revcom.us, April 26, 2021 through May 2, 2021 (#697)

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/694/a-declaration-a-call-to-get-organized-now-for-a-real-revolution-full-en.html

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

| revcom.us

 

Let’s get down to basics: We need a revolution—nothing less!

To everyone who can’t stand this world the way it is ... who is sick and tired of so many people being treated as less than human ... who knows that the claim of “liberty and justice for all” is a cruel lie ... who is righteously enraged that injustice and inequality go on, and on, and on, despite false promises and honeyed words from people in power (or those seeking power) ... everyone who agonizes about where things are headed and the fact that to be young now means being denied a decent future, or any future at all ... everyone who has ever dreamed about something much better, or even wondered whether that is possible ... everyone who hungers for a world without oppression, exploitation, poverty, and destruction of the environment ... everyone who has the heart to fight for something that is really worth fighting for: You need to be part of this revolution.

This revolution is not just “a good idea”—it is actually possible.

Is this for real? Are we serious about this, and can we back it up? YES. We are not here to repeat garbage that may be “popular” or to spread the lies we are constantly told by the people in power and their mouthpieces in the media and elsewhere. We are here to bring the truth. So here are some basic truths that we need to understand and live by.

1. The system we live under, the system of capitalism-imperialism destroys lives and crushes spirits. It is the source of endless horrors for the majority of people in this country and all around the world, and it is increasingly threatening the very existence of humanity. The military of this country is not carrying out an “honorable service”—and it is not some “bad ass” force that people should respect. It is doing the same thing around the world, on a massive scale, that the police are doing here: carrying out the cowardly killing and terrorizing of people in the service of the biggest oppressors in the world, the rulers of this country. And it is a major cause of the destruction of the environment.

It is a hard but basic truth: For the masses of people, and ultimately for humanity as a whole, there is no future, or no future worth living, under this system.

But there is a way to a world and a future that is worth living, and is worth fighting for right now: revolutiona real revolution, not playing around with a few changes that leave this system in place and in power, while benefitting only a small number. A revolution means a force of millions, drawn from many different parts of society and organized for an all-out fight to overthrow this system and replace it with a radically different and much better economic and political system, a socialist system, based on meeting the needs of the people and carrying forward the fight for a communist world where there will finally be an end, everywhere, to the exploitation, oppression, and destruction of the environment that is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism. Anything less than this revolution will completely fail to deal with the root of all the problems or lead to the actual solution.

2. Revolutions are not possible all the time, but are generally possible only in rare times and circumstances, especially in a powerful country like this. This is one of those rare times and circumstances. This system is in real trouble, caught up in crisis and conflicts for which it has no easy or lasting solutions. Throughout this country the workings of this system have given rise to deep divisions which cannot be resolved under this system. Society is being ripped apart. Those who rule are locked in a bitter fight among themselves, and they cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past. Although there are a lot of bad things connected with this and it could lead to something really terrible, it is also possible that we could wrench something really positive out of it—revolution, to put an end to this system and bring something much better into being.

We have seen the potential for revolution powerfully demonstrated just last summer when millions of people, of all races and genders, all over this country, and all around the world, rose up together against racist oppression and police murder. We have seen this potential in the mass outpourings of women, in countries all over the world, refusing to put up with being abused and degraded. This potential is also revealed in the deep distress being expressed, by scientists and millions of ordinary people, about the continually worsening climate crisis and the threat this poses to the future of humanity—a crisis this system cannot solve, but can only make worse. But, with all this, right now only a small number of us have recognized the need for this revolution and are acting to make it happen. So there is crucial work that must be done now to win people to understand the need for revolution and act to make it real—to turn the potential for revolution into a powerful movement and organized force for an actual revolution.

3. To make this revolution a reality, we need leadership with the scientific method, the strategy and program that can shine a light through the madness and chaos that this system is constantly creating and can lead in carving the path forward out of this madness to the radically new world we need. AND WE HAVE THAT LEADERSHIP—IN BOB AVAKIAN (BA). BA is the architect of a whole new framework for the liberation of all oppressed people and the emancipation of all humanity: the new communism. We are followers of BA. And you need to become followers of BA too. There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

4. We need to urgently change the situation where not nearly enough people know about this revolution and are with it. We need to get this revolution, and its leadership, known everywhere. We need to challenge and seriously struggle with people right around us, and all over the country, to do something that, yes, requires real heart and will make a positive difference for real—become part of this revolution, and follow this revolutionary leadership. We need to organize more and more people into the ranks of the revolution.

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for. This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same. On this basis, and through the growing ranks of the revolution acting together as an increasingly powerful force, it will be possible to attract and organize the necessary numbers, and build up the necessary strength, to be in the position to do what needs to be done.

We need to struggle hard with people to take up the orientation and strategy, the values and goals, for this revolution, and dedicate themselves to working for this revolution, while we unite growing numbers to fight the abuse, brutality and destruction perpetrated by this system, and through all this get thousands and then millions of people prepared and steeled to do away with this system that brings so much hell to people. We need to wield this growing revolutionary force to stand up to this system and its murderous enforcers and to change the whole “terrain” (the political, social and cultural situation and “atmosphere”) throughout society, in order to weaken the hold of this system over people, win people away from acting to strengthen and enforce this system, and create the best possible conditions for this revolution to succeed.

To come back to basics: We need revolution—a real revolution. We cannot afford to waste these rare times and circumstances that could be ripened into a real chance to make revolution. We cannot afford to squander the rare and precious leadership we have for this revolution. We have to get busy, build the movement and the organized forces for revolution all over the country, and work together tirelessly for this revolution, to actively prepare for the situation where this system can be brought down and something much better brought into being.

To get more of the tools and the knowledge you need to become part of this revolution, and to go to work building for this revolution, get with those representing for this revolution right now, become part of the Revolution Clubs around the country, go to our website revcom.us regularly, and watch The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show every week.

If you want to know more about this, right now, keep reading: here is further knowledge about these basic truths.

One. This system of capitalism-imperialism rules and profits by exploiting and oppressing, using and abusing masses of people, including children, all over the world; by treating whole groups of people as less than human; by slaughtering people who get in its way; by threatening people with its arsenals of mass destruction; by destroying the environment. Regardless of who is in the positions of power, this is the only way this system can operate, and under this system things can only get worse. All this is why we need a revolution. Bob Avakian (BA) has put this very clearly: “We have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!

To make it very clear once more: By revolution we mean nothing less than overthrowing this whole system—defeating, disarming and dismantling the murderous armed power and other institutions that enforce this system—completely abolishing this whole system and replacing it with something radically different and much better, a new society built on an entirely different foundation. And this new system we need is socialism—an economic and political system that is set up to meet the needs of the people, not the profit and power of exploiters and oppressors—a system that moves to do away with all exploitation and oppression, and supports people everywhere fighting against exploitation and oppression, in order to get to a communist world, where all this madness will finally be ended, for real, and people all over the world will be able to work together for the common good. Don’t be fooled by talk about how communism is no good and will make things worse. That is just talk that helps to keep this system of capitalism-imperialism going, with all its horrors for the masses of humanity and its growing threat to our very existence. In the works of BA, and other works you can find at revcom.us, you can learn the real truth about communism and the way BA has further developed communism into an even more powerful and liberating science of revolution: the new communism.

Two. This is one of those rare times and circumstances when revolution becomes possible, not just because this system is always a horror, but because the crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means. Those who have ruled over us, for so long, with their Republican and Democratic parties, are now caught up in bitterly fighting each other over how to hold this country together, keep this system going, enforce its rule over the people it exploits and oppresses, and maintain this country as the world’s top-dog oppressive power. The Republicans are moving to exercise this rule through fascism: discarding the pretense of “democracy for all,” relying on naked brutality and trampling on people’s rights, to enforce undisguised, aggressive male supremacy, white supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners and persecution of immigrants, especially from non-white countries) and crude “America first” chauvinism. The Democrats are trying to keep things together with more disguise and deception, with the claim that what exists in this country is a “great democracy” representing “the will of the people,” and for this reason it deserves to be, and needs to be, the most powerful force in the world. But, in reality, both of these ruling class parties are working to maintain the violent oppressive power, the dictatorship, of this capitalist-imperialist system, with all the horrors for humanity this involves.

These divisions and conflicts have ripped big holes in the camouflage of this system, further exposing its real nature and the lie that this is “the greatest country in the world,” the “shining light of freedom” and “leader of the free world.” All this is very likely to become more and more intense, tearing apart the bonds that have held things together under this system and further deepening the divisions throughout society, including within the institutions of power. This could lead to something very bad—or something very good, IF we act in the way we need to in these rare circumstances and fight to take things where they need to go.

As BA has emphasized, in a powerful New Year’s Statement (A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity), the fact that the fascist Trump was voted out of office is important but it only “buys some time” and time is not on the side of the fight for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be wasted by going along with this system. We will never get where we need to go by being a tail on the Democratic donkey (and, obviously, not by siding with the Republican fascists). No, we need to break out of acting on the terms, and within the confines, of this system, which has all this murderous oppression and destruction built into it. We need to be actively working to radically change the “alignment of forces” in society, to where things are more favorable for overthrowing this whole system.

These days there is a lot of talk about another civil war, especially from fascists, in government and the broader society, who think they could just carry out a one-sided slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.” This situation needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.

What we need is “repolarization for revolution—making real revolution an active and increasingly powerful force of first thousands, and then millions, of people organized to work for and win more and more people to this revolution—radically changing the “terrain” on which the revolution will be fought.

Today, there are not only many fascists in the murderous police forces, but more than a few in the military as well. But it is a fact that, at the high point of the 1960s, the strength of the radical liberation movements at that time reached into and strongly influenced every part and every institution of society—including the armed forces of this system, where more of the soldiers looked for leadership from the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary-minded forces than from the president of the United States (the so-called “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces). Even with the differences between then and now, creating this kind of situation—where a revolutionary movement based on the new communism and the leadership of BA is impacting every part of society and key institutions—this is achievable, and is a very important part of preparing the ground for the seizure of power, when the time is right. This will make it possible to have the best fighting chance to take revolution all the way, and not be beaten back down into yet more horror.

And the potential for this revolution is real. There is the ever intensifying climate crisis—and it is a scientific fact that this system of capitalism-imperialism cannot solve this crisis, but can only make it worse. At the same time, over the past few years, literally millions of women, all over the world, have demonstrated their outrage at the murder and rape, the attacks on their right to abortion and birth control, and the all-around brutality and abuse they are continually subjected to, as a result of the male supremacist relations that are built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, and all systems that are ruled by exploiters and oppressors. And last summer, when millions of us, of all races and genders, rose up all over this country in righteous rebellion in response to the vicious murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police, this powerfully demonstrated the potential for revolution.We were supported and joined by millions more in countries all over the world. And, at the height of this, the whole country, the whole world was compelled to recognize and to talk about the long and continuing chain of these racist murders and big questions about the whole history and nature of this country. Yes, this powerful rising was, in the short run, misled into dead-ends by people working for meaningless petty reforms and seeking funds for themselves and positions within the structures of this system. But that does not change the fact that what was demonstrated was the possibility and potential for something much greater and far better—an actual revolution.

Three: Bob Avakian (BA) came forward as a revolutionary and developed into a communist leader through the mass revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s. He is an old white guy—yes, deal with it! Unlike so many who considered themselves revolutionaries at that time, BA has never given up, never departed from the road of revolution. He has continued to advance on this road and to confront the problems and difficulties in making revolution. He has drawn crucial lessons from the historical experience (positive and negative) of revolution throughout the world, and from many other aspects of human society and human endeavor. He has deeply studied how this system of capitalism-imperialism actually works, and what are the defining contradictions of this system that constitute the basis for overthrowing it. It is through all this that he has brought forward a whole new framework for the liberation of all oppressed people and the emancipation of all humanity: the new communism.

BA is providing ongoing leadership for this revolution, and he has a whole body of work that contains the scientific method to analyze the problem and the solution, the strategy for the revolution to bring down this system, and the vision and concrete plan for that radically different and much better society, on the road to emancipate all of humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation, and to enable humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth. He’s even written a Constitution (the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America) that concretely maps out what to do starting right after the seizure of power, so we can actually work on building up that whole new emancipating society. It is simply true: There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now, and we cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

Four: Many of the people who can be won to this revolution are not “into this” now and are not acting in accordance with the methods, principles, and goals of this revolution. And there is still way too much trying to get over on each other and attacking each other, which only brings more heartbreak and misery. This revolution is in the interests of all people who catch hell under this system and all those who hunger for or dream about a world where an end to exploitation, poverty, inequality, injustice and oppression is not a bitter joke but a liberating reality. Instead of fighting each other, we need to be uniting everyone with a heart for justice and protecting and defending each other from the criminal, brutal and murderous actions of “official” forces and fascist forces with the power to do us the greatest harm. We need to be working together to build up the ranks of the revolution and prepare to defeat the forces, of any kind, that would keep this system going and make its madness even worse.

And, in working to change the world in this way, people can change themselves—they can be united with in refusing to put up with injustice that no one should accept, and struggled with to see that revolution is the way to put an end to all this—that revolution is what we should live for and fight for. The basis for making this real is concentrated in the guideline: Fight the Power, and Transform the People—for Revolution.

To do this, people need to break with this system’s ways and take up radically different and emancipating methods, principles and goals, and a radically different and far better culture, morality and way of relating to each other. With the revolution it’s not “everyone out for themselves and against everybody else”—it’s all of us together who can’t stand to live like this and hunger for something much better, something truly emancipating.

At the same time as leadership and guidance for this revolution is being provided, in an ongoing way, through our website, revcom.us and through The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show, and while paying attention to the necessary health measures in light of the still continuing COVID pandemic, we are reaching out directly (in real life) to people around the country, to bring the liberating message of this revolution, to win growing numbers of people to this revolution and organize them into the ranks of this revolution.

All over the country, in every neighborhood, every school, every place and every institution where there are people sickened by the way things are, or questioning whether things have to be this way, revolutionary organization needs to be built, as part of the nationwide revolutionary movement. This revolution and its leadership need to increasingly become the authority that people look to and the leadership they follow, setting the standard and providing the direction for how people see things, and how they act.

Through all this, growing numbers of people can be working together to shape the political situation, winning masses of people to revolution and strengthening the organized revolutionary forces for the all-out fight for revolution when the conditions for revolution have been ripened.

To come back, once more, to basics: We need a revolution—a real revolution. And this revolution is possible. To everyone who hungers for an end to oppression and injustice, and everyone who has the heart to fight for something that is really worth fighting for: You need to get into this revolution, become part of the organized forces for this revolution, and work tirelessly for this revolution, so that we can have a real chance to win.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

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During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/avakian/new-years-statement-2021/bob-avakian-new-years-statement-2021-en.html

 

NEW YEAR'S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN

A New Year,
The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—
For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

 

1In my statement of August 1 of last year, I put forward the analysis that, in the particular circumstances of this presidential election and the truly profound stakes it posed, if the Trump/Pence regime remained in power at the time of this election, it would be necessary and important to vote for Biden to deliver a decisive electoral defeat to the fascism represented by this regime. At the same time, I emphasized that simply relying on voting would likely lead to disaster, and that it was vitally important for masses of people to take to the streets, in nonviolent but sustained, and growing, mass mobilization with the demand that this fascist regime must be OUT NOW!, as called for by RefuseFascism.org.

As it turned out, masses of people did vote in large numbers to oust this fascist regime—and, in doing so delivered a decisive enough electoral defeat to the Trump/Pence regime that its increasing, and then massively violent, attempt at a coup has been more difficult to pull off and has finally been defeated, with Trump forced to leave (while still refusing to acknowledge his loss in the election), even as Biden had to be inaugurated in a capital city that was a locked-down armed camp.

In immediate terms, the catastrophe has been narrowly averted that would have occurred if this fascist regime had been re-elected (or in some other way remained in power) and on that basis further consolidated its fascist rule and been more fully emboldened and unleashed to implement its horrific program. The fact that the Trump/Pence regime has had to leave office is of great importance and something in itself worth celebrating! Yet the reality is that, not only in relation to this election but throughout the four years of this regime’s rule and its mounting atrocities, there has not been the massive nonviolent mobilization called for by Refuse Fascism to drive out this regime—and, in the aftermath of the election, the streets were dominated by fascist mobilizations, and not by opposition to fascism. This has resulted in a situation where, despite the Trump/Pence regime’s loss in the election, the forces of fascism are still in many ways being strengthened, and the opposition to this has remained much too passive and reliant on the terms set by the Democratic Party.

The reality has to be confronted that, as expressed through the election, nearly half this country has passionately, aggressively and belligerently embraced what is represented by “Trumpism.” The unavoidable truth is that this country, the much-proclaimed “Shining City on a Hill,” is full of fascists!—in the government at all levels and in large parts of the society as a whole. And a defining characteristic of these fascists is their fanatical allegiance to demented distortions of reality, which is extremely difficult (and in many cases impossible) to penetrate with reason and fact, because these distortions serve to reinforce their sense of threatened entitlement and render long-standing prejudices and hatreds even more virulent. This fascism is deeply rooted, in the underlying dynamics of the capitalist-imperialist system that rules in this country and in the whole history of this country, from its founding in slavery and genocide. Related to this is another critical truth: Biden will fail miserably in his attempt to bring about “healing” and “unite the country.” As I have written previously:

Biden and the Democrats cannot “bring the country together,” as they falsely claim, because there can be no “reconciliation” with these fascists—whose “grievances” are based on fanatical resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), rabid American chauvinism, and the unrestrained plundering of the environment, and are increasingly expressed in literally lunatic terms. There can be no “reconciliation” with this, other than on the terms of these fascists, with all the terrible implications and consequences of that!

There is no question that many of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration will be different than the blatant atrocities of the Trump/Pence regime, and things will definitely “feel different” with Biden and Harris, but the way they will try to “unite the country”—in line with the interests and requirements of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is something that no decent person should want, or be part of. In seeking to re-establish and reinforce “stability” at home, and to maintain the U.S. as the world’s number one oppressive power, Biden, Harris, and the Democrats (as well as other “mainstream” institutions, such as the New York Times and CNN), will make determined attempts to keep the masses of people who have righteously hated the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime, and who aspire to a more just world, firmly tied to this system—restricting their political vision, and activity, within the confines of this system, preventing them from acting in their own fundamental interests and those of humanity as a whole. And to the degree that things are maintained within the limits of this system, this will actually have the effect of furthering the horrors for humanity that are built into this system, while also reinforcing and giving further impetus to the underlying economic—and the social and political—forces that will strengthen the fascism that has already shown great strength in this country (and a number of others).

2Even as it is critically important that the voting in this election has resulted in a decisive defeat for the Trump/Pence regime and its attempts to more fully consolidate fascist rule, this must not be allowed to obscure this crucial truth: The polarization, between Democrats and Republicans, as expressed through the electoral process in this country, involves contention over how to uphold and pursue the interests of the capitalist-imperialist system and rule by the capitalist class. It does not represent the fundamental divisions in society and the world, nor the fundamental interests of the masses of people, in this country and in the world as a whole. Nor can the profound problems confronting humanity be solved—in fact, they can only get worse—within the confines of this murderously oppressive and exploitative system and the chaos and destruction it will continue to unleash on a massive scale, so long as it continues to dominate the world.

This is fact-based, scientifically-established truth. Ignoring, denying, or trying to pursue individual escape from this reality will only make things worse and hasten disaster.

The electoral defeat of the Trump/Pence regime only “buys some time”—both in relation to the imminent danger posed by the fascism this regime represents, and more fundamentally in terms of the potentially existential crisis humanity is increasingly facing as a consequence of being bound to the dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism. But, in essential terms, time is not on the side of the struggle for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be squandered—mired in oblivious individualism and political paralysis or misspent on misdirected activity that only reinforces this system which perpetuates endless horrors for the masses of humanity and has brought things to the brink of very real catastrophe.

