From LA Across the Country: Getting Down with the Revolution and Getting into BA

March 25, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Saturday, March 23 marked a solid step forward for the National Revolution Tour, now focused in Los Angeles. People who are just turning their faces toward revolution came out to hear the first part of Bob Avakian’s filmed 2018 speech (Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution), as well as BA Through The Years. People gathered in different cities to watch the livestream.

They came as well to listen to a talk from representatives of the Tour, to break bread afterward with Tour members, and in many cases to get involved. People came from the climate march a week earlier, from the transit hubs and high schools where Tour members and volunteers went to agitate, from a union rally for Bernie Sanders, from the area around the park, and elsewhere in the area.

People came, in brief, to find out more about revolution, and as they ate donated ribs, vegan fare, and delicious conchas (Mexican sweetbread); they wrangled over a whole range of questions that had been gone into by BA in the film. If you walked from table to table, there were vets locked in deep discussion on the real role of the U.S. around the world; people hearing about what the Tour had done up in Sacramento and Vallejo, digging into the limitations—and damage done by—identity politics; and high school students drinking in what they were hearing and putting forward their views on it all. More than one person there had been attracted initially by Bernie Sanders but saw or sensed the American chauvinism saturating his thing and/or the limits of his electoral reformism, and wanted something different. Very notably, there were people talking about, and in one case wielding right on the spot with each other, the Points of Attention for Revolution.

In both the program and the picnic discussions that followed, Bob Avakian—what he said in the films, in the work he’s done, and in who he is—was a real presence. More than one person there had followed him from a distance and was feeling the need to “get in closer,” and others were just getting introduced to him and feeling strongly that “people need to know about this... and I need to know more about it.” The main talk at the program drew heavily from the crossroads laid out clearly in BA’s speech: “In fundamental terms, we have two choices: either live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!” This ran through the main talk and then continued in the discussions outside.

The Tour had a sign-up sheet with a range of activities, and a number of people committed to be part of one or more. Others bought copies of BAsics or the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. Working with people on these next steps—working with them on how this is contributing to and fitting into making revolution, getting into their questions as we take this out further—will be critically important.

There was a certain point where, if you stepped away from a table for a minute and looked at the panorama, with people at a half-dozen or more tables intently discussing things with those who had been strangers a few short hours before, you could say to yourself, this is a beginning. And you would be right.