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See—and share—this talk
THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America
A Better World IS Possible
A Talk by Bob Avakian
In this Film, Bob Avakian Analyzes the Deep Roots and Driving Forces of Trump/Pence Fascism and What Must Be Done to Stop It.
Watch It Here, and Spread It.
| revcom.us
Be part of bringing the most serious answers to the most urgent questions to tens and hundreds of thousands, and ultimately millions.
This talk from Bob Avakian (BA) provides a scientific understanding of the roots of this fascist regime—in the history of the U.S. and the deeper roots in the system of capitalism-imperialism. He does so with passion, humor, humanity, and a deep sense of history. He cuts into the deepest, most agonizing questions, first in the speech and then in a wide-ranging Questions and Answers.
If more people watched this talk, it could change today’s political equation. But far too few have seen this talk, or even know about it. You are needed to be part of changing this.
Donate towards promotion of this film:
Scroll down for the film trailer, videos of the Q&A session following the speech, and clips from the film
Click to view the full speech.
The film and all video clips are also available for download HERE
NEW: Download, share, and watch each Q&A in a separate clip.
To download these clips, click the "v" icon on the bottom right of the clip to get to the Vimeo page, and scroll down to the button for "Download"
Q&A: What do you say to the comedians who ridicule Trump/Pence but also run the risk of contributing to normalizing fascism?
Q&A: The Democrats are supposed to be the lesser of two evils, but I don't want to vote for them. I know the system sucks, but what do we do in the interim?
This Nightmare Must End—And Only the People Can, and Must, Help End It! November 4—It Begins!
October 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Two weeks ago, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that he worried that Trump had put the world on the road to nuclear war. The Republican head of the committee. Trump meanwhile rejected his own secretary of state’s efforts to negotiate with North Korea, saying that “they only understand one thing” (presumably war), and then he set in motion a chain of events that could break a treaty with Iran and end up with a catastrophe in that part of the world as well. To those who talk about elections: Will there even be a world left in 2018?
This week Trump’s chief of staff, ex-marine general and former warden of the Guantánamo torture chamber, John Kelly, went to bat and defended Trump. But that’s not all: He falsely attacked a congresswoman; he ranted about “the good old days” when the army, religion, and women were “sacred” and where those “sacred” women were not allowed to control their own bodies; and then he refused to take questions from anyone who was not connected to a military family. This is NOT civilian control of the military, this is military dictatorship. And to prove the point, when reporters pointed out to Trump’s press spokesperson that Kelly had lied, she told them it was “inappropriate” to question a four-star marine general! To those who hoped that Kelly and the other generals would prevent Trump from doing anything wrong: Now what?
The reassertion of white supremacy,1 the horrors perpetrated on women2 and on immigrants3 and on gay and transgender people,4 the destruction of the environment,5 the wanton and endless assaults on the very notion of truth... these are almost hourly.
There are millions, tens of millions, who experience this as a nightmare. But way too many of those millions have not heard that there is a way out, there is an answer—that there are mass demonstrations set to begin November 4 to drive this regime OUT... to end the nightmare. YOU NEED TO BE PART OF LETTING THEM KNOW! The stakes right now for humanity are the highest in living memory. Nobody can stand aside.
This weekend took a step toward changing that situation, toward letting people know about this. Supporters of Refuse Fascism got the word out in major cities in a coordinated way and began to impact. This must intensify. Those who hear and resonate to the message must be organized to actively spread the word themselves. The more that people see the materials announcing the 4th show up everywhere, the more that they hear about this on the news (through things like Carl Dix’s confrontation with Jerry Jones over “taking a knee” and more), or through social media... those who right now despair can be won to not just understand the stakes (though that is essential)—they can be shown the way to rise to those stakes. People can get and spread the stickers, the flyers, the brochures of Refuse Fascism; they can learn about and watch the filmed speech of Bob Avakian, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible; and they can hook up with Refuse Fascism... they can get organized for November 4 and the days beyond.
1. For example, Trump’s genocidal refusal to provide the level of aid needed by people in Puerto Rico facing a desperate situation in the wake of Hurricane Maria, even as he rates his regime’s relief efforts there as scoring a perfect “10 out of 10”; and his calling NFL players, mostly Black, who are protesting the police murder of people of color “sons of bitches” and calling for them to be fired, even as he calls the Nazi-KKK marchers in Charlottesville “very fine people.” [back]
2. One recent example: the Trump/Pence regime intervened to block a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant from getting an abortion she needed and wanted, after advocates went through extraordinary efforts to help her get permission for the procedure. Read about it here. [back]
3. In an October 20 speech in Texas, Attorney General Sessions confirmed that Trump is forging ahead to build a border wall, praised the anti-sanctuary cities law Texas recently passed, and reaffirmed other extreme anti-immigrant policies of the regime. [back]
4. As revealed in a recent New Yorker article, at a meeting with a legal scholar, when the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump pointed to Vice President Pence, who was in the same room, and “joked,” “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!” [back]
5. In early October, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, announced that the Trump/Pence regime will move to end the Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations that put some restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide—one of the main greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. [back]
October 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Here are some key things you can do immediately to be part of building for the massive, sustained nonviolent outpourings to begin on November 4.
1. See—and share—the film of the new talk from Bob Avakian (BA). THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible.This talk addresses the most urgent question of the day: how to understand, and what to do about, the threat to humanity posed by the Trump/Pence regime. The daily, almost hourly, headlines cry out with urgency. Go here for ways YOU can be part of getting this film out to many, many people right away.
2. Spread the slogan and the date far and wide:
NOVEMBER 4, It Begins... This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
Use posters, stickers, flyers, chalking, light projections, banner drops, radio call-ins, social media, church bulletins, announcements at events, and much, much more. Go here for posters, flyers, banners, and graphics.
3. Be part of spreading the word and distributing thousands of copies of the Call for November 4 to students, religious congregations, professional organizations, and everywhere people gather. Here are a couple of examples of what people are doing: going out to a Democratic Club; connecting with students at a high school.
5.Donate to and raise funds for November 4. Refuse Fascism says: “From shaking the can out on the street to calling individuals for major donations to house parties and yard sales and other activities, every donation raised strengthens this movement and expands the community of involvement.”
6. Use the Indictments of the Crimes of the Trump/Pence Regime to educate, organize, and stage political protests that provoke people broadly to understand the emergency we face and the extraordinary struggle required to redress it. Every protest should build for November 4.
7. Be part of protests against the outrages of the Trump/Pence regime and spread the word about November 4—like this protest against Trump’s genocidal actions against the people of Puerto Rico.
Stop Hoping For Saviors, Stop Trying Not To Think Too Hard About It... and Get Involved in Actually DRIVING OUT the Trump/Pence Regime
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On November 4, thousands will take the streets, demanding that the Trump/Pence regime be driven out and vowing not to stop until they are. Those thousands need to and aim to grow into millions in order to wrench humanity off what is truly a disastrous course. That is true.
What is not true is that someone or some event “from above” will intervene without our taking action. And the past two weeks have witnessed one false hope after another evaporate.
We saw Senator Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly reiterate his fear that due to Trump’s comments and behavior, “we could be heading toward World War III”! Yet nobody in the ruling class—Republican or Democrat, including Corker himself—has risen to call on people to drop what they were doing and unite to stop this horror. Indeed, even as Corker’s speech echoed, or was echoed by, criticisms leveled by other Republican “heavyweights and wise men,” including George W. Bush, not only did nothing happen—the net effect was that nearly everyone agreed that Trump was now stronger. In other words, the Republican Party was yet further fascisized in the image of Trump. The great irony in this was when anti-Trump Republican senator Jeff Flake raised the question of how will we answer our children when they ask us what we did to resist and reverse this—and then promptly announced that he was retiring!
We saw Trump chief of staff John Kelly—whom many were counting on as a firewall of sorts against Trumpian madness—come out full force with his own brand of Trumpian cult-of-the-military fascism, and make clear that he would defend his boss against any and all, including by resorting to unapologetic slander and lies.
We saw the New Yorker publish a devastating profile of Mike Pence, disabusing anyone of the notion that a “Pence presidency” would somehow be less devastating than Trumpian rule. The theocratic contempt for women and gays, coupled with the end-times fanaticism, literally gave people nightmares—as well it should.
We saw the New York Times put out a front-page headline that “Hopes Dwindle For 3 Inquiries on Russia Ties”—explaining that the Congressional probes into Russia were being sidetracked and were unlikely to come to much after all, at least in any kind of near term. Now, as we go to press, there are reports of indictments and rumors that special counsel Robert Mueller may be fired—but even there, absent massive demonstrations beginning on the 4th, nothing good will come of this (and in the short term could even increase the likelihood of desperate moves by the “Trump team”).
We saw a major Democratic donor say he would support Democratic candidates who called for impeachment. The near total silence in response from powerful Democrats to this offer was as deafening as their silence in response to Corker’s repeated warnings.
We saw the great god Zeus himself decline to come down and save humanity—well, no, we didn’t actually see that, but some of the hopes that people are clinging to are not much more implausible than that prospect.
The point is this: the nightmare already is very, very far along, and went further this week. Nothing will stop this but millions of people, in massive, nonviolent, sustained protests across the country, beginning November 4. If we do this, then yes—the differences and conflicts with Trump among those who rule the country can come into play and be part of driving out the regime, stopping and then reversing the consolidation of fascism.
The great need for this—as well as the roots of this fascism—is laid out in depth in Bob Avakian’s new speech. The questions on what comes next, of how to rally and unite people of very diverse viewpoints, of how to understand the need for sacrifice—these are all deeply grappled with and answered in the extensive question-and-answer session.
The opportunity to do this—to be part of radically altering and reversing what is now a truly catastrophic course by throwing in with November 4—is there. We are, in fact, accountable to those who are now suffering terribly under the Trump/Pence madness, to those who will suffer further—from North Korea to Iran to the ghettos and barrios and Native American Indian reservations of this country—from the madness, and to the future generations whose lives are even now being blighted and, still worse, put into serious question.
Thousands can grow to millions. Every great movement starts up against inertia and disbelief, breaks through, and then grows through waves, with crests and troughs, through withstanding and coming back stronger after attacks, but always fighting to surge higher. There is no guarantee that we will win. But there IS a virtual guarantee that if we don’t act, at first in our thousands and then in our millions, the results will be catastrophic.
Spreading the Word and Building for November 4 and Beyond
Updated October 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Threats of nuclear war; reassertion of white supremacy; putrid abuse and hatred of women; attacks on immigrants and Muslims; attacking the rights of LGBTQ people; gleeful destruction of the environment in pursuit of profit—millions of people recognize this as a living nightmare. On the weekend of October 20-23, coast to coast, people went to green markets, to football games, to zombie festivals; people went on trains and public transportation, through middle class neighborhoods and into ghettos and barrios, bringing the message that THIS NIGHTMARE MUST END: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
This was a stride toward letting some of those millions know there is a way out. And it needs to intensify in the days before November 4. People who hear about November 4 must themselves organize and get the word out to millions more. The future of humanity, the future of the planet really is at stake. There is no one else—the nightmare must end, and only the people can, and must, end it.
Brown Berets call for walkouts building up to Nov 4. Video from RefuseFascism.org
NYC, October 25
Revolution Club at Columbia University in NYC showing the trailer for the film "THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible" A Talk by Bob Avakian
In the context of a fascist regime in power, you cannot have “civil discourse” with fascists...
To advocate for civil discourse at a time when these ideas have the backing of the state – such as through threatening tweets from the president in support of these speakers – serves to fan the flames of fascism...
Thursday, October 19, at Kenwood Academy High School, Chicago police swarmed Kenwood students after school, using force and intimidation tactics to attempt to stop the students from talking with organizers about the November 4 protests to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.
The Revolution Club went right back out to Kenwood High School the day after the police tried to literally drown out their interactions with the students. This time the police stayed away while the school security messed with the organizers and students, but they couldn't stop the students from signing the banner and getting organized for November 4th...
Donald Trump has used the lyrics to “The Snake” many times in speeches to demonize immigrants. He is twisting the song, and turning the message upside down!
The words and music are by the legendary Oscar Brown Jr, father of Maggie & Africa. They have been outraged at Trump's misuse and distortion of the meaning of Oscar's words. Video from RefuseFascism.org
“Just want to thank the Refuse Fascism national office for your advice to focus this 4-day weekend on solving 2 problems:
“1) People are agonizing about all the sharpening ways this regime is advancing, and they don't know about Nov 4 and the plans for protests day after day and night after night—AND their decisive role in this; and
“2) We must make significant advances in organizing new people to become organizers for Nov 4, bringing in many more of those who are agonizing and looking for a way to act.
“There were only two of us yesterday from the Detroit chapter. We went to the Eastern Market, and went over that advice before we started...
“I asked myself, how could I spread the word? I spend a lot of time driving, so I painted it on.”
Houston, October 21: Zombie Festival Street Party
We went to a zombie festival street party. One person dressed up as a zombie, carrying a sign that read, this nightmare must end, the trump/pence regime must go. Nov 4th it begins. Ppl came up and said, yes this nightmare must end, and we told them, then you need to be part of making this happen-nov 4th. As others got out cards and pamphlets, once again challenging people to get actively organize for going to austin for nov 4th. Where will you be nov 4th?...
Posters Up in 90 Stores – Enlisting People As We Went
Our team of 2, plus another friend who joined midway, just finished a trip down a couple miles of a major street in our city. We got almost 90 posters for November 4 out, mostly up, in stores, restaurants and street vendor carts. It was probably the most positive and heartfelt response we've gotten in a long time or ever. This area is a fast-gentrifying stretch that runs thru a large college campus, many small smoke shops, bodegas, wine shops, nail salons, laundries and restaurants which are being encroached on by chain stores in past 5-10 years.
Refuse Fascism Booth outside the Taste Of Soul. Organizing the thousands of people at the Festival. People took "Organizers Kit" and took up the call to bring this message to their Churches, One person said "I Don't go to church on Sundays, I go to the Casino" He took stacks of the Call for Nov 4, to his Casino.
Refuse Fascism out at a busy Metro station in Koreatown, Reaching hundreds of people and chalking the message of November 4th.
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revolution Club Gets Out With Nov 4 in Chicago
Over the past week, the Revolution Club has been out at high schools, colleges, hubs, neighborhoods, protests and events... to reach thousands of people with the message: This Nightmare Must End, The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO! Nov 4: It Begins, and to organize people to become organizers. The more we have grounded ourselves in the REALITY of the urgency to drive out this regime—the danger for humanity it poses and the potential powerful upsurge of millions who want to see it go—the more we have been able to compellingly make the case to others and call people forward to take this up themselves. We have put straight forward that America was never great and the Revolution Club is working for revolution to overthrow this whole system, and right now we have to get rid of the Trump/Pence Regime. We have called on people to step forward to help get the word out to millions NOW, and almost everywhere we’ve been, people have done that. We’ve worked to give people a vision of how the regime can be driven from power and struggled with people where necessary about acting in the interests of humanity and how people like themselves acting now can be felt throughout society and draw forward thousands and millions more. And we’ve worked to bring forward people in the face of and in response to repression on various levels. As we’ve gone along, we’ve more and more promoted the new talk and Q & A from BA, hosting some collective showings and doing some showings with individuals.
Scene at a Chicago High School
One high school we went to had a diverse mix of students, a history of gang conflicts and a sizeable number of students who are from, or have relatives in, Puerto Rico. We went in the morning, a rainy morning, and got out some stickers and cards to students.
When we went back in the afternoon, students came out of the school wearing the stickers, including one guy who had made a design on his shirt out of all the different styles of stickers we had distributed. We had a really big sign for Nov 4 and stood in a spot where everyone could hear us on the bullhorn. We talked over the bullhorn about the nature of this regime in power, getting into more deeply what that means. And this led to more substance in people’s responses. People took out their phones and were recording and when the person on the bullhorn would pause, they would say, “Keep going!” We called on people to get with the movement to drive out Trump/Pence, enlist yourself in making Nov 4 happen. People were raising fists and saying, “Yea get with the movement.” Students got on the bullhorn—and while there was some silliness, there was also some real substance, including about Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ people.
