admit as much. In any case, these fake socialists and communists are often some of those who most viciously attack BA and the GENUINE communism represented by BA, the new communism, precisely because BA and the new communism ACTUALLY represent what they may PRETEND to be about but in reality fundamentally oppose: real revolution and communism.

Few things are as threatening to a poseur as someone who actually IS what they PRETEND to be.

Returning to society more broadly: sharp ideological struggle must be waged—not just on an individual level or in small numbers, but among MASSES OF PEOPLE, and on a SOCIETAL SCALE—to rupture people out of all the wrong ways of thinking and wrong lines that they are caught up in and into the framework of BA’s new communism.

Once again, there is every basis and every urgency to do this, exactly because BA and the new communism correspond to reality and how it can and must be changed, while these other lines and ways of thinking do NOT. But this will take determined, sharp struggle—of the sort emphasized and modeled by BA in the works that we have studied together.

This brings me to the point with which I want to briefly conclude, which is the second of the two themes I have emphasized.

The Importance of Revolutionary Theory

Another tendency that people can have when they are young and relatively inexperienced is the tendency to view “doing stuff” as the most important political task at hand. “Doing stuff” can be defined in a number of different ways, including things such as attending programs, events or protests or doing “on the ground” political outreach and work.

Well, first of all, the question of “doing WHAT stuff” is immediately posed. In other words, what KIND of political work and outreach are people doing, and what KIND of programs and protests—around what line—are people seeking to be involved in? This is obviously a key question.

It’s not the case, as people often think and sometimes say, that “it’s all good”—in other words, “liberal”/“progressive”/“socialist”/“communist”—“sure, sure we all basically want the same things and are on the same page.”

NO. While there are certainly some important areas in which genuine communists can find unity with broad ranks of progressives, there are different lines out there and these different lines are in contention and lead to fundamentally different understandings of the problem and solution in the world.

So, that’s the first question: doing “WHAT” stuff and with WHAT goal?

That said, “doing stuff” in the right sense—i.e., doing “practical work” on the ground and in the broader society to promote this revolution and its leadership, to organize people into the revolution, working to hasten and prepare for an actual revolution, to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution, including through different forms of political outreach, programs and discussions, demonstrations and protests, etc.—is extremely critical and important, and in fact urgently necessary.

But it is important to understand that in a movement for revolution—like any good team—everyone has different roles, and it is important for people to understand and embrace their roles in order to make the greatest possible contribution to the team and, in this case, to humanity.

However, even beyond this question of each person’s individual roles, there is the question of the decisiveness of revolutionary theory.

Once again, “doing stuff” in the right sense—i.e., practical revolutionary work—is critically important. If millions of people had the right theoretical understanding but didn’t act on that understanding in practice, nothing would change.

However—and this goes up against the ways people are trained to think in this society, and against the spontaneity of how people often see things when they are young (or new to things), but is nonetheless true and important—what is even more fundamental than “doing stuff” is the question of what people, individually and in their masses, UNDERSTAND. Whether and how people act—and the effect this has in the world—ultimately comes down to what people UNDERSTAND.

From that standpoint, it is crucial that people find the ways to do what we have been doing: immersing ourselves in, taking up and applying the most advanced revolutionary theory in the world, BA’s new communism, as part of the overall process of making revolution.

One final point: It is important not to look narrowly at what it means to TAKE UP and APPLY the new communism. This doesn’t just mean direct political work and outreach, which, once again, is very important. Taking up and applying this work means—in a BROADER sense—applying the understanding represented by BA and the new communism to understanding and changing reality. Very importantly, this includes sharing observations/ideas/questions and thoughts—about what you are learning and the material you are studying; about developments, changes and trends in society (and the world overall); about ways and openings to promote this revolution and its leadership; about how people (those you know and people more broadly) are viewing and discussing different things going on in society/the world, what this reveals about openings for revolution and jolts in society but also the need to transform people’s thinking; about major events and developments in music and the arts... just to give a few examples.

These are all VERY IMPORTANT contributions to the revolutionary process, and it would be wrong to think otherwise.

So, let me end this where I began: This process we have embarked on has been—and will continue to be—deeply meaningful, really exciting, and a lot of fun. And this is a crucial part of actually participating in and contributing to the process of building for the revolution that is so urgently needed.

Major Controversy Erupts Over LAPD Spying on Refuse Fascism

July 29, 2019 | revcom.us

 

A major controversy has erupted in Los Angeles about the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) spying on and criminalizing political protest against the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

This has now broken into the editorial section of the LA Times with the lead editorial on the LAPD infiltrating Refuse Fascism, spying on and recording constitutionally protected political organizing and speech. There is a long and sordid history of LAPD political spying and “information gathering” aimed at progressive and radical movements, against police critics inside of city government, and even on the political establishment. In 1975 the LAPD was ordered to destroy files on 55,000 people. Instead they just hid them, and even leaked them to fascist organizers, which was uncovered through a series of lawsuits through the ’80s. This is what the LA Times editorial calls the “LAPD's surveillance hall of shame.” Through court cases and a lot of struggle, there have been consent decrees, reorganization and federal court rulings aimed at “reforming” the police. The LA Times editorial writes, “it is not clear why the department has to keep relearning the same lesson: Snooping on the public in order to gather intelligence is off-limits unless authorities have a reasonable belief that there is a crime afoot. Without a credible tip or other evidence, monitoring a conversation or a meeting amounts to a fishing expedition at best. When directed at people of a particular political leaning, race or creed, it’s unlawful harassment.”

This illegal spying only came to light because of the determined and heroic resistance of the members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club who were arrested and dragged into court, facing illegitimate criminal charges that could land them in jail for up to three years. They were arrested in protests aimed at sounding the alarm and calling people into the streets to stop this fascist nightmare. For more on these cases, and the upcoming trials in August and September, go here.

Word of this needs to spread further—exposing what the LAPD has done and demanding the charges in three trials, currently set for August and September, be dropped. Things people can and should do:

» Call City Attorney Mike Feuer to demand: Drop the charges against the #Freeway9 and #UCLA5. 213.978.8100.

» Sign petition demanding charges be dropped.

» Read/share statements of support from Cornel West, Yusef Salaam, Bill Ayers, Edward Asner

LAPD Chief Pig Goes on the Attack with Slander and Lies

Last Tuesday, July 23, at the LA Police Commission, when questioned as to who from the Police Commission approved this spying, LAPD Chief Moore went on the attack, spreading slander and lies about Refuse Fascism. He claimed that “members that identified themselves as being within this group had traveled to other parts of the country, and that in other parts of the country, there had been criminal acts including vandalism, assault with a deadly weapon or arson...” This would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. You went somewhere, while you were there some people may have done something illegal, therefore you should be investigated. This was not just an attempt to justify the LAPD’s unconstitutional spying, but a disinformation campaign—a deliberate spreading of false information to try to justify, and deflect from the fact that legal, protected speech and organizing is being targeted by the LAPD (and possibly higher), and to justify more of the same.

This is all the more dangerous against a backdrop of a rapidly consolidating fascist America where protest and dissent are being criminalized, where Trump is calling for locking up his political opponents, vilifying the press and mobilizing and whipping up a fascist social base at Ku Klux Klan style rallies... a time of concentration camps and the looming possibility of war turning to nuclear war.

It was these dangers—the existential threat represented by the Trump/Pence regime—that these protesters were warning of. In the fall of 2017, they recognized that, as Refuse Fascism said, “Only the determined struggle of millions of people acting together with courage and conviction can drive this regime from power.” Not elections, not investigations, not petitions, not lobbying, not posting your outrage on social media and staying home. This is more true now than ever. They broke with the normal routine of protest-as-usual—disrupting traffic on the 101 Freeway and disrupting the polite presentation at UCLA given by the fascist Steve Mnuchin—calling for millions in the streets.

