Ceremony and Celebration for New Members of the Revolution Club
by the Revolution Club, New York City
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On a misty Sunday afternoon, people gathered at Revolution Books for an inspiring event full of heart and science, humor and revolutionary love for humanity. People came to a ceremony to celebrate a diverse group of individuals stepping up to officially join the Revolution Club. It was put together and hosted by leaders in the Revolution Club, and in attendance were current Revolution Club members, the newest recruits to the Revolution Club and their invited guests—family members, friends and partners, longtime revolutionaries and supporters of the movement for revolution, and others. One new member took the day off work and made a two-hour drive to be part of the ceremony. People active in RefuseFascism.org came to be part of the experience. A ceremony like this was the first of its kind in NYC.
During the opening remarks to the ceremony, one of the co-hosts made the point that in a world and in a society where all around you everybody is hit with the same message to “only think about yourself” and forget about the larger world, forget about the 65 million refugees fleeing war, poverty, and hunger, forget about the destruction of the environment, and on and on, it is a great thing, in the face of all that, to have people saying they refuse to accept these horrors, they’re about the emancipation of all of humanity so “count me in!” This is a beautiful thing that was celebrated on this day.
The new recruits were given a warm welcome and presented with an official Revolution Club membership patch. Each new person went up on stage and shared a story or recounted the process that got them to this point. There were many heartfelt statements made and some went deep into the transformations they have gone through, politically and ideologically, as a result of running with the Revolution Club, struggling over the big questions confronting humanity and seriously engaging with Bob Avakian (BA) and the new communism. It was very moving for everyone involved.
The program featured the trailer of the new speech by Bob Avakian, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution; it included a statement from Carl Dix; and there was a special performance from the revolutionary rock band Outernational; and important statements were made by current Revolution Club members who talked about their own experiences becoming revolutionaries and what it has meant to be part of this group and contribute to the world historic effort to emancipate humanity.
The Revolution Club co-hosts kept bringing the audience back to the core message: that this system cannot be reformed and it must be overthrown, that there’s leadership in Bob Avakian. and that today that’s the process people are stepping into in answering the call and challenge to be a part of the Revolution Club. They did a dramatic reading of the Points of Attention for the Revolution; and they called attention to the need to defeat the attempts by the system to silence and repress the Revolution Club in different cities, in particular highlighting the serious charges facing the comrades in Chicago and Los Angeles. And through all this they also gave a sense of the Revolution Club as an organization with national scope.
The program ended with a challenge to the audience to put on the R-NL! [BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!] T-shirt as part of taking a first step in powerfully representing for this revolution... there was a momentary silence and then a couple of people enthusiastically did. We called on new and current members of the Revolution Club as well as those who got a T-shirt that day to come up on stage for a group picture—with fists in the air—and we chanted, “This system can’t be reformed—It must be overthrown!”
As HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution puts it, the Revolution Club is “where people can take part in and powerfully represent for the revolution in an organized way, as they learn more about the revolution and advance toward joining the Party.” Those responsible for putting the ceremony together worked hard in the days before to come up with a program that would capture this through statements, videos, and visuals. We wrestled with the importance of how this ceremony is part of the process of recruiting the thousands now into the revolution and bringing forward communists, and tried to present and convey the strategic importance of new and current members taking up the responsibility to be part of a force and organization—the Revolution Club—that is getting organized and ready to make real revolution—to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time.
Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution
A speech by Bob Avakian
In two parts:
Watch it, spread it, fund it
Find out more about this speech—and get organized to spread it »
From Statements Made at the NYC Revolution Club Patch Ceremony
Prepared statement from a new member of the Revolution Club read at ceremony
I’ve long been convinced of the necessity for revolution and communism. Most of my adult life has been spent dedicated to studying the works from Marx to Mao, the history of the international communist movement, the breakthrough that marked the first stage of communist revolution, and fighting like hell for that right here in the belly of the beast. I have known about Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party for quite some time, reading bits and pieces of various works here and there, and occasionally “checking in” online to see what this revolution was up to. But for far, far too long I did not take it seriously. In fact, I was among those who were quite hostile to it. That all changed when I met supporters of the Party and its leadership, and when I opened myself up to struggling with them. There’s so much that I can say about the period between then and now, and my whole life leading up to this point... but instead, I’ll ask y’all: where am I standing now? I’m standing here and now to join the Revolution Club, to make a leap in my further transformation as an emancipator of humanity, to be a part of the vanguard of the future.
The truth is, before I linked up with this revolution, I was just about ready to give up on revolution. Because ideas, determination, resolve, drawing on experiences of the past—all of that alone can only take you so far. What was missing, what I so desperately needed, even if I didn’t know it at the time, was the living scientific method and approach that Bob Avakian has synthesized and brought forward. My mind was so full of dogmatism, idealism, a whole package of all that bullshit, even as I spoke vehemently against such things. For me, “science” had become synonymous with “philosophy” and “ideology,” which really means I was guided by religiosity more than anything else. The New Communism that Bob Avakian has brought forward has changed everything for me; I’m still in the process of shaking off the old ways of thinking, making the ruptures needed in order to really stand up to the challenges ahead. But I have accepted the invitation to join him on this revolutionary road, joining the collectivity of others who are fighting together to take up and enrich this science, and applying it to transform society towards the final aim of world communism.
