This is a time to step up BA Everywhere
Rev up the Engines for the Revolution—Nothing Less! August Van Tours
August 4, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Call up the volunteers. Reserve the vans. Ready the projection and sound equipment to reach hundreds and thousands of people. Rev up the engines for the second week of the Summer 2013 Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tours to go back on the road at a juncture when people have new ears to hear the music of revolution.
Right now: when people are agonized about what is to be done about a system that justifies the lynching of Black youth...
Right now: when people are wrestling with what is to be done about a system that brutalizes and degrades women and that is rapidly and systematically taking away the right to abortion that enables a woman to be free to decide when and if she will have a child...
Right now: when people are beginning to make the connections between these outrageous crimes and the reality that this is a country that murders people across the globe by remote control, that spies on its entire population, that lets a racist vigilante walk free but unleashes the full thug force of its empire against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden—whistleblowers who have exposed the real war crimes of this government—all while this system relentlessly destroys the planet...
People are grappling with big questions: why do these outrages keep happening, what can be done, and isn't there a better way the world could be?
There is an answer, and it's concentrated in the film: BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live. And there is a guide, a handbook for revolution in this time: BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. And there is a campaign, BA Everywhere, to involve lots of people who yearn for a radically better world to spread this vision and to raise funds to make this known. (See "Summer 2013: Taking BA Everywhere, Raising Funds and Making a Difference.")
Van Tour, Oakland, California
If you are seething with outrage at the George Zimmerman verdict, if you have a conscience and just can't stomach any longer the whole horrific state of the country and the world, you can be a part of one of the Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tours in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, or the San Francisco Bay Area during the second week of August.
THIS IS PRECISELY THE TIME TO STEP OUT AND STEP UP WITH THE REVOLUTIONARY VISION AND FRAMEWORK DEVELOPED BY BOB AVAKIAN. We are living in a moment when people's perceptions and understanding of the world are being challenged by the outrage of the murder and then the courtroom lynching of Trayvon Martin and the continuing unfolding debate and ramifications. This is a time when people's thinking is in flux. This is a time of serious questions that demand serious answers.
No one has developed a scientific methodology to go to work on these questions and forged answers like BA (Bob Avakian). As we have written before in Revolution: "Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done over several decades, summing up the positive and negative experience of the communist revolution so far, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, there is a new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward—there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal." (For more information on BA's new synthesis of communism go to revcom.us/avakian/ba-new-synthesis-brief.html)
Discovering BA and what he has brought forward at this time can shake up people's long-held assumptions, break people out of thinking that there is no other way the world could be. Engage BA and new possibilities open, urgent matters like the future of the world get posed—and sections of people can be drawn towards and into the movement for revolution.
In early July, the first of the Summer 2013 Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tours made a beginning impact. Volunteers of different ages, genders, nationalities, and background took off from work and school, and broke out of the routine of life to work together to introduce and involve a whole lot of people in the BA Everywhere campaign. The decorated vans were equipped with flat-screen TVs and portable DVD players and sound systems. Hundreds of people saw sections of the 6+ hour film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live. After the gut-wrenching Zimmerman not guilty verdict, the tours reported that there was a new openness and seriousness. A young woman said she didn't want another 30 years to go by and this to still be happening. Two young Black men who had known about the movement for revolution reconnected and volunteered to go out on the tour for a day or two. A Methodist minister went out to protest the Zimmerman verdict and the next day donated $50 and wrote: "We have come to a point of no return when it comes to dehumanizing our people of color and communities. Resist is the word. Tired of marches and speeches... This is time to act!!! and real revolution!!!"
The vicious verdict came just as the three-week crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo (IGG) to raise funds for the BA Everywhere Summer 2013 Campaign was approaching its last 48 hours, and people's horror at the verdict fueled their desire for BA and revolution to be way out in the midst—and $24,606 was raised, surpassing the goal of $20,000. This support must be built on and amplified on a whole other level now.
The August van tours must have the ability to show the film to large groups of people. Flat screens big enough to draw a crowd and/or projectors with good sound so that groups can gather and watch the film together. Announcements circulated that the vans will be at a project or park at a set time to show the film. Screenings arranged at community centers. The August van tours should aim for hundreds and more in each city to see the film. The experience selling the DVDs, BAsics, T-shirts and buttons from the July tours should be summed up and the potential of the current juncture grasped so that there is an exponential leap in sales and spreading BA.
Right now, BA Everywhere Committees need to involve all the people met in June and July, including all those who contributed to the IGG campaign to put heads together to plan to make a real leap in how to involve people in raising funds on the spot and in an ongoing process. People will contribute and join in if the great need that this campaign fills—in bringing to really large numbers of people the possibility of a radically better world and the movement for revolution that is making it a reality—is boldly and straightforwardly put forward. To raise the really big funds necessary for BA Everywhere to have societywide impact, people need to become a part of an ongoing campaign—following its progress online at revcom.us, hooking up with it in the neighborhoods, taking it out to family and friends, and by joining the BA Everywhere Committees, so that BA Everywhere becomes a multifaceted mass fundraising campaign.
The tours and the whole summer's efforts will be capped off with a cultural celebration in a park or neighborhood and a showing of the opening hour of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live on Sunday, August 25—with events that bring together many of the different kinds of people that have been touched by and attracted to the campaign. These celebrations will be an opportunity for people to step back and reflect on what is unfolding as a turning-point summer—and to prepare for greater struggle and societywide influence and impact in the fall. In a summer when people are being jolted by the brutal truth that Amerikkka is indeed a lynching society that causes enormous pain and suffering around the world, a moment when many are lifting their heads and opening up to the big questions that are posed in the world, the August 25 events should be celebratory of the new—that people are finding and are becoming a part of bringing into being a radically better way the world could be through getting into and funding BA Everywhere.
Think again of what a difference the Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tour can make in this highly charged time—in being able to take BA and the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live right to where the people are—where they live, where they gather, where things are hot. Think of the flexibility provided by having the vans with the film, all the organizing materials, projection equipment, and most important volunteers ready and able to go anywhere on quick notice. These are times when the movement for revolution needs to be flexible and on the scene with revolution and nothing less.
It is precisely in the heat of a time like this, when people are raising their heads, questioning, and fighting back, that they really need to engage a deep understanding of the source of the problem and especially the solution—a whole new society organized in a radically new way aiming at the emancipation of all humanity which can only be achieved through revolution. Without this, no matter how hard people fight or how much they sacrifice, the world will not fundamentally change, the horrors will continue, and the defeatist "common wisdom" that nothing can be done to really change things will be further reinforced.
Again, it is precisely in a time like this that not only are more people more open to consider revolution, but finding out the reality that there is the pathbreaking leadership of BA and a party he leads that IS building a movement for revolution is itself a powerful mood-creating factor. The BA Everywhere Campaign, with the Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tours as a key focal point in August, has potential to break through on a scale we've not yet seen.
To those who have supported and/or been part of the struggle to build a movement for revolution, bending every effort to see that BA Everywhere runs through all that the movement for revolution does at this moment will make all the difference in whether or not a crisis like this contributes to the liberation of humanity.
And to all who are reading revcom.us and Revolution newspaper for the first time, to all for whom the not guilty verdict in the murder of Trayvon Martin was the last straw, to all who just can't sit passively by while the right to abortion is taken from women, to all who are just finding out about BA and are beginning to appreciate that there is a radically new world possible through revolution, now is the time for you to take part in the Revolution—Nothing Less! Van Tours, and to become a part of spreading this among others while you are learning about it yourself. There is no better way to learn that there is a way forward for humanity, there is nothing more important you can do.
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