A profoundly different polarization must be brought about, in line with the potential for a radically different and better world, representing the actual interests of the masses of people and ultimately all of humanity. A radically different approach to understanding, and acting on, the relations and problems of society must be taken up—a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach.

3Among many who have been outraged by the way Trump has consistently engaged in both pathological and purposeful lying, there has been a great deal of emphasis on the importance of science and truth, on facts and evidence-based reasoning. This has focused to a significant degree on the criminally anti-scientific approach that Trump and Pence have taken to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the encouragement of this anti-scientific madness among the fascist “base” in society at large—all of which has led to at least tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of unnecessary deaths as well as unnecessary hardship and suffering for masses of people. This emphasis on science and the scientific method is vitally important, but it is also necessary to emphasize the real need and great importance of being consistent with this, and following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads, in order to correctly understand reality, in every sphere of life and society.

This means fully breaking with and moving beyond an approach of merely embracing truths—or supposed truths—with which one is comfortable, while rejecting, dismissing, or evading actual truth which may make one uncomfortable. One important dimension of this is rising above and repudiating methodologically the philosophical relativism of “identity politics,” which does a great deal of harm through its own version of reducing “truth” to partial, unsystematized experience and subjective sentiment (“my truth”...“our truth”...) in opposition to real, objective truth, which is correctly, scientifically arrived at through an evidence-based process, to determine whether, or not, something (an idea, theory, assertion, etc.) corresponds to actual material reality. While politically this “identity politics” may be proceeding from a desire to oppose various forms of oppression—even if this is often characterized, and vitiated, by people of different “identities” seeking to claim “ownership” of opposition to oppression—in terms of epistemology (the approach to understanding reality and arriving at the truth of things) “identity politics” has a lot in common with the reliance on “alternative facts” (assertions that are in opposition to actual facts, often wildly so) that is the hallmark of the fascists. Even as it is important to recognize the political distinctions involved, the situation is far too serious, and the stakes far too high, to allow ourselves to fall into, or conciliate with, any form of opposing the scientific method and its pursuit of objective truth about actual reality.

To understand why we are confronted with the situation we are, it is necessary not merely to respond to—and in effect be whipped around by—what is happening on the surface at any given time, but to dig beneath the surface, to discover the underlying mainsprings and causes of things, and arrive at an understanding of the fundamental problem and the actual solution. This means coming to the scientific understanding that we are living under a system, and what that system actually is (the system of capitalism-imperialism); working to grasp the deeper relations and dynamics of this system and how this is setting the framework for how different sections of society spontaneously think and react to events in society and the world, and what is the possible way forward to transforming all of this in the interests of the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole. A crucial part of this is a scientific understanding of major changes, resulting from the very dynamics and functioning of this system, that have led to upheaval in society and have in significant ways fed this fascism: changes in the capitalist-imperialist economy and correspondingly in the social structure and “social composition” within this country, as well as internationally, which have undermined “traditional” forms of oppression without, however, leading to the ending of this oppression but establishing and enforcing it in new forms, while provoking what is truly a deranged, sadistic and often violent reaction on the part of the sectors of society who have identified their interests, and in effect their very being, with the traditional forms of oppression.

As an introduction, and overarching point, in regard to some of these important changes, it is important to emphasize that these changes, and especially those that have occurred in the last few decades, are bound up with the heightened parasitism of capitalism-imperialism in the contemporary world. As I explained in Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, parasitism refers to

the fact that an increasingly globalized capitalism relies to a very great degree for production and for maintaining the rate of profit on a vast network of sweatshops, particularly in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, while capitalist activity in the capitalist‑imperialist “home countries” is increasingly in the realm of finance and financial speculation, and the “high end” of (not the production of the basic physical materials for) high tech, as well as the service sector and the commercial sphere (including the growing role of online marketing).

Since the end of World War 2 (75 years ago), the situation of Black people has dramatically changed. These changes were initially based in increased mechanization and other transformations in agricultural production, and the economy overall; they were driven by a powerful upsurge of struggle of Black people, wrenching concessions out of the ruling class in this country that was anxious to maintain its image as “the champion of democracy” and “leader of the free world,” especially in its confrontation with the Soviet Union for a number of decades after World War 2. As a result of these and other factors, Black people’s oppression is no longer centered around brutal exploitation in the rural south, in conditions of near slavery (and in some cases actual slavery) backed up by Ku Klux Klan terror, but instead involves a situation where masses of Black people are segregated and concentrated in urban areas throughout the country and subjected to systematic discrimination and continual brutality and murder by the police. Over the past several decades, due to heightened globalization and automation of production, interacting with continuing discrimination, there has been the elimination of a great deal of factory employment which provided Black men (and some women) with better-paying jobs in the urban areas. At the same time, as a result of the civil rights and Black liberation struggles of the 1960s/early ’70s, and other factors, there has been the growth of the Black middle class. But there has also been an increase of the so-called “underclass,” concentrated and contained in urban ghettos and more or less permanently locked out of regular employment in the “formal” economy.

Unable to provide a positive resolution to acute contradictions bound up with these changes—unable to end systemic racism which involves degrading discrimination against even economically better-off sections of Black people—unable to integrate large numbers of Black people into the “formal” economy—the ruling forces in society have responded to this situation with mass incarceration of millions of Black males (and growing numbers of females) with arrests, trials, convictions and sentences embodying yet more discrimination and injustice, and by unleashing and backing systematic police terror, which is especially directed against Black people in the inner cities but can target any Black person, anywhere, at any time. The attempt to brutally enforce “law and order,” given that a more just solution is impossible under this system, heightens the volatility of this whole situation, leading to further upheaval—including completely justified and righteous protest and rebellion—which, in turn, is seized on by fascist forces in promoting their grotesque white supremacist portrayal of the masses of Black people as “criminals” and “uncaged animals.”

The fact that, with all these changes, and regardless of who is occupying the seats of power, systematic discrimination and murderous oppression has persisted, has led some Black people to conclude that the Democratic Party is the problem, since it has consistently sought the support of Black people but has repeatedly acted against their interests. Even as the Republican Party has become the vehicle of overt and aggressive white supremacy, it is true that the Democrats, and not just the Republicans, have presided over the oppression of Black people. But what is the actual reason for that, and what is the real answer to it? The reality is that white supremacy is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, and neither of these ruling class parties could put an end to this, even if they wanted to. The answer is not rallying to the fascist Republican Party, or trying to play these bourgeois parties against each other, or embracing “Black capitalism” and begging for a better “seat at the table”—all of which will only reinforce the existing system of oppression and perhaps benefit a few at the expense of the many. The answer is revolution, and establishing a radically different society that has the basis as well as the orientation to uproot and abolish white supremacy, and all oppressive relations.

There have been profound changes in the situation and social position of large numbers of women, both within this country and internationally. To cite one important dimension of this, much of the sweatshop labor in the Third World involves women, forced to work under horrific conditions. In this country, changes in the functioning and structure of the economy (as part of the increasingly globalized world economy) have led to extensive employment, and exploitation, of Black women (and other women of color), in the service and retail sectors in particular. At the same time, not only is there more opportunity for large numbers of women (especially white women, but some women of color as well) to find positions in the professions and in business, but this has also become a necessity in order for their families to maintain a “middle class way of life.” This situation where greater numbers of women are employed outside the home, including a significant increase in the number of women in better-paid middle class positions, has seriously strained and significantly undermined the “traditional” patriarchal (male-dominated) family and patriarchal relations in society overall.

All this has provided more favorable conditions for, and has been significantly influenced by, the struggle against the oppression of women, which was powerfully expressed as part of the overall radical upsurge of the 1960s and has continued in various forms since then. As I spoke to in Away With All Gods!:

Through the upsurge of the ’60s, many things were called into question—not just in the realm of ideas, although that was extremely important, but in practice, in the realm of political struggle—things that are foundational to this society. And many changes were brought about, partly as a result of mass political struggle and partly because of the changing features and needs of the economy. Once again, one of the most important dimensions of this was in relation to the role of women, particularly among professionals and other sections of the middle class, where it became both possible and necessary for women to work full time, in the effort to maintain a middle class standard of living. When you combine that with political and ideological expressions of feminism, and other movements that came forward out of the ’60s, this did pose a very direct challenge to traditionally institutionalized forms of oppression in this society.

Yet the elimination of male supremacy is impossible within the confines of this system. This is true because male supremacy has been deeply woven into the fabric of this society, and because this system is based on capitalist commodity relations and exploitation—things are produced to be exchanged (sold), through a process in which masses of people work, for a wage or salary, to create profit that is accumulated by capitalists who employ them and control their work—a system in which the patriarchal family unit remains an essential economic and social component and requirement, even as it is being put under increasing strains. And the fascist section of the ruling class has, over a number of decades now, waged a relentless attack on Constitutional rights, and mobilized their social base of religious fundamentalist fanatics, to forcefully and often violently assert “traditional” patriarchal oppression—with the assault on the right to abortion, and even birth control, a major focus of this attempt to essentially enslave women. What I wrote, 35 years ago, is today more true than ever:

Over the past several decades in the U.S. there have been profound changes in the situation of women and the relations within the family. In only one of ten families is there the “model” situation where the husband is the “sole breadwinner” and the wife a totally dependent “homemaker.” With these economic changes have come significant changes in attitudes and expectations—and very significant strains not only on the fabric of the family but of social relations more broadly.... The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

What has gone along with all this has been an increased possibility and “space” for the assertion of gender “identity” and relations that run counter to the traditional oppressive gender relations—and, once again, there has been the often violent attempt to reassert and reinforce the traditional relations and to suppress anything that does not conform to this.

Religion, and especially religious fundamentalism, is a powerful factor promoting and reinforcing the patriarchal subordination of women, as well as other “traditional” forms of oppression. Here is an important insight by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who grew up in a town in Iowa that was filled with white Christian fundamentalists (which she refers to as “white evangelicals”) who are the backbone of present-day American fascism. In her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, she writes:

White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole. A father’s rule in the home is inextricably linked to heroic leadership on the national stage, and the fate of the nation hinges on both. [emphasis added here]

Given the tight connection between militant patriarchy and fascism, it is not surprising that some (though clearly a minority of) Black and Latino men have been drawn to support for Trump, despite his overt white supremacy. (This includes some who are or have been prominent in rap music. While there have been positive forces and elements in rap and Hip Hop overall, what has been increasingly promoted is a culture that is full of, not to say dominated by, misogynistic degradation of women, as well as admiration for the kind of hustler gangsterism that is one of Trump’s defining “qualities.”) It is also not surprising that even significant numbers of women (mainly white women but also some Latina and other women of color) have been drawn to this fascism, as the phenomenon of the oppressed clinging to “tradition’s chains” that oppress them is unfortunately all too common. (Think of the mothers in the fatherland, written about by Claudia Koonz in her book with that title—women who actively worked for the aggressively male supremacist Hitler and the NAZIs in Germany during the rise of fascism there in the 1930s. Or listen to the words today of Black female fascist Candace Owens, who has praised Hitler for his efforts to “make Germany great”: “There is no society that can survive without strong men.... In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Of course, for fascists like Owens “strong” and “manly” men are those who embody and enforce traditional gender relations, exercising domination over women who submit to this domination—and men who do not conform to traditional gender roles and relations, men who support equality between men and women are somehow “weak,” “effeminate,” “emasculated.”) And for white women who are part of this fascist phenomenon, in which virulent male supremacy is a defining and cohering element, there is also the fact that these women can join in with the white supremacy which, particularly in a country like the U.S., is also a defining and decisive element of this fascism and is closely intertwined with the virulent male supremacy—as reflected in Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s formulation: aggressive, militant white masculinity.

As a result of the intensifying climate crisis, war and repression—and, as a driving force in all this, major changes in the capitalist-imperialist dominated world economy, including the further growth and increased impact internationally of corporate agribusiness and labor-displacing technology, increasingly monopolized control of seeds and chemicals, greater monopolization of marketing, and vast land-grabbing investments—there is massive dislocation and upheaval, particularly affecting people in the global South (the countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia—the Third World). An important feature of all this is mass urbanization: more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, with huge shantytown slums, involving more than a billion people, in the urban areas of the Third World, even as tens of millions of people from the Third World have been forced to migrate to the U.S. and countries in Europe. And the situation has developed where, in some of these countries—with the U.S. a prime example—the economy could not function without the exploitation of large numbers of immigrants, while many are subjected to the constant threat of deportation, which also makes them even more vulnerable to extreme exploitation.

The ruin of much of traditional small-scale farming in Third World countries and the dramatic increase of an urban population there (as well as in the U.S. and some other imperialist countries) which in large numbers is unable to find work within the “formal economy”—this has also fostered the growth of an illegal economy and of gangs (and, particularly in Third World countries, cartels) based on this illegal economy, in particular the drug trade, but also the trafficking of human beings, especially women and girls viciously victimized in prostitution, the “sex industry,” and literal sexual slavery.

This dramatically changed and often highly volatile situation has also been a major factor in the rise of religious fundamentalism, in the Third World and notably in the U.S., where Christian fundamentalism is a powerful negative social and political force. Interconnected and interacting with these economic and related social changes in a way that has contributed to the increased influence of religious fundamentalism, particularly in the Third World, has been the defeat, or abandonment, of movements in the Third World led by communists or revolutionary nationalists against old-line colonialists and neo-colonial oppressors, above all the U.S., in the period after World War 2—with the greatest setback being the reversal of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in China in the 1970s, which transformed China from a powerful socialist country and a beacon and bastion of support for revolutionary struggle throughout the world, into a rising imperialist power and itself an exploiter of masses of people in Africa and other parts of the Third World.

The rise of religious fundamentalism has occurred together with, and in opposition to, the increase of secularism (people who are not religious, or at least not part of traditional religions), especially among the more educated urban populations. This secularism is not in itself conceived or intended as an attack on people who continue to hold religious beliefs, but it does objectively undermine religion—and it is taken as an attack “on everything holy” by religious fundamentalists who refuse to even attempt to reconcile religious belief with the results of scientific inquiry, as strongly reflected in their irrational attack on the solidly established scientific fact of evolution.

What is essentially involved in this division is the acceptance, or the denial and rejection, of evidence-based rational thought, including the importance of critical thinking, that has, in a broad sense, been the extension of the Enlightenment, which arose in Europe (in particular France) several centuries ago. In that time, and since, the advance of science and important discoveries this has brought forward have given impetus to the questioning of religion in a way that was not really possible before, since many of these scientific discoveries clearly contradict long-entrenched religious scripture and dogma, and the scientific method rejects the recognition of things as “real” if concrete evidence for their existence cannot be shown, in the real material world. And, as emphasized by Ardea Skybreak, author of the very important book The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters, science provides plenty of evidence that human beings have invented every religion that exists anywhere in the world. (In a book consisting of an interview with Skybreak, Science and Revolution, she also emphasizes that, although at times “bad science” has been used for very negative purposes, including to promote racism, the actual scientific method itself provides the means for refuting this: “you can use rigorous scientific methods to prove that was all bad science.”)

It is true that science itself cannot put an end to religious belief, as shown by the fact that there are large numbers of religious people who consider themselves advocates of enlightenment and accept the discoveries and conclusions of science (up to a point at least) but insist that there is a realm of existence—involving a supernatural being, or beings—which is beyond the scope of science. And it is a fact that in general the representatives of the ruling class in this country, whether they are “liberal” or “conservative”—and whether they themselves personally believe in god or not—definitely regard religion as a crucial part of maintaining the “social cohesion” of the country on a capitalist basis, and work to promote religion, in particular Christianity, in one form or another. (They are all essentially practitioners of the statement attributed to Napoleon: society is impossible without inequality; inequality is impossible to maintain without a morality to justify it; and such a morality is impossible without religion.) Nevertheless (to paraphrase an important statement by the physicist Steven Weinberg), although science itself does not eliminate religious belief, it does provide a basis for people not to believe in god and to reject religion. This is in conflict with those who believe religion is necessary for an orderly and “moral” society, and all the more so with those who insist on a religious fundamentalism that is wildly out of keeping with reality and with a rational approach to reality.

Yet, while it is true that, in order to win their full emancipation, the masses of people in the world will ultimately need to cast off religious belief in general, it is important to emphasize that, in the world today, the polarization does not simply come down to those who have rejected religion in the name of enlightenment vs. those who cling to religious belief. An important polarization now is that between what can rightly be called decent people (including large numbers of religious people) who are opposed to injustice, and on the other hand those who are determined to revive and enforce traditional forms of oppression. In regard to all this, one of the important questions is whether people come to embrace, or reject, two distinguishing qualities: largeness of mind and generosity of spirit.

4All this provides an important foundation and “backdrop” for understanding what happened in the recent election, why, and what are the implications of this, now and in terms of the future. The following, from a November 9, 2020 article by Leonard Pitts Jr (“The election of 2020 has ended at last, but the celebration has caveats”) contains some important insights. The result of this election, he writes, “strips bare all the glossy claims about who we are as a country, underscoring the fact that in a meaningful sense, we are not one country at all anymore, but two sharing the same borders.” He continues:

The last time that happened [with the Civil War], it took four years and 750,000 lives to force us back into some semblance of oneness. Even then, the seams of the fracture were always visible.

Unlike that break, this one is not starkly geographic: South versus North. No, this one is city versus country, college educated versus high school educated and, most significantly, future versus past. Meaning that yesterday, this was a nation where white people were the majority, and tomorrow it will be one where they are not.

Although Pitts is correct that the division today is more rural vs. urban than strictly South vs. North, it is the case that the old (and new) Confederacy—and in particular rural white southerners—remain the anchor for an ill-founded and ill-intended attempt to restore the past (in the name of “Making America Great Again”). As I pointed out in the 2017 talk The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!:

There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw “America First” jingoism and trumpeting of “the superiority of western civilization” and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.

At the same time, the divide, and the clash, between the past and the future goes deeper than demographic changes and the prospect of a majority non-white U.S. population. The forces fighting for the past are aiming to reverse, with a vengeance, even the modest concessions that have been made to the fight against social injustice and institutionalized inequality and oppression, and to enforce a form of capitalist dictatorship that is overt and unrestrained by the Constitution and the rule of law (or which turns the Constitution and the rule of law into merely instruments of fascist tyranny and atrocity).

As I put it in my August 1 Statement, fascism is “open and aggressive dictatorship, trampling on and perverting the rule of law, relying on violence and terror, on behalf of the predatory capitalist system and as an extreme attempt to deal with profound social division and acute crises (both within the country and in the global arena).” While this might hold things together, in an extremely negative way, for a certain period, in the final analysis this cannot succeed—cannot indefinitely preserve this system of capitalism-imperialism, and cannot lead to any future but one of horrors for humanity, if indeed we have a future at all. And the supposed “alternative,” as represented for example by the Democratic Party in the U.S., involving a “more democratic” means of exercising the rule of this system, will also continue to embody and enforce terrible and completely unnecessary suffering for the masses of humanity and pose an existential threat to humanity as a whole, even if not always through the same brute and unmitigated juggernaut of horrors as the fascist form of capitalist dictatorship.

What was expressed through this recent election—what, in fact, is expressed through all elections under this system—is not “democracy” and “the will of the people” in some abstract sense but specifically a choice that is made between different representatives of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which is the only “realistic” choice that is, or can be, offered under this system. In this particular, extraordinary situation, that choice—between fascist and bourgeois democratic capitalist rule—actually made a real difference, to the point where it was right to support one side, the Democrats, in order to deliver a defeat to the attempt to more fully consolidate fascism. But that does not change the fact that this was a vote on the terms of the very system that has produced this fascism and will continue to provide fertile soil for this fascism at the same time as it continues to generate horror after horror for humanity—horrors that are hidden only from those who do not, or will not, look. The “liberal” (or “mainstream”) version of this system’s rule involves the enforcement of the exploitation and oppression of masses of people in this country and throughout the world (including the more than 150 million children in the Third World who are cruelly super-exploited in sweatshops and mines). Enforcing all this, and defeating attempts by rivals to gain a larger share of this plunder and to replace the USA as the world’s dominant power—that is what “liberal” (and other) representatives of this system mean when they speak of the “national interests” of this country. And this is the foundation for the “progressive” approach of allowing for some more “diversity” and “inclusiveness” for previously excluded sections of this society, and the promotion of certain aspects of science, on the basis of and especially for the purposes of this international plunder, of people as well as the environment.

