Revolution #251, November 27, 2011
Want the alternative to capitalism?
Get the BAsics!
$20 buys a copy, and another for a prisoner
On “Black Friday”—”the biggest shopping day of the year,” Americans will spend $10 billion to buy gadgets assembled in Chinese sweatshops, food picked by immigrants in the fields of Alabama, and sporting goods stitched together by little children in Bangladesh. The capitalist system of exploitation will recharge to grind on, crushing lives and spirits around the world.
But this year, something radically different is happening on “Black Friday.”
In the midst of, and in the face of this obscene orgy of “shop till you drop,” teams of people in communities and shopping malls are out to create a whole other kind of scene. The mission: to get BAsics into the hands of many and cover the cost of responding to requests from prisoners for copies of the book. And in doing so, to jump-start an emerging fundraising campaign: “BA Everywhere... Imagine the Difference It Could Make.”
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation. BAsics concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian’s work. BAsics can not only introduce many more people to the thinking of BA—who has put communism back on the agenda as a vital and viable force—it can play a major role in bringing forward and forging a new wave of revolutionaries.
And the BA Everywhere... campaign has the potential to effect a radical and fundamental change in the social and political atmosphere of this whole country by projecting the whole Bob Avakian vision and framework into all corners of society.
GIVE A GIFT THAT MATTERS Many, many requests for BAsics remain to be filled and await your contribution! $15,000 is needed to send 1,500 copies of BAsics to prisoners. $100 will pay for pending requests for BAsics by prisoners in Mississippi and Alabama. $250 will fill pending prisoner requests in Illinois. And $600 will pay for requests in New York. YOUR GIFT CAN BE TAX DEDUCTIBLE. How to Donate: Tax-deductible and other donations can be made online at www.prlf. org. Make tax-deductible checks payable to: IHCenter/PRLF. Make other checks/money orders payable to PRLF. Mail all checks and correspondence to: Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, 1321 N. Milwaukee, #407, Chicago, IL 60622 PRLF is an educational literature fund that fills requests from U.S, prisoners for revolutionary literature. PRLF is a project of the International Humanities Center, a non-profit public charity, exempt from federal income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the IRS code. PRLF: contact@prlf.org, (773) 960-6952 or www.prlf.org. |
Hundreds of prisoners have received sponsored copies of BAsics so far. The initial impact has been profound and inspiring, with a deep connection taking hold amongst some of the 2.3 million people in prison.. taking up BAsics as a lifeline, some transforming themselves into emancipators of humanity.
A prisoner in Alabama wrote:
“I want to thank you for sending me a copy of the BAsics. This book is what it is. It allows you to see America in its Web of Lies for what they are. So when you watch the news or read the newspaper you can screen what’s being said by the information contained in the book so you can see what’s really being said and not said.”
Another prisoner, at California’s Pelican Bay wrote:
“...I recently received the new book BAsics and really dug its content. Over the years while reading Revolution newspaper I have been able to build my understanding of the society we live under here in America. While growing up in the ’hood all one knows is being poor broke and hungry is ‘just the way it is,’ gangbanging becomes a release for the anger that consumes those in the ghetto, and ultimately prison is where we end up and yet don’t know why we got here. The truth is this society is not set up in our interests and it doesn’t have to be this way, it’s this way because too many people are focusing on ‘coming up,’ on hanging on the street corner or chasing that high and taking their eye off the prize and not creating a Revolutionary environment wherever they are at!
“...College campuses like prisons are places where people are often exposed to ideas outside the normal American Imperialist view for the first time in their lives and so colleges like prisons are fertile grounds for Revolution. It is in colleges like prisons where people first start paying attention to World events and how everything they been told about this country being land of the free etc are lies.”
And another prisoner wrote:
“When I talk to people about BAsics I tell them to think about it in the following way. ‘Let’s say you’re sick and you want to get rid of the sickness, first, you have to know what the sickness is. In this way, you’ll know what steps you have to take to get rid of the sickness. So, if you identify the sickness as a cough, then you know that you’re going to need cough medicine to get rid of the cough. In this case, capitalism is the sickness and B.A. and his synthesis is the medication to the sickness.’ It’s a crude analogy, but it helps in getting people to understand why a book like BAsics is so important.”
Buy a copy of BAsics right now—and another for a prisoner—from activists on the street, or online at revcom.us/basics.
Your friends, family and loved ones will not only get this powerful and inspiring book, but they will know this same book is reaching one of the 2.3 million people held behind prison bars in the U.S.
NEW video at youtube.com/PRLFvideos April 2011 marked the release of BAsics, a book of quotations and short essays by Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader who has developed a new synthesis of communism. Before publication, Revolution newspaper called on its readers to suggest quotes to include in BAsics. A number of prisoners who read Revolution responded; and many mentioned the same quote, from the last section of Avakian’s memoir. Go to youtube.com/PRLFvideos to see a video of actors reading this quote from Avakian intermixed with responses from three prisoners. Show this short video to friends and family over the holiday for a living example of the connection of BAsics to prisoners. Raise funds to send copies of BAsics to prisoners for this connection to spread. |
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