Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Israel's Killing of Humanitarian Activists:

An Outrageous Massacre to Enforce Horrific Crimes

by Alan Goodman

In the pre-dawn hours of May 31, 2010, Israeli military forces stormed the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships carrying humanitarian relief to Gaza. The Israelis killed at least nine activists and injured dozens of others. In response to an international outcry, Israel was forced to release hundreds of captured people from around the world who had been part of the flotilla. Now the Israeli and U.S. governments and the mainstream U.S. media have unleashed a massive disinformation barrage, aimed to confuse and demobilize people who have been shocked and outraged by this crime. But the basic facts are NOT in dispute.

 

Oppressors' Logic

After Israeli commandos murdered nine people on a ship carrying aid to Gaza, this is what you heard—from CNN commentators, radio talk shows, and the guy sitting next to you at the restaurant: Didn't those people on the ships know that if they tried to break the blockade of Gaza that Israel would not tolerate this? What did they expect? They must have known that Israel would attack. The Israeli commandos who fired their guns were just responding to the people on the ship who attacked them with poles and chairs... In other words: the people on the ship who were killed and wounded...brought it on themselves.

Think about this.

A man comes home and is hungry, he's had a "bad day," he wants his supper NOW. But his wife doesn't have it ready, so he yells at her. She yells back. And so he slaps her. She tries to defend herself. So he beats her down. He tells her: "You know when you don't have my dinner ready it makes me mad.... You shouldn't yell at me. And you know when you hit me that I can't control myself.... You brought this down on yourself."

While the New York Times and others continue to frame the massacre in terms of the activists "attacking" the elite Israeli military forces who stormed the ships, the ships were in international waters and the Israeli assault was itself a crime against international law.

The relief effort was carrying 10,000 tons of concrete, toys, workbooks, chocolate, pasta and substantial medical supplies to Gaza, items that Israel bans from Gaza.

The internationals on board had no guns. They were attacked by elite, armed Israeli commandos rappelling down from helicopters onto the ship. Among the dead: a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back; Fulkan Dogan a 19-year-old who has dual Turkish-U.S. citizenship, shot five times from less than 45 centimeters (18 inches), in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Turkish autopsies revealed that five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back ("Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range," UK Guardian, June 4, 2010).

Those onboard the Mavi Marmara ranged in age from 88 to 1, and included not just Muslims, as the media has implied, but people of all kinds of backgrounds, religions (or none), philosophies, and politics. Some 700 activists from 40 countries were participating in the entire flotilla, including elected officials, former diplomats, aid workers and activists, a Nobel laureate, news correspondents, and independent journalists.

Like the murder of Rachel Corrie (a 23-year-old from the U.S. who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 during a non-violent protest against the occupation of Gaza) and other brazen and outrageous attacks on those standing with the Palestinian people, the massacre on the Mavi Marmara was a bloody statement from Israel to the people of the world that Israel's terrible crimes, particularly the brutal, inhumane mass-imprisonment of the people of Gaza, cannot be challenged.

Enforcing a Massive Crime

The 1.5 million people in Gaza—part of Palestine—live in the world's largest outdoor prison. At the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, Israel launched a one-sided massacre of Gaza, delivering weeks of collective punishment to the people of Gaza, destroying schools and shelling hospitals, killing some 1,400 people. Efforts to break the siege of Gaza, including the Gaza Freedom March a year after the massacre, have been blocked by Israel and Egypt, with the full backing of the U.S. government.

The blockade constitutes collective starvation, humiliation, and brutalization of all Gazans, collective punishment of an entire population that is "a flagrant violation of international law." (Amnesty International Report 2010—Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories).

Amnesty International's current Annual Human Rights Report states that Israel's siege on Gaza has "deepened the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by shortages left four out of five Gazans dependent on humanitarian aid." According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report, there has been an increase in malnourishment, now at over 10 percent of children in Gaza, because of a chronic lack of protein, iron, and essential vitamins.

Israel's 2008-2009 invasion damaged 15 of 27 hospitals in Gaza, including shelling the Al Wafa hospital that treats paraplegics and amputees. Israel damaged or destroyed 43 of Gaza's 110 primary health care facilities, none of which have been repaired or rebuilt because of the construction materials ban. Some 15 to 20 percent of essential medicines are commonly out of stock.* And Israel's sadistic lockdown means that the people in Gaza are not allowed to leave and are totally cut off from family and friends outside. In the face of this, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."

• • •

The Israeli massacre on the Mavi Marmara took place amidst a tense international crisis in the Middle East, where the U.S. is waging a widespread war to impose regimes and power relations that strengthen its position as the world's sole superpower. Within this, Israel plays a critical role as an attack dog in the region and beyond.

Even as the context is complex, the basic question of right and wrong is clear, and cries out for a powerful, determined, sustained political response that demands justice, and can contribute to creating conditions for a genuinely liberatory force to emerge in that part of the world.

* See "OPT: West Bank health and economy up a bit, Gaza down," IRIN (irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89169), May 18, 2010. [back]

Israel Goddam!

Don't tell me "It was a public relations disaster"
It was a massacre.

Don't tell me "It was a tragedy"
It was an act of depravity.

Don't tell me that they should have known that Israel has no rules.
Maybe they did know
But they couldn't turn their backs
While Gaza is slowly strangled and starved.

Don't tell me the Holocaust justifies this...
When the lesson is that people of conscience
Must resist crimes against whole peoples...
And not wait until it is too late.

The story of Israel... a truth untold:
Apartheid South Africa, they were there.
Guatemala's Mayan genocide, yes, there too.
At your service, whenever the U.S. empire calls.

Do you hear the excuses from the halls of power?
Hour.... After hour... after hour...
While the blood dries, more lies.

Do you hear the celebrations of sanctimonious thugs?
Echoing those who cheered when Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were lynched in Mississippi,
When 4 Little Black Girls were blown up in church...

And Nina Simone sang Mississippi Goddam.
Do tell me this...
What are YOU gonna do NOW?
- A.G.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Video Available: Emergency Forum to Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at Revolution Books NYC

On June 1, an overflow crowd packed Revolution Books in New York City for an Emergency Forum to Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The speakers provided a highly informed picture of the situation in Gaza, in Israel, and the real story behind the massacre on the Mari Marmara. And there was serious engagement between different perspectives on the root causes of Israel's crimes, and the implications for what must be done.

Participants were:

The event was hosted by Andy Zee of Revolution Books. Links to a downloadable video of all the presentations that can be shown to groups is available (along with an audio file, and links to YouTube clips) at the website for Revolution Books, www.revolutionbooksnyc.org.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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In this issue:

A Month of Horrendous Crimes by the System—A Month For the People to Act!

In just this last month millions have seen these images:

This is the hellish reality of this capitalist-imperialist system.

But these crimes are hardly an aberration. This United States of America has a whole history, and a present on–going reality of war, brutality, carnage, and misery for the people all over the planet.

Stop and think about this unending horror brought to you by what they like to call "the greatest country in the world." Stop and think about what U.S. imperialism brings to people around the world, every single day—invasions, wars, torture, rape, poverty, domination, sweatshops, environmental destruction.

Some people are looking at these things—and their faith in the right, ability, and legitimacy of those who run this setup is being shaken.

Is this the best of all possible worlds, as they tell us? Isn't a radically different, and far better world possible?

The revolutionaries are stepping out to say: NO! This is NOT the best of all possible worlds. Things DON'T have to be this way. Those who rule this planet—who prove time and time again that they are the real criminals, who perpetrate outrage and atrocity again and again—have no right to rule. And YES—a far better world IS possible. As the RCP's Message and Call, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" says:

"The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good...Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings...Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world."

Society could be a whole different and better way and we have a way to get there: Revolution to get rid of this system and set-up. And we have the leadership of Bob Avakian, who has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need.

A year ago the RCP brought forward a campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" focused on three main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. Achieving these objectives is decisive now in waging the struggle to bring a new world into being. At recent conferences in two cities (see page 4) hundreds came together from all over the country to take up this campaign and as part of that, to step up to the challenge of waging resistance against all the crimes of the system.  This is all part of the movement for revolution we ARE BUILDING.

This has truly been a month of horrible crimes against the people. And this shows that the criminals now running things have no right to rule.

Now, let's make this next month a time for the people to deliver a powerful answer to these crimes. These outrages present the necessity AND the opportunity for the people to act.

As the RCP's Message and Call says:

"It is up to us: to wake up...to shake off the ways they put on us, the ways they have us thinking so they can keep us down and trapped in the same old rat-race...to rise up, as conscious Emancipators of Humanity. The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

In this issue:

Read this issue of Revolution and hook up with those who are taking up the RCP's slogan: "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution."

Read this issue of Revolution and help to manifest in many different corners of society, among many different sections of the people that: THE REVOLUTION IS REAL.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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THE PEOPLE MUST ACT
COME TO NEW ORLEANS
STOP THE OIL CATASTROPHE

A monumental crime against the planet and humanity is unfolding before our eyes. Toxic oil and gas continue to spew in the Gulf of Mexico—and the government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to truly deal with this rapidly escalating environmental, wildlife, and human catastrophe.

Millions are outraged. But many feel powerless and don't know what to do. People are looking for ways to act, to fight.

We have a bold vision and big plans to rally people to stop this catastrophe, protect the environment, and to spread revolution. We call on all who are sick at heart and feel the urgency of the crisis to join these efforts. And we call on all those who see the importance of these efforts to donate generously—funds are urgently needed.

Many thousands desperately want to stop this disaster but have been discouraged, prevented, and reduced to passive spectators by the system. Imagine if a force of revolutionaries and progressive-minded people united with and helped people find concrete ways to break out of the system's stranglehold and meaningfully contribute to containing the disaster and protecting Gulf ecosystems.

The whole country and world are watching. Imagine if scientists and engineers, people from fishing communities directly affected, environmental activists, and intellectuals, artists and voices of conscience came together for an Emergency Summit. Imagine if this conference exposed the full truth about this oil disaster and organized a massive response that really began to deal with this devastating nightmare in all its dimensions.

People's lives are being shattered, millions are suddenly finding their confidence in the government really shaken. Imagine if in this situation, a force of revolutionaries, students, youth and others were fanning across the region, spreading the truth that this is a "capitalist oil spill," that this system is not a fit caretaker of the earth. Imagine the impact of the message that a whole different world is possible, that there is a movement for revolution, and that there is a concrete plan for putting that revolution on the map with the Revolutionary Communist Party's campaign—"The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have."

And imagine if, as a result of all this, sights were raised. Imagine if new energies were unleashed, and new connections forged—between fishing communities and environmentalists—between white people and Black people—between immigrants and native born—and with revolutionary communists in the mix.

The stakes are extremely high. What happens—or doesn't happen—now will reverberate for decades, even generations. We must not let the Gulf and the planet's ecosystems be savaged, perhaps irreparably harmed.

In this grave situation, a galvanizing force is urgently needed. Join us and help forge it. Be part of the creative brainstorming about how to do this and the liberating work to make it happen. What could be more important, especially if you are a student or young person, than coming to the Gulf right now to fight this catastrophe? 

Supporters of Revolution newspaper
Email: revolutionreporters@gmail.com

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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The People Must Act to Stop The Oil Catastrophe

Revolutionaries Are Going to the Gulf
Your Support Is Needed

For over 45 days, people have watched with horror as the oil spill in the Gulf has turned into an environmental catastrophe. And people have watched the government and BP repeatedly prove themselves unwilling and unable to truly deal with this crisis. These are crimes against the planet and humanity. The people must act boldly and creatively to stop this catastrophe. We are sending teams onto the scene. And we are asking for your support.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is reaching out broadly—to youth, to environmental activists, to scientists and engineers, and to working people on the ground. Our aim is to help inspire and rally people to do everything possible to save the environment and ecosystems of the region and beyond.  And in this crisis situation, we will be spreading the understanding that this is a "capitalist oil spill," but that there is a way out. We are building a movement for revolution. We can get rid of capitalism and bring about a liberating society and economy that can enable humanity to be the caretakers of the planet.

Your financial support is needed:

Please give a contribution commensurate with the crisis.
It matters.

How to Donate: Credit card: On-line to revcom.us.  Click on "Sustain/Donate."  Note "Gulf Initiative" in the comment box. Make check payable to: "RCP Publications." Write "Gulf Initiative" in the memo line. Send to RCP Publications, PO Box 3486 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654. Questions? Call 773-227-4066; email rcppubs@hotmail.com.

*Revolution (www.revcom.us) is the Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party.  Published by RCP Publications.

Contributions or gifts to RCP Publications are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

At the present time, RCP Publications cannot accept any contributions or gifts from readers who reside outside the borders of the United States.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Obama and the BP Oil Catastrophe:

GUILTY!

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is like a murder in progress. Birds caked in oil, waiting to die...all kinds of species, big and small, being poisoned and killed... wetland grasses, the heart of the coastal ecosystems soaking in oil and withering away...the lives of fishermen ruined.

Millions of people are anguished and furious at the prospects of many more months of millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf, of the government's continuing failure to protect the fragile shore lands, and even more devastation to all kinds of marine life and birds. Some people hope Obama and the U.S. government will somehow come to the rescue and do the right thing. But the Obama government is directly and criminally culpable in this disaster:

These crimes are not simply the result of a "scandalously close relationship" (in Obama's own words) between officials of federal regulatory agencies and the oil companies, or of the government being caught flat-footed and being too passive. Yes, there is plenty of greed and corruption and incompetence to go around. But there is something deeper and systemicat work.

Obama is the head of a state that represents the interests of the capitalist/imperialist system, which exploits and squeezes the lifeblood out of billions of people around the world. This system bases its entire functioning on the extraction of cheap and extremely profitable energy sources from "fossil fuels"—oil, gas, and coal—despite the fact that the use of these fossil fuels has been tremendously destructive to the environment and has led to potentially catastrophic climate changes on a global scale.

For the U.S. rulers, their position as the top imperialist power is inextricably linked to access to and control of massive amounts of fossil fuels (which is one reason for the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the support for Israel as the U.S. attack dog in the Middle East, and the threats against Iran). The U.S. military is, in fact, the largest single institutional purchaser of oil. With more easily extractable sources of oil drying up, this has become an era of "tough oil," with capitalist mega-corporations and countries rushing—and competing with each other—to drill in more dangerous and harder-to-reach places, and for even more polluting sources of oil, with heightened potential for catastrophes. This deeper imperative is what has been driving the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at depths of a mile and more.

And the reason this government will not, and can not, really mobilize the masses of scientists, technical experts, and ordinary people is because of the private nature of capitalism. Capitalism can't confront this problem and mobilize humanity to deal with it because any such mobilization could undercut its necessity to defend the "sanctity of private property" and to maintain masses of people in a suppressed and subordinate position. This is a sharp example of how the interests of the capitalist class and the interests of humanity as a whole are in antagonism.

It will take a whole new system—a revolutionary socialist society that is moving toward a world free of all exploitation and oppression—to deal with such disasters in a radically different way. A revolutionary state can and will mobilize, rely on, and lead the masses of people in dealing with such disasters and other social contradictions—unleashing the creativity and energy of the people, seeking out all kinds of ideas and using the best ones, bringing out people's highest aspirations, and applying all that to genuinely creative and cooperative solutions.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Detroit June 15-30 BE THERE!
Put Revolution on the Map

On May 12th, the Detroit police murdered 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Then they treated her family like criminals, arresting her grandmother and testing her for drugs and gun powder residue and making her father lay on the floor in the very room his little girl had just been blown away in, his face in her still warm blood. Then the authorities blamed Aiyana's family for their little girl's murder. These pigs are lying through their teeth! This is wrong, it is illegitimate and it is unacceptable. AND WE MUST NOT ALLOW THEM TO GET AWAY WITH THIS! Come to Detroit and join us in letting people know that there is a revolutionary movement which will not be backed down in the face of this kind of stuff, and which says: "The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

But that's not all that's happening in Detroit. The United States Social Forum is happening on June 22-26—thousands of people coming from all over the country, and beyond, putting their heads together and debating about how to make a different and better world. And this revolutionary movement will be there, too—part of the debate, and learning from everyone we can, even as we're going to boldly put forward our revolutionary solution to this madness.

We're going to take the need for communist revolution—how it's the only way to deal with all this—and the existence of our leadership—Bob Avakian and the Party he leads—out to both these sections of people. But that's not all. The movement for revolution is going to do all it can to bring these two forces together—the basic people in Detroit seething over brutality and injustice, and the activists coming to Detroit to wrangle with making a different and better world. We're going to work to create a very positive, and very rare, chemistry in this fucked-up society which does everything it can to keep people divided and fearing one another.

If you are sickened and outraged by the police murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones... if you are outraged by crimes against the environment in the Gulf and the Nazi anti-immigrant laws in Arizona... if you are righteously infuriated by the U.S. rampaging around the Middle East with its thug Israel and you want to fight for a radically different and radically better world where all these things don't constantly happen... and if you are about getting down with the Message and Call from the RCP,USA, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"... if you want to get Bob Avakian and his liberating, emancipating message known to many many thousands in Detroit and beyond... then drop everything and COME TO DETROIT THE SECOND HALF OF JUNE!

