Donating to "1000 years – $1000 for BA Everywhere"

Continuing the Engagement Outside the Local Jail

June 20, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader

For the last six weeks or so, we have been going to the local jail every Sunday, aiming for broad social impact as well as bringing people into the movement for revolution. Our main focus has been on BA Everywhere and the "1000 years – $1000 for BA Everywhere" project , and we wanted to share our experience in how things are developing.

Having a consistent presence outside the jail has meant that people who visit their loved ones regularly also see us regularly, and so there is beginning to be on-going contact, regular readership of Revolution and continuing debate and discussion around key questions, as some of them have taken up the "1000 years – $1000" project. This past Sunday, this kind of engagement deepened. A theme of our agitation was “We refuse to accept slavery in any form.” Exposing the ways that women are enslaved really resonated with many people, especially women, and provoked responseses many of them too. Even though most of the people there didn't know about the #YesALLWomen, the articles in the paper touched them deeply. People began to tie together different forms of slavery – mass incarceration, the oppression and degradation of women, the lives of immigrants, the people who are suffering from U.S. invasions and drone strikes. One woman, who has read the paper before, paid $5 for a paper and said that she liked the idea of an anti-July 4th picnic (article from last week's Revolution on "A Call for Major Events on July 4th Weekend, '"WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS YOUR FOURTH OF JULY?'") because “I hate everything about america.” A couple of people came up to us and said that they want to learn about communism. They said they agree with a lot of what was being said, but they had heard all kinds of horror stories and had thought that it doesn't work. One young man argued that he thinks the "Venus project" is a viable alternative to capitalism, and you don't even need a revolution. But as we got into it more, he began to wonder if there could be any fundamental change without a revolution, and he started looking through the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).

A small group of young Black women passed by, and one threw some change into the donation can because she said that she supports the revolution. This alarmed another women, who happened to have been yelling at us the week before because she said she is against abortion and wanted nothing to do with us. She called out to the other not to give us money since we are “pro-abortion.” A big debate broke out. "Abortion is not murder." "What if a woman is raped?" "Who should decide if a woman does or does not have a child." "What does the right to abortion have to do with eliminating the degradation and oppression of women?" At a certain point, the woman who had been yelling said, "that that is a complicated decision and that no one but the woman should make it." It turned out that some of them were thinking that “pro-abortion” means that all women should have abortions. The woman who had donated said that she is against abortion because she is pregnant and she wants to have a child. As they left with a copy of Revolution, one of the women said that “I really like this kind of discussion because we all learn a lot.”

A lot of times people don't bring their wallets when they visit their loved ones in jail. What was significant this past Sunday was that 3 or 4 people left, and later drove back to give money for the newspaper. There were also a few people who pledged to donate or raise money for the "1000 years – $1000" project.

The next day, we ran into one of these women who pledged. She told us that she had printed about 30 copies of the "1000 years – $1000" project flyer and was mailing them to the relatives of her loved one in jail. She had read the quote from BAsics 3:22 and she said that she especially liked the ending “The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.” She said, “that's really good because so many women are afraid to speak out, and need to.”

At the jail we sold 32 papers and received donations of $4 for BA Everywhere and $2 for the paper and $20 in pledges for BA Everywhere.

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