“Now is a moment when you have to tell the truth to people”—Vignettes from Los Angeles on taking out BA’s THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!

March 12, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From readers in LA:

The following are some glimpses of initial reactions and responses from people on watching clips and excerpts from BA’s THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!

* One student responded to watching the full talk, “These are things I feel and think but can’t talk about with people because they’re so entrenched into the way things are.” He said, appreciatively of BA in the talk that, “Now is a moment when you have to tell the truth to people.” Another person said, also appreciatively: “He put the problem right in front of your face; no tiptoeing around.”

* One student who has seen the talk is telling everyone they know that we’re not going to stop Trump and Pence through voting, but that we have to be in the streets. They’ve taken responsibility to spread the word to others of this talk and they’re working together, in different ways, to build resistance to the crimes of the Trump/Pence regime while linking it to the struggle needed to drive out the regime. And they’re having a lot of discussion and struggle over questions of epistemology, identity politics and more as they are doing this.

* With watching the film, and some back-and-forth struggle, a student is coming to see that elections won’t end the system of capitalism and that elections won’t put a stop to fascism. The student is now reading THE NEW COMMUNISM.

* A woman we’ve known for some time, who lost her son to police murder, loved the film. She was really pumped up off watching it and at one point in the midst was saying, “Black people don’t know this and need to.” This was in response to the GTF¹... She is very frustrated that Black people are not doing more around this and generally are so quiet.... She also commented, “Black people need to get that this is about everyone—people are suffering everywhere. That is what they need to be about.” After the film she spoke to how BA is teaching people how we got to this situation and what slavery has to do with where we are today. She was recently with a bunch of other families of victims of police murder and was frustrated that people were relying on politicians and struggled with them about this. She said she taught them the chant: “1, 2, 3, 4, Slavery, Genocide and War. 5, 6, 7, 8, America was never great!” and everyone loved it. She was enlisted in the promotion of the film, especially on social media. She is also getting out cards. We need to learn the response she has gotten.

* The woman we met with considers herself a Christian revolutionary and has seen BA talks in the past. She and I watched about half of the talk. Right after it began, she made me pause it so she could take notes. She commented out loud during the viewing in response to points made by BA: Donald Trump claims to have won the popular vote—“that’s a damn lie.” Re slavery: We have to judge things by the standards of the times. People back then did not know better—“Bull.”

After BA states, if police shot down dogs wantonly there would be a huge hue and cry but the same people are silent when this is done to people of darker skin—she stops the talk and tells the story of her relative who was shot by police. She was out putting up posters of him in the neighborhood. There were posters up of a missing dog. A police comes on her and threatens her to take her poster down. She refuses and asks what about the poster of the dog. He responds people care about that dog.

Another point in the talk that got her interest: “Free Yourself from the GTF!”

She gets challenged a lot by people in her church and family. What is a Christian doing with a communist? Her basic response is we are both for justice. She is influenced by a lot of the propaganda about communism, as are people she knows. She thought she would need to study about BA and communism a lot so she could explain BA to people.

I told her if she likes it, then spread it and let BA speak for himself. She went to Facebook and started sharing.

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We look forward to learning more about the responses to this film and the experiences spreading it to others. Write to us at revolution.reports@yahoo.com

1. This is a section of the talk where BA discusses “the Great Tautological Fallacy” of narrow American chauvinism, a circular argument that assumes the “goodness” of America with an assumption that therefore it’s a force for good in the world... because of its “fundamental goodness,” etc. But this is a BLOODY LIE which BA exposes in substantive and visceral ways. [back]

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