July 4th Weekend Picnics Hosted by BA Everywhere!
What to a Slave Is Your Fourth of July?
We Refuse to Accept Slavery in Any Form!
July 14, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Over the July 4th weekend, hundreds of people came to picnics and barbeques around the country hosted by BA Everywhere committees. The gatherings brought together people of different ages and from various neighborhoods and communities. Funds were raised to get the word out on the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA). People learned about big plans for BA Everywhere this summer—to win many more people to join the campaign to raise the kinds of funds that can get BA and his work out all over around what’s the problem with the world and the revolutionary solution. BA Everywhere committees are making “Revolution in the City” plans to go out among, and involve, youth in particular—and to reach out as widely as possible to all kinds of people throughout society who care about what’s happening with those on the bottom, are concerned about the world, and are seeking answers.
From May 1st through the end of the July 4th weekend, the “1000 Years – $1000 for BA Everywhere” project raised over $11,000 nationally. This is a great start—and shows the huge potential to multiply this amount and reach the aim of raising tens of thousands of dollars by October, the Month of Resistance Against Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.
The gatherings were fun, with live music, games, and great food. There were deep and wide-ranging conversations—and sometimes debate—among people who in this society rarely encounter each other, let alone get into big questions like: What’s the reason for the way people are forced to live, here and around the world? What is meant by calling it a system of capitalism-imperialism? What is BA’s new synthesis of communism and revolution? What about religion? Is the right to abortion essential for women being full participants in society? And much more. People got a real feeling for the huge difference it would make if BA Everywhere begins to succeed, with many more people knowing about BA and his work and getting into these kinds of questions.
On this page are pictures from gatherings around the country. See "Chicago July 6 BA Everywhere Picnic: Coming Together for a Radically Different Future" for a report from the picnic in Chicago. For fuller reports, more photos, video, and more information about the BA Everywhere campaign, go to BA Everywhere page at revcom.us.
All photos: Special to Revolution
Below: Los Angeles—People from South Central neighborhoods and different parts of the city came together with youths from the Revolution Club and others active in different struggles for a multinational anti-July 4th picnic. A Revolution Club member read a poetic statement on the "Red, White and Blue," saying in part: "The flag is draped over the people and the country and spread around the world as a curtain, burqa, a veil, to keep them from seeing the reality of oppression and the truth and understandings of the working of this system draining the life out of humanity. Just think about why some people from other countries hate this flag."
Above: New York City—The New Amsterdam Music Association in Harlem was the site for a barbeque and festival. A large donation of food from the Bronx got combined with other donations and was prepared by volunteers from Harlem and around the city. A group of people, some familiar with BA's work and others who have just learned about BA recently, read statements from ex-prisoners about why they have raised money for BA Everywhere. Then people threw chains—with one link for every year lost in the hellhole prisons of Amerikkka—into a garbage can marked "home of the free," representing the lies and hypocrisy of this system.
Below: Houston
Below: San Francisco Bay Area—The picnic in Oakland brought together immigrants from Latin America, Black people from the neighborhood, students, revolutionary communists, and others in a spirit of defiance. As part of the program, a woman from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network read a letter from a prisoner supporting the "1000 Years–$1000 for BA Everywhere" project and pledged to raise $200, which was followed by a fundraising pitch that raised $400.
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