An Open Letter to Revolutionary-Minded Students, Youth, and Others About the Campuses
February 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
There is a new mood on the campuses across the country—students beginning to think about and acting to stop the horrible crimes and injustices being inflicted upon the people by the system we live under. In recent months, students at hundreds of colleges and high schools joined in the major wave of protests across the country against police murder—walking out of schools, taking over freeways, dying in, and thinking and acting in daring new ways. There is also a new openness to revolutionary analysis and solutions, as demonstrated in the turnout of hundreds of students to the historic November 15 Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian on “Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion,” and in other ways. Of course, there is still a lot of apathy, but this only underscores how important it is to recognize these changes and to build on them—precisely because students have a very significant role to play—both in their own direct impact and in the hope and strength and scope of thinking they can spur among others—in making an actual revolution.
Now the question is how to go further—how to rip things back open and take them much, much further, how to bring forward a real revolutionary communist current on the campuses as part of that, and how to make leaps in building organization among students to hasten and seize on the possible emergence of a revolutionary situation—to get organized for an actual revolution.
I am calling on you to step forward and join with others around the country to take responsibility for doing this—and offering a few thoughts on how we should approach this.
In very immediate terms, we have to make breakthroughs in three major realms:
First, April 14, the National Shutdown Day Against Police Murder must truly reverberate throughout all of society, no business as usual. After the tremendous upsurge of protest last fall, the rulers made clear that they will not easily back off of giving the green light to their police to murder Black and brown youth. They lashed out against protesters with heavy repression (brutal arrests, trumped-up charges, media slanders, etc.) and with the LIE that “now is the time to get out of the streets and work towards ‘realistic solutions.’” Will students take the bait, leaving those who suffer every day under the gun and in the prisons alone once again, allowing demoralization and isolation to set in? Or, will students step forward even more powerfully—shutting down schools, taking over buildings, blocking freeways on thousands of campuses—taking the lead in busting open new levels of resistance throughout society that do not stop until this genocide STOPS? It is urgent that we take this question out very boldly right now to students and challenge them—and organize them—to make sure that the answer is the latter: even more powerful resistance that rises to a new level on April 14 and continues until this genocide is STOPPED. There are real stakes and they are right now.
Second, in late-March, the premiere of the film of the historic Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian on REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion must be built very boldly and broadly among students.
This Dialogue gives people an incredible introduction to the most advanced leadership and understanding of revolution in the world today and to a model of how people who are coming from very different perspectives can stand together, struggle over differences but also explore and deepen their unity—and the unity of others in the audience and throughout society—in their commitment to bring about a world free of all oppression and injustice. Never has such an event taken place, bringing together a leader like Bob Avakian, the architect of a new framework of human emancipation and an active leader of a revolutionary party, and someone like Cornel West, a powerful voice of revolutionary Christianity and an important public intellectual, to explore questions that weigh so heavily on humanity and its future: Revolution and Religion: the Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion. Through their differences and their unity, through their shared love and respect and their humor and their honesty, they opened up questions that millions need to grapple with and brought alive a real and palpable sense that the world could be radically and liberatingly different.
Right now, we need to work to bring hundreds of students to these premieres and to make this Dialogue—and BA’s work overall—a point of reference among thousands and soon tens of thousands on the campuses. This is critical in both bringing forward a real revolutionary and communist current that sees and is fighting for the way out of all this madness for real, and for the full breadth of involvement in the struggle against oppression in all its forms today.
Third, we must forge organization. There is a real basis right now among many students stepping into political life to join and be part of fighting for Revolution Clubs, collectivizing and getting guidance from the Revolutionary Communist Party and this website (www.revcom.us), as well as contributing to this process. This is a critical part of getting organized for an actual revolution. Also, among students very broadly, build organized involvement in—and chapters of—the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Stop Patriarchy, as other forms of organizing taking up the fight against what could be characterized as the “Five Stops.”
In short: I am calling on you to step forward as part of a growing cohort of young revolutionaries around the country who are taking responsibility together—and who feel that responsibility and that togetherness—for making all this real. Yes, the Party will be there for you, providing overall leadership and guidance and you should take full advantage of this—checking in regularly to this website and in other ways. And, yes, people like Carl Dix, Raymond Lotta, Andy Zee, and myself will be available to you—both through this website and in as many kinds of formal and informal activities and time spent on your campuses and with you as possible. So, no, you will not be alone. But, I am asking that you do more than simply “chip in” or to “do your part.” I am asking you to be part of taking full responsibility for all this with us. I am asking you to get deeply involved in the feel and flow of campus life and to bring the real revolution into every sphere—into the political movements and the classrooms, into the parties and the dorm life, into the coffee shops and philosophical debates, and into the poetry, music, and art scenes. I am asking you to bring alive and fight for communist morality—a morality consistent with the kind of truly liberated world we are fighting for, with mutual respect and equality between genders and nationalities, without ego and narrow-mindedness, with a spirit of cooperation and a willingness to sacrifice for a better world—and for the scientific method. And I am asking you to offer—through this website—your ideas, raise your questions, share your experiences, and make proposals through this website in an ongoing way.
Whether you have been with this for a long time or are just new to this, if you are serious about wanting a better world, not just for yourself but for all of humanity, step forward and be part of shouldering this responsibility. Write to me today, or at least this week, through this website (revolution.reports@yahoo.com) and let’s get started together.
Sunsara Taylor
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