Get there June 15th and stay for the whole time. Be there for the United States Social Forum June 22-26, and bring the outrage of the masses in Detroit at this murder into this important gathering of radical activists. And bring the desire of these activists for a better world out among the masses in Detroit. Get there for any part of this time that you can. But get there.

*****

People who want to volunteer to go to Detroit or make a financial contribution to this effort should get in contact with us right away.

Write, call, e-mail: Libros Revolucion/Revolution Books (see page 15 for information for different cities) or

RCP Publications, P.O. Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 • 773-227-4066 • rcppubs@hotmail.com.

Please give your name, e-mail, phone number so someone can get back to you right away. Checks can be made out to RCP Publications (marked "Detroit Effort").

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Reporter's Notebook from the campaign conference, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"

by Annie Day

 

Nearly a year ago, the RCP, USA launched a campaign around "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have." Anchored by a powerful Message and Call from the Party, the campaign has accomplished some important things. But the campaign has not yet broken through to its main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. To deal with this, the Party called conferences on May 29 and 30 in two cities.

These conferences were very successful. People came from a number of different cities, large and small. And they brought a wide range of experience with them—experience in different forms of fighting the power and, in many cases, in beginning to take out revolution. The chemistry that came through by having people with diverse viewpoints and experience wrangle with the purposes and goals for this campaign and then, on that basis, develop ideas and plans—and in so doing, constantly returning to those larger goals and purposes—brought forward something new. For the first time there was a sense of a national campaign; now the charge is to make that real, and take it all to a higher level.

On Monday night, June 7, we will be publishing the main speech given at the conferences online, and we will be publishing more from the conferences in the future. This week, however, to give people a basic sense of and feel for what happened, we are publishing a reporter's notebook from Annie Day, a participant at one of the conferences.

You could feel the anticipation and excitement as people were buzzing about the auditorium. This was the first day of the major conferences called by the Revolutionary Communist Party on the campaign they've embarked on, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have."

About the room in different forms and colors was a striking new image of Bob Avakian, on t-shirts, palm cards and posters. The fire-red word REVOLUTION was emblazoned on a banner on the side of a wall promoting Avakian's talk, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About and was something people pointed to throughout the weekend, talking about ways to get this further out there, and the impact this talk had on them. And the Message and Call of this campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" was at the front of the room in Spanish and English.

Gathered here were people, diverse threads, from different perspectives and places, different levels of experience and familiarity with the revolution, but together determined to confront and transform this nightmare of a world.

DAY 1—getting in deep

The first and main speech of the weekend took us on a journey—it set the framework for the conference and the revolutionary spirit, ethos and impatience informed and infused the wrangling, discussion and debate that followed. I know I'm still playing in my mind what was said, and the challenges put to all of us.

The main themes in the talk were the stakes of the campaign and its main objectives... what this campaign has to do with making revolution—including what the RCP's strategy for revolution is in a country like this... and the relationship of the leadership of Bob Avakian to all that.

The speech surveyed the events of just the last month to remind us of the great need for revolution. Then it laid out soberly where things are at in the world and the high stakes of changing all this. "This revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—is fighting for its life." The speech laid out how we got to this point: since the defeats of the first stage of revolution (with socialism reversed in the Soviet Union in 1956 and in China in 1976) there have been over 30 years of counter-revolution, with the most reactionary to "the most enlightened" trumpeting that these experiences were totalitarian nightmares at worst, or utopian impossible dreams at best. The real, liberatory experience of all this has been constantly slandered, endlessly distorted, and entirely covered over. Even the majority of the Revolutionary Communist Party itself objectively bought into these verdicts and gave up on revolution as a real and realizable goal.

But Bob Avakian took a different road, and the talk got into that more deeply. Avakian studied this first stage of communist revolution, he dug into and defended the tremendous achievements of these revolutions—but he also confronted and deeply analyzed where they fell short and what objective problems a revolution will face going forward... and through this work, he forged a new synthesis of revolution and communism. The talk quoted the Manifesto from the RCP, Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage. This new synthesis is comparable to "what was done by Marx at the beginning of the communist movement—establishing, in the new conditions that exist, after the end of the first stage of the communist revolution, a theoretical framework for the renewed advance of that revolution." Avakian went on to lead a Cultural Revolution within the RCP itself over these very questions, "to not only get this Party back onto the revolutionary road, but to put it on a more profoundly revolutionary basis than ever."

Linking this struggle to what this campaign is a part of, the speaker brought us up to now: "BA saved this party as a revolutionary party; and now this party must, and can, move forward and lead people to initiate a whole new stage of communism, fighting for this understanding everywhere and using it to make revolution right here."

The most polemical part of the talk, which became a big point of discussion throughout the weekend, got into this more. "Without Bob Avakian and the work he did and is doing—without Bob Avakian and the courageous struggle he waged, and led—it is very likely that there would BE no communism today, at least no vital and viable communism. Without Bob Avakian, it is very likely that there would be no Party in the U.S. today—at least no party that is really a vanguard of revolution—nor would there be a revolutionary movement." That we have all this is really precious, and something that has to be made known throughout society. And we have to challenge people to get into, and wrangle with the work Avakian has brought forward.

The talk also called on us to challenge others—"if you are serious about fundamental change, it is the height of irresponsibility to fail to engage Avakian's work on the level it demands."

"We ARE BUILDING a movement FOR revolution"

Through the course of the weekend, we got a living sense of how the three objectives of this campaign—making this revolution known throughout society, making Bob Avakian a household name, and bringing forward a core of fighters for this understanding out in the world—can all work together to have a big impact in a concentrated period of time. We got a sharper focus on the need to get a different trajectory going in society, and much more of a feel for what that would be and how all this would be conveying to people that we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution. This was laid out in both speeches, and pulsed through the breakouts on day one and the workshops on day two.

We all got a much deeper sense of the link of all this to a larger strategy for revolution, and to hastening while awaiting a revolutionary situation. The opening talk had gotten into how, in qualitatively different objective conditions, a revolution could be made in a country like this... and out of what contradictions today that qualitatively different objective situation could potentially arise. The Message and Call were drawn on in this regard, as was the recent two paragraphs from Bob Avakian printed in Revolution.* And all this kept circulating in our minds throughout the weekend.

The discussions on the first day were rich. People wanted to know more about the Cultural Revolution in the RCP—what it meant and why Avakian launched it. People asked about what a revolutionary situation could look like in a country like this, what contradictions it may come out of, and how revolutionaries today need to be working to bring that, and a revolutionary people, into being. There was a lot of discussion about the need for resistance and the relationship of this campaign to the slogan, "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." People spoke about the criminal murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, including people who had jumped in their cars right after it happened to attend her funeral in Detroit and went out into the neighborhoods to call on people to hit the streets, and work to connect them up with this movement for revolution.

People brought a lot of experience to bear—from the campuses and the ghettos. A college student from one of the top schools in the country later spoke about how little people in his school know about the lives of people lived at the bottom of our society, he'd never heard people talk about the anger and frustration of those who are forced into prisons, and shuttled into housing projects that themselves resemble prisons. He was trying to figure out how to bridge that gap. The need for those connections, for the "mixing and meshing" from different strata—and the ways we can go to work on that—was an important thing that came out of this conference as a whole.

There was also discussion, at times heated, to get more into what was said about Avakian. Through this discussion and struggle, it became more clear to many that what you thought of the need for leadership and of Avakian's leadership in particular had everything to do with what you think about revolution and communism. One person wrote in a survey afterwards, "I knew Bob Avakian was important, but I didn't know how important until this weekend."

We'd gone pretty far in a day, and the discussions over dinner continued. I looked over at the other end of the auditorium and a few dozen people were circling around the main speakers—people who'd been into this for under a year or so had been invited to pose their toughest questions and wildest dreams, and they did, and then they all threw in to speak to what each other had raised. "What kind of revolution is needed?" "How are people going to be part of a revolution if they're not stepping up to resist today?" There was a serious and heartfelt discussion about the divisions between Black people and Latino immigrants. Participants spoke from experience about these killing contradictions among the people, and went back and forth about how we can bring forward a whole different way.

The night was brought to a close as we packed in tight to Revolution Books. People shared their poetry, read excerpts from Bob Avakian's memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond, a few people read letters from prisoners who subscribe to Revolution newspaper. The whole room laughed appreciatively at the irony Joe Veale talked about in his letter on turning prisons into universities, "...here we are the so-called 'worst of the worst' (this was said and meant in every sense by those who held us)—they've put us in the most extreme conditions in this prison in an attempt to break us down and beat us down—and here we are not only discussing but critiquing Plato—showing how he and Socrates did not represent the interest of the people but the interest of a slave system!"

I felt soul stirred again—in that space with others setting out on a historic mission—listening to a young revolutionary reading from Avakian's memoir. He read a part towards the end where BA talks about his response to the death of Peter Tosh, "Sadness to anger; anger to intensified revolutionary energy, fired with a profoundly realistic optimism: that is what should drive us forward and lift our spirit and sights."

I heard the next day that dozens of attendees were like me... up to the early morning hours continuing the discussion, confronting the stakes of all this, and laughing and feeling the reality of the decisive difference this campaign can make in a badly bruised, and increasingly dire, world.

DAY 2—Making plans, coming out roaring

And before we knew it, we were gathered again to hear the opening speech of day two. This talk—on the foundation laid the day before—took us on a different kind of journey. It focused on the key elements of this campaign and what it really needs to look like, and involve, to achieve its goals—and by the end of it, we got a sense of how the parts could be woven together to accomplish what the world demands.

There were sharp comparisons made throughout—the difference of waging this campaign as a campaign and what difference it makes that people you're trying to involve understand their participation is part of making a national and concrete impact vs. coming off like you're just timelessly and aimlessly "doing what revolutionaries always do." Or in the discussion on the importance of the statement (which was returned to throughout the conference as a whole) "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have," a comparison was made between "saturation" and just getting out a lot of fliers. Saturation is where this is pushed "enough into people's worlds that they have to engage this and have their assumptions challenged by it and to create a situation where people are wrangling with each other about it—and where we are operating in that whole mix."

Plans were announced to distribute one million copies of the RCP's Message and Call over the summer—actually saturating festivals, and key neighborhoods across the country. And to get out 200 in 10, that is 200,000 statements in 10 days off the conference starting Friday, June 4. There will be regular reporting on Revolution newspaper's website about how this is going so people across the country can, in real time, learn from each other's experience—positive and negative—and see how we're doing in relation to our goals.

Another important and sharp comparison was the difference between being what Avakian has called "completely outrageous...and yet eminently reasonable"—posing a provocative and radical challenge. This is very different, the talk went on, than "incrementally grooowiinnnggg a moooovement." In talking about this on the campuses in particular, the talk summed it up this way, "There are young people on these campuses who are searching for a way to contribute to changing the world—but they don't think communism is the way to do it. If we are going to provoke them to not only rethink but to get into this—we need to build on and do even better at both hitting hard at their deeply held assumptions in ways that cannot be easily dismissed and speaking to people's highest aspirations."

The talk returned to the importance of unabashedly modeling a culture of appreciation, popularization and promotion around Avakian. The speaker went on to pose it sharply, "If you are proceeding from humanity's need to get free it can ONLY be a good thing that there is a leader who has solved or pointed the way towards solving the biggest problems of the revolution. If you are proceeding from humanity's need to get free—you will be EAGER to get into this leader."

She laid out, and called on people to further develop, key elements of the plan in relation to making Bob Avakian a household name over the next few months. These include major promotion of this new BA image, getting the Revolution talk seen on the streets and on the net to where its presence is on a qualitatively higher level, and an early fall release of a back-pocket-sized book of quotations from BA called BAsics.

The talk went through other important parts of this campaign—the work on the campuses, building the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund and fighting the ban of Revolution in at least three prisons. She talked about the need to expand the distribution and reach of Revolution newspaper—online and in print, and the need for Revolution to play a bigger role as a collective organizer for this movement, and this campaign. The orientation around fundraising—and the need to develop a culture of fundraising—was taken up throughout the day, and someone in the plenary suggested this approach as an example of being both "utterly outrageous and eminently reasonable," "Hi, I'm with the revolution. We intend to run a whole different and better society, and we're raising $___ to put revolution on the map, would you contribute towards that?"

One of the things I noted in hearing the speech, and have been thinking about in the days since, was the loud applause when the speaker announced that "soon the RCP will be publishing a new constitution of the future socialist state." I think it was felt among all of us, how much more real this could make what's meant in the beginning of the Message and Call, "This Is NOT The Best of All Possible Worlds... And We Do NOT Have to Live This Way!" It can, as Avakian himself discussed, project on a whole higher level, and in the mix of all these parts of the campaign, an alternate authority to the brutal current order.

Working On—and Leaping Into—"Key Concentrations of Social Contradictions"

Another point made in the talk was brought to life through the conference itself. "This campaign is to build a movement for revolution to really impact and change the whole world. It is not a self-contained process—and we need to be interacting with the quickly and sometimes sharply changing larger world." Late Saturday night, BP announced that their "top kill" strategy to stop the oil gush didn't work. When this was announced Sunday, a wave of anger swept over the room, and conference organizers in our area decided to add a workshop on this at the last minute (one had already been scheduled in the other city). Dozens attended to figure out how to both build resistance to this catastrophic crime and in that, make known and give living emphasis to "the revolution we need and the leadership we have." An attitude and orientation which emanated from these conferences was the determination to "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." Living spirit and concrete plans were given to the point in the Message and Call, "The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world... when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness... those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

People talked about being in Detroit around the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and needing to return to continue protests coinciding with, and bringing that into the U.S. Social Forum later in June. People talked about going to Arizona this summer to protest—and fight to reverse—the fascist anti-immigrant laws. One woman talked about a prison being built in her area and how she was determined not to let this pass, and plans were discussed to fight to overturn the ban on Revolution in the prisons and to get down to New Orleans with concrete demands around this oil catastrophe—to put resources into stopping the leak and involving volunteers in cleanup (something BP and the U.S. government are currently preventing).

Welcoming Controversy...And Responding To Attacks

Stepping out in all these kinds of ways will be controversial, and at times unpopular. We know that, and also know provoking controversy over questions that will otherwise be off the table and absent from people's thinking is part of what we want to get going. The second talk made an important point in this regard, "The only people who are afraid of controversy, who want to seek to avoid controversy, are the people who think that the status quo is just fine. The way people are thinking is just fine. The ways they are acting is just fine. The massive crimes being done to the people all over the world and to the planet itself are just fine. That's not acceptable!"

Before the plenary discussion began, the conference leaders took a moment and recognized some of the people in the room who'd come under attack or been arrested in the context of the movement for revolution—for posting a flyer for a Raymond Lotta speech on an elite campus, for agitating against the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Harlem, for standing out against the censorship of communists at an Ethical Humanist Society event, for calling out the illegal and abusive actions of the police while they were violently arresting someone on the street... one by one these people stood up and we applauded. Yesterday's speech was echoing in my mind once again, "People got to see, and they have to stand up with, the revolutionaries standing firm and fighting back when we come under all the different attacks that the system comes at us with, and we have to mobilize them to make every assault politically boomerang against the enforcers of oppression, as we turn these attacks into a way for more people to hear about and come together to defend this new movement." This became a running theme of the conference.

Percolation, Chemistry and Pushing Out

One of the big aims of this conference was to get a lot of percolation going on—people all straining together to figure out the different forms through which the goals of this campaign will be accomplished. What's it really going to take to pose a radical, societal challenge on every front? The thinking on this got uncorked on a way higher level. Getting people together—with different levels of experience and knowledge, different backgrounds and interests—we were able to break the atomization that weighs people down. People were able, in a different way, to step out of the confines of today and proceed from what it's really going to take. And having these challenges put before us collectively, we were able to bang on the problems we face together.

Ideas built off other ideas, people got wild, imaginative...and concrete. When proposals emerged, people ran with them and thought about how they'd impact and interpenetrate with other ideas and other parts of this campaign. People who'd never raised money had further thinking on plans and approach, those without net knowledge learned from those with, and even after the workshops were over, people were intensely discussing further ideas. What about an all-day fundraising web telethon? Can we raise money for billboards for this BA image, and if we advertise a website on the billboard, we can fundraise for others to sponsor their own billboard. A call for essays from prisoners to write on, "what to the prisoner is your 4th of July." A BA day in the early fall, maybe to coincide with the release of BAsics, a video of testimonials from different kinds of people, "I'm into BA because..." And a lot more... The collective political imagination was broken open, and through that collective process, people came up with thinking they would not have, off on their own.