5To emphasize this crucial point once again: It is necessary to confront the fundamental reality that there is no future worth living for the masses of people and ultimately for humanity as a whole under this system—which has given rise to a powerful fascism; which is the source of horrendous, and unnecessary suffering, not only for masses of people in this country but for billions of people throughout the world; and which poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity, through its massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons as well as its accelerating destruction of the environment. It is true—an important truth—that the Trump/Pence regime (and others like it, for example the rule of Bolsonaro in Brazil) has made the environmental crisis far worse—has, so to speak, accelerated the acceleration of environmental destruction. But the dynamics and requirements of this system are driving the climate crisis toward the point of no return, regardless of which particular person or regime is acting as its dominant political representative. Capitalism is often extolled for being a “dynamic” system, constantly bringing about changes. But this is a “dynamism” based on exploitation for privately-accumulated profit, and driven by anarchy (and anarchic competition between capitalists), and that very anarchy is rapidly propelling things toward an existential threshold—past which humanity could well be irreversibly hurtled—if this system of capitalism, in its imperialist globalized expression, continues to dominate the world.

Given how much the fascist social base in this country has been conditioned to falsely and ridiculously identify the Democrats (even “centrist” Democrats like Biden) as “radical socialists” (or even “communists”) and to viscerally hate them on that basis—largely because of the Democrats’ limited concessions to the struggle against racial and gender oppression, to the need to address the climate crisis, and to a reckoning with the real history of this country—it is highly ironic that it is only a powerful movement aiming for actual socialism, as a radically new and emancipating society and the transition to the fundamental goal of communism on a global scale, that could create the basis for significant numbers of those, and in particular youth, who have been caught up in this fascism to break with that and become part of the struggle aiming for a positive resolution of the contradictions that this system of capitalism-imperialism continually intensifies. (As any rational person can readily determine, the relatively small number of “democratic socialists” who are part of the Democratic Party are in no way “radical socialists”—or really socialists at all—but are social-democrats who are aiming not for the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist system, but for reforms within the capitalist system which would not change, or significantly affect, its basic nature and functioning.)

The fact is that there is no bringing back (or newly bringing into being) an idealized way of life that supposedly existed in the late 19th century and the first part of the 20th century in this country, no return to an imagined idyllic America, characterized by “traditional values” which somehow fairly rewarded “virtues” such as hard work, and where people occupied the place in society they deserved (or were intended by god to occupy)—something which has really existed only in the minds of those who seek an illusory “restoration” of this, and who have been conditioned to irrationally hate everyone and everything that has supposedly destroyed it. And there is no bringing back the situation that existed for several decades after World War 2 where large numbers of people (especially, though not only, white men) without a college education could have jobs in major industries like auto and steel at a wage that made possible a “middle class standard of living.” That there is no basis for this is true not because of conspiracies by “satanic liberals who drink the blood of trafficked children” but, once again, because of the workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which have led this world to be shaped as it is, and to be heading for the environmental disaster it is rapidly bringing into being, if it does not first extinguish humanity through nuclear war unleashed by the powerful possessors of massive nuclear arsenals.

And no one should want to go back to the actual past: to a world marked by massive poverty and disease, even beyond the terrible toll this takes today, especially in the Third World; with the horrendous destruction and suffering brought about through two world wars in the 20th century, in which tens of millions of people were slaughtered, and atomic bomb attacks were unleashed by the U.S. on two Japanese cities at the end of the second world war, immediately incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese people and ushering in the “nuclear age”; with the USA marked by open, institutionalized segregation, discrimination and “second class” status for people of color and women, and a brutally suppressed existence for LGBT people, and Black people in particular subjected to continual terror, marked by repeated lynchings and other depraved acts accompanying them. The future lies not with the (real or imagined) past but in going forward, to an actual socialist society, and ultimately a communist world, where the fundamental orientation and practical policy are geared to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, while giving increasing scope to individual initiative, on the basis of and within the framework of the collective and cooperative foundation and ethos of society, where age-old economic and social relations of exploitation, inequality and oppression are surpassed, and no longer does the well-being of some rest on the misery of others.

It should be clear that the present polarization and the profound problems that must be faced cannot be solved by trying to “adjust” things within the confines of this system. The example of the “Occupy” movement of the last decade is another illustration of this. This attempt to in effect repolarize the 99 percent against the 1 percent of super-rich failed, in significant part because social relations (such as the oppressive relations between different “races” and genders), and not just economic relations, are powerful material forces, and a good part of that “99 percent” is determined to maintain those unequal and oppressive social relations from which they benefit (or strongly believe they benefit), especially in this capitalist society which sets people against each other in often ruthless competition.

It is only on the foundation of a radically different economic system—a socialist economic system (mode of production), where society’s productive resources are collectivized, marshaled and utilized, in a planned way, to meet the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, on a continually expanding basis—that there can be a favorable basis for uprooting and transforming social relations that embody oppression, and the ways of thinking that go along with and reinforce that oppression, moving beyond the situation where (as Lenin so aptly put it) people are not merely encouraged but are compelled to calculate, with the stinginess of a miser, what their position is in relation to others.

6All this strongly points, once again, to the need not simply to “face reality” but to consistently apply the principle that science matters and truth matters, and therefore to seriously engage the scientific analysis (which I have outlined here) of the problem facing humanity, and the solution: where the world is heading now, under the domination of this system, and the radically different direction it needs to, and can, take. It calls for a willingness to apply this same approach—that science and scientifically-determined truth matter—to communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, and in particular to the new communism which has resulted from decades of work I have carried out. This new communism is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. Unlike those who slander and condemn, or simply ignore, communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, I myself have done, and have led others in doing, extensive, serious scientific, study—investigation and analysis—of the history of the communist movement and the socialist societies it has brought into being (as well as countries that have called themselves “socialist” but in fact are not, such as Cuba since 1959, Venezuela in recent decades, and the Soviet Union and countries of Eastern Europe, where capitalism was restored and has reigned for more than 60 years, well before they became openly capitalist countries a few decades ago). This scientific approach has led to the conclusion that with the actual socialist societies that have been brought into being, with the leadership of communists, first in the Soviet Union and then in China (before capitalism was restored in the former in the 1950s and in the latter after the death of Mao in 1976), this experience of socialism has been mainly—and in the case of China overwhelmingly—positive, while secondarily there have also been significant, in some cases serious or even grievous, errors.

Drawing from this historical experience of the communist movement and a broad range of human endeavor, the new communism, as its defining method and approach, emphasizes the critical importance of science and applying the scientific method to everything—to society as well as nature. It firmly rejects any approaches that amount to applying and justifying the bankrupt and extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means,” and that “truth” is just an “instrument” of desired objectives, rather than what it actually is: a correct reflection of objective reality.

It is this same method and approach that has been applied to continually deepen the understanding of the nature and functioning of the system of capitalism-imperialism that continues at this point to dominate the world, with terrible consequences and implications for humanity and its future. And this work is continuing as an important part of developing the revolutionary movement that is needed in order to finally abolish this system and bring a radically different and much better world into being. While much remains to be done and many challenges remain to be met, a scientific analysis and synthesis of fundamental questions relating to the situation facing humanity and the possibility of human emancipation can be found—in both more concentrated and popular forms and in works of considerable depth—in talks and writings of mine and other materials that are available at revcom.us. And a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and emancipating society, on the road to the final goal of a communist world, is set forth in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored.

It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will “enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.” All this will unchain and unleash a tremendous productive and social force of human beings enabled and inspired to work and struggle together to meet the fundamental needs of the people—transforming society in a fundamental way and supporting and aiding revolutionary struggle throughout the world—aiming for the final goal of a communist world, free from all exploitation and oppression, while at the same time addressing the truly existential environmental and ecological crisis, in a meaningful and comprehensive way, which is impossible under the system of capitalism-imperialism.

Far too many have rejected this—or, more often, failed or refused to even seriously engage it—because of ignorance and prejudice which have their ultimate source in the distortion relentlessly propagated by guardians of the present order, and which serve to reinforce this highly oppressive order. Here, it has to be said (and can be readily demonstrated) that the “liberal” bourgeois attack on communism is, in its own way, as ludicrous and outrageous—crudely in violation of the scientific method and blatantly in opposition to the actual facts—as the fascist mangling of truth which the “liberals” are forever decrying. This does great harm to humanity: Refusing to apply, and acting in opposition to, an honest, scientific approach to communism, the actual history of the communist movement, and the development of the new communism contributes to closing off the only real alternative to this truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism—the only viable alternative that represents the fundamental interests and a future worth living for the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole.

The road to a better world is not, and will not be, an easy one—this cannot be accomplished without determined struggle and, yes, great sacrifice. But continuing on the current course, under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism, means a continuation of the horrors already being perpetrated in the world today, the far worse horrors that are immediately threatening, and the very real existential danger that is increasingly looming.

In the face of the fascist juggernaut that is still threatening and gaining strength, large numbers of us who are deeply sickened and outraged by this, and who aspire to something much better, have raised and rallied to the call that science and truth matter and must be our guide. Let us now be brave enough, and bold enough, to apply this in an unhindered way, determined to seek the truth and follow the truth wherever it leads, overcoming all obstacles to this, including any cherished illusions and ingrained prejudices that run counter to reality and scientifically-established truth. Let us dare to act to make a reality of what science reveals as possible: a radically different and far better world and future for humanity.

 

Download PDF of this statement (English):    Booklet    |    8.5x11 sheets


In Spanish:

Download PDF in Farsi:

(This translation reposted from the website cpimlm.org)

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/696/why-you-should-come-to-revolutionary-may-1-gatherings-in-cities-across-the-country-en.html

Why you should come to revolutionary May 1 gatherings in cities across the country:

| revcom.us

 

  1. Be part of a revolutionary gathering that declares to the whole world:
    WE DECLARE: WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS—WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT SLAVERY IN ANY FORM!
  2. Meet the Revcoms—an ORGANIZED revolutionary group, formed with a revolutionary morality, disciplined and militant... and welcoming YOU! They will show you how to:
    GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!
  3. Learn more about the leader of the Revolution, Bob Avakian (BA). There has never been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now.
    WE ARE FOLLOWERS OF BA. AND YOU NEED TO BECOME FOLLOWERS OF BA TOO.

You will meet people just like yourself and people very different—but all united to make revolution here as part of making revolution all over the world and freeing humanity.


How you can organize now together with the Revolution Club to make May 1 the day this organized material force for revolution makes a real advance that can impact and recruit more people:

  1. Make a video pledge to be there yourself. Record a short video saying why you are going and calling on others, send it to us... and send it all over. (We can help you with this. DM @therevcoms or write to GetOrganizedForRevolutionTour @ gmail.com)
  2. Spread the word about May 1—impact the neighborhoods, schools, cultural scenes, etc, by posting on social media, putting up posters, leaflets and stickers everywhere so people notice and get the feeling this is growing. And give out the Declaration and Call from the revcoms to “Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution.Donate to print materials to organize for May 1.
  3. Invite (and if need be, struggle with) your friends who care (forget the ones who don't for now) that real revolution is possible and they should come. (Use the three reasons above.)
  4. Meet up with the Revolution Club to practice marching in formation. Contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  5. Run with the Revolution Club—at least once or as much as you can between now and May 1 to impact with this revolution and learn how to take this to the people. Be with us to urgently get organized now for this real revolution. Again, contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  6. Donate: Venmo: @RevolutionTour; CashApp: $revtour; PayPal orCredit Card: revcom.us—go to Donate Now to the National Revolution Tour

Fr. Luis Barrios, NYC, invites you to International Revolutionary May Day 2021

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/694/when-and-where-to-celebrate-international-revolutionary-may-day-2021-en.html

When and Where to Celebrate
International Revolutionary May Day 2021

| revcom.us

 

Local information (we will post as it becomes available)

Los Angeles:

Saturday, May 1
2:00 pm
Magic Johnson Park, Avalon Blvd. Entrance
(North of El Segundo Blvd.)
*Wear a mask and practice social distancing*

New York

Saturday, May 1
2:00pm - 5:00 pm
St. Nicholas Park
133rd and St. Nicholas Ave, Harlem

Chicago:

Saturday, May 1
3:00 pm
Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E 71st Street

Boston

Saturday, May 1
4:00 pm
Parade Ground, Boston Commons (Corner of Beacon and Charles Street)

Cleveland

Saturday, May 1
2 - 6 pm
Edgewater Park
lower level—look for the tent and banner
wear a mask and practice social distancing

Houston 

Saturday, May 1
2:00 p.m.
Our Park, 2604 Alabama (at corner of Alabama and Live Oak, next to SHAPE Community Center)
*Please wear mask and practice social distancing*

Seattle

Saturday, May 1
4:00 p.m.
Seattle Center, corner of 4th Avenue North and Broad Street near the Space Needle

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

Read this Declaration and Call, find out more:
Basic version | Extended version

Available in Brochure format (PDF):
Basic version | Extended version

 

 



(Click to enlarge)

1. Download this template for the poster and leaflet.
2. Add your local information.
3. Get it out everywhere:

Poster 11x17:   PDF   |   JPG
Leaflet 8.5x11":   PDF   |   JPG

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/633/bob-avakian-a-radically-different-leader-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT LEADER—A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

| revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian is completely different than the endless stream of bourgeois politicians who are put forward as “leaders,” whose goal is to maintain one variation or another of this system of capitalism-imperialism that is founded on and perpetuates itself through cruel and literally life-stealing exploitation, murderous oppression, and massive destruction, in all parts of the world. BA is a revolutionary who bases himself on the scientific understanding that this system must finally be overthrown through an organized struggle involving millions of people, and replaced with a system that is oriented to and capable of meeting the most fundamental needs of humanity and enabling humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth.

Bob Avakian is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new synthesis of communism, which is popularly referred to as the "new communism."

BA is the author of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, an inspiring application of the new communism—a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a new socialist society, whose fundamental goal is to bring about a world without classes and class distinctions, a world without exploitation and oppression, and without the destructive divisions and antagonisms among people: a communist world.

Ardea Skybreak, a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and a follower of Bob Avakian, speaks to the importance of what he has brought forward:

Bob Avakian ... on the basis of decades of hard work [has been] developing a whole body of work—theory to advance the science of communism, to advance the science of revolution, to more deeply explain where the problems come from, what the strategy is for getting out of this mess, what the methods and approaches should be to stay on track and actually build a better world, to build a society that most human beings would want to live in. (From Science and Revolution, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak)

BA is a leader who is firmly convinced, on the basis of a consistently scientific method and approach, that the goal must be nothing less than all-out revolution, and who at the same time has emphasized:

the new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that “the ends justifies the means.” It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the “means” of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental “ends” of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis. (From Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary)

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.

A leader like this has never before existed in the history of this country, and this leadership is of tremendous importance for the emancipation of all humanity.

What is urgently needed now is for continually growing numbers of people—in the thousands, and ultimately millions—to become conscious and active followers of BA, building the revolutionary movement, based on the new communism, for which BA provides this unprecedented leadership.

Download poster and leaflet:

11x17 poster

8.5x11 two-sided leaflet

CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America

Click to read and download (PDF)

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/665/bob-avakian-for-the-liberation-of-black-people-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE
AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY

| revcom.us

 

One of the things that comes through most powerfully in Bob Avakian’s memoir1 is that a profound hatred for the oppression of Black people has been a defining part of Bob Avakian’s life from the time, as a teenager, he learned about the lives of the Black people with whom he developed deep ties of friendship. Never feeling that, because he is white, “it is not his place” to be involved in the struggle against this oppression—but, on the contrary, determined to contribute whatever he could to this struggle—Bob Avakian (BA), from the time he worked closely with the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary days in the 1960s, has made the liberation of Black people a defining part of his life’s commitment and work. As he developed as a revolutionary communist, and emerged as the foremost revolutionary leader and thinker in the world, this commitment has become even deeper and has been strongly interwoven with a dedication to the emancipation of all humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation.

As BA has written about his life’s work:

Why was I doing the work I was doing? Once again, we’re back to for whom and for what. I wasn’t doing this work for myself. When I was young, in middle school and then even more so in high school, my life got changed in a very major way by coming into contact with people that I hadn’t really known that much before, in particular Black people. I started learning about their situation and how that relates to what goes on in this society as a whole. I was drawn to the culture—not just the music and the art overall, but the whole way of going through the world—of the Black people who became my friends, and the world they introduced me to. And I came to the point of recognizing: these are my people. Now, I knew they had a different life experience than I did. But these are my people—I don’t see a separation—it’s not like there are some other people “over there” who are going through all this and somehow that’s removed from me. These are my people. And then I began to recognize more deeply what people were being put through, the oppression they were constantly subjected to, the horrors of daily life as well as the bigger ways in which the system came down on them. And as I went further through life and began to approach the question of what needs to be done about this, and was introduced to taking up a scientific approach to this, I realized that my people were more than this. I realized that my people were Chicanos and other Latinos and other oppressed people in the U.S.; they were people in Vietnam and China; they were women...they were the oppressed and exploited of the world...and through some struggle, and having to cast off some wrong thinking, I have learned that they are LGBT people as well.

These are my people, the oppressed and exploited people of the world. They are suffering terribly, and something has to be done about this. So it is necessary to dig in and systematically take up the science that can show the way to put an end to all this, and bring something much better into being. You have to persevere and keep struggling to go forward in this way. And when you run into new problems or setbacks, you have to go more deeply into this, rather than putting it aside and giving up.

So this is why I’ve been doing the work that I’ve been doing.2

Bob Avakian grew up in Berkeley, California. Unable, because of a life-threatening illness, to be directly involved in struggles taking place against racial oppression for several years after graduating from high school in 1961, BA nevertheless closely followed and strongly supported the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and at the same time was influenced by and supportive of the militant stand and role of Malcolm X. This was reflected in an article that BA wrote at the age of 19 in 1962 supporting the struggle of Black people. (This article was submitted to the liberal magazine Saturday Review. Although the article was not published, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Norman Cousins, personally replied—indicating that, although the magazine had chosen not to publish this article, he recognized that the article spoke, in a strikingly compelling way, to very important questions.)

Having recovered from his illness, in 1964, BA became actively involved in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in Berkeley, where he was a student. The central issue of this movement was the right of students to carry out activity on the campus in support of the civil rights movement. BA was among the 800 who were arrested during the occupation of the university administration building, which was the high point of the movement and led to winning its demands.

As the civil rights movement increasingly gave way to a more militant Black liberation movement in the second half of the 1960s, BA was strongly influenced by this. He left the university and dedicated his life to working for radical change. As a result of direct contact and discussions with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, and getting to know Eldridge Cleaver (who also became a leader of the BPP), BA worked closely with the Black Panther Party from its earliest days and at the height of its revolutionary role and influence.

In 1967, BA attended rallies, and spoke at one of the rallies, held by the BPP in North Richmond to protest the killing there of Denzil Dowell, part of the long and continuing chain of murders of Black people by police.

In 1968, when Huey Newton was facing murder charges as a result of a shoot-out with Oakland cops, BA spoke—along with a number of key figures in the Black liberation movement, including Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, James Forman, and leaders of the Black Panther Party— at a Free Huey rally held in the Oakland auditorium on the occasion of Huey Newton’s birthday.

BA worked tirelessly to build support, including among white people, for the demand to “Free Huey!” At a “Free Huey” rally at the courthouse in Oakland where Huey Newton’s trial was being held, BA was arrested for “desecrating” (burning) the American flag.

During this time, at the invitation of BPP leaders, BA wrote a number of articles for the Black Panther newspaper.

At a rally of thousands, led by the Black Panther Party, on May First, 1969, BA spoke of the need for revolution and called on white people in particular to more actively take part in movements for revolutionary change in the U.S., and to support such movements throughout the world.

By the beginning of the 1970s, millions of people in this country were in favor of some kind of revolutionary change, but they faced profound challenges. How could this revolution be made—or was it even possible to make a revolution here, up against such powerful forces of oppression and repression? Which were the key forces that had to be mobilized to have a real chance to carry out such a revolution? What kind of leadership was needed, and what methods and approaches should that leadership be based on? The difficulties in confronting and seeking the answers to these hard questions, combined with brutal and often murderous repression by the powers-that-be, led many revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panther Party, to split and end up departing from the road that could lead to real revolution.

By this time, partly because of the influence of the Black Panther Party, which had popularized the “Red Book” of quotations from the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, BA had become convinced not only that revolution was necessary, and was possible, but that it had to be led by a vanguard force that based itself on the scientific method and approach of communism, as it had been developed initially by Karl Marx, then further developed by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution in the early part of the 20th century, and then in turn further developed by Mao, who led the Chinese revolution and the new, socialist society in China, until his death in 1976. BA led in the formation of the Revolutionary Union at the end of the 1960s, with the aim of working toward the establishment of the vanguard party of revolution, based on the science of communism. During the first part of the 1970s, BA was both the practical leader and the leading theoretician of the Revolutionary Union, writing much of the essays and polemics for its theoretical journal Red Papers. This included major articles, particularly in Red Papers 5 and 6, that involved groundbreaking scientific materialist analysis of the situation of Black people, historically and down to the present—how and why their particular conditions of oppression had changed, from the time of slavery to the present era, and how this objectively put Black people in a potentially powerful position to be a driving force not only for their own liberation but for the communist revolution whose fundamental aim is the abolition of all oppression and exploitation. These articles included powerful polemics, arguing against positions and programs that would not lead to, but would actually work against, this liberation and the revolutionary transformation of the world as a whole.

In 1975, with BA’s leadership, the Revolutionary Communist Party was founded, with the aim of being the vanguard force for the revolution that was, and continues to be, profoundly necessary. Over the decades since then, BA has fought to keep that Party on the revolutionary road and to bring forward new revolutionary forces to revitalize and strengthen the vanguard forces for the revolution that is now, all the more urgently, required. While continuing to provide practical guidance to the revolutionary forces, BA, through summing up the experience (positive and negative) of the communist movement, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, has brought forward a new synthesis of communism (also referred to as the new communism) which, most decisively, has established communism on an even more consistently scientific basis. As BA’s Official Biography explains, the new communism “is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. It provides the basis—the science, the strategy, and the leadership—for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.”3

A defining part of this new communism is the emphasis it gives to the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and the relation of this to the ending of all oppression. And this has continued to stand out in BA’s leadership role and work over the decades, up to the present.  At revcom.us there is a special section, Bob Avakian on The Oppression of Black People & the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppressionwhich contains clips from films and selections from the writings of BA on this question. The following are just a few examples of important works and leadership by Bob Avakian, over the past few decades, that speak to this decisive question.

The book Reflections, Sketches & Provocations, written by Bob Avakian during the 1980s, contains a number of commentaries, speaking in a number of dimensions to the oppression of Black people and the struggle against this oppression, including support for rebellions following the murder of Black people by police. This book begins with the essay “Hill Street Bullshit, Richard Pryor Routines, and the Real Deal,” which powerfully exposes how terror against Black people, and other oppressed people, is “part of the job” of the police—and is “a reward” for carrying out the role of maintaining the “law and order” that keeps the oppressed in their desperate and miserable conditions. Going deeper, it speaks to how this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism, which has had this oppression built into it from the very beginning.

In the 1990s, BA raised the idea that there should be a day, every year, when people mobilized to protest police brutality, mass incarceration and repression by the government. This proposal was taken up and a broad coalition, including family members of people killed by police, was formed to initiate, in 1996, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. At its height, over the next decade, this National Day of Protest, held every October 22nd, rallied thousands of people in dozens of cities across the country. And activities by people who have been part of this coalition have continued since then.

During the past two decades, BA has given a number of filmed speeches, and written articles, essays and books, in which the liberation of Black people and its crucial relation to the communist revolution, aiming for the emancipation of all humanity, has been a major question.

BA’s 2003 speech Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, begins with a searing exposure and condemnation of lynching, and speaks to the horrific reality of slavery and the oppression of Black people down to today, including the continual murder of Black people by police.3

In 2006, BA gave a series of 7 Talks, in which once again the oppression of Black people, and the struggle for their liberation, is a major theme. One of these 7 Talks, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, begins by speaking to the experience of Black people in this country; and the question of slavery and the overall oppression of Black people is, of course, a major part of this talk. It is in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy that the following is clearly stated:

There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.

(This is also the very first statement in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution.)3

At the beginning of BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!, in 2012, this point is stated emphatically:

Let’s start with just one great crime of this system: police murder—after murder—after murder—of Black people and Latinos, especially youth.3

This is part of the powerful exposure in this speech of the role that continuing murders by police play in enforcing this monstrous system of exploitation and oppression, the system of capitalism-imperialism.

At the beginning of his October 2017 speech The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,  BA speaks powerfully to the horrors of slavery in this country—including the rape by slavemasters of huge numbers of enslaved women. This speech shows how the murderous oppression of Black people, continuing down to today, is one of the main roots of the fascism that has come to power in this country with the Trump/Pence regime; and, in this speech, BA repeatedly returns to the critical importance of the fight against this oppression.3

BA’s 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution begins this way:

In 2012 in Revolution—Nothing Less! I talked about the outrageous murder of Ramarley Graham earlier that same year—shot down in his own house in the Bronx by the New York City police. He was only 18 years old. Do I have to tell you what “race” he was?! His mother kept saying: “This has to STOP!” And his father repeated over and over: "WHY did they kill my son?! WHY did they kill my son?!" New York cops then loudly rallied around their fellow pig who murdered Ramarley in cold blood, viciously taunting Ramarley's family and loved ones, demonstrating yet one more time the ugly truth that, in the way this country has been built, and for the powers-that-be in this country, the humanity of Black people has never counted for anything—they have never been valued as human beings, but only as things to be exploited, oppressed, and repressed. Six years later, and with cold-blooded murders by police continuing in an unbroken chain, I will say again what I said then: How many more times does this have to happen? How many more times do the tears and the cries of anguish and anger have to pour forth from the wounded hearts of people?! How many more times, when another of these outrageous murders is perpetrated by the police, do we have to hear those words that pour gasoline on the already burning wounds: “justifiable homicide, justified use of force” by police?! How many more?!3

In that 2018 speech, BA not only powerfully exposes once again the horrific oppression that this system of capitalism-imperialism inflicts on Black people, and on other oppressed people in this country and throughout the world, and the grave danger this system poses to the very future of humanity; he also lays out in this speech (and in a more recent article A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win, Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution3) the strategic approach that could make it possible for this system to be finally overthrown through a revolution in which millions and millions of people are led to fight to put an end to this system and bring a radically different and much better system into being.

In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA, a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is set forth. And the principles and means for finally putting an end, at long last, to the oppression of Black people is a major part of that Constitution.3

This year (2020), BA has written as many as 30 articles in which this decisive question—the oppression, and the struggle for the liberation, of Black people—is a recurring subject.3

In the speeches and writings of BA overall, there is not only powerful, penetrating exposure and uncompromising condemnation of brutal and murderous oppression but, even more importantly, there is scientific analysis of how all this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism and of the need, the possibility, and the means for making revolution to overthrow this system and finally put an end to all the outrageous and unnecessary suffering that the masses of humanity are continually subjected to under this system.

***

It is a very precious thing for the oppressed of the earth when they have a leader whose life is dedicated to their emancipation, and who has the determination, and the scientific method, developed over decades, to point the way, and continue to carve out the path, to achieving that emancipation. BA is such a leader. As emphasized in the article Bob Avakian: A Radically Different Leader—A Whole New Framework For Human Emancipation:

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.3

One of the things that most distinguishes BA’s role as a revolutionary leader is his willingness—indeed, his insistence—on telling people the truth, even when they may not want to hear it. This comes through in the way BA exposes and refutes unscientific ways of thinking—all kinds of “conspiracy” theories and superstitious ideas—that lead people, including the most bitterly oppressed people, away from understanding the world as it actually is, and keep them from seeing not just the need, but the possibility, of radically changing the world, in a way that will lead to ending oppression. A big problem that BA has taken on, straight-up, is the role of religion as a mental chain on the masses of Black people, and other oppressed people, and the need to break this chain in order to most powerfully wage the struggle to finally be free of all oppression. BA has repeatedly emphasized that, in order to end oppression, “you have to want revolution badly enough to be scientific about it.”

Science means judging whether something is true, or not, by whether there is evidence that it actually corresponds to reality—and not believing something because it makes you feel good to believe it, or not refusing to believe something because it makes you uncomfortable. In the article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World, BA has spoken directly to this problem:

many of the basic masses, who are bitterly oppressed under this system, also are suspicious of and even are inclined to reject science and scientifically-grounded analysis. But this also leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of unfounded “conspiracy theories” and other wrong and harmful ideas, including the notion that nothing people do will make a difference because “it’s all in god’s hands.”3

In the 2014 Dialogue with Cornel West (REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion), which took place during the upsurge of protest and rebellion in response to the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, while speaking to the importance of uniting people broadly in the struggle against oppression, including people who hold religious views, BA also emphasized that the revolution that is needed to finally put an end to oppression must be led with a scientific, not a religious, outlook and method.3

From the start of the article Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression, written this year (2020), BA does not hold back in speaking to these critical questions:

In 1863, mid-way in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, as a result of the Civil War, Black people were formally freed from literal, physical slavery. But today the question is: When, and how, will Black people finally be free from all forms of slavery and oppression? And this poses straight-up this big question:

When will Black people finally emancipate themselves from the mental slavery of religion?!....

Once more, the question is sharply posed: How can Black people be finally and fully emancipated from centuries of oppression, and how does this relate to ending all oppression, of all people, everywhere?

The answer is that the possibility of this is real, but it can happen only on the basis of a scientific approach to changing the world and the scientifically-grounded understanding that this oppression is rooted in and caused by the system of capitalism-imperialism—the same system that is viciously exploiting and murderously oppressing people not just in this country but all over the world and is plundering the natural environmentand that this system must and can be overthrown through an actual revolution and replaced by a radically different and far better system: socialism, whose final goal is a communist world, without any oppression or exploitation of anyone, anywhere.3

****

From his early years, forging close personal ties with Black people and increasingly learning about their lived experience, to his development as this rare leader who has brought forth the most advanced scientific revolutionary theory with the new communism—a defining part of the life and work of Bob Avakian has been the liberation of Black people from centuries of oppression, and the understanding of how this relates to, and is a crucial driving force in, the communist revolution to finally abolish every form of oppression and exploitation, everywhere.

BA himself has expressed this in the following poetically powerful statement:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

 


1. From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary CommunistA Memoir by Bob AvakianInsight Press, 2005. [back]

2. Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, first printing, 2016, pp. 321-22. In addition to THE NEW COMMUNISM, in other recent works by BA—in particular Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summaryand Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and its relation to the emancipation of humanity as a whole, is a prominent subject. These works are available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. All of these works are available at revcom.us. (Information about how to acquire the print and e-book editions of BAsics can be found at revcom.us. Audio of the 7 Talks is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us; and Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy has been published in a print edition, the text of which can also be found in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)

The film of the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, is also available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.

The article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World (longer and shorter versions) is available at revcom.us as well.

The importance of Bob Avakian as a revolutionary leader, who has further developed communism as a consistently scientific method and approach, is a central theme in SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak. Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, who is also the author of the important book THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION AND THE MYTH OF CREATIONISM, Knowing What’s Real And Why It Matters. Each of these books by Ardea Skybreak is published by Insight Press, and the Interview with Ardea Skybreak (SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION) is also available at revcom.us

The following articles, written by Bob Avakian this year (2020), which speak to the oppression of Black people and the struggle to end this oppression, are available as well at revcom.us:

Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist (Parts 1-10) 

Racial Oppression Can Be Ended—But Not Under This System

Police And Prisons: Reformist Illusions And The Revolutionary Solution

Anything But The Truth—Bob Avakian Exposes Lies, Distortions, Distractions and Evasions About the Murderous Oppression of Black People

Lynching, Murder By Police—Damn This Whole System! We Don’t Have To Live This Way!

Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression

Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James And The Whole Truth

Donald Trump Isn’t “Tough,” He’s A Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces

Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces Trump Isn’t “Tough”—Part 2: Who Really Has Heart?

Trump And Pigs: A Racist Love Affair

Fucker Carlson, Fascist “Fox News” And The Broadcast Of White Supremacy

Bob Avakian on Black Trump Supporters: What If Jews Had Supported Hitler?!

Bob Avakian On: A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles

On Statues, Monuments, And Celebrating—Or Ending—Oppression

Fascists Today And The Confederacy: A Direct Line, A Direct Connection Between All The Oppression

Patriarchy And Male Supremacy, Or Revolution And Ending All Oppression

Sounding Like Southern Segregationists: It’s Not Just Trump—It’s Democrats Too

Bob Avakian Brings Out the Truth: Barack Obama Says Police Murdering Black People Should Not Be Normal—Unless He’s President

Bob Avakian On Ugly Words & Phrases

Bob Avakian On Tulsa Racist Mobs

A Real Revolution--A Real Chance To Win: Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution

[back]

Get to know BA

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

Get Into BA »

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/683/the-more-i-engaged-ba-i-could-not-wait-to-get-out-of-prison-en.html

"The More I Engaged BA, The More I Could Not Wait to Get Out of Prison"

by Joe Veale, revcom, former member of Black Panther Party

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received the following from Joe Veale.

I’ll start like this. I “knew” BA even before I met him. We grew up in the same city, in Berkeley, California. The Black Panther Party had started in Oakland which was right next to Berkeley. I knew a lot of the rank and file Panthers, once they got going. They were telling me what they were doing—they had developed this organization and they were trying to make revolution to overthrow the system and to put an end to the oppression of Black people. They were straight up about the fact that racism went with the capitalist system, working to overthrow the system and not working within the system. And they made it clear to me that they was trying to build the revolution not only among Black people, they was trying to build support for it among whites, you know, support for this among whites as well as other different races and nationalities. And in that context, BA’s name always came up. It was “Bob Avakian.”

I hadn’t met him yet, I wasn’t a Panther yet, but I knew about him. That’s what they were saying—this is the main person who supported them when they first began. Then when I started to go to Panther rallies, that’s what I would see on the stage with these Black revolutionaries, Black militants—BA would be right up there speaking with them about Black liberation and revolution, and supporting the Panthers.

Joining the Panthers

Then when I joined the Panthers—it was in Richmond, California, that’s the branch I went in. BA and the Revolutionary Union, which he led, were also there as well. I didn’t know this at the time, but they were in Richmond doing their political work. They were answering the call from the Panthers and others to take revolutionary politics out to poor whites. He talks about it in his Memoir (excerpts from the Memoir available here).

Richmond was a proletarian city of different races and nationalities. So out in Richmond, I would see him come by the office to talk with the Panther leadership. At times I’d have assignments at the National Office in Berkeley and I’d see him come through there talking to some of the national leaders and everything.

I remember on one occasion it was at this community college, Contra Costa College. BA talks about doing work there and the Panthers did work there also. This is when I first ran into BA face to face. And one of the things that really struck me, because up to this point, I had never met anyone who was white that was so passionate about Free Huey! Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were the two founders of the Black Panther Party. Huey was facing a murder charge for a shootout with Oakland police and they were trying to put him in the gas chamber. BA had Free Huey buttons all over his clothing—it was really striking to me. He also had Mao Tsetung buttons all over him.

You know, the Panthers were into popularizing Mao’s Red Book, but BA was just as passionate, if not more so, about Mao and revolution. I hadn’t met anybody—anybody white, to be frank—who was so passionate about Black liberation and communist revolution.

Then I found out that me and BA, we had some of the same friends. He talks about one of these friends—Billy Carr, who was also a friend of mine. Billy was a very good athlete, and a really nice person—he was a little older than me. Billy ended up being in “the life”—I had gotten into it too and I kinda idolized Billy.

But he was a friend of BA’s that he knew really well. BA was struggling with Billy trying to get him to do something else with his life. He wasn’t blaming Billy for being in the situation that he was in, he was blaming the system and trying to get Billy to see that. He really understood and he had a lot of real affection for people like Billy generally. When I realized that and I learned that BA had genuine friends like that, that they had potential to do something great with their life, this had a big impression on me—I just have to be straight up about it.

Studying Revolution in Prison, Going Up Against Identity Politics

In the early ’70s when I was sent to federal prison, these revolutionary prisoners (seven prisoners known as Leavenworth Brothers) struggled with me to read BA’s writings. Because I was really angry like [another person in this discussion] was talking about. I was cocky and angry, and nobody could tell me shit. I had a certain attitude towards other prisoners: “y’all trying to win a longevity contest but you need to be out here trying to make revolution.” Anyway, some people were struggling with me: “if you’re really serious you got to read BA.” The first thing they had me read was Red Papers issues #5 and #6, both issues were about the Black National Question or Black liberation. I knew BA had wrote these.

I had already read, studied, and listened to Malcolm X, all of his speeches/recordings over and over. I had read Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. I had read all this stuff from the Panthers and the Panthers’ leaders about this contradiction—the oppression of Black people—and what’s the solution to it. But when I read Red Papers 5 and 6, I recognized that I had never seen this kind of approach, this kind of systematic and scientific approach that BA took to understanding and analyzing it: from the time of slavery, to sharecropping and Jim Crow, to moving into the urban cities, into the proletariat still facing discrimination, segregation, and police terror—the implications of all that for revolution. Black people was now potentially in a more powerful position to contribute to communist revolution to emancipate humanity. I had never read anything like that.

But at that time some people were saying (at least some people that I knew—it was one of the things that was in the movement at that time): “don’t read anything from somebody white that’s trying to tell you about the struggle of Black people or any other oppressed people because its social chauvinism.” It means they are trying to take over “your” struggle. They are trying to “own” it. No! If it is true and scientific it is getting to the root of the problem so that this oppression can be uprooted and overthrown.

You hear a lot of this today in identity politics lingo—it’s white privilege, white racism, therefore white people are automatically disqualified and they have no business in here trying to tell you about what is real or not real. That is bullshit! It’s a way of avoiding the central point which is whether what anybody says is true or not, does it correspond to reality or not? You can determine that by taking the evidence-based scientific approach.

It’s bullshit on another level. I knew BA, and I knew where his heart was.

And then when I got to reading his writings—I got to know his method of thinking, his thinking process, how he went about engaging reality. When I received that pamphlet while I was in prison, Revolutionary Work in a Non-Revolutionary Situation, I thought it was a masterful grasp of the dialectical materialist method—understanding how a thing of one quality can be transformed into a whole different kind of quality. How a non-revolutionary situation can be transformed into a revolutionary situation.

I was in prison and we had our Marxist study group. We were comparing all these people that were saying they were communists and communist leaders. You had different ones—October League, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Black Workers Congress—all these different organizations. You had ’em all, they were all around. We were looking at all of them, what they were saying in relationship to what BA and the RU were saying, as well as comparing it to how Mao, Lenin, and Marx took up the scientific method, how they engaged reality, and who here came the closest to that. Even at that time BA stood out.

The method that he was applying, even though he has developed it and made different ruptures since that time—but you could see, if you was looking for it, that there was some real systematic and a scientific way of getting to the roots of things. He did not put forward or say something just ’cause it was something to make people feel good, he just told people the truth whether they liked it or not. It was something I really appreciated. He applied this to everything including the oppression of Black people and how it had changed over the years.