Students wanted posters, asked if they could take some cards, they were listening to the agitation, they pulled out their phones to get connected on social media. People that gave numbers answered right away so they could lock us in. A guy who said he got it in the morning, for the walkouts, texted later he’s in support of the student strike. He said he would watch the BA film and get back to us. When we went back the next day we worked out getting together with him and watched some of the film together.
The principal had tried to run us off but we didn’t go. In a follow-up phone call with one of the students, we learned that the next morning the principal followed this up by making a long announcement over the sound system to the entire school saying, “Don’t listen to these political people.” Students weren’t having it. Many of them were saying to each other that this was bullshit, that Trump is a racist and the principal is probably for Trump.
The Revolution Club has decided to go back this week with a challenge to the principal to meet us after school for a debate on whether youth have a role to play in what future they get or if they should just be told to accept a fascist America.
The student who told us about what the principal did has been passing out stickers and cards for Nov 4: It Begins. She was talking about Puerto Rico and how pissed off she gets about Trump not helping, golfing while Puerto Rican people need help after the hurricane. “He’s not doing anything about it because he’s racist and trying to change things in a way it’s becoming clear he’s not for the people.” We talked to her about fascism. She’s heard of it only as an insult, so we got into what it means, the direction and momentum it has. We talked about Hitler and I asked her if she learned about that. She said “yea they separated people and that’s what they’re doing now and it’s serious, they’re causing problems, war, putting fear in people.” The flyers she got, she said she got them all around school and told them it’s for people to march. She also got them out at her church on Thursday and telling them we need more people. She got it out at two other high schools. She told me about a nearby alternative school and said we should go there—she has a woman in mind who does a program there. We made plans to hook up and arrange a connection with this woman.
At a South Side high school where police attempted to intimidate students away from finding out about and participating in Nov 4: It Begins, the movement to drive the Trump/Pence Regime from power, students sign a banner that says, “Hey Trump, from those you like to demonize: You and your GANG in the White House are the REAL thugs and threat to humanity. In the name of humanity, WE WILL DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!”
Students getting organized in front of a South Side high school to be part of getting the word out to millions about This Nightmare Must End, The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO, Nov 4: It Begins - taking stacks of stickers to distribute and get out all over school.
Watching the New Bob Avakian Talk with High School Students and Getting Organized for Nov 4
We met a student at a protest on the anniversary of the police murder of Laquan McDonald. When we got back together with her we watched the one-hour speech by BA. She liked it and asked questions throughout. During the part about Obama she said, "oh, people take that wrong about we’re hoping for success.” We said, well he did say “we’re all on same team,” normalizing fascism. Then she was like, oh, ok, she hadn’t thought of it that way. She said early on this is really good, but some of this stuff I already know, not new to me. But at the end she said I was thinking about all he’s going through, things I think are common knowledge but not. The question she asked right after the film, after we drive out Trump and Pence, what’s going to happen next? We answered it but also told her it’s answered in the Q&A for BA’s filmed talk.
We talked to her about revolution, she doesn’t think working within the system works. She was talking about police and said she doesn't think they’re trained to kill, but trained to make it OK. Wanted to know that if we drive out Trump and Pence will we stop there, because white supremacy won’t end after Trump and Pence are out. Talked to her about revolution which she was in agreement with and was interested in joining the Revolution Club, but also that driving out Trump and Pence is what the revolution has to go through right now because they are a threat to humanity. She’s very insightful, knowledgeable. Her boyfriend was studying things not taught in school like slavery and then she got into doing her own research. She told her grandma about planning to walk out of school. Her grandma is very religious, but hates Trump and is in favor of walkout. Last time she was in a walkout she didn’t tell grandma but she saw her on the news. The first walkout was re: Trump, she asked the principal and didn’t get permission, but did it anyway. She will ask, but committed. Asked for more materials to get to friends, she knows friends who go to another school, she understands this needs to get out there, people need to know about Nov 4 and see the BA film.
Another student we met at the Oct 22 Take A Knee protest at the Bears game. When she met us she was really worried about healthcare. We sent her the trailer for the BA film that day and she said she couldn’t wait to watch the whole thing. When we got together we watched the full hour together. She had passed out the stickers, her friends were wearing the sticker and asking her what it was. What she said about people she’s been talking to is they don’t see the possibility. She told her school about it, her family about it.
After the film, she was talking about the history she got from it, about Brown people, she’s Latina and when Trump was nominated she was in Texas and she and her aunt were getting verbal attacks. She talked about Brown people and the oppression that has happened until now. About North Korea, she said she didn’t think about it that way that the reason they have nukes is because of the U.S.
We talked about organizing a walkout from school and asked her what if school doesn’t allow you to do it? She said will do it anyway and her family is supportive. She asked for a lot of materials and we gave her as much as possible. Told her when students wear the stickers to take video of people wearing it. She was also talking about reaching out to other schools. She’s on a group text. When I told her let’s make a meet-up to show it to group, she texted right away—friends from other schools. She agrees that people need to watch this. She also was interested in revolution and we talked about the future for children all over the world. She said driving out the Trump/Pence regime is more important than her education right now. Told her I would follow up with her in a couple days to see how things are going.
Bob Avakian:
The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!
To view the full speech, click 'Play' above. The film and all video clips are also available for download HERE
Transportation Hub Becomes Organizing Center for Nov 4
Since Monday, the Revolution Club has been going to a transportation hub on the South Side that thousands of people, including lots of high school students, pass through. In the course of the week, it is becoming like an organizing center for Nov 4 with people taking materials in the morning and reporting back in the afternoon, then getting more for later. We go out with a big sign and have one person speak loudly to the crowds passing by about the urgency of getting rid of the Trump/Pence regime and the plan Refuse Fascism has for how to do that, which they are needed to step into doing RIGHT NOW because nobody at the top of this country (founded on slavery and genocide) is going to do this for us. When people stop for a flyer we tell them don’t take one, take a hundred and pass them out on the train....
ORGANIZING PEOPLE: We tried to do this systematic thing of getting out bundles of fliers and stickers and then pointing people to the person who had the sign up sheet. And they would go walk over to do that. We said, ‘Put down your contact info so we’ll have a way to reach you and we’ll be back at 3.’ We told people our return at 3 pm is for reporting back and that we’re getting organized this way.
People have taken this up, and are starting to report back to us at the transit hub. For example, one woman came up to tell us she got out all the fliers at work and needed more. One high school student reported that after getting out the stickers at school, he got the rest of his flyers and stickers out at an intersection after school. People were asking him,”Who’s Pence ?” He said “He’s the vice-president." He’s telling people “they’re trying to get thousands in the streets to grow to millions to drive out the Trump/Pence Regime.”
We also try to call people the same day they give us their number. People who have been picking up phone calls have said they got materials all out. We told people about more plans for this week and how they and others can get connected, get organized for Nov 4. Some people said they will come to the film showing of the BA talk at our organizing center this Sunday or will watch the film tonight or tomorrow.
One club member reported, “I talked on the phone to a woman from the transportation hub. She stuck around and was passing out flyers with us for like an hour, so on the phone I asked her what she thought about it. She said she never did anything like that before but felt something, in her spirit when she saw us, and she thought about Trump and what he’s doing. I told her how important it is what she did. She came across this movement and it gave her a way to be part of it and she participated in creative ways, she made up her own chant— get em out, get em out. This is what November 4 needs to be, a sustained thing. She’s interested in coming Sunday, but something is holding her back. I asked her what it is, she said taking care of her kids. What unleashed her too, she thought about her kids and the future of her kids. I talked to her about kids around the world and humanity. I told her someone here could look after her kids while she’s watching the film and participating in the planning.”
When our team was big enough, we also had someone going more deeply with people who are more interested. There were people we showed the trailer to BA’s new film and we showed part of the Q&A to one man who stopped after hearing our agitation. He was like, “Ok ok.” Then asked, “But what do you replace it with?” He watched the whole question and answer BA does on this. At first, he didn’t like how BA started off answering it, that we don’t know what will come next. He asked, “Is this like jumping off a sinking boat into an ocean when you don’t know what’s in it?” He kept interrupting with questions and changing what he thought. When BA started talking about Harriet Tubman and slavery, he said, “What does he know about slavery?” But then listened and felt what BA was saying. By the end, he changed what he didn’t like from what he said at the beginning. When BA was talking about different forces in the field, he said “I like how he frames this.” Asked what he thought about the point at end about being in better position to fight forward vs. near-certainty of disaster, he nodded.
He wanted to know more about revolution. The club member made the point that driving out Trump was a phase the revolution had to go through and is different than making revolution. She showed him the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America for the plan for after the revolution. He asked, “What do you think about Farrakhan?” and agreed with what we said about him being a Black capitalist. He is planning to watch the whole talk by BA online.
Building for November 4 and Beyond: Some Experience and Lessons from Reaching Out to Different Organizations and Individuals
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In building for November 4 and beyond, where thousands and then hundreds of thousands and millions are in the streets, reaching out to and mobilizing different organizations and groups in many ways is essential. What follows is some experience from a reader and some lessons people are summing up.
In reaching out to different organizations and individuals, we are learning by doing it. And as we were well advised by the National Office of Refuse Fascism, we’re going to have to try a lot of different things. So I want to emphasize there is not one way of doing this. What we know does not work is just sending an email into the netherworld of a million emails. A passionate human connection has to be made, but one that is also calm and confident in the truth of what we are putting before people and not desperate or defensive about what we already have in hand. We have to convince people—and that begins by making a connection based on the understanding that different people will find their way into this movement at different levels and different times.
I learned something about method in the way Bob Avakian (BA) approached this in the Q & A of his recent speech with an audience of people many of whom are trying to build refuse fascism. In one of his answers, he makes the point, “All tens of millions are not going to get involved right away, but thousands...the reason the formulation was used, ‘thousands going to millions,’ is not just the same people who are determined to keep things going but that everything they do becomes a lightning rod to draw the attention of broader people and the means are incorporated into it and that makes possible drawing new numbers of people in. So you get a dynamic...going where it does become like the Women's March... That's what needs to happen here in a very telescoped period of a few weeks between now and the 4th and then going forth on November 4th. We have to be down on the ground, dealing with the real world, but we also have to really think big and then connect the two. How do you take a vision and actually do things to work toward making it a reality.”
Getting that dynamic going, there is also a relationship between the broad publicity and saturation people in Refuse Fascism are doing to reach people who feel that normalization is deadly and who are looking for a way to impact the very bad direction the society is headed—and the importance of organizations becoming involved—and being able to reach a critical mass through these weeks so that people feel this is real, that it's happening and it's not just a handful who feel this way. There are literally millions of small and large organizations—among professionals, among students, among affected communities—to reach out to. They all count for something, and when people are hearing through publicity but also social media and their lists—what people may think is impossible comes into the realm of the possible.
So we’ve gone at this several ways: (1) Being at events that are called by the organized forces we are trying to reach, hearing the speeches and talking with the people you think would engage the urgent necessity to drive out the regime, making a mission of meeting the people leading this and others interested and talking with them on the spot initially and getting an appointment soon after to follow up. This is somewhat intuitive. (2) Brainstorming with people we do know and have talked with about who would be important to go meet with and having the person who knows the scene either come to the appointment, make the introduction themselves, or letting you use their name. (3) Walking into an office and asking the assistant to make an appointment for you.
Experience from the Past Week
Experience in the last week included:
(1) Meetings with people in the immigrants rights field—met at a theater event. This included an attempted fund-raising appointment that did not bear fruit, but established a cordial relationship. There was a meeting where people thought they could spread the word as individuals to like-minded people in the field. We got them the materials to do so.
(2) Attending meetings of environmental organizations.
(3) Attending an event being held by democratic progressives at a human rights forum in a progressive suburb. The questions had to be submitted in writing, and ours was last; the reader reduced it down to its essence, saying there’s a last question we don’t expect the panel to be able to answer: What do you think about getting rid of the whole regime? The audience broke into applause, and the panel politely laughed and avoided answering it. The panelists were not that open; they were pessimistic and focused on “what’s the mechanism?” “You do this and then what?” The organizer of the series who had campaigned hard for Hillary let us know their focus, like other Democrats, had been to do what the right had been doing for decades...start at the grassroots and elect people, but did agree that this was a crisis (implicit in this: is it practical to keep taking the same approach) and they did agree with the basic assessment we were making. He said he’d closely study the material, and we could get back to him.
(4) Attending an event at a local elite university and participating in the Q&A.
Getting Together with a Clergyman in the Sanctuary Movement
We also met with a clergyman with long time experience in working with immigrants in the Southwest and who also participated in Occupy. He has recently organized to broaden out the Sanctuary Movement beyond the churches, into the community. We called for an appointment and got one. I gave a brief pitch utilizing the trailer from the new BA film. And outlining who we are, why our name is what it is, the qualitative change in the situation, including going into some examples. I talked about Refuse Fascism and the breadth of people who feel as I do, and very specifically what we are calling for on November 4. I spoke to the vision and what could make a huge change in the situation—and the challenge of the resistance making this necessary turn to do anything meaningful. What it would mean to have the populace mobilized around this vs. paralyzed by looking to those at the top of society to change things? We can learn from the model of South Korea and why change has to come from below.
The pastor raised that they have been doing what they have been doing long before the election and that they see doing what they are doing no matter who is in office. At the same time, he really did agree with us in how qualitatively the situation has changed and expressed significant agreement with our assessment. He talked to us about how the religious community works and why people cannot for legal reasons take on specific political figures, but also agreed that there comes a time when you have to weigh that against morality and the purpose they exist for.
He had also been part of Occupy. He had a very specific understanding of how hard it is to start something and get it going: “No one wanted to support Occupy at first, and three weeks in they all wanted to be part of it.” He had a real appreciation for the vision of what we are trying to start here and agreement with the demand and in contrast to raising “what is the mechanism?” He said these are the same voices who told Occupy, “Your demands are not specific enough.” He agreed it’s not our job to tell them how to do it. It’s our job to create and ratchet up the opposition so that they have to find a solution. He said when you get this going, then the clergy can go have a religious service in the middle of a rotunda somewhere calling on the regime to step down. It’s best when they move as a church. He had very specific ideas of who had to be approached locally and nationally, and agreed to be connected with the Refuse Fascism national religious task force.
Talking with a Union Representative
From there, we drove to talk to a representative of a large union in the area. At the meeting they wanted to know who was behind it as they get red-baited on a regular basis. We made clear who had initiated Refuse Fascism and who is involved. There is the challenge being put to people in their position of “who is going to be first?” We then made a clear case for what the situation is and the only thing that can change it. This person thought this was a good conversation, and agreed in particular with the point on people being paralyzed and looking to the top where nothing is happening or the fact that no good is going to come without the people themselves moving. (We learned in another meeting with people in a similar union that they have very little faith in anything coming from the top of the Democratic Party or the political system. The key thing they do is mobilize people to fight for what they need—whoever is in office.) The question of who can set the terms, of how to have the interests of the people reflected in the avenues we do have is an important concept to connect with people.
They like the idea that on November 4 something begins where people begin coming together to see their own power and what changes through that will be very important. There was discussion of a vision for a different future where we spoke to the breadth of visions on this having to be encompassed and the dialogue that has to be part of the whole experience—and to the future that is expressed in the slogan “In the Name of Humanity...” They are thinking a lot about both the environment and war. The big issue for many organizations that represent people with a range of different political positions is endorsement, because the are responsible for people who, like the whole country, are in a polarized political situation—but they also don’t think that polarization is necessarily a bad thing either. They were happy for the conversation, think this is very good, but they have to give this specific strategic thought. Even without endorsement, many unions and organizations can let the membership know.
Some Lessons from Our Experience
So from just a few weeks of experience, what lessons can you sum up?
You have to cover A LOT of territory.
Don’t make assumptions of what people think. Go in and find out and engage with people. Struggle where you need to, but don’t waste time if people can’t think out of the box. Find those who can.
Be prepared to get back to the people who were at first reluctant. People will change as you get something going and in response to attacks by the enemy and the movement taking that on.
Be part of the feel and flow of life—not just political life. Attending and participating in cultural events, panels, conferences and being able to participate and connect with people's concerns and bringing to people why there is a way out of this all are important ways to find and establish the connections we need to make.
