Dinner Among Immigrants: Raising Funds for the Dialogue and Grappling with Big Questions of Religion and Revolution
October 17, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
A fundraising dinner held recently among immigrants raised $110 for the Cornel West-Bob Avakian dialogue. It was an informal dinner held with a few family and friends, plus someone from the Party. There were eight of us altogether. The entire discussion was in Spanish with translation for the comrade. The food was great and the discussion was pretty intense at times, and very ideological. It revolved around the theme of the Dialogue and the two speakers.
At first, people were talking mostly about their personal backgrounds, coming from the impoverished mountainous areas of Southern Mexico, with one person saying how revolution in the U.S. is not possible because people, including immigrants, get comfortable with life/work in the U.S. The comrade opened the centerfold of Revolution #349 and went through the three pictures as to why revolution is necessary, and someone read from the first segment of the RCP’s strategy statement in Chapter 3 of BAsics. He went into the importance/role of BA, the high caliber communist leader we have, who has developed the most advanced communist theory in the world so far, and how this impacts the possibility.
One person put the Dialogue palm card on the table and said he wanted each person at the table to speak to what will happen there, and if the purpose is for BA and CW to convert or win over each other through it? One immigrant woman said in a somewhat angry tone “you can’t tell me there is no God, he exists for me.”
The comrade spoke to the historic nature of the Dialogue, the significance of each of the two speakers and stressed that it is about the entire title of the dialogue, given a notable tendency to want to focus it on religion full stop, cutting off the first half of the theme. Not surprisingly, these immigrant masses aren’t familiar with Cornel at all so we pulled up his picture on a smart phone and explained who he is. A Party supporter spoke to the importance of epistemology and challenged the view that “god exists for me so who are you to say he doesn’t exist.” He talked about reality and objectively truth exists for everyone in the world, or it doesn’t.
Someone brought out a Spanish copy of the Bible and read a passage from it where God asks Moses to slaughter men, women and children, bring down the plague and burn down their villages for disobeying him. When he finished, you could hear a pin drop. One person finally broke the silence with “that is shocking!”, admitting he had never read the Bible, while the woman mentioned earlier continue to argue irrationally that “maybe God had a reason to have them killed” and no one can take her faith from her.
Two immigrant youth asked if we can be good without God, and one of them emotionally put his hands over his chest and said “there is an empty space in my heart that religion fills.” He said when he died he “will go to a better place whereas you all will end up nowhere” (or with nothing), and that he would be doing a lot of very bad things if he didn’t have God.
The comrade spoke to why religion is a philosophy of submission, getting people to accept the horrible world that needs to and can be changed through revolution, and the empty spot or hole in people’s hearts is hopelessness about the world, and for the youth in particular, the question of having a purpose to one’s life is a big part of filling the emptiness of life under this system. She said revolutionaries die but revolution is infinite, that the struggle for communism to end all oppression and exploitation will continue for human beings to get free.
The discussion was so intense that at one moment, all eight of us were talking at the same time, but some of the questions weren’t returned to (e.g. whether we can be good without God) due to the necessity of going back and forth in Spanish and English so that everyone could participate. But at the end of a long evening, two people said they want to read Away With All Gods by Bob Avakian, and with the deeply religious woman saying she is interested in knowing more about this movement for revolution, and agreed we are on the same side in fighting oppression, even as she continues to differ on God/religion.
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