A group of revcom supporters in Cleveland was brainstorming for ways to continue raising significant funds after the summer livestream. Inspired by the report from the Chicago yard sale, we decided we could do something like that here. We set goals to raise at least $1,000, to involve people new to the revolution and people with big differences with the revcoms but supportive of the need for society-wide debate over revolution in each step, and to make every aspect of the sale serve bringing forward a revolutionary people.

The sale was a tremendous amount of work and a lot of fun! At the end of the day, we were shocked and delighted to learn that after expenses we raised close to $1,800. Around 20 families or individuals and four small businesses donated great sale items and/or contributed equipment for display and canopies or helped with hauling, storing, setup and providing live music. One woman met recently at a music festival came wearing her new “Woke” Lunacy vs. Real Revolution T-shirt to help the day of the sale. At least two area businesses directed people to check out the sale, and a Black nationalist activist group promoted it to their membership. Contributors included an antique store and several artists, highly skilled bakers who provided baked goods and many friends of the revolution who provided quality items to sell and both came and encouraged friends to come to support. Everyone who was asked to contribute was introduced to We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System and We Are the Revcoms if they were not already familiar, and contributed on that basis. Shoppers were a pretty broad cross section of the population—not youth, but several nationalities from their 20s to 70s, ranging from basic people to folks with quite a lot of money.

Many learned of the revcoms, Bob Avakian (BA), and The RNL Show for the first time that day. Some came consciously to support because they heard that it was a revcoms sale. A number of people contributed in addition to the price of the items because they learned the funds were going to put revolution on the map THIS YEAR. While people came for a street sale and we made a point of letting them browse on their own, we distributed a fair amount of literature: mainly We Are the Revcoms and We Need and We Demand, but also the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America; Organizing for An Actual Revolution: 7 Key Points; Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emacipating; How We Can Win and fliers for both the “‘Woke’ Lunacy vs. Real Revolution” Campus Speaking Tour and the Raymond Lotta Fall Campus Tour. We met some great people. A couple volunteered to join in Operation Saturation next weekend, a woman from a major campus expressed serious interest in bringing the “Woke” Lunacy vs. Real Revolution Tour there and several signed up to get involved in activities locally. One report characterized particularly well what seemed to be the tenor of most people who came to buy when we approached them to let them know that this was a fundraiser for the revcoms: “Almost all were sympathetic, none were ‘fuck no.’ I included in my opening the fact that many people are in shock by what’s happening, thinking that they should act, but are in shock, holding out on the sidelines—just so we could get it on the table from the git. One Black woman ducked her head immediately and said ‘that’s me to a tee.’ She said she wished she had time to talk. I had run out of literature, so she headed straight to the table to pick some up. She wasn’t the only person, by far, who acknowledged she was thinking this way but had the strongest reaction.”

We still have a lot of summation to do—and a lot to follow up on, including sending thank yous to everyone who contributed. We have immediate plans to sell the remaining baked goods this week and can probably raise an additional $1,000 with the remaining sale items if/when we find a good place to hold an additional sale and unite people able to staff it. We hope to do so within a month or so.