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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Israel's Killing of Humanitarian Activists:

An Outrageous Massacre to Enforce Horrific Crimes

by Alan Goodman

In the pre-dawn hours of May 31, 2010, Israeli military forces stormed the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships carrying humanitarian relief to Gaza. The Israelis killed at least nine activists and injured dozens of others. In response to an international outcry, Israel was forced to release hundreds of captured people from around the world who had been part of the flotilla. Now the Israeli and U.S. governments and the mainstream U.S. media have unleashed a massive disinformation barrage, aimed to confuse and demobilize people who have been shocked and outraged by this crime. But the basic facts are NOT in dispute.

Oppressors' Logic After Israeli commandos murdered nine people on a ship carrying aid to Gaza, this is what you heard—from CNN commentators, radio talk shows, and the guy sitting next to you at the restaurant: Didn't those people on the ships know that if they tried to break the blockade of Gaza that Israel would not tolerate this? What did they expect? They must have known that Israel would attack. The Israeli commandos who fired their guns were just responding to the people on the ship who attacked them with poles and chairs... In other words: the people on the ship who were killed and wounded...brought it on themselves. Think about this. A man comes home and is hungry, he's had a "bad day," he wants his supper NOW. But his wife doesn't have it ready, so he yells at her. She yells back. And so he slaps her. She tries to defend herself. So he beats her down. He tells her: "You know when you don't have my dinner ready it makes me mad.... You shouldn't yell at me. And you know when you hit me that I can't control myself.... You brought this down on yourself."

While the New York Times and others continue to frame the massacre in terms of the activists "attacking" the elite Israeli military forces who stormed the ships, the ships were in international waters and the Israeli assault was itself a crime against international law.

The relief effort was carrying 10,000 tons of concrete, toys, workbooks, chocolate, pasta and substantial medical supplies to Gaza, items that Israel bans from Gaza.

The internationals on board had no guns. They were attacked by elite, armed Israeli commandos rappelling down from helicopters onto the ship. Among the dead: a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back; Fulkan Dogan a 19-year-old who has dual Turkish-U.S. citizenship, shot five times from less than 45 centimeters (18 inches), in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Turkish autopsies revealed that five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back ("Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range," UK Guardian, June 4, 2010).

Those onboard the Mavi Marmara ranged in age from 88 to 1, and included not just Muslims, as the media has implied, but people of all kinds of backgrounds, religions (or none), philosophies, and politics. Some 700 activists from 40 countries were participating in the entire flotilla, including elected officials, former diplomats, aid workers and activists, a Nobel laureate, news correspondents, and independent journalists.

Like the murder of Rachel Corrie (a 23-year-old from the U.S. who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 during a non-violent protest against the occupation of Gaza) and other brazen and outrageous attacks on those standing with the Palestinian people, the massacre on the Mavi Marmara was a bloody statement from Israel to the people of the world that Israel's terrible crimes, particularly the brutal, inhumane mass-imprisonment of the people of Gaza, cannot be challenged.

Enforcing a Massive Crime

The 1.5 million people in Gaza—part of Palestine—live in the world's largest outdoor prison. At the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, Israel launched a one-sided massacre of Gaza, delivering weeks of collective punishment to the people of Gaza, destroying schools and shelling hospitals, killing some 1,400 people. Efforts to break the siege of Gaza, including the Gaza Freedom March a year after the massacre, have been blocked by Israel and Egypt, with the full backing of the U.S. government.

The blockade constitutes collective starvation, humiliation, and brutalization of all Gazans, collective punishment of an entire population that is "a flagrant violation of international law." (Amnesty International Report 2010—Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories).

Amnesty International's current Annual Human Rights Report states that Israel's siege on Gaza has "deepened the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by shortages left four out of five Gazans dependent on humanitarian aid." According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report, there has been an increase in malnourishment, now at over 10 percent of children in Gaza, because of a chronic lack of protein, iron, and essential vitamins.

Israel's 2008-2009 invasion damaged 15 of 27 hospitals in Gaza, including shelling the Al Wafa hospital that treats paraplegics and amputees. Israel damaged or destroyed 43 of Gaza's 110 primary health care facilities, none of which have been repaired or rebuilt because of the construction materials ban. Some 15 to 20 percent of essential medicines are commonly out of stock.^* And Israel's sadistic lockdown means that the people in Gaza are not allowed to leave and are totally cut off from family and friends outside. In the face of this, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."

• • •

The Israeli massacre on the Mavi Marmara took place amidst a tense international crisis in the Middle East, where the U.S. is waging a widespread war to impose regimes and power relations that strengthen its position as the world's sole superpower. Within this, Israel plays a critical role as an attack dog in the region and beyond.

Even as the context is complex, the basic question of right and wrong is clear, and cries out for a powerful, determined, sustained political response that demands justice, and can contribute to creating conditions for a genuinely liberatory force to emerge in that part of the world.

* See "OPT: West Bank health and economy up a bit, Gaza down," IRIN (irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89169), May 18, 2010. [back]

Israel Goddam! Don't tell me "It was a public relations disaster" It was a massacre. Don't tell me "It was a tragedy" It was an act of depravity. Don't tell me that they should have known that Israel has no rules. Maybe they did know But they couldn't turn their backs While Gaza is slowly strangled and starved. Don't tell me the Holocaust justifies this... When the lesson is that people of conscience Must resist crimes against whole peoples... And not wait until it is too late. The story of Israel... a truth untold: Apartheid South Africa, they were there. Guatemala's Mayan genocide, yes, there too. At your service, whenever the U.S. empire calls. Do you hear the excuses from the halls of power? Hour.... After hour... after hour... While the blood dries, more lies. Do you hear the celebrations of sanctimonious thugs? Echoing those who cheered when Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were lynched in Mississippi, When 4 Little Black Girls were blown up in church... And Nina Simone sang Mississippi Goddam. Do tell me this... What are YOU gonna do NOW? - A.G.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Video Available: Emergency Forum to Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at Revolution Books NYC

On June 1, an overflow crowd packed Revolution Books in New York City for an Emergency Forum to Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The speakers provided a highly informed picture of the situation in Gaza, in Israel, and the real story behind the massacre on the Mari Marmara. And there was serious engagement between different perspectives on the root causes of Israel's crimes, and the implications for what must be done.

Participants were:

• Alan Goodman, correspondent for Revolution newspaper
• Chris Hedges, author, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
• Abdeen Jabara, past-president of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee
• Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine
• Adam Shapiro, human rights activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement

The event was hosted by Andy Zee of Revolution Books. Links to a downloadable video of all the presentations that can be shown to groups is available (along with an audio file, and links to YouTube clips) at the website for Revolution Books, www.revolutionbooksnyc.org.

Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/203/editorial-en.html

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

In this issue:

A Month of Horrendous Crimes by the System—A Month For the People to Act!

In just this last month millions have seen these images:

• Grainy footage of Israeli commandos rappelling down ropes from helicopters—who storm a ship carrying aid to Gaza and gun down and kill nine people.
• Live 24-7 video of millions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean, dying birds covered with oil, thick sludge hitting the shore.
• The photo of a smiling 7-year-old with lots of attitude, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, murdered in cold blood by the Detroit police while she slept next to her grandmother.
• Rabid Tea Party rallies in support of Arizona's racist, fascist, Nazi anti-immigrant laws.

This is the hellish reality of this capitalist-imperialist system.

But these crimes are hardly an aberration. This United States of America has a whole history, and a present on–going reality of war, brutality, carnage, and misery for the people all over the planet.

• Before this latest Israeli massacre, there was already a decades-long history of U.S. backing for Israel's vicious occupation of Palestine—including the massive military assault on Gaza in 2008 and 2009 that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals and schools (See "Israel's Killing of Humanitarian Activists: An Outrageous Massacre to Enforce Horrific Crimes.").
• Before the BP explosion, capitalism, in its relentless drive for profit, was already killing the planet with toxic waste, global warming, the ravaging of the rain forests.
• Before the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the armed forces of the state—whose job is to serve and protect the oppressive economic and social relations in society, including the subjugation of Black people—were already beating and killing people in oppressed communities around the U.S., acting like an occupying army in hostile territory. (See "Murder Trial Begins for the Killer of Oscar Grant: Time to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.")
• Before the new fascist law in Arizona, there was already a vicious campaign by reactionaries, including forces in the government, to demonize and viciously repress immigrants; and hundreds of immigrants were already dying each year—over 400 just in 2009—crossing the dangerous border area deserts, driven to the U.S. to look for work because U.S. imperialism has messed up their home country. (See "Undocumented, UNAFRAID," on protests against Arizona's anti-immigrant laws.)

Stop and think about this unending horror brought to you by what they like to call "the greatest country in the world." Stop and think about what U.S. imperialism brings to people around the world, every single day—invasions, wars, torture, rape, poverty, domination, sweatshops, environmental destruction.

Some people are looking at these things—and their faith in the right, ability, and legitimacy of those who run this setup is being shaken.

Is this the best of all possible worlds, as they tell us? Isn't a radically different, and far better world possible?

The revolutionaries are stepping out to say: NO! This is NOT the best of all possible worlds. Things DON'T have to be this way. Those who rule this planet—who prove time and time again that they are the real criminals, who perpetrate outrage and atrocity again and again—have no right to rule. And YES—a far better world IS possible. As the RCP's Message and Call, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" says:

"The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good...Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings...Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world."

Society could be a whole different and better way and we have a way to get there: Revolution to get rid of this system and set-up. And we have the leadership of Bob Avakian, who has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need.

A year ago the RCP brought forward a campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" focused on three main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. Achieving these objectives is decisive now in waging the struggle to bring a new world into being. At recent conferences in two cities (see page 4) hundreds came together from all over the country to take up this campaign and as part of that, to step up to the challenge of waging resistance against all the crimes of the system.  This is all part of the movement for revolution we ARE BUILDING.

This has truly been a month of horrible crimes against the people. And this shows that the criminals now running things have no right to rule.

Now, let's make this next month a time for the people to deliver a powerful answer to these crimes. These outrages present the necessity AND the opportunity for the people to act.

As the RCP's Message and Call says:

"It is up to us: to wake up...to shake off the ways they put on us, the ways they have us thinking so they can keep us down and trapped in the same old rat-race...to rise up, as conscious Emancipators of Humanity. The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

In this issue:

• Read the call for people to go to New Orleans to help set up a political encampment and organize an Emergency Summit, and mobilize clean-up, protection, and resistance. Become part of a bold vision and big plans to stop the oil catastrophe, mobilize clean-up and resistance, and build the movement for revolution. (See page 9.)
• Read the call for people to go to Detroit from June 15-30 (See page 8). Join with revolutionaries and others to bring the outrage of the masses in Detroit at the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones to radical activists at the U.S. Social Forum. And bring the desire of these activists for a better world out among the masses in Detroit.

Read this issue of Revolution and hook up with those who are taking up the RCP's slogan: "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution."

Read this issue of Revolution and help to manifest in many different corners of society, among many different sections of the people that: THE REVOLUTION IS REAL.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

THE PEOPLE MUST ACT
COME TO NEW ORLEANS
STOP THE OIL CATASTROPHE

A monumental crime against the planet and humanity is unfolding before our eyes. Toxic oil and gas continue to spew in the Gulf of Mexico—and the government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to truly deal with this rapidly escalating environmental, wildlife, and human catastrophe.

Millions are outraged. But many feel powerless and don't know what to do. People are looking for ways to act, to fight.

We have a bold vision and big plans to rally people to stop this catastrophe, protect the environment, and to spread revolution. We call on all who are sick at heart and feel the urgency of the crisis to join these efforts. And we call on all those who see the importance of these efforts to donate generously—funds are urgently needed.

Many thousands desperately want to stop this disaster but have been discouraged, prevented, and reduced to passive spectators by the system. Imagine if a force of revolutionaries and progressive-minded people united with and helped people find concrete ways to break out of the system's stranglehold and meaningfully contribute to containing the disaster and protecting Gulf ecosystems.

The whole country and world are watching. Imagine if scientists and engineers, people from fishing communities directly affected, environmental activists, and intellectuals, artists and voices of conscience came together for an Emergency Summit. Imagine if this conference exposed the full truth about this oil disaster and organized a massive response that really began to deal with this devastating nightmare in all its dimensions.

People's lives are being shattered, millions are suddenly finding their confidence in the government really shaken. Imagine if in this situation, a force of revolutionaries, students, youth and others were fanning across the region, spreading the truth that this is a "capitalist oil spill," that this system is not a fit caretaker of the earth. Imagine the impact of the message that a whole different world is possible, that there is a movement for revolution, and that there is a concrete plan for putting that revolution on the map with the Revolutionary Communist Party's campaign—"The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have."

And imagine if, as a result of all this, sights were raised. Imagine if new energies were unleashed, and new connections forged—between fishing communities and environmentalists—between white people and Black people—between immigrants and native born—and with revolutionary communists in the mix.

The stakes are extremely high. What happens—or doesn't happen—now will reverberate for decades, even generations. We must not let the Gulf and the planet's ecosystems be savaged, perhaps irreparably harmed.

In this grave situation, a galvanizing force is urgently needed. Join us and help forge it. Be part of the creative brainstorming about how to do this and the liberating work to make it happen. What could be more important, especially if you are a student or young person, than coming to the Gulf right now to fight this catastrophe? 

• Join us in New Orleans to help set up a political encampment
• Help organize an Emergency Summit in New Orleans
• Help mobilize clean-up, protection, and resistance
• Be part of teams building a movement for revolution across the region
• If you can't come, there are still many ways to help—get in touch, send us your ideas; donate or raise funds; call friends in the Gulf who may be able to provide housing; help publicize this project and the Emergency Summit; contribute to Revolution newspaper and its coverage.

Supporters of Revolution newspaper
Email: revolutionreporters@gmail.com

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

The People Must Act to Stop The Oil Catastrophe

Revolutionaries Are Going to the Gulf
Your Support Is Needed

For over 45 days, people have watched with horror as the oil spill in the Gulf has turned into an environmental catastrophe. And people have watched the government and BP repeatedly prove themselves unwilling and unable to truly deal with this crisis. These are crimes against the planet and humanity. The people must act boldly and creatively to stop this catastrophe. We are sending teams onto the scene. And we are asking for your support.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is reaching out broadly—to youth, to environmental activists, to scientists and engineers, and to working people on the ground. Our aim is to help inspire and rally people to do everything possible to save the environment and ecosystems of the region and beyond.  And in this crisis situation, we will be spreading the understanding that this is a "capitalist oil spill," but that there is a way out. We are building a movement for revolution. We can get rid of capitalism and bring about a liberating society and economy that can enable humanity to be the caretakers of the planet.

Your financial support is needed:

• To help people get to the Gulf immediately to travel through the region to distribute the special environmental issue of Revolution* newspaper, "State of Emergency," and the message and call from the Revolutionary Communist Party: "The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have."
• To help reporters and photographers for Revolution newspaper to continue to investigate, document and analyze this environmental catastrophe.
• To help build an emergency summit in New Orleans of scientists; youth and activists; and local working people, professionals and artists.

Please give a contribution commensurate with the crisis.
It matters.

How to Donate: Credit card: On-line to revcom.us.  Click on "Sustain/Donate."  Note "Gulf Initiative" in the comment box. Make check payable to: "RCP Publications." Write "Gulf Initiative" in the memo line. Send to RCP Publications, PO Box 3486 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654. Questions? Call 773-227-4066; email rcppubs@hotmail.com.

*Revolution (www.revcom.us) is the Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party.  Published by RCP Publications.

Contributions or gifts to RCP Publications are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

At the present time, RCP Publications cannot accept any contributions or gifts from readers who reside outside the borders of the United States.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Obama and the BP Oil Catastrophe:

GUILTY!

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is like a murder in progress. Birds caked in oil, waiting to die...all kinds of species, big and small, being poisoned and killed... wetland grasses, the heart of the coastal ecosystems soaking in oil and withering away...the lives of fishermen ruined.

Millions of people are anguished and furious at the prospects of many more months of millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf, of the government's continuing failure to protect the fragile shore lands, and even more devastation to all kinds of marine life and birds. Some people hope Obama and the U.S. government will somehow come to the rescue and do the right thing. But the Obama government is directly and criminally culpable in this disaster:

• The Obama administration, through its Department of Interior and Minerals Management Service (MMS), approved BP's Deepwater project now spewing the oil—despite BP's notorious record of spills and accidents. BP lied, saying it had the means to clean up spills—and the MMS waived laws requiring environmental reviews to assess the damage such drilling could cause to wildlife.
• BP refused to release videos of oil gushing from its broken pipe and Obama's press secretary defended this, saying it was BP's decision because they owned the tapes. After video footage of the gushing oil became public, BP and Jane Lubchenco (head of the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) continued to lie about how much oil was coming out.
• Obama officials have censored scientists who discovered, contrary to BP's original claims, that plumes of oil from the leak are present in large amounts under the surface of the Gulf. Scientists have also exposed that federal agencies were not conducting the proper tests to measure the effects of the oil on the Gulf. Even now, government agencies are failing to systematically track the effects on wildlife in wetlands, coastal areas and marine life.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed BP to use chemical dispersants to break up the oil—despite the fact these dispersants are known to be toxic. Even after widespread press reports about this danger, the EPA continued to allow the use of dispersants and has yet to conduct proper tests on the chemicals' effects.
• Just a month before this oil disaster began, Obama broke a decades-long U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling by proposing to massively expand drilling into new areas in Alaska, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Florida. Obama justified this by saying, "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills."
• Obama has declared a six-month moratorium to supposedly make sure drilling is made "safe," but as Obama himself says offshore drilling remains "an essential part of our overall energy strategy." And, as the Center for Biological Diversity exposed, the temporary moratorium didn't cover permits already in the pipeline—so even after the start of this current catastrophe, the MMS continued to issue permits to 26 new drilling projects, two of them to BP!

These crimes are not simply the result of a "scandalously close relationship" (in Obama's own words) between officials of federal regulatory agencies and the oil companies, or of the government being caught flat-footed and being too passive. Yes, there is plenty of greed and corruption and incompetence to go around. But there is something deeper and systemicat work.

Obama is the head of a state that represents the interests of the capitalist/imperialist system, which exploits and squeezes the lifeblood out of billions of people around the world. This system bases its entire functioning on the extraction of cheap and extremely profitable energy sources from "fossil fuels"—oil, gas, and coal—despite the fact that the use of these fossil fuels has been tremendously destructive to the environment and has led to potentially catastrophic climate changes on a global scale.

For the U.S. rulers, their position as the top imperialist power is inextricably linked to access to and control of massive amounts of fossil fuels (which is one reason for the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the support for Israel as the U.S. attack dog in the Middle East, and the threats against Iran). The U.S. military is, in fact, the largest single institutional purchaser of oil. With more easily extractable sources of oil drying up, this has become an era of "tough oil," with capitalist mega-corporations and countries rushing—and competing with each other—to drill in more dangerous and harder-to-reach places, and for even more polluting sources of oil, with heightened potential for catastrophes. This deeper imperative is what has been driving the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at depths of a mile and more.

And the reason this government will not, and can not, really mobilize the masses of scientists, technical experts, and ordinary people is because of the private nature of capitalism. Capitalism can't confront this problem and mobilize humanity to deal with it because any such mobilization could undercut its necessity to defend the "sanctity of private property" and to maintain masses of people in a suppressed and subordinate position. This is a sharp example of how the interests of the capitalist class and the interests of humanity as a whole are in antagonism.

It will take a whole new system—a revolutionary socialist society that is moving toward a world free of all exploitation and oppression—to deal with such disasters in a radically different way. A revolutionary state can and will mobilize, rely on, and lead the masses of people in dealing with such disasters and other social contradictions—unleashing the creativity and energy of the people, seeking out all kinds of ideas and using the best ones, bringing out people's highest aspirations, and applying all that to genuinely creative and cooperative solutions.

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Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Detroit June 15-30 BE THERE!
Put Revolution on the Map

On May 12th, the Detroit police murdered 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Then they treated her family like criminals, arresting her grandmother and testing her for drugs and gun powder residue and making her father lay on the floor in the very room his little girl had just been blown away in, his face in her still warm blood. Then the authorities blamed Aiyana's family for their little girl's murder. These pigs are lying through their teeth! This is wrong, it is illegitimate and it is unacceptable. AND WE MUST NOT ALLOW THEM TO GET AWAY WITH THIS! Come to Detroit and join us in letting people know that there is a revolutionary movement which will not be backed down in the face of this kind of stuff, and which says: "The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

But that's not all that's happening in Detroit. The United States Social Forum is happening on June 22-26—thousands of people coming from all over the country, and beyond, putting their heads together and debating about how to make a different and better world. And this revolutionary movement will be there, too—part of the debate, and learning from everyone we can, even as we're going to boldly put forward our revolutionary solution to this madness.

We're going to take the need for communist revolution—how it's the only way to deal with all this—and the existence of our leadership—Bob Avakian and the Party he leads—out to both these sections of people. But that's not all. The movement for revolution is going to do all it can to bring these two forces together—the basic people in Detroit seething over brutality and injustice, and the activists coming to Detroit to wrangle with making a different and better world. We're going to work to create a very positive, and very rare, chemistry in this fucked-up society which does everything it can to keep people divided and fearing one another.

If you are sickened and outraged by the police murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones... if you are outraged by crimes against the environment in the Gulf and the Nazi anti-immigrant laws in Arizona... if you are righteously infuriated by the U.S. rampaging around the Middle East with its thug Israel and you want to fight for a radically different and radically better world where all these things don't constantly happen... and if you are about getting down with the Message and Call from the RCP,USA, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"... if you want to get Bob Avakian and his liberating, emancipating message known to many many thousands in Detroit and beyond... then drop everything and COME TO DETROIT THE SECOND HALF OF JUNE!

Get there June 15th and stay for the whole time. Be there for the United States Social Forum June 22-26, and bring the outrage of the masses in Detroit at this murder into this important gathering of radical activists. And bring the desire of these activists for a better world out among the masses in Detroit. Get there for any part of this time that you can. But get there.

*****

People who want to volunteer to go to Detroit or make a financial contribution to this effort should get in contact with us right away.

Write, call, e-mail: Libros Revolucion/Revolution Books (see page 15 for information for different cities) or

RCP Publications, P.O. Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 • 773-227-4066 • rcppubs@hotmail.com.

Please give your name, e-mail, phone number so someone can get back to you right away. Checks can be made out to RCP Publications (marked "Detroit Effort").

Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/203/conference_notebook-en.html

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Reporter's Notebook from the campaign conference, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"

by Annie Day

Nearly a year ago, the RCP, USA launched a campaign around "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have." Anchored by a powerful Message and Call from the Party, the campaign has accomplished some important things. But the campaign has not yet broken through to its main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. To deal with this, the Party called conferences on May 29 and 30 in two cities. These conferences were very successful. People came from a number of different cities, large and small. And they brought a wide range of experience with them—experience in different forms of fighting the power and, in many cases, in beginning to take out revolution. The chemistry that came through by having people with diverse viewpoints and experience wrangle with the purposes and goals for this campaign and then, on that basis, develop ideas and plans—and in so doing, constantly returning to those larger goals and purposes—brought forward something new. For the first time there was a sense of a national campaign; now the charge is to make that real, and take it all to a higher level. On Monday night, June 7, we will be publishing the main speech given at the conferences online, and we will be publishing more from the conferences in the future. This week, however, to give people a basic sense of and feel for what happened, we are publishing a reporter's notebook from Annie Day, a participant at one of the conferences.

You could feel the anticipation and excitement as people were buzzing about the auditorium. This was the first day of the major conferences called by the Revolutionary Communist Party on the campaign they've embarked on, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have."

About the room in different forms and colors was a striking new image of Bob Avakian, on t-shirts, palm cards and posters. The fire-red word REVOLUTION was emblazoned on a banner on the side of a wall promoting Avakian's talk, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About and was something people pointed to throughout the weekend, talking about ways to get this further out there, and the impact this talk had on them. And the Message and Call of this campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have" was at the front of the room in Spanish and English.

Gathered here were people, diverse threads, from different perspectives and places, different levels of experience and familiarity with the revolution, but together determined to confront and transform this nightmare of a world.

DAY 1—getting in deep

The first and main speech of the weekend took us on a journey—it set the framework for the conference and the revolutionary spirit, ethos and impatience informed and infused the wrangling, discussion and debate that followed. I know I'm still playing in my mind what was said, and the challenges put to all of us.

The main themes in the talk were the stakes of the campaign and its main objectives... what this campaign has to do with making revolution—including what the RCP's strategy for revolution is in a country like this... and the relationship of the leadership of Bob Avakian to all that.

The speech surveyed the events of just the last month to remind us of the great need for revolution. Then it laid out soberly where things are at in the world and the high stakes of changing all this. "This revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—is fighting for its life." The speech laid out how we got to this point: since the defeats of the first stage of revolution (with socialism reversed in the Soviet Union in 1956 and in China in 1976) there have been over 30 years of counter-revolution, with the most reactionary to "the most enlightened" trumpeting that these experiences were totalitarian nightmares at worst, or utopian impossible dreams at best. The real, liberatory experience of all this has been constantly slandered, endlessly distorted, and entirely covered over. Even the majority of the Revolutionary Communist Party itself objectively bought into these verdicts and gave up on revolution as a real and realizable goal.

But Bob Avakian took a different road, and the talk got into that more deeply. Avakian studied this first stage of communist revolution, he dug into and defended the tremendous achievements of these revolutions—but he also confronted and deeply analyzed where they fell short and what objective problems a revolution will face going forward... and through this work, he forged a new synthesis of revolution and communism. The talk quoted the Manifesto from the RCP, Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage. This new synthesis is comparable to "what was done by Marx at the beginning of the communist movement—establishing, in the new conditions that exist, after the end of the first stage of the communist revolution, a theoretical framework for the renewed advance of that revolution." Avakian went on to lead a Cultural Revolution within the RCP itself over these very questions, "to not only get this Party back onto the revolutionary road, but to put it on a more profoundly revolutionary basis than ever."

Linking this struggle to what this campaign is a part of, the speaker brought us up to now: "BA saved this party as a revolutionary party; and now this party must, and can, move forward and lead people to initiate a whole new stage of communism, fighting for this understanding everywhere and using it to make revolution right here."

The most polemical part of the talk, which became a big point of discussion throughout the weekend, got into this more. "Without Bob Avakian and the work he did and is doing—without Bob Avakian and the courageous struggle he waged, and led—it is very likely that there would BE no communism today, at least no vital and viable communism. Without Bob Avakian, it is very likely that there would be no Party in the U.S. today—at least no party that is really a vanguard of revolution—nor would there be a revolutionary movement." That we have all this is really precious, and something that has to be made known throughout society. And we have to challenge people to get into, and wrangle with the work Avakian has brought forward.

The talk also called on us to challenge others—"if you are serious about fundamental change, it is the height of irresponsibility to fail to engage Avakian's work on the level it demands."

"We ARE BUILDING a movement FOR revolution"

Through the course of the weekend, we got a living sense of how the three objectives of this campaign—making this revolution known throughout society, making Bob Avakian a household name, and bringing forward a core of fighters for this understanding out in the world—can all work together to have a big impact in a concentrated period of time. We got a sharper focus on the need to get a different trajectory going in society, and much more of a feel for what that would be and how all this would be conveying to people that we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution. This was laid out in both speeches, and pulsed through the breakouts on day one and the workshops on day two.

We all got a much deeper sense of the link of all this to a larger strategy for revolution, and to hastening while awaiting a revolutionary situation. The opening talk had gotten into how, in qualitatively different objective conditions, a revolution could be made in a country like this... and out of what contradictions today that qualitatively different objective situation could potentially arise. The Message and Call were drawn on in this regard, as was the recent two paragraphs from Bob Avakian printed in Revolution.^* And all this kept circulating in our minds throughout the weekend.

The discussions on the first day were rich. People wanted to know more about the Cultural Revolution in the RCP—what it meant and why Avakian launched it. People asked about what a revolutionary situation could look like in a country like this, what contradictions it may come out of, and how revolutionaries today need to be working to bring that, and a revolutionary people, into being. There was a lot of discussion about the need for resistance and the relationship of this campaign to the slogan, "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." People spoke about the criminal murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, including people who had jumped in their cars right after it happened to attend her funeral in Detroit and went out into the neighborhoods to call on people to hit the streets, and work to connect them up with this movement for revolution.

People brought a lot of experience to bear—from the campuses and the ghettos. A college student from one of the top schools in the country later spoke about how little people in his school know about the lives of people lived at the bottom of our society, he'd never heard people talk about the anger and frustration of those who are forced into prisons, and shuttled into housing projects that themselves resemble prisons. He was trying to figure out how to bridge that gap. The need for those connections, for the "mixing and meshing" from different strata—and the ways we can go to work on that—was an important thing that came out of this conference as a whole.

There was also discussion, at times heated, to get more into what was said about Avakian. Through this discussion and struggle, it became more clear to many that what you thought of the need for leadership and of Avakian's leadership in particular had everything to do with what you think about revolution and communism. One person wrote in a survey afterwards, "I knew Bob Avakian was important, but I didn't know how important until this weekend."

We'd gone pretty far in a day, and the discussions over dinner continued. I looked over at the other end of the auditorium and a few dozen people were circling around the main speakers—people who'd been into this for under a year or so had been invited to pose their toughest questions and wildest dreams, and they did, and then they all threw in to speak to what each other had raised. "What kind of revolution is needed?" "How are people going to be part of a revolution if they're not stepping up to resist today?" There was a serious and heartfelt discussion about the divisions between Black people and Latino immigrants. Participants spoke from experience about these killing contradictions among the people, and went back and forth about how we can bring forward a whole different way.

The night was brought to a close as we packed in tight to Revolution Books. People shared their poetry, read excerpts from Bob Avakian's memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond, a few people read letters from prisoners who subscribe to Revolution newspaper. The whole room laughed appreciatively at the irony Joe Veale talked about in his letter on turning prisons into universities, "...here we are the so-called 'worst of the worst' (this was said and meant in every sense by those who held us)—they've put us in the most extreme conditions in this prison in an attempt to break us down and beat us down—and here we are not only discussing but critiquing Plato—showing how he and Socrates did not represent the interest of the people but the interest of a slave system!"

I felt soul stirred again—in that space with others setting out on a historic mission—listening to a young revolutionary reading from Avakian's memoir. He read a part towards the end where BA talks about his response to the death of Peter Tosh, "Sadness to anger; anger to intensified revolutionary energy, fired with a profoundly realistic optimism: that is what should drive us forward and lift our spirit and sights."

I heard the next day that dozens of attendees were like me... up to the early morning hours continuing the discussion, confronting the stakes of all this, and laughing and feeling the reality of the decisive difference this campaign can make in a badly bruised, and increasingly dire, world.

DAY 2—Making plans, coming out roaring

And before we knew it, we were gathered again to hear the opening speech of day two. This talk—on the foundation laid the day before—took us on a different kind of journey. It focused on the key elements of this campaign and what it really needs to look like, and involve, to achieve its goals—and by the end of it, we got a sense of how the parts could be woven together to accomplish what the world demands.

There were sharp comparisons made throughout—the difference of waging this campaign as a campaign and what difference it makes that people you're trying to involve understand their participation is part of making a national and concrete impact vs. coming off like you're just timelessly and aimlessly "doing what revolutionaries always do." Or in the discussion on the importance of the statement (which was returned to throughout the conference as a whole) "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have," a comparison was made between "saturation" and just getting out a lot of fliers. Saturation is where this is pushed "enough into people's worlds that they have to engage this and have their assumptions challenged by it and to create a situation where people are wrangling with each other about it—and where we are operating in that whole mix."

Plans were announced to distribute one million copies of the RCP's Message and Call over the summer—actually saturating festivals, and key neighborhoods across the country. And to get out 200 in 10, that is 200,000 statements in 10 days off the conference starting Friday, June 4. There will be regular reporting on Revolution newspaper's website about how this is going so people across the country can, in real time, learn from each other's experience—positive and negative—and see how we're doing in relation to our goals.

Another important and sharp comparison was the difference between being what Avakian has called "completely outrageous...and yet eminently reasonable"—posing a provocative and radical challenge. This is very different, the talk went on, than "incrementally grooowiinnnggg a moooovement." In talking about this on the campuses in particular, the talk summed it up this way, "There are young people on these campuses who are searching for a way to contribute to changing the world—but they don't think communism is the way to do it. If we are going to provoke them to not only rethink but to get into this—we need to build on and do even better at both hitting hard at their deeply held assumptions in ways that cannot be easily dismissed and speaking to people's highest aspirations."

The talk returned to the importance of unabashedly modeling a culture of appreciation, popularization and promotion around Avakian. The speaker went on to pose it sharply, "If you are proceeding from humanity's need to get free it can ONLY be a good thing that there is a leader who has solved or pointed the way towards solving the biggest problems of the revolution. If you are proceeding from humanity's need to get free—you will be EAGER to get into this leader."

She laid out, and called on people to further develop, key elements of the plan in relation to making Bob Avakian a household name over the next few months. These include major promotion of this new BA image, getting the Revolution talk seen on the streets and on the net to where its presence is on a qualitatively higher level, and an early fall release of a back-pocket-sized book of quotations from BA called BAsics.

The talk went through other important parts of this campaign—the work on the campuses, building the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund and fighting the ban of Revolution in at least three prisons. She talked about the need to expand the distribution and reach of Revolution newspaper—online and in print, and the need for Revolution to play a bigger role as a collective organizer for this movement, and this campaign. The orientation around fundraising—and the need to develop a culture of fundraising—was taken up throughout the day, and someone in the plenary suggested this approach as an example of being both "utterly outrageous and eminently reasonable," "Hi, I'm with the revolution. We intend to run a whole different and better society, and we're raising $___ to put revolution on the map, would you contribute towards that?"

One of the things I noted in hearing the speech, and have been thinking about in the days since, was the loud applause when the speaker announced that "soon the RCP will be publishing a new constitution of the future socialist state." I think it was felt among all of us, how much more real this could make what's meant in the beginning of the Message and Call, "This Is NOT The Best of All Possible Worlds... And We Do NOT Have to Live This Way!" It can, as Avakian himself discussed, project on a whole higher level, and in the mix of all these parts of the campaign, an alternate authority to the brutal current order.

Working On—and Leaping Into—"Key Concentrations of Social Contradictions"

Another point made in the talk was brought to life through the conference itself. "This campaign is to build a movement for revolution to really impact and change the whole world. It is not a self-contained process—and we need to be interacting with the quickly and sometimes sharply changing larger world." Late Saturday night, BP announced that their "top kill" strategy to stop the oil gush didn't work. When this was announced Sunday, a wave of anger swept over the room, and conference organizers in our area decided to add a workshop on this at the last minute (one had already been scheduled in the other city). Dozens attended to figure out how to both build resistance to this catastrophic crime and in that, make known and give living emphasis to "the revolution we need and the leadership we have." An attitude and orientation which emanated from these conferences was the determination to "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." Living spirit and concrete plans were given to the point in the Message and Call, "The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world... when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness... those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

People talked about being in Detroit around the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and needing to return to continue protests coinciding with, and bringing that into the U.S. Social Forum later in June. People talked about going to Arizona this summer to protest—and fight to reverse—the fascist anti-immigrant laws. One woman talked about a prison being built in her area and how she was determined not to let this pass, and plans were discussed to fight to overturn the ban on Revolution in the prisons and to get down to New Orleans with concrete demands around this oil catastrophe—to put resources into stopping the leak and involving volunteers in cleanup (something BP and the U.S. government are currently preventing).

Welcoming Controversy...And Responding To Attacks

Stepping out in all these kinds of ways will be controversial, and at times unpopular. We know that, and also know provoking controversy over questions that will otherwise be off the table and absent from people's thinking is part of what we want to get going. The second talk made an important point in this regard, "The only people who are afraid of controversy, who want to seek to avoid controversy, are the people who think that the status quo is just fine. The way people are thinking is just fine. The ways they are acting is just fine. The massive crimes being done to the people all over the world and to the planet itself are just fine. That's not acceptable!"

Before the plenary discussion began, the conference leaders took a moment and recognized some of the people in the room who'd come under attack or been arrested in the context of the movement for revolution—for posting a flyer for a Raymond Lotta speech on an elite campus, for agitating against the murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Harlem, for standing out against the censorship of communists at an Ethical Humanist Society event, for calling out the illegal and abusive actions of the police while they were violently arresting someone on the street... one by one these people stood up and we applauded. Yesterday's speech was echoing in my mind once again, "People got to see, and they have to stand up with, the revolutionaries standing firm and fighting back when we come under all the different attacks that the system comes at us with, and we have to mobilize them to make every assault politically boomerang against the enforcers of oppression, as we turn these attacks into a way for more people to hear about and come together to defend this new movement." This became a running theme of the conference.

Percolation, Chemistry and Pushing Out

One of the big aims of this conference was to get a lot of percolation going on—people all straining together to figure out the different forms through which the goals of this campaign will be accomplished. What's it really going to take to pose a radical, societal challenge on every front? The thinking on this got uncorked on a way higher level. Getting people together—with different levels of experience and knowledge, different backgrounds and interests—we were able to break the atomization that weighs people down. People were able, in a different way, to step out of the confines of today and proceed from what it's really going to take. And having these challenges put before us collectively, we were able to bang on the problems we face together.

Ideas built off other ideas, people got wild, imaginative...and concrete. When proposals emerged, people ran with them and thought about how they'd impact and interpenetrate with other ideas and other parts of this campaign. People who'd never raised money had further thinking on plans and approach, those without net knowledge learned from those with, and even after the workshops were over, people were intensely discussing further ideas. What about an all-day fundraising web telethon? Can we raise money for billboards for this BA image, and if we advertise a website on the billboard, we can fundraise for others to sponsor their own billboard. A call for essays from prisoners to write on, "what to the prisoner is your 4th of July." A BA day in the early fall, maybe to coincide with the release of BAsics, a video of testimonials from different kinds of people, "I'm into BA because..." And a lot more... The collective political imagination was broken open, and through that collective process, people came up with thinking they would not have, off on their own.

As the sun was setting, we gathered for closing remarks, and to meet one last challenge together. In order to print 250,000 copies of the Message and Call for this initial ten days of saturation, we needed to raise $8,000. In an earlier break, one person had given $250 and they were asked to stand. The question was asked who could match that contribution, and one by one people stood until about 15 people were standing... then who could give $100 and again, people stood one by one. One person was able to give $1,000 and a hat was passed for those who could give in smaller amounts and the announcement came in, $7,960 was raised... two more hands were thrown up to give the rest for a full $8,000. One person echoed how I felt, "This showed people were serious and that we ARE going to do this." At the same time, we had to understand that this was only seed money—this had to lead to massive fund-raising from the masses themselves in all kinds of different ways and at every level of society.

We poured out into the warm night—saying our goodbyes, some getting ready for a long ride, others making plans to be part of the local teams this next weekend—and I was thinking about something one of the main speakers said as we closed. "Whether they know it or not, the people of the world are counting on us. Counting on the hundreds at these conferences to involve the thousands, to put this before millions." And I was thinking of this great need, and the basis to fill that... I heard a fellow participant say excitedly, "damn, we got some shit to do!" Yes, I thought, and while this won't be a straight line ahead, we've got some shit to do it with!

* The two paragraphs referred to here were published in Revolution #202:

"At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

"The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the "pole" and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution. " ("Some Principles for Building a Movement for Revolution," by Bob Avakian) [back]

Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/203/conference_speech-1-en.html

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Opening Speech at May 29-30 Conferences on the Campaign, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"

Nearly a year ago, the RCP, USA launched a campaign around "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have." Anchored by a powerful Message and Call from the Party, the campaign has accomplished some important things. But the campaign has not yet broken through to its main objectives—popularizing to millions the need for, and character of, revolution; making the leadership of this revolution, Bob Avakian, a household word; and bringing forward a core of new fighters around this revolution and this leadership. To deal with this, the Party called conferences on May 29 and 30 in two cities.

These conferences were very successful. People came from a number of different cities, large and small. And they brought a wide range of experience with them—experience in different forms of fighting the power and, in many cases, in beginning to take out revolution. The chemistry that came through by having people with diverse viewpoints and experience wrangle with the purposes and goals for this campaign and then, on that basis, develop ideas and plans—and in so doing, constantly returning to those larger goals and purposes—brought forward something new. For the first time there was a sense of a national campaign; now the charge is to make that real, and take it all to a higher level.

I. We Need Revolution

We have a lot to do here this weekend, a lot to accomplish, and I want to lay out a framework that can help us accomplish that on the best possible basis. Our overall purpose is to take this campaign—"The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"—to a qualitatively higher level.

So I'm going to talk about why we undertook this campaign. I'm going to talk about the high stakes involved. I'm going to get into the goals of this campaign. And then I want to explain in some depth what all this has to do with doing what we ultimately and urgently need to do—and that is to make revolution.

But I want to start by talking about Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the 7-year-old child murdered by Detroit police two weeks ago today. I know you've read in our paper how she was sleeping on the couch in the living room, next to her grandmother, when the cops swarmed into their home after midnight. You may have read how the cops had every basis to know that there were children in the home because they had been surveilling the place. How these pigs shot her in the head and then carried her lifeless body out of her home like a rag doll. How they then brutalized her father and arrested her grandmother, putting her in chains. And how all this was filmed for a reality TV show in order to sell back to people their own brutalization and degradation, and add bitter insult to the horrible injury. How the mayor of Detroit then jumped to defend the police and attack the family's lawyer and, yes, attack the masses themselves for "making bad decisions." How Al Sharpton then ran to Detroit to "give the glory to god"—and put the blame on Black people themselves, especially the youth. But to echo the article in our paper, THAT'S STILL NOT THE WORST OF IT: for yet again, at least for now, the masses have been forced to chew on their sorrow and swallow their anger and just walk on—until they eventually turn it back, once more, against each other.

Or maybe you read in our paper a few weeks back about the massacre in Gardez, Afghanistan. Twenty-five people were celebrating the birth of Hajji Sharaf Udin's newborn grandson. At 3 in the morning, again while people were sleeping, Udin's son, Mohammed Dawoud went to investigate noises that he heard outside. The noises were American special forces, who promptly murdered Dawoud. Just like the Detroit police, these American soldiers then attacked the house and murdered three women who were crouching behind the door in fear. Bibi Shirin was 22 years old and the mother of four children under 5; Bibi Saleha was 37 and the mother of 11 children; and Gulalai was 18 years old. Maybe you remember how those same American soldiers then assaulted the survivors, arresting eight of them and holding them for four days of American-style interrogation, hoods and all, and then tried to cover up the massacre, stonewalling and lying for more than a month before the truth finally became undeniable. And here too THAT'S STILL NOT THE WORST OF IT—for all too many people remain passive in the face of this and other outrages by the Obama administration, including Obama's self-declared right to assassinate, without even the semblance of any due process, anyone that he decides to.

Or maybe you're burning in anger over Arizona and its maniacal fascist legislature, one day virtually criminalizing people of color and almost literally the next day forbidding the teaching of ethnic studies—including the teaching of the historical fact that the U.S. stole New Mexico, Arizona and large parts of the rest of the western U.S. from Mexico in the first place...because teaching that fact "might incur resentment."