Getting Out of Prison and into the Movement

The more I engaged BA, I could not wait to get out of prison. Before that, I didn’t give a fuck whether I got out or not. Before that I was saying: if I only live five more minutes it’s going to be on my terms, whether I’m in here or whether I’m out there—fuck it! But once I started getting into... I wanted to get out. I wanted to get with the leadership of BA. I wanted to meet him, I wanted to get with the Revolutionary Communist Party because I thought: hey, we have the leader and the leadership to really make revolution that we was trying to do in the ’60s.

When I came out of prison in the late ’70s, what immediately happened was the Bob Avakian and Mao Tsetung Defendants court case. He was part of a demonstration in DC that was viciously attacked for defending Mao and revolution in China and was calling out the capitalist coup after Mao’s death. BA himself was facing hundreds of years in prison. Because I knew that we had something special here in terms of a leader, I volunteered immediately to go to DC to be one of the volunteers. I said: we can’t allow BA to be snatched away from us. I’ll go anywhere, do anything politically, to prevent that from happening. And 200 of us volunteers went to DC. We went there to politically “turn DC upside down”—again, this is in BA’s Memoir. We were passionate about that, even as we were just beginning to grasp what we have in the leadership of BA.

I was brand new. I had just got out of prison, my parole had just ended the day before and the very next day I was on the plane to DC as a volunteer. So, I’m there, and I think it was a speech BA had just given to the volunteers. I’m standing in the back talking to somebody, he comes up to me. He starts talking to me about some of things we were all studying at that time about the Collapse of the Second Communist International. We studied why during Lenin’s time, Lenin was the only one who led the masses to go for revolution. They had other parties that were bigger and had even greater influence but were capitulating and leading the people in different countries to take up guns to defend the fucking imperialist fatherland and shit like that, during World War 1.

BA just walked up to me and started talking to me about that and some of the lessons that we should draw from that. I was just kinda... I have to say I was kinda taken aback because he came up and was talking to me. But BA was so genuine, he had no airs, he was just so genuine. I was just talking to him... even though he’s this really advanced world-class leader, when you’re talking to him it’s like you’re talking to your best friend, it’s like talking to a friend—that’s just how he comes off to me, which again, just really struck me. This always has struck me about him.

Back to what I was saying about his friend Billy, even the thing with the Panthers, when I listen to BA talk about it, he understands it better than I do. I was in the Panthers, I went through it, but he understands it. When I went to prison that’s why I was so angry because of what had happened to the Panthers. But BA had a rational and a scientific understanding about why they split apart, and departed from the road of revolution. Again, not blaming them, appreciating the very brutal and murderous repression they faced—but more so, recognizing how they didn’t make the leap to become scientific about revolution.

Nobody in the ’60s came up with a real strategy that can lead millions and millions to defeat and overthrow this system, what to replace it with, what kind of leadership do we need, what kind of methods and approach does that leadership needs to be based upon.

So it’s the same thing like what I was saying about Billy or with those youth in Chicago when we showed them the video clips of BA Through the Years. BA resonates when people hear him, especially the basic masses, as well as others. When they hear him it resonates so profoundly because he understands their situation, what they are going through, and what is the way out—better than you do.

You may be going through and suffering in this way, but it is like going to a doctor, a good doctor. You’re the one suffering but they understand what the solution is to put an end to that suffering better than you do and better than you can. Because he has done the work. People need to engage this work and become followers of BA.

“There has never been a leader like this”

But these are some of the things that have really always struck me about BA. It always struck me on a real personal level. Anytime I was ever able to talk to him, and then read and study his works, it’s so striking that there has never been a leader like this. I think it’s really rare. Especially when I was in prison, and other times, I would just hope that we could get a leader that could really lead the masses to get out of this shit and really navigate through all the twists and turns. Because in any revolution there are always difficulties, there’s always unanticipated things that pop up, but you got to have a method and approach that allows you to be able to work through that and not be thrown by that. And that’s what I see with BA.

When I was in my prison cell, I used to think that either I was going to do something crazy when I got out or I was just going to go to China and live because Mao was still alive at that time. But I hated this system, I hated what it was doing to the masses, not just here but all around the world. But I didn’t think we could get that leadership on that level of a Mao, a Lenin, or a Marx. Then I started realizing that we had it, we have it. And now, it’s developed more beyond what it ever had been in the history of the communist revolution, because BA has made this science much more thoroughly and consistently scientific, to be in synch with reality and how it is changing, and how it CAN be changed to emancipate humanity.

I would read some of things from the first wave of the world revolution—Marx making the first great breakthrough in our understanding in the struggle for human emancipation—but there were definite limits and weaknesses in the first stage of communism. Sometimes I would read those things and get to a place where I’d say, “oh yeah, now we can relax because there’s a kingdom of peace and forever harmony”—that’s a vision would come to my mind. But I don’t ever get that from BA.

Through this revolution humanity can surpass being divided into antagonistic groups—but there’s always going to be matter in motion, there’s always going to be struggle, even if it’s not always antagonistic, that’s just reality. That’s what’s so fucking refreshing. Because when I was in prison people would talk... some of these people, they was eloquent, they’d been studying Marxism—but it was really dogmatic. And I’d listen to them talk and my jaw would just drop because they’d be talking about how the working out of history is pre-determined, that feudalism would be negated by capitalism, and capitalism is going to be negated by socialism—and it was all a kind of worked out in a one/two-step harmony. Real dogmatic and shit like that. Some of that was in that first phase of communism, and BA has gotten rid of all of that with his new synthesis of communism. You don’t find none of that religiosity, religious mantra and shit like that in it and stuff. To me, that’s why I think we can do this—with him, and with his leadership, because of that.

 

BA Through the Years 1969,1979, 2003

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/revolutionclub/index.html

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/why-people-are-going-to-may-day-2021-and-why-you-should-too-en.html

Why People Are Coming to Revolutionary Internationalist May 1 Gatherings Across the Country and Why YOU Should Too!

| revcom.us

 

Fr. Luis Barrios, NYC, invites you to International Revolutionary May Day 2021

Why you should come to revolutionary May 1 gatherings in cities across the country:

  1. Be part of a revolutionary gathering that declares to the whole world:
    WE DECLARE: WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS—WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT SLAVERY IN ANY FORM!
  2. Meet the Revcoms—an ORGANIZED revolutionary group, formed with a revolutionary morality, disciplined and militant... and welcoming YOU! They will show you how to:
    GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!
  3. Learn more about the leader of the Revolution, Bob Avakian (BA). There has never been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now.
    WE ARE FOLLOWERS OF BA. AND YOU NEED TO BECOME FOLLOWERS OF BA TOO.

You will meet people just like yourself and people very different—but all united to make revolution here as part of making revolution all over the world and freeing humanity.


How you can organize now together with the Revolution Club to make May 1 the day this organized material force for revolution makes a real advance that can impact and recruit more people:

  1. Make a video pledge to be there yourself. Record a short video saying why you are going and calling on others, send it to us... and send it all over. (We can help you with this. DM @therevcoms or write to GetOrganizedForRevolutionTour @ gmail.com)
  2. Spread the word about May 1—impact the neighborhoods, schools, cultural scenes, etc, by posting on social media, putting up posters, leaflets and stickers everywhere so people notice and get the feeling this is growing. And give out the Declaration and Call from the revcoms to “Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution.Donate to print materials to organize for May 1.
  3. Invite (and if need be, struggle with) your friends who care (forget the ones who don't for now) that real revolution is possible and they should come. (Use the three reasons above.)
  4. Meet up with the Revolution Club to practice marching in formation. Contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  5. Run with the Revolution Club—at least once or as much as you can between now and May 1 to impact with this revolution and learn how to take this to the people. Be with us to urgently get organized now for this real revolution. Again, contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  6. Donate: Venmo: @RevolutionTour; CashApp: $revtour; PayPal or credit card: revcom.us—go to Donate Now to the National Revolution Tour

Share this

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

Read this Declaration and Call, find out more:
Basic version | Extended version

Available in Brochure format (PDF):
Basic version | Extended version

Join the Revolution Club

Wherever you are, sign up.
Email: getorganizedforrevolutiontour @ gmail.com, DM us on social media @TheRevcoms, Sign up here. Get ready for International Revolutionary May Day 2021.

Join National Revolution Club Zoom Calls.
Sign up or email for info, Email: getorganizedforrevolutiontour @ gmail.com, DM us on social media @TheRevcoms, Sign up here.

Contact the Revolution Club
in the Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City

Why you should come to revolutionary May 1 gatherings in cities across the country:

  1. Be part of a revolutionary gathering that declares to the whole world:
    WE DECLARE: WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS—WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT SLAVERY IN ANY FORM!
  2. Meet the Revcoms—an ORGANIZED revolutionary group, formed with a revolutionary morality, disciplined and militant... and welcoming YOU! They will show you how to:
    GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!
  3. Learn more about the leader of the Revolution, Bob Avakian (BA). There has never been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now.
    WE ARE FOLLOWERS OF BA. AND YOU NEED TO BECOME FOLLOWERS OF BA TOO.

You will meet people just like yourself and people very different—but all united to make revolution here as part of making revolution all over the world and freeing humanity.


How you can organize now together with the Revolution Club to make May 1 the day this organized material force for revolution makes a real advance that can impact and recruit more people:

  1. Make a video pledge to be there yourself. Record a short video saying why you are going and calling on others, send it to us... and send it all over. (We can help you with this. DM @therevcoms or write to GetOrganizedForRevolutionTour @ gmail.com)
  2. Spread the word about May 1—impact the neighborhoods, schools, cultural scenes, etc, by posting on social media, putting up posters, leaflets and stickers everywhere so people notice and get the feeling this is growing. And give out the Declaration and Call from the revcoms to “Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution.Donate to print materials to organize for May 1.
  3. Invite (and if need be, struggle with) your friends who care (forget the ones who don't for now) that real revolution is possible and they should come. (Use the three reasons above.)
  4. Meet up with the Revolution Club to practice marching in formation. Contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  5. Run with the Revolution Club—at least once or as much as you can between now and May 1 to impact with this revolution and learn how to take this to the people. Be with us to urgently get organized now for this real revolution. Again, contact the Revolution Club in your city, or contact the National Revolution Tour.
  6. Donate: Venmo: @RevolutionTour; CashApp: $revtour; PayPal or credit card: revcom.us—go to Donate Now to the National Revolution Tour

Share this

 

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/695/revolution-club-materials-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Materials to Take the Revolution Everywhere

Flyers, Posters, the BA Statement and more...

 


From Bob Avakian—Revolutionary Leader, Author of the New Communism:
THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE— WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY

De Bob Avakian — Líder revolucionario, autor del Nuevo Comunismo:
ESTE ES UN MOMENTO POCO COMÚN EN QUE LA REVOLUCIÓN SE VUELVE POSIBLE — POR QUÉ ES ASÍ, Y CÓMO APROVECHAR ESTA OPORTUNIDAD POCO COMÚN

 


FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):
A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

PDF Pamphlet (English)

Now available:

PDF 8.5x11, 7 pages (English, Extended Version)

PDF Pamphlet (Spanish)


NEW YEAR'S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN
A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—
For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

PDF of this statement (English):    Booklet    |    8.5x11 sheets

PDF of this statement (Spanish):    Booklet    |    8.5x11 sheets

PDF in Farsi
(This translation reposted from the website cpimlm.org)


"Seeds" (English)

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

"Seeds" (Spanish)

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG

Download: 11x17 PDF   |   8.5x11 PDF   |   JPG


Three Strikes...

Download, print, and distribute widely (English)

8.5x11    |    11x17

Download, print, and distribute widely (Spanish):

8.5x11    |    11x17

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/695/revolution-tour-fund-appeal-en.html

As the New Declaration and Call from the Revcoms Hits the Streets…

DONATE NOW TO THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION TOUR

| revcom.us

 

The National Revolution Tour has gone out strong in these past few weeks, while still taking needed precautions not to contribute to the spread of COVID-19. Now there is something huge afoot; a new Declaration and Call from the revcoms, NOW is the time to get organized for a real revolution! If you have not read this yet, read it now.

This Declaration and Call must get into millions of hands, all over the country. The horrors for which this system has no answer—the white supremacy, the patriarchal oppression here and around the world, the looming ecological catastrophe—have given rise to massive struggle and, among tens of millions, to searching and intense questioning. This Call speaks to that—to the situation we face and how this system has caused it; to the revolution we need; to the rare and precious leadership we have in Bob Avakian; to how such a revolution could really be made, and the ways that people can be part of all this.

Thousands must be brought forward to answer this Call, racing to get organized and into position to take advantage of one of those rare dangerous times when the system is caught up in crisis and, to quote the Declaration and Call, “those who rule ... cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past.” Yes, these times carry the danger of catastrophe—but they also carry the possibility for the people to “wrench something really positive out of it—revolution, to put an end to this system and bring something much better into being.”

This is what the National Get Organized For An Actual Revolution Tour is working night and day to do, fighting to make this real, and leading the Revolution Clubs to do so as well. But they can’t do it alone.

And this is where YOU come in. Funds are needed to pay for:

  1. Printing massive quantities of the Declaration and Call from the Revcoms to get them into people’s hands everywhere. This alone takes many thousands of dollars.
  2. Spreading the New Year’s Statement from Bob Avakian everywhere and planting the “Seeds,” to be posted up everywhere.
  3. Planning and hosting revolutionary May Day celebrations around the country where this Declaration and Call will be featured.
  4. The ongoing needs of the members of the Revolution Tour who have made tremendous sacrifices to quit their jobs and travel around the country, in order to devote themselves full time to organizing for this revolution.
  5. Support for The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show on YouTube, which, along with revcom.us, is a major voice of the revolution.
  6. Widespread promotion of the recent major statement BOB AVAKIAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY, video showings out among the masses, and other important media.

Your financial support is a critical part of making all this real. Because of the leadership of Bob Avakian there is a vision and a plan for a way out of this madness, a way out of all the suffering this system causes for millions and millions around the world. But many, many thousands more people need to hear about this revolution and become a part of it. This cannot happen without your support. Donate $10, $100, or $1,000—whatever amount you can afford makes a huge difference to the revolution. And if you received a recent stimulus payment, donate whatever portion of it you can and make it count for what really matters—supporting this revolution that can put an end to this system of oppression.

“This revolution is not just a ‘good idea’—it is actually possible.”—from the “From the revcoms (revcom.us): A Declaration, a Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution.”

____

What Is the National Revolution Tour?

The National Revolution Tour formed in 2019 to go across the country to spread the word about, and wage struggle for, revolution and the new communism and leadership of Bob Avakian (BA), and to build Revolution Clubs. We aimed—and still aim—to bring forward a force of thousands who represent for this revolution and can have a major impact on a society that is right now locked in major crisis and conflict, with millions wondering and searching for whether there is a real way out. We went to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York—and a whole lot of other places as well.

Last year, just as we were getting started with a new phase in LA, COVID hit; we adopted best practices against contagion, but we didn’t let it stop us.

And now we are hitting the streets again, beginning with major revolutionary events this May 1. We aim to carry forward the Tour this year, going forward around the country to spread the word, organize people, and hasten the time when millions can be won to fight, all-out, for the revolution humanity so desperately needs.

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

Read this Declaration and Call, find out more:
Basic version | Extended version

Available in Brochure format (PDF):
Basic version | Extended version

How to Donate to the
National Revolution Tour

  • Venmo: @RevolutionTour
  • CashApp: $revtour
  • Write in to getorganizedforrevolutiontour (at) gmail.com, let us know if you are taking up collections, or to send statements
  • Or call (323) 671-9839
  • Send a check or money order,
    payable to RCP Publications and earmark it for National Revolution Tour. Mail to:
    • RCP Publications
      Box 3486, Merchandise Mart
      Chicago, IL 60654-0486
  • PayPal or credit card:

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/bidens-climate-summit-chicanery-poisoning-the-planet-and-deceiving-the-people-en.html

Biden’s Climate Summit Chicanery: Poisoning the Planet and Deceiving the People

by Raymond Lotta

| revcom.us

 

The global Earth Day summit convened by Biden was a cruel imperialist deception, a slap in the face for anyone who cares about the fate of the planet. A summit that showcased pledges and proposals that fly in the face of what science tells us about the urgency of the environmental crisis and the scale of action needed. Greta Thunberg, the global climate activist, righteously called out the summit for what it was: “bullshit.”

1. Biden committed to a target of a 50-52 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030—a measly drop in the carbon bucket relative to the catastrophic situation of rising global temperatures.

Global warming is leading to the collapse of polar ice sheets and ever-faster rise of sea levels ... greater frequency of extreme weather events ... the prospect of widespread crop failures ... and is magnifying the burdens and horrors that climate change already places on the oppressed populations of the global South. The Biden target is obscenely out of whack with this reality—and with the culpability of U.S. capitalism-imperialism in the environmental emergency that humanity faces. Keep in mind:

In short, the Biden targets are not a fundamental draw-down from fossil-fuel-based production and the fossil-fuel infrastructure of the U.S. And these inadequate targets are not even binding or enshrined in law!

2. Bullshit carbon emissions accounting.

When the U.S. says they are going to reduce emissions in the range of 50-52 percent, greenhouse gas emissions caused by their genocidal military machine is not even in the scope of discussion, and completely untouched. The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world, and a key pillar of U.S. imperial domination. Nor do they include the emissions caused by their cheap-labor/pollution-intensive global supply chains of exploitation—a network of companies in other countries that send products like iPhones back to the U.S. for assembly, packaging and sale.

The bedrock principle of Biden’s climate program is what is called “zero net emissions.” This means that carbon can be pumped into the atmosphere as long as it is based on promises of carbon “removal” at some far-off date. Meanwhile, the carbon is doing its damage in the atmosphere. Just as bad, the whole idea is based on completely unproven technologies to suck up and store carbon emissions. So this is NOT zero emissions (which means no carbon emitted); it is not the radical transition away from fossil fuels that is needed to deal with catastrophic changes in climate and threats to biodiversity. “Zero net emissions” is a dangerous fantasy and deception that prolongs fossil-fuel production and consumption.

3. When Biden says the U.S. must become “the global leader” in combating climate change, he means that U.S. imperialism must respond to and utilize the climate crisis to maintain U.S. dominance in a world imperialist order that is facing new threats: environmental and geopolitical.

The Earth Day summit was the first major diplomatic offensive of the liberal imperialist Biden administration. Under the fascist, climate-denying Trump, the U.S. moved away from global negotiations and agreements. Meanwhile, rising imperialist China has been moving to extend and cement its global influence. This summit represented a move by U.S. imperialism under Biden to drape itself in the mantle of “climate concern,” to regain and reassert U.S. “soft-power” authority in the global arena, and to set its terms for how this environmental emergency will be responded to. Not in the interests of world humanity and towards saving the planet—but, rather, preserving U.S. dominance in the system of capitalist-imperialist property rights, profit, and plunder that is destroying the planet.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CLOCK IS TICKING...

ONLY REAL REVOLUTION GIVES US THE REAL CHANCE TO SAVE THE PLANET

The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show Episode 49: EARTH DAY 2021 Capitalism Is Destroying Our Planet. We Need: Revolution—Nothing Less!

Bob Avakian, "Not fit caretakers of the earth"

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/bpb-blamed-for-delirium-en.html

BPB Blamed for Delirium—
Experts Warn of Ultra-Toxic New Pollutant, BPBS

| revcom.us

 

Health and environmental experts today warned of a dangerous new pollutant, said to cause mass delirium. In a press release issuing its highest level of alert, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that “BPB has caused otherwise normal people to abandon their senses.”

BPBS, which stands for Biden’s Political Bullshit Syndrome, was released into the air last week during the course of the global climate summit. A WHO spokesperson, Dr. Delphi Pukka pointed out that the plan proposed by Biden during this summit relies on technologies that don’t even exist or are in their infancy, and assumes decisions in industries that would fly directly against the need of capitalist enterprises to maintain the highest possible rate of profit. All this while maintaining a culture of parasitic consumerism, made possible by continuing the domination of the entire planet by the U.S. military—which is also the world’s number one institutional polluter.

Even accepting all that—which Pukka warned no decent person should accept lest they fall victim to the dreaded ASS Syndrome*—the plan would not make a meaningful dent in the global catastrophe. “There is no time to lose,” Pukka insisted, “and anything less than the truth could lead to the extinction of the human species.”

Yet people like Bill McKibben—the influential environmental activist and writer—hailed the plan. Pukka shook her head, citing McKibben’s New Yorker article right after the Biden climate summit that stated “it’s big enough” and that “to make it happen, he’s [Biden’s] going to need the movement that got us to this point.” McKibben concluded his assessment of Biden’s climate pledge: “This is a real shot in the arm, and it’s going to have to last.”

“This is either simple self-deception—and worse, deception—or the man has taken leave of his senses due to this dangerous new pollutant,” said Pukka, shaking her head. “We don’t know yet, but I believe the data will bear out that one way or another BPBS has played a very deleterious role in this sad affair. Still worse, he is not alone—people who once sounded the alarm, like the writer David Wallace-Wells, are now going on cable TV to say that Biden’s plan is ‘unbelievably ambitious’ and to claim that governments and business leaders all over the world are now ‘seeing the economic benefits ... the faster we move’ to solve the problem of climate change.”

In closing the press conference, Dr. Pukka concluded that, This may be a case of people like McKibben and Wallace-Wells indulging in wishful thinking, unable to confront the real depths of the problem and dreading the necessarily extreme solution of revolution that alone can solve it. It’s easy to blame BPBS—but for people whose claim to authority is based on upholding science, there’s no excuse, with the oceans rising and the forests on fire, to NOT confront the truth. Hopefully, at least some of those suffering will regain their senses soon. We do have some evidence that the toxin can be contagious if not quickly confronted.”

In the meantime, she urged that interventions be done with McKibben, Wallace-Wells, and other victims of BPBS.

 


* The ASS Syndrome, which continues to pose a serious threat around the COVID-19 epidemic, as documented in these pages last fall, refers to the American Self-serving Stupidity syndrome. Initially hailed for its tranquilizing properties, global consensus has developed that this syndrome and its underlying causes must be wiped out if humanity is to survive.  [back]

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/696/rnl-show-episode-49-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 49 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show!

Chauvin Verdict, Earth Day,
Revolutionary May 1st – Seize the Time!

 

A real victory has been won, Derek Chauvin found GUILTY for killing George Floyd. Yet, as Bob Avakian (BA) makes vividly clear in this episode: the police will continue to kill Black, Brown, and Native people until this system of capitalism-imperialism is overthrown. We must transform the potential we have seen in the streets into a powerful movement and organized force for an ACTUAL REVOLUTION.

On Revolutionary May 1st across the country, come meet the Revcoms, learn more about Bob Avakian, and get involved with the revolution. In this episode, you’ll see how the Revcoms have been hitting the streets getting ready for May 1st and some of the people you’ll meet when you come out that day.

Today is EARTH DAY. In a powerful illustrated segment, you’ll learn why the environmental crisis cannot be solved, but only made worse, under this system. In an interview with Raymond Lotta, you’ll learn how an actual revolution rooted in the new communism forged by Bob Avakian will give us a real chance to solve this while bringing about a society and world you’d actually want to live in.

Plus, a contribution from the Chicago Revolution Club and a special commemoration of Damián García.

***

INVITATION! SATURDAY, APRIL 24:

If you are just learning about and trying to figure how to get involved in this revolution, including in revolutionary May 1st or forming a Revolution Club where you are, email us at: GetOrganizedForRevolutionTour@gmail.com

Tell us where you are from, how you learned about the revolution, what is drawing you towards it, and what questions you have. We’ll send you back a link to log into a national Zoom meeting this Saturday, April 24 at 10 am Pacific, noon Central, 1 pm Eastern.

 

Like, Share, and Subscribe: youtube.com/therevcoms
Follow @TheRevcoms on social media 
Donate and become a patron at patreon.com/TheRevcoms 

 

 

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/as-killer-pig-is-righteously-found-guilty-guilt-of-system-can-not-be-denied-en.html

As the Killer Pig Is Righteously Found Guilty...
...The Guilt of This System Can NOT Be Denied

WE NEED TO ORGANIZE NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: The following is adapted from an editorial that appeared the night of the verdict in the case of the pig who murdered George Floyd. For more on this critical case, watch our commentary in The Revolution, Nothing Less! Show Episode #49. We will continue to analyze the implications of this case and its aftermath in the weeks to come.

The pig who murdered George Floyd was found guilty on all three counts he was charged with. His guilt could not be denied.

But the only reason there was such a trial in the first place is the fact that WE, people here and all over the world in our millions, came into the streets to demand justice night after night, standing up against tear gas, bullets, and weaponized cars to do so. Through our struggle, justice has—in this case—been won and people are righteously celebrating.

At the same time, the guilt of this system continues, and can also not be denied. Say their names: Daunte Wright, 20 years old, shot dead at a traffic stop, Black and unarmed; Adam Toledo, 13 years old, shot dead in an alley with his empty hands in the air, Latino; and those are only the most well-known. And the names go on, and on .... During the 19-day period of testimony in the trial of the Minnesota killer cop, at least 64 people were killed by police—over one-half of them Black or Latino.

THIS MURDER MUST END. This is what every decent person feels.

But this nonstop string of horrific murders has forced the whole world to confront the brute fact that so long as this system goes on, THE MURDER AND BRUTALITY BY THE POLICE CAN NOT END. To deal with this, to deal with all the other towering outrages this system brings down here and around the world, we need—humanity needs—revolution, nothing less.

And this is one of those rare times in which a revolution could possibly be made in this country. “Those who rule are locked in a bitter fight among themselves, and they cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past.”1 At the same time, over these past few years the people have shown their hatred for oppression, and their courage, in powerful demonstrations and mass outpourings, here and around the world, including in the beautiful rising after the murder of George Floyd. These show the potential for revolution.

We have the leadership for that revolution in Bob Avakian, BA. BA has further developed the scientific way to understand the world, the strategy for an actual revolution, and a vision and blueprint for an emancipating new society in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which he authored.

To learn more about all this, and to start changing the world while you are learning, dig into and spread A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION.

If you burned with anger and a rage for justice when you saw the life snuffed out of George Floyd and if you ache for something better... you need to be part of this revolution. And we, together, need to urgently get organized now for this real revolution.

Right now: come to, and help build for, Revolutionary May 1 celebrations. Meet, and become part of, a serious force, resolutely determined and getting organized now for a real revolution, to bring into being a world without slavery in any form, in which all of humanity can finally and fully breathe free.


1. Quoted from A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION. [back]

The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show Episode 49: Chauvin Verdict, Earth Day, Revolutionary May 1st – Seize the Time!

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/el-salvador-tormented-for-a-century-by-us-en.html

El Salvador: Tormented for a Century by U.S. Capitalism‑Imperialism

| revcom.us

 


2019—migrants travel north from Central America. Over the past century, U.S. imperialism has plundered and devastated the smallest of the Central American countries, El Salvador, and turned it into a hellish deathscape of violence and poverty for the masses of people there, causing tens of thousands to make the dangerous journey north. Photo: AP


Central America (click map to enlarge)

Anyone trying to understand why tens of thousands of immigrants from Central America and Mexico—including children—make dangerous journeys across hundreds of miles trying to enter the U.S. needs to confront this fundamental truth Bob Avakian expresses:

Now I can just hear these reactionary fools saying, “Well, Bob, answer me this. If this country is so terrible, why do people come here from all over the world? Why are so many people trying to get in, not get out?” ...Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have fucked up the rest of the world even worse than what you have done in this country. You have made it impossible for many people to live in their own countries as part of gaining your riches and power. (BAsics 1:14)

The following article outlines some of the ways over the past century that U.S. imperialism has plundered and devastated the smallest of the Central American countries, El Salvador, and turned it into a hellish deathscape for the masses of people there.


1904–1944: The “Coffee Republic,” the “American Cure,” la Matanza (the Massacre)


In 1904 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declared to the world that the U.S. had a "right" to exercise "international police power" in Latin America and the Caribbean--a warning to other powers to keep out of what the U.S. considered its "backyard." El Salvador became a "Coffee Republic"—with a handful of wealthy plantation owners while the masses of people lived under harsh oppression and in extreme poverty.


Protest and unrest grew in El Salvador during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1932, the government responded to a peasant strike by massacring about 30,000 people, or 4% of the population, in one week—this was called la Matanza. Ferocious repression followed for the next 12 years under the regime of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a U.S. puppet and open fascist sympathizer.

In 1904, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declared to the world that the U.S. had a “right” to exercise “international police power” in Latin America.1 This brazen declaration was a warning to rival powers to keep their military presence out of what the U.S. considered its “backyard” and a “justification” for the U.S. military to “extend its ‘sphere of influence’ in the Caribbean, Central America, and smaller countries of South America....” It immediately led U.S. financiers to “believe that increased intervention and policing by the U.S. in Central America would provide greater peace and financial stability in the region.”2

El Salvador soon became one of the world’s largest producers of coffee—known as the “Coffee Republic.” A handful of wealthy plantation owners secured financing that enabled them to enrich themselves while millions of Salvadorans lived in poverty. This process was called the “American Cure ... a three-part formula of debt, discipline, and exports.” Thousands of peasants were displaced from their farms and forced to work on coffee plantations, where they were paid with a small amount of scrip that could only be used at company stores and two bean tacos daily.3

Protest and unrest grew in El Salvador throughout the 1920s as coffee prices fell internationally and large plantation owners, backed by the government, slashed wages, and confiscated even more land from the peasants. In 1932, an uprising, primarily of indigenous peasants in El Salvador’s western coffee regions, began after the government prevented Communist Party members elected to the national legislature from taking their seats.

The government responded to a peasant strike by “massacring an estimated 30,000 people, or 4% of the population, in one week”4—what was called la Matanza. The U.S. and Canada sent warships to aid the Salvadoran government.5 The warships weren’t used because the Salvadoran military was able to crush the uprising by themselves. Ferocious repression throughout the country followed the massacre—and continued for the next 12 years under the regime of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a U.S. puppet and open fascist sympathizer.6


1944–1979: U.S.-Backed Coups, Massacres, Repression


Headline reads: "Security Forces Massacre Students." It describes the shooting of student protestors from the University of El Salvador on July 30, 1975. Source: Zinn Education Project.


The 1950s through the 1970s were marked by a series of regimes in El Salvador dominated by the U.S.-backed military and wealthy plantation owners. In October 1979, a U.S.-backed coup brought another junta to power. It was immediately recognized by the U.S. government under President Jimmy Carter. Deadly repression was unleashed against protesters in San Salvador and other cities. Massive U.S. funding and support for the regime began pouring into the country. Photo: AP

A series of protests and strikes in the spring of 1944 forced the government from power and Hernández Martínez into exile. A few months later, Osmín Aguirre y Salinas, an army colonel and former chief of police, led a military-backed coup that unleashed bloody repression of students, labor organizations, and civilian political parties.7 Aguirre y Salinas’s regime was “legitimized by immediate recognition from the United States.”8

Internationally, the decades beginning in the 1950s were increasingly shaped by “Cold War” contention between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.9 Virulent, violent anti-communism became the cornerstone of U.S. global policy. In El Salvador, these decades were marked by a series of governments dominated by the military, and an economy dominated by wealthy plantation owners, both of them linked to the U.S.10 In 1954, the U.S., under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, orchestrated support for a coup it was preparing against the leftist president of Guatemala. The Salvadoran government faithfully assisted the U.S. by putting an anti-communist resolution before the Organization of Central American States, isolating Guatemala and forcing it to withdraw from the organization, thus paving the way for a U.S.-backed coup.11

In 1960, the U.S. withheld recognition from a Salvadoran junta (ruling group composed of military and civilian leaders) that had promised elections. Months later, a right-wing countercoup toppled the junta before the scheduled elections and seized power. The countercoup was facilitated by the U.S., which soon announced its support for the illegitimate government.12

Protests mounted throughout the 1970s, and the government responded with ferocious repression. Among the government massacres: In 1975, police fired on students protesting a Miss Universe contest—dozens were killed and “disappeared.” In 1977, more than 200 protesters were killed and hundreds more wounded by government troops when tens of thousands of people gathered peacefully in the central plaza of San Salvador to protest election fraud.13 Right-wing death squads—which had been built up, trained, organized, and even provided target lists by the U.S. military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents—began to target and “disappear” hundreds of left-wing opponents.14

In October 1979, a U.S.-backed coup brought another junta to power. It was immediately recognized by the U.S. government under President Jimmy Carter. Deadly repression was unleashed against protesters in San Salvador and other cities. Massive U.S. funding and support for the regime began pouring into the country.15


1980-1992: Civil War, Death Squads and Genocide, Depopulation


After Archibishop Romero, who had called on an end to the U.S. aid to the Salvadoran military, was gunned down in 1981, civil war broke out. Genocidal repression against poor farmers in El Salvador's rural areas was a major focus of the U.S.-directed war against guerrilla forces backed by the Soviet Union, which was at the time a powerful imperialist rival of the U.S. worldwide. On December 11, 1981, a U.S. trained and armed battalion entered the northern village of El Mozote, ostensibly to search for guerrillas. They found none. Nevertheless, they executed more than 800 civilians, including children.


1981—Death squad victims in San Salvador, El Salvador. In a 12-year war beginning in 1980, right-wing governments backed by the U.S. killed and tortured more than 70,000 people, in a country with a population of about six million.


From 1980 to the early 1990s, the U.S. provided an estimated $6 billion in military aid to the Salvadoran regime. The Salvadoran military grew from an estimated 7,000 in 1979 to about 53,000 by 1986. There were at least 11,000 additional civilian counter-revolutionary forces, many of them active in death squads. Here, government soldiers with a howitzer gun in Osicala, El Salvador, 1987. Photo: AP

In March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who had called on Carter to end U.S. aid to El Salvador’s military, was gunned down as he was saying Mass at a hospital chapel. Targeted killings of oppositional leaders and slaughter of protesters intensified. The government began genocidal campaigns in rural areas, calling it “agrarian reform.” Several guerrilla groups, backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, joined to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which became the main force fighting the U.S.-backed government. Civil war erupted.

From 1980 to the early 1990s, the U.S. provided an estimated $6 billion in military aid to the Salvadoran regime. The Salvadoran military grew from an estimated 7,000 in 1979 to about 53,000 by 1986. There were at least 11,000 additional civilian counter-revolutionary forces, many of them active in death squads such as the Maximiliano Hernández Martínez Anti-Communist Brigade.16 The U.S. also routed significant funds and training to the Salvadoran military through allies such as Argentina, Chile, and Israel17 and funneled $2.2 million to fascist political parties to help tighten their grip on power.18

Genocidal repression against poor farmers in El Salvador’s rural areas was a major focus of the U.S.-directed war. In December 1981, the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit of the Salvadoran military, carried out a horrific massacre in the village of El Mozote. “The residents were rounded up overnight and the next day, December 11, were killed. The Atlacatl Battalion maimed, shot, raped, and dismembered hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children. Nearly half of the victims are believed to have been under 10 years old. Estimates of the total murdered on that day range from 200 to over 1,000.”19 The battalion “decapitated men in a church and bayoneted a child to death and slaughtered entire families.”20

The Atlacatl Battalion was specially trained by the U.S. military at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was considered the “pride of the United States military team in San Salvador.”21

Rural farming areas of El Salvador, a small country about the size of the state of Massachusetts, were “pummeled by the most intensive and prolonged aerial bombardment in the history of the Western hemisphere. The air force dropped phosphorous bombs and napalm on forested hillsides and farmlands, poisoning the earth for many seasons. The army swept through the countryside, torching whole farming communities and slaughtering livestock.”22,23

By the time a treaty ending the war was signed in 1992, about a million Salvadorans had been driven from their homes24—“a third of the population either fled the country as refugees or [was] displaced internally.”25 Much of the country lay in ruins. And over 75,000 civilians had died at the hands of government forces supported, trained, and funded by the U.S.26


1992–the Present: A Cascade of Environmental, Social, and Economic Catastrophes


Decades of intense coffee production and massive government onslaughts during the civil war have depleted once fertile agricultural land and poisoned much of El Salvador's remaining water and soil. Today, El Salvador is experiencing a "multilayered crisis of water scarcity, contamination, and unequal access that affects a quarter of the country's population," and "more than 90 percent of surface water sources in the country are contaminated."

Decades of intense coffee production and massive government onslaughts during the civil war have depleted once fertile agricultural land and poisoned much of El Salvador’s remaining water and soil. Since the 1960s, about 85 percent of the country’s forests have disappeared, and over 50 percent of El Salvador is no longer suitable for food cultivation. The entire country is “perilously close to facing large-scale desert formation.”27 El Salvador is experiencing a “multilayered crisis of water scarcity, contamination, and unequal access that affects a quarter of the country’s population of 6.4 million,” and “more than 90 percent of surface water sources in the country are contaminated.” At least 600,000 people in rural areas have no access to water, and hundreds of thousands more have limited or intermittent access.28


Environmental devastation has made El Salvador more vulnerable to extensive damage from severe natural events such as volcanos, earthquakes, hurricanes and landslides set off by torrential rain. October 2020, the upper part of San Salvador volcano was set in motion by torrential rains. Here, people search for bodies buried in the mud where homes once stood, in Nejapa, El Salvador. Photo: AP

As in Central America overall, environmental devastation has made the country more vulnerable to extensive damage from severe natural events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and landslides set off by torrential rain. Two hurricanes that hit the country in late 2020 destroyed entire villages. The anti-poverty organization Oxfam estimates that as of late December 2020, 800,000 people were still homeless in El Salvador and other Central American countries because of these hurricanes.29

In 2006, El Salvador entered the U.S.-dominated Dominican Republic—Central America Free Trade Agreement” (CAFTA-DR). It required and has accelerated “restructuring” the economies of the countries who joined it.30 And this has opened the floodgates to a massive influx of American agricultural and industrial goods that have weakened domestic economic activity, especially farming. A report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs concluded that in El Salvador and other countries, CAFTA-DR has contributed to the elimination of many small farms and greater “food insecurity”31 (translation: hunger and starvation), driving more people into El Salvador’s cities. And many of these people try to migrate to the U.S. to find a means of survival. Environmental deregulation CAFTA-DR mandated also has enabled mining companies based in the U.S. and other imperialist countries to “strike gold”32—and their mining has further poisoned mountain zones.


During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans who fled U.S. sponsored terror during the civil war settled in barrios of Los Angeles, where groups of youth formed gangs, including for self-protection. In the 1990s, many of these youth were deported to El Salvador. Here, Salvadorans arrive at the El Salvador international airport after being deported from the U.S., February 1999. Photo: AP.

Horrific violence plagues the masses of people of El Salvador, carried out by gangs and police/military forces, sometimes acting together. The country has one of the highest homicide rates in the world,33 and this violence is a major factor driving people out of the country. But seldom mentioned is that the roots of El Salvador’s violent gangs are in the U.S. During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans who fled U.S.-sponsored terror during the civil war settled in barrios of Los Angeles, where groups of youths formed gangs, including for self-protection. In the 1990s, many of these youths were deported to El Salvador. A law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 made it far easier for the government to quickly deport people, including lawful permanent residents, who had been convicted of certain minor crimes.34 Some of the deported youths took their gang allegiances and culture with them, as they returned to the crushing poverty and police/military violence of El Salvador’s cities.

So ask yourself—what could compel people to risk everything, even the lives of their children, to cross a continent and try to enter the U.S.?

