Prisoners Respond to the Special Issue of Revolution Featuring Bob Avakian’s Speech: “This talk needs to get out far and wide”

Earlier this year, revcom published a special issue of Revolution, in English and Spanish, featuring the full text of the speech by Bob Avakian (BA), THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. This was in order to get this crucial talk by BA into the hands of those locked up in America’s dungeons, who can’t watch the film of the talk online.

As we said in our call to readers to donate to the printing and distribution of the special issue: “Think of the difference it will make as copies of BA’s speech pass from cell to cell through some of the most notorious hellholes in this country; as prisoners of different nationalities and backgrounds discuss the significance of the ‘Great Tautological Fallacy’; as they grapple with and learn from the scientific method and approach BA uses to develop his analysis. Think what it will mean as people cast off and locked up by this heartless, racist system read and engage with BA’s searing exposure of this country’s bloody history of slavery and genocide, and how that legacy endures and is expressed today.”

The following is a selection of letters we have received from prisoners in response to the special issue.

“This talk by BA needs to get out far and wide”

PRLF,

When you seriously engage and grapple with the revolutionary scientific works of Bob Avakian, you begin to come to a revolutionary understanding—as you’re developing a scientific method and approach—that we cannot eliminate the suffering of the masses if we don’t even know, or are unwilling to get to the root causes of that suffering. Like so many in this country, I have spent most of my life buried alive deep within cold steel and concrete. Coming up, I was like so many of the youth today. I was unable to see how the petty senseless violence amongst ourselves serves to degrade and dehumanize us in unimaginable ways all while helping the oppressors to keep us down.

We have to go up against the images that have been created of us as being nothing but dangerous “animals” and “criminals” that need to be hunted and contained.

“Looking out for me and mine” and referring to people down the block, who are in the same desperate situation, as “Opps” only serves to strengthen the profound and poisonous lie of white supremacy—even within our own thinking.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Dred Scott v. Sandford ruled on March 6, 1857 that:

A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a “citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.

And also that:

The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race treat them as persons whom it was morally lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves. [emphasis added]

The rise of mass incarceration, murder by police, and the overall oppression of Black, Brown, and other people of color can be traced back to when the first ships unloaded African slaves in the harbors of New York and Charleston.

As BA pointed out in his talk, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!, “The USA is a country which established its territory and built the foundation of its wealth through the armed conquest of land, genocide, slavery, and ruthless exploitation of successive waves of immigrants to America.”

This talk needs to get out far and wide. We need to get to the roots of the rise of fascism becoming a form of rule in preserving the American empire and its system of global exploitation, and what we must do to stop it.

What are the genocidal implications of Trump hugging the American flag while referring to immigrants living here as being an “infestation”?

Or Jeff Sessions using bible verses to justify turning Walmart into an internment camp to detain children snatched from their parents?

A fascist America poses a grave danger to the future of humanity and the planet! (Go to RefuseFascism.org.)

I just want to encourage people out there to get up with your local Revolution Club, or go to revcom.us and begin the process of engaging the 40 yrs worth of revolutionary scientific works of Bob Avakian, the most radical revolutionary on planet Earth.

I am, in a living way, an example of how necessary and vital the leadership of BA is in the emancipation of humanity.

I will end this here with a quote from BAsics 1:31. “If you can conceive of a world without America—without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world—then you’ve already taken great strides and begun to get at least a glimpse of a whole new world. If you can envision a world without any imperialism, exploitation, oppression—and the whole philosophy that rationalizes it—a world without division into classes or even different nations, and all the narrow-minded, selfish, outmoded ideas that uphold this; if you can envision all this, then you have the basis for proletarian internationalism. And once you have raised your sights to all this, how could you not feel compelled to take an active part in the world historic struggle to realize it; why would you want to lower your sights to anything less?”

In Unity—Struggle—Unity,
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“Ready to actively carry out the ‘3 Prepares’”

First of all I would like to thank the volunteers who send out the Revolution newspaper and insightful articles to those of us behind bars. I’ve just read the special edition of Revolution on THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity We Refuse To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible, and I believe that humanity has been brutally exploited under the capitalist-imperialist system and it looks like it will continue until we come together collectively to stop the atrocities this dictatorship commits. The US has a long history of using open terror and violence throughout the world in order to impose their heinous agenda. I became politically radicalized in 2016, but after reading THE NEW COMMUNISM by Bob Avakian, I realized that there is an actual movement out there that has real possibilities of emancipating humanity from this corrupt system we currently live under. I’ve heard a member of the RCP call prison the “university of revolutionaries,” but from my personal observation, people are obsessed with making money. The sub-culture here in prison has adopted the corrupt capitalist ideology. Prisoners have abandoned solidarity in order to survive and succumbed to the cutthroat principles of laissez-faire capitalism. The subjective conditions for a real chance at revolution are not yet mature because fear is holding people back. Anyone who represents the importance of values rather than pure profits becomes a threat to the status quo. It is in the prisoncrats best interest that the prisoners remain ignorant, living, as Karl Marx states, a “cattle-like existence” blindly obeying orders. I’m calling out to all prison revolutionaries to step out of the shadows and educate the masses and talk about the injustices that have been committed against humanity around the world. I get that most of us grew up in a society that from childhood fosters in us a subordinate “minority” consciousness and our creativity and free thought has been suppressed to the point where we’d rather conform to our current situation because we think we have no choice. The culture of oppression has been internalized and the masses are submerged in it. Nobody wants to destroy the only world they know because they have no alternative, at least they think they have no other alternative. So, if there is nothing to compare it to, how will they know there is something better or worse?

I’m ready to actively carry out the “3 prepares” to spread the truth because I care for the well-being and growth of those ignorant of their own critical consciousness. I’m ready to organize those around me for revolution and lay the issues out on the table to discuss the problems and also provide real concrete solutions. I support the aggressive measures that would bring about the fall of the ruling powers that have mass incarcerated and repressed us under this system. I’m ready to lead and learn as I lead, so I will need the help of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA to provide me with literature and articles that I can use to teach people about the leadership, the science, and the strategy and program that Bob Avakian has structured for us. Revolutionary action is necessary to bring to fruition the new synthesis of communism. I can see no overwhelming reason not to entertain such aspirations when the wheels have already begun to turn. The insanity must come to an end!

Compañero,

XXXXXX

BA “really gets us”

To: Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF)

Greetings to all my comrades. I first want to give a shout out to the big homie, BA, for his life long dedication to the struggle. The speech was mind blowing (THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!) He really gets us. I mean on a real level that most can’t grasp. The best thing that happen to me in years was this speech & Science and Revolution by Ardea Skybreak. She is brilliant and her breakdown of BA is life changing. It makes me want to learn more, to be engaged by a new synthesis with scientific evidence. I have started debates about the root of the problem and a possible solution. I’m on fire right now and this knowledge was the worst thing for a capitalist society, design to hold people down. It’s possible, it’s within reach, and the time is now! Here’s a poem I wrote after reading BA speech.

“Trump Start the revolution”

I see why we got Millions of Americans deaf,
Dumb, blind with no minds
blindly following a
Religion of slave trafficker’s, that got a pope to
Co-sign
and while capitalist gain
the poor get drained
The rich drive Bentleys, and the poor get driven insane
Ever since the invention of race
we been out paced
In a race that got us at the starting line, while the
Rich running to space
so I pray for revolution
For America’s sake
And I ask Donald Trump, when
Was America great?
The only thing that ever been great
Is America’s hate
built off slavery, war, murder, and rape.
This why a revolution is must needed
it won’t be televised,
Live streamed, or tweeted
(All power to the people)
We will not be defeated. im supose to see y'all
When my vision fail
im supose to feel y'all when I don’t
Feel to well
im supose to hear y'all from my prison
Cell.
Tell the world the new synthesis of communism
And BA got the only solution
the time is now
Trump start the revolution, the time is now trump
Start the revolution.

Revolutionary Love,
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