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A Guide to This Issue of Revolution

What You Need to Know and Engage This Week
About the World and Revolution: In This Issue
May 23, 2022

We are this week again focusing your attention on Bob Avakian’s (BA’s) article The Supreme Court Moves to End Abortion Rights: “Taking to the Streets,” And Refusing to Let This Go Down. There are millions who see the need to keep the right to abortion and even feel strongly about it. But they have not yet been won to being part of the massive resistance needed to prevent the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They don’t know that it can be won and they don’t know how. This article takes on the arguments standing in their way. It needs to get everywhere—and among those who have read it, BA’s arguments and the method he uses to dig into reality need to be really thought about and worked with.

Within this battle for abortion rights, there is bound up the question of what kind of future we will have.

Decades ago, as the contradictions that scream out today were only beginning to assert themselves, BA wrote the following:

The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances… It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms… The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

At the end of “Taking to the Streets,” And Refusing to Let This Go Down, and after extensive discussion of the importance uniting the broadest numbers of people in this fight and of not letting this battle get derailed by dead ends, BA writes:

Fundamentally, to bring about a more just society and world, what is needed, and all the more urgently now, is a revolution to overthrow this whole system, which both Democrats and Republicans represent and work to enforce, even as they have sharp differences between them over how to do this. In “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating,” I have analyzed in depth why this is a rare time when revolution becomes more possible, even in this powerful country. It is crucially important to understand why this is so—which has to do with the already very deep, and continually deepening, divisions, not only in the country overall but particularly within the ruling class, and why that ruling class cannot continue to rule in the “normal way” it has for generations—and how to move to build up the revolutionary forces with the strategy and organization capable of seizing on this rare opportunity, not in order to achieve a “peaceful transfer of power” from one section of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class to another, but to bring about a seizure of power by a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions and millions and determined to bring about a truly emancipating change—bringing down this monstrous system and building up a radically different and far better system.

Working to prepare for that revolution right now means, first, aiming high to actually win this battle—going everywhere with the sharpest message possible and winning all kinds of people, including people with real influence, to become actively involved; continuing to build this ferment and resistance among the youth while winning them to impact all of society with their conviction and urgency; and spreading the spirit of making unmistakably clear to those who run society that if this right is taken away, the “machinery” of business-as-usual will not be allowed to function. It means spreading “Taking To The Streets” and enabling many, many people to read this, to discuss it, and to take up the arguments in there with others—all for the goal of refusing to let this foul attack succeed.

And working to prepare for revolution in the midst of this means, at the same time, the revcoms being out there building this struggle, spreading this article (available in pamphlet form also) and the understanding it contains, marching in disciplined formation with bold banners, and letting people know where they can find out more about this revolution and what it stands for and how they can get connected to it—especially through The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube, as well as the revcom social media and this website, revcom.us, and meetings of the Revolution Club, in cities where they exist.

So this week’s issue focuses on that: we feature an updated panel on the Home page of materials on this struggle, including not only BA’s article but also a new speech from Sunsara Taylor, the new episode of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, new messaging from Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, and reports and visuals from the student walkouts last Thursday. We include what the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, has to say on abortion, as well as other materials from BA, including Part Seven (“Globalized Supply Chain”) of an important new interview (full interview here). We also feature a famous and powerful clip from Mario Savio, a leader of the 1964 Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, another time when people had to take a bold stand… and to go with it, a section of Bob Avakian’s memoir, From Ike To Mao and Beyond, in which he discusses his experience in the Free Speech Movement.

And there’s more—much more. Go here for a statement from the Chicago Revolution Club on the cruel murder of a young Black man… and the cruel edict against all Black youth then put into effect by Chicago’s Black mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Go here to find out about important—and ominous—developments in the war in Ukraine, and here to read BA’s reply to former SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) members who now support the U.S. government’s proxy war with their imperialist rival Russia there. And go here to find out about the continued use of Trump’s immigration order that has people seeking asylum in the U.S. in a living hell on the border.

We also want to call on everyone reading this to watch the 100th episode of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show and especially to spread it to others. This show has to become the way that people all over this country link up with the revolution every week—at a time like this, it is very possible to build the audience fairly quickly into the thousands and then take off from there. Send us your ideas on this and your experience.

Included in this issue:

* The fight for abortion rights

* Interview with Bob Avakian

* WORKING WITH BLACK PANTHERS, WORKING FOR REVOLUTION—NOT "WOKE IDENTITY" BULLSHIT, by Bob Avakian (posted 5/25)

* Ukraine

  • From Bob Avakian:

THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND THE INTERESTS OF HUMANITY: A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH VS. HARMFUL CONFUSION AND CHAUVINIST DELUSION, Bob Avakian Responds To People Who Should Know Better (and Maybe Once Did)

Ukraine: World War 3 Is the Real Danger, Not a Repeat of World War 2

World War 3 and Dangerous Idiocy

* Two Years After the Murder of George Floyd and the Beautiful Rising That Followed: Critical Lessons for the Future

* From Buffalo to Uvalde: To Those in Agony at the Insanity They Call America

* From the Revolution Club, Chicago: To All Those Who Fear They Won’t Make It to 21

* Title 42: Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Border “Expulsions,” Thousands of Immigrants to Remain Stranded in Desperate, Deadly Conditions

* Contribute to the National Revolution Tour... Contribute to FIGHTING FOR the Future! Join in Meeting the $50,000 Goal by June 1!

* Author Ariel Dorfman Urges Iran Halt Execution of Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali—International Emergency Campaign Joins Calls to Rescind Planned Execution, Demands Iran Free All Its Political Prisoners

* From Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund: Help Get the Revolution Newsletter into the Hands of Hundreds of Prisoners

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From the genocide in Gaza, to the growing threat of world war between nuclear powers, to escalating environmental devastation… the capitalist-imperialist system ruling over us is a horror for billions around the world and is tearing up the fabric of life on earth. Now the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class, between fascist Republicans and war criminal Democrats, is coming to a head—likely during, or before, the coming elections—ripping society apart unlike anything since the Civil War.

Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has developed a strategy to prepare for and make revolution. He’s scientifically analyzed that this is a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible, and has laid out the sweeping vision, solid foundation and concrete blueprint for “what comes next,” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

The website revcom.us follows and applies that leadership and is essential to all this. We post new materials from BA and curate his whole body of work. We apply the science he’s developed to analyze and expose every key event in society, every week. Revcom.us posts BA’s timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists), including his social media posts which break this down for people every week and sometimes more. We act as a guiding and connecting hub for the growing revcom movement nationwide: not just showing what’s being done, but going into what’s right and what’s wrong and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force.

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but goes up to a whole different level!

So what should you give to make 2024 our year—a year of revolution?
Everything you possibly can!
DONATE NOW to revcom.us and get with BA and the revcoms!

Your donations contribute to:

  • Promotion of BA on social media and the Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show
  • Strengthen revcom.us as an accessible, secure, robust website able to rise to the challenge of meeting the extraordinary demands of navigating the storms and preparing for revolution in this pivotal, unprecedented year
  • Fund revcoms to travel to national “hotspots,” where extreme contradictions are pulling apart the fabric of this country and creating the possibility of wrenching an actual revolution out of this intensifying situation
  • Expand the reach and coverage of revcom.us
  • Printing and distribution of key Revcom materials including the Declaration “WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM” and the Proclamation, “WE ARE THE REVCOMS (Revolutionary Communists)”

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