Maybe you read our declaration for women's liberation and the emancipation of all humanity, and were stunned by what it revealed about the scope and depth of the oppression of one half of humanity all over the world. A fabric of oppression, to quote our declaration, that "is carved deeply into the calloused hands of women in the sweatshops of China and Honduras," that "is draped over the faces of young women in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia," that "is stripped off the bodies of girls of Moldova and Bangkok who are put up for sale in brothels," and that "is worn like a prize by pre-teens in the U.S. and Europe who are taught to dress and move like sex objects long before they understand what sex even is."

Or maybe you're heartsick over the disaster now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you've read our paper, which goes into the real depth of this disaster, and here too, once again, exposes the lying and suppression and cover-up that is second nature to the people who run this system.

Or perhaps you're losing sleep over the continued rise of a fascist movement in this country... distressed about people who have been organized by one section of the rulers to aim their resentment and anger toward those "below" them or "slightly higher"—toward immigrants and Latinos more generally...toward Black people, particularly poor Black people...and on the other hand, toward intellectuals and artists...and, yes, toward communists, including very explicitly this Party.

All that and more keeps you up at night. All that and more brought you here today.

But the fact is: none of this has to be this way.

Let's go back again to the heartless murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Mayor Bing in Detroit said this: "It's quite demoralizing. I don't know how to stop it." But we DO know how to stop it. We know how to stop it because we know how to deal with what started it and what keeps it going—this rotten capitalist system, with its ever-changing but somehow never-dying structures of white supremacy. We don't need murdering pigs—but so long as you have a SYSTEM which relies on the social structures designed to keep the masses of Black people and other people of color impoverished, imprisoned, insulted and brutalized, then for just that long there will be murdering pigs to enforce those structures. But we don't need that system and we can do away with that system—through revolution.

And no, we don't need the masses of youth preying on each other and even killing each other off. But so long as you have this capitalist system, where everything and everyone is looked at as a source of profit and where as a result "look out for number one and screw everyone else" (while "giving it to god" on Sunday) is the real morality that is promoted and reinforced every day... so long as you have these white supremacist, racist institutions constantly blaring the message that lives lived in black and brown skins are worth less than those lived in white skins... then this kind of ugly thing will play out amongst the most oppressed...whether you are talking about Detroit, Mexico City, Mumbai or Paris. But we can do away with that too, but not by sermons and not by education—education that leads nowhere. We can do away with it if—but only if—we make revolution against the system that spawns it and do away with that system and all its fucked-up ways of relating. This system, with its planet of slums and its planet of gangs, has NO future for these youth—but the revolution DOES.

We need state power—revolutionary state power—a state power not of these imperialists, but a state power serving and rooted in the masses of people, with the leadership of the vanguard party. If we had state power, we would deal with the worst of this overnight, even as we set about the longer but still do-able process of leading people to tear up the deeper roots of this horror. And even before we have that power, right now as we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution, we are learning how to draw these youth into something else and something far better—fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.

We can stop this shit. It doesn't have to be this way. We don't need a system that divides the world into different sets of turf ruled by different cliques of legitimate gangsters—that is, the ruling capitalist-imperialists—fighting like dogs over who has the right to exploit and super-exploit the people and to plunder the resources of the earth. What we need is revolutionary state power—and if we had it, we would use it to build a system that does NOT run on the worldwide division of people into exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed. We would use that state power NOT to rain down terror on oppressed people all over the planet, but to support revolution—REAL revolution, revolution designed to end oppression and NOT just repackage it, with a different set of oppressors—all over this planet.

And there is no objective need to befoul and devastate and destroy the environment either—unless you have a system in which every player is driven to seek profit on top of more profit... If we had the power, we could forge a future where people would live as caretakers of the planet, nursing its terrible wounds and developing a sustainable relationship to nature—and not piratically and insanely plundering the earth the way that these rulers do now. These dominators and despoilers need to get the fuck out of the way—and the people need to MAKE them do it, through revolution, for these capitalists will never leave on their own. Just look at the principles in the special issue of Revolution on how our revolutionary socialist state power would handle the environment and tell me that there is anyone else willing to stand up and say "Give US the power, and we could deal with this"—and able to actually back that up with substance. [Revolution's special issue on the environment is available online at revcom.us/environment/]

We want state power. We would use that state power both to prevent the exploiters from returning and to set about resolving the great disparities and inequalities in the world—between oppressor and oppressed nations, between men and women, between those who work with ideas and those who are locked out of that sphere—and we would do it in a society that would be full of ferment and initiative from many different directions.

II. Revolution Is Fighting To Break Out...

Revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—could deal with all these outrages and more, and could do it as part of moving forward to a planet without any exploitation...without any forms of oppression...and without all the institutions and ideas, whether ancient or oh-so-modern, that reflect and reinforce that exploitation and oppression. Revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—would get rid of their instruments of oppression and it would bring in a new power, one which would mobilize the people to transform the material reality they face.

We need state power—state power to defend the people as they overcome the age-old divisions and as they work through the complicated but nevertheless very do-able and very joyful process of dissolving the mental shackles that chain their minds. We need a state power that would lead people to transform their own supposedly unchangeable human nature, not in a crude way that tramples on people's individuality, but through a whole process where as people transform the material world they are also led, and take initiative, to open up capacities and parts of themselves that they never knew they had.

But here's the most painful thing of all: this revolution right now is pretty much off the map in people's thinking. Even where people are fighting back—like in Arizona, or in the fights against education cuts—we have to face it: Revolution isn't out there as a REAL viable possibility in their thinking.

This revolution—the REAL revolution, the communist revolution—is fighting for its life. That's right, fighting for its life. And not just to survive, as some kind of abstract hope that might as well be a religion—but to survive and grow as a real contending force, increasingly mobilizing people to fight the power, and preparing people to SEIZE the power as part of conquering and transforming the whole world.

But even worse—not only is the reality of this not known to most people, to the extent they have heard of it, people have been convinced that such a revolution is either impossible or undesirable.

How did this happen?

The communist revolutions that came to and held power—first in the Soviet Union in 1917 and lasting for several decades, and then in China from 1949 to 1976—achieved things that had never been seen on this planet. People began the process of genuinely freeing themselves, and they set about creating a whole new world on the soil of this rotten and decaying one.

But these were the first attempts. These new socialist states were surrounded on all sides, constantly invaded or threatened with invasion. The leaders of these societies were starting almost from scratch in building a world without exploitation and oppression. True, they had the insightful and far-seeing (but nevertheless beginning and somewhat basic) framework brought forward by Marx and Engels, and then Lenin; but now all that had to be applied, and that is always more complicated and full of learning once you get into it. In both the Soviet Union and then China, our movement led people to do amazing things, our movement and its revolutions inspired the whole world, and tremendous lessons were learned. But ultimately both these revolutions were, as the Message and Call of this campaign puts it, "turned back by the forces of the old order."

Looking at it from the long view of history, looking at it with a scientific understanding of how different classes come into being and the tortuous process through which they reshape the world in their own image—and on this point, I will refer people to especially the second part of Bob Avakian's talk Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About—these defeats are very painful but not surprising. And from this same viewpoint, it is not surprising that the imperialists—the concentration of everything that is old, decaying, rotten and reactionary in this world—would then do everything that they could to bury this movement, once and for all.

I mean, talk about brainwash! These imperialists use their television stations, their publishing houses, and their news media to slander and distort these revolutions, and to downplay and deny their incredible accomplishments, day after day, week after week, year in and year out. Where this movement has still raised its head, these imperialists have used threats and prison and murder, as well as slander. And all the while, they have brought forward and supported, all over the world, religious fundamentalists as "an alternative" for dispossessed and angry youth.

Their so-called brilliant scholars just brazenly make up lies or distort facts, as Raymond Lotta so powerfully shows in his talks, and then they broadcast them over and over until "everyone knows" these lies as the truth. Those who dissent or question this verdict are warned, sometimes quietly and sometimes quite openly, that they are risking their "access" and their position... and sometimes more. And the imperialists have also played on real weaknesses and shortcomings of the first stage of our revolution, some of them quite serious—even as those shortcomings were overall secondary to the great achievements.

It got so bad, over those decades, that all too many communists themselves—including, yes, most of us in this Party—let themselves get worn down by it and, in the words of the Manifesto from our Party, objectively abandoned the outlook and aims of the communist revolution, accommodated to the system of imperialism, and settled for, at most, reforms within this horrific system. All too many communists stopped being communists, perhaps not in word, but in fact.

III. The Leadership We Need...For A New Stage of Communist Revolution

But there was, during this period, someone who traveled a different road. The Message and Call puts it this way:

While many others have given up, Bob Avakian has worked and struggled tirelessly to find the way to go forward, having learned crucial lessons and built lasting organization that could continue the struggle, and aim to take it higher, while uniting with the same struggle throughout the world.

Bob Avakian confronted the problem, head on and straight up. He analyzed the first stage of the communist revolution, upholding its achievements but also confronting and digging into its shortcomings. He worked on the problems we faced, he wrangled with them from many different angles, and in the course of this he came up with a new synthesis of communism—something that is comparable, as the Manifesto from our Party says, to "what was done by Marx at the beginning of the communist movement—establishing, in the new conditions that exist, after the end of the first stage of the communist revolution, a theoretical framework for the renewed advance of that revolution." Communism has not only been defended, but further developed and, in important aspects, re-envisioned through Bob Avakian's new synthesis.

And when he found that most of the people in the Party that he led were pulling to a different road, turning away from advancing the revolution and into a preoccupation with building a reformist movement, in one form or another, he launched a tremendous struggle within that Party—a cultural revolution within the RCP—to not only get this Party back onto the revolutionary road, but to put it on a more profoundly revolutionary basis than ever.

This Cultural Revolution was a struggle over LINE—that is, over what would be the guiding method of the Party for understanding reality; over how the Party understood the whole history of our revolution; and over the strategy and policies that flowed from that method and understanding. At bottom, it was over whether this would be a revolutionary party—a vanguard of the future—or whether it would be a relic of the past. And this high-risk high-stakes struggle, initiated and led by Bob Avakian, did in fact result in a

real revitalization of the revolutionary and communist outlook, objectives, spirit, and culture of the Party—a Party facing squarely, and confronting scientifically, the complexities, the difficulties and the dangers, as well as the inspiration, of doing all it can to work for revolution in this country, and to contribute the most it can to this same cause throughout the world, all aiming for the final goal of communism. ¹

Bob Avakian saved this Party as a revolutionary party; and now this Party must, and can, move forward and lead people to initiate a whole new stage of communism, fighting for this understanding everywhere and using it to make revolution right here.