The Democratic Party: Greasing the Skids for Fascism

As these trials reveal, it is this kind of protest that the Democratic Party machinery in the DA’s office (and perhaps higher) is working overtime to suppress and contain. It is likely that this spying was known and approved high up in offices currently held by the Democratic Party in the city of Los Angeles and in the state of California. Why is it that Mike Feuer’s office spent almost a year building these cases—compiling 57 charges against 11 people? Why is he now doubling down to retry these cases?

It’s because they represent the same capitalist system—and they are seeking to resolve the big differences they have with the whole fascist direction Trump and the Republicans are fighting to bolt into place—on the basis of their interests in preserving that system. The Democrats’ job is to make people think their party is at least responsive to their interests and to think that they have a stake in a capitalist democracy that claims to represent “the will of the people.” The Democrats have a shared interest in the plunder of the world and in an America First competition with their imperialist rivals. They have a shared interest in draconian measures of controlling immigration which they euphemistically call “border security,” when their own system, with its wars, invasions, coups and economic domination, has devastated the countries to the south and created the mass migration they consider an immigration crisis, to begin with. The leadership of the Democratic Party is opposing impeachment because it would “tear the country apart,” which means they find it preferable to live with the horrors this regime is bringing down on the heads of people here and all around the world. This is a party that is more afraid of the people getting out of bounds of the official channels they want people confined within and demobilized by than they are of the order of fascism.

Bob Avakian (BA), in making the case for Refuse Fascism, called on people to get out beyond the confines of this kind of politics, to confront that this is fascism, that it comes out of the origins and history of America and to break with the American chauvinism that makes people think “fascism can’t happen here.” To stop thinking like an American and to start thinking about humanity.

Refuse Fascism is right when it calls for massive non-violent mobilization “growing from thousands to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions. Our actions will reflect the values of respect for all of humanity and the world we want—in stark contrast to the hate and bigotry of the Trump/Pence fascist regime. The whole world will take heart. This will shake millions awake, with many losing their adjustment to life under this regime. The international credibility of the regime will be undermined. A determined struggle that doesn’t yield and won’t be provoked can create a serious political crisis. Those in power who are themselves now under attack by the regime but conciliating with it would be compelled to respond to our struggle from below, leading to a situation where this illegitimate regime is removed from power.”

There is still time, but not much time, for people to mobilize in their millions to demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Just as the people in Puerto Rico have done and following examples in Hong Kong, Sudan, Armenia and more.

What Kind of a System IS This?!

Several defendants in these cases are part of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour: seeing the need to prevent the consolidation of fascism as part of making revolution to bring a whole better future into being. Alex Hernandez, one of the defendants in the Freeway 9 case who is a part of the National Revolution Tour, said, “What kind of system sends its armed forces of repression to spy on and criminalize people who are standing up for the interests of humanity while the regime is torturing immigrants at the border and threatening to murder 10 million Afghan people?! This system is illegitimate and needs to be overthrown at the soonest possible time.”

The National Revolution Tour is working to do that, putting before society the need for revolution, the possibility of revolution and the leadership for revolution in BA. There is a solution to this madness. The National Tour is setting out to organize thousands of people into the revolution over the course of a year. It is involving people in the strategy for revolution, spreading the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America written by BA and working with people to solve the problems of the revolution... including very immediately why people aren’t in the streets in their millions acting now to demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

Alex, in talking about why he got on the 101 Freeway in 2017 said, “When I found out about BA, and learned more deeply about the horrors happening to people all around the world, when I learned about the possibility for revolution, I said: I want to dedicate my life to that, to the emancipation of humanity. I decided I couldn't stand aside. When Trump came to power, threatening fire and fury against North Korea, threatening a fascist America, I decided I couldn’t stand aside. Now—with all that this regime has done in the last two and a half years and is threatening to do—that question is really before everyone.”

 

 

Los Angeles Times editorial July 28, 2019

"Order or Justice?"

A Clip from a 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

From Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution:
Bob Avakian On Revolution And The Fight Against Fascism

Share widely on social media

Download this clip

Members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club were arrested in protests aimed at sounding the alarm and calling people into the streets to stop this fascist nightmare. For more on these cases, and the upcoming trials in August and September, go here.

The U.S. Hounding and Driving Out of Chinese Cancer Researchers from Top Institutions
Sharpening Contention, Assaulting Science, Targeting a Whole People

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

We received this contributed article from a reader:

The NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the FBI are targeting ethnic Chinese scientists, including U.S. citizens, who are searching for a cancer cure. They have staged a witch hunt against a Chinese-American scientist Xifeng Wu, who is a U.S. citizen, labeling her an “oncological double agent” (oncological—relating to the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer). This ultimately forced the resignation of Wu, a top-ranked epidemiologist (a scientist who investigates patterns and causes of disease and injury in humans) at the nation’s top-ranked cancer research center, MD Anderson. Wu had worked at MD Anderson for the last 27 years. In the wake of her resignation, three other Chinese-American scientists have resigned.

This is happening in a context of, and is part of deep and intensifying contention between the U.S. and China; between the top-dog imperialist power in the world and a major, rising capitalist regional power and global economic power. This contention is happening in many arenas, including the military, economic, and here, the scientific arena.

According to an article at Bloomberg.com (“The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers From Top Institutions,” by Peter Waldman, June 13, 2019):

[Wu] joined MD Anderson while in graduate school and gained renown for creating several so-called study cohorts with data amassed from hundreds of thousands of patients in Asia and the U.S. The cohorts, which combine patient histories with personal biomarkers such as DNA characteristics and treatment descriptions, outcomes, and even lifestyle habits, are a gold mine for researchers. (Some examples of the use of cohorts: Wu and her team showed that Mexican Americans who sleep less than six hours a night had a higher risk of cancer than Mexican Americans who get more sleep, and that eating charred meat such as barbecue raised the risk of kidney cancer.)

A Broad and Deep Fascist Attack on Chinese and Chinese-Americans in the U.S.—Targeting and Demonizing a Whole People…

This case is just the tip of a large, horrific iceberg. A vicious climate of suspicion is being whipped up aimed at all 130,000 Chinese and Chinese-American scientists working in the U.S. This has caused tremendous anxiety among these scientists and among Chinese and Asian people generally. As the Bloomberg article states, “Chinese people in America, including U.S. citizens, are now targeted for FBI surveillance.” There are almost five million people of Chinese descent living in the U.S. and over 360,000 Chinese international students at U.S. universities.

In a speech in April to the Council on Foreign Relations, FBI Director Christopher Wray put straight out the pretext for this: “China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can from a wide array of businesses, universities, and organizations.” Wray implicated a wide swath of Chinese people, continuing, “They’re doing it through Chinese intelligence services, through state-owned enterprises, through ostensibly private companies, through graduate students and researchers, through a variety of actors all working on behalf of China.” And further, he said, “Put plainly, China seems determined to steal its way up the economic ladder at our expense...,” and he stated that this Chinese societal approach must be combated by the U.S. with a “whole-of-society approach.” Wray also said that the FBI is pursuing economic espionage investigations “that almost invariably lead back to China” in almost every one of its 56 field offices. According to the journal Science, over the last year the NIH sent out “inquiries” to many institutions it helps fund about “foreign ties” of researchers. NIH says this has prompted 55 institutions to launch investigations.

