In times like these, many voices and opinions come forth: politicians, the clergy, media sources, and others. There are major concerns of police brutality, oppression of women, racism and war, and violence. These, and all other acts exist to inform society of an illness which warrants an investigation, a scientific investigation, into the disease which concerns humanity as a whole.

Why science? Science seeks to determine the basis of an issue, the root of the problem, recognizing that all problems have a source. They have a foundation. In fact, what we experience as diseases of society can be defined as (symptoms). Scientifically based, we experience symptoms of what ails us individually, and collectively. It is within this context, we should seek to remedy the disease so that the symptoms would cease. The symptoms, poverty, violence, oppression... may be signs of the problem but no successful practitioner in any field of scientific endeavor confuses symptoms with root of the problems.

May we look to a practitioner who speaks to the cause of our problem and not our symptoms, only.

The interviews given by Bob Avakian get to the fundamentals (source) of the problem. Take a fresh approach to understanding why things continue day after day, month after month, year after year! Be transformed in your thinking, and find a scientific answer to a scientific problem. It is where you need to look!

Physician's 5 for $500 letter

A few weeks ago, inspired by the new interviews, "Up Close and Personal With Bob Avakian, Heart and Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution," and recognizing the power these interviews can have if introduced into society in this moment of so much despondency and delusion, I made a donation and called on others to match that donation ("Will you be the one to match a $500 challenge from a physician who supports the Revcoms and sees the difference that genuinely revolutionary leadership can make right now?"). It was exciting to hear Lenny Wolf announce that a viewer of the interviews, a professor who had never donated to the Revcoms before, stepped forward to meet that challenge! Other people made larger donations, and then called on others to match! And this occurred just as the interviews were starting to get out there, only starting to have an impact among a small but growing number of people.

Over the past few weeks, the show and the website revcom.us have told of ways people have come together with determination to raise funds and strengthen a movement on a mission to put revolution on the map. There was the story of people joining together to make and sell tamales—each inspired by the interviews—relying on the skills of people, and calling forth the initiative of others who could be won to support their efforts when obstacles came up. A number of other folks have stretched their means to donate what they can, then asking people they know to match their donation, as seen in the examples of the 10x10 donations in Chicago among other places.

Inspired by these collective fundraising projects, when an opportunity came up, I jumped at the chance to work together with a couple of other people who likewise want to spread the impact of these interviews among professors, doctors, lawyers and other professionals, and as a part of doing so, calling on them to give funds needed to accomplish this. We will learn more as we set to this task, and we are committed to struggling through challenges as they come up, and doing this as a part of a nationwide movement. We are inspired to stand alongside our sisters and brothers who took out the 10x10 challenge in Chicago, and who made tamales and worked to spread revolution in LA!

In this spirit, I want to make an additional $500 challenge donation, and call on five other people to donate $500 dollars (we could call it a 500x5), focusing this challenge on people who have the resources to make this kind of gift to the struggle, and who can see, watching the interviews and this livestream today, that THIS is where those funds should go! We (our “team”) are reaching out to friends and colleagues, calling on them to match this. And today we call on other people across the country to take this up and issue this challenge—we want everyone who has the resources to do this to also step in! If the challenge is met in whole tonight during this livestream, we will not stop there, and will take out another challenge round this coming week.

Please donate generously, and spread this call to others!

I’m giving $325 because you revolutionaries care for humanity and are the only organization that wants to see the emancipation of humanity.

You talk about the system of capitalism and I see violence on TV, especially all of the police killings of young people, especially the Black youth. Around the world too, look at how they killed Mahsa Amini in Iran. It’s such a bad situation going on right now, and not only in the U.S. but around the world. 

I’m giving today because Bob Avakian talks about ending all this oppression with a revolution. Bob Avakian talks about a new world, his vision is emancipating.

I find these Bob Avakian Interviews very interesting! I can say I feel the same way as he, I want to see humanity emancipated.  

I really do like Bob Avakian! He speaks from the heart and cares about humanity. Some of us see it the same way but don’t speak out—even people with big hearts. It would be good to have this Bob Avakian interview shown everywhere, on CNN, on the Bill Maher Show and many other places. 

Para mí Bob Avakian dice la verdad. Me gusta lo que dice en su entrevista. Lo dice de una manera bien centrado y seguro. Comenta de los abusos en China, Bangladés, Venezuela y los más marginados, los esclavos. Y en las últimas tres décadas la opresion del sistema con las mujeres las obligan a prostituirse y después a abortar lo cual ahora es un crimen.

En los tiempos pasados las mujeres tenían que demostrar que al casarse eran vírgenes. Para demostrar eso tenían que mostrar una sábana ensangrentada, lo cual es injusto porque si no eran vírgenes no podían casarse y las castigaban muy feo.