Ask people to open doors even if they can’t be the first one to step out themselves (some people such as those serving refugees and immigrants really are under harsh scrutiny right now) and ask who can speak for them if they can’t. Many non-profits and NGOs have very strict legal restrictions and cannot participate as organizations, but the individuals in them can participate as private citizens.
Collaborate with people and find the ways for them to work together with you and organize themselves.
Find a way to reach the base of the naysayers. The more those closing the door at the leadership level to Refuse Fascism hear about it from their membership the less they can dismiss it. We WANT this to be debated in every organization and church as this goes forward.
Most importantly, proceed from the reality that this is the great and real necessity and we are giving people a real path out. The beginning is very heavy lifting, but it can open a flood gate of pent-up desire.
In this moment where even some Republicans are calling out what the Regime represents more than Democrats in office are—but who are also simply retiring as the GOP is consolidated as an instrument of fascism now controlling all three branches of government—remember what it would mean to have masses in their thousands open the door to masses in their hundreds of thousands to step through—and that only Refuse Fascism is willing to lead that.
Intolerant policies warrant nonviolent protests, not civil discourse
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
One of the key places where Refuse Fascism is being spread and November 4 is being built are the campuses—from high schools in Chicago to Columbia University in NYC to UCLA on the West Coast and elsewhere. The following is an opinion piece by Tala Deloria, a fifth-year geography student at University of California, Los Angeles, which was posted on the Daily Bruin website on October 24.
In the context of a fascist regime in power, you cannot have “civil discourse” with fascists.
Conservative campus groups like the Young Americans for Freedom, an appendage group of the Young America’s Foundation, receive millions of dollars in subsidies and backing to fund speakers who do not recognize the humanity of whole sections of people, such as through denigrating undocumented immigrants. These speakers include David Horowitz and Ann Coulter, and act as the intellectual hitmen of the presidential administration, providing justifications for the crimes of the fascists in the White House.
To advocate for civil discourse at a time when these ideas have the backing of the state—such as through threatening tweets from the president in support of these speakers—serves to fan the flames of fascism.
The fascist President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence regime holds the reigns of power in the U.S. today. The regime is made up of outright white supremacist ghouls like Jeff Sessions—a senator condemned for making several racist comments as a U.S. attorney—and others such as Scott Pruitt and Betsy DeVos, all of whom intend to subordinate women or push forward a xenophobic program aimed at mass deportations.
These are anti-science theocrats threatening to destroy the world by waging a nuclear holocaust against countries such as North Korea. They have demonized, criminalized and unleashed violence against Muslims, immigrants and people in inner cities. They have taken measures through word and deed to reduce women to breeders, such as through rolling back requirements that employer-provided health insurance covers birth control methods for women and through fighting against women’s rights to abortions.
Denying millions of U.S. citizens healthcare by refusing to pay subsidies to insurance companies threatens their lives. Trump’s administration also threatened to deny any real form of aid to Puerto Rico after the two recent hurricanes that hit the country, putting Puerto Rican lives at risk. Administrators have expressed disdain for the truth, attacking the science of climate change and evolution, and the scientific method overall. They have assaulted civil rights and liberties in various ways, such as through practices that limit certain communities’ abilities to vote and attacking the press.
Trump spoke at the 2017 Values Voter Summit put on by an anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Family Research Council—an event the Southern Poverty Law Center described as a “rogue’s gallery of the radical right.” Trump told the audience, composed of anti-LGBTQ activists, that its voices would “not be silenced any longer.”
He used an expletive to describe Colin Kaepernick, the football player who took a knee during the national anthem in response to police brutality. At the same time, the FBI labels “black identity extremists” as domestic terrorists, and the administration attacks consent decrees aimed at correcting egregious abuses of police power by claiming they are part of a “war on cops.”
Refuse Fascism is putting forward a challenge on Nov. 4, and a call to all to recognize this regime for what it is: a grave danger to humanity and the planet. Our challenge is aimed at ending this nightmare by having thousands across the country pour into the streets and engaging in mass, nonviolent resistance until our demands are met. We refuse to accept a fascist America.
In Los Angeles, the sustained resistance starts at Pershing Square at 1 p.m. The following week, we at UCLA will participate in protests, including walkouts. Students have played a key role in almost every social and political movement, and their support is needed now more than ever. The future of the world is in our hands, and we have a responsibility as those being trained as the future leaders of society not only to voice our opposition to the horrors unleashed by this regime, but also put an end to it.
I am proud to have disrupted the panel, “What Is Civil Discourse? Challenging Hate Speech in a Free Society,” where good people were denouncing what they called “student censorship of ideas they disagree with.” These people make no distinction between those advocating for and those opposing reactionary ideas with state backing, and make the harmful argument that we need to hear each other out.
I agree with the university motto “Fiat lux”—“Let there be light,” but this fascist regime—not student protests—is what tramples on the light. There should be light for the millions of immigrants, for people of color in the inner cities, for women, for LGBTQ people, for refugees, for the people of North Korea—for everyone. In the face of the reality we confront, to say to students “You’ve got to hear these ideas out,” or, “You can change things with the sheer power of pointed questions,” is to normalize fascism.
These arguments are tantamount to arguing the freedom fighters of the civil rights era should have had “civil discourse” with the Ku Klux Klan instead of disturbing the air and disrupting business as usual. Pretending civil discourse will solve anything in this context only serves to put people on the defensive while the regime steamrolls over people’s lives and rights.
We refuse to go down that road. Imagine the difference it would have made if the people in Nazi Germany had sounded the alarm in this bold way and organized millions to put a stop to fascism while they still had a chance. Let us learn from history, confront the very serious stakes we face and act with all our creativity and determination to drive out this regime before it’s too late.
The One Question That WON’T Be Asked About U.S. Troops in Niger
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Here’s a question about the firefight involving U.S. troops in the West African nation of Niger that you won’t hear from some senator or commentator on CNN:
“What the FUCK is the U.S. Army doing in Niger in the first place?”
Think about it. Or imagine this: People in Niger hear that Black people in America are being shot down by police and then the police are not tried or, if they are tried, are acquitted 67 percent of the time. They further learn that this is the spearpoint of a whole genocidal program that includes mass incarceration, discrimination in every sphere of society, denial and stripping away of basic civil rights, and demonization by politicians and the media. And on top of that they learn that the new Trump/Pence administration is promising, and already carrying out, a far worse escalation of all this.
Does Niger then send its soldiers to the U.S. to stop such terror from going on, or to even offer training to the U.S. police? Obviously not. But wouldn’t Niger certainly have at least as much right to do that as the U.S. does to send its troops to Niger?
So then what gives the U.S. the right to station its troops in virtually every single country in the world?!?
Reason one: “Oh, we’ve been asked to come in” (and if the Niger government didn’t ask them, the U.S. would try to overthrow it).
“Oh, we have to defend our people in the U.S. in case some Islamic fundamentalist jihadist terrorist in Niger comes over here.” Quiet as it’s kept (and the longer answer can be seen in Bob Avakian’s new filmed speech, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible), the U.S. imperialist system has both created the basis for reactionary armed jihadist movements to arise and to a certain extent supported their rise, at least initially, when they could aim these forces against their rivals and against other more secular revolutionary or radical movements. And there is the fact of the far greater terror by the U.S., its proxy Israel, and its puppet governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.—including wars of aggression either launched against, provoked, or maneuvered in, in the countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, and so on.
When all else fails, there is what Bob Avakian (BA) called “the great tautological fallacy” in that recent speech, the notion that “America is a force for good in the world, and therefore whatever it does is good (or at least done with ‘good intentions’), even if the same thing when done by other forces, especially forces opposed to ‘us,’ is bad, is evil—because... because America is a force for good in the world.” And BA goes on to show over and over again how this has served and still serves as the thinnest cover for acts of towering atrocity and horror. In fact, nothing gives the U.S. armed forces the “right” to be in Niger or in any of the other 150 (!) or so countries that they’re stationed in other than the overwhelming force they have. Force in the service of imperialist empire. Force that is utterly illegitimate, that must be opposed and, ultimately, defeated and dismantled in a real revolution.
The political censors “would prefer that we remain miseducated or uneducated so that we cannot ‘Refuse Fascism’”
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is from a prisoner who is responding and adding his name to the statement against the move by Global Exchange to withdraw fiscal sponsorship from the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF). As revcom.us has written, “This action by Global Exchange is unacceptable on general principle, but particularly in the time of Trump, this is downright unconscionable.”
Dear PRLF,
Yes, Comrades, please add my name to the list of incarcerated Communists who wish to lend our names to the statement to Global Exchange’s new Dictator (... ahem, I’m mean director) Jeff Ordower.
The decision to politicize the rehabilitation of brothers and sisters by defunding the RCP is more than unconscionable; it is another shot fired in the war Amerikkka and its capitalist/imperialist allies have waged against Black and Brown men and women of poor or lower class distinction. It is a deliberate attempt to interfere with the edification and vitalization of the oppressed, suppressed, repressed, and depressed’s most pivotal minds in the universal struggle for change that is the New Communism B.A. awakens us to.
We are the most dangerous components of Revolution because no one feels more deeply than us the effects of racial and class caste systems, i.e. capitalism/imperialism through fascism under the guise of a so-called democratic republic (demonic states united). The news we’re given through the Revolution and, more recently, the newsletters that the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund is able to send us is vital to the new awakening and redirection of already revolutionary hearts.
Jeff Ordower would prefer that we either remain miseducated or uneducated so that we cannot “Refuse Fascism.”
This cannot be allowed to happen! So yes, I would like to lend my name to the Statement. But feel free to use my name. I do not fear reprisals; I fear complacency; and I am MORE than willing to stand at the front-lines and fight for the equality of all.
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
“When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward [Vice President Mike] Pence and joked, ‘Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!’’’
This was one of many damning revelations about Pence’s history, thinking and program in Jane Mayer’s extensive piece in the October 23 issue of the New Yorker, “The Danger of President Pence.”
First off, what kind of monster would want to hang gay people? Second, what kind of monster would think it was funny?
Mayer’s reporting makes clear that this “joke” was no joke. It spoke volumes about Pence’s actual attitude—his deep, bigoted hatred of LGBTQ people—lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, transgenders and queers—and the actual posture of the whole Trump/Pence regime.
Pence is one of the most powerful figures in this regime and he’s been an adamant opponent LGBTQ rights and protections for decades. He has even opposed recognizing the estimated 10 million LGBTQ people in the U.S., as “a discrete and insular minority entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws.”
In 2015, as governor Pence signed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” which legalized religious bigotry and discrimination against LGBTQ people in particular. (A wave of national outrage forced Pence to sign a less overtly discriminatory version of the bill a few weeks later.)
“There have been other evangelical Christians in the White House, including Carter and George W. Bush,” Mayer writes, “but Pence’s fundamentalism exceeds theirs.” Under Trump, Pence hosts a weekly Bible study session for Cabinet officers led by a fundamentalist fanatic.
Pence is a Christian fascist whose views are rooted in Biblical literalism, which holds that any deviation from heterosexuality and traditional gender roles constitutes a sin against god (and in the Bible, punishable by death). And other Christian fascists occupy powerful positions throughout Trump’s government.
This may sound like lunacy, and it is, but it’s lunacy that’s deadly serious, has been legitimized by this system, and is now in power.
Assault After Assault, From Day One
The Trump/Pence regime’s actions, from day one, reflect this lunacy, and profound hatred of LGBTQ people. It has systematically dismantled protections and launched one assault after another against their basic rights and humanity.
The day Trump took office, his regime took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website and has never replaced it. Over the next seven months:
Trump struck down the ban on giving federal government contracts to companies that discriminate against women and LGBTQ workers.
Revoked federal guidelines that said transgender students should have the right to use public restrooms that match their gender identity.
Proposed a budget that cut funding for the Center for Disease Control’s HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and support programs by $186 million.
Proposed huge cuts to the National Institutes of Health, including $550 million cuts to HIV/AIDS research.
Proposed $800 million cuts from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and U.S. Agency for International Development programs addressing the AIDS pandemic—meaning there will be more than 830,000 AIDS treatment interruptions leading to an estimated 130,000 more deaths at minimum.
Banned the recruiting of transgender people into the military
In Just the Last Two Months...
Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) sided with a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for two gay men.
Both Trump and Pence expressed support for Roy Moore, who won the runoff to become the Republican candidate for senator from Alabama. In 2005, Moore said “homosexual conduct should be illegal.” Trump said he “sounds like a really great guy.”
The DOJ rescinded a policy that protects transgender people from discrimination.
The DOJ argued in court against protections against discrimination against gay workers.
Christian fascist Betsy DeVos began her tenure as head of the Department of Education by rescinding protections for transgender students. In June she declared she wouldn’t work to stop discrimination against LGBTQ students. Now, she’s hired an attorney for the Department’s legal office who comes from a firm representing the Christian Educators Association International, an organization “virulently opposed to LGBT rights,” according to The American Prospect, and whose website accuses “public schools and the National Education Association (NEA) of promoting ‘the homosexual agenda.’”
In one of its most outrageous steps to impose religious rule, in early October, the DOJ issued a policy guidance statement giving broad license to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others in the name of protecting religious freedom. One of its provisions was that “Religious employers are entitled to employ only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employers’ religious precepts.”
“The guidance is meant to ‘protect’ the anti-LGBTQ child welfare worker who is opposed to placing young people in foster care with a lesbian couple. It is meant to ‘protect’ the transphobic shelter worker who refuses to give a transgender person a place to sleep for the night,” said Rea Carey, the executive director, National LGBTQ Task Force
“The Department of Justice has declared open season on transgender and other LGBTQ people,” the National Center for Transgender Equality stated.
***
Mike Pence may not intend to hang gay people at the moment, but the logic of his Christian fascist outlook and program, and the Trump/Pence assaults could lead to genocidal atrocities against LGBTQ people.
Just this month, Georgia lawmaker Betty Price, wife of former Trump cabinet member Tom Price, asked if people with HIV should be quarantined. She tried to dismiss it as a “provocative and rhetorical comment,” but such “provocative” and “rhetorical” comments are how genocidal ideas gain legitimacy, with potentially horrendous consequences as history has repeatedly shown!
November 4: It Begins...
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
Latest in Trump/Pence Regime’s Relentless Assaults on Environment: Erasing Mention of Climate Change from Government Websites
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Evidence is all around us of the catastrophic direction the world is heading in because of climate change: the series of devastating hurricanes hitting the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, with warming seawater and air a major factor... record-setting global temperatures year after year... rising numbers of “climate refugees” around the world from poor countries, forced out of their homes because of drought and other weather-related hardships... accelerated melting of glaciers and shrinking of Arctic ice... and much more. In the face of this, the Trump/Pence regime is plowing ahead with its relentless, predatory assaults on the environment—putting its foot down on the gas pedal of the accelerating environmental emergency.
One of its latest moves: erasing all mention of “climate change” from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website, which previously included crucial information about climate change, including decades of research and data about emissions of carbon gases and other greenhouse gases that are key drivers of global warming. The EPA took down those pages in April, with a message saying they were being updated to reflect the Trump/Pence regime’s “new priorities.” According to Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a group that monitors federal sites for climate change content, when those pages went back up online, “Large portions of climate resources that were formerly found on the previous website have not been returned, and thus have ultimately been removed from the current EPA website.”
A recently published public review draft of EPA’s four-year “strategic plan” also has no mention of “climate change” nor any references to “carbon dioxide” or “greenhouse gas emissions.”
The head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is one of the many climate change deniers that the regime is chock-full of—anti-science lunatics who deny, contrary to the overwhelming consensus among scientists worldwide, that climate change poses a threat to human and other life on earth, or that it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity. In early October, Pruitt announced that the EPA will move to end the Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations that had put some restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide—one of the main greenhouse gases.
Several other recent outrageous Trump/Pence moves relating to the environment:
As part of the moves to muzzle government scientists, in late October, the EPA cancelled the scheduled appearance of three of its scientists at an environmental conference in Rhode Island. The scientists had written a report on the effect of climate change on air/water temperatures and sea level in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and were going to talk on the subject at the conference.