The Bloomberg article states, “Ways of working that have long been encouraged by the NIH and many research institutions, particularly MD Anderson, are now quasi-criminalized, with FBI agents reading private emails, stopping Chinese scientists at airports, and visiting people’s homes to ask about their loyalty.” This FBI activity did not start with the Trump/Pence regime but these attacks are a huge oppressive leap, and a further ominous step in consolidating fascism in America. Fifty-two percent of people indicted for espionage from 2009 to 2017 had Chinese names. “In the same way racial profiling of African Americans as criminals may create the crime of ‘driving while black,’” wrote the author of an article in Cardozo Law Review, “profiling of Asian Americans as spies … may be creating a new crime: ‘researching while Asian.’”

According to the Bloomberg article, a retired federal employee closed a recent panel discussion on “The New Reality Facing Chinese Americans” by “raising the unspoken dread in a room full of scholars familiar with the long history of U.S. laws and executive orders aimed at Asian immigrants.” She said:

The greatest fear is that history may repeat itself in this political climate, and Chinese Americans may be rounded up like Japanese Americans during World War II… The fear and worry is real.

It is notable and frightening that up to now, these attacks have gotten very little coverage in mainstream media beyond Bloomberg and the Houston Chronicle. Everyone who has an ounce of humanity needs to expose this and oppose it.

...and a Serious Attack on Science—Imposing a Fascist Rupture from a Global Scientific Culture of Cooperation to an Ugly USA #1 with No Sharing of Knowledge

The Trump/Pence regime wants to dupe people to believe there is some kind of big conspiracy involving the entire Chinese science community—scientists with “foreign ties.” But science generally today, and especially basic scientific research like cancer research, is a very global process. Scientists from all over the world collaborate with each other, regularly sharing data and theories, insights, questions. They publish their findings openly for review and criticism. These attacks will have a chilling effect on cancer research worldwide. Cancer kills nearly 10 million people each year, including 4.3 million in China. This will lead to more unnecessary deaths around the world. Without scientific cooperation, insights and discoveries will be missed or delayed, there will be increased waste as resources have to be duplicated, slowing down everything.

Oliver Bogler, MD Anderson Cancer Center’s senior vice president for academic affairs from 2011 to 2018, spoke about the changes:

MD Anderson was very much an open door. The mission was “End cancer in Texas, America, and the world.”

And Adam Kuspa, senior vice president and dean of research at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, described the global social relations involved in cancer research, relations that are now under attack:

Faculty don’t see international borders anymore. If someone in another country has a piece of the puzzle, they want to work with them.

The Bloomberg article continues:

Relationships often begin at academic conferences, jell during invited visits for symposiums or lectureships, and culminate in the melding of research into scientific papers.

This System Is a Shackle on Science—We Need a Whole New System and a Whole New World

Science is and should be a global effort to further humanity's understanding of nature and society and to help solve many of humanity’s problems, many of which are global in scale.

But under the system of capitalism-imperialism, the whole world is broken up into rival blocs of capital and rival nations forever locked in life-and-death competition. And as long as this system continues to exist, everything, including science, is subordinated to that and twisted by it. This assault on scientists and Chinese people more broadly is taking place in the broader context of intense contention between the U.S. and China, including the well-publicized trade wars. Besides this attack on scientists, there is also a similar parallel attack on Chinese tech workers.

As the Bloomberg article states, “Everything is commodified in the economic cold war with China, including the struggle to find a cure for cancer.” And it goes on to say:

Wu hasn’t been charged with stealing anyone’s ideas, but in effect she stood accused of secretly aiding and abetting cancer research in China, an un-American activity in today’s political climate.... There was no evidence, and no accusation, that she’d given China any proprietary information, whatever that term might mean in cancer epidemiology.¹

This system itself is a societal cancer on humanity. Humanity desperately needs to find and implement a cure for this cancer, needs a whole better system than this. And while not yet enough people know this, humanity can do much better than this system. To get there, to do this, requires a real revolution, requires the scientific framework for being able to understand and change this system; Bob Avakian’s New Communism requires actively preparing for that revolution now.

---

1. Behind the investigation that led to Wu’s exit—and other such probes across the country—is the National Institutes of Health, in coordination with the FBI. “Even something that is in the fundamental research space, that’s absolutely not classified, has an intrinsic value,” says Lawrence Tabak, principal deputy director of the NIH, explaining his approach. “This pre-patented material is the antecedent to creating intellectual property. In essence, what you’re doing is stealing other people’s ideas.” 

In a world situation marked by extreme contention between rival world powers like the U.S. and China, this represents not only the commodification of all knowledge but also its weaponization. [back]

 

Check It Out:
SAND AND BLOOD: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The following is a letter from a reader on a recently published book. We felt the letter would be of interest to other readers. We appreciate hearing from our readers and encourage readers to send in correspondence. The views expressed by the writers of this and other reader letters are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere on our website.

You know the Revolution Club is not playing around when it went to the border between Mexico and the U.S. and burned six American flags on July 4. They literally entered a war zone with an internationalist message to people across the border and around the world. Internationalism, the whole world comes first. It’s with that spirit that I want to inform readers about a new and important book I just read.

After reading SAND AND BLOOD: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border I have a greater appreciation for the people of Central America and Mexico who journey to the border to come to the U.S. Some know it, some have weighed the stakes, and many don’t know but when they come to the border they are entering a war zone.

This book SAND AND BLOOD, written by John Carlos Frey, is a great contribution to the fight against the war on the masses of people being waged by the U.S. at the southern border. Yes, it is Capitalism/Imperialism bringing hell to the people trying to cross the border and hell to those in the States who would help them. But Frey chooses one word that gets at the heart of horror and murder taking place. He calls it “a culture of cruelty. If they come, let them suffer. Make them suffer so they won’t come. But still people will. It is the most rational thing for millions to do.”

The author writes: “Migrants have described agents hurling verbal abuse. Racial slurs, and curses and inflicting sexual assault and physical violence—even causing death. Eighty-four migrants have died at the hands of Border Patrol agents since 2010. These practices appear to be systematic, amounting to what insiders refer to as a culture of cruelty.” He goes on to say that according to his sources, "cruelty is part of the training.” (p. 134)

Let me quote from the inside of the book jacket to give readers a better sense of this book, which says that SAND AND BLOOD takes “readers to the Border Patrol outposts, unmarked graves, detention centers, and halls of power, SAND AND BLOOD is a frightening, essential story we must not ignore.”

With Noam Chomsky precision he documents step by step: presidential administrations, laws, and various campaigns aimed at deterring people from coming to cross the border. He documents his assertions. From President Nixon, through H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, whom he asserts played a major if not decisive role, in escalating the border from an area of conflict to one of open warfare. Nearly 700 miles of wall in California, Arizona, and Texas were erected at his hands. G.W. Bush, Barack Obama (deporter-in-chief), and Trump are reviewed for their crimes. While he particularly slams Trump’s moves, he points out that the law used by Sessions and Trump to separate families, ripping children out of the arms of their parents, was created during G.W. Bush’s rule. And yes, “crooked mouth” Dick Cheney makes his entrance too. There exists a symbiotic relationship between the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and the War on the Border. In the name of these wars, many innocent migrants are being killed.

Frey really does penetrate the halls of power, documenting and footnoting how and why there is a “stealth war on the Mexico border.” This is the part of the book which is frightening, as he describes in detail the horrible assault on a population of people who have done no wrong other than to seek a better life in the country that is responsible for the misery and squalor at home that they are trying to escape.