 


Footnotes:

1. Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, OurDocuments.gov  [back]

2. “Empire, Public Goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary,” Kris James Mitchener, The Journal of Economic History  [back]

3. Information and quote from the book Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug, by Augustine Sedgewick  [back]

4. January 22, 1932: La Matanza (“The Massacre”) Begins in El Salvador, Zinn History Project  [back]

5. “Unintended Consequences: U.S. Military Interference in El Salvador,” Blake Bergstrom, James Madison University  [back]

6. Hernández Martínez, Maximiliano, Our Campaigns  [back]

7. Latin American Election Statistics, El Salvador; University of California, San Diego, Collections  [back]

8. A Century of U.S. Domination Created the Immigration Crisis, Mark Tseng-Putterman, https://medium.com/s/story/timeline-us-intervention-central-america-a9bea9ebc148  [back]

9. From 1917 until the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR) was the world’s first socialist state. This marked a huge advance for humanity. However, following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union. By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union had become a capitalist-imperialist power (while continuing to falsely claim to be “communist”), and it was locked in a fierce, reactionary rivalry with the U.S. for global dominance. Wars between U.S. and Soviet-backed forces erupted in several parts of the world, and in El Salvador an insurgency of masses of people was greatly influenced by pro-Soviet political and military forces. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.  [back]

10. Bergstrom, page 21  [back]

11. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Changepgs. 421-426  [back]

12. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian  [back]

13. El Salvador: Uprising, NACLA Report, September 25, 2007  [back]

14. History of El Salvador, Teaching Central America  [back]

15. Mass Atrocity Endings, El Salvador, Tufts University Case Studies  [back]

16. “Rightist Death Squad Kills Four in El Salvador,” New York Times, October 8, 1983  [back]

17. American Crime Case #38: 1980-1992 – The U.S. Back’s El Salvador’s Death Squad Government, Revolution, July 9, 2018  [back]

18. “CIA Said to Aid Salvador Parties,” New York Times, May 12, 1984  [back]

19. December 11, 1981: El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador, Zinn History Project  [back]

20. Ibid.  [back]

21. “How U.S. Actions Helped Hide Salvador Human Rights Abuses,” New York Times, March 21, 1983  [back]

22. Ibid.  [back]

23. In December 1983, at a time when death squads were killing hundreds of people a week and as opposition to the murderous war intensified in the U.S. and other countries, U.S. Vice President George Bush traveled to El Salvador to advance U.S. efforts to back the war against the anti-government forces. Bush met with top government officials and other major figures, including Roberto d’Aubuisson, a former U.S.-trained intelligence officer and head of the fascist Arena party. Bush made some public statements about opposing the Salvadoran death squads—but in reality, death squads, and the overall genocidal war backed by the U.S. continued for another nine blood-drenched years.  [back]

24. The Pacification of Central America, James Dunkerley, Institute of Latin American Studies  [back]

25. Destruction of a Way of Life, El Salvador Watch, November 1997  [back]

26. El Salvador, Center for Justice and Accountability  [back]

27. Destruction of a Way of Life, El Salvador Watch, November 1997  [back]

28. “Once Lush, El Salvador is Now Dangerously Close to Running Dry,” National Geographic, November 2, 2018  [back]

29. TPS Can Promote Stability and Recovery for Central American Countries Hit by Recent Hurricanes, Center for American Progress, December 2020  [back]

30. The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), Every CSRReport.com  [back]

31. CAFTA-DR Governments in Contrast to Small-Scale Owners Parcel Engine of Development, Council on Hemispheric Affairs  [back]

32. What “Free Trade” Has Done to Central America, Foreign Policy in Focus  [back]

33. “The Real Migration Crisis is in Central America,” Foreign Affairs, April 13, 2021  [back]

34. “Deporting People Made Central America’s Gangs. More Deportation Won’t Help,” Washington Post, July 20, 2017  [back]

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/two-days-two-deaths-at-the-hands-of-the-detroit-police-en.html

From a reader:

Two Days, Two Deaths at the Hands of the Detroit Police

| revcom.us

 

In two successive days, while the court case of Derek Chauvin, the cop murderer of George Floyd, was wrapping up, the Detroit police shot and killed two young Black men one day after another. Their names have not been released yet.

On early Monday morning, April 19, a 27-year-old was shot and killed by the police after a car chase. According to the cops, he drove up on an unrelated crime scene, fired at a police car, then sped off. He was chased through Detroit until he was cornered and shot down. His mother, broken-hearted, told media how he had been completely out of his mind with grief over the killing of a close friend the night before. The chief of police floundered to slander their victim—this was a young Black man who had somehow made it to age 27 without having an arrest record—and then claimed that it was clear that he was bent on killing a cop that night.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, as the verdict against Derek Chauvin was being read, Detroit cops killed another young man in his home. This was heart-wrenching. The young man’s mother called police seeking help for her mentally ill son, who was suicidal. According to the police, when they arrived they found he had sliced open his own abdomen and was extremely gravely injured. They said he cut the leg of one of the cops who tried to get the knife. According to the cops, his partner made a “split second decision” to “save the officer’s life.” Neighbors tell it differently, describing how cops ran out of the house, grabbed rifles from squad cars, and ran back in firing so wildly that they hit one of their own.

Neighbors talked about a clearly seriously depressed, quiet man who kept to himself and whose name they didn’t even know. “We saw him all the time sitting on the porch quietly.” One guy was very sad because he knew how bad his neighbor had been hurting, but also accepted the police story and the justification (police have refused to release body-cam video). But others did not. One woman said angrily, “It didn’t have to be handled this way. You and I are mothers, if we had dealt with it, we would have talked to him, we would have helped him. But the cops have a certain mindset. They were all over the place with their guns.” “They came in like it was a war,” another young man said. “You can’t even disagree with them or they will hit you.”

I showed the neighbors I talked to BAsics 2:16 (see below), and we talked about how things could be different and the need for a real revolution. One man took several copies of “A Declaration, A Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution” to get out to friends, saying they talk about this kind of thing all the time.

Editor’s note: Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American woman shot dead by Riverside, California police in 1998. Miller had been passed out in her car, resulting from a seizure, when police claimed that she suddenly awoke and had a gun; they fired 23 times at her, hitting her at least 12 times, and murdering her. Bob Avakian addressed this:

If you can’t handle this situation differently than this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this situation, but get off the earth. Get out of the way of the masses of people. Because, you know, we could have handled this situation any number of ways that would have resulted in a much better outcome. And frankly, if we had state power and we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people. You go there and you put your own life on the line, rather than just wantonly murder one of the people. Fuck all this “serve and protect” bullshit! If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way but the way they did it to handle this scene. They could have and would have found a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the proletariat, when it’s been in power has handled—and would again handle—this kind of thing, valuing the lives of the masses of people. As opposed to the bourgeoisie in power, where the role of their police is to terrorize the masses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, without necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more broadly it affects the masses. And that’s one of the reasons why they like to engage in, and have as one of their main functions to engage in, wanton and arbitrary terror against the masses of people.

—Bob Avakian, BAsics 2:16

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/iranian-political-prisoners-face-trials-april-28-en.html

Iranian Political Prisoners Face Trials April 28 – Arbitrarily Detained, Denied Legal Rights

Emergency Appeal Demands Their Immediate, Unconditional Release, Freedom for All Political Prisoners

Appeal and Statement Endorsed by 1997 Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, Gloria Steinem, Former Prisoners & Relatives, over 1,500 other signers

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received the following update/press release from the Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners.

The Islamic Republic of Iran will hold trials for at least three and perhaps more political prisoners on April 28, according to family members and media reports. 

The three are Nahid Taghavi, a 66-year-old German-Iranian dual citizen; Mehran Raoof, a 64-year-old British-Iranian dual citizen and labor activist; and Bahareh Soleimani, a 43-year-old nurse. All three were arbitrarily detained on October 16, 2020 and subjected to various forms of abuse and torture, including solitary confinement, and denied their legal rights.  (Soleimani has been out on bail but according to her brother will be tried on April 28.)

Typical of the illegitimate legal process in Iran, all three have so far been denied access to their case files.  (Taghavi had not been brought before a judge until April 13, according to a press release from her daughter Mariam Claren.)  It is unclear whether and when access will be approved. It is also not known whether any of the defendants now named and others that are currently unnamed will even see their lawyers prior to trial. 

“This suggests a fair and impartial trial is clearly not guaranteed or likely for any of Iran’s political prisoners,” states Dolly Veale, a spokesperson for the Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners. “The Iranian regime’s courts are known for sham trials, tortured confessions that are used for long sentences or even executions. Preventing political prisoners from having access to legal counsel, or transferring them to prisons far removed from family and attorneys— amidst a raging COVID epidemic—violates standards of law and human decency,” says Veale.

“The Islamic Republic’s treatment of its political prisoners is totally illegitimate and an outrage that shocks the conscience,” Veale says, “and our campaign is demanding their immediate, unconditional release and freedom for all Iran’s political prisoners.”

The Center for Human Rights (ICHRI) in Iran warns that some prisoners now face “catastrophic and permanent health ramifications, if not death.” Taghavi, who suffers from Type 2 diabetes, “is in danger of developing kidney failure, nerve damage, heart attack, and stroke,” the Center reports.  The health of 64-year-old Raoof, who had been on a hunger strike for several days in April, “is rapidly deteriorating.” And, according to other sources, Soleimani’s lungs were already damaged from treating COVID-19 patients yet she was deprived of medical care in custody.

Ahead of these trials, Amnesty International renewed “its calls on the Iran's authorities to immediately & unconditionally release #MehranRaoof and #NahidTaghavi, who both are prisoners of conscience detained solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression & association.”

“The lives of Iran’s political prisoners are in peril and all who stand for justice and yearn for a better world must rally to the cause of freeing them,” Emergency Campaign spokesperson Veale states.

“Now is the time to spread the Emergency Appeal - The Lives of Iran’s Political Prisoners Hang in the Balance—We Must ACT Now – far and wide,” Veale emphasizes.  “The Appeal’s message condemning the Iranian government for its cruel treatment of dissent and demanding it free all its political prisoners, and also its demand for an end to U.S. threats, war moves, and sanctions is critical to put before the U.S. (and global) public.”

“This Appeal and a previous statement have already been signed by 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams; writer and feminist activist Gloria Steinem; MacArthur Fellow and Obie award winning playwright Naomi Wallace; playwright and novelist Kia Corthron; 10 former political prisoners; Mariam Claren, daughter of political prisoner Nahid Taghavi; Elika Ashoori, daughter of political prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori; Kylie Moore-Gilbert, former political prisoner; Mehri Jafari and Satar Rahmani, UK Solicitor and activist respectively, both advocating for political prisoner Mehran Raoof; and over 1,500 others including social justice activists, artists, academics, faith leaders, medical professionals, and ordinary people."

Emergency Appeal & Endorsers

Interviews available with spokespeople, prisoner's relatives and advocates

Contact: press@freeiranspoliticalprisonersnow.org
Follow the Emergency Campaign on Twitter @IranPrisonEmerg

______________________

Further Updates, Background on Iran’s Political Prisoners:

21 April 2021, Press release regarding Nahid Taghavi, 66-year-old innocent German citizen arbitrarily detained in Iran since 16 October 2020, from Mariam Claren

The Urgency of Acting Now, Executions Underscore Danger to Iran’s Political Prisoners -- Now Is the Time to Spread the Emergency Appeal Far and Wide, April 19 Update from Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners

The heroes I met fighting Iran’s brutal prison system, National News, April 16, by Kylie Moore-Gilbert, British-Australian academic imprisoned in Iran for over two years, endorser of Emergency Appeal


Nahid Taghavi


Mehran Raoof


Bahareh Soleimani

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/interview-with-vietnam-war-vet-dewey-canyon-iii-protests-en.html

Interview with a Vietnam War Vet:

50 Years Ago: Anti-war Vets Rock the U.S. Capital and the Whole Country with Dewey Canyon III Protests

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: This April 19-23 marked the 50th anniversary of the Dewey Canyon III protests in Washington, D.C., led by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The war in Vietnam is part of a whole bloody history of U.S. wars, invasions, and aggression against countries and people fighting for their liberation. The heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people, combined with upsurge of opposition within the U.S., led to the defeat of the U.S. imperialists in Vietnam. Revcom.us interviewed a Vietnam War vet who took part in Dewey Canyon III.

Q: You were part of Dewey Canyon III, the important protest by vets that happened 50 years ago against the U.S. war in Vietnam. Tell us what this protest was about and what happened.

A: I think it would be helpful if we set the stage a little bit about the period of time this was in. This was 1971. By this time, the U.S. was stuck deep in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people were waging this incredible war to drive out the U.S. invaders. And there was an anti-war movement back here in the States, and that anti-war movement had actually leaped into the military—in the sense that there was increasing GI resistance, so that by 1971 there was an article in the Armed Forces Journal by a Colonel Heinl in which he described rebellion in the ranks, drug use, fragging (killing their officers), refusing to fight... It was a very sharp article that showed GIs in Vietnam, on many different levels, refusing to fight and carry out orders. So this was the context in which Dewey Canyon III was happening.

The previous few months before this the U.S. military had put on trial Lt. Calley for war crimes, for the massacre at My Lai village in Vietnam. And they were trying to make it look like it was an “isolated” incident. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) had conducted what was called the Winter Soldier Investigation where 125 veterans testified, along with a whole bunch of other people, for three days about the massive horrors that the United States was inflicting on Vietnam, including very powerful testimony by veterans about the crimes they carried out against the Vietnamese people as part of the U.S. military. So that was one of the things that the VVAW did to “bring the war home” to the American people and call on the people that it was their responsibility to stop it. That was the purpose of the Winter Soldier Investigation.

And that was also the purpose of the demonstration that was scheduled April 19 to 23 in Washington, DC. It was called Dewey Canyon III, because there had been two previous U.S. military operations—called Dewey Canyon I and Dewey Canyon II. Dewey Canyon II was actually an invasion of Laos—American soldiers had gone into Laos along with a horrific air war that was being carried out in Laos. So we called it Dewey Canyon III—an “incursion into the country of Congress.” “Incursion” was the language the military was using about their invasion of Laos.

The idea for this protest was first proposed at a national coordinators meeting of the VVAW, where John Kerry (who would later become a U.S. senator) put forward the idea of going to DC to carry out a demonstration. His idea was that this was going to be to lobby Congress. And it turned into a bigger deal.

The idea was that we were going to DC and camp out on the Mall. We ended up staying there for five days, from Monday through Friday. We spent the week going throughout the city and carrying out guerrilla theatre operations where we dressed up in our fatigues and, along with theater people and artists who pretended to be the Vietnamese, and we would do re-enactments of the crimes that we had carried out in Vietnam. This was not the first time we had done this. We had done this previously in the fall of 1970. We had carried out a 77 mile march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, and we did similar guerrilla theater for the length of those 77 miles. So we had it down pat about how to these kinds of things.

The week involved something like 1,000 vets, and people came from all over. We were going all over the city, doing different kinds of things, and lots of people were getting arrested, including dozens at the Supreme Court. There were a couple of days when the lobbying on Congress went on. One of the things that happened as we were going around DC was that we passed a group of Daughters of the American Revolution, a right-wing group, and this woman said to us, “What are you doing? You’re going to upset the troops.” And we responded, “Lady, we are the troops!”

In camping out at the Mall for the week we had to have security at night. We had to be aware of people coming into the camp and disrupting, both innocent people who were drunk or whatever, but more importantly, we knew that the government didn’t want us there. So I was walking around one night on security and came upon three or four guys with very short hair. Young as I was,  or even younger. I got into a conversation with them, and asked them, “Why are you guys here?” One guy said, “Well, we’re here to support this.” We talked further, and finally he said, “You know, we’re on alert to put you down.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “We’re from Fort Bragg.” I asked what was going to happen. And he said, “Don’t worry, all the vehicles have been sanded. Nothing will run.” The hair on the back of my neck shot up.

Q: These were National Guard or regular military?

A: They were Army soldiers. Years later I would come to find out the Marines at Quantico (a base in Virginia) were also on alert to possibly put us down. But this was an example of how profound the GI movement was seeping into the military worldwide—not only with the GI newspapers on every U.S. military installation in the world, but there were rebellions among troops in Germany who were refusing to go to Vietnam, and many other examples. This massive GI resistance was growing. I had been deeply involved in the vets movement, but this was one of the first times I realized there’s something bigger going on here than just these veterans I’ve been organizing. The government was also trying to mobilize the DC police against us, and there was disagreement among the ranks, and they were not able to mobilize the police to come after us. Years afterward, I watched a 2013 film called Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, and in there is the story of the struggle in the Supreme Court around how they're going to decide the Ali case, of his refusal to go to Vietnam. There’s a discussion in there where two Supreme Court justices are going back and forth on this, and one of them makes a comment about the veterans that are there right on the Mall outside the door. This was part of the stage that Dewey Canyon III was happening on, right when there was tremendous struggle among the rulers around how they were going to handle the war and the resistance. Also, the DC government filed a suit with the Supreme Court to try to force us to leave the Mall. We veterans held a vote—it was a close vote, but we voted to refuse the order to leave. The next day, New York Daily News had a headline, “Veterans Overrule Supreme Court.”

Q: A big part of Dewey Canyon III was the vets throwing their medals at the Capitol.

A: The plan had been that at the end of the week, we were going to go somewhere near the Capitol, where we were going to carry body bags with stage blood in the body bags, and we would take our medals and throw them at the bags. It was symbolic, and very passive. When we came to DC we thought we were going to tell the Senators things they did not know about what the U.S. was doing in Vietnam, and that if we just told them the truth, that would help to reverse the war. It was a very profound experience that we summed up that these Senators knew exactly what was going on and that they didn’t care, and they didn’t want us veterans there. So by the end of the week that body bag idea was dumped, and it was decided to take our medals and throw them back at these mf’ers.

As the veterans lined up at the Capitol, the government had constructed a fence. We hung the word “trash” on it. And somewhere around 600 to 800 veterans lined up—it went on for several hours—to throw their medals away, over the fence toward Congress. As vets hurled their medals they made various statements. One was, “We don’t want to fight again, but if we have to it’ll be to take these steps.” Another one was, “I got a Purple Heart. I hope I get another one fighting these motherfuckers.” VVAW was sort of a coalition between two kinds of vets. The leadership and the majority of the membership was coming at this from wanting to oppose the crimes we had committed against the Vietnamese people and to expose the truth about those crimes. But there was another section of vets who wanted the war to end mainly because Americans were dying. And that was reflected in some of what was said at the medal throwing. But mainly it was people like this Black vet who said, “I apologize to the non-white people of the world for what the United States is doing to their countries.” Other people got up and said about their medals, “Here’s a bunch of shit.” This went on for hours and hours. You can watch some of the footage on YouTube.

This broke through the U.S. media in a way that nothing before had done. We were the first story on CBS, NBC, and ABC national network news, every night of that week—covering the different things we were doing, showing the guerrilla theater, throwing of the medals, etc. The actions of VVAW changed the image of the veteran in this country from one of the patriotic WW2 type to what people saw at Dewey Canyon III—anti-war, angry, and for many—unpatriotic. I think it is important to stress how there were these veterans of the U.S. military siding with the humanity (and, for many of us, the victory) of the Vietnamese people, especially now as the white supremacy and xenophobia of ex-military fascists are much in the news.


GIs refuse to return to combat, AK Valley, Vietnam, September 1969.

Dewey Canyon III, April 1971



On April 23, as part of Dewey Canyon III, 800 to 1,000 vets lined up outside the Capitol to walk up the Capitol steps and throw their medals back at the U.S. Congress and the rulers of America. Some of the comments from the vets as they threw their medals over a fence marked "trash" were: a Black vet who said, "This is my opposition for the policies of this country against the non-white peoples of the world"; "My name is Peter, I got a purple heart here and I hope I get another one fighting these motherfuckers"; "We don't want to fight again, but if we have to it'll be to take these steps."

