Out in the Protest Against Trump at the UN

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A report from a member of the National Get Organized for an Actual Revolution Tour

There were hundreds of people out tonight (September 23), which probably grew to maybe about a thousand at one point. I agitated in the beginning and there was an openness to the message, including nobody from the official conveners tried to stop me, even though they could have. A new volunteer came up on the spot and there seemed to be an interest in this meeting. I saw three friends of mine from Brooklyn who are not protesters or movement people who were out—they said that they just don’t understand why the Democratic Party is not impeaching, this is so horrible, what is happening, largely what they see is happening in this country but also just so sick about what’s happened at the border.

Two students I talked to felt very torn between their studies and wanting to be out in the street, they feel their workload is very heavy and don’t know how to balance it all and so we struggled over “me” or humanity but also how do we go to work on this contradiction. This one young woman said, “I feel like I being in with politics makes it very hard to focus on school because all I can think about is how I want to be out there and then when I am in school, I feel very divorced from what’s happening out there.”

There is a BIG openness from one of the elite colleges in particular and I feel like we have to do some conscious work and struggle with students, to bring some forms of them building for this meeting at their school this week.

When I posed what is happening in Hong Kong, one person asked about the “violence” and another person said, “This is exactly what we need to do.”

There was an openness around the “Puerto Rico Showed us how, Trump/Pence Must Go Now!” chant, but there is a struggle to be had with people around the Democratic Party is not going to do this with just some more pressure, but we actually need a major nonviolent upheaval. One guy told me that he is just so angry, he will try anything.

One chant from another organization out there, was “The oceans are rising, so are we, and Trump is sinking... something something.” I don’t recall the rest of the chant, but this idea that “inevitably” Trump will be removed from office is very dangerous.

We also struggled—and need to struggle more—over the fact that fascism can absorb individual acts of resistance and this is why the whole regime must be driven from power from below, through the kind of sustained, mass, nonviolent, growing resistance that RefuseFascism.org is actively working to launch. You will not get “ICE abolished” or “close the concentrations camps” with a fascist in the White House, there is no way, no matter how much you are in the streets. You have to drive out the regime!

Our crew got interviewed by some press and there might be the ability to get in the press more right now, given that Trump is at the UN this week.

I ran into some folks who have claimed to be working towards driving out as well, but who have raised some anti-communism in the past and claimed they don’t want to work with communists because they burned the flag, not because “I have any problem with it” but because somebody told them it will turn other people off, it will turn off veterans. I posed to them, you know a big problem we are up against, that is preventing people from getting into the streets is this idea that America is a force for good in the world. This is a BIG LIE—just look at this country’s actual history and the way it is currently backing the genocidal war in Yemen. So are we going to confront that truth or not?

Probably I could have been sharper on this, ok so you are more offended by flag burning than children in concentration camps? And you are going to use this, something that is constitutionally protected speech, to stand aside and NOT drive out this fascist regime? You aren’t refusing fascism. That’s collaborating with fascism—straight up.

I invited them to the RefuseFascism.org mass meeting this Sunday to prepare to launch sustained, mass outpourings that do not stop until the Trump/Pence Regime has been driven from power. I invited them to actually raise that, as part of contributing to the process of getting at what’s true. It would be good if they came and did it. It’s better to have all this shit out in the open and struggled over as part of a collective process of what we are confronting.

One of these people really liked my speech and other people re-tweeted it, including one woman who was hostile to me at another time. I was open when I spoke at the end about being a communist and why and on what basis there is a material basis for us to unite with people who are not communists, because whatever kind of future we want, making America better or fighting for a world without borders, fascism forecloses on all of that, it crushes dissent, it strips away civil liberties.

MASS MEETINGS to consider and plan for sustained nonviolent mass protest beginning this October to demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go NOW!

Learn more and find an upcoming meeting in your area.

 

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