While this section of the book is interesting and full of who is who, of defense contractors making billions of dollars off this war and designing military technologies with which better to slam the migrants—it is the “war correspondent” part of the book that really stood out to me. Frey gets right down on the ground and goes to cemeteries; goes to the detention centers; goes to the border towns; and even pays a cartel to take him on a journey from Guatemala to the border, and yes, he goes into the death-enticing deserts and mountains where thousands have died. He talks with people who have placed water strategically, finding how angry they are that Border Patrol takes the paths of immigrants, with one thought in mind: Destroy the water that sanctuary advocates have left to assist desperate migrants who may have run out of water saving their lives. It truly is a culture of cruelty to go out to the desert and mountains and deprive people of water meant to save their lives.

Look, this is an important book. I am a Vietnam veteran and I know what it is like when America wages a genocidal war against people. Particularly people of color. At age seventeen, 3 days out of high school, I was in a U.S. Navy boot camp being taught that the correct nomenclature to identify the Vietnamese people is “GOOK.” I’ll never forget it. I’ll never stop hating it. And I’ll never give aid and comfort to the enemy, USA. So Frey calls the border a war zone. Is it? Well here is an example of the language that Border Patrol agents use. To set the stage Frey tells a story from a video he has that one of those who leave water in the desert took of the Border Patrol not knowing they were being filmed by a hidden camera.

The bottles [of water] crash against rocks bursting open. She [the agent who threw it] smiles. Another agent also smiles, seeming to take real pleasure in the spectacle. He says something under his breath, and the word “tonk” is clearly audible. “Tonk” (it turns out) is a bit of derogatory slang that some Border Agents use to refer to undocumented immigrants. One agent told me that it derives from the sound a flashlight makes when you hit someone over the head—“tonk.”(p. 132)

I’m sorry to indulge you but there is one more short story I must relay. It is a snapshot of what goes on at the border.

Frey writes:

This rookie force was armed with batons, pepper spray, Tasers, rifles, and handguns. It has an array of military technology at its disposal from ground and night sensors to unmanned drones and Black Hawk helicopters. Along with its military weapons, Border Patrol received military training.(p. 134)

The part of the book that is really inspiring, while often bitter sweet, is when Frey puts the stories and the words of migrants front and center for everyone to engage. He does this with great humility. He gives a platform for the migrants to speak truth. A platform to tell their stories of horror and abuse. He gives them a platform to show their humanity.

The author recounts a lesson learnt by him. He talks of when he met three women from Guatemala who were traveling without a guide. They were a grandmother, mother, and daughter. They had gone all the way from Guatemala up to about 20 miles from the Mexico-U.S. border. He spent some time with them getting background and it came to light that the men in their lives had caused them great harm. This is why the three of them struck out alone. He stressed to them to reconsider and get a guide. He told them it was too dangerous to cross without one. Frey reports the words of the mother:

Kindly but powerfully the mother said, “we already made all the decisions a long time ago. There is nothing left to decide.” She explained that she didn’t want to be in the company of men or a guide. She was fleeing an abusive husband. She mentioned the lack of opportunity in Guatemala for her and her daughter. She told me how women are treated in that country: like the possessions of men. She told me about the health care system there and that if she stayed, there would be no hope for her mother....She wrestled with the thought of leaving her home town, her relatives, her friends, her job, and everything she had ever known....She had only one option: to migrate north. She had already made the decision to mobilize—uproot her family and enter a country illegally through a process in which people die and women get raped.”(pp. 95-96)

And finally let me close with a story that is so similar to Rodney King’s beating in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles police. In a similar setting, Border Patrol agents killed Anastasio Hernández Rojas in 2010. Frey reports on a video clip he has retrieved:

He was in the process of being deported for being undocumented. Hernandez was severely beaten, shocked with a Taser, and killed. The video reveals that at the time he was surrounded by about twelve border officials.

One witness on the Mexico side of the border said that the agents hit Hernandez with their batons over and over while others punched and kicked him. A Border Patrol supervisor arrived on the scene, but instead of intervening, he permitted the agents to continue. (p. 145)

Please go to your libraries and ask them to order this book .Go on-line and purchase it. Because Trump and Pence are at the helm now, we must do everything to drive them out of power and as we do that we must give political support to our sisters and brothers in Central America and Mexico and around the world. We need to build lots of Revolution Clubs everywhere we can. As Bob Avakian has said, “A Better World IS Possible.”

Detention Center, Weslaco, Texas, June 11, 2019. Photo: Office of Inspector General, Dept of Homeland Security

Trial Approaches for Noche Diaz and Six Other Revolutionaries Illegitimately Arrested at Puerto Rican People's Parade

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

In 2018 at the Puerto Rican People's Parade, more than a dozen police vamped on Revolution Club members in their T-shirts, grabbing as many as they could, including Noche Diaz, who was on the bullhorn. Some were brutally thrown to the ground with several police piled on top. Altogether, seven were arrested and hauled off to jail. These defendants have now been dragged through court proceeding after court proceeding for over a year on completely bogus charges. Noche is facing misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct, resisting/obstructing and a violation of the sound ordinance. The other six are charged with obstructing/resisting. None of them did anything illegal. They were TALKING to people!

The authorities clearly did not want a revolutionary message to reach and challenge people who have borne the brunt of U.S. colonization and the utterly inhumane treatment of the island’s people in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The anger and outrage this stoked were still below the surface in 2018 but have since erupted into massive struggles rocking the island as the people took to the streets and forced the governor from office.

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria had landed a catastrophic hit on Puerto Rico, an island nation of over three million people.

Dozens died as a direct result of the storm. But in the days, weeks, and months after the storm, thousands more would die, hundreds of thousands would endure great suffering, and the entire economic, educational, and social infrastructure of Puerto Rico would be severely and permanently degraded. Almost all of that was completely un-necessary; it was the result of deliberate, genocidal inaction by the U.S. government and its refusal to organize a serious rescue and recovery effort for Puerto Rico.

This was the situation when the Revolution Club of Chicago went out to the 2018 Puerto Rican People's Parade and Festival which draws thousands each year. The club set up at a corner where they could maximize their interaction with people streaming by. They were met with an unjust mass arrest by the Chicago Police Department.

The Revolution Club was displaying the “5 Stops” panels and a special display about Puerto Rico, and the criminal (non) response of the U.S. government. Overhead was a banner calling for revolution. For more than two hours the club was reaching out to the crowds—exposing U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico historically and today, its crimes in countries like Yemen where a school bus full of children was hit with U.S. bombs dropped by its ally, the Saudis; of children being ripped away from their parents on the southern border with Mexico; the murderous role of the police in enforcing this system of oppression. Through it all, the message rang out: This system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown. Literature about how a revolution was possible was handed out and people were being signed up to get with the revolution.

After being out at the parade/festival site for about two hours, there was a pre-meditated assault on the Revolution Club crew who were TALKING to people going to the parade! There was no prior warning. The police rolled up over 12 deep, led by a high-ranking deputy chief. One would have to ask why he was there. The deputy chief personally later claimed that Noche used the bullhorn to “incite violence” against the police. And he determined this how? After a minute or two? The video shows that what Noche actually said was that the police constantly arrest the Revolution Club for no legitimate reason (TRUE) and he exposed their general role as enforcers for a brutal system of oppression (TRUE). This does not meet by any stretch ANY legal definition of inciting violence. The very fact that the deputy chief described it that way is both serious and reveals the real political nature of this arrest and prosecution.

The police, led by their deputy chief, stopped what was clearly First Amendment activity for political reasons and then made up criminal charges to justify the arrests.

This arrest was one of 14 incidents of CPD arresting and ticketing members of the Revolution Club. But that is not all. There were another 13 incidents of almost arrests. Why did the latter stay “almost” arrests? Because there was a lawyer present who intervened to prevent the arrests, thus highlighting the other arrests should never have happened.

