There is an untapped fury of millions of women (and men) about the precipice we are on of the Supreme Court ripping away one of women’s most basic rights, the right to abortion. At the same time many people who were aware of the Texas decision do not even know the Supreme Court decision is only months away. This is in large part because the Democratic Party and those beholden to them in the women’s and reproductive rights movements are not sounding the alarm. Why? Because they have surrendered before the fact and are instead preparing for a “Post-Roe America.” The so called “resistance” is calling for no resistance—so enslaved to the system they are willing to enslave women.

This has been a point of contention at a law school where people who DO know what is happening with the Supreme Court ruling are accommodating themselves to this decision coming down. A contingent of the student body who are “woke” have made it a point to “not engage” the challenges to this deadly logic that have been made by the Revolution Club taking up the call from RiseUp4AbortionRights.org.

To provoke the debate that is needed, the Revolution Club saturated the campus with a couple of provocative items: We hung coat hangers in classrooms, eating areas and on statues throughout the larger campus. And we posted a famous picture of Gerri Santoro that in the 1970s became a symbol of the fight for abortion rights. This picture graphically brings forward the horror of botched abortions, when abortion was illegal and the dangerous measures desperate women resorted to to end their pregnancies.

After this picture went up in the law school, the “woke” contingent started a buzz that there was a disturbing photo put up by the “Bob Avakian people” that was triggering to people. They spread the word that if people saw the picture they should take it down.

The next week, the picture was put up again, this time with a challenge written and signed by a member of the Revolution Tour and alum of the university:

Were you “triggered” by seeing the photo of Gerri Santoro in 1964 dead on the ground in a pool of her own blood? Her death was caused by an illegal, botched abortion that she had to obtain before Roe. Are you more upset that you had to look at this picture than you are about the reality? The reality that this is the future for millions of women and girls—if we do not get in the streets to stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe by this spring. If you are more upset by having to look at this picture, then you are choosing to look away from this reality, choosing to do nothing about it and choosing the enslavement of women. Don’t agree? Think this photo should be taken down? Then come debate it. Because the fact is that EVERYONE needs to confront the reality that when abortion is illegal, women die. And on that basis, EVERYONE with a heart for humanity needs to ACT now. You are law students—make your argument and back it up with evidence. We will! Meet the revcoms in the law school quad.

At the time announced for the debate, the alum posted up in the center of the quad with an enlarged version of the Gerri Santoro picture and an enlargement about the protest on March 8, International Women’s Day. Another comrade went around and passed out the letter to every table. Some took it with interest, others tried to ignore it, a couple tables of people were incensed.

Nobody came up to debate or discuss any of this. The alum spoke so everyone could hear her, first reading her letter and inviting people to come up. Then after waiting a few minutes, she addressed the “ignore-ance” of what is coming down on millions of women, and gave people a sense of breaking out of the box and stepping into the streets with a broad movement of people determined to stop the ticking time bomb of female enslavement. Conversation stopped at the tables in the courtyard where people eat, study and meet. You could see a certain polarization around this—some people expressing agreement, others making a point to disrespect the speaker, others just listening intently and some people keeping their heads down in their computers.

Afterwards, we went through the quad to talk to all the groups of people sitting around.

What happened then was very interesting: on the one hand, there were some earnest discussions with people seriously engaged and figuring out how to be involved, on the other hand a ridiculous and pat refusal to even have discussion or debate at all uniformly repeated by the “woke” contingent.

Some of the people who engaged were not convinced that mass resistance can actually change what is happening. They were infuriated that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe and at the same time arguing for solutions that they themselves know come nowhere close to dealing with this, because their thinking is locked in a box of supposed “electoral” change and they don’t know what to do.

A number of people with a sense of the fight for abortion rights in Latin America were much more ready to agree that we need to get in the streets to fight to keep abortion legal, instead of trying to rely on channels that won’t go anywhere. They were glad we were speaking out, glad we were calling people into the streets, and expressed that it was really good we were there to “shake things up.”

Some students agreed that the silence on this in society is a real problem. They recognized that it’s not enough to be “pro-choice.” If people don’t act now, they're complicit in taking away women’s most basic rights as just the first step of a larger fascist onslaught if people go along with this. We talked with them about what THEY need to do to break the silence and acceptance of this by getting into the streets. And what they can do so that everyone in the law school is having to take a side on this. We talked about how to get this debated in their class rooms, what clubs they are in that should endorse the call from Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, spreading the green bandanas and more.

Among this section of people, there was also a hunger to see people actually debate out their differences, which turned out to be the sharpest dividing line on display among the law students on this day.

At one table, there was some honest discussion about students complaining of being “triggered” by the photo. One person brushed this off as a way people are avoiding dealing with the actual problem. Another person at first felt that you have to keep in mind people’s different situations and what they’re sensitive to. Most of the students who were first year law students felt that showing the reality of what things were like before Roe was needed. They wanted to know how things had changed in the ’70s and agreed that getting into the streets was necessary.

When we moved on to talk to a nearby table, we were greeted by a chorus of “We don’t have to talk to you. Go away.” When challenged with how is that in any way presenting an argument or backing it up with evidence, they just screamed louder: “We don’t want to talk. Fuck off.” In observing this, the people we had just talked to—including the person who thought we should be considerate of people’s situations—were infuriated and said people should be willing to argue what they think, not to mention just have some basic human decency. The students got more scarves and put them on their heads and arms as a response.

While one contingent of students were obnoxiously and actively working to create an atmosphere of trying to get people to shun the revolutionaries and ignore the urgently needed call for people to rise up for abortion rights, their refusal to even argue a position with any content other than “you are triggering people” was an exposure to other students that they have no argument other than to make a principle out of not having one.

In 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 revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian said:

Here I have to say: Enough of “woke folk” who act as if it is actually oppressed people (or, as they like to say, the “marginalized”) who are fragile beings constantly in need of the protection of “safe spaces,” lest they fall apart at the mere appearance of a “triggering” phenomenon. And since when are universities and other institutions supposed to be places where you are “safe”—not just from physical violence of one kind or another, and from overtly threatening or clearly degrading verbal assaults, but from ideas, statements, etc., that simply make you uncomfortable?! How are you going to “change the world” if you are in danger of falling apart at things like that? Again, from Hope For Humanity:

[I]n any real struggle to deal with any real oppression, up against powerful enforcers of that oppression, you are going to have to face the prospect of real sacrifice, including the prospect of being physically attacked. And if you think that you can carve out little safe enclaves, and that this is somehow going to lead to any kind of significant change in society, you are full of illusions and delusions.

This foray into the law school started to polarize things and shake the paralysis. Much more of this is needed.