So, when people ask, "Why do you make such a big deal about Bob Avakian?" there's a very basic truth that they're not getting. And we should tell them that, straight up, with no apology. Without Bob Avakian and the work he did and is doing—without Bob Avakian and the courageous struggle he waged, and led—it is very likely that there would BE no communism today, at least no vital and viable communism. Without Bob Avakian, it is very likely that there would be no Party in the U.S. today—at least no party that is really a vanguard of revolution—nor would there be a revolutionary movement.

One more thing. Without Bob Avakian—BA—and the work he's done, it is very likely that there would be no plan, no foundation and no strategy for actually making revolution in the USA—actually figuring out how to break through the suffocating situation of today and get things to the point where people in their millions could actually be won and roused to take on this monster...and to win.

Do you realize how precious THAT is? To not only be able to uncover and analyze the causes and forces behind the character of the prison that confines you...to not only see the basis for a future without those bars and chains...but to know the way out?

Why do we make such a big deal about Bob Avakian? Because he IS a big deal. And in fact, we need to make a much bigger deal about him—and that's one big objective of this campaign, and one big thing we're going to be getting into this weekend. The work he has done has provided the potential to MAKE revolution known; and not just known—to make it a real goal, actively fought for, by increasing numbers of people—a viable force that can actually carry forward the needed changes that only grow more urgent with each unbearable day. The Party that he has fought for and led in re-forging can lead that. We don't intend to die of slow suffocation; we don't intend to "fight the good fight" so that we can shuffle off the stage with good consciences... we intend to do what the old '60s song said: "break on through to the other side."

IV. The Campaign and Its Objectives

This campaign—The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have—is the crucial link to getting on a trajectory to doing that. And that's what this conference has got to be about. To quote from the letter that called you here:

People need to hear and see that things DON'T have to be this way. They need to hear about revolution. And they need to know there is a Party that is building a movement for revolution. That is what this campaign is about. We aim to make known to millions the goal and character of thisrevolution, communist revolution, as it has been revitalized and reconceived by Bob Avakian; to make the leader of this revolution a household word; and through all this to forge a core of dedicated fighters who are going to advocate for this revolution and make it a driving dynamic force in society and the world.

These three goals are somewhat distinct, but they work together. First of all, people got to know about, hear about, see, and FEEL the revolution. In all kinds of different ways—speeches, posters, literature, and yes, in bold hard-fought struggles standing up against the system and its enforcers, especially where it is carrying out its most atrocious outrages—this revolution has to get known. People have got to see the revolutionaries rolling with these T-shirts with the BA image or with the Revolution masthead. People got to see, and they have stand up with, the revolutionaries standing firm and fighting back when we come under all the different attacks that the system comes at us with, and we have to mobilize them to make every assault politically boomerang against the enforcers of oppression, as we turn these attacks into a way for more people to hear about and come together to defend this new movement.

People have got to know—and we have to bring it home in all kinds of imaginative ways—that this is not just about their neighborhood, but it's something going on all over the nation, with potentially worldwide reverberations.They have to see and hear this Message and Call not once, not twice, but over and over—coming from different places, some unexpected and even wild—so that this doesn't just fade from memory after a week or two. They have to be led to go deeply into this statement—this Message and Call is RICH, this is "Revolution 101"—with a basic foundation in the goals, methods and strategy of revolution concentrated in it. The basic fact that there is a movement for revolution...a revolutionary communist movement...this has to penetrate into the atmosphere, and affect all of society. Some people are gonna love it, some people are gonna hate it, and some people are gonna just have it circulating in their minds—but the revolution has got to get out there and get known. Let me tell you, the days will come—and they may come sooner than you think and almost certainly those days will come before we feel fully ready for them—when masses of people will be seeking a way out. And when they do, they better know something about this revolution.

But there's another element to this campaign, another objective. There's making known the leadership of Bob Avakian. I've talked about Bob Avakian in one dimension earlier, and it's an important one: the objectively undeniable role he's played in laying a foundation from which the whole movement can go forward and in waging a battle to save this Party as a revolutionary...communist...party. But there's more to say. The Message and Call puts it this way:

Bob Avakian has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need, and he is leading our Party as an advanced force of this revolution. He is a great champion and a great resource for people here, and indeed people all over the world. The possibility for revolution, right here, and for the advance of the revolution everywhere, is greatly heightened because of Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing. And it is up to us to get with this leadership...to find out more about Bob Avakian and the Party he heads...to learn from his scientific method and approach to changing the world...to build this revolutionary movement with our Party at the core...to defend this leadership as the precious thing it is...and, at the same time, to bring our own experience and understanding to help strengthen the process of revolution and enable the leadership we have to keep on learning more and leading even better.

"A great champion and a great resource for the people here, and indeed people all over the world." People need to know that, they need a basic sense of how that is so, and they need to know him. It is up to us to get Bob Avakian's memoir—From Ike to Mao and Beyond—out there to people. Up to us to spread the Revolution talk to people, watch it with them where we can, and write up the lessons of that for our newspaper. Up to us to get this T-shirt out there, and this way cool graphic out and about. Up to us to do a hundred and one other things that are going to get taken up in this workshop tomorrow to make this leader a household word.

Obviously, things have not yet broken loose in this country. And in many ways the atmosphere is more suffocating and locked down than it was in the early '60s—though there ARE openings, some of which we can recognize and seize on, and some of which we are going to have to create. But there is a real basis to get Bob Avakian's leadership out there, now, on a much much huger scale than it has been, through this campaign, and to do that in such a way so that when and as things begin to open up—and this campaign, along with other things we do, is part of prying things open—he will be a point of reference and more than that: a magnetic pole for people who are searching for a leader with real answers and real substance.

And look. I've read reports about, and I've talked to people, who've said, "It would make such a difference if we could see and meet the Chairman in person. It would make such a big difference if the Chairman could be out here speaking." Now some people say that in a nasty way or a baiting way. But the people I'm talking about are mostly coming from a good place. Well, the Party appreciates your sentiment. But let me also say this: the Chair IS "out here." He's out here in his memoir... out here in the Revolution talk...out here in the graphic image...in the pages of Revolution newspaper, almost every week...in other audios that are online. He's out here and we have to get him much much further out here to hundreds of thousands and then to millions. Not five years from now, not two years from now, but right now—beginning with the plans we make this weekend. Let's make "Are you getting into BA?" a mass challenge. And let's make "GET INTO BA" a mass slogan.

And we have to be bold with people. We don't need to—in fact we most definitely should NOT—get into long defensive explanations when people raise this stuff about "why are you making such a big deal," or "everyone says you're a cult," or "I don't follow leaders"—in other words, when people begin, frankly, repeating a lot of the conventional wisdom or prejudices that have been hammered at by the bourgeoisie in these past 35 years of counter-revolution. No. We should just put it right out there, like I said to you earlier: you don't understand—without Bob Avakian there would very likely be no revolutionary communism in today's world. And the fact is that we're not promoting him ENOUGH yet—and we aim to do a whole lot more and a whole lot better!

We should put it out there, plainly, matter of fact, without any hint of religiosity, and then we should challenge people: if you are serious about fundamental change, it is the height of irresponsibility to fail to engage Avakian's work on the level it demands.

If you are at all serious about human possibility, then you have to wrangle with why the previous revolutions were defeated. You have to wrangle with whether we can really make a revolution that both can overcome the terrible inequalities and disparities and horrors in the world—and can do that without turning out the lights, as Avakian has put it, on intellectual and artistic endeavor and initiative.

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with whether Marxism really is a science—and if it is, what it really means to say that, and how our scientific understanding of the world has changed in the 160 years since this science was first forged.

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with how do people change their understanding of the world and, yes, their deepest moral feelings—not just after the revolution, but how do they change now, in order to MAKE revolution and as part of MAKING REVOLUTION?

If you are serious, you have to wrangle with whether it is even conceivable that the ruling class of this country could some day be vulnerable to a revolutionary challenge...and if it is conceivable, then how could that possibly come together and what would be required of revolutionaries—both then and, from the vantage point of that future time, today?

And if you are wrangling on that road, then you will meet someone else who got there first and will welcome you onto it and wrangle with you and try to learn everything he can from you—because that's how he rolls. And that would be Bob Avakian.

It's there for the taking. And then sure, let's argue about it. Let's learn from each other as we do. But on the basis of you being serious enough to get deeply into this. To quote Bruce Springsteen, the door's open but the ride ain't free—you have to do some work too.

This gets us to the third objective of this campaign—bringing forward a core of dedicated, ardent fighters who are going to passionately advocate for this revolution and make it a driving dynamic force in society and the world. Fighters who are going to come at this not from what my friends think, or what my family thinks, or how backward things are out there, or how brutal and heartless these monsters at the top are—but from what humanity needs and what really is possible.

Fighters who are going to put their questions on the table from the standpoint of working them through, on the road to deepening their commitment to this revolution.

Fighters who will boldly take on what the enemy throws at them, and who will just as boldly take on both the backward thinking and the real questions among masses broadly, as well as the sophisticated apologists for this system.

Even a relatively small initial core of such fighters, coming forward from all ages but especially the youth, and from all walks of life, especially those on the bottom of society, can make a huge difference. It can have a magnetic effect. And such a core will stand out all the more sharply against the backdrop of today. Such a core can act as a living embodiment of the vision of a revolutionary movement that Bob Avakian put forward in "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity":

There will be, and there should be, all kinds of struggle about those questions [of how to make revolution]. But people should have a sense: If you want to know about, and work toward, a different world—and if you want to stand up and fight back against what's being done to people—this is where you go. You go to this Party, you take up this Party's newspaper, you get into this Party's leader and what he's bringing forward, you come to the Revolution Clubs, you join in with the people carrying out political activity that embodies this—spreading revolution and building resistance, and the "positive synergy" between the two—all aiming for revolution.

There needs to be more room for and emphasis on systematic study and struggle for people who are getting into this. There needs to be a more widespread and keener sense of what this Party is about and what it means for people...of the crucial importance of the Cultural Revolution in our Party and what a great thing it is...of what it means to take leadership from this Party and what it would mean to join it... All that has to be much more part of the atmosphere, much more of what we call a "mass question"—something that lots of people are openly and constantly wrangling over and returning to, in their conversations and their thinking. People have to be coming into this Party, and helping to further transform it, too, into an even more revolutionary party...into an even sharper instrument with which to deeply understand and radically transform reality in the interests of the masses.

Our aim and our plan with this campaign is this: to get those three objectives working together, so that some people may be hearing about Bob Avakian and then checking out the Revolution talk or the memoir and from there learning about the revolutionary movement and getting into it... and other people, within the atmosphere where the image of Avakian is getting around and the Message and Call of this campaign are everywhere, see this movement stand up to the authorities and they come into things from there...or still others are going to a speech by Sunsara Taylor or Raymond Lotta or Carl Dix about some particular burning question and from there look more deeply into all this... or they're beginning to read Revolution, every week... or they are hearing about and supporting the fight to allow prisoners to continue to get and read Revolution...and where, as people are doing this or hearing about it, they are catching the feel that there is a wave—even if right now the beginning of a wave—of people who are getting into this, for real, and as they see and encounter these people, the elan and the hope and the science and the fresh approach of these new revolutionary communists draws them forward to check all this out further.

