Selling Tickets at a Community College
March 9, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
11 students have so far bought their tickets at the community college that we have been going out to. After some initial outings where we had a team of 4 or 5 people we were able to organize a revolution club that has made its first big project bringing at least 20 students from the school to the premiere. The Revolution Club meetings have varied from 4 people to sometimes just a couple of students because people have classes at different times and a lot of the students have jobs as well, but the role that they have been playing has really been great. Listening to the interviews of BA with Cornel and Slate have really strengthened the ability and energy of the students in making announcements to classes. We have been making announcements about the film in a lot of classes. Particularly receptive have been professors who teach African-American and Latin American history and politics but also other teachers who were part of the radical '60s and would like to see a new generation of radical students active in changing the world. After making a five minute announcement before start of a class, we come back at the end and ask students to buy their tickets. This is the main way we have sold tickets so far.
Our announcement is modeled after the points in the beginning of the editorial “What the World Needs Now” that talks about the horrors facing humanity, how people don’t see a way out and how this film challenges all that and can change all that; and how after the defeats of the first heroic attempts, there has not been any liberated society for the last 40 years. How BA has deepened the science of revolution, starting by going back to Marx and that it is not some unchangeable human nature but capitalism that is the source of all these horrors and that we need revolution, nothing less. We end the announcement with the quote on the card from Cornel West. Then one of the students in the Revolution Club makes a passionate call for other students to join them at the film showing and how they will be joining others from other colleges and also youth from the hood and mothers who have lost their children to police murder and that those coming together like this will be able to go back out into the world to make a much needed big leap in the strength in the movement for revolution. After most of the classes we have sold at least one ticket.
When people buy a ticket, we tell them that they should bring someone else to the movie and most of them can think of at least one other person who they discuss serious things with who they would like to bring. We also invite them to come to the next revolution club meeting. So while we are about half way to our goal, we have this last week to make a big push. If we can get enough of the people who have bought tickets together in different small groups to watch some of the preview or listen to the interviews with Michael Slate or Cornel, then that will have even more of a basis to make the final push needed to achieve our goal of bringing 20 people from the school.
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