A team from the Revolution Tour has been strategizing on how to go outside of our immediate networks and reach out broadly to the middle class—for real engagement and impact with The Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, and to raise funds to put this revolution on the map. In this, we've also wrestled with the strategic importance of reaching those among the intelligentsia who really care—challenging them to get into this revolution, at this urgent time.
We've been brainstorming creative ideas to reach people who work in tech or the arts. And in particular, wanted to reach people in academia before the winter break. We made a plan to reach the professors at a college campus where the Revolution Tour had some impact earlier in the semester.
We wrote a mass email asking them to invite us to speak to their classes next semester. The email was framed by the reality that we're in a rare time when revolution has become more possible, and we introduced people to The Bob Avakian Interviews. We also linked to our recent experience at another university where the Revolution Tour was invited to speak to a class on "woke" obstructionism. We linked specifically to the urgency of breaking open this debate and the overall debate on reform vs. revolution, and asking them directly to donate towards this.
This letter was emailed out to about 350 professors. We also spent several hours hand delivering this letter to professors and lecturers at a whole range of departments (we also included the fund drive leaflet and a palm card for The Bob Avakian Interviews). We distributed about 600 copies of these packets. While we knew it was going to be difficult to find professors, we persevered. We spoke with department offices and told them about the content of the letter and they let us put them in all the department's mailboxes.
We also found a few professors in their offices and in the hallways and we made our pitch in person. One professor took us very seriously and said “I'm not quite sure how this will fit in my class but I think it's important.” She then said it might work in a class she's teaching on law, asking how long our presentation might be, who'd be doing the presentation, etc. At a certain point in the discussion she did raise concern regarding the more backward students in her classes to which we reiterated the point that that's exactly what we want to open up and referenced the Yeats quote that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” by way of making the point of needing to change the polarization. Another professor in the history department was headed to a meeting and when we gave him the basic pitch and said these are pre-civil war days it made him stop. He was further provoked by the fact that we were arguing for a societal wide debate on reform or revolution (he said he'd get back to us). Another professor told us he received our email that morning and just hadn't had a minute to reply. Other professors were provoked by the fact that we were talking about revolution and were open to discussing this further.
We've also received a few replies to our mass email. One professor said he'd forward it to an academic student association because “this could be a very interesting topic for them/us.” He was familiar with revcom from the ʼ80s and listens to BA regularly on The Michael Slate show on KPFK. Another wrote back they'd like to have us speak in their anthropology class and asked us to follow up at the beginning of next semester.
This is still initial, and we'll need to follow up with everyone at the beginning of next semester, but we thought this was important experience to share.
