Dispatches from a Tour Member

March 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour has begun in Los Angeles. I’m looking around, and we have a solid and strong team. I was even thinking, “Well, who am I to be a part of this?” We have all kinds of people. We have very developed leadership. We have people with a lot of experience wrangling with ideas, struggling over problem and solution, and we have people who are newer to taking on this level of responsibility on the national level as part of organizing the thousands and influencing millions for an actual revolution and going to work to lead while being led by this leadership, overall by BA, on that basis. We have people from different backgrounds, from different cities. It’s really beautiful and it’s an incredible feeling to be a part of this, and the question of “who am I?” is the wrong question when it comes to emancipating humanity and representing the interests of the seven billion people on this planet, and this Tour is going to work on that.

It feels like it has been weeks when in reality it’s actually just been a few days. We went to the campuses, to the parks, and to the neighborhoods taking out what we have and what we need along with #BEB, “What is #BEB?” We’ve encouraged people to think, to look at the people on the #BEB poster, about what they have in common, because if you can’t figure it out, you might have #BEB! This is a big part of what stands in the way in people’s way of thinking. This stirred some controversy at UCLA, where we brought the poster onto a grassy area where students were enjoying the sun, talking and studying. It seemed like we were just talking to people in the ones and twos, so we posed a question from the bottom of the hill to everyone of what is #BEB? It was met from someone who told us to shut up because they were studying. Another student approached us and said no one should listen to people who don’t believe in intersectionality theory and read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work. We posed back, “Well there is an intersectionality... with all of the #BEB faces on the poster!” We went through and not everyone wanted to engage with what #BEB was, but some did. They thought long and hard. “Was it breaking empire bankers?... bad...” and then their engagement got other students from the next group and the next guy to engage and try to guess. This mattered because while the haters of revolution told us to shut up and tried to shut us down, others decided to think and to find out what it was.

On the UCLA campus, the revcoms have stirred up a lot of controversy and made an impact. It began with a reading of “The Women of the World” at a poetry reading that was cut short by the MC who claimed we were infiltrating their public “safe space” because a white man was reading the poem, which the revcoms came back the next day on campus to debate that gathered some new students. Then there was a piece from the campus feminist paper about the revcoms “infiltrating” and “colonizing” their spoken word, and then the revcoms were featured in the main college newspaper marching for the women of the world and particularly against the forced hijab in Iran, and then a polemical response by Tala Deloria to the piece from the feminist magazine. There is a freedom-necessity dynamic here, of putting on your boxing gloves and struggling, taking on what’s being waged at the revolution and throwing it back with substance and reality for the masses to see, to impact and prepare the people for revolution. This will be a part of how this revolution makes it through the bullshit, not bowing down to necessity or “moving on” but by taking it on head-on with the reality and science and BA in the interests of the people of the world.

The reveal of #BEB was beautiful. The Revolution Club was lined on the steps of the City Hall to unveil “WHAT IS #BEB?” and a speech by Andy Zee. This was broadcast live on The Michael Slate Show on KPFK, and live-streamed on Facebook. A member of the Club took some great photographs, and a supporter and videographer did video. Unfortunately, we did not bring the hundreds to this. There was going to be a climate march bringing a lot of young students, and the organizers preparing for it in front of us were watching and listening to the #BEB reveal, and some of their jaws dropped.

After the reveal, as young students came to City Hall by the hundreds and hundreds, the Revolution Club came marching in, chanting, “We are the mighty, mighty revcoms!” as students themselves took on the chants and pulled out their phones to take photos and videos. We marched toward the middle of the gathering that drew the media forward. When people marched, we chanted, “There is no Planet B, Revolution is what we need!” and “Climate change needs a SYSTEM CHANGE—hey!” along with “How do we get out of this mess? REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” You could see students gathering with different programs and different chants, but up and down the march you could see some students taking on the revolutionary chants. Students were agonizing over the existential questions for the planet, animal species, and humanity. A radical-minded young Latina college student joined us on the spot and walked with some of us afterward to organize people for revolution. After she saw us struggling with some students who did not agree about revolution and argued you can work within this system and then walked away, the young woman remarked how she could not stand to not want to confront those kinds of people. She talked about how Obama deported more people than any previous president, and AOC was not someone her friends and she were falling for. She had come out to the march alone, but she got organized with the revolution, and she may be free to join us today.

This Tour is just beginning. We have the launch next weekend to work on bringing people to. We’re gonna need people to contribute food. We’ve gone to some places like parks and marching down the neighborhood. A lot more has to be done. I’m seeing how complex these things are and the methods we need to work on this. What are our metrics? How do we measure our work? How do we sum it up? I have talked to people on the tour of how do we work as a team of scientists.

I’m going to have to go now, but I would like for readers to contribute to this process, and this Tour needs a lot of funds. We have made $10K and that is a good beginning, but we are going to need a lot more and continue bringing in people and their ideas and their support and their conscious going to work on this revolution to emancipate humanity.