As the sun was setting, we gathered for closing remarks, and to meet one last challenge together. In order to print 250,000 copies of the Message and Call for this initial ten days of saturation, we needed to raise $8,000. In an earlier break, one person had given $250 and they were asked to stand. The question was asked who could match that contribution, and one by one people stood until about 15 people were standing... then who could give $100 and again, people stood one by one. One person was able to give $1,000 and a hat was passed for those who could give in smaller amounts and the announcement came in, $7,960 was raised... two more hands were thrown up to give the rest for a full $8,000. One person echoed how I felt, "This showed people were serious and that we ARE going to do this." At the same time, we had to understand that this was only seed money—this had to lead to massive fund-raising from the masses themselves in all kinds of different ways and at every level of society.

We poured out into the warm night—saying our goodbyes, some getting ready for a long ride, others making plans to be part of the local teams this next weekend—and I was thinking about something one of the main speakers said as we closed. "Whether they know it or not, the people of the world are counting on us. Counting on the hundreds at these conferences to involve the thousands, to put this before millions." And I was thinking of this great need, and the basis to fill that... I heard a fellow participant say excitedly, "damn, we got some shit to do!" Yes, I thought, and while this won't be a straight line ahead, we've got some shit to do it with!

* The two paragraphs referred to here were published in Revolution #202:

"At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

"The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the "pole" and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution. " ("Some Principles for Building a Movement for Revolution," by Bob Avakian) [back]

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Opening Speech at May 29-30 Conferences on the Campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"

Nearly a year ago, the RCP, USA launched a campaign around "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have." Anchored by a powerful Message and Call from the Party, the campaign has accomplished some important things. But the campaign has not yet broken through to its main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. To deal with this, the Party called conferences on May 29 and 30 in two cities.

These conferences were very successful. People came from a number of different cities, large and small. And they brought a wide range of experience with them—experience in different forms of fighting the power and, in many cases, in beginning to take out revolution. The chemistry that came through by having people with diverse viewpoints and experience wrangle with the purposes and goals for this campaign and then, on that basis, develop ideas and plans—and in so doing, constantly returning to those larger goals and purposes—brought forward something new. For the first time there was a sense of a national campaign; now the charge is to make that real, and take it all to a higher level.

I. We Need Revolution

We have a lot to do here this weekend, a lot to accomplish, and I want to lay out a framework that can help us accomplish that on the best possible basis. Our overall purpose is to take this campaign—"The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"—to a qualitatively higher level.

So I'm going to talk about why we undertook this campaign. I'm going to talk about the high stakes involved. I'm going to get into the goals of this campaign. And then I want to explain in some depth what all this has to do with doing what we ultimately and urgently need to do—and that is to make revolution.

But I want to start by talking about Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the 7-year-old child murdered by Detroit police two weeks ago today. I know you've read in our paper how she was sleeping on the couch in the living room, next to her grandmother, when the cops swarmed into their home after midnight. You may have read how the cops had every basis to know that there were children in the home because they had been surveilling the place. How these pigs shot her in the head and then carried her lifeless body out of her home like a rag doll. How they then brutalized her father and arrested her grandmother, putting her in chains. And how all this was filmed for a reality TV show in order to sell back to people their own brutalization and degradation, and add bitter insult to the horrible injury. How the mayor of Detroit then jumped to defend the police and attack the family's lawyer and, yes, attack the masses themselves for "making bad decisions." How Al Sharpton then ran to Detroit to "give the glory to god"—and put the blame on Black people themselves, especially the youth. But to echo the article in our paper, THAT'S STILL NOT THE WORST OF IT: for yet again, at least for now, the masses have been forced to chew on their sorrow and swallow their anger and just walk on—until they eventually turn it back, once more, against each other.

Or maybe you read in our paper a few weeks back about the massacre in Gardez, Afghanistan. Twenty-five people were celebrating the birth of Hajji Sharaf Udin's newborn grandson. At 3 in the morning, again while people were sleeping, Udin's son, Mohammed Dawoud went to investigate noises that he heard outside. The noises were American special forces, who promptly murdered Dawoud. Just like the Detroit police, these American soldiers then attacked the house and murdered three women who were crouching behind the door in fear. Bibi Shirin was 22 years old and the mother of four children under 5; Bibi Saleha was 37 and the mother of 11 children; and Gulalai was 18 years old. Maybe you remember how those same American soldiers then assaulted the survivors, arresting eight of them and holding them for four days of American-style interrogation, hoods and all, and then tried to cover up the massacre, stonewalling and lying for more than a month before the truth finally became undeniable. And here too THAT'S STILL NOT THE WORST OF IT—for all too many people remain passive in the face of this and other outrages by the Obama administration, including Obama's self-declared right to assassinate, without even the semblance of any due process, anyone that he decides to.

Or maybe you're burning in anger over Arizona and its maniacal fascist legislature, one day virtually criminalizing people of color and almost literally the next day forbidding the teaching of ethnic studies—including the teaching of the historical fact that the U.S. stole New Mexico, Arizona and large parts of the rest of the western U.S. from Mexico in the first place...because teaching that fact "might incur resentment."

Maybe you read our declaration for women's liberation and the emancipation of all humanity, and were stunned by what it revealed about the scope and depth of the oppression of one half of humanity all over the world. A fabric of oppression, to quote our declaration, that "is carved deeply into the calloused hands of women in the sweatshops of China and Honduras," that "is draped over the faces of young women in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia," that "is stripped off the bodies of girls of Moldova and Bangkok who are put up for sale in brothels," and that "is worn like a prize by pre-teens in the U.S. and Europe who are taught to dress and move like sex objects long before they understand what sex even is."

Or maybe you're heartsick over the disaster now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you've read our paper, which goes into the real depth of this disaster, and here too, once again, exposes the lying and suppression and cover-up that is second nature to the people who run this system.

Or perhaps you're losing sleep over the continued rise of a fascist movement in this country... distressed about people who have been organized by one section of the rulers to aim their resentment and anger toward those "below" them or "slightly higher"—toward immigrants and Latinos more generally...toward Black people, particularly poor Black people...and on the other hand, toward intellectuals and artists...and, yes, toward communists, including very explicitly this Party.

All that and more keeps you up at night. All that and more brought you here today.

But the fact is: none of this has to be this way.

Let's go back again to the heartless murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Mayor Bing in Detroit said this: "It's quite demoralizing. I don't know how to stop it." But we DO know how to stop it. We know how to stop it because we know how to deal with what started it and what keeps it going—this rotten capitalist system, with its ever-changing but somehow never-dying structures of white supremacy. We don't need murdering pigs—but so long as you have a SYSTEM which relies on the social structures designed to keep the masses of Black people and other people of color impoverished, imprisoned, insulted and brutalized, then for just that long there will be murdering pigs to enforce those structures. But we don't need that system and we can do away with that system—through revolution.

And no, we don't need the masses of youth preying on each other and even killing each other off. But so long as you have this capitalist system, where everything and everyone is looked at as a source of profit and where as a result "look out for number one and screw everyone else" (while "giving it to god" on Sunday) is the real morality that is promoted and reinforced every day... so long as you have these white supremacist, racist institutions constantly blaring the message that lives lived in black and brown skins are worth less than those lived in white skins... then this kind of ugly thing will play out amongst the most oppressed...whether you are talking about Detroit, Mexico City, Mumbai or Paris. But we can do away with that too, but not by sermons and not by education—education that leads nowhere. We can do away with it if—but only if—we make revolution against the system that spawns it and do away with that system and all its fucked-up ways of relating. This system, with its planet of slums and its planet of gangs, has NO future for these youth—but the revolution DOES.

We need state power—revolutionary state power—a state power not of these imperialists, but a state power serving and rooted in the masses of people, with the leadership of the vanguard party. If we had state power, we would deal with the worst of this overnight, even as we set about the longer but still do-able process of leading people to tear up the deeper roots of this horror. And even before we have that power, right now as we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution, we are learning how to draw these youth into something else and something far better—fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.

We can stop this shit. It doesn't have to be this way. We don't need a system that divides the world into different sets of turf ruled by different cliques of legitimate gangsters—that is, the ruling capitalist-imperialists—fighting like dogs over who has the right to exploit and super-exploit the people and to plunder the resources of the earth. What we need is revolutionary state power—and if we had it, we would use it to build a system that does NOT run on the worldwide division of people into exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed. We would use that state power NOT to rain down terror on oppressed people all over the planet, but to support revolution—REAL revolution, revolution designed to end oppression and NOT just repackage it, with a different set of oppressors—all over this planet.

And there is no objective need to befoul and devastate and destroy the environment either—unless you have a system in which every player is driven to seek profit on top of more profit... If we had the power, we could forge a future where people would live as caretakers of the planet, nursing its terrible wounds and developing a sustainable relationship to nature—and not piratically and insanely plundering the earth the way that these rulers do now. These dominators and despoilers need to get the fuck out of the way—and the people need to MAKE them do it, through revolution, for these capitalists will never leave on their own. Just look at the principles in the special issue of Revolution on how our revolutionary socialist state power would handle the environment and tell me that there is anyone else willing to stand up and say "Give US the power, and we could deal with this"—and able to actually back that up with substance. [Revolution's special issue on the environment is available online at revcom.us/environment/]

We want state power. We would use that state power both to prevent the exploiters from returning and to set about resolving the great disparities and inequalities in the world—between oppressor and oppressed nations, between men and women, between those who work with ideas and those who are locked out of that sphere—and we would do it in a society that would be full of ferment and initiative from many different directions.

II. Revolution Is Fighting To Break Out...

Revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—could deal with all these outrages and more, and could do it as part of moving forward to a planet without any exploitation...without any forms of oppression...and without all the institutions and ideas, whether ancient or oh-so-modern, that reflect and reinforce that exploitation and oppression. Revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—would get rid of their instruments of oppression and it would bring in a new power, one which would mobilize the people to transform the material reality they face.

We need state power—state power to defend the people as they overcome the age-old divisions and as they work through the complicated but nevertheless very do-able and very joyful process of dissolving the mental shackles that chain their minds. We need a state power that would lead people to transform their own supposedly unchangeable human nature, not in a crude way that tramples on people's individuality, but through a whole process where as people transform the material world they are also led, and take initiative, to open up capacities and parts of themselves that they never knew they had.

But here's the most painful thing of all: this revolution right now is pretty much off the map in people's thinking. Even where people are fighting back—like in Arizona, or in the fights against education cuts—we have to face it: Revolution isn't out there as a REAL viable possibility in their thinking.

This revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—is fighting for its life. That's right, fighting for its life. And not just to survive, as some kind of abstract hope that might as well be a religion—but to survive and grow as a real contending force, increasingly mobilizing people to fight the power, and preparing people to SEIZE the power as part of conquering and transforming the whole world.

But even worse—not only is the reality of this not known to most people, to the extent they have heard of it, people have been convinced that such a revolution is either impossible or undesirable.

How did this happen?

The communist revolutions that came to and held power—first in the Soviet Union in 1917 and lasting for several decades, and then in China from 1949 to 1976—achieved things that had never been seen on this planet. People began the process of genuinely freeing themselves, and they set about creating a whole new world on the soil of this rotten and decaying one.

But these were the first attempts. These new socialist states were surrounded on all sides, constantly invaded or threatened with invasion. The leaders of these societies were starting almost from scratch in building a world without exploitation and oppression. True, they had the insightful and far-seeing (but nevertheless beginning and somewhat basic) framework brought forward by Marx and Engels, and then Lenin; but now all that had to be applied, and that is always more complicated and full of learning once you get into it. In both the Soviet Union and then China, our movement led people to do amazing things, our movement and its revolutions inspired the whole world, and tremendous lessons were learned. But ultimately both these revolutions were, as the Message and Call of this campaign puts it, "turned back by the forces of the old order."

Looking at it from the long view of history, looking at it with a scientific understanding of how different classes come into being and the tortuous process through which they reshape the world in their own image—and on this point, I will refer people to especially the second part of Bob Avakian's talk Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About—these defeats are very painful but not surprising. And from this same viewpoint, it is not surprising that the imperialists—the concentration of everything that is old, decaying, rotten and reactionary in this world—would then do everything that they could to bury this movement, once and for all.

I mean, talk about brainwash! These imperialists use their television stations, their publishing houses, and their news media to slander and distort these revolutions, and to downplay and deny their incredible accomplishments, day after day, week after week, year in and year out. Where this movement has still raised its head, these imperialists have used threats and prison and murder, as well as slander. And all the while, they have brought forward and supported, all over the world, religious fundamentalists as "an alternative" for dispossessed and angry youth.

Their so-called brilliant scholars just brazenly make up lies or distort facts, as Raymond Lotta so powerfully shows in his talks, and then they broadcast them over and over until "everyone knows" these lies as the truth. Those who dissent or question this verdict are warned, sometimes quietly and sometimes quite openly, that they are risking their "access" and their position... and sometimes more. And the imperialists have also played on real weaknesses and shortcomings of the first stage of our revolution, some of them quite serious—even as those shortcomings were overall secondary to the great achievements.

It got so bad, over those decades, that all too many communists themselves—including, yes, most of us in this Party—let themselves get worn down by it and, in the words of the Manifesto from our Party, objectively abandoned the outlook and aims of the communist revolution, accommodated to the system of imperialism, and settled for, at most, reforms within this horrific system. All too many communists stopped being communists, perhaps not in word, but in fact.

III. The Leadership We Need...For A New Stage of Communist Revolution

But there was, during this period, someone who traveled a different road. The Message and Call puts it this way:

While many others have given up, Bob Avakian has worked and struggled tirelessly to find the way to go forward, having learned crucial lessons and built lasting organization that could continue the struggle, and aim to take it higher, while uniting with the same struggle throughout the world.

Bob Avakian confronted the problem, head on and straight up. He analyzed the first stage of the communist revolution, upholding its achievements but also confronting and digging into its shortcomings. He worked on the problems we faced, he wrangled with them from many different angles, and in the course of this he came up with a new synthesis of communism—something that is comparable, as the Manifesto from our Party says, to "what was done by Marx at the beginning of the communist movement—establishing, in the new conditions that exist, after the end of the first stage of the communist revolution, a theoretical framework for the renewed advance of that revolution." Communism has not only been defended, but further developed and, in important aspects, re-envisioned through Bob Avakian's new synthesis.

And when he found that most of the people in the Party that he led were pulling to a different road, turning away from advancing the revolution and into a preoccupation with building a reformist movement, in one form or another, he launched a tremendous struggle within that Party—a cultural revolution within the RCP—to not only get this Party back onto the revolutionary road, but to put it on a more profoundly revolutionary basis than ever.

This Cultural Revolution was a struggle over LINE—that is, over what would be the guiding method of the Party for understanding reality; over how the Party understood the whole history of our revolution; and over the strategy and policies that flowed from that method and understanding. At bottom, it was over whether this would be a revolutionary party—a vanguard of the future—or whether it would be a relic of the past. And this high-risk high-stakes struggle, initiated and led by Bob Avakian, did in fact result in a

real revitalization of the revolutionary and communist outlook, objectives, spirit, and culture of the Party—a Party facing squarely, and confronting scientifically, the complexities, the difficulties and the dangers, as well as the inspiration, of doing all it can to work for revolution in this country, and to contribute the most it can to this same cause throughout the world, all aiming for the final goal of communism. 1

Bob Avakian saved this Party as a revolutionary party; and now this Party must, and can, move forward and lead people to initiate a whole new stage of communism, fighting for this understanding everywhere and using it to make revolution right here.

So, when people ask, "Why do you make such a big deal about Bob Avakian?" there's a very basic truth that they're not getting. And we should tell them that, straight up, with no apology. Without Bob Avakian and the work he did and is doing—without Bob Avakian and the courageous struggle he waged, and led—it is very likely that there would BE no communism today, at least no vital and viable communism. Without Bob Avakian, it is very likely that there would be no Party in the U.S. today—at least no party that is really a vanguard of revolution—nor would there be a revolutionary movement.

One more thing. Without Bob Avakian—BA—and the work he's done, it is very likely that there would be no plan, no foundation and no strategy for actually making revolution in the USA—actually figuring out how to break through the suffocating situation of today and get things to the point where people in their millions could actually be won and roused to take on this monster...and to win.

Do you realize how precious THAT is? To not only be able to uncover and analyze the causes and forces behind the character of the prison that confines you...to not only see the basis for a future without those bars and chains...but to know the way out?

Why do we make such a big deal about Bob Avakian? Because he IS a big deal. And in fact, we need to make a much bigger deal about him—and that's one big objective of this campaign, and one big thing we're going to be getting into this weekend. The work he has done has provided the potential to MAKE revolution known; and not just known—to make it a real goal, actively fought for, by increasing numbers of people—a viable force that can actually carry forward the needed changes that only grow more urgent with each unbearable day. The Party that he has fought for and led in re-forging can lead that. We don't intend to die of slow suffocation; we don't intend to "fight the good fight" so that we can shuffle off the stage with good consciences... we intend to do what the old '60s song said: "break on through to the other side."

