A Path Was Blazed on September 5th:
Will You Walk on That, or Will You Turn Away?

by Andy Zee

September 13, 2020 | revcom.us

 

The following is a transcript of the commentary by Andy Zee on Episode 25 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show.

With all that you’ve seen and heard on today’s RNL Show, and on previous episodes, it comes to this:

A path was blazed on September 5th. Will you walk on that; or will you turn away? We are laced up and ready.

Those who took the streets September 5th were the first rush of a fresh stream pouring down from the mountain of masses of peoples’ outrage and their determination to stop all that is the Trump/Pence regime... This can and must become a torrent over the next 60 days.

Lines are drawn... Trump, Pence, their regime, their fascist base are moving. Did you know that right now, every week there are MAGA boat rallies, car caravans, militias stalking communities; vigilantes and police and paramilitary suppressing protest and voters... while they plot to mobilize all this to intimidate at polling places while subverting counting of absentee ballots?

What was begun with each and every person who took the streets across the country on September 5th is as precious as the first drops of water to parched earth. Now, each and all can and must be marshaled and organized so that October is our month—a month that begins sustained nonviolent protests, building in numbers and determination so that by November there are not just the MAGA Trump forces in the field, but instead there is an unstoppable flood of people in the streets committed, determined, overcoming, and putting aside their differences to unite to say with many voices: TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW! To be fired at their core that not in our name will we allow another day of rule by this fascist regime, to be inspired and determined to demonstrate in word and in deed: In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.

Do not underestimate what we have begun. For in word and deed September 5th posed the questions that each and all of us must answer and continue to answer in word and deed. Questions that must be before people everywhere:

What are you going to do for the next 60 days?... and beyond... Who are you going to be?

Will you say, I didn’t join those who took to the streets in nonviolent protest to demand TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW! because I thought Biden would win and Trump was all bluster?

Will you say, I didn’t join the protests in the streets because Trump is just a reactionary psychopath and fascism couldn’t really happen here?

Will you say that I didn’t join the protests in the streets because I don’t want to be associated with anarchists or revolutionary communists, or Marxists—because I want change but without cost, I want the rain but without thunder and lightning?

Will you say, as some people have told us, that life in the hood and the barrio is always hard and we are always dogged by the system and its police, so we got to deal with things where we’re at, Trump won’t mean anything different for us? Did you know that in Germany and Eastern Europe before the Nazis came to power, Jewish people were oppressed and confined to ghettos, but when Hitler came to full power it was only eight years before they were rounded up and sent to concentration camps?

Will you say, as some people have told us, that they didn’t join the protests in the streets because they know that the Biden Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans and that I am working for real change, ignoring the reality of what was staring me in the face, that the Trump/Pence regime and the fascist movement it leads could seriously wipe out for a long time the possibility of the kind of change I thought would come? Here too, the example of Germany is relevant—where for a time the radical revolutionary forces failed to unite, some having the slogan: “After Hitler, Us,” which tragically became: After Hitler, concentration camps.

Dismiss this as hyperbole. Argue that it hasn’t happened yet so it won’t... Tell yourself reassuring tidbits of history about all the differences between America 2020 and Germany of 1933... but be warned here that if you do this, and fail to heed the call to join together in the streets now to demand Trump/Pence Out Now, if you fail to look squarely in the face of reality without illusion or delusion, if you—if we—fail to find the ways to unite in our great diversity in 60 Days of Struggle this fall... you will then bitterly learn how it actually did happen in Germany in 1933.

And here’s a more underlying question:

What country, what world, will you, will we, will humanity wake up to, in February 2021?

If it is a fascist world... which is what is coming if we don’t rise up in nonviolent, mass sustained protest to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power—then: all your reasons, all your rationalizations and excuses, will evaporate like a drop of water in the hot sun. The hot sun will be ruled by those who are changing the rules—those who rule only by force and terror... those who are committed and determined white supremacists enforcing a racist genocide, those who are Christian fascists insisting that women and LGBTQ people go back... those who terrorize and put immigrants in concentration camps.

September 5th showed that such a course is not necessary. There is a way forward.

To each and every person who came out on September 5th and to all who are watching or hearing about this on this show or elsewhere, know this: You and all of the 1,700 who came out did so in recognition of the danger we face and in defiance of the prevalent thinking that all we can do is vote and wait to see if Trump loses, steals, or defies the election—let alone, that he could actually win the election, with this a possibility made stronger if we are not mobilized while the Trump fascist forces rampage around the country.

We know that being the first out—and in the face of all the reasons given to not do so—is not easy, but you stepped out of your comfort zones because you recognized it mattered and now others can and need to follow in your path. So now each of us needs to reach out and bring others forward. Go to the websites RefuseFascism.org and to revcom.us to get the orientation, the argument, and the materials to bring others forward right now.

Go to those sites which amplify what you saw in the opening video today of people of different backgrounds coming together who think that science and reality matter, that justice matters, and that all of those who came out from different struggles—saving the environment from extinction, saving Black and Brown lives, immigrant, women’s, LGBTQ rights, people fighting for various reforms, and the revcoms working to prepare today for the time when we could make an actual revolution—all of these concerns and causes that affect humanity joining together in recognition that the continuation of the Trump/Pence regime, that the consolidation of fascism, will bring disaster not just to these causes but to the entirety of humanity.

Everyone is needed. Now. Not just when the shit hits the fan. First of all, it has. If the blatant murder of people protesting for Black Lives by MAGA fascist vigilantes does not wake and shake you to the real and present danger, take your pulse.

The people really do have the power. I will repeat that it is on each and all of us to do all we can to arouse, inspire, and organize that into a mighty torrent starting now—60 Days of Struggle—so that going into the election our side has the initiative; so that whatever the Trump/Pence regime does there is a powerful movement in the streets that has forged the ways to work in concert with each other and that will be prepared to mobilize with even greater determination should Trump refuse to leave office.

On September 5th we carved open a path to stop the great calamity that the continuation and consolidation of the Trump/Pence regime would mean. That path needs to and can grow to millions. That is possible because there are millions of people who feel that the horror of this regime must be over.

I close this commentary with the following from Bob Avakian in a statement he made on June 1, soon after the murder of George Floyd:

We need a world without white supremacy and male supremacy—a world where no one is regarded as “alien”—a world without war, where people from all over the globe, with a beautiful flowering of diversity, act together for the common good and are truly caretakers of the earth.

THIS IS NOT JUST A DREAM.

The possibility for this is being powerfully demonstrated in this uprising of the people, of all different races and genders, from all parts of the world—refusing to remain silent or stay passive while all this oppression and brutality goes on.

That was Bob Avakian in the early days of the uprising sparked by the brutal murder by the police of George Floyd.

The struggle over the next period is a crucial part of making this real. Ultimately, to realize this world requires an actual revolution. We, who work for that revolution, are all in with fighting today with all we’ve got, to Drive Out the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

We join with all of you and what must become millions more in making real our conviction that:

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.