Todo lo que el dice es verdad. Yo he escuchado mis ancestros hablando de eso antes, pero la verdad años y años atrás he venido a escuchar de una revolución como dice Bob. Una revolución contra los opresores, y nada menos.

* * * *

To me Bob Avakian speaks the truth. I like what he says in his interview. He says it in a very focused and confident way. He comments on the abuses in China, Bangladesh, Venezuela and the most marginalized, the slaves. And in the last three decades, the system's oppression of women forced them to prostitute themselves and then to have an abortion, which is now a crime.

In the past women had to prove that when they got married they were virgins. To prove it they had to show a bloody sheet, which is unfair because if they weren't virgins they couldn't get married and they were punished very badly.

Everything he says is true. I have heard my ancestors talk about this before, but the truth is that many years have gone by since I heard about a revolution like Bob talks about. A revolution against the oppressors, nothing less.

I work in an office with professionals and support staff who in the main are aptly described in the Fund Drive Call as people who do care and are aware to varying degrees of the very dangers we face in this moment of extreme crisis, including how the U.S. Constitution is being overturned and the dangerous implications of that as well as the growing fascist movement in this country, yet do not see, or do not want to see, how this very same moment holds the potential for something truly emancipating. My desk area has memes and palm cards posted from revcom.us, and especially with sharp developments and outbreaks draws people to want to come and talk about such developments. 

Recently, I had shared the palm cards of the premiere of the BA Interviews on The RNL Show and emailed clips from the interviews to several coworkers and professionals in the office. One person had watched the clip: Bob Avakian on Biden, Putin & Xi Jinping: Imperialist Gangsters and the Need for Revolution! which opened up some sharp struggle over the analysis of these developments.

I shared the Tamales Holiday Festival flyer, and three people ordered tamales. In delivering the tamales, I thanked them for their contributions and invited and challenged them to watch the interviews. I explained what their donations were contributing to, which is very well put in the Fund Drive Call. I plan to send them the clip with Lenny Wolf and Michelle Xai on fundraising in this week’s episode of The RNL Show—it would be very important for them to see people who have little means contributing to putting revolution on the map.

But even before I had the chance to let anyone know that in lieu of a gift to me, please donate to this fund drive, I received a total of $300 in cash and gift cards from three people expressing appreciation for “my dedication” to fighting for a better world, and one person wrote about appreciating my “passion and commitment to reminding her and others to ‘look up’ (vs. Don’t Look Up!) and this was a donation to RevCom…” With everyone I responded with both an appreciation for their donations and sharing with what their contributions make possible and the challenge for them to watch these extraordinary interviews with BA, to be able to see why a radically different and far better world IS POSSIBLE.

"The Bob Avakian Interviews are quite interesting! There are significant insights into who Bob Avakian is… 'The Making of the Man.' We can see he has been on this path for many years, evolving to where he is at this time. From a young man to civil rights, the campus at UC Berkeley, the Black Panther Party, all the way to now… he has been a 'seeker of justice.' I call it a 'seeker of the right,' understanding 'right' in its original meaning. In these interviews I see a justification for why things need to change—no question about that. I understand Bob Avakian’s position, his evolution. He’s been looking at society and has responded to the changes in society—I totally understand how he’s gotten to this point.

"I am impressed with Bob Avakian’s ability to articulate the present conditions; there is knowledge of how this system needs to change, but the question for me is how. I seriously want to hear how such a change could be made. Things do need to be changed, especially because of the imperialistic nature of this system. We hear in the Bob Avakian interviews about Putin's attack on Ukraine… but both Bushes did the same thing to Iraq, and of course other countries have been attacked and invaded by the U.S.! I am of the philosophy that there needs to be a counter-voice. There is always the need for opposition to exploitation and oppression. This movement can surge to that degree. I support Bob Avakian’s voice being heard and continuing.”

"Watching these Interviews with BA makes revolution seem more real. Through a living application of science, BA makes it plain in terms of the basis for revolution... There is a demystification of all the bullshit so you can see the real terms of things, the raw nature of this system much more clearly. And you see him leading this whole process.

"It gives me so much hope, real hope, because we can apply what he's talking about. It stands out from him, and in listening to him, you can see more clearly the basis for revolution. He talks about these times we're living in—why it is much more possible in our lifetimes, than it's ever been—what that has to do with society being split apart from top to bottom. Then you also see that the more that this was out there, and people following him—a critical mass, representing an alternative to the parameters that people are trapped in... there would be a real alternative that people can see, a whole different way, a whole different direction that this stuff could go.

