Revolution #212, September 26, 2010
To Revolutionaries, Radicals and Resisters:
Take THIS Revolution to the Campuses
Last year, the movement for revolution began to get going on the campus. The revolutionary communists came, straight up, to Columbia and Cal-Berkeley, to UCLA and University of Chicago, NYU and Harvard, Howard and Clark Atlanta University. They challenged the conventional wisdom—and sometimes the spokespeople for that wisdom. They took on what "everybody knows" about the history and future of communist revolutions... about the still ongoing and, yes, intensifying oppression of women... and about the grotesque irony of Black youth becoming a new generation of "Buffalo Soldiers"—joining the U.S. Army to violently defend the very white supremacist system that forecloses their future. A special Revolution on the environmental emergency—one which lays bare the real depth and source of the problem but also shows how revolution could deal with this—began to get out as well.
All this was badly needed. Without a revolutionary movement on the campuses, and without radical ferment and much more critical thinking and a whole lot of imagination among the students, there won't be revolution. There won't be an end to the horrors; just a tinkering with and touching up of the system that produced the horrors.
This year? Let's take it deeper and let's take it wider. Let's get back into the debates we opened up. And let's open up some new ones. Let's talk about Israel—about its whole history, what it's doing today, and how all that fits into U.S. global domination. Let's talk about micro-lending and NGOs, and how those false solutions suck in thousands of students every year who really do want to make a difference with their lives. Let's seriously get that Revolution on the environment out to the many students agonizing over the future of life on this planet. And let's get into, most of all, the possibility for a whole different future society on this land that will be laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—coming this Fall!
from And, despite the good intentions of many teachers, the educational system is a bitter insult for many youth and a means of regimentation and indoctrination overall. While, particularly in some "elite" schools, there is some encouragement for students to think in "non-conformist" ways—so long as, in the end, this still conforms to the fundamental needs and interests of the system—on the whole, instead of really enabling people to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, education is crafted and twisted to serve the commandments of capital, to justify and perpetuate the oppressive relations in society and the world as a whole, and to reinforce the dominating position of the already powerful. And despite the creative impulses and efforts of many, the dominant culture too is corrupted and molded to lower, not raise, people’s sights, to extol and promote the ways of thinking, and of acting, that keep this system going and keep people believing that nothing better is possible. |
Let's do all this—and let's do it as part of the campaign "The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have." A campaign to put revolution back on the map... to make the leader of that revolution, Bob Avakian, known throughout society… and to bring forward a new wave of revolutionary fighters.
Let's take a challenge to the students: "We ARE building a movement for revolution... And if you don't think we need a revolution, tell us why!" Seriously, let's paint a picture of the whole thing: the wars and destruction of entire countries; the officially sanctioned torture; the capitalist destruction of the planet's ecosystems and the environment; the oppression of women—intensifying in different forms across the world; children's lives and dreams ground to dust in the global sweatshops; police brutality and the criminalization and incarceration of a generation; and pose that challenge for real. "You want to defend this? You really think that this can or should be patched up? Too much is at stake not to get into and seriously check out a REAL AND RADICAL ALTERNATIVE: REVOLUTION AND COMMUNISM, especially as it has been re-envisioned in Bob Avakian's new synthesis." Let's get out the Message and Call from the RCP—"The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have"—and let's make it a mission to permeate some campuses with this by semester's end.
Let's take poster boards of the Revolution centerspread on "Entre-Manure-ialism" onto the campus—and let's work up some street theatre based on it—and plug into the real dissatisfaction that a lot of students have for the putrid culture we live in, and the bankrupt future—and morality—they're being offered... or, rather, pushed into. Let's take the symbols of that culture—from the cop hats to the porn to the wedding dresses—and throw them, figuratively and yeah, maybe literally, into the dumpster. And while we do all that, let's model and create space for a new morality, that lives our principles now.
Let's get the special issue on Israel, coming October 4, out in a big way; and let's use the quiz about Israel's true history ahead of time to stir controversy and anticipation. Let's stir up debate and argument on this question—let's NOT "let sleeping dogs lie"—and let's be sure that there's a growing trend of people on the campus who know what's behind Israel's attacks on the Palestinians and its threats to start war against Iran, and let's get ready to politically respond at the next outrage. Let's do this—and let's seek to unite with the people who've also been working to bring out the truth about and build resistance to these crimes, and let's get some debate going with anyone who wants to defend this shit.
Let's take the October 22 day of protest to stop police brutality and repression onto the campuses, and let's unite some of the people who face that every day to come with us as we do. Let's remember the response of a student from an elite campus who came to a conference on building the movement for revolution, when he met and talked with some people who live in the projects about their lives—"the people on my campus have NO IDEA about this!" What might be the impact if even a couple of people who DO live this hell every day came to campus with signs saying "Ask me what it's like to live in the hellhole called America"? And what might be the impact of some of the students going on guided tours of the ghettos and barrios, led by these same people?
Let's try new things. Let's see if we can put together a "Revolution Week" at some campuses, where formal organized programs could be put on but where those would be in a whole context of a week of revolutionary agitation and programs and showings of Bob Avakian's filmed talk on revolution and coffee shop discussions and classroom "guest lectures" and with Avakian's image popping up in unexpected places and on unexpected people, and where the week itself has an informal revolutionary festive feel—massive visual saturation and decoration with past posters of centerfolds and back pages, "guerilla-arts-style" video showings on walls, street theatre and agitation, collectively watching Bob Avakian's revolution talk, and discussions/arguments in dorms and cafés going into the night, and everything else you can imagine. Why not? Is there anything more festive than actually setting about bringing into being a whole new—and far better—world? Anything more stimulating than seeing the dots actually connected? And let this be "radically simple" in the way we do it—get your kits and get out there and talk with people!
Let's get revolutionary literature way into the campus... but let's not confine ourselves to passing out a few—or even a lot of—flyers and papers and posters. Let's sit down with people—with students—and let's find out what they think. Let's listen to how they see the world and their futures, and with those who are provoked—or who provoke you—let's go through the day and into the night and talk further. Let's make a friend or two—sure, let them know what we're doing, but don't just be calling them when "you've got something for them to do." Naw, that's not the heart of what this movement for revolution is or should be about—let's be part of the feel and flow of campus life, and bring revolution into that.
Let's be like our cause and like our leader—completely outrageous... and eminently reasonable! Let's get the image of Bob Avakian up and out and everywhere. Let's popularize BA's memoir... and let's show his talk on revolution all over. People have never heard and read or seen anything like Avakian—let's tap into the hunger that many don't even know they have yet. For those who've been hungry for something like this, let's meet that hunger and get into it with them. And for those who feel even a little bit pulled to what we got here, let's walk with them all the way through the whole back-and-forth, up-and-down, zig-and-zag, wrangle-resist-and-grapple-with process involved in rupturing with just about everything you've been told your whole life and everything your friends, your teachers, your parents and pretty much the whole damn society is telling you right now. Let's not give up on people... and let's give them space to act on what they do know and believe, while they work out the rest. Let's have a little strategic confidence that what we've got with BA and with our whole communist cause really IS the real deal... and that people, right now, may be hooked by the society and may have a hard time getting unhooked... but that, deep down, they don't want to be strung out on the nasty-ass bad dope known as America.
Let's get out there. Let's learn, and let's teach. Let's wage some struggle. Let's use our imagination and our science. And let's have some fun.
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