The idea here is to get all three of these objectives—and all the work involved in each particular effort and initiative related to this campaign—cross-fertilizing, and synergizing, and amplifying one another—so the message and feel gets out NOT that these people are good-hearted folks with interesting ideas, but that these people ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution.

Right now we do not have this campaign clicking on all eight cylinders. But this is a goal that we can reach. This is a goal that we can brainstorm about and percolate on and develop plans for and carry out those plans so that in a finite time this movement for revolution can be in a different position in society. We can, through waging and winning this unprecedented campaign, break through and break out... and get into position where we can begin advancing the revolutionary communist movement with societal impact and worldwide reverberations...making known to all a political and ideological force on a mission to fight for this new stage of communist revolution.

V. The Campaign—As Part of a Strategy

Now all this is part of a larger strategy. And yes, we have a strategy. I'll say it again, because it's something that we don't do enough to let people know: we have a strategy to make revolution. There's actually a method to what we do—it's not something like Jehovah's Witnesses, where their members go around and talk to people and try to recruit them, waiting for the day when god comes to deliver the big payback and set everything right. It's not "we're doing this because this is what communists always do." No. And make no mistake—we are NOT trying to stir up a "radical opposition" for its own sake. We ARE BUILDING a movement to actually MAKE REVOLUTION.

How could you make a revolution? Let's talk about this a little. The Message and Call of this campaign says that,

Revolution can be made when there is a revolutionary situation, an even greater crisis in society as a whole: when people in greater numbers come to deeply feel and understand that the present power has no legitimacy...that it serves only a handful of oppressors...that it uses lies and deception, corruption and completely unjust force and violence to keep this system going and "keep the people in their place"...when millions see the need to fight to break this power and establish a new power that can bring about the changes that people desperately need and want.

Let's break this down. "An even greater crisis in society as a whole." How could that happen? Well, let's look back at some of what we started this speech with. Let's look at these fascists out here. These Tea Party people and others. Believe me, we take these people quite seriously. We see these people in Texas rewriting the textbooks to even further distort U.S. history and these Republican governors "honoring the Confederacy"—that is, the slaveholders in the Civil War. We see—and we are out there opposing, including our people right now out there today—these fascists in the Arizona legislature with their apartheid-style laws. We see these Christian fascists, continuing their onslaught against abortion and murdering and threatening providers, lashing out against women, and threatening our comrades who lead struggle against them as well. We see them demonizing and stirring up fear of and hatred against gay people, and denying them their elementary rights. We watch Glenn Beck, and we call attention to his scenarios of militias made up of what he calls "angry Bubbas"—translation: racists—taking up arms.

And we see the Democrats—doing everything they can to hold it all together and to PREVENT people from resisting this, at the same time as they join with the Republicans to push forward the wars and repression and massive imprisonment of minority youth and serious economic deprivation that both parties are firmly behind. And we see and run up against how all this right now is intimidating and suffocating people.

But we see something else, too. We see the way that the divisions at the top of the ruling structures of society at a different point could come unraveled. Among these rulers, there are two different visions of how America needs to be ordered in the next few decades, and the potential antagonism between them is very great. Be clear, the point is most definitely not to choose sides between these rival factions of imperialists—because "they're both worse." The point is that this clash could provide the people with one of those rare openings when revolution could actually come onto the agenda for real.

Here's what I mean. When "the center cannot hold"—that is, when there is not enough cohesion among the ruling class itself to hold together its rival factions—and the "weakness of the center" is what a lot of their commentators have been bemoaning—when this happens in societies, there are fissures created out of which mass discontent can erupt. Splits that provide cracks through which the anger and discontent that people are just forced to swallow in "normal times" can come roaring out, like lava erupting from a suddenly active volcano. And something else can happen, too; to return to the Message and Call, "people in greater numbers [can] come to deeply feel and understand that the present power has no legitimacy...that it serves only a handful of oppressors...that it uses lies and deception, corruption and completely unjust force and violence to keep this system going and 'keep the people in their place.'"

You can see the embryo of something like that going on in Iran over the past year—where a society that seemed locked down tight for 30 years suddenly was engulfed in a crisis that started as a clash between two rival factions in the ruling class of the Islamic Republic over how an unstable society rife with contradiction was going to be ruled. This clash led to massive street demonstrations and fighting, and bigger questions were thrown up, and other forces began to come into play.

You can even study the history of the Civil War in this country from this angle and learn how fundamental change can actually happen.

But here's the rub—if there is not a revolutionary pole strong enough to lead people to wrench something altogether new out of this... then the rulers will just bludgeon their way out, and things will go to a still deeper circle of hell.

No, it's not enough for there to be a societal crisis to which we the revolutionaries could somehow "just add water," as if fundamental social change was like instant coffee. Here's how the Message and Call lays it out:

For a revolution, there must be a revolutionary people, among all sections of society but with its deepest base among those who catch hell every day under this system...people who are determined to fight for power in order to radically change society, to get rid of oppression and exploitation. But the point is this: we cannot, and we must not, sit around and wait for "one fine day" when this revolutionary situation comes about and a revolutionary people comes on the scene. No, we must--and we can—work to bring a revolutionary people into being...to enable people to see why they should put no faith in this system, and should not live and die in a way that keeps this system going...but instead should devote their lives to resisting oppression and building up for the time when we can get rid of the cause of all this oppression. Using our Party's newspaper, Revolution, as the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for this whole process, this is what our Party means when we say we are hastening while awaiting the revolutionary situation, preparing minds and organizing forces...for revolution.

It is crucial that when things do go up for grabs—when people are searching for a way forward, when they are questioning the assumptions they've believed in their whole lives, when they are streaming into the streets at great personal risk—it is crucial then that there be a different magnetic pole, one with the ties and influence and understanding that could enable it to forge and lead a powerful united front that actually COULD make revolution and bring in a whole new system.

So, yes, we have a strategy. We have a way to get to that tomorrow, starting from today. We are hastening revolution, even as we're not going off half-cocked... even as we're tensely awaiting, while doing all we can to shape, the situation where you actually COULD begin the fight to establish a new state power.

Recently, Revolution published two paragraphs from Bob Avakian that put out a very concise guideline on this:

At every point, we must be searching out the key concentrations of social contradictions and the methods and forms which can strengthen the political consciousness of the masses, as well as their fighting capacity and organization in carrying out political resistance against the crimes of this system; which can increasingly bring the necessity, and the possibility, of a radically different world to life for growing numbers of people; and which can strengthen the understanding and determination of the advanced, revolutionary-minded masses in particular to take up our strategic objectives not merely as far-off and essentially abstract goals (or ideals) but as things to be actively striven for and built toward.

The objective and orientation must be to carry out work which, together with the development of the objective situation, can transform the political terrain, so that the legitimacy of the established order, and the right and ability of the ruling class to rule, is called into question, in an acute and active sense, throughout society; so that resistance to this system becomes increasingly broad, deep and determined; so that the "pole" and the organized vanguard force of revolutionary communism is greatly strengthened; and so that, at the decisive time, this advanced force is able to lead the struggle of millions, and tens of millions, to make revolution.

Now there's a lot packed into those two paragraphs. You could—and at some point everybody should—spend a day and more breaking this down and getting into this. The point I want to focus on here, though, is that when we focus on these outrages—be it the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, or the cruel murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, or Arizona even as we speak—we are focusing on them both because they demand action in their own right and as part of "bringing a revolutionary people into being."

We have an analysis of these contradictions—even as we are open and attuned to new ones emerging or coming to the fore. The pace can be intense, but we're NOT aimlessly or randomly running around. What we do has a point—to review and roughly paraphrase those paragraphs, we are searching out those concentrations of KEY social contradictions, and we are looking for the right forms, that can strengthen people's consciousness AND their fighting capacity to carry out political resistance...we are bringing to life the fact that we need, and can get, a radically different world...and we are making revolution real for people. But that's not all—we're doing this in a way that calls into question the very legitimacy of the rulers...that builds up society-wide resistance...that strengthens the pole of revolutionary communism within all that...and that does all this in such a way so that the advanced revolutionary force could actually lead millions at a future time when things have further ripened.

Listen: the very things that are at the root of the power of this ruling class—their ability to exploit people all over the planet and plunder the earth, their murdering police, the repression and injustice against immigrants and people of color generally, their structures of gender oppression, their wars and military strength—these are the very contradictions that can politically backfire against them, if revolutionaries wield their science to work on those contradictions and if things come together in a certain way.

We have a strategy—and our newspaper is, as the statement says, "the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for [the] whole process" of carrying out that strategy. This is the paper that cuts to the bone to tell you WHY things are happening... to show you HOW it doesn't have to be this way...and to give you the ways to ACT to change it. It is a call to action and a means of struggle. It is, and has to be much more, the scaffolding on which this movement is built, where those who are getting into it and following it can wrangle in its pages and on its website with how we can better build this movement. It is a guideline, where today thousands, but soon tens of thousands and eventually millions, all over the place, stay connected and learn to act in a powerful and united way. It is the foundation, where those who read it learn about the larger goals of revolution and communism, and come to see the ways in which the struggles of today are connected to those larger goals...where they come to grasp the scientific communist outlook through its application to all the many particular events and outrages and developments in society... and where they get organizationally linked up to this revolution.

And, yes, we have a strategy that takes in how, at a future time when things DO get to the point at which the rulers are weakened and fighting amongst themselves, when many other political forces are paralyzed, and when millions are ready to put everything on the line, that those millions would not be left without a way to fight and win—that is, to actually be able to meet and defeat the violent, repressive force of the old, exploitative and oppressive order. This is contained in the contribution to the pamphlet Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation that is entitled "On the Possibility of Revolution"—and a basic sense of this has been put in the speech two years ago, available on-line,"Making Revolution in the USA." This article, "On the Possibility of Revolution," is something that people need to get into and study, now.

Do you realize what it means that we not only have a leader and a party that knows where we need to go, but a strategy that can actually get us there? This is very precious—and this is something that we have to make much more widely known than it is today, as we carry forward with the campaign.

VI. Conclusion

So we've traveled a bit into the future in this last section. Now let's bring it back to the here and now (even as that future is pregnant in the here and now). The Message and Call puts it this way:

[Y]es, it is true—now is not yet the time, in this country, to go all-out to seize the power away from those who rule over us and to bring a new power, serving our interests, into being. But now IS the time to be WORKING FOR REVOLUTION—to be stepping up resistance while building a movement for revolution—to prepare for the time when it WILL be possible to go all out to seize the power.

Which leads me back to this campaign. This campaign is the crucial link right now in "hastening while awaiting the revolutionary situation, preparing minds and organizing forces...for revolution." If we accomplish the goals of this campaign—if the revolution gets known and its magnetic force increases...if Bob Avakian becomes a household word among those who are awake or awakening...and if a growing core of people, including and especially from the "catch-hell-every-day, nothing-to-lose" section of society, advocate, fight for and sacrifice for THIS revolution...if we do that, then we will not only have made a must-do leap along the road from where we are today, we will have gotten into position where we can make further and even more powerful leaps in this whole process.

