Getting BA’s New Year’s Message Out in an Inner-City ‘Hood and a Counter-Culture Community
January 13, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
After discussing BA’s New Year’s message of revolution, a group of us spent the weekend in an inner-city neighborhood and later in an area where counter-culture youth and others hang out. We looked for opportunities to play the audio track to groups of people at barber shops, restaurants, and cafés. Though we didn’t immediately impact a large number of people, our renewed effort to carry forward the BA Everywhere campaign did create a buzz.
We encountered, first off, quite a bit of interest in the message, as there is much discontent with the state of the world, with a number of people agreeing that yes, things are the way they are because of the system. One man even gestured a thumbs-down at the mention of the system as the cause, when he brought up the death of Detroit (and was pleasantly surprised to see the article on that in Revolution newspaper). Some—especially those familiar with BA—felt like he was talking directly to them. Others wanted to find out more about BA.
In just a few hours, we played the message several times, and set up a number of sessions for the following week. In a number of places, every person in the establishment was engaged in some way with this. Several people asked, “What can I do?” and many small stacks of flyers went out
Along the way, some youth debated whether people can get into changing the world unless they change themselves first; after wrangling with what BA says about “fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution,” they took flyers to get out.
Our experience in one shop revealed the potential that has yet to be unleashed broadly: we asked the two people working there if we could play the message and they said sure. They had never heard of BA or the Revolutionary Communist Party or Revolution. They and their customers listened (even over the pro football playoff on TV).
We talked about the BA Everywhere campaign and what difference it would make to really get this out there. In response, one guy said that raising money is the easy part—saying that they can come together for stuff like a football game, but he felt like only a few people would be into what we were talking about. This led to discussion about the strategy for revolution and the role of revcom.us and Revolution newspaper, where, like BA says in the New Year’s statement, “our Party puts forward why we need revolution, what the goals of this revolution are, and how to work for this revolution. With the guidelines this provides, thousands can move now in a unified way and build up the basis to lead millions when the time comes...” He read one of the prisoner letters published in Revolution that expressed how getting into the paper and BA has opened his eyes to the revolutionary potential of “someone who got caught up in terrible things.” He bought a DVD of BA Speaks : Revolution —Nothing Less, and plans to come to the next discussion.
Meanwhile a few customers came and went and they, too, got drawn into discussion and got materials. One woman was moved to go the revcom.us website right there on her phone. One youth at the shop said he was just 21 and didn’t think much about these things. We responded that the Black Panther Party was led in many cases by teenagers, and that one of the most advanced of them, the Chicago chapter chairman, Fred Hampton, was assassinated by the police and FBI for being a revolutionary leader at age 21. The youth took our flyer and replied, “I think I have to read this.”
Sunday was our day in the counter-culture community. Though there was not as much eagerness to get into the New Year’s message as there was in the inner-city neighborhood, there was a fair amount of curiosity and some agreement that the world was in need of profound change. One older middle strata couple read the statement carefully and commented that things were really bad and it just might come down to revolution. On several occasions, youth contributed for a paper or got a few extra copies of the message. Several immigrants were inspired to check out this movement as well. The idea that communism was what humanity needed compelled the younger crowd to voice their own thinking. Several got the special Revolution issue on the experience of socialist societies.
We didn’t raise a lot of money on the spot, but have big plans for next weekend, to play BA’s New Year’s message to more people and deepen the ties we had initiated.
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