At Revolution Books

Rihanna and Breaking ALL the Chains!

July 21, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This correspondence is a great start and example of putting BAsics 3:22 at the heart of the August 9th Celebration. We look forward to hearing from you and your response to the quote.

For over four years now, a Revolution poster of the before/after beating of Rihanna by Chris Brown has hung in a side window of Revolution Books visible to the street. People stop every day to look at this poster which sparks fury, quips, debates – the gamut – from passersby. A couple days ago, two store staff people were talking with a college student interning at the store about how to involve people in the August 9th Break All the Chains celebration, and make a big deal about the new publication "Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution."

We decided to hang the poster outside facing the sidewalk next to an enlargement of quote 3:22 from the book BAsics from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, "You cannot break all the chains, except one…". We got pads of large post-its, sat down on the bench beside our display and asked people passing by to write their comments.

The first person to stop was an older dreadlocked Latino man who stood staring for a long time before quietly uttering, "Disgusting." He told us his father had beaten his mother throughout his childhood until he got big enough to stop him. His mother meanwhile told him repeatedly that his father was a good man. When she passed away and his father got Alzheimers, it fell to him to take care of his father until he died.

This man lived two blocks from the bookstore. We met many neighbors that afternoon including people who had never been in the store but had looked at the poster repeatedly and had a lot to say once we asked. One 40 year-old white woman told us, "I was never political until two years ago, now I'm a raging feminist." It was the attacks on abortion, the epidemic of battering, porn—the whole war on women—that changed her. She had not thought about revolution before, but listened to us and went inside to sign up on Revolution Books' email list and find out about the Stop Patriarchy Freedom Ride to Texas.

We learned some things. A Black woman staying at a nearby hotel had written her thesis on what happens to Black women who have been battered. "Many of them don't see themselves as victims of domestic violence because they say, 'I fought back!' When they get to court the judge sees a fierce confident woman and they get no justice or protection because the court declares no battering took place."

Two young Black women stopped, one told us, "Sometimes we women bring this on." We asked her to explain. "How we talk, how we dress, we can provoke men." When we got into the oppression of this whole system—and that people don't have to live this way, we need a revolution—they lit up, they could relate. But abuse by men was more like the weather… normal, not part of the system. They ended up writing on the post-it, "Even though one is provoked, no one deserves to be beaten."

One young white guy wrote, reflecting how even those most directly impacted by misogyny [the hatred of women] internalize it: "I remember in high school girls talking about Rihanna, 'What an ugly bitch.' Confusing and sad." He is an actor, new to NYC, and wants to participate in the August 9 Break ALL the Chains evening.

In the space of two hours, post-its with comments covered one side of the bookstore's front window—they're still up and we plan to continue collecting them through August 9. (There are coat hangers with messages about abortion next to this display.)

Many people got the quote card with BAsics 3:22, some got the "Break ALL the Chains" sampler edition, some want to be part of August 9—a lot of people got a taste of this movement for revolution, what lies inside this bookstore and why it must be saved.

 

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