Heading into “Take BA to Campus Week”
April 30-May 4

From a reader:

For the last two months, a few of us have been taking the film of BA’s talk, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible to a local New York City college with a large proportion of Black, Latino and immigrant students. On March 1, nearly 20 students joined with us for 11 minutes of silence in support of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

Our approach has been pretty simple. We distribute palm cards for the film to students, faculty and staff outside the school, while focusing on briefly telling people who BA is, what the film is about, then encourage them to watch clips of the film. Having the film playing continuously on a tablet with an amplified speaker makes a big difference in how many people stop and watch clips. Many of those who’ve stopped feel Trump IS a racist horror and real danger, and that too many people are “sleepwalking”—not protesting or resisting in the way that’s needed. So a good number are attracted to watching BA’s “wake-up” film. A woman walking by told us she didn’t have time to stop, but she was drawn in by the film and watched it for 20 minutes. We hear a lot of “he’s right about that” or “I agree with what he’s saying.”

After watching the film trailer, one woman student said, “What he was saying—if they [Trump/Pence] were to go through with getting rid of North Korea with nuclear weapons, we wouldn’t get rid of half of North Korea, we’d get rid of half the world. So I agree with what [BA] is saying.” She didn’t know about the example of Egypt and Tahrir Square but said, “I feel like if we actually stand up against him in numbers like he [BA] was saying then, yeah, we can stop Trump.” Did she want to be part of this? “Yeah, I want to be part of it.”

Two students have watched the whole film with us, and it kicked off wide-ranging discussions over a number of questions including how revolution would deal with all the individualism in this society, what it will really take to stop the Trump/Pence regime, whether voting and the Democrats are an answer, and whether people are too scared of communism to embrace BA’s solution. Both left eager for further engagement, including with THE NEW COMMUNISM.

So far we’ve signed up dozens of people who’ve said they want to help take responsibility to spread the film far and wide. Some have taken beginning steps. One student distributed over 100 palm cards including to the faculty. We’re working with them to get organized (and to understand and help transform the obstacles that make that difficult for many people) to spread the film and engage BA’s work further.

We’ve also gone door-to-door to talk to faculty and met a good number, including some who’ve taken cards for their classes. Others have watched and commented on the film. Some interesting engagement over science, the importance of Darwin and evolution, fascism, and BA’s new communism has begun.

We’re working with students and faculty to make “Take BA to Campus Week” a big deal. While focusing on the film and organizing a showing, we also want to open the door to a broader introduction to BA and the new communism. We’re thinking of doing a book table, getting faculty members the new official biography, spreading the brochure from The Bob Avakian Institute, perhaps mass distributing BAsics quotes and the film cards for REVOLUTION—Nothing Less! Bob Avakian Live, along with invitations to the film showing. 

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The following is a report from a campus in which the Revolution Club has been a presence for a while, and where a number of relatively high-profile fascists have recently spoken.

We’ve been going to campus almost every day and trying to get off the ground. We decided to establish a consistent public presence at two key places at lunch time where students hang out. We’ll do quick classroom announcements and let people know where they can find us. We have a rolling cart with a TV powered by a car battery and we show clips and Q&As for about three hours.

The first day we had a loudspeaker playing clips and I believe this played a part in attracting people, though only one or two at a time. People were just walking by as I tried to do agitation, so I just started going straight up to people and struggling with them to get into this talk. Since we had the loudspeaker we were able to let the clips do the agitation for us while we went up to people calling them over, this is what worked best. A woman who said she was in a rush got pulled in after watching the GTF clip, she confided that she was undocumented and was afraid of stepping out, so I played the Q&A where BA speaks to this. When that Q&A was over I tried to talk to her but she wanted to continue watching the Q&A that came next. She left abruptly before that one was over leaving only her email address. Another woman walked up as this was playing and later talked about how she really liked what he said about identity politics and how she was so tired of that. She gave an example of a group of women who were fighting for a higher wage and how those very women kept people from joining the struggle because they weren’t women or part of that particular group of people. It’s been like this throughout where people engage parts of the talk, leave an email but won’t commit to taking up the mission to take this talk out.

One of the members of a Black student group who is attracted to the Revolution Club called us to be part of planning a protest against a fascist speaker. When we got there, there was a lot of discussion about what the protest should be about and what different people’s roles should be. I stated that “this represents a fascist onslaught, an attempt to normalize fascism, preparing people to go along with horrific crimes. We have a different understanding of what this is and we have different goals. But we all agree that this is a problem and that it has to be opposed so there’s plenty of basis for unity, and if this situation is going to be successfully turned back then there is a need for further unity going forward with lots of debate about what is the problem and what is the solution.”

