In this time of society ripping apart, the National Tour to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution is hitting the streets and the campuses, aiming to jolt people awake to the real-world fascist danger looming, and in opposition to that, the real possibility of making an emancipating revolution if we get organized for this revolution.
Last week we focused on a state college in the LA area. This campus draws in a mix of students—multinational, from different strata, some that have grown up in the hard neighborhoods of LA and others from surrounding areas. There’s also an organized and vocal white-supremacist, male-supremacist, Christian fascist core of students on this campus.
Over three days, we put to people the basic challenge to come hear a speech:
While the whole society is being ripped apart and the planet burns:
The Republican-fascists are preparing for civil war and the Democrats are failing miserably;
YOU are sick of being told to fight over “privilege,” reforms and “inclusion” in a rotting oppressive empire;
WE are fighting and organizing for an ACTUAL revolution in these times when revolution can be made.
Learn about and get with this revolution.
We experimented with different things. We covered the campus in flyers. When we had a larger crew, we marched through campus in revolutionary formation, interrupting lunch in outdoor eating areas with this challenge.
One day we just had a couple of us. We stood in busy walkways with a banner, wearing “bloody pants” (representing the danger of botched abortions when abortion is illegal) and T-shirts that said “Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement, Abortion on Demand and Without Apology.” Hundreds of students walked up and grabbed flyers with this challenge:
Now, as the Supreme Court moves quickly to rip away abortion rights…
If you will NOT fight against forced motherhood,
Then you ARE choosing the enslavement of women.
Into the streets March 8.
On the day of the speech, about 40 people either stopped on the spot or came specifically to hear it—including people who got connected during the week, people who had seen flyers one way or another, and also a handful of fascists.
How the campus newspaper covered the Revcoms' speech:
“CSULB students intrigued by Revcom speech calling for ‘revolution to overthrow capitalist-imperialist system’”
These are some things we learned and some basic lessons for going forward.
** One thing to sum up is that while most people do have their heads up their asses, just thinking about themselves and not paying attention to what’s happening in the larger world, there are some people searching, who are sick that others are going along with where things are headed. This could be seen with the seven people who stayed after the speech to sign up with the Revolution Club and take up the call to get into the streets for abortion rights on March 8th.
Two women who came to the speech together have been searching for something that can deal with the problems humanity is facing and the direction society is moving. One talked about how the problems are so big it’s daunting, feeling like no one knows what to do. She talked about how mad she is at her friends that when she brings up the danger of climate change and they say, “What are you worried for, we’ll be dead by then.”
Another student from a rural area stopped because he’s been looking into different trends that claim to be radical, like anarcho-communism, and not finding real answers. We began some struggle over some important differences with the new communism developed by Bob Avakian (BA) and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America that he's authored.
** The speech gave people a sense of the rare time we are in when revolution can be made, why you need an actual revolution and the problem that as Bob Avakian said in his speech quoting the poet Yeats, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The things that stuck with people the most were when we hit more sharply at how people end up thinking in ways that justify this system. For example, we went at the argument that what we need is “inclusion”—the idea we should be proud about Kamala Harris getting in as the “first Black woman vice-president.” That just changes the look of the same system, when what’s needed is to get rid of this system. This kind of thing needs to be much more the leading edge of what we’re doing.
There was also a sharp challenge that we’re about to see the right to abortion being taken away, the actual stakes that forced motherhood is female enslavement, and the need to fight now to stop this.
** The whole thing was aimed at recruiting people for revolution, so afterwards we asked people, “Who wants to be an organizer?” No one answered, and we realized people who are just stepping into this for the first time don’t see themselves as organizers! When we got concrete and asked who wants to get into the streets on March 8th, a wave of people raised their hands.
One of the people from the Revolution Tour made an important point to the new people that we all learned from. She said not everyone starts as an organizer, but the most important thing this day was that you all stepped up and that you need to get to know each other and work together. She told them that we in the Revolution Tour would help, but we’re going to different places. There is a way to do this that everyone can start with—form an RNL Circle where they pull together once a week to watch The RNL Show together and grapple with why revolution is needed, what it involves, and what kind of society it’s aiming for. They’ll learn through doing this together. People were relieved and put at ease by this. One person talked about why they didn’t feel ready to be an organizer but very much desired to be part of this and how happy they were to find this. The group wanted to get together again and figured out a time that worked for everyone there. They set up a chat group on the spot and there is already debate kicking off in it about what kind of leadership we need for revolution—debate which everyone can learn from.
Going forward we realize we need to more fully integrate the Points of Attention for the Revolution—so people can see how to live today for this revolution, and contrast the real difference in method and morality of what it means to step into this revolution.
The experience was a beginning one in taking up what BA says in the talk “Something Terrible, OR Something Truly Emancipating”:
[P]eople need to be jolted awake, to reality—to the reality of this system of capitalism-imperialism, the reality of where things are heading right now, with terrible consequences if things continue on this course—and the reality of the possibility, and the urgent need, to wrench something positive out of this, through a real revolution.
