The end of the year brings a chance to step back and reflect on life, to see old friends and close relations… and to resolve to make the year ahead count for much, much more. The times we do that in now are, as Bob Avakian has analyzed, days when things will be radically transformed, one way or the other—either in a murderously reactionary way that makes the horrors that humanity must endure today immeasurably worse OR… in a radically emancipatory way. These are urgent times; and even as we take the time to reflect and celebrate, sing and dance and laugh, we also need to be looking ahead. 2023 must be a year when all of us reading this editorial today have to be part of organizing and leading hundreds and then thousands to put revolution on the map in the thinking of millions.
But let’s go back to the next few weeks. If you’ve gotten into the Bob Avakian Interviews this fall—whether you’ve followed BA for years, or just learned about him—those friends and relations you’re going to be seeing and catching up with need the chance to meet him as well. Take some time to sit down with them and watch the Interviews together… enough to let them get into it. Talk about it together. Getting these Interviews out—both big and bold into society but also in serious small group discussions—is the leading edge right now of building a movement for revolution.
To help prepare yourself, go here, here, here, and here to read the Game-Changer series. Use it to ground yourself. Start with this, from Part 1 of the series:
Once again, think about these interviews and what it was like to watch them.
Like, really actually think about that for a moment...
Think about who and what they feature.... what these interviews talk about and how they talk about it... think about their substance... their style... think about how they inspired and moved you... how they challenged you... what they illuminated... what they made you think and what they made you feel.
Think honestly about whether you have ever seen and heard anything else like this...
Then take a look at the page with the experiences people have had taking this out and the different ways that people have responded to it. Reflect on the experience in raising funds and giving people a chance to support something that can make a real difference. Then go out with these Interviews. It’s important to deeply appreciate these Interviews—that’s crucial; but you gotta take them out, too. The world is on fire, it desperately needs saving, and it’s not gonna be somebody else besides you who takes a hand in doing it. The leadership is there; the understanding is there; the plan is there. So take that first step and—if you’ve already taken it—dream higher and think bigger and write to us.
A Message to the Revcoms and Everyone Else Yearning for a Better World
THIS Is A “Game-Changer”: The Bob Avakian Interviews
Then go back over the Game-Changer series, which will prepare you for the pushback you will indeed get. The Game-Changer series lets you know how to understand that and how to handle that. Be ready for the static and the struggle; but be just as ready for the positive responses that you can see on the same page from people who may never have heard of BA before now—be ready to build on those, to find ways for those people to become seeding machines while they themselves continue to go deeper into the Interviews.
One more thing, and a very important one: when you read the newest installment of the Game-Changer series, take a pause afterward and then go back over it. Take a few days to reflect on and think about the relationships it gets into… talk about it with your friends and comrades… and then send us your thinking on these relationships.
To make the kind of leap we’re talking about next year—that is, to really put revolution on the map, to make a solid advance in the goal of bringing forward a revolutionary people in their millions—we don’t just need your efforts, we need your experience, your thinking, your insights and ideas. How do we bust these powerful Interviews out there, now, way beyond the shallow waters and into the stormy waves and currents?
That’s the question we have to solve. And there’s no time to lose.
Everything depends on bringing forward a revolutionary people, from among the most bitterly oppressed, and all parts of society, first in the thousands and then in the millions, as a powerful revolutionary force, organized from the start and consistently with a country-wide perspective, impacting all of society and changing the terms of how masses of people see things and how every institution has to respond. Everything must be focused now on actually bringing forward and organizing this revolutionary force.
—Bob Avakian, from 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