Because all of humanity, the very planet itself, is counting on us to follow through on that. We have to become a major contending force in society, so that thousands and then millions more come to accept this invitation too. The work that BA has done objectively represents the only way out of the long nightmare that humanity has suffered, the endless horrors of capitalism-imperialism that all other projects for humanity will ultimately keep us locked within. We have seen a glimpse of what is possible in revolutions past, now we must go even further. And look, one thing those experiences taught us is that we should never be afraid to go against the tide, to go up against all the prevailing winds that lead the people away from what they must rise up to accomplish. We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be, but we have the basis for us to make huge leaps forward in this movement, and very quickly. With communism that is grounded in a scientific method and approach, and an inexhaustible impatience, we can live up to what we say we are. We can be the real, revolutionary communists that the world so desperately needs.
New member
... it’s amazing to know that there are organizations out there that are actually fighting to emancipate all of humanity and not just one pocket or two here and there because the more you do any kind of activism the more you realize how interconnected all these issues are to the horror that is capitalism, so I’m really, really honored to be part of the movement to truly overthrow that so that we can actually live in a better world and actually make real progress and real change, so thank you everyone.
New member
... I’m a citizen of the world... and I’m very happy to be here with you, to be part of the Club, of the Revolution Club. And I’m very excited, very excited to fight against the capitalism-imperialism system. Yes I agree the Trump/Pence regime must go but the system we must definitely destroy it because like you say all the time a better world is possible. If we look around, whether in Haiti, Dominican Republic, in Mexico... you see the same thing, poverty, misery, ignorance, diseases... war, police brutality, all those things come from the capitalism system, capitalism-imperialism. And I believe like BA says all the time, this system cannot be reformed, cannot be reformed, this is the nature of the system, it must be totally, I’m going to use a very hard word, it must be totally destroyed... we must be serious and scientific and that’s what I love about the Revolution Club... And I would like to say thanks to them... on a daily basis those guys, you know, they call me all the time, I call them all the time, they come to my house, we really work together. Again I’m very happy to be with you and I know, I’m pretty sure, I’m not going to say 100 percent but at least 98 percent I will be helpful for the Revolution Club. Before I finish, on the Points of Attention for the Revolution... the first one is very important, “...We do not tolerate using the revolution for personal gain.” This is very, very important, a lot of people they did that, they did that in the Dominican Republic, they did that in Haiti, they did that in Mexico... the second one is very important, they’re all important... the third one, “We fight for a world without borders”... I’m a citizen of the world, everywhere the capitalist-imperialist system exists I will fight against it... “and for equality among different peoples, cultures and languages,” that’s the reason I speak four languages because since I was young I said I must communicate with all people in America, wherever you’re from, you’re from Venezuela or born in Venezuela or you were born in the Dominican Republic, or Haiti... “We do not tolerate insults, ‘jokes’ or derogatory names about a person’s race, nationality, or language.” That’s very important.
Points of Attention for the Revolution
The Revolution Club upholds, lives by and fights for the following principles:
New member
... I’ve been around the movement for revolution for a long time fighting police brutality, standing up against the wars, but the longer that I’ve been around this the more I see, fuck, we need to get rid of this system, this system has to be overthrown it cannot be reformed and so some of us were talking about this quote the other day and this quote had a really big impact on me becoming a revolutionary. This is by Bob Avakian from BAsics 1:31.
If you can conceive of a world without America—without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world—then you’ve already taken great strides and begun to get at least a glimpse of a whole new world. If you can envision a world without any imperialism, exploitation, oppression—and the whole philosophy that rationalizes it—a world without division into classes or even different nations, and all the narrow-minded, selfish, outmoded ideas that uphold this; if you can envision all this, then you have the basis for proletarian internationalism. And once you have raised your sights to all this, how could you not feel compelled to take an active part in the world historic struggle to realize it; why would you want to lower your sights to anything less?
So that’s why I’m part of this Revolution Club.
New member
So I’m so proud to be here—I just can’t even begin to tell you guys—but on top of that... we still need to do so much more. All of us here, I think. One step that I’m definitely taking as we move forward is I want to contribute not just more of my time, more of my being, more of my expertise that I have, but I must give monetarily as well. ... the intellectual integrity that we have within this room [is so high], we need to match that, and we need to talk to all of our friends we need to talk to family we need to talk to anyone that we can because the movement will go faster will happen better and more efficiently, because BA has already done all of the think work... and again the one message that BA has that nobody else has in this world today is putting humanity first and that’s what I want for all of us in this room.
A current member
... we are serious about this shit, but this is a thing where there’s no place on earth where you could run. There’s no running away from this shit that doesn’t involve on one level or another willfully blinding yourself towards it. Especially coming from this situation and as people have said furthermore none of this is necessary. But if you go out into the street you see that everyone has an explanation justifying why it is or why there’s only something you can do about it to change it in this way or that way to serve you, or them, or my people, or those people. And too few people know about this. And so as somebody that’s been around and in the club through these various stages of development. Why I’m wearing this patch today has to do with consciously stepping up to being part of solving this problem. Seeing it around and seeing that too few fucking people know about this shit and that absolutely none of this is necessary. I’ve had this patch put on consciously as part of taking responsibility of putting up and putting on this radical revolt against this revolting culture on the map, of deepening my understanding but also bringing my questions and working on the problems of the revolution. I’m putting on this patch as part of representing for this revolution wherever I am, and working to bring forward and inspire others as part of this and... it’s one thing to do this and work through this shit on your own and wrangle with these ideas on your own and it’s a different thing entirely to do it collectively with people working on the biggest problems of the revolution and so that’s why I’m wearing this patch today.
Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:
