Next Sunday, the movement for revolution is hosting a major livestream fundraiser. With this livestream, we aim to start the new year by raising $20,000 in a single day’s broadcast. This is part of a $100,000 goal by February 15, of which over $37,000 has already been raised. This livestream will be raising money to get out the new game-changing interviews with Bob Avakian—Up Close and Personal with Bob Avakian, Heart and Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution—as well as The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—YouTube show and this website, revcom.us. This will be at 2 pm Pacific, 4 pm Central and 5 pm Eastern, on the revcoms’ RNL Youtube channel.
We have big plans for that money, and big plans for that livestream. This editorial will get into those plans, and invite you to add to them. But first, let’s step back to what this new year has to be all about and what this money has to serve.
Every major article in this issue—on the ever-more-dangerous U.S.-Russia proxy war in Ukraine… on the horrific suffering of millions of refugees worldwide and the crisis building around that on the Mexican-U.S. border… on the terrible toll from Los Angeles to Buffalo1 that the historic, ongoing and built-in institution of white supremacy takes every single day… on the heroic rebellion of the Iranian people against patriarchy and religious dictatorship… all these cry out for one thing: REVOLUTION.
And not just any revolution, but one aiming for the society embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, BA.
This understanding has to be fought for because actual revolution is so far from people’s minds these days that they will tend to continually go somewhere else. They’ll confound revolution with some fashionable-sounding reform and before you know it, you’ll be talking about two different things—while you’re assuming you’re having the same conversation.
What makes this so ironic is that today the possibility for revolution in the U.S. is greater than it has been in living memory—yes, even including the 1960s. But to understand that, you need to approach things scientifically and look beneath the surface—you need Bob Avakian’s incredibly important talk, 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.
The Bob Avakian Interviews: Heart And Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution
This fall BA made a further major contribution, one that is both unique and at the same time sheds new and different light on works like "Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating" and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. He did three interviews: Heart And Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution.
With these interviews, it’s as if you meet this leader, getting a sense of who he is, of the people and events that shaped him, his sense of humor, compassion and wonder… and how he in turn took all that into the new communism. You hear him apply the scientific method to the new developments and contradictions that have emerged in the very fraught year since "Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating" was published. He gives you a very living sense of what it would be like to live in a socialist society guided by the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
In short, these interviews let everyone dig into why we need to, and how we can, make a revolution, while introducing people to Bob Avakian the human being, the thinker… and the leader. These interviews are, as one series of letters we’ve run puts it, game-changers—powerful political "weapons" that can introduce and bring home to people in their hearts as well as their heads the need for revolution and what it will take to make that revolution, and what that revolution has to be all about.
Want a sense of the potential of these interviews to change people? Just look at the letters and videos we’ve already received from all kinds of people. Then think about what could be possible if we had the money for more promotion and we could “scale up,” multiplying the people who hear these interviews by the hundreds and thousands and even more.
2023: A Critical Year
Here’s an important truth: things are moving very quickly. 2023 has to be a year in which revolution—THIS revolution, an actual revolution, an all-the-way revolution aiming for the emancipation of all humanity—gets on the map… gets known by millions… gets moving with hundreds and then thousands getting organized and active in it.
Because rare times like the present—when revolution is more possible—don’t and can’t last forever… and because if we don’t make revolution in these fateful years, the prospect of something truly terrible, even beyond the horrendous and needless suffering of today, is very, very likely if not certain.
Next Sunday’s livestream is gonna be about building that movement for revolution humanity so urgently needs. It’ll do three things:
One: It will let you, and everyone you bring to this, meet some of the people who are working and fighting every day to make revolution, and find out what they’re doing to bring what BA has been pointing to and calling for into reality… you’ll meet people who work on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less! YouTube show and the revcom.us website… and you’ll meet people who have been inspired by and begun to inspire others with these interviews of BA…
Two: It will give you a way to join together in a common effort to boost and spread the word of the revolution, through your own donations and through taking this next week to win others to donate and organize them to watch the livestream…
Three: It will create community around this interview with Bob Avakian and the whole larger method, morality, strategy and solution this interview represents. Bob Avakian is the most important thinker and leader in the world today—these interviews show why, and they really must reach many, many more people. It’s urgent.
Go back and watch these interviews again, as much of them as you can, and see what we mean… read or watch the responses of the wide variety of people that are on the site… send us your ideas and your experiences, either written or as a video, during this next week… do all this while getting to everyone you know, and even more you don’t know, to watch… and then tune in this coming Sunday for the first big step forward into the new year.
