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The World Needs to Be Radically Changed. Here’s Step One.
Updated April 21, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is the text of a national leaflet for the BA Everywhere campaign. At the end of the article is a link to a pdf version, suitable for downloading and printing.
We face a crossroads. In the opening of his 2014 New Year’s Message, Bob Avakian put it like this:
“Look at the world today. Destruction of the environment. Youth in the inner cities robbed of a future, ‘presumed guilty’ for being Black or Brown, hounded and shot down by police, incarcerated in huge numbers. Women raped, battered and murdered, denied their basic humanity and their full potential as human beings. People scorned, bullied, brutalized for being gay, or just being ‘different.’ Millions of children dying every year from starvation and disease. Immigrants driven from their homelands, forced into the shadows, exploited, deported, ripped away from their children. Slaughter and enslavement in the name of one god or another. Wars, torture, and massive government spying.
“Things are this way because of the system that rules over us and declares its ‘special right’ to rule the world. A system like this is a system that no one should put up with or go along with. It needs to be swept off the face of the earth. And it can be.
“This system is not a mystery, or something that only a few people can understand. And it is not all-powerful. This system has a name—capitalism. This system is full of contradictions—an economy based on ruthless exploitation and dog-eat-dog competition, repeated crises, unemployment and poverty... savage inequalities...claims of ‘peace’ and ‘justice for all’ that are bitter lies—contradictions that this system cannot resolve. All this is the basis to bring this system down and bring something much better into being.”
Bob Avakian—BA—has not only named this insanity, he has put forward a solution to it: revolution, communist revolution. He has, over the past 40 years, developed a new synthesis of communism—building on the path-breaking achievements of past revolutions, but also summing up their shortcomings and problems and on that basis forged a further pathway to emancipation.
Nothing less than revolution is needed for a better world. Revolution today—if it is to bring about a better society and future without exploitation and oppression—means BA’s new synthesis of communism. He has shown how such a revolution could actually be made... yes, even in today’s world. And BA is leading a party, and a movement, to make all that real.
Bob Avakian has developed a vision and viable framework for a new society that is working to overcome and dig up the roots of all the forms of exploitation and savage inequality that people suffer from today; where wars of plunder and subjugation of nations and cultures are no more; where a new constitution would require safeguarding the environment. All in a framework that gives great scope to intellectual work, ferment, and dissent so that people could consciously and collectively strive for a world where all humanity could flourish.
Contribute to BA Everywhere—
Imagine the Difference It Could Make!
The work BA has done creates new possibility at an excruciating time for humanity—nothing less than an opening for a visionary and viable future. The biggest immediate problem right now is that all this is basically not known. It’s not on the scene in the way it needs to be—engaged and discussed, popularized and debated. And to solve that problem, there is, right now, a major fundraising campaign to make Avakian’s work and leadership known in every corner of society.
If you are seriously concerned about the direction that this capitalist world is heading... if you look for real at current political institutions and processes that offer no fundamental answers to all the misery in the world… you need to check out and engage BA. And, you can contribute to making this known.
BA Everywhere is a national campaign to raise large sums of money so that BA becomes a household word. So that this radical vision and strategy of how the world could be becomes a contending pole throughout society… so that when people are profoundly outraged by the horrific situation and the oppressive, paltry, and draconian political solutions put forward by the system, they know about and are able to weigh all that up against what BA has brought forward.
The BA Everywhere campaign has begun to make a difference—reaching deep into where people live, work, and struggle. It has sponsored bus tours of volunteers of all ages and nationalities to go into the Deep South, the California fields, and the inner cities, spreading BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian—a handbook for revolution of quotes and short essays—and the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Artists have contributed their work and performances. Hundreds of copies of BAsics have been sent into the prisons. From barber shops, to housing projects, to salons in well-off neighborhoods—people are beginning to talk, engage, debate and wrangle with BA. This needs to be amplified a thousandfold.
These are times of great peril and great possibility—potential that is constrained by people not knowing that there is a viable revolutionary solution.
Your financial contribution as well as your creativity and effort to make BA known now will make it possible for whole sections of people to engage and debate BA's vision and framework for a new society. As this becomes known and a contending social force it will change how whole sections of people think about what is desirable and possible. The times will once again resonate with big dreams and growing potential for the emancipation of all humanity.
Who Is BA?
Bob Avakian came out of the struggles of the 1960s, working closely with the Black Panther Party and other radical movements of the times. Coming off that era, he led in forming the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. After the defeats of the first socialist revolutions in the 20th century, first in the former Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, and then in China in 1976 after the death of Mao, BA went deeply into this experience—learning from and firmly upholding and defending their path-breaking achievements, while also scientifically probing and summing up their shortcomings. Drawing from that, and from broader inquiry, he has developed a new synthesis of communism that builds on this and in important dimensions is a leap beyond what came before—enabling humanity to do even better in the revolutions to come.
See more information on Bob Avakian
Right-click this link to download and print the Brochure, and "Voices from the People about Bob Avakian and BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!", the brochure insert.
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