Remember why we started this campaign.

Because at a time when revolution urgently cries out to be done, revolution is not only not on the map in people's thinking—it is in danger of becoming a relic of the past.

Because not only is revolution needed, but the problems that communist revolution ran up against in its first stage have been identified and a framework for their solution has been developed, by Bob Avakian.

Because we must and we can break out of the situation we're in right now and get a whole different trajectory going.

At a time when in the space of one month the police can murder a lovely 7-year-old girl and utterly violate her family... when Nazi-like legislation can get passed against people who have been driven here for their survival... when the capitalists can inflict, in their insane and heedless drive for profit, a major disaster on the environment... we need revolution, and we badly need a movement right now FOR REVOLUTION– a movement that puts forward its message in compelling ways and that on that foundation can inspire and backbone resistance, linked to the goal of revolution.

To quote again our Message and Call, the foundation and glue of this whole campaign:

The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world...when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness...those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.

We are here today at conferences which can play a crucial role and have a decisive impact in building the movement we need—FOR REVOLUTION. Though our numbers right now may be small, especially when weighed against the challenges we face, our movement is very very large in terms of the truth it grasps, the justness of its cause, the vision it aims for and the determination and boldness and imagination it possesses to rally people to it. We are here to wrangle with these goals and their connection to revolution...to brainstorm different ideas and angles and hammer out ways to make it all come together...to get much, much better organized...and to break out. And we do all that on the foundation of the Message and Call, and in particular its conclusion:

A WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD, A MUCH BETTER FUTURE, IS POSSIBLE. WE HAVE WHAT WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR THAT WORLD, THAT FUTURE.

IT IS UP TO US TO GET WITH IT AND GET TO THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING THIS HAPPEN.

 

1. Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, RCP Publications, 2008, page 43. [back]

Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/203/get_with_campaign-en.html

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Get With the Campaign

The Revolutionary Communist Party is in the midst of a major campaign—and you need to know about it, and become part of it.

This campaign aims to let people know what communist revolution is all about... to acquaint them with the leadership that we have for this revolution, Bob Avakian and the RCP,USA which he leads... and to bring people into making this revolution happen, in many different ways.

The idea: to put revolution—this revolution—much more on the map in people's thinking. To initiate nothing less than a whole new stage of communist revolution, building on the achievements of the past but critically sifting and going beyond them in significant ways... reviving the viability and desirability of communist revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis, and bringing forward a real social force around this, contending powerfully with the other solutions that are out there.

The Party's Message and Call, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have," forms the glue of this campaign. You can get it online, or in Revolution Books bookstores, or from Party supporters. The video of Bob Avakian's speech, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, forms a basic foundation—and is available on-line. Many of the things we do and talk about in this paper—from the efforts to spread Bob Avakian's classic talk on revolution... to the fight against the censorship of our paper in the prisons... to the tours by revolutionaries like Raymond Lotta or Sunsara Taylor... to initiatives to "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution"... to building the circulation and sustainership of Revolution newspaper—these are all related. They are all getting people to see that, in the words of that message and call, "This is NOT the best of all possible worlds...And we do NOT have to live this way."

Find out about this campaign. Download and distribute the statement and call. Popularize the online Revolution talk by Bob Avakian. Get this paper out. Come to one of our bookstores and find out how you can volunteer. Write us with your questions, your ideas, your experiences. Be part of, in the words of the Message and Call, spreading "the word to every corner of this country... giving people the means to become part of this revolutionary movement, and organizing into this movement everyone who wants to make a contribution to it, who wants to work and fight, to struggle and sacrifice, not to keep this nightmare of a world going as it is but to bring a better world into being."

Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/203/Helen_Thomas-en.html

Revolution #203, June 13, 2010

Behind the Silencing of Helen Thomas: Covering Up and Carrying Out Great Crimes

By Alan Goodman

In an article I wrote on the massacre on the Mavi Marmara ("An Outrageous Massacre to Enforce Horrific Crimes," Revolution issue 203, online at revcom.us), I argued that these killings were carried out to enforce an even greater horror, the slow (or not so slow) strangulation of the 1.5 million people in Gaza by Israel's blockade, a blockade backed up by the USA. In a similar vein, the silencing of one of the very few principled, high-profile U.S. mainstream journalists, ostensibly over a comment she made when a pro-Israel rabbi stuck a camera in her face for an "interview," serves those same ends, and must be protested and opposed.

Before turning to the incident that supposedly precipitated all this, let's note Helen Thomas's actual transgression. In the wake of Israel's slaughter of human rights activists trying to break the blockade of Gaza, Helen Thomas had the audacity to say the obvious, and ask the question everyone should have been asking. She told White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "If any other nation in the world had done it, we would have been up in arms," and asked: "What is the sacrosanct, iron-clad relationship where a country that deliberately kills people and boycotts—and we aid and abet the boycott?"

I wondered how long they were going to let Helen Thomas ask questions like that.

Not long.

The next day all hell broke loose, ostensibly over another quote from Thomas that she made in the course of a "stick-a-camera-in-your-face" interview by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com outside the White House's May 27 Jewish Heritage Celebration.

Now, there are a lot of things you can say, and the powers-that-be and their media and censorship machinery are fine with that. Rand Paul, the darling of the Tea Party Movement and yes, now the Republican Party establishment, can say he wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act because it infringes on the rights of private businesses. And anyone who is offended by that is supposed to quit whining and get a thicker skin. Barack Obama can "joke" in front of the entire Washington press corps that if anyone in the band the Jonas Brothers tries to date "his" daughters, he has 2 words for them: predator drone (the missiles the U.S. uses to wipe out homes full of people in the Middle East from Afghanistan to Yemen)... And anyone who thought that was sick, sadistic, violently patriarchal, and a celebration of cowardly death from the skies was, I guess, supposed to "get a sense of humor."

But let Helen Thomas, the now-forced-out Dean of the White House press corps, say that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine..." and within hours, Hearst News Service announced her (obviously forced) "retirement." The White House Correspondents' Association—which slavishly accepted and fed the nation Bush's "weapons of mass deception" lies (and then "moved on" when those lies were exposed)—rushed to denounce Thomas. Her speaker's bureau fired her.

Throughout the dark ages of the Bush regime, Helen Thomas stood out, and stood pretty much alone, among mainstream journalists in challenging torture and lies. Four years ago, she asked Bush's Press Secretary Tony Snow a question at a White House press conference that suggested the U.S. supported "collective punishment for Lebanon and Palestine," and this was met with the response: "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view" (a response that both framed any questioning, dissent, or opposition to Israel and the U.S. as being "with the terrorists," and served as a warning/threat that anyone asking such questions risked being treated like "the terrorists").

And Helen Thomas has had the principles and integrity to refuse to go silent when the Obama administration has continued to carry out endless war and shred civil liberties. In February, Thomas asked Obama at a press conference (framed by saber rattling around Iran) if he knew of any Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons. An awkward question since, while the U.S. is moving belligerently towards Iran's nuclear program (which so far has yet to produce a single weapon), they enabled and protect Israel's massive nuclear arsenal.

The "Gotcha" Quote

Overtly forcing out the widely admired, 89-year-old "Dean of the White House Press Corps" for asking these embarrassing questions about Israel's crimes, its nuclear arsenal, and the U.S. role in all that might further focus a spotlight on those very questions.

But the ruling class, through the media and its instruments of regulating journalism, did seize on a casual exchange with a pro-Israel rabbi outside a White House celebration of Jewish heritage to silence and discredit Thomas, and also to confuse the nature of Israel, and the U.S. role in backing it.

Accounts of the exchange characterized Thomas as saying that Jews should go back to Russia and Poland, but Thomas initially directed her criticism at Israel. She was asked for her comments on "Israel," and said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." It was the interviewer who reframed things in terms of "So you're saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?"

While a lot of the focus of attack on Thomas was formulated in terms of accusations of anti-Semitism, what really set off some, including forces who claim to be, or are, "progressive" on other issues, is that Thomas' comments did objectively raise questions about the nature of Israel. For these forces, it's OK for liberals or progressives to criticize some of Israel's most egregious crimes—a bit. But you cannot even ask questions that might raise for examination the actual nature of Israel—that question the right of this state to exist on stolen Palestinian land. Writing at Huffington Post, for example, Hani Almadhoun called Thomas's comments "wrong and hurtful" and complained, "Had she been talking about the militaristic Israeli occupation then her remarks would make a lot more sense. But her untactful remarks have so many plausible meanings that it troubles me a journalist who has a gift of words would make such an ambiguous statement." ("Helen Thomas, Old Journalism Ambushed by the New One," 6/8/10).

But what about the truth? First, it is a fact that most Jewish people in Israel are from Europe, or descendants of people who immigrated from Europe, living on land seized through terroristic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. And Helen Thomas was accurate to say, "Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land, not German and not Polish."

Jewish people who resent being resented for Israel's crimes (like white people who resent being blamed for white racism and the history of the oppression of Black people in this country) need to loudly and unequivocally speak out against Israel's crimes. And you can and must refuse to let the same imperialist system that carried out the holocaust (German imperialists, while the other "great powers" essentially stood by because it wasn't in their strategic interests to make an issue out of it at the time) now justify Israel's crimes on that basis.

Backing Israel, a widely despised Zionist state in the Middle East, poses real contradictions for the rulers of the U.S. This is acutely the case now, when they are trying to cobble together alliances with various forces, including Islamic forces, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of their endless war to enforce U.S. domination in a geostrategic part of the world. But Israel plays a unique, and strategic role as an enforcer for U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond, and whatever tension is involved in that, this is a strategic relationship that the U.S. finds essential. And this is the case even when Israel does things that in the short term are problematic for the U.S. (for a concentrated analysis of the relationship between Israel and the U.S., see "Bringing Forward Another Way" by Bob Avakian, at revcom.us, particularly the section "Israel and Its 'Special Role' in Relation to U.S. Imperialism").

In a speech in the aftermath of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara, I surveyed two defining moments in the history and role of the state of Israel—military and technology support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, and Israel's indispensable role in the slaughter of some 180,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala in the early 1980s—horrific crimes carried out in service of the U.S. empire. And I argued that "[W]henever there is something too obscene, too bloody, too obviously immoral, that if the U.S. did it, it would look bad, it would alienate people, and work against the strategic objectives of U.S. empire the U.S. can always count on Israel."

All of this is why Helen Thomas' questions were ruled "out of order."

Stop Censoring the Truth!

Anyone who is against censorship, who values critical thinking and the right of journalists to speak out and voice their opinion—must take a stand against what has been done to Helen Thomas.

And anyone with a sense of right, wrong, and the truth should feel compelled to dig deeply into why "our" government covers up and censors basic truths about Israel, and what that reveals about the whole global setup. And then to act politically against Israel's crimes.

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