IV. The Campaign and Its Objectives

This campaign—The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have—is the crucial link to getting on a trajectory to doing that. And that's what this conference has got to be about. To quote from the letter that called you here:

People need to hear and see that things DON'T have to be this way. They need to hear about revolution. And they need to know there is a Party that is building a movement for revolution. That is what this campaign is about. We aim to make known to millions the goal and character of thisrevolution, communist revolution, as it has been revitalized and reconceived by Bob Avakian; to make the leader of this revolution a household word; and through all this to forge a core of dedicated fighters who are going to advocate for this revolution and make it a driving dynamic force in society and the world.

These three goals are somewhat distinct, but they work together. First of all, people got to know about, hear about, see, and FEEL the revolution. In all kinds of different ways—speeches, posters, literature, and yes, in bold hard-fought struggles standing up against the system and its enforcers, especially where it is carrying out its most atrocious outrages—this revolution has to get known. People have got to see the revolutionaries rolling with these T-shirts with the BA image or with the Revolution masthead. People got to see, and they have stand up with, the revolutionaries standing firm and fighting back when we come under all the different attacks that the system comes at us with, and we have to mobilize them to make every assault politically boomerang against the enforcers of oppression, as we turn these attacks into a way for more people to hear about and come together to defend this new movement.

People have got to know—and we have to bring it home in all kinds of imaginative ways—that this is not just about their neighborhood, but it's something going on all over the nation, with potentially worldwide reverberations.They have to see and hear this Message and Call not once, not twice, but over and over—coming from different places, some unexpected and even wild—so that this doesn't just fade from memory after a week or two. They have to be led to go deeply into this statement—this Message and Call is RICH, this is "Revolution 101"—with a basic foundation in the goals, methods and strategy of revolution concentrated in it. The basic fact that there is a movement for revolution...a revolutionary communist movement...this has to penetrate into the atmosphere, and affect all of society. Some people are gonna love it, some people are gonna hate it, and some people are gonna just have it circulating in their minds—but the revolution has got to get out there and get known. Let me tell you, the days will come—and they may come sooner than you think and almost certainly those days will come before we feel fully ready for them—when masses of people will be seeking a way out. And when they do, they better know something about this revolution.

But there's another element to this campaign, another objective. There's making known the leadership of Bob Avakian. I've talked about Bob Avakian in one dimension earlier, and it's an important one: the objectively undeniable role he's played in laying a foundation from which the whole movement can go forward and in waging a battle to save this Party as a revolutionary...communist...party. But there's more to say. The Message and Call puts it this way:

Bob Avakian has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need, and he is leading our Party as an advanced force of this revolution. He is a great champion and a great resource for people here, and indeed people all over the world. The possibility for revolution, right here, and for the advance of the revolution everywhere, is greatly heightened because of Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing. And it is up to us to get with this leadership...to find out more about Bob Avakian and the Party he heads...to learn from his scientific method and approach to changing the world...to build this revolutionary movement with our Party at the core...to defend this leadership as the precious thing it is...and, at the same time, to bring our own experience and understanding to help strengthen the process of revolution and enable the leadership we have to keep on learning more and leading even better.

"A great champion and a great resource for the people here, and indeed people all over the world." People need to know that, they need a basic sense of how that is so, and they need to know him. It is up to us to get Bob Avakian's memoir—From Ike to Mao and Beyond—out there to people. Up to us to spread the Revolution talk to people, watch it with them where we can, and write up the lessons of that for our newspaper. Up to us to get this T-shirt out there, and this way cool graphic out and about. Up to us to do a hundred and one other things that are going to get taken up in this workshop tomorrow to make this leader a household word.

Obviously, things have not yet broken loose in this country. And in many ways the atmosphere is more suffocating and locked down than it was in the early '60s—though there ARE openings, some of which we can recognize and seize on, and some of which we are going to have to create. But there is a real basis to get Bob Avakian's leadership out there, now, on a much much huger scale than it has been, through this campaign, and to do that in such a way so that when and as things begin to open up—and this campaign, along with other things we do, is part of prying things open—he will be a point of reference and more than that: a magnetic pole for people who are searching for a leader with real answers and real substance.

And look. I've read reports about, and I've talked to people, who've said, "It would make such a difference if we could see and meet the Chairman in person. It would make such a big difference if the Chairman could be out here speaking." Now some people say that in a nasty way or a baiting way. But the people I'm talking about are mostly coming from a good place. Well, the Party appreciates your sentiment. But let me also say this: the Chair IS "out here." He's out here in his memoir... out here in the Revolution talk...out here in the graphic image...in the pages of Revolution newspaper, almost every week...in other audios that are online. He's out here and we have to get him much much further out here to hundreds of thousands and then to millions. Not five years from now, not two years from now, but right now—beginning with the plans we make this weekend. Let's make "Are you getting into BA?" a mass challenge. And let's make "GET INTO BA" a mass slogan.

And we have to be bold with people. We don't need to—in fact we most definitely should NOT—get into long defensive explanations when people raise this stuff about "why are you making such a big deal," or "everyone says you're a cult," or "I don't follow leaders"—in other words, when people begin, frankly, repeating a lot of the conventional wisdom or prejudices that have been hammered at by the bourgeoisie in these past 35 years of counter-revolution. No. We should just put it right out there, like I said to you earlier: you don't understand—without Bob Avakian there would very likely be no revolutionary communism in today's world. And the fact is that we're not promoting him ENOUGH yet—and we aim to do a whole lot more and a whole lot better!

We should put it out there, plainly, matter of fact, without any hint of religiosity, and then we should challenge people: if you are serious about fundamental change, it is the height of irresponsibility to fail to engage Avakian's work on the level it demands.

If you are at all serious about human possibility, then you have to wrangle with why the previous revolutions were defeated. You have to wrangle with whether we can really make a revolution that both can overcome the terrible inequalities and disparities and horrors in the world—and can do that without turning out the lights, as Avakian has put it, on intellectual and artistic endeavor and initiative.

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with whether Marxism really is a science—and if it is, what it really means to say that, and how our scientific understanding of the world has changed in the 160 years since this science was first forged.

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with how do people change their understanding of the world and, yes, their deepest moral feelings—not just after the revolution, but how do they change now, in order to MAKE revolution and as part of MAKING REVOLUTION?

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with whether it is even conceivable that the ruling class of this country could some day be vulnerable to a revolutionary challenge...and if it is conceivable, then how could that possibly come together and what would be required of revolutionaries—both then and, from the vantage point of that future time, today?

And if you are wrangling on that road, then you will meet someone else who got there first and will welcome you onto it and wrangle with you and try to learn everything he can from you—because that's how he rolls. And that would be Bob Avakian.

It's there for the taking. And then sure, let's argue about it. Let's learn from each other as we do. But on the basis of you being serious enough to get deeply into this. To quote Bruce Springsteen, the door's open but the ride ain't free—you have to do some work too.

This gets us to the third objective of this campaign—bringing forward a core of dedicated, ardent fighters who are going to passionately advocate for this revolution and make it a driving dynamic force in society and the world. Fighters who are going to come at this not from what my friends think, or what my family thinks, or how backward things are out there, or how brutal and heartless these monsters at the top are—but from what humanity needs and what really is possible.

Fighters who are going to put their questions on the table from the standpoint of working them through, on the road to deepening their commitment to this revolution.

Fighters who will boldly take on what the enemy throws at them, and who will just as boldly take on both the backward thinking and the real questions among masses broadly, as well as the sophisticated apologists for this system.

Even a relatively small initial core of such fighters, coming forward from all ages but especially the youth, and from all walks of life, especially those on the bottom of society, can make a huge difference. It can have a magnetic effect. And such a core will stand out all the more sharply against the backdrop of today. Such a core can act as a living embodiment of the vision of a revolutionary movement that Bob Avakian put forward in "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity":

There will be, and there should be, all kinds of struggle about those questions [of how to make revolution]. But people should have a sense: If you want to know about, and work toward, a different world—and if you want to stand up and fight back against what's being done to people—this is where you go. You go to this Party, you take up this Party's newspaper, you get into this Party's leader and what he's bringing forward, you come to the Revolution Clubs, you join in with the people carrying out political activity that embodies this—spreading revolution and building resistance, and the "positive synergy" between the two—all aiming for revolution.

There needs to be more room for and emphasis on systematic study and struggle for people who are getting into this. There needs to be a more widespread and keener sense of what this Party is about and what it means for people...of the crucial importance of the Cultural Revolution in our Party and what a great thing it is...of what it means to take leadership from this Party and what it would mean to join it... All that has to be much more part of the atmosphere, much more of what we call a "mass question"—something that lots of people are openly and constantly wrangling over and returning to, in their conversations and their thinking. People have to be coming into this Party, and helping to further transform it, too, into an even more revolutionary party...into an even sharper instrument with which to deeply understand and radically transform reality in the interests of the masses.

Our aim and our plan with this campaign is this: to get those three objectives working together, so that some people may be hearing about Bob Avakian and then checking out the Revolution talk or the memoir and from there learning about the revolutionary movement and getting into it... and other people, within the atmosphere where the image of Avakian is getting around and the Message and Call of this campaign are everywhere, see this movement stand up to the authorities and they come into things from there...or still others are going to a speech by Sunsara Taylor or Raymond Lotta or Carl Dix about some particular burning question and from there look more deeply into all this... or they're beginning to read Revolution, every week... or they are hearing about and supporting the fight to allow prisoners to continue to get and read Revolution...and where, as people are doing this or hearing about it, they are catching the feel that there is a wave—even if right now the beginning of a wave—of people who are getting into this, for real, and as they see and encounter these people, the elan and the hope and the science and the fresh approach of these new revolutionary communists draws them forward to check all this out further.

The idea here is to get all three of these objectives—and all the work involved in each particular effort and initiative related to this campaign—cross-fertilizing, and synergizing, and amplifying one another—so the message and feel gets out NOT that these people are good-hearted folks with interesting ideas, but that these people ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution.

Right now we do not have this campaign clicking on all eight cylinders. But this is a goal that we can reach. This is a goal that we can brainstorm about and percolate on and develop plans for and carry out those plans so that in a finite time this movement for revolution can be in a different position in society. We can, through waging and winning this unprecedented campaign, break through and break out... and get into position where we can begin advancing the revolutionary communist movement with societal impact and worldwide reverberations...making known to all a political and ideological force on a mission to fight for this new stage of communist revolution.

V. The Campaign—As Part of a Strategy

Now all this is part of a larger strategy. And yes, we have a strategy. I'll say it again, because it's something that we don't do enough to let people know: we have a strategy to make revolution. There's actually a method to what we do—it's not something like Jehovah's Witnesses, where their members go around and talk to people and try to recruit them, waiting for the day when god comes to deliver the big payback and set everything right. It's not "we're doing this because this is what communists always do." No. And make no mistake—we are NOT trying to stir up a "radical opposition" for its own sake. We ARE BUILDING a movement to actually MAKE REVOLUTION.

How could you make a revolution? Let's talk about this a little. The Message and Call of this campaign says that,

Revolution can be made when there is a revolutionary situation, an even greater crisis in society as a whole: when people in greater numbers come to deeply feel and understand that the present power has no legitimacy...that it serves only a handful of oppressors...that it uses lies and deception, corruption and completely unjust force and violence to keep this system going and "keep the people in their place"...when millions see the need to fight to break this power and establish a new power that can bring about the changes that people desperately need and want.

Let's break this down. "An even greater crisis in society as a whole." How could that happen? Well, let's look back at some of what we started this speech with. Let's look at these fascists out here. These Tea Party people and others. Believe me, we take these people quite seriously. We see these people in Texas rewriting the textbooks to even further distort U.S. history and these Republican governors "honoring the Confederacy"—that is, the slaveholders in the Civil War. We see—and we are out there opposing, including our people right now out there today—these fascists in the Arizona legislature with their apartheid-style laws. We see these Christian fascists, continuing their onslaught against abortion and murdering and threatening providers, lashing out against women, and threatening our comrades who lead struggle against them as well. We see them demonizing and stirring up fear of and hatred against gay people, and denying them their elementary rights. We watch Glenn Beck, and we call attention to his scenarios of militias made up of what he calls "angry Bubbas"—translation: racists—taking up arms.

And we see the Democrats—doing everything they can to hold it all together and to PREVENT people from resisting this, at the same time as they join with the Republicans to push forward the wars and repression and massive imprisonment of minority youth and serious economic deprivation that both parties are firmly behind. And we see and run up against how all this right now is intimidating and suffocating people.

But we see something else, too. We see the way that the divisions at the top of the ruling structures of society at a different point could come unraveled. Among these rulers, there are two different visions of how America needs to be ordered in the next few decades, and the potential antagonism between them is very great. Be clear, the point is most definitely not to choose sides between these rival factions of imperialists—because "they're both worse." The point is that this clash could provide the people with one of those rare openings when revolution could actually come onto the agenda for real.

Here's what I mean. When "the center cannot hold"—that is, when there is not enough cohesion among the ruling class itself to hold together its rival factions—and the "weakness of the center" is what a lot of their commentators have been bemoaning—when this happens in societies, there are fissures created out of which mass discontent can erupt. Splits that provide cracks through which the anger and discontent that people are just forced to swallow in "normal times" can come roaring out, like lava erupting from a suddenly active volcano. And something else can happen, too; to return to the Message and Call, "people in greater numbers [can] come to deeply feel and understand that the present power has no legitimacy...that it serves only a handful of oppressors...that it uses lies and deception, corruption and completely unjust force and violence to keep this system going and 'keep the people in their place.'"

You can see the embryo of something like that going on in Iran over the past year—where a society that seemed locked down tight for 30 years suddenly was engulfed in a crisis that started as a clash between two rival factions in the ruling class of the Islamic Republic over how an unstable society rife with contradiction was going to be ruled. This clash led to massive street demonstrations and fighting, and bigger questions were thrown up, and other forces began to come into play.

You can even study the history of the Civil War in this country from this angle and learn how fundamental change can actually happen.

But here's the rub—if there is not a revolutionary pole strong enough to lead people to wrench something altogether new out of this... then the rulers will just bludgeon their way out, and things will go to a still deeper circle of hell.

No, it's not enough for there to be a societal crisis to which we the revolutionaries could somehow "just add water," as if fundamental social change was like instant coffee. Here's how the Message and Call lays it out:

For a revolution, there must be a revolutionary people, among all sections of society but with its deepest base among those who catch hell every day under this system...people who are determined to fight for power in order to radically change society, to get rid of oppression and exploitation. But the point is this: we cannot, and we must not, sit around and wait for "one fine day" when this revolutionary situation comes about and a revolutionary people comes on the scene. No, we must--and we can—work to bring a revolutionary people into being...to enable people to see why they should put no faith in this system, and should not live and die in a way that keeps this system going...but instead should devote their lives to resisting oppression and building up for the time when we can get rid of the cause of all this oppression. Using our Party's newspaper, Revolution, as the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for this whole process, this is what our Party means when we say we are hastening while awaiting the revolutionary situation, preparing minds and organizing forces...for revolution.

It is crucial that when things do go up for grabs—when people are searching for a way forward, when they are questioning the assumptions they've believed in their whole lives, when they are streaming into the streets at great personal risk—it is crucial then that there be a different magnetic pole, one with the ties and influence and understanding that could enable it to forge and lead a powerful united front that actually COULD make revolution and bring in a whole new system.

So, yes, we have a strategy. We have a way to get to that tomorrow, starting from today. We are hastening revolution, even as we're not going off half-cocked... even as we're tensely awaiting, while doing all we can to shape, the situation where you actually COULD begin the fight to establish a new state power.

Recently, Revolution published two paragraphs from Bob Avakian that put out a very concise guideline on this:

At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the "pole" and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution.

Now there's a lot packed into those two paragraphs. You could—and at some point everybody should—spend a day and more breaking this down and getting into this. The point I want to focus on here, though, is that when we focus on these outrages—be it the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, or the cruel murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, or Arizona even as we speak—we are focusing on them both because they demand action in their own right and as part of "bringing a revolutionary people into being."

We have an analysis of these contradictions—even as we are open and attuned to new ones emerging or coming to the fore. The pace can be intense, but we're NOT aimlessly or randomly running around. What we do has a point—to review and roughly paraphrase those paragraphs, we are searching out those concentrations of KEY social contradictions, and we are looking for the right forms, that can strengthen people's consciousness AND their fighting capacity to carry out political resistance...we are bringing to life the fact that we need, and can get, a radically different world...and we are making revolution real for people. But that's not all—we're doing this in a way that calls into question the very legitimacy of the rulers...that builds up society-wide resistance...that strengthens the pole of revolutionary communism within all that...and that does all this in such a way so that the advanced revolutionary force could actually lead millions at a future time when things have further ripened.

Listen: the very things that are at the root of the power of this ruling class—their ability to exploit people all over the planet and plunder the earth, their murdering police, the repression and injustice against immigrants and people of color generally, their structures of gender oppression, their wars and military strength—these are the very contradictions that can politically backfire against them, if revolutionaries wield their science to work on those contradictions and if things come together in a certain way.