"It's BA, the situation and how you understand the situation we're living in right now. And it's not hype, it's real.”

"There’s this routine description of our system as a democracy in the election coverage when it is no such thing at all. As Bob Avakian would point out, it is in reality bourgeois democracy providing a cloak for an underlying capitalist class dictatorship. I did watch the Avakian interviews. They’re really, really first rate, and among many things people can extract from them are the historical context for the rise of Christo white nationalist fascism in the country. I don’t know anybody that has spoken and written more persuasively and brilliantly about how and why we have a fascist movement in this country, the historical context for that as a response to the victories of the social movements of the 1960s and the 1970s."

"Thank God I went to this event and heard the Interview. It was wonderful because of the work Bob Avakian has done.

"The interview brought out the soul and what's needed for every human being to have a sense of their own equality.

"He has worked on the principle of what a revolution means. No one else has done this. He's the first one in the history of the world to do this kind of research and work.

"In my country there have been lots of leaders, especially amongst the educated minority. I came from a progressive background, but nothing has been spelled out with a specific model as brought out in the interview. 

"I was really moved. I respect him more than any other leader. That interview opened up my eyes."

“He reminded me about something that I witnessed during the Iranian revolution in 1979. He mentioned that some people criticize RCP—that they want to empower drug pushers to become revolutionaries that enforce the rule of revolutionary laws.

“And so I remember in Iran how the male youth in the neighborhoods who basically stood at the street corners and whistled at girls, or shy girls who seemed to be ... to do nothing but to wait for a man to marry them, were so quickly transformed by the revolutionary situation and were participating in discussions about overthrowing the regime and how to run a country.”

We hit the streets of South Central to start taking the Bob Avakian interviews directly to the people. We had a team with a TV in a pickup truck.  At one stop, we showed a clip about five minutes long from part 2 of the interview where he talks about how for people who catch the worst hell under this system, who are told they’re worthless, and lash out violently at each other, “there’s this whole notion that if you aren’t fucking over somebody else, you’re weak.” And he goes on to say, “I mean, some people will even talk about how if you’re in this life, out on the streets and whatever, in these communities and neighborhoods where all this is so intense, you can’t even laugh, at least not in public. You can’t even laugh because it makes you look weak.”

A man in his thirties stopped to watch this clip and came over to talk about it. He said when he saw BA’s image on the TV screen, he thought this looked like somebody who has never stepped a foot in the hood a day in his life. But when he heard him speak, he was astonished by how deeply he understands what is going on there. He told us a young friend had just been killed the day before, and he described how his friend was someone who used to laugh all the time, he didn’t care what people thought. It was clear he meant this laughing went up against the code you are ”supposed” to follow. 

When one of the revcoms told him a little about BA’s history, mentioning he worked with the Black Panther Party back in the day, this person was glad to learn this and said anyone who has a history with the original Black Panthers has his respect, because they went through hell. Then he went on to say: but this man has my respect a million times more for what I heard him saying. The guy said he would watch the interview when he got home, spread it to others, and invite people to come with him to the in-person showing of part 3 on Saturday.

It’s very real, it’s very human, it’s very engaging and … from anything else it’s very concerning and it should be concerning and you should give it the consideration that it deserves… Was looking for something more current from BA, and this was very good, probably exceeded expectations.. impressed by the humanity of it. Not just cold, analytical revolutionary talk. We are talking amazement, poetry and music especially as a musician, … especially impressed by not seeking revenge from those who have been oppressed. We have to get beyond that. Not contrived, not rehearsed, so natural is so appealing… The humor, and the fun, very serious, very immediate and at times very fun… If you keep an open mind and use your brain and also use your heart..and you’re a human being and you are going to benefit…

I got it! I listened to various parts. I will watch it weekly. He is funny. I loved the part that living in the United States is like living in the house of Tony Soprano. I find what he said fairly accurate and so all his putting forward of the contradictions about the ‘little goodies’ all of us enjoy here in the U.S. made me look at it a little bit differently. Obviously different than what we normally hear, but a ferocious attack on all the contradictions. I have it on but will need to still catch up. I also see how he got along with the Panthers.

“This part [in the second installment of the Interview] made me understand the system. He broke it down in a way that I could understand. He tells you straight, how he brings it a baby could understand. BA speaks like us, he don’t care if you like it or not – he just tells the truth.” 

She couldn’t stop talking, she was bubbling over with enthusiasm and determination.  She had already watched Part 1 again on her own and she showed it to her husband.  She is getting her son to watch it as well.

She feels like she is part of a community, a team.  This is very important to her.  One of the things that you get from her is the heart and passion for this movement.