In the Wake of the Charleston Massacre:

Get Organized for an Actual Revolution!

June 22, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We definitely support the call issued by Carl Dix and others to manifest strongly against the madness of the Charleston massacre, to build resistance to this true horror and to the whole host of other outrages and horrors that it concentrates. This is not the time for “reconciliation” with oppressors and oppression; this is the time for STANDING UP, powerfully. A major response is most definitely called for, and revolutionaries—along with all people who hate oppression and hunger for justice—cannot wait for “others” to do this! This is a time when the question, WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?, must ring out and challenge every single person who lives in this rotten-ass, stone-to-the-bone racist society.

To make these manifestations strong, they must be ORGANIZED. And they must be organized in a way that brings forward and orients, trains, and organizes people into the forces for revolution.

What, concretely, does this mean right now? First of all, we are organizing people. People are the most important thing in revolution, there is no revolution without people being brought forward and organized. Right now, people are full of thinking, even as they are searching for answers. The Charleston Massacre has struck deep inside of people, and we need to go there with them, exploring the whole reality together with them, working with (and struggling for) the scientific method and approach, and in the course of that not only coming up with creative ideas on how to build resistance as powerfully as possible and where and how to reach out, but getting a deeper understanding of reality.

Second, we are organizing people into a powerful machine to make revolution. We have to figure out, together with the people we are organizing, not only how to reach out as widely as possible to “make things happen,” but how to make the strongest possible impact on the resistance that DOES happen. The ways have to be found, as hundreds or thousands are gathering and resisting, to increase the attractive force of the movement for revolution right on the spot. This means very boldly “stepping out” in ways that let people know who we are and what we are all about, and that calls on them and gives them ways very directly to “run with” and be part of representing for (wearing T-shirts, etc.) the revolution. This will set off a whole process of strengthening the backbone of things overall, attracting more people to the revolution as they see it in action, further strengthening the struggle, and so on, in a positive dynamic.

Third, we need to follow up with people on the spot and in real-time, immediately. All this week there should be chances for people to come together to get into the revolution and get into BA in particular, talking about WHY we need a revolution, WHAT such a revolution would be aiming for, and HOW such a revolution could be made. There’s a lot of ways to begin. You could read over some key quotes in BAsics, like 1:1, 1:2, 3:1, 3:3, 3:15, and 3:19, and discuss one or more of them. You could listen together to the talk “Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy,” especially the first parts of it. You could watch, and then discuss together, the opening sections of any of the films of BA. Of course, this doesn’t have to wait for, and definitely shouldn’t be confined to, special sessions either—you meet someone in the street, or directly after a manifestation of resistance, and you sit down for coffee—whatever, this should be an all-the-time thing. And it should be interlinked with figuring out new plans to take the struggle further. But the point is that people NEED this, as a critical link in the whole process of “fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.”

Finally, and just to re-emphasize, all this has to be in “real-time”—the same intense conditions that give rise to the many fronts that must be fought on and the “thousand deeds to be done” also make people’s thinking very fluid right now, and means that people can be won to a whole process of changing the world and changing their thinking, entering where they are and moving, at whatever pace, through a whole process. But they cannot—and need not—be asked to wait while someone “gets back to them.”

 

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