The pretext in this case was a “sound ordinance” violation. In light of the overall past pattern of arrests and this case in particular, the ACLU wrote a substantial four-page memo to the Revolution Club advising them of their rights. The memo’s conclusion reads, “The Revolution Club and its members have a First Amendment right to attend permitted events in public forums, including the Puerto Rican People's Parade. At such events, you have a First Amendment right to communicate your message to others who are present in the forum, and police may not make you leave the area or limit your speech based on your message, the words you use to communicate your message, or your membership in the Revolution Club.... With respect to the sound amplification ordinance in particular, you are, in our opinion exempt from enforcement because you are participating in a permitted event.” [Editors’ note: In this case the parade and festival are considered permitted events.]

On August 14, all the defendants will appear in court with a legal team put together in anticipation of the case going to trial. At this hearing, the legal team is preparing to press for the discovery that a judge granted in a pretrial motion but which the state has not complied with to date.

Word of this illegitimate arrest and prosecution has to be spread and people rallied to defend the Revolution Club members who are facing these charges. The state is very afraid of this revolutionary force growing so they try to attack and suppress it. This has to boomerang on them by more people coming forward to be part of and learn more about the revolution and by broad strata, whether they agree with revolution or not, taking the right side in this fight to not let the state silence and jail people fighting for a better world.

People should call the office of the Cook County State’s Attorney, Kim Foxx (the recently elected “reformer”) and demand that these charges be dropped: (312) 603-8600.

Noche Diaz

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Case #97:
August 6 and 9, 1945—The Nuclear Incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

May 23, 2016 | revcom.us

 

American Crime is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

 

THE CRIME: At 8:15 am, on August 6, 1945, a blazing, million-degree fireball suddenly appeared just above the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing, burning alive, or vaporizing tens of thousands. Firestorms engulfed the city. Shockwaves and winds over 1,000 miles an hour came next, shattering bodies and buildings, hurling men, women, and children through the air. Nearly all structures were destroyed over a mile from ground zero.

“There were red burned and bloated dead bodies piled up high, the corpses with the guts and the eyes popped out, lines of ghost-looking people with burned frizzled hair and burned skin hanging,” one survivor recalled, and “barely living survivors who were not able to save their own children or parents.” In one room, there were 20 young men whose eyes had melted in their sockets. Clouds of dust turned the morning into twilight; later, black rain fell.

The U.S. had just exploded the first nuclear bomb over the center of a city of 350,000. Thousands who survived the blast soon experienced fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, hair and skin loss—the death knell of radiation sickness. By the end of 1945, between 140,000 and 150,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, had perished in Hiroshima. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded.

Later that day, President Harry Truman announced the bombing and threatened Japan: “If they do not now accept our terms [for immediate surrender] they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.” Three days later, on August 9, the U.S. dropped an even more powerful nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, destroying the city and murdering another 70,000 people.

THE CRIMINALS: President Harry S. Truman, who ordered the attack; U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who oversaw the war effort, including the building of this "most terrifying weapon ever known in human history"; General Leslie Groves, in charge of building the bomb; and the military command responsible for the bombing.

THE ALIBI: Dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan was needed to quickly end the war, avoiding a U.S. invasion which Presidents Roosevelt and Truman claimed would cost a million American lives.

“I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.... We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans,” Truman stated after nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This alibi has been repeated by all presidents since: “What I think the president does appreciate is that President Truman made this decision for the right reasons,” said President Obama’s press secretary.

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE: Control of Japan and post-World War 2 global domination. The U.S. knew Japan would collapse without an invasion and was suing for peace weeks before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On July 12, 1945, Truman admitted in his private diary that the U.S. had received a “telegram from [the] Jap Emperor asking for peace.”

But the U.S. rulers wanted to totally control post-war Japan, prevent the Soviet Union from gaining more ground in Japanese-held Manchuria and having more influence in the post-war setup—or “get in so much on the kill,” as one U.S. official put it. This meant terrorizing Japan into surrendering immediately. That’s why the U.S. incinerated Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, six days after the Nagasaki bombing. These were also warnings to any who might think about challenging America’s dominance of the postwar world, written in mounds of charred flesh and many tens of thousands of horribly disfigured survivors.

REPEAT OFFENDER: The U.S. has repeatedly considered and threatened the use of nuclear weapons to enforce its global dominance: In the 1950s, the U.S. planned for possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union, which they calculated would have killed 600 million; in 1958, 1973, and 1980 it put its forces on nuclear alert during Middle East crises in Iraq, Israel, and Iran; in 1969 President Richard Nixon threatened to nuke Vietnam; before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon secretly prepared for the possibility of using nuclear weapons; Obama has announced plans to spend over $1 trillion in the next 30 years on new nuclear weapons.

 

 

The Revolution Tour Is in NYC—$25,000 Needed in the Month of October

Updated September 30, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour is now in New York City, boldly breaking onto the scene with the spirit of “You Think You’re Woke... But You’re Sleepwalking Through a Nightmare—This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!” The world is being shaken up on many fronts, and the Tour is taking this message into the midst of these momentous events. A great deal is demanded of these revolutionaries in times like these and funds are urgently needed to support this important work!

Members of the Tour have been out to the high schools and out in the midst of the major outpourings of mainly young people at the Climate Strike saying: “Capitalism Is A Straitjacket On Humanity’s Chance To Save Our Planet... Only A REAL Revolution Can Remove That Straitjacket.” They quickly traveled to Washington, DC, to join with a protest against Trump, and carried a big banner saying “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives!—Bob Avakian” and “NO U.S. War On Iran!”—just as the danger of the Trump regime launching a war against Iran is sharpening. There in DC, members of the Tour attended the important national meeting called by Refuse Fascism to discuss calling people out into the streets in sustained nonviolent protests week after week to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power. In all of this, the Tour has been both uniting with people who are standing up in struggle while putting squarely before people that what is needed is to build a movement for an ACTUAL revolution and calling on people to be a part of this. And in the midst of all this, now some of the Tour volunteers are being called back to Los Angeles where they face grossly unjust charges stemming from standing up against the Trump/Pence regime in 2017 and 2018.

Film showings of the talks by Bob Avakian, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! and Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution are planned in New York, and the Tour will be getting out in a major way on the campuses very soon.

But all of this can’t be done without raising greater funds right now. For the month of October, there is a need for a minimum of $25,000 to be raised to meet the most basic needs to sustain the volunteers, to print and distribute massive materials, to travel for trials, to travel to different cities on the East Coast—everywhere bringing out the message of the Tour in what promise to be turbulent times where this is needed more than ever.

 

Plans to Scale Up Fundraising After Chicago Livestream

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The following was sent by a reader after a group watching of the Revolution Tour livestream on Sunday, July 28:

We wanted to share some of our experience with others.

First, our goal for August is $5,000. This seems it would be a good contribution from here to the total, and is a "stretch" but doable.

This was a mix of people who came to watch the livestream—people who have known the revolution for several years and people new to the revolution, including people involved in Refuse Fascism. People were intent throughout, and afterwards people engaged in informal discussion and real ideas and plans for raising funds for the tour. One person who attended started tearing up when his letter was read on the livestream. Writing is not something he's comfortable with as English is his fourth language, so this really mattered to him. Another person watched the livestream on Facebook and made a $50 pledge afterwards. A teacher brought cookies and brownies that she made which people took out and sold at one of the Pulgas (flea markets) to raise money for the tour.

Beginning plans were made, with two "prongs" of moving ahead: Expanding the number of people who are donating larger amounts (including trying to open up possibilities for people who can make substantial donations) and going broadly on a regular basis to key places (while keeping open the possibility of reaching out to other outpourings, parts of town, etc.). We need to make the fact that there is a National Tour building for an actual revolution underway much more widely known through the course of this effort.

