A very engaged audience of 24 people, including 20 students and a professor, showed up for Sunsara Taylor’s speech on “Woke” Lunacy vs. Real Revolution at a university in southern California last week. The students were a mix of different races and genders, undergrad and grad students. Some students came in clearly itching to debate. After a warm introduction from a professor, in which he pointed out that University of California San Diego (UCSD) has a lot of “woke politics” but doesn’t have any “real revolution,” Sunsara Taylor got right into her speech. Four questions she explored were:

[1] Does each different “identity” group—and even each individual—have their “own truth”? Or, is there one unified objective reality that anyone can discover using the tools of science?

[2] Is the problem in society and the world “marginalization” or is it oppression? And why does this matter?

[3] Is cancel culture a tool that empowers the powerless? Or, is it a grotesque expression of the values of this dog-eat-dog capitalist system and the profoundly lowered sights of those who cannot see beyond it?

[4] Should the goal be to guard ourselves with trigger warnings and safe spaces within this monstrous system? Or do we all need to get out of our comfort zones and put it on the line to make a real revolution and bring about a world that is actually safe for the masses of oppressed humanity here and all over the world?

Watch a teaser from her speech.

After the speech Sunsara and Rafael Kadaris fielded a very lively Q&A. Early on, a young woman appreciated Taylor's emphasis on science, but asked: Isn't there a role for people's emotions as motivators for fighting for revolution? Sunsara said yes, it is incredibly important that people's fury at how they and others are oppressed and degraded be unleashed as a driving force in revolution. But, a) sometimes people unleash their legitimate fury and other emotions in wrong ways—like revenge and destructive violence among oppressed people. So you have to be scientific about evaluating this, even as you have to encourage it in a positive way. And, b) where there is oppression there will be resistance, but without a scientific understanding of the source of that oppression and the solution, and without leadership basing itself on that scientific understanding, even the most powerful struggles will be contained and absorbed back into the system. The student followed: Would you say that this emphasizes the importance of learning about history and social sciences... of course, it depends on who is telling the history. Sunsara united with learning history and taking a scientific approach to society, but said that the question is NOT “who tells the history” but is it told accurately.

Another student asked: What is the mechanism for revolution? Didn’t Marx theorize that the industrialized workers would rise up? Sunsara spoke to key changes in the world since Marx’s time, like the development of imperialist globalization, that have changed the position of workers in the U.S., and she emphasized the “5 Stops” (white supremacy, patriarchy, deportation of immigrants, imperialist wars, and destruction of the environment) as key driving forces for revolution now. She also talked about the development of communism as a science, the original breakthrough of Marx, and the further breakthroughs Bob Avakian has made on that foundation to advance communism, including a more scientific understanding of the relation between social relations (like racial and gender oppression) and the economic system.

A student asked what is meant by revolution and why do you say it’s more possible now. Rafael spoke concretely to what a real revolution is (the overthrow of the system of capitalism-imperialism by millions of people in an all-out fight). Then he got into how this is a rare time when revolution is more possible because the rulers are deeply divided, ripping up the “norms” that people are used to, like peaceful transfer of power, fundamental rights like abortion. All this is making people question. This poses tremendous dangers, but also potential openings if we bring a revolutionary understanding to people and organize them into this. He emphasized that this revolutionary understanding doesn’t come to people just from their direct experience of oppression but has to be brought to them, which is why it’s so harmful when “woke” folk tell people not to even look into what Bob Avakian is saying because he’s white.

A trans student said that it's clear that Sunsara opposes attacks on trans people, but why bait people over pronouns? They read part of a quote from Bob Avakian (BA) where he calls out woke folk for focusing on changing the faces of those on top of this system while spitting on people who don't use the right pronouns or in some other way conform to the constantly mutating standards of wokeness. The student also pointed to BA's article, “Pronouns and Starving Children,” which they mischaracterized as being opposed to using people's preferred pronouns. They accused BA of making a disingenuous argument because, “You can care about trans people and the children who are starving.”

Sunsara asked them to cite where they saw BA argue against calling people by their preferred pronouns. They again mischaracterized what he's written. Several other trans and non-binary students united with this.

Rafael took people back to where BA begins the article, stepping back to the bigger picture—just since World War 2, 350 million children have died of starvation and preventable disease because of the system of capitalism-imperialism, which we have the power to change… but what are people obsessing over on college campuses? Identity and pronouns. As he was speaking, a handful of students started grumbling and objecting that this was a false dichotomy.

Sunsara called bullshit: Of course it is possible to care about pronouns and starving children. But that is not what is happening. Look around! Virtually no one is fighting what this country does to the people of the world or taking responsibility to end this through revolution. Instead, people are being canceled for wrong pronouns and language. Making a point of misgendering and attacking trans people is fucked up. But that is not what BA is doing. He specifically said he’s not here to argue about what pronouns people use, but about what their priorities are. If this got under your skin, good! Hopefully you'll think about what he is actually saying. And let's be real, in terms of the rising attacks on trans people—which are very serious and even genocidal—canceling people over pronouns is not doing shit to stop the 500 anti-trans laws introduced or passed. Stopping this is going to take struggle and resistance and most fundamentally REVOLUTION—the same solution that is required to end patriarchy and climate destruction and imperialist wars and the starvation of millions of children every year. So, yes these things are connected, but obsessing over pronouns is doing harm. This brought reality back in the room and reset terms sharply. In the middle of it, the mother of one of the students blurted out about all the focus on language instead of fighting back, “It’s like putting a band aid on a major wound.”

A student said what she got from the talk is that woke-ism poses as being about change, but it is just “performative”—it’s about changing the faces of the system and small reforms, versus a bigger change and revolution.

Finally, a student went back to the 350 million children and challenged people in the room to think seriously about the whole world and what is really going on. To these starving children, even the trans ones, they don't have the time to think about pronouns. And even recognizing, as someone who is nonbinary themselves, the positive impact that pronouns can have on one's mental health, the bigger thing is to change what is causing the attacks on trans people.

Sunsara appreciated this statement and struggled with the students to lift their sights to the 8 billion people on this planet who this system keeps us blind to, but who we are intimately connected to. She talked about people fleeing their homelands from countries in Latin America the U.S. has plundered... the heating of the planet... the ripping up of the democratic norms of this country… the Black and trans legislators in Tennessee and Montana being purged and silenced by fascists. This world is changing, radically. The revolution is possible, but the forces for revolution are not nearly strong enough, and you need to be part of changing that, even as you are learning about it. Sunsara pointed to the “We Are the Revcoms” statement and challenged students to be part of letting the millions know about this revolution, helping spread this tour, and getting into the revolution themselves.

After the program ended, about half the students stuck around for almost another hour, getting signed up and talking more with Sunsara, Rafael, and the other revcoms. One student later that evening posted on her Instagram story:

“This talk was super good and inspiring!!! It was about how liberalism uses identity politics (‘wokeism’) not only as bandaid solutions to systemic problems, but as a counter-revolutionary and anticommunist tool to shut down impactful discussions. Definitely check out @therevcoms”