Trump is set to nominate yet another climate denier—Kathleen Hartnett White, a former top aide to former Texas governor Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary—to a key post, as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. White is a senior fellow at a right-wing think tank in Texas heavily backed by huge fossil fuel corporations; one policy paper she authored claimed there was a “moral case” for the continued burning of fossil fuels.
Trump announced on October 27 that he was accepting the recommendations of his interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, to shrink two national monuments in Utah, opening up huge amounts of public land to more gas drilling and other for-profit uses—and signaling more such turnovers of public lands to come.
For more on the Trump/Pence regime’s war on the environment, see the poster from Refuse Fascism on what the regime has done and is doing—part of the series of seven hard-hitting posters indicting the crimes of the regime.
Climate change and the global environmental emergency did not begin with the rise of Trump and Pence to power. Under this system of capitalism-imperialism, nothing can be done unless, ultimately, there is profit. Different blocs of capitalists compete against each other, driven by the ruthless commandment of “expand or die”—compelling them to rapaciously despoil the environment without regard for consequences for humanity and all species of life. And the U.S. has done more harm to the environment than any other country on Earth. An actual revolution is needed to uproot and sweep away this predatory system and bring into being a radically new and much better system, which will have a completely different approach to the environment.
But it’s also a fact that the Trump/Pence regime is an extreme concentration of this system—and has already made the danger of climate change much worse just in the past few months. They must be driven out before they can do even greater harm to the environment and life on this planet.
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Imagine a future in which women in the U.S. have no right to get an abortion, or even have birth control. A future in which this half of humanity is consigned to being incubators, or sex objects, or both. A future in which women’s role in society is drastically reduced, even eliminated in some areas, and male right and privilege forcibly reasserted. A future in which women who find ways to assert their basic rights and control are repressed by the armed enforcers of the state. In short, a real-life “Handmaid’s Tale.”
Now think about what just took place in the case of “Jane Doe,” and what has recently been further revealed about Vice President Mike Pence...
Abortion is still officially legal in the U.S., including for immigrants, including those in detention. So on September 28, a judge ruled that “Jane Doe,” a 17-year-old undocumented and unaccompanied immigrant from Central America who discovered she was pregnant while being held in a Texas detention camp, could get an abortion.
Did the U.S. president, vice president, and the current administration, which is mandated to uphold the law, respect this judge’s lawful order? Did they bow to the fact that opinion polls show that a majority in the U.S. favors keeping abortion legal? Did they consider “Jane Doe’s” needs and clearly expressed wish to have an abortion? Emphatically no! Jane Doe was being held at a federal immigration detention center and the Trump/Pence regime waged a nearly month-long battle to block this ruling and prevent her from getting an abortion.
This battle was a glimpse of what the fascist lunatics now governing have in store for women—legal or undocumented, young or old—if they succeed in consolidating power.
Mike Pence, and a regime staffed with Christian fascists from top to bottom
This is a regime staffed from top to bottom with fanatical Christian fundamentalists who hate that women have won some measure of reproductive choice and social equality, and that open, forcible patriarchy has been weakened or eroded. And they are determined to reverse these trends with a vengeance and impose a theocratic form of fascism.
Take Vice President Mike Pence. As Jane Mayer documents in an in-depth exposure in the October 23 issue of the New Yorker, “The Danger of President Pence,” Pence is one of the most powerful people in the current regime, and a hard-core, ruthless Christian fundamentalist and misogynist determined to forcibly reimpose overt, legalized male domination and control.
According to Mayer, unless his wife is present, Pence will never dine with another woman or attend an “event in mixed company where [there’s] alcohol,” a position whose logic “reduces women to sexual temptresses and precludes men from working with women on an equal basis.” In the 1990s, Pence headed a right-wing think tank that argued “unmarried women should be denied access to birth control.” As a congressman, Pence has “backed ‘personhood’ legislation that would ban [abortion] under all circumstances, including rape and incest, unless a woman’s life was at stake.” He has attempted to push through measures that would have “made it legal for government-funded hospitals to turn away a dying woman who needed an abortion. (Later, as governor of Indiana, he signed a bill [later ruled unconstitutional] barring women from aborting a physically abnormal fetus; the bill also required fetal burial or cremation, including after a miscarriage.)”
“There have been other evangelical Christians in the White House, including Carter and George W. Bush,” Mayer writes, “but Pence’s fundamentalism exceeds theirs.” The Bible study group for cabinet officers Pence hosts is led by Ralph Drollinger, a fundamentalist lunatic who has written that “Women with children at home, who either serve in public office, or are employed on the outside, pursue a path that contradicts God’s revealed design for them. It is a sin,” and argues that “a wife must ‘submit’ to her husband.” All this amounts to reducing women to incubators or sex toys, or both.
And Pence isn’t the only one. Some of the top officials in the Department of Health and Human Services are anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-birth control fanatics, according to the New York Times. Its division overseeing the care of unaccompanied minor immigrants and refugees is the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Who did the Trump/Pence regime put in charge? Scott Lloyd, a fanatical Christian fascist who adamantly opposes abortion and birth control. One of Lloyd’s polemics was subtitled, “Why You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Pro-Contraception.” (See Michelle Goldberg, “The Trump Administration’s Power Over a Pregnant Girl, New York Times, October 20, 2017)
The Trump/Pence regime’s assault on “Jane Doe”
The case of “Jane Doe” showed how Pence, Scott, and the other Christian fascists in the Trump/Pence regime are determined to step-by-step impose and enforce these reactionary, medieval views on all society.
The regime had enacted a new policy requiring the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, personally, to approve any abortion. Scott had already personally and directly intervened in other cases like Jane Doe’s, once personally visiting a detainee to pressure her to continue her unwanted pregnancy. He immediately rejected the judge’s ruling that she could have an abortion.
“In this case, the word got out at Jane Doe’s detention center that she was not to be released for her September 28 appointment,” Sunsara Taylor wrote at revcom.us. “Instead, her captors forced her to visit a Christian fundamentalist anti-abortion fake ‘clinic’ where she was forced to view an ultrasound. The detention center also called Jane Doe’s mother in her home country and informed her about the pregnancy despite Doe’s plea that her mother was physically abusive....
“Even after yet another court battle in which a federal judge ruled that Doe’s abortion must be allowed (rescheduled for October 20), the Trump/Pence Regime blocked her again. They refused to release her for her appointment and argued doing so didn’t put an ‘undue burden’ on her constitutional right to abortion because Doe still had the ‘option’ of being deported back to her home country! Doe is from Central America—and in most countries in that region, abortion is illegal, including three countries where abortion is not allowed even when the life of the woman is at stake.”
“I feel like they are trying to coerce me to carry my pregnancy to term,” Jane Doe wrote.
Finally, on October 25, Jane Doe was able to get the abortion she was seeking after a federal appeals court ruling.
A Christian Fascist “Handmaid’s Tale” Future... Unless This Regime Is Driven from Power
Before “Jane Doe,” the Trump/Pence regime had already gutted the requirement that employers pay for birth control. It has lied about fetal development to advance a federal abortion ban. As Joanna Grossman writes, “As part of a wide-ranging effort to implement an anti-abortion policy agenda, the Trump Administration has been rolling back access to reproductive healthcare at every turn. As explained in detail here and here, this administration has erected significant obstacles not only to abortion, but also to family planning services.” (“The Handmaid’s Tale—Junior Version”)
And in the Jane Doe case, the government claimed a “state interest” in “promoting child birth and fetal life.”
Think about it. Abortion is still formally legal. But that didn’t stop the Trump/Pence regime from using the full power of the state to nullify this court’s ruling, and force a 17-year-old girl to have a child against her will, reducing her to an incubator.
This is the future the Trump/Pence regime, which dominates all three branches of government and is moving to radically reshape the courts, is fighting relentlessly to impose, step-by-step on women, as government policy, social practice, and legally.
This nightmarish future for half of humanity must be stopped! They must be driven from power through a sustained, mass upsurge demanding: This Nightmare Must End. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
NYC Cops Handcuff, Arrest, and Rape Teenager—and Claim “It was consensual”!
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On September 15, NYPD detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins rolled up on two boys and a teenage girl (known as Anna) near a Brooklyn park. They harassed and searched them, finding marijuana and anti-anxiety pills in the car and on one of the boys. They then let the boys go, and handcuffed and drove off with Anna. They took her to a Chipotle parking lot where she says that she was forced to perform oral sex on both cops and was raped by one of them. They promised her she would be let go if she went along. Then they dumped her in the street near the local police precinct.
Anna went to the hospital and had a rape exam—police sources told the New York Post that the DNA matched to both of the cops. She reported the assault, and the cops have been indicted for first degree rape and suspended without pay.
The cops’ defense is that the sex was “consensual”! According to them, a handcuffed teenage girl, confronted by two large armed men, and faced with the possibility of being sent to New York’s nightmarish prison at Rikers Island, freely decided that she would like to have sex with two people who held the power of life and death over her!
Obviously, no one in police custody can give meaningful “consent.” In fact, in the state of New York, people in a hospital cannot legally consent to sex with a caregiver. Yet New York law does not prevent cops from using “consent” as a defense for rape.
This is not an isolated case. Rape and sexual assaults are epidemic among cops. In December 2016, Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw was convicted of raping eight women. At that time we wrote:
[R]ape at the hands of police is not an “aberration,” it is common. Holtzclaw’s basic M.O. of preying on women who have minor run-ins with the police and demanding sex in exchange for being let go, is widely practiced across the U.S., a familiar fear among women of color, and considered one of the “perks” of the job by plenty of cops.
As the Associated Press reported, 550 cops across the U.S. lost their badges for sexual assault between 2009 and 2014, and between 2005 and 2011, 5,500 were arrested for sexual misconduct. And this is the tip of the iceberg—these were the ones who were caught, and whose superiors decided to discipline or have them arrested rather than covering it up.
The fact that these New York cops acted so brazenly, and glibly offered their outrageous claim of “consent,” reflect that they understand the reality that in this society, rape in general, and rape by cops in particular, is rarely punished. And it, along with so much that has been revealed and exposed in recent weeks, shines a searing light on the deeply engrained, society-wide oppression of women that marks this society, and that cries out for a liberating communist revolution that will rip all this up by the roots.
Police Blare Sirens to Drown Out Word of November 4 Outside High School
Updated October 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Update October 22: The Revolution Club went right back out to Kenwood High School the day after the police tried to literally drown out their interactions with the students. This time the police stayed away while the school security messed with the organizers and students, but they couldn't stop the students from signing the banner and getting organized for November 4th.
Thursday, October 19, at Kenwood Academy High School, Chicago police swarmed Kenwood students after school, using force and intimidation tactics to attempt to stop the students from talking with organizers about the November 4 protests to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. Police pulled up with three marked SUVs, driving one of them onto the sidewalk of the school, which was crowded with students, and turned the siren on for several minutes to drown out the message. They snatched flyers and stickers out of the hands of students and used their authority to tell students they had to leave the front of the school. The Revolution Club was promoting the film of a new talk by Bob Avakian on www.revcom.us, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America—A Better World IS Possible, and held a banner that students were reading and adding their own messages to, “Hey Trump, from those you like to demonize: You and your GANG in the White House are the real thugs and threat to humanity. In the name of humanity, WE WILL DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!” Students talked about their anger at Trump/Pence for targeting Mexicans, ripping apart Muslim families, insulting and dehumanizing Black people, and threatening nuclear war.
It is unacceptable that police be allowed to politically repress high school students. This would be unacceptable at any time, but especially in the current situation where these students are being demonized by a regime that openly extols white supremacy, male supremacy, and American supremacy; jokes about hanging LGBT people and threatens humanity with nuclear war; and when “free speech” is being rewritten to enforce neo-Nazi speech while those who protest these injustices are unjustly repressed by police and repeatedly attacked by Trump thugs.
Students have the right to know about the RefuseFascism.org call for protests beginning November 4, continuing and growing every day and night until the demand is met: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Students have a right to express their political positions and to be part of protests against a fascist regime. And students have a right to hear about and get organized with the movement for revolution and the radical revolutionary leader, Bob Avakian.
Stand with the Kenwood students and the movement to drive out the Trump/Pence Regime. Call the principal at Kenwood Academy High School at 773-535-1350 and the commander at Chicago Police Department District 21 at 312-747-8340, to demand school authorities and police keep their hands off students and organizers for expressing themselves against the Trump/Pence regime and for the November 4 protests.
Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E 71st Street (near Jeffries in South Shore) Chicago, Illinois. Open noon to 9 pm every day till November 4
Interview with a Member of the Revolution Club Chicago What Happened at Kenwood High
October 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Thursday, October 19, at Kenwood Academy High School, Chicago police swarmed students after school, using force and intimidation tactics to attempt to stop the students from talking with organizers about the Refuse Fascism call for Nov. 4—It Begins... sustained nonviolent protests to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. Kenwood Academy is in the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
In response to the initial report from the Revolution Club, a senior attorney associated with a civil rights organization asked a series of questions. The answers shed even more light on how outrageous this police action was in suppressing the students’ right to shape the future.
Attorney: Do you know who called the police and was the school involved?
Revolution Club Member: I don’t know who or if someone called the police or how involved the school was. We were first approached by a plainclothes police officer who seems to work at the school.
Attorney:What, if any, reasons did the police give for their actions?
Revolution Club Member: The things they said were: “You’re not allowed to do this here”; “You’re not allowed to talk to kids about this, they’re underage”; “You don’t have approval.”
But they also did a lot without bothering to explain themselves. Like grabbing flyers and stickers out of the hands of the students, and shoving them along saying, “Go on. Get out.” And then of course just driving the police SUV slowly ON the sidewalk and into the crowd of students with sirens blazing loudly to try to drown out the conversations we were having.
Attorney: Can you give me some more detail about the sequence of events? For example, when did Revolution Club members arrive, how many were there, and where were they stationed?
Revolution Club Member: There were four members of the Revolution Club who arrived at about 3:30 pm, well before school got out (about 4:15 pm) and waited across the street. As students started coming out of school, we crossed the street and stood on the sidewalk adjacent to the school. We had a banner and a bullhorn as well as flyers and stickers. As students began coming out of school, we began reading the banner out loud on the bullhorn as well as generally speaking about why we were there: to talk to them about Refuse Fascism’s plans for sustained nonviolent movement to demand the Trump/Pence Regime Must GO, beginning November 4. Many students came up to us and were asking questions, wanting to know more; they were taking flyers, and they were signing their names and messages onto the banner. [The banner reads: “Hey Trump, from those you like to demonize: You and your GANG in the White House are the real thugs and threat to humanity. In the name of humanity, WE WILL DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!”]
All this was within the first few minutes after the last bell, before a plainclothes officer approached without identifying himself. He said to me, “You’re not allowed to talk to kids about this, they’re underage,” and when I was going to explain what we were there saying and why it was important for the students to hear, he interrupted saying, “I know why you’re here. You’re talking about Trump. We can’t have you doing this here, we have to ask you to leave or go somewhere else. You’re not allowed to do this here.” I responded asking “Who is ‘we’?” He stuttered and stumbled and said, “I’m talking about you all, your group here. You don’t have approval.” To which I responded, “No, you referred to yourself as ‘we’. Who is ‘we’?” Only now did he open his jacket and flash a badge that was hooked onto his belt and then identified himself as with the CPD. At this point I told him that “We are breaking no laws, we have a right to be here, and if you give me your card I would be glad to have an attorney call and explain the law to you.”
After this I believe most of their verbal harassment and attention was toward the students. For us, they mainly drove an SUV right on the sidewalk and blasted the sirens to drown us out and try to run us off, and physically tried to block us from interacting with any students. For the students, they would grab flyers or stickers out of their hands, shove them along telling them to leave; they would tell students they couldn’t stop and talk to us; students who were trying to read the banner they would block and get in the way and tell to leave. This went on for some time, and we still attempted to speak with as many students as we could and we did have some limited interactions (which would often be cut short by the police activity) until most of the students had exited the building and left the area, when we finally wrapped up and left.
Attorney:Were they [Revolution Club] on school property and if so did they have permission to be there?
Revolution Club Member: We were on the public sidewalk which is very spacious there. We were not on school property.
Attorney:At what point did the police arrive?