People bought books like THE NEW COMMUNISM and BAsics and took copies of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution to get deeper into what this revolution is all about.

Among the things planned:

An internationalist fundraising dinner. One of the teachers is going to find a location for this. We are going to work with some people who can build this among Iranians and Pakistanis in particular.

Moving forward, various immigrant communities are an area we are going to try to make headway among. Large numbers of people from many parts of the world characterize this city to an extent it does few others. This terrain is obviously full of contradictions and particular issues etc. among different nationalities, but overall is a potential strategic strength for our cause in general, and for this effort in particular.

Bake sales. The woman who is a teacher is going to doing some more baking, and looking into places that would be good to set up, as this area is not really a place with a lot of foot traffic.

A garage/yard sale. One thing we're trying to figure out is how to promote and advertise things like this. It's a different scene than it was in the old days of print, free newspapers, etc. One young person had some initial thoughts about this including someone who has more of an IT background.

We plan to be at two universities as school opens. We also want to pursue getting into some classes and working with some professors around this.

I think there is a pretty solid basis for all those who came to the livestream to participate in this and we need to develop some thinking quickly on how to go about developing some beginning collectivities that bring people forward, while mainly contributing to the effort to achieve the monetary goals. The immediate challenge is getting out of the gate on all this.

It would be very important to hear from others. How are you raising funds for the Revolution Tour? Send your plans and how it's going: revolution.reports@yahoo.com.

Donate to the movement for revolution here.

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From the Revolution Club, LA

Fundraising, Building a Mass Movement, and Putting Revolution Straight Up to People

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour is on a mission to bring forward thousands across the country into the movement for revolution and put Bob Avakian and the new communism on the map. The first leg of the tour kicked off in Los Angeles in April 2019, and the tour is now in Chicago.

Fundraising is a key part of building a mass movement for revolution that goes beyond people giving a thumbs up to the idea of revolution and having that dissipate. When we heard the national call to raise $20,000 by August 1, we set a goal of raising $1,000 by raising $10 donations from 100 people. We have been reaching out to broader numbers of people, most who don't know anything about the National Tour or its work to change the whole world. So far, from our discussions with people, we've raised $830 from 34 people.

As we have been doing this, we have become much sharper with how we are putting the real concrete needs of the revolution to people, stepping from the truth concentrated in BAsics 3:1, “...We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit,” and joining struggle around THAT. Very importantly, we are putting the ask for money at the very beginning of our calls, and rolling up our sleeves to struggle ideologically. An important method in waging this struggle, especially with those who consider themselves “woke” or progressive, is challenging people to look at the 5 STOPS and make the argument how they see ending these things short of a revolution. We are also learning that not every donation is going to be a vigorous ideological struggle, some people want to donate immediately. The key is asking.

Some people really do appreciate being given the opportunity to contribute and be a part of the revolution. People have busy lives and schedules with constraints that make it very difficult to be a part of what the Revolution Club does on a day to day basis. Donating gives people a way to get some skin in the game and make a real contribution. It is a sacrifice, and some people have straight up thanked us for the opportunity. This is very different for us. We have been working to break from a model where people either run 24/7 with the Club or do something that feels very individual and cut off from the national picture. All this is connected to the next point:

We have focused on helping people see the national picture of the Tour and movement for revolution, finding the ways for those involved to see that they are a part of something bigger than themselves and the people they're talking to. Sometimes this means literally seeing each other on social media. Even how we formulated the fundraising goal was a part of bringing out this mass character.100 people donating $10 or more. When we called people, we asked them to be one of these hundred people. People tend to see their relationship to the revolution in a very individual and atomized way. Which is the same way they tend to see themselves in relationship to the rest of the world. People think about things in a different way when they are coming forward as part of a collective process, a mass movement, and asking people to be one of a hundred people is a part of breaking that down.

We have also been getting video statements and written statements from people about why they are contributing or why they are calling on other people to donate. How important is it that different voices of the movement be heard? Including some who are just stepping into the revolution. What impact could it have on someone on the whole other side of the country to hear someone just like them (or someone very different from them) making the case why this revolution is important? What we have found is that it has a really positive impact on people when they hear their statement has been spread on social media by other Revolution Clubs and that it has a real impact.

We also have been taking pictures of a money thermometer on our white board at the organizing center and sending it to people we are talking to. It seems this has an impact on people following through on their pledges. People want to make the thermometer go up! All of this is showing people that they are a part of something much larger and forging a sense that we are accomplishing a meaningful goal together. And raising funds for this National Tour is meaningful.

Another new advance was raising $168 using a bullhorn outside of a big George Clinton concert. We asked people to step into the revolution by donating, we talked about the 5 STOPS and the 2 choices, and challenged people to break out of the individualism, the bourgeois electoral bullshit, and the running away from the reality that nothing will change without tremendous sacrifice.

When you put the need for a contribution right up front, people also raise a lot of differences—not just about the funds, but raising a lot of the obstacles in their thinking to revolution. These are questions we want to be struggling over. We heard a lot of arguments that amounted to people just looking out for themselves—whether it be the daily struggle to survive, the argument we should just look out for “our people” (i.e., Black people, or American people), or the illusion that if we “keep our heads down, maybe the horrors won't visit me and those I most care about.” There's also big questions that come up about sacrifice. Both about giving money but then what the rulers make you pay when you stand up. Is it all worth it? A big part of the glue that holds together some of this different thinking is the false notion that there is no alternative to this system of capitalism/imperialism. But revolution is necessary and possible and there is a way that millions can work together now to bring a far better world into being. What could be more worth it than that?

 

Sacrifice your Starbucks for a day & Donate to something that really matters! DONATE TO THE REVOLUTION!🌍 👇 https://t.co/gvlO8NcZ5k pic.twitter.com/VDfTLCphJq

— Revolution Club Los Angeles (@revclub_la) August 4, 2019

"I'm going to go read up on Bob [BA] & watch the Youtube video they showed me" 💯

Putting the leadership of Bob Avakian in front of people who are agonizing about the world & what their lives will be about

Here's why they donated & why you should too! https://t.co/gvlO8NcZ5k pic.twitter.com/JiW9xTaaM7

— Revolution Club Los Angeles (@revclub_la) August 4, 2019

From South Central LA to the youth in Chicago:
STOP fighting & killing each other, Get w/the Revolution

Support the Natl Revolution Tour in #Chicago going to these youth straight up w/the only way out of this mess #RevolutionNothingLess

DONATE TODAY 👇 https://t.co/gvlO8NcZ5k pic.twitter.com/cRtgStEeQX

— Revolution Club Los Angeles (@revclub_la) August 1, 2019

Check out Cynthia from the Revolution Club in LA talk about the impact of the National Revolution Tour👏👏
Go to https://t.co/34WHqcgYLJ to DONATE TODAY👇👇 pic.twitter.com/px2RZCvUR4

— Revolution Club Los Angeles (@revclub_la) July 31, 2019

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

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

 

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

 

Cheers to ESPN Talk-Show Host Dan Le Batard—Another Voice of Conscience in the Sports World:

“If you’re not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric, then you’re complicit.”

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

From a reader

On Thursday, July 18, Dan Le Batard, who has a sports talk show on ESPN TV and radio, unloaded on Donald Trump after Trump had tweeted “send her back”—referring to Ilhan Omar and other Congresswomen of "The Squad"—telling them they should go back to the countries where they came from (when in fact they are all U.S. citizens and three of the four were born here). In defiance of ESPN’s ban¹ on its reporters and hosts commenting on non-sports related politics, Le Batard said about Trump’s fascist onslaught, “If you’re not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric, then you’re complicit.” Le Batard, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba went on: “This is deeply offensive to me as somebody whose parents made all the sacrifices to get to this country. Send her back? How are you any more American than her? You’re more privileged? You’re whiter?”

