Two Professors on BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
October 7, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On October 17, there will a screening of an excerpt from the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! on the UCLA campus. The following are recent statements about BA and the film from two Los Angeles-area professors: Juan Gómez-Quiñones, history professor at UCLA; and Dennis Loo, sociology professor at Cal State Pomona.
From Juan Gómez-Quiñones, professor of history, UCLA, and author:
Come Join Plato—Walk into the Sunlight*
As a professor teaching materials on social movements, I would propose and ask the following:
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! is about a better world nothing less—a world we could imagine as better than this one. In this film BA [Bob Avakian] makes a call to consider the present and imagine the future differently from our everyday perspective, different from the angle of many of our usual teachers in required classes and required texts. This film is about us—nothing less.
If we stand back and see our society, the world on the news and even our own lives—we feel contradictory pressures of job, school or the environment, even our friends. In sum we feel the anxiety for the future: Will there be a future? We ask: What kind of future do I want? Why is there violence everywhere? Why does poverty spread and racism continue and why do more and more people engage in violence? In a class, we may ask: Why don’t we ever discuss, even argue about the present or the future?
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! offers you one set of glasses to see, offers you one voice to hear critically. It challenges you to be a real person along with other real persons willing to say a different, better world is possible. This stance and awareness is critical thinking, taking charge to end the madness of the world as it is, to try changing yourself and the world.
* Refers to the statement by someone who saw the film and relates it to Plato’s allegory of the cave “in which Socrates describes a group of people who have been chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing the stone” and only see the world in shadows, that’s as close to reality as they come. The writer goes on: “Socrates tells us that the philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave, who can step outside, at last, in the freshness of truth, the real world. Bob Avakian’s analysis breaks apart the small framework in which we are manipulated.” Read entire statement and what others are saying about BA and the film at revcom.us. [back]
From Dennis Loo, professor of sociology, Cal State Pomona:
As someone whose life course was also deeply impacted by the 1960s' social movements when revolution was "on the table," even if it did not occur in the U.S., BA's tireless and deeply scientific approach and illuminating contributions to putting revolution back on the table are something that need to be popularized widely. For those who suspect or explicitly know that things as they are now are not the only way that the world has to be, this call in BA's talk and work is exceptionally vital. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it's a matter of life and death for untold numbers of people and the fate more broadly of the planet.
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