It is heartrending and insane and infuriating that 19 schoolchildren two days shy of summer vacation, along with their teachers, are slaughtered as they sat in school in Texas. It is heartrending and insane and infuriating that this comes only 10 days after 10 Black people out shopping for food on a Saturday afternoon in the only supermarket in the entire Black section of Buffalo, NY are murdered by a white supremacist.

It seems as if the solutions are obvious—and on one level, they should be. But the roots of this run deep. So deep questions must be asked at a time like this and deep answers must be sought. There is a rot at the heart of this society that needs to be excavated and confronted in order to really solve this.

Ask yourself:

How are horrors like these connected to the history of this country, with its empowering of white people to use violence to seize land and to enforce barbaric slavery—traditions that until relatively recently were celebrated in the mainstream culture? What is the connection between the violence ripping through the cities and small towns of America and the violence committed by America in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other places? How is this madness connected to an economic system and a culture that fragments and isolates people from each other into billions of powerless individuals competing against everyone else, in a heartless world of “winners and losers,” rather than the world we could have—of freely cooperating human beings taking care of each other and of nature? What is the connection between this violence and the violence done every day to women in ten million ways in this society, and to the move right now to strip women of control over their own reproduction by outlawing abortion? And how might it be connected to the splitting of America in two, right before our eyes, and the growing talk of civil war?

There are answers. And there is possibility—the possibility of a different society, one that does not run on exploitation and oppression and the destructive conflicts between people. There is a strategy to make the revolution needed to get to that society, and to do it in these times of extreme danger but also the possibility of revolution. There is leadership for that struggle, in Bob Avakian and the revcoms.

That leader, Bob Avakian, speaking in a different context, said something 20 years ago that rings out with force and relevance today:

No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that. (BAsics, 1:13, from the book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian)

Let’s make good on that vow, this generation. If you have had it with this madness and you want to find out more about the movement for an actual revolution, go to www.revcom.us and be sure to watch The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube every Thursday.