Revolution Club Member: It appears at least one was already there when we arrived, and I believe another two eventually showed up who were also in plainclothes. A police SUV would arrive a few minutes later blasting the sirens. Another two arrived either at the same time (but not immediately on the sidewalk like the first one) or some minutes later. In total, three SUVs and about six additional uniformed cops.
Attorney:Was anyone arrested/charged?
Revolution Club Member: No.
Attorney:How many students were involved?
Revolution Club Member: A couple dozen I would say were directly involved in the sense of having been yelled at by the police to not talk to us, having stickers or flyers grabbed out of their hands, being driven off by the police SUV driving right up to them, being told not to talk to us and to leave by the police (and later toward the end someone associated with the school would join in with them), or being interfered with when signing the banner.
Attorney:Did any of them take pictures/video?
Revolution Club Member: Yes but we are not in touch with any who have video.
Attorney:Are you in contact with any of the students?
Revolution Club Member: Around 6-10 gave us a way to contact them. We have been loosely in communication.
October 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 23, 2017
An Open Letter to The New York Times:
Regarding the special issue of the Book Review(October 22, 2017) marking the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution:
I’ll leave aside the false narratives, fatuous assertions, and egregious distortions in this tired litany of anticommunist invective—though it’s something when Condoleezza Rice gives the most “balanced” appraisal of all your writers. I’ll leave aside Martin Amis’s morally moronic comparison (and factually ridiculous statement) that daily life for most Germans under Hitler—with the evidently small “exception,” he notes, for Jews, Communists, LGBT, and Roma—was better than for citizens of the Soviet Union.
No, I’ll just ask this: when, dear Book Review, can we expect your special issue on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its relationship to the U.S., with its toll of 10 million and the hundreds of millions more kept in literal chains for centuries, as the “democratic West” grew fat on their labor? When can we expect you to highlight the extremely important work that has been done in just the past ten years, let alone going back to Du Bois, which for decades in this country had to fight to even get air?
And when will we be treated to your reviews of those monsters Jefferson and Washington who sold human beings away from their families, who committed rape, and whose actions led, directly and indirectly, to the violent and genocidal dispossession of one people and the further and even more horrific terms of enslavement for African-Americans (speaking here of Washington’s genocidal campaigns against the Indians and Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in particular)?
Finally, your special issue calls to mind the joke about the professor who asked her class of history students what is the main thing they think is wrong with communism. To which each and every student replied that the problem with communism is that it teaches people to think alike.
Setting the Record Straight on Communism and Socialist Revolution
REFUTING THE BIGGEST LIES AGAINST COMMUNISM
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
LIE #3: The 1917 October Revolution in Russia was a “coup” staged by Lenin and the communist Bolshevik Party. They were power hungry and grabbed power for themselves.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, a flood of magazine and news articles blasts out the lie that Lenin and the vanguard party he led, known as the Bolsheviks, were manipulators: out for themselves and advancing through deceit.
Fact: The Russian Revolution was an anti-capitalist/socialist revolution that involved the determined, heroic, and self-sacrificing struggle of millions of the oppressed and exploited along with intellectuals, young people, and others. In the months leading up to October, mass protests, strikes, large-scale mutinies and mass desertions from the army, land occupations by hungry peasants, and pitched battles between workers and government forces rocked society. In October, the old order was overthrown through a mass insurrection. A new state-political power representing the interests of the formerly oppressed and exploited and the great majority of society was established.
Fact: What made the October 1917 victory possible... what enabled the revolution in power to defeat the forces of counter-revolution and their imperialist backers in the civil war of 1918-20 that followed... and what was decisive to building modern history’s first society free from exploitation and oppression, was visionary, scientifically based leadership. This communist leadership, the Bolshevik party led by V.I. Lenin, guided and unleashed the masses in their millions to consciously bring a new and emancipatory world into being.
That is the crime and the example for which the imperialists and their ideologues hold Lenin responsible. That is why they detest, denounce, and distort Lenin’s leadership... because this is about leading the masses to put an end to capitalism-imperialism and all its horrors, and to all exploitation and oppression. That is why their op-eds declare: “never again.”
I. Millions join with Lenin and the Bolsheviks to make a political and social revolution
The truth is that the Russian revolution was the furthest thing from a manipulative coup.
For centuries, Russia was a sharply divided society of haves and have-nots. The wealthy capitalists and big landowners relied on the ruthless rule of the Tsar (a kind of monarchy) supported by the Russian Orthodox Church and maintaining the old order through police terror, denial of rights, and thuggish, KKK-type violence.
By 1917, Tsarist Russia’s participation in World War 1 had reaped a gruesome toll: seven million killed and wounded. The dead were mostly drawn from the ranks of landless peasants and half-starved urban factory workers. In February, in the face of mass outpourings, the Tsar was forced to “abdicate” (step down). A new “bourgeois-reformist” government came to power making all kinds of promises. But it did nothing to solve the basic problems of the people—and it continued to wage the slaughter of world war.
Under Lenin’s leadership, the Bolsheviks raised the demand “peace, bread, land”—to end the war with Germany, prevent starvation, and drive out the big landowners and redistribute land to poor peasants. They were the only political force prepared and determined to lead the oppressed in Russian society to act to realize these demands. The other major parties and organized forces in Russia (including those on the “left”) were working to reform, to make changes within, an exploitative, oppressive, and decrepit system—and they supported Russia’s participation in World War 1.
Three Bogus Anti-Communist Charges
We are told...
» That Lenin and the Bolsheviks were “manipulative.” The fact is, the Bolshevik program and their vision of a new and better world resonated widely and deeply in a society in crisis, upheaval, and looking for direction. Their program expressed the urgently felt needs of millions suffering the misery and hopelessness of the old order. And the Bolsheviks, at the risk of losing short-term support, went up against reactionary popular tides—for instance, the “we-must-win-the-war” World War 1 patriotism that swept Russia. They stood up to and challenged deeply entrenched anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) prejudices.
» That Lenin and the Bolsheviks were “masters of deceit.” The truth is that the Bolsheviks had been raising the consciousness of the oppressed, bringing scientific understanding to the masses, so that they could grasp the root causes of their suffering and un-reformability of the system—and consciously act in their own revolutionary interests. And in a situation of growing radicalization and discontent in 1917, the Bolsheviks were training people to see through the maneuvering and deceptions of an oppressive government, and the inadequacy of all other political programs and agendas.
Far from deceiving people and concealing his views, Lenin’s whole approach was that the Bolsheviks must lead by empowering millions with a conscious understanding of the means, methods, and goals of the communist revolution. For this, the Bolsheviks relied on a daily newspaper printed and distributed throughout Russia in the tens of thousands (through legal and underground channels) in order to prepare minds and organize forces for the seizure and exercise of state power.
» That they were an “isolated clique.” The Bolsheviks had grassroots strength as well as organization in factory committees, and in the armed forces. These organizations were called soviets: the illegal, anti-government representative assemblies of workers, soldiers, and peasants contesting for power. The question that Lenin posed, as a revolutionary crisis ripened, was whether the power would lead to overthrowing and defeating the old social and economic order, and establishing the rule of a new AND emancipatory economic, political, and social system.
Lenin decisively led the Bolsheviks to take revolutionary responsibility and leadership in 1917. Bob Avakian demarcates how momentous this was and is for all who crave liberation:
Lenin’s argument in What Is To Be Done?—that the more highly organized and centralized the party was, the more it was a real vanguard organization of revolutionaries, the greater would be the role and initiative of the masses in revolutionary struggle—was powerfully demonstrated in the Russian Revolution itself and has been in all proletarian revolutions. Nowhere has such a revolution been made without such a party and nowhere has the lack of such a party contributed to unleashing the initiative of masses of the oppressed in conscious revolutionary struggle. (BAsics 6:1)
II. The utter nonsense that Lenin and the Bolsheviks grabbed and tightened power for themselves
Let’s look at what the new Soviet power was used for. Immediately, the new revolutionary government issued two historic decrees (or laws). One was to fulfill the mass demand to withdraw Russia from the unjust imperialist world war and to declare peace without conquest of countries or annexation of lands. The other was to empower the bitterly oppressed peasantry to seize the Tsarist lands and the landholdings of the wealthy aristocrats and of the Russian Orthodox Church (which had owned and controlled huge tracts of land).
The imperialists would have none of this—and tried to strangle the revolution in its infancy. But even as the Soviet Union was desperately fighting for its survival, it carried forward a social revolution that crucially involved creating equality among peoples, and working to uproot the subordinate role of women in society.
For example, the revolution abolished the practice of church-sanctioned marriage and the institutionalized authority of the male in the household. Abortion was legalized more than 50 years before Roe v. Wade in the U.S. Patriarchal customs were challenged in the Central Asian republics, where oppressive Islamic laws held sway, like arranged marriages and forced wearing of hijabs or niqabs (that covered women’s faces). Never before had an entire society set out to overcome the oppression of women... never before had gender equality and traditional sex roles become such a major social focus. There was much that was changed, much that was inspiring, and weaknesses in understanding and practice as well—to be studied and learned from.
The Bolshevik revolution created the world’s first multinational state based on equality of nationalities. Minority nationalities were granted the right to instruction in their native languages in all schools. The Soviet state devoted considerable resources to the mass production of books, journals and newspapers in the minority regions. Books were published in over 40 non-Russian languages. Campaigns were led against great-Russian chauvinism (similar to white racism).
So come again... Lenin and the Bolsheviks were out for themselves?
And, by the way, what was going on in the U.S. at the time? Segregation was the law of the land; racial intermarriage was forbidden in over 30 states; Klan violence and lynching were epidemic in the South; the Supreme Court had ruled that immigrants could be forcibly sterilized.
III. A closing thought. Imperialists have no right to talk about coups and being power hungry... unless they are looking in the mirror
Talk about coups and the “cynical manipulation” of power to topple regimes and to install or preserve cliques. Well, the U.S. imperialists have written the playbook. They’ve staged dozens of coups across the planet since 1953—working through media, economic destabilization campaigns, paramilitary forces, and senior military officers. They’ve done it in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Libya (and the list goes on). They’ve done it to mass murderous effect. Readers are urged to check out the American Crime series at revcom.us, and William Blum’s Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.
Recommended Readings
*THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Part IV: “The leadership we need,” by Bob Avakian, 2016
*You Don’t Know What You Think You “Know” About... The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future, an interview with Raymond Lotta, 2014, www.revcom.us and www.thisiscommunism.org
*BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, Chapter 6: “Revolutionary Responsibility and Leadership” and Supplement “The Revolutionary Potential of the Masses and the Responsibility of the Vanguard,” by Bob Avakian, 2011
*The 1917 Revolution: How the Bolsheviks Seized Power, November 9, 1997, www.revcom.us
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")
In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment focuses on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.
The site of the Sand Creek Massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
THE CRIME: They came at dawn, November 29, 1864, 700 heavily armed soldiers of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, led by Colonel John Chivington. They rode rapidly toward their target, a Cheyenne village near Sand Creek, where the people were caught by surprise because months earlier, representatives of the U.S. government had met with their chief, encouraged him to settle near the creek, and had promised him and his people peace and safety. As the soldiers approached, the chief, Black Kettle, raced to raise the American flag over his lodge in a show of solidarity; others raised white flags of surrender. It didn’t matter.
The soldiers opened fire with carbines and cannons, killing at least 130, almost two-thirds women, children, and the elderly. Most of the young men were out hunting when the attack occurred; otherwise, the death toll would have been considerably higher. Before leaving, the soldiers burned the village and mutilated the dead.
Captain Silas Soule, a passionate anti-slavery abolitionist, was appalled by the attack, which he saw as a betrayal of the agreement between the U.S. government, Colorado authorities, and Black Kettle. Soule refused to fire a shot or order his troops into action, instead bearing searing witness to the massacre. “Hundreds of women and children were coming toward us, and getting on their knees for mercy,” Soule wrote, only to be shot and “have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.” Soule estimated that 200 were killed, all but 60 of them women and children. He also described how the soldiers not only scalped the dead but cut off the “Ears and Privates” of some.
Another appalled witness said: “I saw bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces ... with knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors...”
Colonel Chivington and his troops dressed their weapons, hats, and gear with scalps and other body parts, including the breasts they had sliced off and the vaginas they had cut out. They also publicly displayed these “battle trophies” in Denver’s public theater during intermissions, as well as at area saloons.
THE CRIMINALS:
The U.S. Government: The Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples had been guaranteed ownership of a large territory in eastern Colorado by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. But in 1858 waves of white immigrants flooded the territory in search of recently discovered gold. By 1861, tensions between the gold seekers, many of whom decided to settle in the territory, and the Native Americans who had been promised the land, had heightened, sometimes breaking out into violent conflict. The U.S. government, in violation of the treaty, supported the white settlers and moved to take the land away from the Native Americans. In February 1861, Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders, including Black Kettle, were forced to sign a new treaty, giving up most of their land in exchange for a 600-square-mile reservation and annuity payments, although many among the Cheyenne refused to accept this new treaty, which they saw as a sellout.
Colorado Governor John Evans: In 1864, Evans, who had been appointed governor of the Colorado territory by President Abraham Lincoln, promised to provide sanctuary to “friendly Indians.” At the same time, he issued a proclamation authorizing “all citizens of Colorado ... to go in pursuit of all hostile Indians [and] kill and destroy all enemies of the country,” a position supported by Lincoln himself. So in April 1864, with U.S. government backing, Colorado soldiers began attacking and destroying “hostile” Cheyenne camps, based on Evans’ orders. At the same time, Evans attempted to isolate the militants by inviting “friendly Indians” to camp near military forts with the promise that they would not be attacked. Black Kettle, still hoping for peace, agreed to move his people close to Fort Lyon, near Sand Creek. In reality, Evans made no distinction between Native Americans like Black Kettle who were willing to compromise and those who continued to fight. So after Chivington’s massacre at Sand Creek, Evans decorated him and his men for their “valor in subduing the savages.”
U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington: A former Methodist minister and close friend of Evans, Chivington led the massacre at Sand Creek. For him, as for Evans, there was really no distinction between peaceful and militant bands—all needed to be “taught a lesson.” As Chivington said:
“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little: nits make lice.”
The U.S. Congress and Military: When word of the Sand Creek Massacre reached Washington in early 1865, and primarily because of a huge public outcry, Congress felt compelled to investigate, and after hearing eyewitness testimony from Captain Soule and others, concluded that Chivington—who insisted that he had battled fierce warriors rather than slaughtering helpless women, children, and elders—had “deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre,” and had “surprised and murdered in cold blood,” Native Americans who “had every reason to believe they were under protection of the U.S. authorities.”
However, Congress took no measures against Chivington, and the condemnation itself was highly unusual, given that the U.S. government and military had broken countless treaties with Native peoples, such as the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, and carried out one genocidal assault after another aimed at exterminating all Native American resistance.
The U.S. military also investigated Chivington and decided there was no basis for court-martial proceedings against him because, by then, Chivington had resigned from the military. He was not jailed or punished in any way, except to lose his once-promising political career.
John Evans, like Chivington, was censured by Congress but also received no punishment, other than being forced to resign as governor of the Colorado territory, after which he forged a lucrative career building and operating Colorado railroads. Today, he is the namesake of Evanston, Wyoming; Evans, Colorado; and Evanston, Illinois, as one of the founders there of Northwestern University, where the highest honor bestowed on faculty members today is the John Evans professorship.
THE ALIBI:
Evans, Chivington, and others claimed that Chief Black Kettle and his followers were straying from the agreement to settle and hunt close to Fort Lyon and Sand Creek. They also claimed it had become nearly impossible to distinguish between peaceful and hostile Native Americans, with settlers complaining of increasing attacks on their land and livestock, compelling the authorities and military to broaden and intensify their attacks.
THE ACTUAL MOTIVE:
It was the U.S. government and white settlers who repeatedly violated agreements and treaties leading up to the massacre of 1864, in order to seize and exploit lands promised to the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples.
The 1858 discovery of gold in Colorado was the immediate trigger for the events and betrayals leading to the massacre, but on a deeper level this was a grotesque expression of capitalism’s compulsion to expand, and the role the conquest of the West (as well as parts of Mexico in the war of 1846) played in forging and maintaining the white supremacist glue holding U.S. society together.
