An Urgent Fundraising Challenge:
Put RCP Publications on Higher Ground

A prisoner sits in a hellish cell in one of ameriKKKa’s prisons—maybe one of the torture-chamber Special Housing Units—going through a copy of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. This is the handbook for revolution in today’s world. The prisoner is underlining, preparing notes, planning correspondence to the Revolution. (See a sample of correspondence from prisoners on BAsics here).

A college student, on a campus without an organized presence of the revolution, downloads materials from revcom.us for a study group to begin to cohere and connect organized forces with other elements in society for revolution. And she begins to study and circulate the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).

Activists in the battle against police murder pack up hundreds of “Stolen Lives” posters printed from PDFs downloaded from revcom.us, and bundles of the bilingual print edition of Revolution. They head for the latest outbreak of struggle and rebellion to unite with and connect the movement for an actual revolution with angry youth rising up against police murder.

In an Internet café in Cairo, or Shanghai, in Ukraine, Colombia, or rural Mexico, or in a city, town, or campus in one of 179 countries around the planet, people gather to log on to revcom.us in English or Spanish, to study and wrestle with the latest articles, videos, artwork, posters, and polemics on the biggest questions facing humanity, and to learn about the movement for revolution in the “belly of the beast.” Among other things, they find in seven languages Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

What do all these experiences have in common?

Two things:

They are part of an emerging movement for an actual REVOLUTION, and a new stage of communist revolution fighting to emerge on the ground worldwide.

And people are connecting into publications and resources that are projects of RCP Publications, which publishes work of Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party, and produces the website revcom.us.

RCP Publications IS AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE

The financial base of RCP Publications cannot sustain even current demands. And even more importantly: Times are changing... and there is a rapidly growing and ever greater urgency for the works from RCP Publications, especially the works by BA, and revcom.us to be out there, reaching into every corner of society and the world, and to everybody who is rebelling against and questioning the ways things are and looking for a way out of the madness.

The drive to raise money and cohere a bigger sustainer base for RCP Publications is one key way right now to accumulate forces for revolution, organizing people to support the vanguard, and bringing in important resources, enabling revolutionary work to surge forward on many fronts.

Another way to look at this: This fundraising drive plays a dynamic role in all three prepares:

Prepare the ground, prepare the people, and prepare the vanguard—get ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.

RCP Publications—Connecting BA and the World

Let’s look at just two of the projects of RCP Publications and consider the stakes of these getting to a whole other level: connecting Bob Avakian (BA) and the world, and producing www.revcom.us website and Revolution newspaper.

RCP Publications is the main way people connect with Bob Avakian. The website revcom.us hosts the most complete set of the works of BA and provides roads for people coming at this from all different levels to engage with BA’s work and leadership.

The website revcom.us plays a crucial role in spreading the films BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live and REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN—so that, as people awaken and lift their sights, they are connected with the leadership of BA and how to understand the world and join the movement to bring a whole new world into being.

And RCP Publications is the publisher of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, and revcom.us is where people connect with the book—being introduced to quotes through powerful posters, downloading the free e-book, and getting “driven” to the book from articles and other material in Revolution. The back of the book isn’t hype, it is a reality that in a serious way:

“You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics.”

And people cannot get their hands on BAsics, and other works of BA without putting RCP Publications on another financial platform.

Revcom.us / Revolution Newspaper

Take your time, and carefully read the paragraph that appears at the bottom of the current issue page at the Revolution section of revcom.us every week.

And think about how the paragraph ends—revcom.us is “the guide, the pivot, the crucial tool in drawing forward, orienting, training, and organizing thousands, and influencing millions—fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution—hastening and preparing for the time when we can go for the whole thing, with a real chance to win.”

How critical is that?

The Times, the Stakes, Bridging the Gap

The gap—between the role RCP Publications and revcom.us can play in a movement for revolution and in changing the terms of discourse and the spirit of rebellion in society on the one hand, and its current reach and influence—cannot continue. To bridge this gap, RCP Publications needs to be put on a much more solid, sustained financial platform.

OK, so how are we going to do this? We are going to do it in a way that expands and strengthens the movement for revolution.

Here’s how this breaks down: We need—and there is a basis for—hundreds of people sustaining RCP Publications, from all walks of life. We need the existing base of sustainers to donate and then be more consistent, and to dig deeper. And we need to expand the network of sustainers.

