BA Everywhere in May and June

From the Hellholes of a Nation of Cages: A Call to Contribute to Human Emancipation

1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere

May 1, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This is a call to people from all walks of life to contribute to "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere."

"1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" is a project of the BA Everywhere campaign to make the hundreds and thousands of years suffered in the hellholes of this nation of prisons count for something that will really matter: working for a radically new world. This is a call to prisoners, ex-prisoners, families and friends of individuals locked up in the massive prison system in America, along with everyone from all walks of life who feels that living in a society that throws millions of its people into cages for decades is completely intolerable. This is a call to raise one dollar and many more for each year our people have been incarcerated, for the BA Everywhere campaign—a campaign to make a very big difference.

To all who are taking up the BA Everywhere campaign:

The Importance of Ongoing Fundraising

The “1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere” theme will be an important focus of BA Everywhere fundraising through May and June.

At the same time, there should be ongoing BA Everywhere fundraising that is not tied to any one project. In particular, BA Everywhere Committees, organizers, and individuals should be promoting the film of BA’s seminal talk, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live, together with the book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. These two works provide the foundational understanding BA has developed of why the world is the way it is, and what must be done to radically change the face of everything that is rotten. Showing and using these pieces, together with the film Stepping into the Future about the amazing cultural event that celebrated the release of BAsics in 2011, brings alive the difference this campaign can make. Showings of the films can be organized in libraries and schools, in living rooms, and on portable players. Where there is potential for more major screenings on campuses in the fall, go to work to schedule those now before school closes.

In May and June and continuing through the summer, T-shirts that say “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” should be getting out among the youth. 

Anti-July 4 Picnics/BBQs

Over the July 4 weekend, BA Everywhere Committees should plan for gatherings that will mark what has been accomplished in the campaign overall as well as to mark the first stage of the “1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere” project that will be launched in May and June. Those from many walks of life who have been involved in raising funds for the “1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere” project, their statements and experiences, should be one important part of these picnics, giving rich expression to a central theme in anti-July 4 events—calling out and getting into the real history of this country from its founding on the blood and bones of African slaves and Native peoples, down to the modern-day entombment of millions in its prisons—and giving real ways for people to express and act on their desire and commitment to be a part of putting an end to such barbarity.

The BA Everywhere campaign is at the cutting edge of a movement for a radically new society and world through revolution—where no more would Black and Latino youth be demonized and robbed of their freedom and lives. Where no more would immigrants seeking a way to live be hunted, locked up, and deported by the millions. The BA Everywhere campaign is a mass fundraising campaign to spread the revolutionary vision, strategy, and leadership of Bob Avakian so that people in all corners of society can know about and get into why and how the brutally inhuman society we live in today need not be forever—that there is a whole other way humanity could live and flourish.

Bob Avakian (BA) is a revolutionary leader coming out of the 1960s who has committed his life to working for revolution—to bring about a future where humanity could collectively go to work on overcoming all forms of exploitation and oppression all over the world. Learning from the revolutions of the 20th century—their liberating achievements as well as their shortcomings, and from experience more broadly—BA has developed a new synthesis of communism that is, as he has put it, "a deeper, even more scientific understanding of the methods, the goals, the strategy and plan for making revolution and a new society."

Making this known, discussed, and debated among all kinds of people in every corner of society will start to change how many people look at the world today and what is possible. To make this well known will take money, lots of it. The BA Everywhere campaign is a struggle for the hearts and minds of people—a fight for the future—to make BA's vision, leadership, and strategy known up against what those who run this society want the people to know, think about—and not think about. BA Everywhere is a way for thousands of people who hate what is being done to people, who yearn for a better world, to contribute funds and their creativity and efforts so that everywhere people can know about and be debating that there is a whole other way we could be living—so that BA becomes a household word.

BA has called on prisoners and all who have been cast off and treated as less than human by this system, to raise their sights above "the degradation and madness, the muck and demoralization, above the individual battle to survive and to 'be somebody' on the terms of the imperialists ... to become a part of ... the gravediggers of this system and the bearers of the future communist society."

BAsics 3:16
An Appeal to Those the System Has Cast Off

Here I am speaking not only to prisoners but to those whose life is lived on the desperate edge, whether or not they find some work; to those without work or even homes; to all those the system and its enforcers treat as so much human waste material.

Raise your sights above the degradation and madness, the muck and demoralization, above the individual battle to survive and to “be somebody” on the terms of the imperialists—of fouler, more monstrous criminals than mythology has ever invented or jails ever held. Become a part of the human saviors of humanity: the gravediggers of this system and the bearers of the future communist society.

