Revolutionary Worker #1218, November 2, 2003, posted at rwor.org
I have just returned after an invigorating and successful day at school where the students of my school took a stand with the masses and RESISTED police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation.
It all started a few weeks ago when I passed out about five copies of the O22 Call to some people that I knew of being rather politically open-minded. Expecting these few people to be the extent of the people I'd get in on this, I asked them what we should do with this. Their answer? We need more copies to get this out to the peeps! So, I came back the next day with a buttload of O22 Calls from the official O22 Coalition website, and we all created a "division of labor" of sorts to get this shit out. We passed out the flyers and put up the posters, and in turn those flyers and posters were passed to others... pretty soon, I had around 50 students sayin' they were wanting to help me.
So time passes by; we plan and strategize, remind peeps of the date and what to do. For the first time, my bundle of the Revolutionary Workers sells out. We make the poster/banner that we plan to have everyone sign and then send to the coalition. All until the big day...
Today, all went according to plan. Buttloads of people came to school wearing all black, with their own mini-posters taped to their shirts supporting O22, and even more people come to sign our poster. As of writing this letter, the poster is still being passed about the school because so many want to sign it!!! I simply cannot wait to see how it turns out. People were extremely positive and I was able to identify a small core of "advanced" here at the school that would be helpful in my struggles, and summing up was very very positive.
Overall, October 22nd was a very powerful day for me, a day where I learned a lot about organizing, strategy, and how to deal with the various types (advanced/ intermediate/backwards) of peeps. I learned more about the Mass Line, and how people in the middle strata think about issues of the day. And I discovered and met a lot more progressive youth that I didn't know at my school! All in all, a GREAT day.