We have a strategy—and our newspaper is, as the statement says, "the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for [the] whole process" of carrying out that strategy. This is the paper that cuts to the bone to tell you WHY things are happening... to show you HOW it doesn't have to be this way...and to give you the ways to ACT to change it. It is a call to action and a means of struggle. It is, and has to be much more, the scaffolding on which this movement is built, where those who are getting into it and following it can wrangle in its pages and on its website with how we can better build this movement. It is a guideline, where today thousands, but soon tens of thousands and eventually millions, all over the place, stay connected and learn to act in a powerful and united way. It is the foundation, where those who read it learn about the larger goals of revolution and communism, and come to see the ways in which the struggles of today are connected to those larger goals...where they come to grasp the scientific communist outlook through its application to all the many particular events and outrages and developments in society... and where they get organizationally linked up to this revolution.

And, yes, we have a strategy that takes in how, at a future time when things DO get to the point at which the rulers are weakened and fighting amongst themselves, when many other political forces are paralyzed, and when millions are ready to put everything on the line, that those millions would not be left without a way to fight and win—that is, to actually be able to meet and defeat the violent, repressive force of the old, exploitative and oppressive order. This is contained in the contribution to the pamphlet Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation that is entitled "On the Possibility of Revolution"—and a basic sense of this has been put in the speech two years ago, available on-line,"Making Revolution in the USA." This article, "On the Possibility of Revolution," is something that people need to get into and study, now.

Do you realize what it means that we not only have a leader and a party that knows where we need to go, but a strategy that can actually get us there? This is very precious—and this is something that we have to make much more widely known than it is today, as we carry forward with the campaign.

VI. Conclusion

So we've traveled a bit into the future in this last section. Now let's bring it back to the here and now (even as that future is pregnant in the here and now). The Message and Call puts it this way:

[Y]es, it is true—now is not yet the time, in this country, to go all-out to seize the power away from those who rule over us and to bring a new power, serving our interests, into being. But now IS the time to be WORKING FOR REVOLUTION—to be stepping up resistance while building a movement for revolution—to prepare for the time when it WILL be possible to go all out to seize the power.

Which leads me back to this campaign. This campaign is the crucial link right now in "hastening while awaiting the revolutionary situation, preparing minds and organizing forces...for revolution." If we accomplish the goals of this campaign—if the revolution gets known and its magnetic force increases...if Bob Avakian becomes a household word among those who are awake or awakening...and if a growing core of people, including and especially from the "catch-hell-every-day, nothing-to-lose" section of society, advocate, fight for and sacrifice for THIS revolution...if we do that, then we will not only have made a must-do leap along the road from where we are today, we will have gotten into position where we can make further and even more powerful leaps in this whole process.

Remember why we started this campaign.

Because at a time when revolution urgently cries out to be done, revolution is not only not on the map in people's thinking—it is in danger of becoming a relic of the past.

Because not only is revolution needed, but the problems that communist revolution ran up against in its first stage have been identified and a framework for their solution has been developed, by Bob Avakian.

Because we must and we can break out of the situation we're in right now and get a whole different trajectory going.

At a time when in the space of one month the police can murder a lovely 7-year-old girl and utterly violate her family... when Nazi-like legislation can get passed against people who have been driven here for their survival... when the capitalists can inflict, in their insane and heedless drive for profit, a major disaster on the environment... we need revolution, and we badly need a movement right now FOR REVOLUTION– a movement that puts forward its message in compelling ways and that on that foundation can inspire and backbone resistance, linked to the goal of revolution.

To quote again our Message and Call, the foundation and glue of this whole campaign:

The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.

We are here today at conferences which can play a crucial role and have a decisive impact in building the movement we need—FOR REVOLUTION. Though our numbers right now may be small, especially when weighed against the challenges we face, our movement is very very large in terms of the truth it grasps, the justness of its cause, the vision it aims for and the determination and boldness and imagination it possesses to rally people to it. We are here to wrangle with these goals and their connection to revolution...to brainstorm different ideas and angles and hammer out ways to make it all come together...to get much, much better organized...and to break out. And we do all that on the foundation of the Message and Call, and in particular its conclusion:

A WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD, A MUCH BETTER FUTURE, IS POSSIBLE. WE HAVE WHAT WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR THAT WORLD, THAT FUTURE.

IT IS UP TO US TO GET WITH IT AND GET TO THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING THIS HAPPEN.

 

1. Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, RCP Publications, 2008, page 43. [back]

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Get With the Campaign

The Revolutionary Communist Party is in the midst of a major campaign—and you need to know about it, and become part of it.

This campaign aims to let people know what communist revolution is all about... to acquaint them with the leadership that we have for this revolution, Bob Avakian and the RCP,USA which he leads... and to bring people into making this revolution happen, in many different ways.

The idea: to put revolution—this revolution—much more on the map in people's thinking. To initiate nothing less than a whole new stage of communist revolution, building on the achievements of the past but critically sifting and going beyond them in significant ways... reviving the viability and desirability of communist revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis, and bringing forward a real social force around this, contending powerfully with the other solutions that are out there.

The Party's Message and Call, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have," forms the glue of this campaign. You can get it online, or in Revolution Books bookstores, or from Party supporters. The video of Bob Avakian's speech, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, forms a basic foundation—and is available on-line. Many of the things we do and talk about in this paper—from the efforts to spread Bob Avakian's classic talk on revolution... to the fight against the censorship of our paper in the prisons... to the tours by revolutionaries like Raymond Lotta or Sunsara Taylor... to initiatives to "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution"... to building the circulation and sustainership of Revolution newspaper—these are all related. They are all getting people to see that, in the words of that message and call, "This is NOT the best of all possible worlds...And we do NOT have to live this way."

Find out about this campaign. Download and distribute the statement and call. Popularize the online Revolution talk by Bob Avakian. Get this paper out. Come to one of our bookstores and find out how you can volunteer. Write us with your questions, your ideas, your experiences. Be part of, in the words of the Message and Call, spreading "the word to every corner of this country... giving people the means to become part of this revolutionary movement, and organizing into this movement everyone who wants to make a contribution to it, who wants to work and fight, to struggle and sacrifice, not to keep this nightmare of a world going as it is but to bring a better world into being."

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Behind the Silencing of Helen Thomas: Covering Up and Carrying Out Great Crimes

By Alan Goodman

In an article I wrote on the massacre on the Mavi Marmara ("An Outrageous Massacre to Enforce Horrific Crimes," Revolution issue 203, online at revcom.us), I argued that these killings were carried out to enforce an even greater horror, the slow (or not so slow) strangulation of the 1.5 million people in Gaza by Israel's blockade, a blockade backed up by the USA. In a similar vein, the silencing of one of the very few principled, high-profile U.S. mainstream journalists, ostensibly over a comment she made when a pro-Israel rabbi stuck a camera in her face for an "interview," serves those same ends, and must be protested and opposed.

Before turning to the incident that supposedly precipitated all this, let's note Helen Thomas's actual transgression. In the wake of Israel's slaughter of human rights activists trying to break the blockade of Gaza, Helen Thomas had the audacity to say the obvious, and ask the question everyone should have been asking. She told White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "If any other nation in the world had done it, we would have been up in arms," and asked: "What is the sacrosanct, iron-clad relationship where a country that deliberately kills people and boycotts—and we aid and abet the boycott?"

I wondered how long they were going to let Helen Thomas ask questions like that.

Not long.

The next day all hell broke loose, ostensibly over another quote from Thomas that she made in the course of a "stick-a-camera-in-your-face" interview by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com outside the White House's May 27 Jewish Heritage Celebration.

Now, there are a lot of things you can say, and the powers-that-be and their media and censorship machinery are fine with that. Rand Paul, the darling of the Tea Party Movement and yes, now the Republican Party establishment, can say he wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act because it infringes on the rights of private businesses. And anyone who is offended by that is supposed to quit whining and get a thicker skin. Barack Obama can "joke" in front of the entire Washington press corps that if anyone in the band the Jonas Brothers tries to date "his" daughters, he has 2 words for them: predator drone (the missiles the U.S. uses to wipe out homes full of people in the Middle East from Afghanistan to Yemen)... And anyone who thought that was sick, sadistic, violently patriarchal, and a celebration of cowardly death from the skies was, I guess, supposed to "get a sense of humor."

But let Helen Thomas, the now-forced-out Dean of the White House press corps, say that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine..." and within hours, Hearst News Service announced her (obviously forced) "retirement." The White House Correspondents' Association—which slavishly accepted and fed the nation Bush's "weapons of mass deception" lies (and then "moved on" when those lies were exposed)—rushed to denounce Thomas. Her speaker's bureau fired her.

Throughout the dark ages of the Bush regime, Helen Thomas stood out, and stood pretty much alone, among mainstream journalists in challenging torture and lies. Four years ago, she asked Bush's Press Secretary Tony Snow a question at a White House press conference that suggested the U.S. supported "collective punishment for Lebanon and Palestine," and this was met with the response: "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view" (a response that both framed any questioning, dissent, or opposition to Israel and the U.S. as being "with the terrorists," and served as a warning/threat that anyone asking such questions risked being treated like "the terrorists").

And Helen Thomas has had the principles and integrity to refuse to go silent when the Obama administration has continued to carry out endless war and shred civil liberties. In February, Thomas asked Obama at a press conference (framed by saber rattling around Iran) if he knew of any Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons. An awkward question since, while the U.S. is moving belligerently towards Iran's nuclear program (which so far has yet to produce a single weapon), they enabled and protect Israel's massive nuclear arsenal.

The "Gotcha" Quote

Overtly forcing out the widely admired, 89-year-old "Dean of the White House Press Corps" for asking these embarrassing questions about Israel's crimes, its nuclear arsenal, and the U.S. role in all that might further focus a spotlight on those very questions.

But the ruling class, through the media and its instruments of regulating journalism, did seize on a casual exchange with a pro-Israel rabbi outside a White House celebration of Jewish heritage to silence and discredit Thomas, and also to confuse the nature of Israel, and the U.S. role in backing it.

Accounts of the exchange characterized Thomas as saying that Jews should go back to Russia and Poland, but Thomas initially directed her criticism at Israel. She was asked for her comments on "Israel," and said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." It was the interviewer who reframed things in terms of "So you're saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?"

While a lot of the focus of attack on Thomas was formulated in terms of accusations of anti-Semitism, what really set off some, including forces who claim to be, or are, "progressive" on other issues, is that Thomas' comments did objectively raise questions about the nature of Israel. For these forces, it's OK for liberals or progressives to criticize some of Israel's most egregious crimes—a bit. But you cannot even ask questions that might raise for examination the actual nature of Israel—that question the right of this state to exist on stolen Palestinian land. Writing at Huffington Post, for example, Hani Almadhoun called Thomas's comments "wrong and hurtful" and complained, "Had she been talking about the militaristic Israeli occupation then her remarks would make a lot more sense. But her untactful remarks have so many plausible meanings that it troubles me a journalist who has a gift of words would make such an ambiguous statement." ("Helen Thomas, Old Journalism Ambushed by the New One," 6/8/10).

But what about the truth? First, it is a fact that most Jewish people in Israel are from Europe, or descendants of people who immigrated from Europe, living on land seized through terroristic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. And Helen Thomas was accurate to say, "Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land, not German and not Polish."

Jewish people who resent being resented for Israel's crimes (like white people who resent being blamed for white racism and the history of the oppression of Black people in this country) need to loudly and unequivocally speak out against Israel's crimes. And you can and must refuse to let the same imperialist system that carried out the holocaust (German imperialists, while the other "great powers" essentially stood by because it wasn't in their strategic interests to make an issue out of it at the time) now justify Israel's crimes on that basis.

Backing Israel, a widely despised Zionist state in the Middle East, poses real contradictions for the rulers of the U.S. This is acutely the case now, when they are trying to cobble together alliances with various forces, including Islamic forces, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of their endless war to enforce U.S. domination in a geostrategic part of the world. But Israel plays a unique, and strategic role as an enforcer for U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond, and whatever tension is involved in that, this is a strategic relationship that the U.S. finds essential. And this is the case even when Israel does things that in the short term are problematic for the U.S. (for a concentrated analysis of the relationship between Israel and the U.S., see "Bringing Forward Another Way" by Bob Avakian, at revcom.us, particularly the section "Israel and Its 'Special Role' in Relation to U.S. Imperialism").

In a speech in the aftermath of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara, I surveyed two defining moments in the history and role of the state of Israel—military and technology support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, and Israel's indispensable role in the slaughter of some 180,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala in the early 1980s—horrific crimes carried out in service of the U.S. empire. And I argued that "[W]henever there is something too obscene, too bloody, too obviously immoral, that if the U.S. did it, it would look bad, it would alienate people, and work against the strategic objectives of U.S. empire the U.S. can always count on Israel."

All of this is why Helen Thomas' questions were ruled "out of order."

Stop Censoring the Truth!

Anyone who is against censorship, who values critical thinking and the right of journalists to speak out and voice their opinion—must take a stand against what has been done to Helen Thomas.

And anyone with a sense of right, wrong, and the truth should feel compelled to dig deeply into why "our" government covers up and censors basic truths about Israel, and what that reveals about the whole global setup. And then to act politically against Israel's crimes.

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Pelican Bay State Prison Feels the Heat

Prison Officials Attempt a Cover-up of the Ban on Revolution Newspaper
Mobilize to Say: NO WAY!

"This letter is to advise you that your weekly periodical 'Revolution', will not be delivered to inmates housed at Pelican Bay State Prison. Your periodical newspaper has been determined to be contraband because it promotes disruption and overthrow of the government and incites violence to do so, per the First, Second and Directors level of Reviews." (February 10, 2010, Pelican Bay State Prison letter sent to RCP Publications)

*****

"This letter is in response to recent letters received by Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) concerning a 'Ban on Revolution Newspaper,' as well as printed articles in your newspaper reflecting concern over the same.

"As a California Law Enforcement Agency, it is the intent of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to foster a positive environment for the inmates in our custody....

"While it is true that in February of 2010, a weekly issue of Revolution Newspaper was banned from distribution into the prison due to content, an across-the-board ban of your newspaper is not in effect. All magazines and newspapers are inspected for content prior to distribution, to ensure they meet the criteria for introduction into the prison. Unfortunately, when you received a letter from PBSP indicating your publication had been disallowed due to content, it was missing four very important words: 'This weekly issue of.' While PBSP stands by the decision to disapprove that weekly issue, due to a portion of the content which was unfortunately found to meet the criteria for disapproval, we do apologize for the confusion which led you to believe your publication was banned completely." (Letter from PBSP to RCP Publications received June 2, 2010)

*****

Officials at Pelican Bay State Prison are attempting to paper over a mountain of evidence that for at least five months an across-the-board ban of Revolution was instituted in their facility, depriving over 45 subscribers access to the paper.

They are weaseling and tactically maneuvering, hoping to disarm people and derail the mounting public outcry as well as the threat of legal action. In early May, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California submitted a request for all public records related to the banning of Revolution newspaper. The ACLU also sent a letter on behalf of the Prisoner's Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF)—the provider of prisoner subscriptions to Revolution newspaper to PBSP—making a strong case that there is no basis to ban Revolution either across the board or by specific issue.

We will not be fooled or go away as easily as the PBSP officials seem to hope. This is not the time to breathe a sigh of relief. It is the time to step up our efforts and galvanize even greater public pressure. Now is the time to press our demands. The new letter from PBSP is in essence a cover-up of unconstitutional and inhumane practices, thus heaping outrage on top of outrage. It would set a horrible precedent to allow PBSP to get away with a cover-up on top of the actual institution of the ban. Successfully fighting the ban and holding the prison authorities accountable has far-reaching implications not only for Revolution and its prison subscribers, but for the rights of all prisoners to due process and to explore the full range of philosophical and political ideas about the world.

The Facts Add Up to a Mountain of Evidence That There Is An Unconstitutional and Inhumane Ban

The February letter from PBSP is unambiguous in stating there is a ban. The baseless reasons given there are internally consistent with an all-out ban. If that February letter was really about a single issue of Revolution being disapproved, then there should have been reference to the specific issue and the specific page(s) which caused the publication to be denied to prisoners.1

The February letter also said the determination to ban the newspaper was "per First, Second, and Directors level of Reviews." Second level is the warden's level review and the director's level is at the state level. If this was not a fabrication, then there are records of those reviews which should be turned over to the ACLU

PBSP subscribers to Revolution received disapproval notices in early 2010. These are standard forms notifying prisoners when mail/publications are disapproved. The forms listed different issues of Revolution going all the way back to at least issue #180, October 25, 2009 (this according to forms forwarded to PRLF). These forms reflect a total ban; i.e. they state that "page(s) which meet disapproval criteria ALL." The reason given for disapproval on all the forms was the same: "incites racial violence and promotes governmental anarchy."