Most people appreciated us being there, though we did get some cold responses going into the protest. The leadership planned to have 12 disrupters but a lot more people than expected went in while a group stayed outside chanting and playing music. Two people from the Revolution Club went inside but the disruptions more took the form of arguing back and forth with the fascists, rather than collective chants.

Outside people really warmed up to the Club and kept asking one of the comrades to get on the mic to lead chants and agitate. Toward the end one of the people who had went in came out a little spooked by what was going on inside and told people that the fascists wanted to physically fight. This very clearly scared some people who started talking about backing down and leaving or at least toning down the language. I intervened at this point and agitated on what this is and what it’s going to take to really deal with it, we shouldn’t speak lightly of sacrifice but we have to confront the reality that fighting back against the ugly shit that is taking hold is going to require sacrifice and if we’re not willing to put our bodies on the line to oppose it than they will steam roll ahead and take us back to the days when they celebrated and sold postcards of lynchings. This turned the whole mood back around to one of defiance.

Some of the fascists came out in a small group but ended up keeping their distance. As other fascist who attended the event made their way toward the walkway next to where we were at, people got information and started dancing in unison electric slide style blocking the way forcing the fascists to walk alongside the edge.

Everybody was invited back to “debrief” at the student group office. We spoke in the beginning to bolster people’s spirit and bring in BA, arguing once again about the need for principled debate and struggle about the problem and the solution making sure everybody got a palm card. People were clearly shaken by what went on inside, they didn’t know how ugly this really was. There was a lot of nationalism and identity politics going on, and some reducing things to what goes on, on this particular campus, but every time one of us got to speak we’d bring in the whole picture and get a lot of “snaps” while we were talking. Someone spoke, and in what I thought was a clear polemic on what I had said, stated that “we need to penetrate the system and become lawyers and doctors” while a couple of other people said that capitalism was the problem. We got some contacts, including that of the chair’s, and believe there is a lot of freedom that can be wrenched going forward out of this.

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We've been spreading revolution and especially working to get BA's talk seen on a particular campus for some months, building on a whole history of work. In the last period in particular, we've focused on broad promotion of the recent BA film, with some smaller viewings of it and being part of resistance against the regime. When a few of us stepped back to think about it, we realized there were some important things we'd been stepping over.

First, there are a number of people we know who are connected in to different kinds of social circuits... some through the dorms, some through their social life and some through the political organizing they've done on campus. They have a sense of how to reach people—not mainly through mass flyering, but through their personal ties and connections. One person we know has a lot of connections to artists and students of color... another is linked up with the sorority and fraternity council... another is in athletics... someone else is a grad student. Every campus has its own dynamic. But campuses are not just 1000s of students bouncing around like atoms. People group into different sets, some isolated and some overlapping, some more alive with ferment and potential and some not; we’ve got to get that if we’re going to get anywhere.

When you survey the campus with more of a bird's eye view, you can see the importance of these kinds of ties and connections... and how you could reach—and learn more about—broad swaths of people through personal and political connections. While it's important to be out on the quad meeting people, these kinds of deeper links can have a more qualitative impact and strengthen the broad work you're doing.

Most of these individuals have seen the BA film on the Trump/Pence Regime but we haven't enough drawn out what they think or thought about how to marshal these connections in a systematic enough way. We're going to try to pull these folks together to talk more about the film, what they all thought of it and how it can be seen by many many more people. If they can't all get together at the same time, we'll meet with smaller groups of them... working together and on a more collective mission. Some of these people are interested in getting more deeply into BA and the whole new communism, checking out the Revolution Club... others are more interested in building resistance against the fascist regime and unsure what they think of the whole revolution. This is all in motion and while continuing to open the door to all of what BA is about, this film especially can reach everyone who is concerned or questioning what this regime is doing. We should definitely open the door to the Club—but if we make joining the Revolution Club a requirement for working on the film (whether we say that straight-up or just convey it through our actions), then the whole process is going to be much narrower than it needs to be and has to be.

Getting this bird's eye view also helps us learn more about the kinds of questions and debates happening on campus. One part of this that's struck us is how much turmoil there actually is among people, but it's not right now bubbling to the surface. There's struggle about whether the student groups are playing the role they should be playing right now, debate about how and whether to take on various fascist speakers that come to the campus, people's thinking both stuck in—and sometimes straining against—the dominant frameworks of relativism, identity politics and individualism... we've also found a special appreciation for the struggle against American chauvinism that's spoken to in the BA film.

We have to be in there with people—in the places and spaces where this kind of debate and discussion is going on or can be drawn out—learning and leading. And especially driving people to this film... working together for it to be seen by hundreds and thousands on any particular campus, and millions throughout society.

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