(In Colorado, and much more sharply in some other states, in the several decades leading up to the 1861-65 Civil War, the expansion of white settlements and the genocide of Native peoples also reflected the underlying conflict between the entrenched slave-owning class in the South and the new and growing capitalist class in the North. The question for both was: Which of these two would prevail, and for both, the key lay in being able to expand to the West. By 1864, the pro-Union capitalist forces were dominant in states like Colorado.)
This murderous expansion and conquest was justified by the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny,” a phrase coined in 1845 to express the notion that the U.S. (i.e., white Christians) had the God-given right to rule the entire continent “from sea to shining sea”—from the East Coast to the Pacific Ocean—and it would be sinful in God’s eyes if they didn’t exercise that “right.”
Sources:
Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek, Harvard University Press, 2013
Houston Texans Owner: “We can’t have the inmates run the prison” Players Respond by Kneeling During Anthem
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Last week Robert McNair, owner of the NFL Houston Texans, in talking about the players who are refusing to stand for the national anthem and acting in other ways to protest police brutality and murder against Black people, said, “We can’t have the inmates run the prison.”
This Sunday, the Houston Texans players delivered an unmistakable response. The team knelt en masse during the anthem. It was reported that only 10 Texans players were standing during the anthem. The Texans were playing the Seattle Seahawks. Several Seahawks players sat during the anthem, as they have been doing during the games this season.
Before the Sunday game, DeAndre Hopkins, all-pro receiver for the Texans, did not show up for practice on Friday in protest of McNair’s statement. McNair’s comments almost caused the entire team to revolt. Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted, “Texans players wanted to walkout today in response to owner Bob McNair’s comments, per @sarahbarshop. Had to be persuaded to stay.”
The New York Daily News reported, “Texans offensive tackle Duane Brown told the Houston Chronicle that players ultimately chose to attend practice. But the team will get together to discuss the issue at a later time...” Brown said, “I think it angered a lot of players, including myself. We put our bodies and minds on the line every time we step on that field, and to use an analogy of inmates in prison, that's disrespectful. That's how I feel about it...It sickened me...it’s horrible, it’s frustrating... I’m not surprised by it.” The Texans rookie safety, Treston Decoud, tweeted, “I don’t believe he is the only owner that feel that way... smh [shaking my head]”
McNair is part of a large group of owners who supported Donald Trump for president. The Washington Post reported, “The Houston Texans owner donated $2 million in 2016 to a pro-Trump super PAC. He is also among the eight NFL team owners who collectively doled out millions of dollars for Trump’s inauguration.”
Other NFL players spoke out against McNair. Eric Reid of the San Francisco 49ers, who has been kneeling for the anthem during the past two seasons, said, “I don’t think he [McNair] could’ve picked a poorer choice of words, referring to us as prisoners. Welcome to America 2017.”
Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks tweeted, “I can appreciate ppl [people] being candid. Don’t apologize! You meant what you said. Showing true colors allows ppl to see you for who you are. ... I wish more ppl would do that. So the world could ostracize those who don’t want to see EQUALITY. Otherwise they will continue to hide.”
Brian Orakpo, linebacker for the Tennessee Titans, tweeted, “That's how they really feel huh??? These words out this man's mouth are infuriating to me and the rest of my brothers in this League.”
The battle of the NFL players against the owners and Donald Trump has now escalated and is becoming extremely sharp. Despite all the attempts to get the players to stop their anthem protest, the owners’ slave master/prison warden mentality towards their players has further fueled the players’ anger and resolve to continue their protests against racial injustice and the continuing murders of Black people by the police.
What the owners want is to be controlling the Black players and keeping them “down and in their place” as subservient “sub-humans.” The logic of these owners who are supporting Trump and his fascist agenda is that, because they own the team, they also “own” the players—and the extension of that logic is that the players have to do what the owners say. This means that in no way are any of these owners going to allow any player to refuse to stand for the national anthem. Welcome to America 2017, where the open promotion of slave relations is now the norm in the NFL.
This quote from Bob Avakian (BA) is very relevant to what’s going on:
There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth. (BAsics 1:1)
So here we have a significant group of owners who have allied themselves with a fascist regime, which is bringing more and worse horrors for the masses of Black people in this country with mass incarceration, police murdering them, almost non-existent health care, the worst education, poverty, and being forced into broken-down neighborhoods.
But the masses of Black people have begun to stand up against this. They took to the streets when these outrageous police murders were exposed by videos and when the murdering cops were not arrested and when those who were arrested were allowed to walk because of the unjust legal system. The players in the NFL have become a part of that struggle, and they are now under attack by the owners and the Trump/Pence regime. This attempt to silence the Black players is a part of ramping up and consolidating fascism in this country and normalizing today what was not normal last year. Welcome to America 2017.
The players must be supported and defended. Right now the best and most important way to support these players and the struggle to end the brutality and murder of Black people is to become a part of the struggle to get rid of the Trump/Pence regime. We have something to say about that, and the masses of people have a vehicle to make this happen on November 4—when we start the mass movement to stop and end the fascist Trump/Pence regime.
November 4—It Begins
Take to the streets and public squares in cities and towns across the country day after day after night—not stopping—until our DEMAND is met:
This Nightmare Must End:
The Trump/Pence Regime MUST Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America!
As Neo-Nazis Enter the German Parliament and the Government Shifts Rightward: “Away with all illusions about this system and its elections! We need a movement for revolution!”
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 23, 2017. A World to Win News Service. The September 24 national elections in Germany marked a dramatic moment in the rightward lurch taking place throughout Europe: Ninety-two neo-Nazis will now goose-step into the halls of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. In the wake of the rise of the fascist Trump regime in the U.S., Angela Merkel's Germany had been held up as an alternative and proclaimed loudly as one of the remaining ramparts in the defense of “democracy” and “Enlightenment” values. Instead, the country has been swept up in the political turmoil engulfing Europe, and Merkel immediately announced a dramatic shift rightwards to appeal to the fascist movement being led by Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD). Mainstream commentators who'd been deluding themselves that the upsurge of fascism had been stemmed by the victory of Emmanuel Macron in France's recent presidential election were shocked. The AfD is now the third biggest party in Germany, winning over a large chunk of former supporters of the country's social democrats in the SPD. Many had thought the bursting of such right-wing extremist forces onto the center stage in Germany was not possible – that the lessons of the Nazi nightmare were indelibly etched in the country's political memory. As the traditional social-democratic arrangements and norms that have prevailed since World War 2 are thrown into disarray, this shocking result underscores the need for a revolutionary communist perspective that offers the people of Germany a way out of the looming horrors.
Below is a leaflet issued by the Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group, Europe before the elections in Germany. The text has been slightly edited.
On September 24 parliamentary elections will be held again. These elections are of particular importance for the bourgeoisie at a time when the political consensus on which the ruling order rests is eroding and its political stability threatens to fall apart – with the possibility of the situation sharpening by leaps and bounds.
We are experiencing times of great turmoil, unrest and emerging fault lines. The German imperialists are confronted with major challenges and risks – with a European Union in danger of disintegrating; a migration crisis for which the rulers have no solution; the fascist Trump/Pence regime rapidly stepping up its aggressive reassertion of U.S. world dominance and threatening to use nuclear weapons; the escalating conflict between imperialism and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism; and so on. The rise of Trump has whetted the appetite of AfD & Co. to imitate him and at the same time position themselves for heightened rivalry with U.S. imperialism. In the rightist lurch already seen in several countries, the specters of a dark past are emerging again, including among some sections of the established bourgeois politicians.
No matter how the elections turn out, it is already clear right now that any federal government will continue to work to consolidate and strengthen the dominant position of Germany in the world and push through the global interests of German capital. No matter how the elections turn out, growing sections of the population will be affected by impoverishment and social exclusion … the establishment of a "fortress Europe" will continue, a brutal deportation policy will be expedited and the asylum laws will continue be tightened… in the name of "domestic security" the building of a police and surveillance state will be advanced… Germany will increasingly attempt, including by military means, to enforce its interests and ambitions… climate change will take on ever more dramatic dimensions and, and, and… These elections are about forming a new regime that consciously shifts the ruling politics even farther to the right, seeking to make the deeply reactionary dreams of German imperialism a reality. We should refuse to consent to any of this!
There may well be some differences between the bourgeois parties – sometimes even important ones. But these differences never involve the question of whether this system is to be administered and preserved or whether the interests of German capital and "Germany as a place for business" are to be enforced. No, fundamentally these differences only involve the question of how this can best be done. The latest revelations about the [Volkswagen diesel engine] "exhaust scandal" make clearer than ever just how thoroughly the bourgeois political system serves the interests of big capital.
Away with all illusions about this system and its elections! We need a movement for revolution!
We live under the dictatorship of a small minority that owns the large industrial groups, banks and insurance companies. We live under a historically outmoded system that has long since lost any kind of legitimacy. Germany is one of a handful of imperialist countries that plunder and rule over the large majority of the world's nations. The purpose of its state power is to enforce those relationships, while elections serve to legitimize all this. In reality, the interests and needs of the masses here and all over the world do not play any role at all in these elections.
It is dangerous to think that these elections can at least stop the rightist lurch in the political spectrum, let alone reverse it. These illusions disarm people and keep them away from the struggle that is actually needed – like the battle in the U.S. against the fascist Trump regime. Such illusions fail to recognize that the rightist lurch is currently being carried out primarily by the established bourgeois parties. They also fail to recognize that the AfD, NPD and other fascist forces sprang from the soil of the ruling system and continue to be nourished by it. After all, Hitler became chancellor through the "constitutional" channels of the Weimar Republic (the "first democracy on German soil" [1919-33]) with the support of large sections of the ruling class and the acceptance or accommodation of the other bourgeois parties.
Today the CDU/CSU/SPD government [a coalition of Christian and Social Democratic parties] has already implemented parts of the AfD program – for example in their refugee policy. The governmental parties are adopting parts of this program and its underlying mindset while at the same time pointing to the danger posed by the AfD & Co. to win people to support the rightist lurch they are carrying out themselves instead. Even the Greens and Die Linke [the self-styled "Left" parliamentary party] are helping to implement the German deportation policy in states where they are part of the government. Even in the name of the "lesser evil," no one should support these forces that are increasingly adopting the program of the ultra-right.
Today, Angela Merkel is being positioned as the "reasonable alternative" to the fascist Trump/Pence regime in the U.S. as well as the rightist governments in Hungary and Poland, and even as the leader of the "free world." In point of fact, today Merkel stands for a consensus fundamentally based on the established policies in ruling the Western imperialist countries over the past several decades. But this consensus is also moving more and more to the right. The revived debate on the "German Leitkultur" [the German culture that supposedly defines the country, in opposition to other cultures] is an expression of this. The aggressively promoted ravings about the "leftist extremism" and "violence" of the protests against the Hamburg G20 summit are a sign that the rulers are preparing for increased popular resistance and relying on intensified repression. When leading politicians of various parties talk about Germany having to assume "more responsibility" in the world, this means that German imperialism wants to fight for its global ambitions more aggressively in the future – including by military means. Germany is readying itself for sharpening competition and conflict in the world. The domestic rightist lurch is a part of this.
Forces such as Die Linke play a very harmful and dangerous role because they spread the illusion that fundamental change for the better could occur without overthrowing the existing capitalist-imperialist system. They call for "breaking" the "power of the banks" and "democratizing" the economy, warn the governing parties that "war and the threat of military force" cannot be "a means for a peacemaking policy," and speak in favor of "justice in international trade and economic relationships." With such phrases, they foster illusions about the reformability of a bloodsucking system and the state that enforces it. Even if their social reform proposals were realizable, this would only be at the cost of even more intensive exploitation by German imperialism of people in every part of the world. Objectively, forces such as Die Linke function to keep the thinking and activity of many dissatisfied people within an "acceptable" (for the system) and controllable framework.
Forward! We need a movement for revolution!
We urgently need a political movement that aims to combat the crimes of this capitalist imperialist system instead of continuing to cling to illusions. We need a movement whose goal is radical change – that aims to make revolution once the conditions for that have ripened. There is a vision and a scientific approach for building a new world where exploitation and oppression, misery, hunger, narrow-mindedness, patriarchy and the waste of human lives are all things of the past. That is the New Communism, the new vision of revolution and communism developed by Bob Avakian (chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA). This New Communism represents an incredibly liberating and exciting breakthrough for humanity.
With it, the monumental problems facing the seven billion people on this planet can be understood, with all their complexity, in a scientific manner. It provides the general strategic orientation for building a movement for a real revolution that can actually win against the massive death machinery of this system. It provides the orientation for how we can build a society that does justice to the fundamental needs of people while at the same time opening up completely new perspectives for a cultural and intellectual ferment and creativity… for how we can really work on uprooting racism and patriarchy, including in people's thinking and values… for how we can build an economy that interacts with nature in a sustainable manner – and a society where the point of departure is not "my country" but the interests of humanity. The New Communism provides answers to these questions.
The rulers want to consolidate their system and their power. Many people think that really radical change is impossible. But the steps the ruling class is taking right now show that the emerging fault lines and cracks will, in all probability, lead to a further sharpening of the contradictions this system has created. We have to make active preparations for a time when the horizons of more and more people are broadened and they raise their sights.
Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe)
... This book is a masterwork and a master class—it is a living laboratory of the new synthesis of communism developed by Bob Avakian. It is also striking in its ability to combine high level revolutionary communist theory and modeling of revolutionary leadership with a visceral, colloquial and passionate style that will resonate with and be accessible to a wide variety of readers.
This thought-provoking book is sure to challenge stereotypes and conventional thinking.
Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:6
On March 17, 2017, A World to Win News Service (AWTWNS) announced its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. Read its “Editorial: Introducing a transformed AWTWNS” here.
Carl Dix is a courageous freedom fighter from the 1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Today, Carl is a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. Carl Dix and Cornel West co-founded the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City demanding a stop to police terror.
October 22: The National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation!
Take a Knee Against White Supremacy and Get Ready to Stand Up on November 4 to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime
by Carl Dix
October 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Police continue to brutalize and murder people—Patrick Harmon in Utah and David Jones in Philadelphia, Black men shot in the back by cops; Justine Ruszczyk killed by police in Minneapolis after she called 911, Kiwi Herring, a transgender woman in St. Louis killed by police. Juries continue to allow cops to get away with murder by exonerating killer cops even when there are videos of their murderous deeds. Police are on track to kill as many people this year as in 2016. And the victims of the police continue to disproportionately be Black people and other people of color. Hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown people continue to be warehoused in prisons across the U.S.
This police terror and mass incarceration is the spearhead of an overall assault this system is inflicting on Black people that amounts to a slow genocide. This slow genocide is built into the very way this capitalist-imperialist system works, and it will take revolution, nothing less to end it and all the brutality and misery this system enforces on humanity, once and for all.
And now comes Trump, accelerating this slow genocide and intensifying other horrors people suffer in this country and around the world.
Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have called for taking the gloves off the police. At a gathering of police in Long Island, NY, Trump said police should stop being too nice to the people they arrest. Sessions has re-instated mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes—sentences that played a big part in the growth of mass incarceration. Deportations, which hit record highs under Obama, have been intensified by Trump. Trump has called for professional football players who protest how police get away with murder to be fired. As far as he is concerned these players are nothing more than well-paid gladiators who should beat each other’s brains out in the arenas—football stadiums—and never speak out about injustice.
This is part of an overall program that includes restricting a woman’s right to have an abortion or access to birth control, a Muslim travel ban, taking newly won rights from LGBTQ people, attacking freedom of the press and the right to protest, and threatening to destroy North Korea. If we don’t stop this regime before it’s too late, the Trump/Pence regime will consolidate fascist rule in this country, and it will be far more difficult to do anything about any of the horrors being enforced on humanity.
It is crucially important that people stand up in resistance to these intensified attacks. And October 22 is a day to do that. Family members with Stolen Lives banners, students and youth who refuse to accept growing up in a society that has put bull's eyes on their backs, formerly incarcerated people, Black Lives Matter activists, professional people who don’t want to live in a world where the color of a person’s skin can determine whether they live or how they live—everybody—needs to be out in the streets, out at NFL games, everywhere taking a knee against police terror and white supremacy and delivering a message that police terror must stop.