This is not just talk or an attempt to make poetry here: there are great tasks to be fulfilled, great struggles to be carried out, and yes great sacrifices to be made to accomplish all this. But there is a world to save—and to win—and in that process those the system has counted as nothing can count for a great deal. They represent a great reserve force that must become an active force for the proletarian revolution.

When people get connected with the revolutionary scientific method and vision and strategy for a revolutionary society developed by Bob Avakian, this has the potential to change everything—including how they think and act—and that reverberates among thousands more who also feel the weight of the oppressive way things are today. When people come to understand why the world is the horror it is and how together with millions of others they can be a part of working to change it as part of the movement for revolution, as well as supporting getting BA and what he has brought forward out everywhere, this lifts people up out of the dog-eat-dog of day-to-day existence under this system—in short, making it possible for people to consciously change themselves in the course of changing the world.

Already hundreds of prisoners and ex-prisoners have received BA's book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. Read some of the words of prisoners and ex-prisoners who have been getting into BAsics and other revolutionary literature, in the accompanying excerpts from their letters.

This connection and engagement needs to happen on a far greater scale, with BA's work known and resonating among many more who are behind the prison walls and many, many more outside the walls, among all kinds of people, everywhere. One-third of the funds raised through "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" will be donated to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, which sends BAsics and other revolutionary literature into the prisons in response to prisoners' requests. The remaining two-thirds will go to fund the BA Everywhere campaign overall.

See also:

Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners on What BAsics and Other Revolutionary Literature Means to Them

For "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" to grow over the next year, for it to have impact, requires people taking it up. We believe that there are many people who see the enormous scope of mass incarceration and how deeply it is woven into the fabric of America with its foundations in the subjugation and oppression of Black people as well as vicious exploitation and demonization of immigrants. And there are many who can come to recognize that it will take a radical change—a break—with the current system to deal with a nation of prisons and that ending this outrage is and can be linked to ending all the oppression that torments people today. The BA Everywhere campaign should work to bring together crews of people who can be won to work together to take up "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" by reaching out to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families and friends to ask and to struggle with them to commit their years to be counted in this way, to be pushing this project forward as one part of how the BA Everywhere campaign is raising funds from all different kinds of people to make BA known as a first step in changing the world.

The U.S. imprisons more of its population than any country on earth, now or in history. If the lives squandered and human potential lost this way were all that was wrong with this system, it would be reason enough for people to seriously check out and dig into the revolutionary solution to this madness. And yet this is not even close to the full picture of the crimes of the worldwide system of capitalism-imperialism dominated by the U.S. On top of this, a war on women is being waged, with constant degradation and sexual abuse, and with the right of and access to abortion already eliminated or in peril in much of the country; the environment is being pushed closer to irreversible disaster; the U.S. is spying on everyone; and it is sending remote control drones to murder people in other lands as just one part of waging murderous wars against people around the world, in order to enforce the grip of their empire.

"1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" taps into a deep fault line of America. It is one reason why people of every nationality, of all ages, of all genders, from every walk of life, from those struggling to survive on next to nothing to the very wealthy, can be inspired to donate money and to contribute in other ways to making BA, and the vision and framework of a new society and the plan to get there that he has developed, known everywhere.

How the "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" project will work:

The BA Everywhere campaign will be raising funds for "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" at the same time as it is working to get statements from prisoners and ex-prisoners, their families and friends to "add" their years of incarceration to make up 1000 years. And then, when 1000 years are accumulated, the process should continue towards another 1000 years. These statements, the pledges of years, will be posted online on the BA Everywhere page of revcom.us, web and a print version will be made available on a regular basis to mail to those behind bars and without Internet access.

To make the number of years you, a loved one, or a friend have been incarcerated count toward the "1000 Years" and to make your pledge to donate or raise that amount or more to BA Everywhere, contact a local BA Everywhere Committee or the national BA Everywhere campaign (baeverywhere@gmail.com) with your donation or pledge. Your thoughts, written to be shared with others, on why you are adding your "years," why you want people to match your donation many times over, are very welcome, and selected statements will be posted and printed as part of the project. Work together with others—sharing the experiences and the challenges in taking this up—and send reports into BA Everywhere so that people all over the country can think about and learn from your experience.

People everywhere should be inspired by "1000 Years—$1000 for BA Everywhere" to not just match one dollar for every year that a prisoner, ex-prisoner, or family pledges to raise to match their loved one's sentence, but to multiply that—donating $2, $5, $10 or more dollars for every year that we accumulate. In this way, 1000 years of pledged years should raise not just the $1000 pledged by those contributing their years, but many more thousands of dollars for the BA Everywhere campaign. We want to hear from all who donate, from all walks of life... building a voice in society that is responding to the outrageous genocidal mass incarceration of millions by contributing to the first step towards a radically new world.

 

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