We need individuals and groups in the communities of the oppressed collecting change, cashing in bottles and cans, donating a regular amount each month and raising money through bake sales, tamale sales, barbeques, and parties. This kind of financial assistance helps pay the bills, but has deeper significance for building a movement for revolution with a backbone among those who catch the most hell in this society and who are acting as emancipators of humanity.

We also need networks of sustainers on campuses—donating money, organizing (fun!) fundraisers, and establishing coherent revolutionary organization on campuses. Think about that (and this whole project!), working back from what it would take to pull off an actual revolution in this country, where those who catch the most hell every day and who would be the hard core base for a revolution would not be isolated and crushed.

We need hundreds of sustainers, donating—collectively—thousands of dollars a month. This is still a shoestring budget, but it will put us in position to expand, to meet the challenges of the times, and it will be a base to build on to meet the exponentially greater challenges to come.

We want to have frank and serious discussions with people about the current situation in society and the world, the possibilities for revolutionary advances—and the role of RCP Publications in this process, and the ways in which you can contribute, including but not only financially.

Strengthening and expanding our current base of sustainers is, as we have noted, a great opportunity to make advances in building revolutionary organization. This is not a one-time campaign. This—organizing people in communities, on campuses, and beyond, to regularly sustain RCP Publications—has to be part of what we do. It has to be like breathing in and out so to speak.

The core of this effort is to draw on and organize people who have already been exposed to the movement for revolution into sustainer networks. We need to reach out in communities (both in the inner cities, but also—where colleges are out of session—in communities of students, artists, musicians, and scenes of political and cultural rebellion) where the revolution has been taking root and the works of BA and Revolution have been in the mix. We need to sit down with people who have been gravitating to the movement for revolution and discuss how critical it is to have this website and newspaper, why this is something that the people must support and spread.

A reliable sustainer base requires getting with people and digging into the need for the current struggles to go forward with the orientation of actually stopping this and about all the big questions that are posed by what is going on, and why revolution and communism and BA need to be out there in the mix. And on that basis, why to commit to a monthly contribution of $50 or $100, or from those with the most limited resources in society, of $5 or $10. Those contributions count for a lot.

As people commit to sustain RCP Publications, we need to strengthen our capacity to collect their initial contribution and their monthly donations if they are not in position to, or choose not to, donate online.

Beyond those who will make up the core of the financial base for RCP Publications, we want to reach out to people we meet or who are one way or another connected to the movement for revolution. Every visitor to the Revolution newspaper section of revcom.us and e-subscribers will be greeted with a “popup” challenging them to donate to and sustain RCP Publications. They are going to be alerted—in an unavoidable way— to the reality that we need funds, and encouraged to donate monthly or quarterly. And look to the print edition of Revolution and revcom.us for flyers, posters, brochures, and other fundraising materials. (If you have expertise in online fundraising techniques, contact us through revolution.reports@yahoo.com!).

Urgency and Determination

This is a finite plan to transform the financial situation for RCP Publications and revcom.us in the next several weeks. And then to achieve a culture change, where organizing people into networks of sustainers is part of everything we do in the movement for revolution.

Let’s return a final time (for now) to the difference YOU can make. The work of RCP Publications is work for the only real solution to the horrors humanity faces. It is not putting a band-aid on cancer; it is about getting to the core of what is wrong with this world, uprooting it through revolution, and moving to a world without oppression of any kind. Those are the stakes, and they are magnified by the historical moment we are in.

And everyone who finds things at revcom.us, or in the publications of RCP Publications, that you find compelling, necessary to be part of political discourse, and that give you a sense that there is a way out of all this madness: DONATE, SUSTAIN, AND SPREAD THE WORD.

Right now, do three things:

1. Send a substantial donation through the donate button at revcom.us, through check or money order to RCP Publications, or through your local Revolution distributor. And commit to sustain on a monthly or quarterly basis.
2. Get with others and make plans right away to reach out to people you know who visit revcom.us, who read Revolution and who read books like BAsics from RCP Publications. Challenge them to make a generous donation now. Shore up or restore sustainer relationships, to reach out to others, and to organize ways to collect regular contributions.
3. Write us with your experiences (we don’t need unnecessary detail, but do need to learn from your experiences, insights, problems, questions, and suggestions).

 

DONATE/SUSTAIN

At the present time, RCP Publications cannot accept any contributions or gifts from readers who reside outside the borders of the United States.