I am sorry that I can’t be with you in person. A special part of my heart and my revolutionary passion is with Revolution Books in Harlem, New York City.

Do not underestimate the importance of what this store means. Do not underestimate the role Revolution Books plays now and the role it can and needs to play in the coming weeks and months.

As we celebrate together today recognize, and then contribute all you can in funds and by actively working with Revolution Books so that it can fulfill its mission, its crucial role in contributing to a real revolution with stakes no less than whether or not humanity is going to have a future in which people here and all over the world are free from the life-stealing and spirit-crushing system and the culture that perpetuates that system in a time when humanity’s very existence hangs in the balance.

This is not hype. The devastation of the earth’s climate cascades towards a future where life as we have known it for many centuries now will be drastically changed, if in fact humanity as a species is able to survive. The danger of war with China or Russia or both escalates by the month—the New York Times even featured a piece that advises its readers to start discussing what World War 3 would look like. Women around the world are increasingly facing more and more draconian measures subordinating their lives, their bodies, their futures to religious fundamentalist fanatics who govern more and more states, while at the same time, sexual exploitation and degradation run rampant. Here in this country the divisions in society and government—political, cultural, moral, and even the understanding of what is actually true, are so polarized, so acute, that they cannot be reconciled.

My purpose is not to throw a pall over this holiday celebration, but we need to speak the truth and the hour is late and here at Revolution Books we don’t speak falsely. We are guided by the principle of understanding the world as it actually is and how on that basis it could be radically different and far better. This is the scientific approach to knowing and changing the world that has been developed and championed by Bob Avakian—the revolutionary leader whose work in developing the new communism lies at the foundation of Revolution Books.

I am not speaking to you on this occasion to bring the bad news of the madness and horrors that loom. No. Another future is possible. I am speaking to you today from Los Angeles to welcome you to a place, Revolution Books Harlem, New York, which is a center of the movement for a revolution that recognizes that out of all the horrors that sit like a weight on humanity lies the potential to bring about a radically different and far better future. Since you are celebrating with the most radical revolutionary store in the world (alongside of Revolution Books in Berkeley) you are in a place that holds the hope for the hopeless, the hope and dreams for a world free of all forms of oppression and exploitation, and place that is forging the critical thinkers and dreamers to make that real.

What am I speaking of? Bob Avakian has made a critical analysis and roadmap for this time, that is captured by the title of his seminal work on the juncture we are living in Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed, A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution. He has put forward that the horror, the madness, with talk of civil war in the air, also opens the potential, the possibility, when making revolution in this country has become more possible. The divisions in U.S. society are so sharp that those who rule are not able to rule in ways that masses of people have become accustomed to. Big jolts like taking away the right to abortion shock people and cause them to increasingly profoundly question the whole set up. And, if, if, in this situation there is serious engagement with revolution, if there are people and a place (and need I say that you are in such a place, Revolution Books), where people are honestly debating, arguing, digging into what is the root of the problems we face and what is the solution, why is revolution necessary, what is a real revolution and what is its goal… And, through such struggle a force can be forged, to impact the political scene in this country attracting more and more people and growing broad support for the revolution involving many people of diverse views.

If this is new to you, or if you are a regular customer or supporter of Revolution Books, this holiday season we have something special for you in the Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show. These interviews are like nothing else—they are intimate, Bob Avakian reveals his character and the journey he has taken to become the revolutionary he is today—they are full of, as we say, heart and soul and hardcore for revolution.

In the current episode of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show I said this about these interviews:

Watching, you feel the tremendous confidence BA has, that through sharp struggle, the people who need to be a part of the revolution can be won to see and act in another way, even as they are caught up today in a lot of crap. BA minces no words in his criticism, but he has strategic confidence that people could break with the bullshit—whether speaking of the youth in the inner cities killing each other; or of the educated middle class caught up in a me, me, me culture—including in its destructive “woke” scrambling over and canceling each other just to get a dirty piece of the imperialist pie.

What has grabbed people from all walks of life as they watch BA in these interviews, is his humanity and the humanity of the road and the future he is fighting for. He speaks of poetry, music that gives flight to the imagination. He speaks of awe and wonder at the beauty of nature and of the art that people create and why that is essential to life and revolution. He speaks of a movement for revolution and future society that fosters critical thinking that is not guided by revenge, but by an ethos of generosity of spirit and largeness of mind.

All of this—the heart and soul, the hardcore for revolution, the struggle for what is true and the fight for what is true, in short the scientific method and approach, the poetic spirit, awe and wonder in the face of beauty and the vastness of the unknown, and a movement and a future that fosters critical thinking guided by a generosity of spirit and largeness of mind—I say again, all of this is what you find and what you need to foster, encourage, contribute to and be a part of here at Revolution Books.

There are those who see—or who want you to see an antagonism—between the breadth of the books, of the authors, of the art that is in this special place, Revolution Books, and the revolution, including the leadership in Bob Avakian, and the new communism that is also on the shelves and that the staff endeavors to bring to you.

These are of a piece—when you come to Revolution Books, for a program, to read, to buy a book, or just to talk, you have the opportunity to engage the whole world, the whole of human experience and to engage the revolutionary theory for how the world came to be the way it is today, to look deeply at things, and to grapple with how it could be radically different and far better—a world where all of humanity is free and all of humanity could flourish.

For that to be real requires all of us, all of you.

With that, I would like to toast Revolution Books, and the coming year of momentous struggle for a whole new world.