Revolution #60, September 10, 2006
Building for October 5th in the Projects
Revolution received the following correspondence from someone organizing for World Can’t Wait—Drive Out the Bush Regime mobilizations on October 5th in a housing project in the Midwest:
I think there is a real basis to bring out hundreds from this project on October 5th. First I want to talk about what has been happening since the latest police shooting here, and why I think this is possible. The recent police shooting here has galvanized a lot of people and brought them into action. They shot a young man last month, seriously wounding him, and there were several days of protest. There’s been a number of things that have happened since the shooting that has a favorable (or can have a favorable) impact on bringing people forward from this section.
A dozen or so people came over to watch the Spike Lee film on New Orleans. Most of the people expressed a real desire or interest in driving out the Bush Regime. There is a group of people who have already, in one way or another, begun to build for the 5th. People are getting leaflets out in the community. Some of these people are guys who were into or around “the street life.” They have a lot of connections. Some of these guys are thinking about stuff in a way they weren’t that open to a while back. One guy has a “Wanted for Mass Murder” poster that was in Revolution—of Katrina and the whole Bush crew—up in his window, and he took leaflets to his drug rehab program. Kids want to organize for it in their high schools. And some of the community organizer types, who are tied in with the City and who have had their differences with the RCP at times, do respect the Party, and hate Bush. So this is another group we can involve.
One thing is that I have gotten out 23 copies of Bob Avakian’s new talks here and had some initial discussion with people. One woman I know who listened to it has also encouraged other people to listen to the talk “Why We’re in the Situation We’re in Today…” She tells her friends, “You will learn things you never knew. One thing is that we are still slaves. Everything that is happening to us is part of a government plan.” One of the maintenance men here at the projects left his copy with his sister, and got another one for himself. This other guy who is a cigarette vendor is listening to “Why We’re in the Situation We’re in Today…” Initially he said, “I’m just waiting—I’m all registered and ready to vote…” But agreed, upon discussion (and not that much discussion) that we can’t wait that long. With this other guy, a 17-year-old who is well known for really getting up in the authorities’ face, and is in and out of jail—we listened to a section of Bob Avakian’s talk “Conservatism, Christian Fundamentalism, Liberalism and Paternalism…Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton…Not All ‘Right’ but All Wrong!" First this youth was sitting and listening. Then he got up and stood next to the speaker and was listening even more intently. He said, “What that guy is saying is really true.” He took the CD upstairs to finish listening to it. I think it inspired him.
Another thing that can help is that the relationship between the World Can’t Wait movement nationwide and people in the projects here needs to be developed. People here need to know what is going on not only here in this city around WCW, but around the country. Going to the WCW web site and calling in to the office are very important, but many of the people here, unfortunately, don’t have access to the web. Revolution newspaper is one way, a central way, for people to keep up with what is going on. If we are going to have hundreds from this project out on the streets on the 5th, we need to build organization there. One way of doing this is to develop a chapter of WCW here. Some of the youth have already expressed a desire to take this up in their schools. This can be a way to not only bring forward people from the project, but to reach thousands more. We need to get a whole lot of stickers, flyers and materials to these students to take to school on opening day.
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