On Saturday, August 5, a team went out to a rally protesting the Texas Education Agency (the Texas state government’s public school branch) takeover and fascist makeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) (see “Turning What Were School Libraries Into Detention Centers: The Fascist Transformation of the Houston School District”). Our goal was to broadly impact this section of people on why revolution is necessary and possible, and challenge people to join in and become part of putting revolution on the map this year.

Over the last few months there have been several rallies like this. This time there was a noticeable shift in the mood of people. People were angrier, and more questioning. About 250 people came out, including a large number of teachers and librarians. A central focus of this rally was anger at the recently announced conversion of libraries in targeted schools into detention centers for students, and the firing of the librarians at these schools. 

We established our space with a four-panel display of “We Need and We Demand” and distributed 237 packets of “We Are the Revcoms” and We Need And We Demand. This was in sharp contrast to the formal rally of the elected and the “want to be elected,” promising reforms. As a retired Black teacher said, “If that’s all they’re doing, I don’t want to listen to that.” This is not to say that people weren’t caught up in BEB (bourgeois electoral bullshit), but many there were also questioning how real changes can actually be made. A number of people stopped to take photos and read the demands on the display including one woman who asked, “When was this Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America written? I’ve never heard about it.” We had enlarged the title of the section in the Constitution on education, and many people focused on that section. A couple of people also went further and started questioning the economic system of capitalism-imperialism in contrast to the socialist economy. 

Several people came up and talked about how they see the state takeover of HISD as part of something bigger. One librarian came from San Antonio and said that it has not happened there yet but she can see it coming. Several other people got into how they see this as part of a nationwide fascist takeover. Some of them linked it to women losing the right to abortion. People also talked about the impact on generations of children to not have libraries. These kinds of sentiments opened up engagement on the need and possibility for revolution, especially now in these rare times. 

Many of the people we talked with we’re inviting to the August 6 Houston video showing of Raymond Lotta’s talk "Robert Oppenheimer Served America’s Empire: We Have the Responsibility and Possibility to End This Horror, and Bring a Far Better World Into Being." And our plan is to more concretely organize them into this movement for revolution. Our crew included people who were newer to taking out literature to public protests and talking to people they didn’t know, and there was unevenness to how we did, but we’re all learning. Also, one thing that we summed up as a weakness was that we didn’t raise any money, and that’s something we’re correcting for our next outing.