Chicago’s Break ALL the Chains Celebration:
"Lofty but Very Real"
August 18, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Sunday evening, August 10, almost 50 people came together in Chicago to celebrate the publication of the sampler version of Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution. The group was quite diverse—in terms of both age and nationality—with a significant representation of those who catch hell every day.
One person described the whole evening as “lofty but very real.” BAsics 3:22 and other quotes from the Break ALL the Chains! sampler framed the evening with its revolutionary vision. People got to know BA—some for the first time and others on a deeper level—through a film clip of BA speaking on the epidemic of rape together with various passages from the sampler. There was a video clip from Sunsara Taylor and the heroic Abortion Rights Freedom Riders who are right now on the front lines of this battle in Texas. And people at the celebration were introduced to the idea that “revolutionary state power can be a most liberating thing” when it comes to ending the oppression of women, and emancipating all of humanity. Everyone got an excerpt from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) on “Eradicating the Oppression of Women.” The audience was challenged to donate generously to the BA Everywhere campaign, based on imagining the difference it would make if many thousands more Break ALL the Chains! samplers were sent into hellhole prisons of the country (a thousand have already been sent) or were gotten out in neighborhoods of the oppressed.
Throughout the event you could see some of the embryos of a movement for revolution coming into being—one that fully unleashed the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution. People who came from neighborhoods of the oppressed read quotes from BA, told of their experiences, and read poems they had written inspired by BAsics 3:22. People heard letters read from prisoners describing how BA had radically altered their views towards women. One young brother played a beautiful song he had written called “When the Revolution Comes.” Two Chicago Revolution Club members jointly described a recent rally in a South Side park and how they had taken on pimp mentality bullshit and set off a big debate that rolled throughout the park as the Break ALL the Chains! sampler got into people's hands. And as the formal program was ending on August 10, people were treated to slides of the Revolution Contingent which the day before had marched in the Bud Billiken Parade (the largest African-American parade in the country).
The August 10 event challenged people. At one table, controversy broke out over a comment that “if women want to be porn stars, what’s wrong with that?” This generated a lot of back and forth which included one woman telling the guy to stop “thinking like a pimp.” Another guy was wrestling with gender roles and the question of abortion. And, as he left, he had gotten as far as “Well, I still think women should have the babies, but I can now see that they should also have the right to control their own body.”
The event also inspired people. A college student said it had reignited her desire to change the world. “This is beyond me and mine. So many groups are just about working for their own thing. This revolution has an all-encompassing view on how to address all the horrors of the world.” A woman from another country said, “This program is very important,” and she talked about her goal of writing the stories of women from her homeland who face horrible oppression. A woman who has not been active for a while was “very happy to see what has been developing.” A 13-year-old girl, who came with her family, responded to what she liked most about the program with: “I really liked what BA said. Lots more people need to know about him.” Inspiration for another person took the form of a very generous donation.
Overall, among all kinds of people, we really need to make leaps in raising the big money necessary to project BA Everywhere. People got a taste of a different future—and Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution is critical in ushering that future into being at the earliest possible time.
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