On December 10 and 17, 2022, the Revolution Club organized fundraising events at Revolution Books in Berkeley. Described as a “revolutionary crafts fair with a poetic spirit,” we wanted to combine a holiday crafts fair with a program around the importance of having a poetic spirit inspired by an excerpt from the BA Interviews.

We put out a call to our existing supporters and people around the revolution to make different crafts for sale, and received patches, bracelets, earrings, postcards, buttons, framed photographs, and even plants from eight contributors in total. For the program itself, a few poets who had watched the BA interviews read pieces inspired by them.

At the end of the program, we made plans to gather on January 8 to watch the live stream,  celebrate the New Year, and raise funds.

In total we raised nearly $1,000 over two weeks, and we’ve decided to leave a table with crafts up at the bookstore for the rest of the holiday season as a continuation of the fundraiser.

LISTENING TO DISTANT BIRDSONG

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.
—Bob Avakian, The Interview, Up Close and Personal

How much rain, heat,
blood & terror can you swallow?
You suddenly become intimate
with the faces of people all over the world.
Iran. Haiti. Sudan. Ukraine. Brazil. Puerto Rico.
Japan. Palestine. Yemen. Chicago.
The world bursting apart,
challenging every breath.
You are choking, eyes blazing.
Everything out of control, you say.
The escape routes blocked
with the roots of storm-ravaged trees,
bombed buildings and broken bodies
buried in the corridors of your dreams.
No curtain of ignorance to hide behind.
The underground vault of tranquility
is full of the bones
of all the forgotten martyrs of liberation.
Whether the flowers in the garden of your life
are blooming or rotting doesn’t matter
to the demons of destruction who rule.
The darkness is no longer blinding:
The flashing light of death overwhelming.
Name the stars, lie down in the heather,
make love like it was the first time?
Become like a doomed, hopeless tarantula
lurking in the underbrush
ready to pounce on survivors?
Denounce the war clouds and poison in the sky,
and the bloodletting on Earth,
then abandon the growing resistance
and retreat into solitary desperation?
What will jumpstart your heart?
Humanity’s at a crossroads:
We’re either on the colossal, life-changing brink
of bringing forward a whole new world,
or falling into an abyss of annihilation.
It’s sea change or die, complicity or revolution.
It’s ten seconds to midnight.
10,9, 6, 7, 2, 5,3,1,1,1…
Hear the birds calling?