To those who are part of the movement to make this Dialogue a major success:
October 20, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
While this Dialogue needs to be made known throughout all of society, the audience for this Dialogue needs to be concretely and systematically BUILT, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Meaning, there need to be a LOT of people (and a lot of different kinds of people) there, and they need to be there on the RIGHT BASIS—which means having a basic sense of who and what they are coming to see. This will not just happen “automatically”—it will take ambitious, systematic and concrete PLANS to get the word out much more broadly among many, many more people, of all strata, and most importantly to make it come alive to people WHY this is something they absolutely wouldn’t want to miss.
To the extent in this process that we encounter bullshit that actually poses concrete obstacles as we build for this Dialogue, we should engage in healthy non-defensive “boxing” (sharp and substantive ideological struggle). We should answer things in a way that can be “heard” and resonate with the more honest or principled people who may be confused or who may have been influenced by the “haters” (people who, out of a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, want to shut down any discussion of real revolution). But let’s not fail to put a lot of emphasis on the “invitation” side of things. This is going to be a wonderful opportunity that people should not want to miss.
A question: Are we making all three of these components—seeing BA live and in person, seeing BA together with Cornel West, and seeing them engage this topic at this time—“come alive” to people so that they really start to “get” why it would be so special to go to this event? We shouldn't assume that it’s sufficient to get the word out broadly (though we obviously do need to do that!!) and that somehow that would be enough for people to “get” why they should not miss this. This kind of thing is not really part of anyone’s typical day to day experiences... we do need to LEAD people to understand what this is all about and what makes it so special, so that they will be determined to get around the countless problems, hassles and distractions of everyday life to BUY A TICKET AND GET TO THAT DIALOGUE!
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