The following responses are drawn from reports of conversations, emails, and videoed interviews from the premiere screenings.  They cover a range of people with different backgrounds and interests.

A friend of a recently deceased revcom:

She loved the interview and the event. She said what she liked most about the interview was hearing BA’s personal stories.  She said it made her think of her own personal story and life.  She said, “This is my team.” It was very important to her to get a BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! T-shirt. When she saw all the people with their club shirts on sitting up in front, she expressed her desire to be part of it. She right away asked me to send her the link to the interview. She said she wanted to watch it again on her computer.

She started making arrangements to get to the next interview showing, planning her ride. She took palm cards and wanted to get more people to watch the video and come to the event. She networked with two people she met there to be part of their crafts fundraising, as she makes candles. 

From a longtime fighter against police murder and brutality:

"I agreed with all of what he said. Especially I thought it was important the part about how we can't defeat them right now but we can get all these young people to take on the mission of revolution and he talked about the struggle we have on our hands because they are all involved now in attacking and even killing each other, but we have to reach out to them and get them to realize that they have to look up AND THEY HAFTA SEE THAT THEY HAFTA STOP ACTING AS THE SYSTEM WANTS THEM TO ACT, that they act in all these harmful ways because they don't see a way out, and we hafta give them that way out. But as BA said, this will be a big struggle, a huge struggle!" She said she has designed a shirt she wants to get printed to sell to raise money for the revolution, saying "Stop killing each other."

From an international student:

When he entered he said he'd seen a poster. We learned later he has been to our website and knew about BA and that is why he came. He is a third-year history major who attended high school (a boarding school in Massachusetts) in the U.S. He was dismayed by the people he has encountered “on the left” at his school who are mostly Trotskyites and Platypus. He said he sees the current regime in China as capitalist, revisionist, repressive and about keeping people passive.

Since meeting us at a RU4AR protest he has gone to the website. He said he had previously read quite a bit of Mao and had been delving into BA and likes what he has seen. He knew BA had been arrested protesting Deng Xiaoping. He was very engaged with the interview throughout and told one of the revcoms that he was fascinated by the segments on the Black Panther Party. He took a class at U of C on labor history which discussed the BPP.

He took cards to promote the interviews but once again expressed dismay that so many people are not interested. He plans to watch all three interviews and expressed a willingness to sit down with us after that to have a serious discussion.

Email from a documentary filmmaker:

"I got it! I listened to various parts. I will watch it weekly. He is funny. I loved the part that living in the United States is like living in the house of Tony Soprano. I find what he said fairly accurate and so all his putting forward of the contradictions about the ‘little goodies’ all of us enjoy here in the U.S. made me look at it a little bit differently. Obviously different than what we normally hear, but a ferocious attack on all the contradictions. I have it on but will need to still catch up. I also see how he got along with the Panthers."

A veteran of ACT UP and all-around fighter for people’s rights

 "I loved the humanity of it... how people can see he's a real person. And I loved how Sunsara and Andy put the questions to him. How they prepared questions they really wanted to know his answers to. It was wonderful. I thought it would be more crowded—where were the people?"

A young journalism student:

She is writing about the interview as an assignment. She was very moved especially by the last section on poetic spirit. “I’m used to fighting my way through by myself, but he kept drawing it back painting a bigger and bigger picture.  There are all the problems in this country but then he links them to the whole world.  l ‘know’ these things, but the way he put it together was inspiring.”

From a revcom:

"What I got out of the premiere interview with BA is a deeper appreciation for the scientifically grounded leadership that Bob Avakian was modeling. You don't make revolution with people as you would like them to be, you make a revolution with people as they are and then there's the process of people transforming themselves as they continually transform the world. This idea or notion that people who have more than you or have some more privileges than you are the enemy, versus just because you don't have as much as someone or that you go through worse conditions is not their fault.  It's not their fault that you have to go through hell day after day, it's the fault of this system. I really appreciate it how BA answered the question around the 'first shall be last and the last shall be first and the me me me.' That line 'Staying in your lane won't protect you from getting run over by this system!' I also want to say I think the title of these interviews 'Heart and Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution' captures it perfectly.