These forms were the first formal clue an institution-wide ban had been in place at least as far back as October 2009. It is a violation of the CDCR regulations that PBSP did not notify anyone concerned that the newspaper was confiscated for all those months.

In February, just six days after PBSP's letter, Chuckawalla Valley State Prison (CVSP) sent a memorandum: "This letter is to advise you that your publication entitled REVOLUTION for the month of ANY AND ALL, will not be delivered to the following inmate(s) ANY AND ALL, housed at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison. [CVSP then cites the same California regulation as PBSP.] Your publication contained material on page(s), ENTIRE PUBLICATION, which was ALL OF THE ABOVE. THE PUBLICATION REVOLUTION IS BAN [sic] FROM ALL INSTITUTIONS WITHIN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. PLEASE REMOVE ALL INMATES FROM YOUR MAIL LIST. (Caps in original)

According to records obtained by the PRLF, a Pelican Bay prisoner filed an appeal about Revolution being withheld. His first level appeal was denied including for the following reason: "Upon review, the newsletter (sic) discussed the need for the, revolutionary struggle. Throughout the newspapers, there was continual reference to the, need for a Revolutionary Party. The newspapers speak at great length of the need for, Revolution to overthrow the government from the outside and the inside, with the Use of Force, causing death and destruction to its citizens and the economic structure of the United States of America (USA) as well as the rest of the world."

This denial letter literally (we are not joking) cites a definition of the word revolution from Webster's New World Dictionary!

The denial grossly mischaracterizes the content of Revolution, pretending to be quoting the paper with the use of italics. These are not quotes from Revolution newspaper nor an accurate depiction of what is found in the pages of Revolution. The method of PBSP authorities is shoddy and dangerously slanderous. It illustrates the suppression of a newspaper for its political content.

Note also: the denial speaks of "newspapers," that is: plural. This denial was dated in mid March, over a month after the letter that PBSP officials are now trying to disingenuously amend.

This same prisoner appealed for a higher, warden level review, which according to the PBSP February 2010 letter is the same level which ratified the original decision to ban the newspaper.

In May 2010 his individual appeal was granted and five previously withheld issues of Revolution newspaper were returned to this prisoner. Subsequently, PRLF was informed by a few other prisoners that they received some issues of the newspapers.

Now, the PRLF has undertaken a systematic survey of all subscribers at PBSP to determine if they have received the paper, and if so, which issues. This letter was sent out on May 7. PRLF reports they have only received 4 replies so far. Only receiving four replies is unusual under the circumstances—and the PRLF continues to pursue this survey with concern.

Pelican Bay Authorities Squirm

When the record is examined it is undeniable that there was a blanket ban instituted for baseless and slanderous reasons. The "oops we accidentally left out four words which meant only one issue and not all issues" explanation is shredded by the actual record of what PBSP both said and did over months. What are they worried about? What is making them squirm?

The pressure from people writing to the prison to protest the ban and the ACLU demand for all public records related to the banning of Revolution at that institution is having an impact.

In addition, is it possible that PBSP and the CDCR are covering up the ban in the wake of a major newspaper investigation shining a spotlight on California prison abuses exposed in a May 2010 Sacramento Bee newspaper investigation? The Bee's "report found support for the abuse claims in interviews with inmates, prison documents and a long-hidden report written by Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation research experts. For years, prison officials knew about many of the claims—including denial of medical care, racial slurs and the destruction of prisoners' formal written protests of mistreatment—yet did nothing to investigate." (Sacramento Bee, May 11, 2010)

The prison authorities need to be held to full disclosure of what all lay behind the ban of Revolution. Why after years of prisoners being allowed to receive this paper was it banned all of a sudden? What were the grounds for the ban and which officials at what levels made the decisions? How did the ban spread to Chuckawalla—and any other prisons in CDCR system? The ACLU's demand for ALL public records must be met.

Given the prison authorities track record in instituting a ban under a veil of secrecy and now openly covering that up, there should be verifiable assurances that all prisoner subscribers at Pelican Bay, Chuckawalla and throughout the entire California prison system are receiving their Revolution newspapers without interference—or retaliation and harassment. The prisoners and the PRLF should not be put in the position of having to fight this arbitrary, political censorship issue by issue, prisoner by prisoner, institution by institution.

The aim of this movement to overturn the ban must be to definitively win. And this means overturning the ban in a way that it can not be re-instated as soon as public scrutiny and legal attention is off.

TIME TO STEP UP AND MAKE THIS A BIG DEAL SO THE BAN IS OVERTURNED, THE REASONS FOR IT MADE PUBLIC AND SO IT CAN'T BE REINSTATED IN ANY FORM!

1. The full letters from Pelican Bay State Prison officials are available on line at PRLF's website PrisonersRevolutionaryLiteratureFund.org. [back]

Join and Step Up the Struggle to Overturn the Prison Ban of Revolution Newspaper

  • There is a powerful statement to overturn the ban (link). There is an important group of initial signatories, but it needs to be signed by many more people. It needs to rapidly grow in scope and stature. Artists, civil libertarians, public intellectuals, humanitarians and religious figures should take a stand. Along with widely distributing the statement for signatures and donations, include a copy of Revolution (or a link to revcom.us) and samples of the powerful letters from prisoners to the paper.1 Plans to get the statement out to the media and published are underway.
  • Circulate this article! Let people know that PBSP officials are attempting a cover-up. Everyone who's spoken out must know the impact of their efforts—and that now is the time to press our demands. Urge people to form or join committees to overturn the ban. Get in touch with PRLF and take word of the ban to other organizations: church, community, legal groups. (PRLF will help you give a presentation or craft your own by reading a few of the prisoners letters along with information from the article in Revolution on Overturn the Ban or the PRLF appeal on the ban.* PRLF has an online petition version of the statement. This needs to be signed by hundreds and hundreds this week! Post it on your Facebook and to your listserves.
  • Financial contributions are urgently needed to expand the work of the PRLF, to fill the requests of more prisoners who are writing for subscriptions, and to publicize the ban and publish the statement. One key way to struggle to overturn the ban is to sponsor the expansion of subs into the prisons: to "adopt a subscription." Fundraising appeals are available through the PRLF website.

Tell people: don't turn away from the reality of more than 2 million incarcerated, disproportionately Black and Latino, people in this country. Think about the prisoner locked in a cell for 23+ hours a day who wrote he couldn't imagine being in that dungeon without Revolution. What does it mean to have it cut off...when Revolution lets you see how the world could be radically changed for the better...when this newspaper brings you the work of Bob Avakian and enables you to delve into communist theory...when this paper connects you to the larger movement for revolution and welcomes your thoughts.

If you have not yet or have not recently read a few of the many new prisoners' letters put up each week at PRLF's website please take the time to do so. You will have a window into this unconstitutional and inhumane ban and why it must be completely uprooted!

* This statement and prisoners' letters are available from the PRLF website at PrisonersRevolutionaryLiteratureFund.org. [back]

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Protest in Phoenix, Arizona:

"Undocumented UNAFRAID"

On May 29 tens of thousands from across the country poured into the streets of Phoenix for a national day of action against SB 1070, the Jim-Crow-like Arizona law that requires police to demand papers from anyone they suspect is undocumented. Busloads and carloads came from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, from Tucson and Chicago, Mississippi and Maryland. Some people came all the way from Australia, joining the many thousands from Phoenix.

There was a sense of urgency: something must be done and we ourselves are the ones to do it. This came together with a broad sentiment that standing up now, here, in response to this law, is standing for basic humanity. The anger was sharp. Anger that people are being persecuted for just trying to work and feed their families. Anger that parents are being ripped away from their children. Anger that the state of Arizona is now officially sanctioning the criminalization of anyone with brown skin. There was a special hatred for the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, who is known for hunting immigrants and putting them in concentration-camp-like jails in the desert. Signs called him a Nazi and youth sang chants that he's a terrorist.

A man from Mexico who grew up in Phoenix expressed a basic sentiment of many: "It's unfair, trying to go to school, go to work, have a quality life. People come with these ideas, racist, fascist, so that's what brought me here, to fight for ourselves, fight for our lives, our future. ... [It's] sad looking at these people that have families, kids here, their parents get deported, sent back to Mexico, the little kids have to stay here. That's my anger."

Young people spoke out about the racial profiling that already goes on. One person described how twice he's been stopped, his car searched, and he's been put in jail for no reason. He said about the new law, "They'll have that as an excuse, 'Oh, I thought he was an illegal immigrant. So I had the right to check because that's the new law.'" The outrage against this was expressed very broadly, with many people wearing buttons and T-shirts that said, "Do I look illegal?" and variations of the message, "Being brown is not a crime." A youth from Los Angeles said, "What looks illegal? What is that? I can't fathom that thought, to look illegal."

Two popular posters encapsulated themes expressed by lots of people: "We Can't Wait," and "Undocumented UNAFRAID." People from Arizona spoke to the climate of fear that this march was breaking through—a situation where people are afraid to leave the house to go to church or to the grocery store and where white racists have been unleashed. Young people described having had guns pulled on them, or in other ways being threatened by racists. During the march, a few of these kinds of reactionaries stood on the sidewalk as the march passed by, yelling things like, "Go back to Mexico!" and in some cases marchers stopped and rallied and chanted until these racists were forced to back down. That evening after the day-long march and rally, the fascistic Tea Party movement held a Nazi-style rally in the baseball stadium in Tempe, just outside Phoenix, with Joe Arpaio as a featured speaker.

All this anger and defiance twirled around in the midst of deep outrage over the basic human rights being denied to Latino people. One student organizer said: "I'm an American citizen, not a second-class citizen. If I travel abroad I'm going to be an American, but if I'm here in Arizona, because I have dark skin, because I'm brown, somehow I'm not worthy. That's not right. So I'm going to fight for my rights and the rights of all people and against the injustices occurring in this state."

The demands of the march were for Obama to stop the Arizona law, and people chanted, "Obama, listen, we are in the struggle," and carried posters with his picture stenciled on. The reality that Obama is sending 1,200 troops to the border pierced through some of this. One young Black woman said, "Screw Obama, he can kiss my ass... he's just making stuff worse."

American flags dotted the crowd, and speakers talked about immigrants working hard to help build a better America. But this is not about immigrants proving they can be "good Americans" and hoping that racists will accept them. THEY WILL NOT. It is about standing up for fundamental rights and for the humanity of those who have been driven here, often in a desperate search for work. As for raising the American flag, this is sheer poison. This flag represents and has presided over terrible crimes committed in the name of "freedom and democracy" in this country and all over the world for more than a century. Immigrants have a unique ability to let people born here know the real truth about this flag—and should not go along with calls to cooperate in whitewashing that truth in the name of relating to the mainstream.

A small team of revolutionary communists came to Phoenix from Los Angeles with the orientation of fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution. At one point during the march, things got tense between those upholding America on one side and the revolutionary communists who were exposing the nature of this country that was founded on the enslavement of Black people, theft of Mexican land, slaughter of Native Americans, and has carried out wars of plunder and domination all over the planet—including the current one in Iraq with U.S. soldiers raping young girls and torturing prisoners. A woman who said America is a great country was so angry that she was in tears and yelled for the revolutionaries to "go back where you came from."

At the same time, the agitation that this system can't solve the problems of humanity but the revolution CAN, was captivating for many others. Some people took up the chant started by the communists, "No tenemos que vivir así. Otro mundo es posible" ("We don't have to live this way. Another world is possible"), especially when the anti-immigrant reactionaries came out. And those who were more revolutionary-minded were drawn to the banner that said, "No hay un problema de inmigración, sí hay un problema del capitalismo, la revolución es la solución" ("There is no immigration problem, there is a capitalism problem, revolution is the solution") and the Message and Call from the RCP, USA: "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have." Several college students spoke to the great disparities in the world and how resources exist which could meet the needs of the people, but are instead being used for profit while masses of people are forced to try to find ways to survive. After the rally, several people who were seriously looking for a way out of all this got together to watch Bob Avakian's talk, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, and stayed up talking into the night about historic questions of changing the world.

The organizers of the national day of action, who have come together in a coalition called Alto Arizona, had put a call out for the creation of art against SB 1070 and many artists responded, with poster designs filling the website, a Human Rights Festival Friday night featuring Los Jornaleros del Norte, Outernational, and Olmeca, and works of art at the march itself (including a beautiful four-panel wall depicting skulls on the border and the U.S. flag intertwined with barbed wire). Mexican banda pop star Jenni Rivera performed at the rally on Saturday as did Outernational, who performed their haunting and powerful version of Woody Guthrie's song "Deportees" and called out for a world where we are all treated as human beings, but until then: WE ARE ALL ILLEGALS!

As we wrote in "Arizona Goddamn!! Oppose the Attack on Immigrants" (Revolution #200, May 1, 2010), "the main thing now is this: support and spread the outpourings against this bill, support and strengthen the spirit of defiance against this immoral and unconstitutional law, and assist and inspire people to cast their eyes to the horizon of revolution, when such outrages will be done away with, as part of emancipating all of humanity."

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Revolutionary Eye on Iran

If you want revolution—in fact, if you are at all concerned about the course of events on the planet right now—you need to keep your eye on Iran. Iran is a hotspot—a point where both moves to war and possibilities for revolution could come to a boil. There are three major levels to what is going on there that we need to understand:

1. What Is Going On Inside Iran

Iran is ruled by an Islamic theocratic regime. That means the law is based on the Islamic religion and that Islamic clergy have a special role in controlling the state (the army, courts, bureaucracy, etc.). This regime is very repressive: it suppresses political dissent by force and often murder, it forces women to veil themselves in public, etc. For the past year, two factions in the camp of the Iranian rulers have been clashing over how to hold this regime together—and in the process, they have opened cracks through which massive protest has erupted. June 12 will be the one-year anniversary of a stolen election which originally set off this protest movement.  Revolutionaries are increasingly working within all this, calling on people to break with siding with one or another faction of the ruling class and to direct the struggle toward the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic altogether. We should be alert for new rounds of opposition to the regime, ready to politically support the rekindled resistance of the Iranian people.

2. The International Setting

At the same time, the United States and Israel increasingly have been threatening war against Iran and stepping up actual aggressive military operations against and within Iran itself. Iran is "in the way" of the present U.S. plans to deepen its imperial domination of the Middle East and Central Asia. The Iranian rulers, for their part, are not trying to get rid of imperialism, but to get a "better deal" from it—including trying to play off other imperialists against the U.S. as part of this. But even this is intolerable to the U.S. and they have been aggressively moving against Iran for some years now.

These threats and aggressive actions now revolve around the U.S.-Israel accusation that Iran is developing the capability to build a nuclear weapon. This alleged attempt on Iran's part is supposed to be reason enough to rain destruction down on the Iranian people—even though the U.S. itself possesses several thousand nuclear weapons and Israel has several hundred! Some of these developments, and the imperialist interests behind them, are explained in the article on our website, "The U.S., Israel and the bomb: reason to worry" (revcom.us). Such a war would be totally unjust, and the very threat of such a war—let alone actually launching it!—demands much more widespread political exposure and resistance from those of us inside the U.S.; much greater efforts to build solidarity with the people of Iran and the genuine revolutionaries there; and more thinking on our part as to possible ways this can all reverberate in this country as part of hastening the development of a revolutionary situation here.

3. The Revolutionary Movement

The Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, is a revolutionary communist force fighting for emancipation. These comrades have been fighting to bring forward another way within Iran, even as they have played an important role in the international communist movement. They are very firm in not only opposing the Islamic theocratic state as a whole, but all attempts by the U.S. or other imperialists to maneuver in this as well. We should be studying their statements—which are available on revcom.us—and politically supporting them.

Nobody can say where all this will end. What we can say is that there is both great danger and very great potential here—and a great need to build a movement FOR REVOLUTION that is internationalist in its outlook and actions.

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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On Reading Bob Avakian's piece: "There Is No 'Permanent Necessity' For Things To Be This Way
A Radically Different and Better World Can Be Brought Into Being Through Revolution"

I want to offer some of my thinking on this piece from the Chairman: "There Is No 'Permanent Necessity' For Things To Be This Way—A Radically Different And Better World Can Be Brought Into Being Through Revolution."

First, I too thought that was one of the more important statements in the Manifesto from our Party—the quote from Marx that "once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice."

The more I think about it—the more I think this is very important—strategically but also immediately in terms of the real, moving, living connection—living link if you will—between all our activity today and actually getting to the point where we could lead millions to seize power, go on from there to build socialism, and move toward the day when all classes, all exploitation, all oppressive relations between people, and all ideas that go along with this—that is, the "4 alls"—are uprooted and eliminated all over the world. 

All we are doing is about this. Masses coming to understand and feel this. The different and various ways people come to see that this is what the revolution is about—and dedicate their lives to it.

I have to admit that at first I did not fully grasp or fully appreciate the relationship, the dialectical connection between the theoretical and political dimension of this.

