Welcome to this issue of Revcom.us! Here’s a guide to what you can access in this issue.

First up, an important new article by Bob Avakian: “Abolition—Real And Illusory.” Get into this; go to the articles referenced in the links; discuss it; and spread it. This gets right to one of the biggest illusions holding people back—especially younger people moved by the Beautiful Rising of protests against police murder from last summer—struggling with them and raising their sights to where they need to go.

There have been a series of articles from Bob Avakian (BA) addressing similar themes over the past few months—part of an intense and important argument we need to have with people caught up in all manner of schemes for reforming this system without overthrowing it. (See here, here, and here, for example.)

What makes this set of articles by BA even more important is the analysis he has made that we are now living in one of those rare times when revolution becomes possible. That’s why everyone reading this should take the time to get into From Bob Avakian—Revolutionary Leader, Author of the New Communism: THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY and A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION. And that’s true whether you’ve never read them, or you’ve read them before—even many times. What people think counts for a lot; but in a rare period like this that’s true on a whole other level. These articles from BA provide the evidence-based content, the rigorous argument, and the scientific method needed to struggle against wrong and harmful frameworks, and to contrast those frameworks with what is correct and what is needed, right now, urgently, to make revolution for a radically different society aiming at the emancipation of humanity.

This year, the forests of the world seemed to burn out of control, flood waters spilled over their banks all summer, and refugees from countries made unlivable by all this have crowded into unlivable and horrific camps when they’re caught on their desperate flight to live. At the end of the month, the governments of the world will meet in Glasgow to discuss the environmental crisis behind this and make their proposals. Meanwhile, the United Nations itself put out a study saying that even if every country met their stated goals from the 2015 conference in Paris, the planet would still warm by a disastrous 2.7 degrees. And still worse, it turns out that only one country—the oppressed and impoverished African country of Republic of The Gambia—has even fulfilled their 2015 goal consistent with the targets agreed on at the Paris Conference that year. The governments and rulers of this system have NO ANSWERS, and the future existence of humanity is on the line! It’s important for people to know the reasons for this horrific fix humanity now finds itself in and to know that there is in fact a REAL way to go at this—revolution, and the establishment of a new socialist republic in power—the only chance humanity has. As BA wrote in the recently published “Why The World Is So Messed Up, And What Can Be Done To Radically Change This—A Basic Scientific Understanding”:

This fundamental contradiction—between production that is socialized and the private appropriation of what is produced, and the corresponding concentration of not only wealth but the means to create wealth (the means of production) in the hands of a small minority of humanity, in a small number of countries—this acts as the essential barrier and chain on human emancipation and suffocates the vast human potential that is now shackled under the domination of this system. This is what is preventing humanity from acting as fit caretakers of the earth, by approaching this in a planned and cooperative way, and instead is driving things toward environmental and ecological disaster at an ever accelerating pace.

So go to this new panel here that goes into the root causes of the problem and the real character of the solution, including the scientific approach to this seemingly intractable problem that can be found in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA; and stay tuned over the coming weeks.

For the past year and more, the murder rate in this country has spiked—even as the rest of the crime rate has actually fallen. Many of these murders are carried out by oppressed youth against other oppressed youth. This wrenches the heart of anyone who wants to see an end to oppression, anyone who cares about these youth and their potential, anyone with a shred of humanity. But again, the question remains: Why does this horror happen? And what can be done—including now—to move to end this? Go here and here to read some recent articles by Bob Avakian that reach deep on this and that cut through the lies that are told about it; and go here to see and listen to Bob Avakian problem-solve in conversation with people who are right up against this every day.

Finally, go here to get the latest on the unbelievable assault on abortion rights now going on and the fight against this; go here for how an operative for the Democratic Party unwittingly tells the truth on how he really sees things in relation to the struggle to get at the truth on the January 6 fascist revolt that aimed to illegally and forcibly keep Trump in power, and how to prevent something like this from happening again.