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/basic-points-of-orientation-en.html

BASIC POINTS OF ORIENTATION

| revcom.us

 

1. This system of capitalism-imperialism is the source of endless horrors for the majority of people in this country and all around the world, and it is increasingly threatening the very existence of humanity. We are actively working for an actual revolution—to bring down, to overthrow and completely abolish, this whole system as soon as possible and replace it with something radically different and much better, a new society built on an entirely different foundation. That, and nothing less, is what is needed. So that is what we are all about—and we have the necessary scientific method, the plan, the strategy, and the leadership to succeed in this. But there aren’t enough people committed to this yet. So... this is what you need to be about. Anything else will completely fail to deal with the root of all the problems or lead to the actual solution. Given the situation facing humanity, we don’t have time to waste, so we need to get busy working for this revolution, in an organized way, and winning more and more people to do the same.

2. We are followers of BA. And you need to become followers of BA too. He is an old white guy—yes, deal with it! He is providing ongoing leadership for this revolution, and he has a whole body of work that contains the scientific method to analyze the problem and the solution, the strategy for the revolution to bring down this system, and the vision and concrete plan for that radically different and much better society, on the road to emancipate all of humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation, and to enable humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth. He’s even written a Constitution that concretely maps out what to do starting right after the seizure of power, so we can actually work on building up that whole new emancipating society. There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/there-is-the-powerful-positive-potential-en.html

There is the powerful positive potential...

| revcom.us

 

There is the powerful positive potential of what it is that Revcoms are—and need to be—fighting for, consistently, boldly, compellingly bringing forward and bringing alive. In this context, the following passage is worth reviewing and reflecting on, from Bob Avakian’s The Coming Civil War and Re-polarization for Revolution in the Present Era, Religion and the Right to Religion, DARK AGES MENTALITY AND THE LIBERATING OUTLOOK AND METHOD OF COMMUNISM”:

The religious fundamentalists, of various kinds, make a point of recruiting in the prisons, and they come with a heavy ideological message. There is something very important to be learned from the “Losing My Religion” article that appeared in our newspaper within the past year. The author of the article, who comes from a family steeped in religious fundamentalism, says that his own life experiences had provided plenty of reasons to reject religion, but it was only when there was another coherent ideology that he could take up that he completely broke with religion. And that coherent ideology wasn’t another religion—it was the scientific outlook and method of communism, which he was introduced to through writings of mine which he encountered in college. He also commented on that: he said that these writings, and the outlook and method they embody, taught him to do what religion never did—to think critically. It is not at all the case that people can only “lose their religion” by replacing it with another religion in some form. But there does have to be another explanation about the world and existence and why this is the way it is, and how it could be different. And how an individual relates to that. If you want to rupture people out of shit, not only stuff that lands them in prison, but the daily shit they are caught up in, in the society, you have to have a really strong hardcore ideological thing to bring to them. It doesn’t have to be dogmatic—it should not be dogmatic, and it should not be religious—but it has to be coherent and systematic. It has to explain the world—and in our case we can actually explain it in a scientific way [BA laughs]. That ’s an advantage of communism over religion, even though religion has certain short‑term advantages because it can appeal to things we can’t appeal to, things that go along with spontaneity. But we have the advantage of actually being able to make reality make sense for people. That’s a very powerful thing.

We should not underestimate the importance, not only with prisoners but in general, of doing a lot of ideological work to really enable people to see the world in a wholly different way— really the way it is. To take the pieces of this puzzle that are all out of whack and don’t fit together— it’s like looking through a weird kaleidoscope the way most people see reality. And then it’s misinterpreted for them by all these different bourgeois and reactionary ideologies and programs, and so on, including various religious views. But communist ideology and its application to the world is a way of taking reality and having it make sense for people. That’s what the CD1 of my speech on religion aims to do, that’s what we urgently need to do in general. [Emphasis (boldface, italics, and underlining) added here]

 


1. This refers to a talk on religion given in 2004 by BA which was later encompassed in Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (Insight Press, 2008)  [back]

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/andrew-brown-jr-is-executed-by-police-in-north-carolina-en.html

Just a Day After the Conviction of the Cop Who Murdered George Floyd:
Andrew Brown, Jr. is Executed by Police in North Carolina

| revcom.us

 

"It’s like we’re against all odds in this world," Andrew Brown Jr.’s son Khalil Ferebee said at an April 26 press conference of family and attorneys in Elizabeth City, North Caroina. "My dad got executed just by trying to save his own life. The officers were not in no harm of him at all. It’s just messed up how this happened... He got executed. It ain’t right. It ain’t right at all."

On April 20 in Elizabeth City, sheriffs blasted away at Anthony Brown, Jr. as he sat with his hands on the steering wheel of his car and then tried to flee for his life. He was a Black man in America, with a family, people who loved him. And now his name joins those of thousands over the years killed at the hands of police. And this happened just one day after the pig who murdered George Floyd in front of the whole world was convicted in Minneapolis.

As happens over and over and over in America—the police story is based on bullshit, is a coverup, is self-contradictory, and is out of line with all evidence. For almost a week after the killing of Anthony Brown, Jr, the country sheriff withheld all video of the shooting and produced no explanation for why sheriffs riddled his car with bullets as he was driving away from them. The sheriff said Brown was killed while police were serving him with an arrest warrant for selling drugs—as if an arrest warrant is a death sentence. And the sheriff—at this point—is not even claiming to have found drugs or a gun at Brown’s house or in the car where they murdered him. None of the sheriffs involved is under arrest.

On April 26, in response to outrage and protest, Pasquotank County Attorney Michael Cox finally showed members of Brown’s family a 20-second clip from one deputy's body camera. The officials allowed only one of the family attorneys to join the family in viewing the clip. One family attorney, Bakari Sellers, said in a press conference after the video viewing that Cox told him he was “not going to be fucking bullied”—Sellers said “I’ve never been talked to like I was in there.” Another family attorney, Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, said the video—and this is a short clip edited by officials—shows at least five deputies pointing their weapons directly at Brown yelling at him to show his hands, despite Brown’s hands being on the steering wheel, and then shooting at him. She said that Brown eventually tried to get away to save his own life by backing out of the driveway, maneuvering around the sheriff’s truck and away from the deputies. “There was at no time in the 20 seconds we saw where he was threatening the officers in any kind of way,” she said, but “they continued to shoot him even after he had crashed into a tree.”

In response to righteous and peaceful protests involving hundreds of Black and white people in Elizabeth City and in anticipation of more outrage, city authorities declared a state of emergency—in effect threatening people protesting racist police violence with police violence.

It was a victory for the people that the pig Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd. More than anything, that verdict showed the power of the people in the streets in our millions. But then the next day, pigs in North Carolina shot Andrew Brown, Jr. in the back, murdering him for no reason. And Brown is one of at least six people killed by police within 24 hours after the Chauvin verdict, including Ma'Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, in Columbus, Ohio.


Andrew Brown, Jr.

RACIAL OPPRESSION CAN BE ENDED— BUT NOT UNDER THIS SYSTEM

by Bob Avakian

Read more

See also:

As the Killer Pig Is Righteously Found Guilty... ...The Guilt Of This System Can NOT Be Denied
WE NEED TO ORGANIZE NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!

Read more

 

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Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/may-day-2021-en.html

International Revolutionary MAY DAY 2021

| revcom.us

 

An invitation to all—attend celebrations on International Revolutionary May 1st... and start organizing others to attend, too.

On International Revolutionary MAY DAY 2021

The REVCOMS announce:

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

Let’s get down to basics:
We need a revolution — nothing less!

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Find Out About a Real Revolution
The Leadership of Bob Avakian
and the Revolution Clubs

We Are Human Beings
We Refuse to Accept Slavery In Any Form

www.revcom.us      youtube.com/therevcoms      @TheRevcoms

When and Where to Celebrate

Local information (we will post as it becomes available)

Los Angeles:

Saturday, May 1
2:00 pm
Magic Johnson Park, Avalon Blvd. Entrance
(North of El Segundo Blvd.)
*Wear a mask and practice social distancing*

New York

Saturday, May 1
2:00pm - 5:00 pm
St. Nicholas Park
133rd and St. Nicholas Ave, Harlem

Chicago:

Saturday, May 1
3:00 pm
Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E 71st Street

Boston

Saturday, May 1
4:00 pm
Parade Ground, Boston Commons (Corner of Beacon and Charles Street)

Cleveland

Saturday, May 1
2 - 6 pm
Edgewater Park
lower level—look for the tent and banner
wear a mask and practice social distancing

Houston 

Saturday, May 1
2:00 p.m.
Our Park, 2604 Alabama (at corner of Alabama and Live Oak, next to SHAPE Community Center)
*Please wear mask and practice social distancing*

Seattle

Saturday, May 1
4:00 p.m.
Seattle Center, corner of 4th Avenue North and Broad Street near the Space Needle

Why People Are Coming to Revolutionary Internationalist May 1 Gatherings Across the Country and Why YOU Should Too!

Fr. Luis Barrios, NYC, invites you to International Revolutionary May Day 2021

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/rnl-show-episode-50-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 50 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show!

May 1st, 2021 & Getting Organized for Revolution; Internationalism; 50th Anniversary of Dewey Canyon III

Thursday, April 29, 2021
5 pm PDT / 8 pm EDT
YouTube.com/TheRevcoms

 

WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS! WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT SLAVERY IN ANY FORM! Get ready to celebrate revolutionary internationalist MAY DAY 2021.

This is our 50th episode! And at the heart of it will be "A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution." We must seize the time, these rare times in which revolution is possible, to organize and prepare for a real revolution to free humanity here and all over the world from this people-killing, planet-destroying, spirit-crushing system of capitalism-imperialism.

Plus, Bob Avakian on internationalism!

And the hidden story of mass G.I. resistance to the U.S.’s war against the people of Vietnam, brought alive through an interview with revolutionary Vietnam vet Joe Urgo and historical footage.

In this episode:

* Commentary from host Andy Zee on the occasion of May 1st.

* Sunsara Taylor and Andy Zee highlight sections from "A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution" and discuss the bold assertion that we need to get organized now for a real revolution.

*An excerpt from Bob Avakian's 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution on what we need to do now to get organized for a real revolution. 

* Revolution Clubs nationwide read the Points of Attention, which are basic principles that members uphold and live by.

* An excerpt from Bob Avakian’s 2012 speech BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! in which he discusses “internationalism” and what it means to be an internationalist.

* On the 50th anniversary of Dewey Canyon III, protests led by anti-war veterans that shook DC and the whole country, we bring you a powerful interview with Joe Urgo.

* Sunsara and Andy on GOING ALL OUT for May 1st!

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/george-floyd-justice-in-policing-act-en.html

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act:
A "Bold" Move... to Protect a System That Can't Stop Brutalizing Black People!

| revcom.us

 

Here’s a basic truth from Bob Avakian (BA):

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian (1:24)

This is why—from the standpoint of the rulers and defenders of this system—the rampant disrespect, brutality, and murder unleashed by this country’s 18,000 police agencies and million-plus cops is a featurenot a bug.

Enter the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

On June 5, Democrats in Congress drafting what is called the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act(JPA) emailed colleagues explaining why it was needed: “Cities are literally on fire with the pain and anguish wrought by the violence visited upon black and brown bodies. ... it’s time we create structural change with meaningful reforms.” Let’s say it plain—this bill was not a response to the police murder of George Floyd, or the tens of thousands of police murders that preceded it—it was a response to the uprising of millions against this terror.

And regardless of the intentions of any individual supporter of JPA, its objective role is primarily to maintain the oppressive order that the police serve, in three ways:

First, by trying to show that “the system works,” that its representatives are “doing something,” and that its oppressive institutions can be meaningfully reformed.

Second, by working to redirect the energy of those whose craving for justice has run them smack up against the irredeemably unjust nature of the dominant system. It aims to funnel people off of the streets and into pressuring Congress to enact at best small “adjustments” to the reign of police terror.

Third, by taking some small steps to rein in the most extreme and outrageous crimes of the cops ... in order to preserve their façade of “serving and protecting” the people, and to minimize incidents that could set off future mass risings.

What JPA Promises, and What It Will Actually Do

JPA promises a lot of things that touch a chord with people—ending chokeholds and “no knock” warrants; eliminating “qualified immunity” for cops and racial profiling; de-militarizing the police. But what is the reality? 

Chokeholds:

The chokehold murders of George Floyd—and so many others—reveal that pigs have zero regard for the lives and dignity of their victims, and they should be banned. But banning them won’t change the nature and role of the police—they have plenty of other tools at their disposal to brutalize, degrade and kill—Tasers, mace, dogs, clubs, guns.

And JPA’s ban most likely won’t even work. Consider this: the New York Police Department (NYPD) banned all chokeholds 28 years ago. But from June 2009 to June of 2014, there were over 1,100 complaints about chokeholds to the civilian review board—which dismissed all but ten of them. In July 2014, four NYPD cops used a chokehold to murder Eric Garner. The only person ever arrested in that incident was Ramsey Orta, who took the video of the killing.

No-Knock Warrants:

At least 60,000 times a yearheavily armed cops bust into people’s homes, often hurling flash grenades or tear gas, killing dozens every year. What an outrage ... what a revelation of the real role of the police! But contrary to claims, JPA will not eliminate this mass terror and may not even reduce it significantly. First of all, JPA bans only “no-knock” warrants but still allows “quick-knock” warrants. All the cops have to do is knock and shout “police” before breaking down your door, and that is okay under JPA. Second, JPA doesn’t even ban no-knocks in all cases—only for drug raids. So pigs will just need to reword their warrants to include suspicion of a weapon on the premises, and no-knock is available.

Ending Militarization of Police:

JPA is supposed to stop the Department of Defense (DOD) from distributing surplus military weaponry to state and local police forces, but as Human Rights Watch noted, it allows “armored vehicles to continue to be transferred if the Secretary of Defense considers it necessary.” And in any case, DOD has already distributed about 7.4 billion dollars in weapons of war to 8,000 police departments, which we have seen used again and again against protestors in big cities and small towns across the U.S.

Qualified Immunity:

Qualified immunity for police is an outrageous doctrine established by the U.S. Supreme Court that makes it very difficult to sue cops for violating people’s civil rights even in the most outrageous cases.1 If the current version of JPA passes the Senate,2 it will include language that could get around this reactionary doctrine.

That would be a good thing, but is unlikely to have much impact on the level of police brutality. Even now, many civil lawsuits filed by victims of police brutality or families of those murdered by cops do get past qualified immunity. One analysis of 31 cities found they paid out three billion dollars for police brutality lawsuits over a ten year period—an average of ten million dollars per city per year.Cities clearly view these legal payouts as just an extension of their “normal” policing costs—the price they willingly pay to “protect the system” and “enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression” (to quote BA).

Federal Supervision:

Certain elements of JPA aim to increase federal supervision of police, to promote training and policies that discourage racial profiling and reckless use of deadly force, and to allow the federal government to investigate “problematic” departments. This is basically a broadening of things the federal government has already done, like the “patterns and practices” investigation that Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, just initiated in Louisville, Kentucky. These investigations can lead to “consent decrees” whereby the federal government sets and tries to enforce certain standards and policies, usually in cities where extreme police brutality has led to mass protest.

One example of this was Los Angeles, where the notoriously brutal LAPD was put under a consent decree after scandals exposed widespread torture, corruption, frameups and other crimes. This lasted from 2000 to 2013, and some changes did occur. For instance, in 2019 LAPD bragged that they “only” killed 12 people, down from 25 in 2015. But in this same period, use of batons went up by 38%. So, somewhat less murder, a lot more beatings, is the best we can hope for from JPA. Readers should check out Bob Avakian’s discussion during the Q&A of his speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, in which he breaks down what these consent decrees on police departments are actually about.

Conclusion

To go back to the BA quote at the start of this article:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

And the role of the Justice in Policing Act is to defuse the righteous anger and rebellion against the brutality and murder by the police, and protect politically the same system that the pigs protect violently.

If you really want to get rid of “all of their brutality and murder,” you have to be about making revolution, and getting rid of that system.

 


1. In basic terms, this is accomplished by saying that the cops had to knowingly violate people’s civil rights, and that the legal test for this is whether there was a previous federal court ruling in an almost identical case which ruled a certain action to be a civil rights violation. Since there are always differences between cases, the courts have been able to use this repeatedly to protect cops from being sued. (For more on this see this Reuters article.)  [back]

2. At this writing the Democrats are negotiating with Black Republi-fascist Senator Tim Scott for his backing, which is likely to be necessary for JPA to pass in any form. Reportedly, the ban on Qualified Immunity is likely to be sacrificed or watered down through these negotiations.  [back]


People confront pigs during a protest against the police murder of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, Sept. 23, 2020.

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

Read this Declaration and Call, find out more:
Basic version | Extended version

Available in Brochure format (PDF):
Basic version | Extended version

RACIAL OPPRESSION CAN BE ENDED— BUT NOT UNDER THIS SYSTEM

by Bob Avakian

Read more

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/697/mario-gonzalez-was-killed-with-a-pigs-knee-on-his-back-en.html

While the Jury Deliberated in the Trial of Pig Who Murdered George Floyd, Mario Gonzalez Was Killed with a Pig's Knee on His Back

| revcom.us

 

From a reader:

On April 19, the day before pig Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, Mario Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Latino man, was murdered by three cops in the city of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area. While the eyes of the world were focused on the horrific video of George Floyd having the life squeezed out of him beneath Chauvin’s knee, for the Alameda cops it was like a training video.

Once again, our eyes are filled with tears and we are filled with rage, at the loss of a young person to brutal police. These pigs deny our humanity, blatantly lie, and cover up their crimes. A life full of dreams and possibilities has been cut short.

“The police killed my brother, in the same manner they killed George Floyd,” Gerardo Gonzalez, said at a press conference. “We are humans,” Mario’s mother, Edith Arenales, said. “They broke my family for no reason.”

While not everything is known about Mario Gonzalez’s murder by pigs, these are undisputed facts:

There was no reason to stop and question Mario: There were two 911 calls. In the first, the caller said of Mario, “He’s not doing anything wrong.” In the second call, the caller said Mario had “two Walgreens baskets with some alcohol bottles.”

There was no reason to try to take Mario into custody: The police approached Mario and spoke with him for several minutes. Mario spoke calmly and made no threatening moves. Then the cops suddenly took Mario to the ground.

There was no reason for the police to put a knee on Mario’s back with his face in the dirt, a position they, and the world, know is potentially fatal. They held him face down for 6 minutes and 17 seconds, kneeling on his back and shoulder. When one of the cops suggested that they turn Mario on his side, the other cop refused to do it. Mario pleaded for the police to stop until he lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Pigs lied to cover up murder. Just like Minneapolis police did in the murder of George Floyd, the Alameda police lied in their initial reports on what happened to Mario Gonzalez. In Floyd’s murder, the police reported that he died of “medical distress” after being cuffed, leaving out the 9+ minutes that Chauvin had his knee on George’s neck, causing his death. The Alameda Police Department reported of Mario’s death that “officers attempted to detain the man, and a physical altercation ensued. At that time, the man had a medical emergency.” Again, no mention of the 6+ minutes that Mario was face down with the police kneeling on him.

Mario was one of at least 64 people who were killed by cops during the Chauvin trial, including 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago. Just in the 24 hours after the conviction of Chauvin, six more people were murdered by cops, including 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, and 42-year-old Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

The facts of these killings are evidence that the crimes that police commit are not just “exceptions,” “tragic accidents,” or the result of “poor training.” Murder, brutality, and mass incarceration are the purpose of cops in this society, one that is based on capitalism, slavery, white supremacy, and genocide, from its very beginnings to the present day.

This string of murder must STOP! There can be no end to these outrages under this system. Our grief, rage, and determination need to be directed to working toward a real revolution. Humanity needs revolution, nothing less!


Mario Gonzalez, left, with family.


Police with knee on Mario Gonzalez's back shortly before he lost consciousness—still picture from police body cam video.

RACIAL OPPRESSION CAN BE ENDED— BUT NOT UNDER THIS SYSTEM

by Bob Avakian

Read more

See also:

As the Killer Pig Is Righteously Found Guilty... ...The Guilt Of This System Can NOT Be Denied
WE NEED TO ORGANIZE NOW FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION!

Read more

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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