Revolution #238, July 3, 2011
Get BAsics Out on YouTube
Join Carl Dix, Herb Boyd, Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, and Nicholas Heyward Sr. in spreading the BAsics.
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a new book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.
This book has to go viral!
One important way to spread the word way beyond those who already are tuned into the revolution is to get quotes from BAsics up on YouTube.
Among the quotes up now, Rev. Kooperkamp, Pastor of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Harlem, reads BAsics 3:22: “You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.” And, Kooperkamp added, “That is a basic truth.”
And there’s more. But there needs to be way more.
Here’s how YOU can make this happen...
First, spread the word—at work and school, on the radio, on the web, and on the walls (where that is permitted): Go to youtube.com/knowthebasics1.
There should be scores and eventually hundreds of these videos up. This coming weekend is a perfect time to start, particularly at anti-July 4th picnics. Set up a camera—a flip camera or even a decent cell phone camera would work—and gather up people who are reading the book. Give people a chance to practice reading their favorite quote from BAsics/Lo BAsico, then record videos of people reading these favorite quotes, and—if they want to—explaining what they think about it and why.
People can pick a quote they want to read, and end the video with “You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics!” All together these videos should provide a growing sense of the impact of this book; it will put Bob Avakian’s words right out there for people to encounter and enable different sections of people to communicate with each other. People from a neighborhood can watch videos of more well-known people; artists and students can watch videos of people from the neighborhoods... making these kinds of connections is an important part of the movement for revolution we are building.
Also, people have a right to be heard around the world with this kind of important message without giving up their privacy. So, before you start recording, have a stack of hats, dark wrap-around sunglasses, bandanas, and so on... get creative with things people can wear while they record their videos.
You can mail video files (in regular video file formats like MOV, WMV or AVI) on a flash drive to Revolution Books in New York City (address on page 15), or go to revcom.us/basics-videos for further instructions.
Then watch and show videos from other people reading their favorite quotes from BAsics.
Spread the word. And send ideas to Revolution newspaper for how to spread these videos and other promotional ideas for BAsics.
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