This is what I think is very important: a mass movement for revolution. Keeping in mind our understanding that there "are masses and masses." And what the Chairman says about a big part of transforming people is developing a different consciousness and a different morality which we have begun to do, and need to continually do better. But this needs to have much more a mass character to it—we also need growing cores who are entering the political fault lines, political points of contention in society and the world—leading masses with the orientation of "what do we want? Revolution! When do we want it? Now!"—communist revolution to emancipate humanity.

I'm not raising this as something different than "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." Or as something different from "the days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...these days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

No, I'm trying to give added emphasis to this—added emphasis to our full ensemble of revolutionary activity in connection with hastening while awaiting a revolutionary situation.

As we know, without this orientation, despite our best intentions, we will get caught up in what is criticized in the "Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have" Message and Call from our Party—of waiting for some "fine day" when revolution will occur. Which is never.

This relates to Revolution Clubs, creating a culture of appreciation, popularization and promotion around Chairman Avakian, really getting the newspaper Revolution out there in big and bold ways. Also the talk Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About by Bob Avakian. The public face of the party really bubbling over with this and representing this and not something short of this. The need for the dictatorship of the proletariat (DoP) and a constitution for the new socialist state, applying the understanding developed with Avakian's new synthesis. All this has to be WAAAAY out there in society and the world.

For me this heightens the importance of the vanguard leading, allowing the masses to come to this understanding. Something to learn from: I was involved in a mass organization that was about revolution in 1969-1970. This was a very short period of time but nonetheless this went a long, long way making you and others feel, think, and begin to understand that this was really about revolution. And even given all the limitations of that organization (i.e., the Black Panthers), you felt this, and at some point decided to dedicate your life to it—before you theoretically understood all of it. 

Why? Cause you saw a few others going all out in this way—and boldly challenging others to relate to this. When they were hit with counter-revolution, they reached out to others and brought them into things or into support of this for a brief period of time.

I am not arguing that this is the only way people can come to this understanding (that we are building a movement for revolution) but there is great importance that this be accessible to people in this way and in this form.

One of the things is that we need to give better leadership on this. I agree with this proposal for the constitution talking about what the socialist society would look like and enumerating the rights of the people, including the people who disagree. This is part of building a movement for revolution, for a new state power, making it clear what the goals of the revolution are, how it would be fundamentally different and better from how things go down in this system, and how it would be better from the socialist societies of the past.

This is the movement we should be building. We need to go ahead with that. I think we need to do a similar thing around what is the struggle or fight leading up to where you can make that leap to getting over the first hump. Building a movement that is capable once there is a major crisis that engulfs all society—that can bring the power of the revolutionary people in their tens of millions to meet and defeat the power of counter-revolution. Replacing it with a new revolutionary state power. A movement that is geared towards this and has its eyes on this prize...

When people join this movement for revolution, they should feel it in their bones that what they are contributing to is revolution—on whatever level that might be—and not something else. I.e., they are interacting with people who are doing this and not something else in the name of revolution. In all kinds of  ways it hits them,  it exudes all around, strikes them with awe, wonder, inspiration and determination. And it sets things on a whole different trajectory. It powerfully contributes to radically changing the terms in society.

Broadly in society people got to relate to the revolution—not "let me see, should we have a revolution." People got to relate to the fact that there IS a revolutionary movement. 

In the '60s this objectively was an inspiration and posed a challenge. Even with all the shortcomings and limitations of the time, there was a compelling, captivating inspiration that things could be different. That there could be a revolution.

This is why I think a constitution of a new socialist society with the new synthesis of communism and what the new society will look like—and the struggle leading up to that—getting over the first hump—has to be linked more and more deeply, intimately, comprehensively—with the revolutionary political work we are doing today. So that when there is a sudden and major change in the objective situation we and the masses of people are ready and prepared to do what will be required of us to seize a new revolutionary power out of that situation.

Some of the stuff in "On the Possibility of Revolution" talks about it. You can see some of the contours of how things are shaping up politically. What kind of situation a revolution could come out of, the kind of social upheaval it would have to be ripped and torn out of.

You can see it with the tea baggers, the Glenn Becks and their efforts to cohere this society around a new, different, fascist governing ruling authority.

There is the struggle at the top of the "pyramid of power" and what that causes and what this can potentially cause at the bottom of the pyramid. Things splitting apart...where is it all going to go and how can it go? What do we have to say about the likely outcome of things? How can a revolution develop out of this? This has been spoken to by Avakian in things like "The Pyramid of Power," "The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era," and the pamphlet Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation.

This "no permanent necessity" is something we need to continually come back to and grapple with in all its dimensions. 

There needs to be growing cores of people who are gelling around "The Revolution We Need...the Leadership We Have."  This is all part of the objectives of the finite campaign we are now in the middle of.

If you get this, going amongst our social base, getting into Bob Avakian is one of the on-ramps that people enter the revolutionary freeway from. This is opposed to falling into routinism and accommodating ourselves to where things are presently at.

What we've done with A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity, and the recent national tour by Sunsara Taylor, also shows there is no permanent necessity for things to be this way. Sunsara's speech was really good. Because of the whole history of economism, we are not accustomed to hear communists talk about sexuality, how and why women's sexual desires are suppressed, devalued, de-humanized, and mutilated. Sunsara was ripping this up showing the historical basis for why human sexual relations are patriarchal and are closely bound up with the emergence of private property and the splitting of human society into classes—showing, illustrating how things do not have to be this way—shattering all this kind of shit. 

I want to speak about a couple of other things more briefly. On the 19 letters on "An Historic Contradiction: Fundamentally Changing the World Without Turning Out the Lights." My main hit off the letters is that it really made me feel—I don't want to say "comfortable" or "at ease"—because I don't think  that characterizes it. What struck me is that it gave me a lot of confidence or of welcoming...to really want to be part of leading alongside people like these—people are leading with this method and approach and outlook, really grappling with the new synthesis. How you lead without letting the lights go out? People working in this way. It was all different in terms of what people were speaking to. There was a lot of diversity with the same method and approach—a solid core with a lot of elasticity. It made me feel real good about having this kind of leadership. This is what people need.

"There Is No Permanent Necessity For Things To Be This Way—A Radically Different and Better World Can Be Brought Into Being Through Revolution" is not separate from "The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have." I agree we need to push out more on this as we go out there. We need to bring this more to the forefront too. Reading over this and some other things, as well as in discussions, has made me think that we need to continue to do everything and situate everything in the new synthesis.

It has made me think more deeply about the difference between being the emancipators of humanity versus just freeing the working class and all humanity which tends towards and did in fact reify the working class.

In China there was the reification of the peasant masses. It was thought that because they did manual labor they were "clean" and closer to the truth. In another way there was reification of intellectuals. It was thought that those who did intellectual labor were "dirty" and far away from what is true. 

What is communism? With our scientific method and approach and our sweeping view of history, we can see that within certain social relations, there emerged a group, a class, the proletariat, that represents new social relations for humanity that can take human history to an entire new place, an entire new world.

"...where people work and struggle together for the common good...Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings...Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world." As it says in the statement: "The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have."

This is what we do and must represent. This is our "identity." The necessity and possibility of this. Grasping and acting on the truth of this. Shaking and awaking others to this. No matter what section of the people you might come from. Comparing and contrasting everything with this. With the new synthesis. Acting on this necessity and possibility.

Some food for thought...

In thinking about the future as opposed to "The Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," we need a new song "From the skyscrapers of New York City—around the globe—to the shores of Hawaii—fighting for our historic mission to free all humanity."

I do think the more we get out there with the new synthesis, the Manifesto and of the breaking down of permanent necessity, the more people will be inspired to re-look at the lyrics to the communist anthem—"The Internationale" and to the reality of developing a new International. People will be inspired to write new songs and lyrics, and build organization that more reflect the emancipation of ALL humanity. 

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Murder Trial Begins for the Killer of Oscar Grant
Time to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution

On January 1, 2009, a gang of Bay Area Rapid Transit police detained and brutalized Oscar Grant and his friends, throwing them to the ground, yelling at them, waving tasers in their faces, and hitting them—in front of a trainload of passengers returning from New Year's celebrations. A half-dozen passengers pulled out their cameras and started filming the escalating police violence. Suddenly, while passengers shouted in protest, the cops pushed Oscar Grant down on the ground, his arms behind him. One of the cops, Johannes Mehserle, pulled his gun and shot Oscar in the back. Oscar was unarmed, had been complying with police, and was face down on the pavement when he was shot. The whole horrifying assault was over in minutes: the train pulled out as Oscar lay bleeding and dying on the platform.

Mehserle goes on trial for murder this week in Los Angeles. Though at least 100 people are killed by police every year in the state,1 this is, according to San Francisco Chronicle journalists' database research and Mehserle's own attorney, the first time in California that a cop will be tried for an on-duty killing. What was different this time? The main reason there is a trial at all has everything to do with what the people did in response to this crime: how they acted, spoke out, stood up, and resisted every step of the way.

Videos of the murder hit the TV news and YouTube. The outrage grew, and at the end of a week, with the cop not even arrested, it erupted onto the streets of Oakland. More protests followed. Revolutionaries were amidst the resistance, calling out the criminal system, raising the slogan, "The whole damn system is guilty."

Since then, the system has counter-attacked. First Mehserle requested and won a change of venue out of Oakland to Los Angeles. The judge who granted the venue change gave as one of the reasons that Grant "has been personified, humanized and cast in a sympathetic light since his death." As we said at that time, "Stop and think about that. In this era of so-called 'victims' rights,' victims of at least certain kinds of crimes are routinely 'personified, humanized and cast in a sympathetic light.' Yet in this case a whole different set of rules has been invoked, so that, bizarrely, the fact that the victim of a horrible crime has been recognized as a human being is invoked as a reason why the man who killed him cannot get a fair trial in the county where the crime took place."

Prosecutors Forget How to Prosecute

Two of the BART cops, Marysol Domenici and Anthony Pirone, who initiated the brutality that night and then defended their actions in court, have now both been fired by BART for their role in the incident leading to Oscar's death. But the prosecution is not calling Domenici, who testified at the preliminary hearing that after she heard the shot and realized it was one of the youths who had been shot, her first thoughts were, "Oh, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, if I have to, I'm going to have to kill somebody." When an important part of the legal case rests on what was on the minds of the cops who were involved in this killing, whether there was "intent" to use lethal force, for the prosecution NOT to call Domenici as a witness is both outrageous and typical of how prosecutors act when they are in the very unusual position of prosecuting a killer cop.

Another cop, Tony Pirone, who brutalized Oscar and his friends before the shooting, has been subpoenaed by both sides. Pirone, who can be heard in the videos saying the "N" word to Oscar, was standing next to Mehserle, holding Oscar down, when the fatal shot was fired. (As we go to press the judge has agreed to hear a motion to exclude these racist statements on the grounds that they are prejudicial to Mehserle because he might not have heard them.)

The system is bending over backward to help the defense show "another side" to the incident. The judge in the case ruled that a defense "video expert" can testify about what he thinks the videos show that other people might not see. The judge has banned the wearing of political T-shirts or buttons in the courtroom. He ruled that the defense can discuss Oscar Grant's past record of resisting arrest, even though such a record (which one can only imagine what might have really happened) is not a legal justification for killing someone, and on top of that, the police could have had no knowledge of this on January 1. Videos show that Oscar was not resisting arrest before he was shot. Meanwhile the judge has ruled that the prosecution cannot discuss Mehserle's past record of police brutality, even though the question of whether Mehserle had a history of brutality is extremely relevant to the case. In sum, the court is giving a green light to dehumanize Oscar Grant, the victim, and to exonerate Mehserle, the killer.

Everything that has happened so far shows that justice will not be granted by the workings of the system and underscores the need for stepped up resistance outside the courtroom. Protest and resistance is crucial in not letting the system get away with crimes and grind the people down. A major protest has been called for Monday, June 14, starting at 7 am, at the LA Criminal Courthouse, 210 W. Temple Street, between Broadway and Spring. This battle is at a turning point; it is urgent that many more step forward into the battle right now.

1. According to Department of Justice statistics. [back]

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Spreading Revolution and Communism

Fund-raising for the Campaign—A Revolutionary Challenge with Societal Impact

Here are two ideas that came up at the recent conference on the campaign "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" that we want to announce immediately. There were many good ideas to be synthesized into more of an overall plan that were worked with at the workshops and will be further developed and integrated into the campaign. A very important and overarching point was the importance of there being a culture of fund-raising—in everything that we do—including passing the hat on every street corner we are saturating and at every event and meeting we hold. The conference in New York City raised thousands of dollars as a powerful closing to the conference. Determined to raise the funds for the first massive printing of the statement, the fund-raising at the conference indicated the collective strength of what we accomplished that weekend. It was an indication that we came out of this roaring and ready to really put this campaign into a higher gear! As one participant put it, this showed that people are serious—and that we ARE going to do this.

So we are excited to announce that we are going full steam ahead with one of the ideas that really began to take shape at the fund-raising workshop in NYC. An all-day web-a-thon to raise money for the campaign. This will be a nationwide all-day event (at least 16 hours, when you consider the advantage of time differences)—to combine phone banking with a full day of web programming on the campaign.

On Sunday, June 20, everyone will need to clear their calendar for a concentrated nationwide feat to really raise big money. Begin assembling your e-lists and phone lists now—we should by the end of the first ten-day saturation have many more names and numbers to work with. Revolutionaries need to be serious and professional about compiling these every day and getting them into the appropriate set of lists—so that no one who says they want to be contacted is lost, forgotten and their potential squandered. This is another key element of reporting. Begin organizing now, where you will be collectively and individually phone banking, so that everyone is hooked in and momentum can build throughout the day.

There will be, in connection with the webcast, special programming for people to listen to and take part in: special reports from Revolution newspaper reporters from the catastrophe in the Gulf, an important speech on the environment by Raymond Lotta, a recent speech by Alan Goodman on the massacre of internationals bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza by the Zionist State of Israel, developments in Arizona including reports from youth going to Arizona for the summer to stop the fascist laws scheduled to go into effect on July 29, Sunsara Taylor, a report from Carl Dix on the U.S. Social Forum and putting revolution on the map in Detroit—with a major saturation to take place in the city as a whole and at the U.S. Social Forum—and more.

The webcast will also have coverage of the impact of getting the statement out there and pictures of the graphic image of Bob Avakian going up around the country. In fact, one of the things we will be fund-raising for that Sunday will be to put this up on billboards and as huge murals on walls that we are able to get with permission or rent in Detroit and New Orleans and Arizona.

If there are YouTube videos of people wearing the image of Bob Avakian shirt or displaying the poster—and those same people testifying as to why they are doing so—be sure that these are being sent into Revolution newspaper so that some of the best of these can be played that day—no matter where you are, in a major city or small town or an outlying area of the revolution—you can be part of this—it will be a nationwide collective event. If you would like to film a special report of key advances in the saturation from the city where you are—you can film these and send them in also.

This web-a-thon will actually begin on Sunday afternoon, June 13—where especially people who have volunteered to work on fund-raising will do an initial broadcast—with coordinated phone banking—to begin raising funds as soon as possible and to also get some necessary experience in doing this before the really big all-day event. This is important in its own right and is crucial as a building block.

We will need hundreds of people phone banking on June 20—there will be a basic template or script so that people who have never done this can jump right in—and so that people they call can call or email ten of their friends. One of the favorite approaches that someone came up with at the East Coast conference was "Hi, this is the revolution calling—we're calling you because we have a whole better way to run society and you need to be part of the movement for revolution... We are raising $_____ today to put this revolution on the map."

A supplemental idea that came up in the fund-raising workshop for the July 4th picnics—organize a walk or run, or both, that morning, or that weekend, where people sponsor you by the mile. People who register will get the image T-shirt before the walk—and people can walk/run in them together advertising the campaign as they go, through busy parks or waterfronts or through neighborhoods. Do it on the weekend of the 4th—and/or do it again later in the summer.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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The Thing about Treme

Soon after the debut of the HBO series Treme, which takes place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Revolution posted a letter from a reader who really praised the show and urged people to watch it. I want to offer some thoughts on this after watching the first seven episodes.

Treme opens with a montage of photographs—flooded neighborhoods, ruined houses, moldy living room ceilings and people dancing in the street. These images brought me back to when I was there in February 2006, seven months after the hurricane, and then again in 2008. Both times, I walked through the empty neighborhoods and saw remnants of broken lives amidst tremendous devastation. This is the reality Treme brings to the screen.

The camera pans across the rigid, nervous faces of cops—who always seem to be in the background acting like a brutal occupying army. They beat up a Black man for bumping into their car. They arrest someone for occupying an apartment that's boarded up while thousands ache to come home. A woman desperately looks for her brother who was locked up when Katrina hit and has "disappeared into the prison system." And there's a whole lot of seething anger at the government which isn't doing a god damn thing to really help people. Professor Creighton Bernette (played by John Goodman) articulates a refrain repeated in other episodes, that "What hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast was a natural disaster, a hurricane pure and simple. The flooding of New Orleans was a man-made catastrophe, a federal fuck-up of epic proportions and decades in the making." When you hear him say this you can't help but think about how the people in New Orleans are now being hit by the BP oil catastrophe.