And as we do this, we must be gathering strength for taking to the streets on November 4 in cities across the country. As the Call issued by Refuse Fascism for November 4 says: We willgather in the streets and public squares of cities and towns across this country, at first many thousands declaring that this whole regime is illegitimate and that we will not stop until our single demand is met:This Nightmare Must End: the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
If you’re one of those who say you would’ve resisted the horrors of slavery, or Nazi rule in Germany, or the savage oppression Black people suffered during Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror—you need to stand up NOW and engage in massive non-violent resistance.
STOP POLICE BRUTALITY, REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION!
TAKE A KNEE AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY!
TAKE TO THE STREETS ON NOVEMBER 4 AND STAY IN THE STREETS UNTIL THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME IS DRIVEN FROM OFFICE!
Vehicular Hate Crime in Brea, California: Driver Plows Through Immigrants’ Rights Protest
October 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Brea, a city southeast of Los Angeles in Orange County, was the scene of what appears to be the latest hate crime against people protesting the Trump/Pence regime’s assaults on the people, in this case immigrants.
On Thursday, October 26, several hundred were taking part in a permitted, nonviolent protest outside the office of Congressman Ed Royce. Their demand: that Temporary Protective Status (TPS) be extended for the 300,000 immigrants now in the U.S. who are unable to safely return to their homelands due to war, environmental devastation or other factors. Protest organizers said the TPS is now under threat by the Trump/Pence regime and will expire if it’s not renewed by Congress. These immigrants and refugees “tirelessly care for our children, clean our homes and offices, and work in our fields. There is no doubt they would suffer unspeakable hardship if they are forced to return to their countries of origin,” the protest organizers declared.
When the Congressman’s office refused to meet with protesters, many formed a picket line in a nearby intersection, blocking it. At that point one driver, a 56-year old white man, began slowly plowing through the people! When some protesters jumped on his car or got in front to try and stop him, he sped up.
One who courageously did so told the LA Times, “My only thought is that I just want him to stop...I’m like, if I just jump on the car, he’s going to stop. He did stop, thank God, because if he didn’t stop, he would [have] run over a lot of people that [were] crossing the street. It was so quick.”
The driver stopped a short distance later, and outrageously the pigs on the scene were threatening protesters to get away from the car, showing more concern for the driver than the victims of this attack! The driver was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon but then quickly let go. Police were already whitewashing his actions, saying he was just trying to get through the intersection.
The SEIU United Service Workers West union who organized the action, issued a statement calling the driver’s action of plowing into “a crowd of families, seniors, and children,” an apparent “deliberate and hateful crime.” The union said six people were taken to the hospital.
“We are shocked and saddened that families seeking refuge from violence in their home countries were victimized here in this country. Unfortunately, such hateful crimes have been fostered by the climate of fear and division established by the Trump Administration, and vehicular attacks have actually been actively promoted by the forces right-wing extremism.” The Union vowed to continue to struggle for immigrant rights: “we refuse to be silenced in the face of oppression and violence.”
October 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Once again this morning, Bob Corker, Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Trump is so dangerous that he is setting the country on a path to World War III. And remember, Corker is not running for re-election. He is not a Democrat. He has no “skin in the game,” other than what he perceives the overall interests of the ruling class to be. And now, for the second time in two weeks, he has made this point.
So stop. Think. If what he is saying is true—and if anything, he understates the problem—this means that all of humanity is in direct danger of extinction at the hands of a fascist regime headed by a demented bully and an end-times Christian fanatic.
How is this not something that everything stops for? How are we not seeing both Republicans and Democrats stopping business as usual and clamoring for immediate hearings, calling people into the streets, and taking drastic steps to prevent such a calamity? Again, think of what’s being said! “On the road to World War III.”
We cannot wait for those on top to see reason or to find a heart. They, as well as all of society, must see and hear masses of people coming out on November 4, and the days thereafter, demanding that this regime be driven out and replaced.
“Great Hope” General Kelly Goes Full Fascist, On All Fronts
October 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Millions of liberals and progressive-minded people who detest Trump have been hoping, indeed counting on, Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly, along with other generals in the administration (McMaster and Mattis) to be “the adults in the room”— the decent, disciplined and (somehow!) war-averse military men who were going to restrain the fascist Trump and protect the world from his vicious white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia and reckless nuclear warmongering.
On October 19, those hopes were exposed as illusion—and self-delusion—when Gen. Kelly stepped before the microphones at a White House press conference to try to squelch the uproar over Trump’s callous and flippant phone call to the family of La David Johnson, a Black soldier killed in a secret U.S. war in Niger.
Kelly eagerly and willingly went full-Trump fascist on all fronts. (Read the transcript here.)
He fully backed Trump’s actions, cynically invoked the death of his own son in combat as political capital, and launched into a racist, lie-filled attack on a Black congresswoman from Florida. Then Kelly, this so-called “man of integrity” dove into a grotesque and maudlin celebration of that era when he “was a kid growing up”—the 1950s and early ’60s—when “women,” “religion,” “dignity of life” and, of course, service in the U.S. military, were “sacred.”
You remember those “good old days,” don’t you? The days when the U.S. military leveled the whole of North Korea, killing millions. The days when young Black men like Emmett Till were brutally tortured and lynched for alleged violations of the racist code that governed the lives of all Black people, and the murderers were acquitted by all-white juries. The days when civil rights workers like Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney were abducted, tortured and murdered by the KKK, with the aid of the police. (And these were just three among two dozen brutal racist murders carried out in Mississippi in that period.) The days when a woman wasn’t allowed to open a bank account without her husband’s permission and men were legally allowed to rape their wives. The days when anyone who wasn’t a heterosexual, god-fearing white Christian could have their “dignity of life” and maybe their life itself, snatched away at a moment’s notice by any asshole, mob, Klansman or cop that felt like “having a little fun.”
This is what Kelly yearns for. This (and much worse) is what the regime he willingly serves wants to violently reimpose, under even more barbaric fascist rule.
In service of this agenda, Kelly’s central theme was the worship, sanctity, and sanctification of the U.S. military—a core element of the Trump/Pence fascist regime. Kelly exalted military service as “sacred.” He praised the soldiers who carry out war crimes from one end of the earth to the other, as “the best 1 percent this country produces,” and “the best men on Earth.” Why? Because they are “doing their nation’s bidding all around the world.” “They go where we send them ... Sometimes they go in large numbers to invade Afghanistan and Iraq,” or to any of the dozens of other U.S. outposts—building and manning drone bases, training local reactionary forces, propping up brutal dictatorships, and other “missions” in service of the world’s greatest empire of enslavement and oppression. [Emphasis added]
This coming from the general who, as head of the U.S. Southern Command, carried out an “aggressive oversight” of detainees at the torture chamber known as Guantánamo, including “punitive force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber bullets,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.
And how do these “best men” on earth, treat women? With an epidemic of rape—of the women in the countries they occupy, as well as female GIs, who report being afraid to go to the bathroom at night lest they be attacked by their “brothers-in-arms.”
Kelly refused to take questions from any reporter unless they claimed a personal connection to a U.S. soldier killed in action, (and reporters felt compelled to preface their questions by thanking Kelly for his military service). White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders followed up a day later by warning reporters who pointed out Kelly’s lies that it was “highly inappropriate” to “debate ... a four-star Marine general.”
In other words, this sacred military has the right to deny questioning by anyone who is not a veteran or family of someone killed in one of the U.S. invasions of the world—or questioned at all, even when caught in bald-faced lies! All reminiscent of open military juntas where “insulting” the military is a severely punished criminal offense.As Masha Gessen noted in The New Yorker, Kelly’s press briefing “could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would look like...”
So, dear liberals:
THIS is who you were hoping would restrain Trump? This pig who has more than once come to Trump’s rescue in just this fashion, and has now come fully out of his fascist bag? A “choice” between military dictatorship and fascist lunacy—when you’ll probably end up with both? The time for these hopes is long past. The time to actually face reality—that this is ONLY going to get worse, as it does in some egregious form or other seemingly every week or even every day—is long since past. And the time to do the ONLY thing that can be done—getting this regime out—is HERE. November 4: It begins.
Trump Gives Himself a Perfect "10 out of 10" for Hurricane Relief in Puerto Rico
A Perfect Example of a Genocidal Liar in Top Form
October 21, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In Puerto Rico (and in the other nearby colony, the U.S. Virgin Islands), one full month after Hurricane Maria, the situation for millions of people remains dire. Just 22 percent of Puerto Ricans have electricity, more than one in four has no access to drinkable water, and the majority of cellphone towers are down. People are forced to drink from dangerously polluted wells and streams. The economy is at a standstill, and doctors use terms like "post-apocalyptic" to describe the state of healthcare, warning that thousands are in danger and many dying "preventable deaths."
At the recent funeral of a man who slowly suffocated for five days because there was no power for his oxygen pump, his body lay decomposing in the casket at a funeral home with no refrigeration. A mourner declared, "You can't even die. In this country you can't even die."
But at an October 19 meeting with the Puerto Rico's Governor Rossello, when asked to rate the job his administration had done in providing relief on a scale of one to ten, Trump gave himself a perfect score—"a ten" for what he claimed was the "great job" they were doing.
At this meeting, Trump spoke not of aid but of debt, indicating that Puerto Rico, already over $70 billion in debt, and facing an imminent government shutdown, would have to borrow more money to repair the devastated infrastructure on which the lives of millions depend. And this exactly one week after Trump again threatened, "At some point, FEMA has to leave, first responders have to leave and the people have to take over."
After over a century of colonial domination, plunder and exploitation, Puerto Rico is now suffering from purposeful, murderous, and racist neglect at the hands of the Trump/Pence fascists.
Is this an overstatement?
Look at the facts—Puerto Rico, mainly Spanish-speaking and dark-skinned, gets a pitiful fraction of the support received by areas in the continental U.S. that suffered less devastation:
After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, 5,300 repair workers from around the U.S. were rushed to the area—in fact, the highways coming into Houston were choked with utility repair trucks. When Irma hit Florida, 18,000 workers were dispatched to restore power.
In Puerto Rico, after four weeks, most repair work is being done by 900 local workers, lacking sufficient trucks, poles, and lines, and going home after long days of grueling work to sleep in suffocating heat, without clean water.
Trump bragged about getting a total of 10,000 FEMA and other federal employees to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. But there were over 37,000 FEMA and other federal aid workers in Texas within six days of Hurricane Harvey.
When the storms hit Texas and Florida, the Trump regime immediately waived the Jones Act (requiring U.S.-owned ships handle all cargo, greatly increasing relief costs) for a month. In Puerto Rico the regime first refused to waive it at all, and then issued a 10-day waiver, which has now ended.
Trump blames Puerto Ricans for the island's $74 billion debt (which is actually a result of U.S. domination to begin with), and points to that as the main obstacle to reconstruction. But rather than offer debt relief to assist in this emergency, Trump proposed a further (and meager) $4.9 billion loan for hurricane relief. But in Texas, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were built in known flood zones, construction that was encouraged and subsidized by the Federal Flood Insurance Program, which issued policies no private company would. Now that this program is (predictably) billions of dollars in debt, Trump requested $16 billion in cash (not a loan) to bail it out.
In a nutshell, the Trump regime's program for Puerto Rico is to blame Puerto Ricans for the disaster, go through the motions of providing emergency relief while letting hundreds of thousands suffer and many die, and then "offer" to entrench the island even more deeply in debt if they ever want to get electricity and running water. The effect of this has been and will be to drive tens of thousands from the island and make life an unsafe and unhealthy hell for those who remain.
And in declaring the relief effort "a 10," and constantly demanding that Puerto Rican political leaders publicly praise it, Trump is making clear that in his eyes, "inferior peoples" should be grateful for any crumbs they get from their masters, and stop complaining about the needless misery and death.
So yes, Trump deserves "a perfect score"—in his genocidal assault on the Puerto Rican people.
Unconscionable Censorship of PRLF—Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund
Updated October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Global Exchange, the fiscal sponsor for the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF), summarily cut off PRLF for explicitly political reasons after four years of excellent association. This cutoff means that PRLF can no longer accept tax-deductible donations. The new director, Jeff Ordower, stated, “Global Exchange is not interested in an association with Bob Avakian or the RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party, USA].”
This action by Global Exchange is unacceptable on general principle, but particularly in the time of Trump, this is downright unconscionable. This is also the most important time for PRLF’s annual fundraising drive.
In response to Global Exchange, four former prisoners immediately wrote a statement about what PRLF has meant to them. This statement is now circulating inside prison walls for current prisoners’ endorsement.
The PRLF is also sending out a letter to people of conscience who care deeply about the situation of prisoners to ask that they either contact Global Exchange directly or lend their name to a statement that will be sent to all members of Global Exchange’s Board of Directors to urge them to immediately reverse this decision.
PRLF’s objective is to have Global Exchange re-instate PRLF as a fiscal project of theirs. (Global Exchange can be contacted at web@globalexchange.org or 415.255.7296)
The PRLF has vowed to encourage supporters to protest outside Global Exchange’s office in San Francisco if the revocation of PRLF’s status is not overturned.
The following is the statement that PRLF is encouraging voices of conscience to sign:
“We, the undersigned, urge you to immediately reverse your decision to not continue Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund as a fiscal project of Global Exchange. The reason given that you do not wish to associate with Bob Avakian or the RCP is unacceptable, especially in the time of Trump. Some of us have actively engaged Bob Avakian’s work and value that engagement, but all of us protest this censorship on the part of Ordower on behalf of Global Exchange. In doing so, we recall the words of Pastor Niemöller:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Best way PRLF can reach you (not for publication): ___________________________
PRLF is asking you to be an initiating signer of this statement. PRLF will publish it as soon as possible, encouraging more people to sign this letter.
If you contact Global Exchange directly, please let contact@PRLF.org know that you did. Please also let PRLF know if you get any response from Global Exchange.
If you have any questions, please get in touch with PRLF: contact@prlf.org, 773.960.6952
Signatories (list in formation):
Jason Bell, Regional Director, Project Rebound Expanded*, San Francisco State University*
John Burris, attorney
Colin Dayan, professor and writer Carl Dix, Representative of Revolutionary Communist Party, co-initiator of RefuseFascism.org Gregory "Joey" Johnson, former defendant, U.S. Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson (1989), member of Revolution Club Emily Kunstler, director/producer, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe Sarah Kunstler, director/producer, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe Nancy Michaels
*PRLF is an educational literature fund that has sent Revolution newspaper (www.revcom.us), works from Bob Avakian, (Chairman of the RCP) and other revolutionary and scientific literature to hundreds of prisoners across the U.S. for 10 years. PRLF has fought attempts by prison officials to censor these publications. For example, the ACLU of Southern California successfully represented PRLF in a censorship battle focused on Pelican Bay State Prison, with statewide ramifications in California.
Ex-Prisoners Speak Out Against the Global Exchange Censorship of the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund
Updated October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Recently, Global Exchange has notified the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF) that it will no longer sponsor it and enable it to receive tax-deductible contributions. Jeff Ordower, the new director of Global Exchange, explained this by saying, “First, Global Exchange is not interested in an association with Bob Avakian or the RCP....”
As former prisoners whose lives have been positively transformed through engagement with Bob Avakian’s works as well as a wide range of other literature provided by the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, we want to express our outrage and condemn what amounts to arbitrary and mean-spirited censorship of the PRLF by Jeff Ordower, the new director of the Global Exchange.
Jeff Ordower has stated: “Yes, I am a new director and one of the folks making this call. Two concerns pop up. First, Global Exchange is not interested in an association with Bob Avakian or the RCP....”
While incarcerated, enclosed by gloomy, gray concrete walls, we received literature from the PRLF that was truly a light in the darkness. The way we viewed the world and the role we played in society changed dramatically. We learned to think of more than ourselves and our present conditions, we learned of all the unnecessary suffering of masses of people throughout the world and were able to reclaim our humanity by recognizing it didn’t have to be that way and that there was a role for us to play in changing it. Through engagement with Bob Avakian we were inspired to think differently, to raise our sights beyond the monotonous comings and goings of prison life, and were able to envision a radically different world, without people being horrendously exploited, oppressed, degraded, cast off and ground up like human garbage by this system. Now Jeff Ordower wants to prevent other prisoners from getting the same opportunity.
