We wanted to do a big used book sale to raise funds for the $100,000 fund drive. We set a goal of $1,000 for a two-day sale, and we achieved that goal and more. That is important. But also extremely important is that we linked this sale closely to the release of the crucial declaration “We Need And We Demand A Whole New Way To Live, A Fundamentally Different System.” This was a more revolutionary book sale than we have done in the past, and we also tapped into and learned some new things about the mood of the people and how they are confronting the intense times we are in, and how we can forge an emancipating revolution through these times.

The summer is the slow season for our store—school is greatly reduced at nearby UC Berkeley (with a limited summer session). There are days when almost no one comes into the store. Also we had very few used books on hand when we started working on this sale. We had to get contributions of books, and we had to widely publicize the sale to succeed, and we needed to draw forward everyone who could be part of this.

A local small press, Small Press Distribution, and a book publisher, Heyday Books, both gave generous donations of poetry and coffee table art books, and said that we could publicize that they had contributed. Sales of these books ended up amounting to over $300 for the fund drive. We also received a collection of titles on the history and cultures of Native peoples of this land. These were books that spoke literal volumes about the reality of America—wars, removals, boarding schools (concentration camps for kids), and broken treaties and executions, legal and not. Books about Powhatan, Tecumseh, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Osceola and Crazy Horse and others who led resistance against the U.S. and its brutal army (fuck you for your service!). These books—when we put them in the framework of “We Are the Revcoms…” and “We Need and We Demand…”—help put revolution on the map. And we also got some other generous donations, and had a good collection of quality books.

Several students who had just volunteered to work with the store helped to prepare for and set up the book sale. We posted for the sale all around Berkeley and reached out via the internet. And just having many tables of books lining the hallway by the store with revolutionary posters and enlargements on the side was itself an attraction to people, and we ended up with many, many people coming for the sale.

One thing we did was set up a prominent table of used books on communism—used and reduced-cost titles of works by Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Mao, and books on the new communism of Bob Avakian (BA). This table got a lot of attention, especially from young people. Many people went home with books of communist theory, and the “We Are the Revcoms…” and “We Need and We Demand….” One of the things we tapped into is a hunger among some of the youth who were coming through for some deep answers to what is happening right now and what to do about it. One young man told us that he had recently read Volume 1 of Capital. We said, “That is not an easy book to read.” He said, “Yes, it took me a while, but I worked it through.” We asked him, “What did you get out of it?” He said that before he read it, he had been considering social democracy (like Bernie Sanders). But after reading it, he said he realized that that was not enough—that something much deeper and more radical is required. It is good that some are doing this kind of deeper investigation, and drawing real-world conclusions from theoretical works like this. One thing which we are wrestling with and which was posed at this book sale is that more of these youth are interested in the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao than they are of the new communism of BA. But at least during this book sale many went home promising to dig into “We Are the Revcoms…” and “We Need and We Demand…,” and in some cases people linked up with the Revolution Club, which was part of this book sale as well.

At times during the book sale, people were lined up at the counter, their arms loaded with books, often donating $20 or more on top of their purchase, some expressing appreciation for the store and repeatedly telling us this was not like any store they had ever seen (we were also spreading the world about our sister store in Harlem in NYC), promising to tell other friends about it, saying they will come back and explore more, and signing up with the revolution. It is striking that almost everyone who came in to talk agreed that society is tearing apart, and that something very dangerous is looming. What most do not see is how something very positive can come out.

After the first day, we summed up that we needed a sharper political focus. There were two key points. One, we had the experience of someone saying “yes, yes, yes” to revolution and the Declaration, and then when they walked off they said “Happy July 4”! We didn’t want any more of that, we wanted to bring out right from the start that this was quite the opposite of a celebration of July 4 and America. We postered the walls where the used books were on display with the “July 4th America is nothing to celebrate” poster, and invited people to join us in the street on July 4. And two, we put much more front and center: “We need a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system.” That is what this fund raiser is about.

Some further experiences:

Two sisters, daughters of Vietnamese immigrants, browsed the poetry section and one asked for books in Arabic, her area of study. They said they were fascinated by the store and had recently wanted to know much more about communism as their parents were very anti-communist and said they “lost everything” because of the communists, but never said any more than that. We spoke about the overall positive and liberating history, and invited them back to discuss things further, including the savage war crimes the U.S. committed in Vietnam.

On Saturday a high school student came in the store, amazed. On Sunday he brought a group of youth attending a debate camp at UC Berkeley, who voraciously grazed the books. Inside the bookstore they browsed the tables and shelves and read the posters on the walls. One member of our staff raised her voice:

JULY 4, 2023—AMERICA IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE “…for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival…”

Let us not cover up the truth, the U.S., the #1 capitalist-imperialist exploiter in the world today—was founded in slavery, genocide and has lied about all of this. WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM. OK, Debate me!

There was a silence, and then, “we agree with you.” The youth who had brought the group in explained that they were from “very conservative” places in Utah. “And Kansas,” a female student said. She told us about her life and how she had grown up in an extremely conservative Christian family. When she became part of the debate club in her high school, she had to read lots of materials on both sides of different issues. This opened her mind and eyes and changed her thinking, so she broke away from the views of her family and found a “new” family amongst the debaters. She began arguing with her family with her new thinking and they told her, “That sounds like communism.” Now here she was in a communist bookstore eagerly looking for radical and revolutionary ideas. As she held the Declaration she said she was going to take it back to the camp and raise it for discussion.

A summer session at UC Berkeley was just starting, and Sunday was move-in day. Groups of students came in to the store, drawn by the displays, some for a time, some just quickly in and out. One staffer stopped one group as they were about to leave. Repeat after me, “1, 2, 3, 4,” she said in a conversational tone… “1, 2, 3, 4,” “slavery, genocide, and war”… “5, 6, 7, 8,” and finished louder, “America was never great!” The students chanted the last with gusto.

A final point: One thing we were not satisfied with was how well we understand what we want to do with the “We Need and We Demand” declaration. This was our first shot at raising it to the people, and we feel we needed to take it to them with more of a challenge to take up this need and DEMAND for a whole new world and whole new system as their own and spread it throughout society. So on this we can and need to do better.