Jemele Hill, a former ESPN anchor who quit the network last September after ESPN suspended her for calling Donald Trump “a white supremacist” on Twitter, wrote in The Atlantic: “The appeal of Le Batard is that he is the anti-sports sports analyst, and a big reason he’s become one of the most respected voices in sports media is that he is unafraid to tackle race and gender, whether sports are involved or not.”

Le Batard previously ended his show every day by playing a recording of Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA, San Antonio Spurs, saying, “...we live in a racist country.”

Le Batard was not on his show for a few days this past week, indicating that ESPN wanted him off the air. On Thursday, the network backed down and said that Le Batard would not be punished and would resume his on-air show.

 

---

1. ESPN does allow its reporters and talk-show host to talk about politics if it relates to sports, e.g., if a sports team refuses to go to the White House, but they do not allow anything that is not sports related. Le Batard denounced the policy as “cowardly.”[back]

From the National Revolution Tour

On the Murders in El Paso and the Hateful White Supremacist Offensive: What Are You Going to Do Now?

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On Saturday a man who claimed that Latino people are “invading” the US murdered 22 Latino people in El Paso, Texas.  The week before another man opened fire at a festival in the town of Gilroy, CA, on a crowd of mainly Latino people, killing 3.  And this follows mass murders in Jewish synagogues, that targeted them for supporting these so-called “invaders.”

This lie of invasion totally turns history upside down: it is the US, after all, that stole the land from the Native people who lived here and waged war on Mexico to seize the area of California to Texas – in order to expand slavery into new areas.

There is a straight line from that ugly history to today.  Right now, the president of the US continually defames, slanders and threatens Latino people, Black people, immigrants, and Muslims.  This white supremacist agitation is whipping people up for a race war, a civil war to “make America white again.”  Trump can talk out of two sides of his mouth all he wants, but everyone knows his real message.  This is FASCISM, pure and simple, and this is a fascist regime in the White House trying, and succeeding, in actually locking in a fascist America.

The question is, WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Are you on the side of white supremacy and fascism? Or are you on the side of ending this oppression?

The rot and horror we now see is a concentration of this system, a system that must be OVERTHROWN, through mass revolution.  We are recruiting for that revolution right now, to move forward the time when we can get rid of this. You need to check out the National Revolution Tour and get with this revolution.  And we are supporting the movement to unite millions right now to drive out this fascist regime with massive, sustained, nonviolent resistance, as called for by Refuse Fascism.

Finally, the problem brought into sharp relief by the massacre in El Paso is not one that can be solved by “gun control.”  The problem is this imperialist system, the white supremacy it cannot do without, and too many guns in the hands of those working to install fascism in America.

Clip: "The direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today"

Reposted from RefuseFascism.org:

The Blood of El Paso Is on the Hands of the Trump/Pence Regime! This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

Updated August 6, 2019 | revcom.us

 

PROTEST!

---

TODAY, August 6

Atlanta: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm, Ponce De Leon and Moreland Ave. Facebook Event
Boston: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm, Park Street Station (Red Line), upstairs
Cleveland: 3:00 pm, Northwest corner of Euclid Heights and Coventry, Cleveland Heights
Detroit: 5:00 pm at the corner of Joseph Campau and Belmont in Hamtramck. 
Houston: 5:30 pm at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose

August 7

Detroit: 6:00 pm at the corner of 9 Mile and Woodward in Ferndale, MI

OR: Wherever you are (send time and place to info@refusefascism.org)

---

TAKE TO THE STREETS!

The Blood of El Paso Is on the Hands of the Trump/Pence Regime!
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

Printable flyer (PDF)
Editable flyer with space for local info (Word file)

Bring your anger, outrage and determination. Bring your signs and banners. Bring your whistles and noise makers.

• Immigrants Murdered – Repeated Mass Murder By Fascist White Supremacist Shooters
• Immigrants Murdered – Even Babies – In USA Concentration Camps On The Border
• Jews Mass Murdered In Synagogues
• And, The Mob Chants: "Send Them Back!" "Go Back" at TRUMP/PENCE Fascist Rallies
• Trump Rants Outright Racist Fascist Tropes: "Vermin." "Shithole Countries."

Is It Not Time To Call It Like It Is And Act Accordingly?

THIS IS FASCISM

It Must be Stopped NOW. 2020 is too late.

Join Us Today. Say it and Act it:

In the Name of Humanity: We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America

We Demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!

Urgent Call from the Revolution Club:

Updated August 11, 2019 | revcom.us

 

After the white supremacist murders in El Paso... after the concentration camps on the border and the torture of children... after "send them back"...

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Are you on the side of white supremacy and fascism? Or are you on the side of ending this oppression?

The horror now going on will not be solved by "gun control." The problem is this imperialist system, the white supremacy that is knitted into its every fiber, and the fact that there are too many guns in the hands of those fighting for fascism and not enough fighting spirit among the people who say they oppose it. Every person who has a conscience and cares about humanity really does have to get off their ass, stop waiting for 2020 (which won't begin to touch the problem anyway), stop being complicit, and do something NOW.

Stand with the Immigrants! Basta Ya! No More!!!

In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
Drive Out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime!

We are the REVOLUTION CLUB, and we are working to overthrow this system through mass revolution, aiming at the emancipation of all humanity from all forms of oppression. We stand and fight for:

Revolution—NOTHING LESS!
We Want a World Without Borders,
And the Emancipation of Humanity!

We are recruiting for that revolution right now, to move toward the time when we can get rid of this. And we are also supporting the movement to unite millions right now to drive out this fascist regime with massive, sustained, nonviolent resistance, as called for by Refuse Fascism, and we call on everyone to take a stand against this white supremacist madness!

Revolution Club, Chicago
(312) 804-9121
Revclub.chi@gmail.com
facebook.com/revclubchi/
1857 E. 71st Street
Chicago, Illinois 60649

On Thursday, August 8, on the wake of #ElPaso #Gilroy and the hateful white supremacist offensive, the Revolution Club Chicago and Refuse Fascism Chicago shut down #LakeShoreDrive, a main artery in Chicago pic.twitter.com/Y495gqWU2X

— revcom.us/Revolution (@tuneintorevcom) August 10, 2019

Republished from RefuseFascism.org:

In a Week of Terror Against Immigrants:
It is Not Enough to Hate this Fascist Regime;
We Have to Drive it Out

By Coco Das

August 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On the heels of the mass murder in El Paso, in which a white supremacist targeted Latinos and killed 22 people, the Trump/Pence regime sent ICE agents, its American Gestapo, to unleash more terror. 680 workers at chicken processing and other food processing plants in Mississippi were rounded up and detained. There are pictures and videos of their children, left behind in schools and daycare centers or picked up by other community members, screaming and crying for their parents. One pastor said about the ICE raid of the chicken processing plant, “It looked like an invasion in a war.”

A war is two-sided. This is in fact an ethnic cleansing of Latino immigrants and citizens, waged by the Trump/Pence regime and its many soldiers, from government agents in ICE and Border Patrol to young white supremacist men who are willing to follow the marching orders of a whole fascist movement, fed and strengthened by Trump’s immigrant bashing at Nazi rally after Nazi rally.

No more sacrificing our immigrant brothers and sisters to these crimes! No more sitting back and begging politicians to “do something!” The politicians are either part of the fascist GOP or part of the Democratic Party, which is funding and enabling this fascist regime, collaborating with it—while giving empty lip-service to “holding Trump accountable” and “impeaching Trump at the ballot box”—and having no way of actually stopping this fascist terror.

