Bringing the 5-2-6 to a Transit Hub in Philadelphia

June 24, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Editors note: We received the following correspondence from readers and supporters of revcom.us and want to share it with our readers. We appreciate such correspondence and encourage others to write in and share similar experiences.

Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Philly linked up to disturb the air and organize people into the ranks of the revolution during the evening commute. We chose a major transportation hub that connects people to and from the outlying neighborhoods and suburbs west of the city, and we decided to focus on wielding the new special edition Revolution newspaper broadsheet as our main tool. We had a crew of five people, including one member of the New York City Revolution Club. All of us have had experience at different levels with doing various forms of outreach and protest together—straight up with revolution. However, this was something of a new experiment for our growing collectivity and an application of some lessons that we have drawn from summing up our previous outings.

This was new terrain for us as well, as some had never even been to this transit hub before. By the nature of the location we were able to connect with very broad and diverse sections of people, from students and other middle strata to basic masses and youths. We gathered together to set up our materials and visuals (our REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirts, a 5 Stops poster, 100 copies of the new broadsheet, an arsenal of various books & pamphlets, sign-up sheets, and a donation can), while some split off to quickly observe the flow of foot traffic and to note the arrival/departure times so we could determine when the waves of people would be coming through.

And then the waves of people began. We positioned ourselves along the flow of traffic, with one revolutionary “leading the charge” by getting right in the midst of the crowds to agitate before they dispersed. Knowing that there wouldn’t really be a captive audience in that setting, agitation was kept short and simple with bold yet basic slogans about how the system cannot be reformed and must be overthrown, challenging people who’ve had enough of one or more of the 5 Stops to quit sleepwalking through this nightmare right now and make a choice; to take up this newspaper and get into the movement for an actual revolution, to find out what it’s all about, to get with the leadership of Bob Avakian and the science he’s developed, to get with the strategy and the plan for a better world that is actually possible.

Most would simply take one in passing, but as things progressed some started to engage the broadsheet with us on the spot, with some small knots of people digging into it together with the revolutionaries. During a brief lull between waves, one man stopped the lead agitator, pointed to the image of Bob Avakian and asked who he was. When he then understood that this was the leader of the revolution, he immediately wanted to know what Avakian thought about reparations for Black people, since in his view this was an immediate demand that needed to be addressed first before anything else. This was definitely an important question to get into and that was acknowledged, but knowing that another wave was coming soon, the revolutionary directed him to go to the revcom.us website where he can search for articles that speak on this topic. It’s important to not do this in a flippant or dismissive way, but to do so in a manner that encourages people to actually dig for the answers themselves with a spirit of unity and positive encouragement, especially when it comes to questions like this that are crucial to address in the overall process of moving towards the emancipation of humanity—to help with this we read Point of Attention #3 together so that he knew what we were fundamentally aiming for in the broader, more sweeping sense. And in fact he expressed that he was eager to do so and that he was going to check it out when he got home.

This approach was taken by other members of the team when confronted with questions coming from other angles such as, “So how are you going to make this revolution?” Or with another young man, who, simply by becoming aware of all these strengths that we have on our side concentrated in the broadsheet (and the fundamental challenge being put forward), said that he felt really empowered to seek out the answers to a lot of questions that he has.

In this outing we found that, while in the main, people were still sleepwalking, among the people who took that initial step forward to engage, there was a sense of open-mindedness and that some people were looking for alternatives outside of the dominant ideology. A self-described evangelical Christian woman urged her daughter to take one of the broadsheets so that she would look into things from a different perspective and find out about what is going on in the world. A number of people paused to read the entire 5 Stops poster, and the responses to it were uneven but welcomed. One man wanted to know what was meant by “patriarchy,” since in his mind this mainly evoked images of women in the Middle East being forced to wear veils. A revolutionary directed him to watch the latest filmed speech from Bob Avakian, where there is a section in which he outlines how “male supremacy is...completely interwoven and tightly ‘stitched together’ with the whole historical development of the division between exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, throughout the world, including the capitalist-imperialist system which is dominant in the world today” (and most importantly, how it can and must be abolished) on a firmly scientific foundation.

The sheer gravity of the first Stop (“STOP Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality and Murder of Black and Brown People!”) alone and how to overcome it brought out frustration in some people who wanted to act but don’t know how or what to do, and compelled them to commit to looking towards the revolution. One couple, after reading the 5 Stops, made the point that people generally do have, to some degree, a sense that all this is going on, but they just go about their business anyway, and they wondered... what is it going to take to change this? One of the revolutionaries put this very real problem back in their hands to get to work on, with the simple question, “Well, what do YOU think it’s gonna take?” They said it’s going to require a lot more people getting involved, and we couldn’t agree more.

The 5-2-6 formulation that concentrates the path to getting organized for revolution, now given striking visual and physical expression in the new broadsheet, is proving to be a powerful tool in busting the mental shackles holding people back from raising their sights to the problem (capitalism-imperialism) and the solution (revolution). For those taking this out, whether it’s the Revolution Clubs or networks of people who have yet to be forged into Clubs—but who have come to understand the core principles and goals of the revolution along with the need to spread the word/organize people into its ranks—it has the essentials of what we need to stay laser-focused on while giving us the elasticity to embrace people’s broader questions and channel them into the “connecting link” that is the website/newspaper, and getting them to engage with the leadership of Bob Avakian.

All this occurred within a very short amount of time, approximately an hour and a half. We were able to distribute 69 broadsheets, have seven people get signed up for an e-sub to the website, including one youth who connected with us on Instagram on the spot. We’ll be inviting everyone on our small but growing contact list to tune into the livestream of Andy Zee’s report back from the “National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution” Tour as an easy way to connect them with the national movement right away.

Read, Download, Order — the Special REVOLUTION newspaper issue, May 2019.

Watch BA’s whole speech, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution