I thought I would share some reflections on my experience out with the revcoms on the UCLA campus building for Sunsara’s talk, “Woke” Lunacy Vs. Real Revolution. I learned a lot about how a lot of the science Bob Avakian (BA) has been putting forward can play out on the ground, especially: pushing on objective conditions instead of waiting passively; the two new outmodeds of fascist lunacy and “woke folk” insanity¹ reinforcing each other and reinforcing the system; the outsized impact of organized forces in a local area with potential for reverberations across the country.

Over the five days I was out on the campus, I saw the development of a campus buzz about this event. With our huge displays of the poster about the speech, the 7 points of indictment, and other provocations; our agitation; our conversations with individuals or small groups, including at least three professors who invited us in to make announcements; and getting the flyers out everywhere, people were talking about it, and you got a growing sense that a critical mass felt they had to be there. Our concentrated forces (usually three teams) really hyping up the chance to see Sunsara Taylor give this speech + mass saturation + a prolonged effort of about two weeks of building for this created necessity for the other forces—the two outmodeds (fascists and wokesters) and the passive middle, to respond. Another contributing factor was probably timing; people are sick of the woke lunacy and there was a social base primed for receiving this message.

On the Tuesday before the talk, there was an escalation in snarky comments or arguments from the wokesters, which were universally based on denying that woke is an actual phenomenon and/or distorting our argument. One woman said that I was misgendering people when I had not made a single statement against preferred pronouns. Another woman could not grasp anything we were saying about the bigger picture and just kept talking about herself—a real identity hustler. Someone told us to go back to Florida. Someone spit at us. Their anti-revolutionary and anti-scientific line and their utter moral, political, and ethical bankruptcy were on full display, culminating in their pathetic disruption during the talk. I felt a sense of their desperation, and how threatening it is to have this framework taken on from a revolutionary perspective, of losing their place as the dominant line of the “progressive” strata.

During the talk, even with the two outmodeds in the room, the majority of people were listening with rapt attention to Sunsara’s full argument and the way she was able to field thoughtful questions and skewer the disingenuous questions from MAGA fascists and wokesters alike. She was constantly challenging people to lift their sights, and constantly resetting the terms toward revolution. The atmosphere in the room was electrifying, and I got an idea of how things can transform in a relatively short period of time. On a microscale, I got a sense of the repolarization that needs to happen throughout society and the potential for winning the thousands into the organized forces for revolution and the millions of revolutionary-minded people. Afterwards I talked to one guy who said he’d come to a lazy conclusion about communism, and was rethinking all of that now.

Over the past year, I’ve been undergoing a lot of personal transformation and getting serious about applying BA’s methodology and science and becoming a part of and living for this revolution, which can’t come soon enough. To be part of a collective effort, and see what is possible with growing organized forces, helped me get a picture of what is needed and possible on a larger scale. This was the first time I was involved in and wielding “Ieading with revolution” while taking aim at the woke framework that is truly silencing and suffocating millions of decent people—as a way of breaking with a “gradualist” approach as BA talks about and making larger leaps in preparing the ground, preparing the vanguard, and preparing the people for revolution.

My favorite audience question from the evening was about how this woke framework became so dominant. Sunsara gave a very substantial answer about the defeat of the socialist revolutions, the post-modernism and relativism, and other objective and subjective conditions. But later I was listening to Andy Zee talk to someone who had further questions about how to make revolution, and he said one thing I hadn’t really thought of before. Referring back to that question, he said (I’m paraphrasing) just as a combination of factors led to woke becoming a dominant line today, what WE do in relation to the swirl of rapid change and what other forces are doing can lead to revolution becoming the dominant line influencing millions.

So… onward with the spring/summer offensive!