Driving out this fascist regime is the greatest moral obligation we have at this moment in history. Consider this quote from a recent speech by Bob Avakian: “Trump’s election—through the electoral college, not the popular vote—is, in a real sense, an extension of slavery: the people who voted for Trump are the kind of people who would have been pro-slavery, had they been around at the time of slavery in the United States. And those who find it acceptable to have the overt white supremacist Trump in the White House are the kind of people who would have ignored or would have openly accepted and justified or rationalized slavery when it existed.”

In his speech, Avakian calls out the illusion of painless progress. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglas spoke to this when he said, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. ...Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Right now, everyone standing aside and waiting for 2020, or thinking they can stop these horrors one at a time, are asking the most vulnerable to bear the pain of this regime’s fascism. To sacrifice their lives so that too many “good Americans” don’t have to sacrifice their comfort. The blood of El Paso is on the hands of the Trump/Pence regime, but it will be on everyone who continues to cling to the illusion of painless progress. Listen to the children in Mississippi crying for their parents. They need us now.

It is not enough to hate this fascist regime; we have to drive it out. This American fascism will not be stopped painlessly, but it can be knocked off the tracks sooner than we can imagine with the right demand—that the Trump/Pence regime must go now—and millions in the streets in non-violent protest day after day, refusing to back down until their demand is met.

Refuse Fascism is looking for the thousands who are ready to start this sustained mobilization. Prepare to take to the streets and stay in the streets. Bring your anger, outrage, and determination. Join our sustained actions and donate so that we can grow and reach millions.

Get ready to go Puerto Rico on this regime, and raise your voices everywhere to say: This nightmare must end. The Trump/Pence regime must go now!​

Mourning victims of the massacre of immigrants in El Paso

August 7, Mississippi: One of many coordinated ICE raids on chicken processing plants in which a total of 680 workers were rounded up.

Breaking News:

Anti-Trump Protest Blocks Chicago's Lake Shore Drive

August 8, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Taking over Lake Shore Drive #Chicago #NoMore @tuneintorevcom pic.twitter.com/ROrJkdayPN

— Revolution Club Chicago (@revclubchi) August 8, 2019

"Silence is complicity
With white supremacy
Which side are you on?
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"
The marching has begun. At State street and Monroe now. #ElPaso pic.twitter.com/1rvXH6mOtp

— revcom.us/Revolution (@tuneintorevcom) August 8, 2019

Why We Blocked Lake Shore Drive and Disrupted Business as Usual in the Loop

by a member of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

August 10, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On Thursday, August 8, 2019, in response to the white supremacist murders in El Paso and mass ICE raids and detentions in Mississippi, dozens of protesters, led by the Revolution Club Chicago and the National Revolution Tour, took to the streets in a defiant march through the Loop (in downtown Chicago), which culminated in shutting down Lake Shore Drive, a major thoroughfare, during evening rush-hour traffic.

In the face of an atmosphere of fear and repression, with the Trump/Pence regime unleashing violent thugs and white supremacists to carry out atrocities, including massacres, targeting whole sections of people, those taking part in this protest carried out an important act of resistance, and changed themselves in the process. The demonstrators raised the slogans: “WE STAND WITH IMMIGRANTS; We Refuse to Kill Each Other; We Need Revolution—Nothing Less!; and WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA—The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!”

A young woman who came into the city from three hours away from a place where she regularly sees Trump 2020 signs and Confederate flags held back tears as she expressed on the microphone what millions of Latinos are currently feeling: “Iʼm tired of living in fear.”

The bold action began at the intersection of State and Jackson and snaked through the crowded streets and walkways of downtown, chanting, “Silence is complicity/with white supremacy/Which side are you on?” and “BASTA YA! NO MORE! Trump and Pence Must Go!” accumulating forces along the way. Our diversity of forces, which included people from around the country on the National Tour, members of the Chicago Revolution Club, broader forces with Refuse Fascism, and people who were not organized but met us on the spot (mainly Black and Latino youth), represent, in embryonic form, the breadth and diversity of the people who need to be a part of this movement for revolution. People got connected to the revolution on the spot and were recruited to become organizers, taking up basic tasks like passing out fliers to the crowds.

The protest was infused with a radical, internationalist spirit, as march leaders posed to bystanders the question: “What are *you* going to fight for? We are fighting for a world WITHOUT borders!” They challenged everyone to pick a side and posed the reality that it will take a revolution and nothing less to end this madness and bring about a world fit for humanity.

After marching through Millennium Park, the march leaders broke into a sprint.

People at the back of the march had no idea why they had started to run, but they took their lead, overcome with the joy of resistance, and ran toward Lake Shore Drive. Chicago pigs scrambled as a group of revolutionaries blocked the roadway with a massive banner that read: “El Paso: WE STAND WITH IMMIGRANTS—TRUMP IS A FASCIST—REVOLUTION NOTHING LESS!” Members of Refuse Fascism also blocked, with signs calling for the driving out of the fascist regime. It was the height of rush hour, and while some motorists were frustrated or even angered, there were also strong shows of support from the masses. One man got out of his car and said simply to a revolutionary, “Iʼm with the People”. A crowd of people gathered from the park and cheered on the protesters. Many—especially the youths who had joined up—surprised themselves and gave strength to everyone by surging into the street to join those blocking traffic and holding the banner. The air was filled with a mix of defiance and sheer joy.

After making their message heard, demonstrators were led safely off the street into a rally headed by Noche Diaz, who congratulated those who took part, but stressed that this needs to go further—we canʼt just go home thinking we did something good and leave it at that—that those masses who stepped forward to be a part of this need to be actively organized into the revolution. There IS a strategy, leadership, and organization to get with NOW to get ready for the time when we could really make revolution. Bob Avakian has charted the pathway to human emancipation with the New Communism—a thoroughly scientific method and approach to understanding and changing the world which can and should be taken up by everyone who wants to work toward a radically different and far better future for all humanity, and Noche called on people to get into BA. Because of all this, he said, because of BA and the movement he is leading, humanity does have hope. But there are not nearly enough people taking up this leadership and working to make this hope a reality—and this is what everyone who was inspired by the day’s action needs to become part of changing.

This was something the streets of Chicago had not seen before—a force of people, a small critical mass, impacting society with REAL revolution, led by a core of agitators on fire for BAʼs New Communism and determined to not only strengthen the resistance against the crimes of this system, but build a movement to bring this whole capitalist-imperialist system down at the soonest possible time.

Imagine if there were thousands of such revolutionaries in different cities around the country, united around a revolutionary line, and ready to seize on the “jolts” in society and the world to advance the revolution humanity needs to get free. This is the mission and cause of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour, which is now in Chicago and plans to cross the whole country this year to build such a movement.

On Thursday, August 8, on the wake of #ElPaso #Gilroy and the hateful white supremacist offensive, the Revolution Club Chicago and Refuse Fascism Chicago shut down #LakeShoreDrive, a main artery in Chicago pic.twitter.com/Y495gqWU2X

— revcom.us/Revolution (@tuneintorevcom) August 10, 2019

Taking over Lake Shore Drive #Chicago #NoMore @tuneintorevcom pic.twitter.com/ROrJkdayPN

— Revolution Club Chicago (@revclubchi) August 8, 2019

"Silence is complicity
With white supremacy
Which side are you on?
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"
The marching has begun. At State street and Monroe now. #ElPaso pic.twitter.com/1rvXH6mOtp

— revcom.us/Revolution (@tuneintorevcom) August 8, 2019