These are all very positive things about Treme and I'm sure it's a big reason a lot of people like this show. I read many comments on the internet, including from people living in New Orleans. And a lot of them welcome the show because they say it portrays the New Orleans they are proud of—the great and unique culture, the music, rich sense of history—and the spirit of the people who refuse to give up in the face of immense adversity. Indeed, at a time when the Black masses are constantly blamed and demonized by the system, Treme's sympathetic portrayal of the people of New Orleans is a breath of fresh air.

These are reasons why I too like watching the show. And I have to add that in particular I really enjoy the infectious, rebellious, history-laden music woven into and around the story lines. But there are also some things about the show that I find really troubling.

First of all, while there are strong women characters in the show, at least one of the main male characters is just downright bad when it comes to how he treats the women in his life. I'm not a plot spoiler so I won't go into detail, but let's just put it this way—he's a guy who cheats on the woman he lives with, wants to sleep with his ex-wife who is married, and ogles women in a strip club. And you're supposed to like him. Now, my point here is not that characters in works of art should be cardboard one-dimensional heroes with no flaws. This would indeed be bad art that doesn't in any way reflect the reality of life, people and society. But art should be higher than life. And there is a way that the complicated, contradictory sides of people can be portrayed in works of art that can help people sort out right and wrong.

Art is a distinct sphere of human endeavor and creativity that is different than politics per se. And art is not, or at least good works of art are not, political slogans or analysis "put to music and acted out." But at the same time, works of art do contain political views and ideological outlooks. And it is important to think about this, even as we can appreciate and simply be entertained by movies, novels, paintings, etc. It is important to tease out and understand the themes and messages in something like Treme exactly because it is an engaging work of art and it can influence people's thinking, one way or another.

There are at least four or five plot lines in this show and I find them all pretty interesting. Treme gives us "slices of life" that reveal the struggles, thinking and aspirations of different kinds of people—musicians, small business people, Black youth, street musicians, and progressive lawyers and professors. As in real life, these characters are complicated and full of contradictions.

One moment I find myself really liking one of them, then the next second they say or do something that really puts a sour taste in my mouth. For example, one ideological thread I find troubling in the show is an outlook that amounts to revenge. It should really make you pause, for example, when one of the main sympathetic characters in Treme, Albert Lambreau (played by Clarke Peters), brutally and viciously takes out his suppressed anger on a youth who is trying to survive by stealing. I don't know how the characters in Treme will develop and change. But so far Lambreau seems to be really down on the Black youth, seeing them as the problem. And I think the more or less negative portrayal of the youth—and the fact that none of the central sympathetic characters are youth—is a real weakness of Treme. I'm not arguing we should idealize the youth. But far too many people are sucked into the poisonous Cosby-line that the youth are to blame for "making bad choices"—when the truth of the matter is that this system, which offers no kind of future to the youth, is the real problem.

I really encourage people to check out the powerful documentary, Trouble the Water—described on its official website as "a redemptive tale of two self-described street hustlers who become heroes." Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott, who lived in the poor 9th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, were trapped in their attic when their home and community were flooded. We experience their harrowing days through video taken by Roberts and we witness a neighbor who heroically rescues them and others using a floating punching bag and then a boat to navigate the floodwaters. I remember hearing other stories of Black youth rescuing people and organizing to get and distribute water and food to those who had been abandoned by the government. In this we can see the potential of the masses—to rise above the me-first, dog-eat-dog mentality this system puts on people, to change in the course of struggle. And this is a very important part of the revolutionary movement we are building.

There is also a thread in Treme where, in different ways, people end up directing righteous anger and blame at wrong or lesser targets that in effect let the capitalist system off the hook. A judge suddenly "discovers" that the prisons are abusing people and orders them to clean up their act. One character decides to take on the corrupt politicians and run for city council. The professor rails against cutbacks of what he considers more down-to-earth, practical classes that teach how to build levees and power grids, ridiculing courses (that didn't get cut) that deal with what he sees as useless abstract, philosophical study.

In thinking about this contradictory nature of Treme, it reminded me of how on the one hand, the masses' anger and hatred of their oppressors are a necessary element of any revolution. But at the same time, this is not enough. This provoked me to think about how there will be many people who fight the system, who join the revolution with the outlook of "now we want to make those who oppressed us suffer too"—but that this cannot be the outlook of what leads the revolution whose goal is the emancipation of all of humanity.

It is good that millions of people are watching this show and seeing what it was like after Hurricane Katrina. And I'm going to keep watching, learning from and critiquing Treme. This show, even with what I see as real problems, is a work of art that has the power to move people and it raises big questions about how society is presently organized—and this is something everyone needs to be thinking about.

One person posted this comment on the official Treme website: "First, I'll say I haven't watched it. Why should I? I live here, lived here before during and after The Thing. I hope it does well. I hope it's nuanced and multi-layered and whatever else they call good TV. But just the thought of re-living those early dark days is enough to make me tense up, I don't cry every day anymore, in my car when I'm alone. I'm still driving past broken things and abandoned houses every day. For me, and this is only for me, it's too soon. I hope they do a great job with Treme. I hope people everywhere else watch it and learn something and learn to love New Orleans."

We should never forget and never forgive the towering crimes this system has done—and is doing—to the people of New Orleans. This alone is reason enough to make revolution.

Send us your comments.

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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From A World to Win News Service

An extraordinary admission of guilt: Obama, Israel and war crimes in Gaza

The following is from A World to Win News Service:

May 24, 2010. Israel's stepped-up ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank has rightly captured much of the world's attention recently. But it is important not to lose sight of Israeli efforts to slowly choke the Palestinians in Gaza.

The scientific precision with which Israel is inflicting cruelty on Gaza residents and the political goals behind it were highlighted by recent reports from the Israeli organization Gisha, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Britain's BBC. About a year ago, Gisha, which describes itself as a "legal centre for freedom of movement" of Palestinians and particularly Gaza residents, brought suit against the Israeli government to force it to reveal what it does and does not allow to be brought into this narrow desert strip and why. First the government falsely claimed that no relevant documents existed. Then, after a court challenge, it finally submitted a written response stating that four basic policy documents have been written up, but that their contents could not be revealed without "harm to national security and foreign relations." A district court judge was allowed to read them in a closed hearing, but Gisha's lawyers were not.

This claim that Israeli policies towards 1.5 million people must be kept secret is astonishing, and the statement is extraordinary in other ways as well, but before examining it, first the known content of those policies must be detailed.

Certainly what Israel does and does not allow through its blockade is no secret in Gaza. The Israeli court response admits that two of the four secret documents list non-prohibited items (anything not specifically authorized is forbidden). The absurdity of this secrecy shows through in the ease with which Gisha was able to guess the list's contents based on information from Gaza traders, business people and international organizations. A BBC correspondent was somehow able to see the secret Israeli list of the 81 items allowed, and in general terms confirmed what Gisha had deduced. (See Gisha.org and BBC.co.uk "Details of Gaza blockade revealed")

The list at first seems arbitrary, but its goals become apparent on careful study—as of course they are obvious to people in Gaza. The point is to keep people in Gaza on the verge of hunger, to kill them slowly, and to deny them sources of pleasure and information.

A calibrated cruelty is evident even in the smallest details, like the prohibited condiments and spices. Some basic items such as tahini (sesame paste), garlic, zaatar (dried herbs) and cinnamon are allowed, but experience shows that sage, cardamom, coriander, cumin and ginger are not. No dried fruit, jam, halva, chocolate, biscuits or other sweets. Dried foodstuffs such as lentils, beans and rice and frozen meat and vegetables are permitted, as are canned goods, but fresh meat is banned. People are also denied toys, musical instruments, paper and newspapers.

Some of the rules governing food are clearly designed to crush Gaza's local economy and force it to become more dependent on Israeli imports. For instance, the importation of tin cans is forbidden, so that farmers are unable to preserve and sell produce such as tomatoes, but Israeli tomato paste is allowed in. Anything to do with fishing—poles, nets and ropes—is banned. So are basic farming inputs, such as fertilizer, and crucial farm equipment and greenhouse items. Chicken farming seems to be a particular Israeli target, along with livestock in general. Industrial salt, margarine and other products used in food processing are barred.

The blockade of all construction materials, including wood, concrete and pipes, brings extreme hardship to people whose homes, schools and other buildings were destroyed by the Israeli air strikes and invasion of December 2008-January 2009. The UN Development Programme said on May 23 that only about a quarter of the damage done by Israeli missiles, bombs and artillery has been repaired, since the only available resources are recycled rubble or supplies smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt. Fuel restrictions mean that there is electricity only about half the time, which is especially disastrous for hospitals. Gaza residents are not allowed to leave for education, so that among other results there is an acute shortage of trained medical personnel.

But perhaps the most shocking prohibitions are against the drugs and medical equipment that mean life and death for many people. These products are not discussed in the Gisha report, but are mentioned in a April 25 "operational update" from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It says that Israel has allowed the ICRC to deliver 55 tons of drugs and other supplies for emergency treatment, but has kept out 110 other essential pharmaceuticals and supplies and spare parts for many medical machines. All this, too, perpetuates the destruction brought about by the Israeli attack, since as a consequence a high proportion of the people have long-term disabilities and special health needs. For example, the ICRC says that about nine percent of all children in Gaza suffer from speech disorders as a result of war trauma.

It can be deduced from the medical situation that Israeli policy is to keep people from dying all at once in such numbers that it would cause an international outcry, but to deliberately bring about the deterioration of health in general and the deaths of many people that would otherwise be avoidable. One of the four secret documents seems to indicate that this is exactly the goal of Israeli policy in general regarding Gaza. From what is known, it sets "red lines" for what Israel considers a minimum amount of calories (detailed by age and sex) Gazans are to be allowed. Another document establishes mechanisms for "foods needs" to be monitored. It is alarming and telling that Israel refuses to divulge what it considers the minimum requirements. These facts imply that Israel has taken an official decision that it is not going to produce mass starvation, with all the political consequences that would bring, but that people in Gaza are not going to get much more than that either.

Israel cannot admit these policies, even though their existence is no secret, because they are outlawed by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Section Three, articles 47-78), which holds the occupying power responsible for the people's welfare in general, and particularly medical services and children's education.

In its response to the judge in this case, instead of a legal argument the Israeli government makes a political one. After apologizing for what it calls a "misunderstanding" in initially lying to the court, it reasons that "the requested documents concern the management of the transfer of goods that Israel imposes on the Gaza Strip" whose disclosure would "harm national security and possibly even Israel's foreign relations" because "Israel's conduct toward the Gaza Strip, including the restrictions on transferring goods, is a central part of the measures at its disposal in the armed conflict with Hamas, which is a hostile entity whose goal is to destroy the state of Israel."

This assertion that fear of Hamas is what motivates Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is not entirely true. First of all, historically, Israel itself is much to blame for the rise of Hamas, which it secretly encouraged for decades in an effort to weaken the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, when the PLO was more revolutionary. Today, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank is not so different than Israeli policies toward Gaza. Even without a blockade like in Gaza, the wall around the West Bank, Israeli checkpoints, Israeli settlements and other policies have largely wiped out the local economy, especially agriculture. The wall and/or the Israeli army keep farmers from the fields for long periods of time, sometimes permanently. When they are not murdering Palestinian farmers and children, Zionist settlers often focus their violence on Palestinian olive trees and citrus groves. Despite the U.S.-inspired Israeli policies that have brought a measure of economic relief to some of the small urban middle class in the politically key West Bank city of Ramallah where the PLO is strongest, the previously mentioned Red Cross update reports that half of the West Bank population is currently living in "poverty" by international measures. This is a population that is not guilty by Israeli standards, as Gazans are, of having largely voted for Hamas...

The Israeli government statement amounts to an Israeli admission of guilt under international law. It openly says that its policy is intended to punish all the people of Gaza in order to weaken Hamas. Such "collective punishment" of people "for an offence she or he has not personally committed" is explicitly illegal under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime. While the Israeli government tried to hide its guilt on a technical level by refusing to reveal the contents of its list of what Gazans are permitted to import, this political part of its statement is a perhaps inadvertent but unambiguous confession in legal terms. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in its commentary on Article 33, says that "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" are "opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

The Obama government has voiced concern about the accelerated expulsion of Palestinians from the remaining part of Jerusalem where they had been allowed to live, many after having been driven out of their home villages and West Jerusalem when Israel was created. That might endanger the emergence, legitimacy and viability of the Palestinian "mini-state" with a shared sliver of Jerusalem as its symbolic capital that Washington continues to propose. The U.S. is also slightly worried about the political future of the PLO leadership, which has staked its entire political capital on the hope that American pressure will force Israel into letting it help administer at least some oppressed Palestinians. Further, overly close public identification of U.S. and Israeli policy would go counter to the U.S.'s regional goals.

But at the same time the U.S. has showed its contempt for Palestinian lives and aspirations by supporting Israeli policies toward Gaza that can only be considered extremely cruel, immoral and illegal under international law. The U.S. has even backed Israel against every attempt to condemn these policies in the UN. Likewise, the U.S.-dependent Arab regimes and their media outlets have been quick to protest when religion is at stake, in the face of current Israeli measures to make Jerusalem sites sacred to both religions exclusively Jewish. Yet they barely pretend concern for the Palestinians living in Gaza.

It's worth noting that even while the U.S. has criticized the pace of Israeli expansion in that once mainly Palestinian city, it has argued against it on the grounds of political expediency and never mentioned the fact that the avowed policy of "Judaizing" Jerusalem constitutes a prima facie (obvious on the face of it) violation of international law. (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention outlaws the colonization of an occupied territory and the forced transfer of its original inhabitants.) The whole issue of applying international law to Israel is too explosive for the U.S. to even allow it to be raised, since the Zionist state is so obviously an outlaw state by these standards, and so, of course, is the U.S. (in its international conduct). This is why the Bush and Obama governments have supported war crimes tribunals for specific countries where that suits American interests, like the former Yugoslavia and Sudan, but Washington still refuses to sign the International Criminal Court treaty that would subject the leaders of all countries to law.

Israel's response to the exposures it has suffered at the hands of Israeli human rights organizations is itself an exposure. A bill currently before the Israeli parliament envisages the banning of any NGO if "there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the association is providing information to foreign entities or is involved in legal proceedings abroad against senior Israeli government officials or IDF [Israeli army] officers for war crimes."

Here we have it: The reason why the Israeli government cannot allow its policies toward Gaza to become public really is what Israel says: it would "harm national security and foreign relations" by fueling the movement of people all over the world to demand the indictment of the Israeli leadership for war crimes, throw shame on the Arab regimes complicit with Israel and embarrass and expose those who rule the U.S. as motivated not by the principles of morality or even law that they pretend to uphold, but only imperial self-interest.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Revolutionary Strategy

Some Principles for Building A Movement for Revolution

At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the "pole" and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution.

 

 

Fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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What Is Communist Revolution?

It is this system that has got us in the situation we're in today, and keeps us there. And it is through revolution to get rid of this system that we ourselves can bring a much better system into being. The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good...Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings...Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.
This revolution is both necessary and possible.

From: The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have
A Message, And A Call,
From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010


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Who Is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party?

In Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party, we have the kind of rare and precious leader who does not come along very often. A leader who has given his heart, and all his knowledge, skills and abilities to serving the cause of revolution and the emancipation of humanity. Bob Avakian came alive as a revolutionary in the 1960s—taking part in the great movements of those days, and especially working and struggling closely with the most advanced revolutionary force in the U.S. at that time, the Black Panther Party. Since then, and while many others have given up, Bob Avakian has worked and struggled tirelessly to find the way to go forward, having learned crucial lessons and built lasting organization that could continue the struggle, and aim to take it higher, while uniting with the same struggle throughout the world. He has kept on developing the theory and strategy for making revolution. He played the key role in founding our Party in 1975, and since then he has continued the battle to keep the Party on the revolutionary road, to carry out work with a strong revolutionary orientation. He has deeply studied the experience of revolution—the shortcomings as well as the great achievements—and many different fields of human endeavor, through history and throughout the world—and he has brought the science and method of revolution to a whole new level, so that we can not only fight but really fight to win. Bob Avakian has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need, and he is leading our Party as an advanced force of this revolution. He is a great champion and a great resource for people here, and indeed people all over the world. The possibility for revolution, right here, and for the advance of the revolution everywhere, is greatly heightened because of Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing. And it is up to us to get with this leadership...to find out more about Bob Avakian and the Party he heads...to learn from his scientific method and approach to changing the world...to build this revolutionary movement with our Party at the core...to defend this leadership as the precious thing it is...and, at the same time, to bring our own experience and understanding to help strengthen the process of revolution and enable the leadership we have to keep on learning more and leading even better.

From: The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have
A Message, And A Call,
From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Send us your comments.