Jeff Ordower has through his actions appointed himself the position of “thought cop,” policing the ideas that prisoners are able to engage by unconscionably cutting off the lifeline to the outside world that the PRLF provides to hundreds of people behind prison walls simply because he doesn’t agree with communism. What the PRLF has done for us (and does for many more still locked up) was more than offer an escape from the maddening, mind-numbing and mind-killing conditions of incarceration, but more importantly awakened us to political life and moved us to radically change our morality and way of thinking in the most positive way imaginable, yes, through the works of Bob Avakian and the RCP, as well as other works from other perspectives. It is hard to imagine the immensely positive transformation that we have been through had it not been for the work of the PRLF in getting the works of Bob Avakian and subsidized subscriptions of Revolution newspaper into our hands and into our cells.
This censorship is nothing more than a cheap, unprincipled anti-communist attack and we the undersigned call for this action to be reversed.
Signed by four former prisoners and two current prisoners, whose names are being withheld to prevent political repression, and now being circulated among current and more former prisoners for endorsement.
Ten-Year-Old Girl with Cerebral Palsy Faces Deportation After Emergency Surgery
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
At 2 am on Tuesday, October 24, the undocumented Mexican parents of a 10-year-old girl were told by doctors at a hospital in Laredo, Texas, that their daughter needed emergency gall bladder surgery, and must be transferred immediately to a hospital in Corpus Christi, 150 miles away. Rosa María Hernández, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has the capacity of a six-year-old, was brought to this country as a three-month-old infant.
The parents, fearing deportation because they would have to cross a Border Patrol checkpoint, had to let their daughter travel with only a U.S. citizen relative. The emergency hospital van was stopped at the checkpoint, and when the Border Patrol discovered Rosa María was undocumented, the agents followed the van the entire way to Corpus Christi.
This was no humanitarian gesture. Because she was in the country “illegally,” agents insisted that this “criminal alien” be within sight from then on, because Rosa María was a “flight risk.” They were nearby during the surgery, and in the room for all medical follow-up. Even her lawyer had to force them to leave when she spoke with her client.
The lawyer told the Independent, “We had direct confrontation for about a 45 minute period... because Border Patrol indicated that their directive from the supervisor was that the child was to remain in their line of sight.” She said the Border Patrol “has been unable to tell me what threat or in what manner this 10-year-old child with cerebral palsy is posing to the U.S. They haven’t really answered that question.”
From the hospital Rosa María was sent to a shelter housing juveniles in immigration custody in San Antonio, another 150 miles away. To get there, Rosa María traveled with an armed guard inside the vehicle, followed by two Border Patrol and two ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) vehicles. It remains unclear whether Rosa María will be deported, or allowed to return to her mother’s care.
An undocumented immigrant with Dream Activist told the Independent, “That’s the result that immigration wants to get out of this, for people to know what they need to be afraid of. Practically speaking, on the ground, I think that the message is being heard from the community.”
And no, this isn’t one of those exceptional cases. In May, after a two-month-old U.S.-born baby in Harlingen, Texas, required life-saving surgery in Corpus Christi, the Border Patrol showed up at the hospital and agreed to escort him and his undocumented parents through the checkpoint as long as they agreed to face deportation proceedings when they got there. In February, huffingtonpost.com reported that a mother of two children, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor requiring surgery at a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, was returned to ICE custody at Prairieland Detention Center—where ICE was going to keep her under observation until her surgery.
The blatantly cold-blooded treatment of Rosa María Hernández, and other undocumented immigrants, is meant as a deliberate message—as further encouragement to the fascist forces that it’s “open season” for vicious attacks against immigrants, and a warning to immigrants and those who support them of what is in store under the “new norms” of this fascist regime. And it captures a great deal of truth about how the fascists are determined to carry out their xenophobic, white-supremacist goal of ridding the country of all undocumented immigrants, and discouraging others from coming.
This disgusting dehumanization of immigrants cannot be allowed to continue. The Trump/Pence fascist regime must be stopped in its tracks, and driven from power. This won’t happen without further attacks and outrages by the regime and by their racist, chauvinist base of supporters. But it can happen. And it must.
Protesters Shut Down Fascist White-Supremacist Rallies in Tennessee
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Saturday, October 28, “White Lives Matter” rallies were set to take place in two Tennessee cities, Shelbyville and Murfreesboro. The white supremacists, many of whom attended the Nazi rally in Charlottesville in August (where white supremacists attacked anti-fascist protestors and killed Heather Heyer), arrived in Shelbyville with helmets and shields. However, they were met by dozens of counter-protesters blasting music and speeches by MLK Jr. over a PA. Local media reported that the Nazis’ speeches were completely drowned out by the anti-racist protesters’ music and speeches.
The fascists had planned to start in Shelbyville and then travel 20 miles north to Murfreesboro. Approximately 1,000 counter-protesters had gathered prior to the Nazi rally in Murfreesboro, far outnumbering the white supremacists, forcing the white supremacists to cancel their rally. One of the leading white supremacists tweeted saying that Murfreesboro was a “lawsuit trap” as justification for canceling his Nuremburg rally (Nuremburg was a city in Germany where Hitler held Nazi rallies), claiming it was not worth the risk.
This is an important example of the people standing up to fascism and shutting it down. One protester told CNN, “What will I tell my daughters? ‘Mommy was too busy watching football to protest a Nazi takeover?’ Not me. Not in my state.” The group that organized the protest, Murfreesboro Loves, posted on Facebook Saturday night, “We will drive home the message that white supremacy is not welcome in Murfreesboro.”
Theodore Roosevelt Statue Defaced in Protest vs. “Genocide, Dispossession, Displacement, Enslavement, and State Terror”
October 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
As reported by the arts website Hyperallergic.com, a new activist group calling themselves the Monument Removal Brigade (MRB) took responsibility for splashing red paint on a statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on Thursday, October 26. In a statement available online, the MRB described their action as a “work of public art and an act of applied art criticism”—a “counter-monumental gesture that does symbolic damage to the values [the statue] represents: genocide, dispossession, displacement, enslavement, and state terror.”
The MRB statement points out that in the monument in front of the museum, “Roosevelt is pictured on horseback, reaching for his pistol as he gazes onto the horizon. He is flanked subserviently by a shirtless Black man and an ‘Indian chief.’ They are both holding rifles, willing foot soldiers in the expansion of American Empire. A former NYC Police Commissioner and proud descendent of Dutch settler-colonists who first expropriated Manhattan from the Lenape, Roosevelt rose to fame for his role in the Spanish American war, which involved the colonization of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and Cuba. Roosevelt was also a staunch endorser of Eugenics, the pseudo-scientific movement whose calls for sterilization, population control, and racial purification would directly inspire the Nazis. Roosevelt was an open white supremacist and imperialist who is still lionized by the museum and the city plaza standing in front of it.”
The MRB goes on to say: “The monument not only embodies the violent historical foundation of the United States, but also the underlying dynamics of oppression in our contemporary world. In highlighting the bloody foundations of the monument, we salute those movements struggling against the values epitomized by Roosevelt: past, present, and future. From the uprisings of Ferguson and Standing Rock, to popular self-defense at the frontiers of gentrification in the Bronx, in the ground zero of climate crisis in Puerto Rico, or in the crosshairs of ICE raids terrorizing immigrant communities. We also salute the history of artistic actions undertaken against the monument, especially the six Indigenous activists who temporarily marked it [in] 1971 in solidarity with the occupation of Alcatraz Island by The American Indian Movement (AIM). On the base of the monument they inscribed: ‘Return Alcatraz’ and ‘Fascist Killer.’ Decolonization and Anti-Fascism remain the horizons of our time.”
100+ Women Stage a “Handmaid’s Tale” Protest vs Pence
October 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 26—When Trump’s second in command, Mike Pence, came to Denver for a Republican fundraising event, he was met with more than 100 women dressed in costumes out of The Handmaid’s Tale protesting the regime’s attacks on women and reproductive rights. The Handmaid’s Tale is a current TV series based on a Margaret Atwood novel depicting a Christian fascist society in which strict biblical law and patriarchal values are viciously enforced by the rulers.
One of the protesters told the Boulder Daily Camera, “We thought Ronald Reagan was bad enough with the religious right and Focus on the Family. That is what inspired the book [by Atwood]. But that was nothing like Mike Pence." A member of the Indivisible Front Range, which helped organize the protest, said, “It's a scary thought, thinking someone like Mike Pence is dead set on taking away the rights of women. We stand against discrimination of any kind, and women shouldn't be relegated to the second class."
Pence is a key leader of the powerful Christian fascist movement in the U.S. backed by major sections of the U.S. ruling class—as revcom.us has pointed out, he is a dangerous “holy warrior” waiting in the wings.
A report at CommonDreams.org on the Denver action pointed out, “The protest comes as Republicans in the [U.S. House of Representatives] this week announced hearings for a bill that would make it illegal for doctors to perform abortions after only 6 weeks, earlier than most women even know they are pregnant. That comes after the House, in fact, passed a similar ban for abortion after 20 weeks. The GOP leadership in the Senate has said the 20-week ban will get a vote, but hasn't specified when.”
"Avakian is saying we need to take to the streets and drive out the Trump regime, and I'm with him on that."
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
We received this comment from a Black person who has been in and around resistance to the horrors this system has inflicted on humanity for decades, on the film THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible, a talk by Bob Avakian.
It was an excellent speech. I liked the way Bob Avakian developed the whole thing of capitalism and how he dealt with the history of Black people. I liked how he dealt with the Republicans and Democrats and how they’re all on the same team, which reminded me of a speech he gave years ago, “You Can’t Beat the Enemy While Raising His Flag,” because that’s the same flag of the Nazis, the KKK, the skinheads. That’s the same flag they raised when they castrated and hung Black people. The same flag Black people went to war under and came back and couldn’t get any justice in this country, still under segregation, racism. So that put me in the mind of that.
After Black men fought and died for this country in WW2, segregation still continued. German prisoners of war had better seats on the train than Black soldiers who had fought and died for this country.
And when he talked about the Nazis and Hitler, and people remaining silent, or saying we’re on the same team—no, we’re not on the same team. They’re on the team of murder and plunder and racism and sexism—we’re not on that team. That goes back to what I said: You can’t beat the enemy while raising his flag. And back to the part he said about the Democrats and the Republicans being on the same team, and they are.
And how he spoke to the things the U.S. does, not only in this country but around the world, and how they justify it with the concept of democracy and freedom. How much freedom do Black people, Latinos, and poor white people have in prison? There’s a host of things he touched on for me. It was excellent.
And there was the question of how do we see humanity as a whole. That was great. And I always used to wonder about all the scientists, not just in this country but around the world, who see what’s happening to the environment and global warming. They talk about it, but they don’t come out about it.
Getting back to the Nazis and Hitler and how German people smelled something funny, a smell that was being caused by the Nazis putting people in the ovens and those good Germans didn’t do anything.
It was just an overall good speech. I told my kids that they had to listen to it, I told my friend about it.
And he brought out how the parliament had been burned down, and the Nazis knew the communists hadn’t done it, but they put them on trial for it. And when the court did not convict the communists, many people said, see, the system does work. I thought that was important, which goes back to the Democrats and the Republicans. It’s like loving eyes never see—people see what they want to see, and because people love this system they turn a blind eye to what’s actually going on.
I thought about this after watching the video when I heard about Trump saying to the widow of the soldier who died in Africa that he knew what he was getting into. He didn’t know what he was getting into. He thought this system was about democracy. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, they should start at home. With all the 1,001 ways they mistreated Black people in this country.
Things like that keep coming into my mind off of watching Avakian’s video, and he was right on about everything. I have listened to it four times, and I haven’t found anything I disagreed with.
As far as those who say Black people have been thru all this before, we have been thru this movie before and it’s not new, but what is new is that they try to tell us, that was back then. Avakian brought out that back then and now there’s nothing that’s been fundamentally changed. And you can’t understand what’s going on now if you don’t understand what happened back then. Look at how they distort what slavery was like in the school books, or how they distort what communism is. They do that for a reason—because they don’t want people to be able to get out from under the muck and the mire. They’ll tell you communism is wrong, and they don’t know a damn thing about communism. But people buy the okeydoke about communism, and they don’t see what’s going on right now and how horrible it is.
I was thinking about something my nephew told me about when he went to prison. He said: “That place was not fit for human beings, and I don’t ever want to go back there.” There’s no guarantee he, and others, won’t end up going back because of how this system uses prisons as a source of free labor and exploitation for people they have no future for.
When I visited NYC I went to a meeting about Rikers Island and to a demonstration about Rikers Island off of learning about Kalief Browder who was in Rikers for several years charged with stealing a backpack—a crime he never committed. Off of the devastation of those years in prison, he committed suicide when he was finally released.
It was a great speech and it definitely opened my eyes to go back and read things I hadn’t quite grasped before. This system is a good teacher, if you don’t get it the first time, it continues pounding you down into the ground with its rhetoric about democracy.
Getting to the part of driving out Trump, I have kind of hesitated on seeing that and I guess I have to go back to that. My whole point is that the whole system has to be changed. For that to happen we have to stand up to all the injustice not only here in this country but all around the world. Particularly what Trump is doing because it’s giving a neon sign to all the racists and the skinheads, the KKK and all these reactionary people—it is your time to shine. And you even see some white people who are siding with Trump based on trying to keep “our country” and “our race” first. “Our race” is white nationalism.
I liked how he brought out that white people who see this injustice can’t remain silent, like the good Germans who smelled something from the concentration camps but didn’t speak out. We can’t remain silent either. We have to stand for something or accept anything. We have to do something about this.
The U.S. cheered when the wall between East and West Germany was torn down, and now some of the same kinds of people are cheering Trump wanting to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. What hypocrisy.
I used to talk about how people in this country cared more about their dogs than about Black people. Bob Avakian mentioned that in his speech—that if dogs were being killed in the numbers that Black people are shot down in the streets by the police, people would be up in arms. But no outrage about Black people being shot down by the police, and when people say Black Lives Matter in response to police murdering Black people, those people get all upset.
After Katrina hit New Orleans, they didn’t care about getting clean water to the Black people there, and in Flint right now they’re pumping poison water into Black people’s homes, but in LA when the fires hit there, they were giving bottled water to the animals. Bob Avakian is right on the money on that.
Avakian is saying we need to take to the streets and drive out the Trump regime, and I’m with him on that. On the part of the ruling class, I was thinking what are they more afraid of, communism or fascism, and I think they more fear communism not fascism because fascism is the control and manipulation of the whole society and how it’s governed. It’s not the lesser of two evils—fascism is evil.
Showing Bob Avakian’s New Film in an African American Community
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader
Yesterday, 11 of us gathered in this small church in the African-American community. The showing was hosted and organized by the minister who strongly supports Refuse Fascism’s Call and was previously introduced to the work of Bob Avakian (BA). She saw this showing as an important opportunity to bring the importance of this battle to drive out the Trump/Pence regime out amongst her parishioners and friends, as well as those who come to her food pantry every week.
Seven of those who came were older African American women along with two of their children, one in high school, one in his 20s, along with one younger Haitian immigrant.
The film really struck a chord in people there. Throughout the film, people would yell out “that’s right,” etc. This was especially true of Bob Avakian’s examination of the roots of the rise of this fascist regime in a country founded on slavery and white supremacy, and also when BA gave examples described in the American Crime series on revcom.us and specific crimes committed by Trump.
The film had not even ended before our new Haitian friend whispered, “Is this on You Tube? I want to send this to all my friends on Facebook.” And that indeed became the way our discussion afterwards began. Mini-palm cards promoting the Revcom.us website were passed out—as the place to go to not only view and spread the speech that they just saw, but to get short excerpts for social media, and the questions and answers that followed his speech, AND where they can find the “American Crime” series that he mentioned twice in the talk and much more. Some people took extra cards.
Everyone also got a copy of the 12-page indictment “The Crimes of the Trump/Pence Regime and How to be a Part of Driving Them from Power” from Refuse Fascism that BA referred to in the film. Many know of some element of the regime’s crimes, but knew little about others and for all this was an important resource.
One person raised “But people are so silent—they aren’t doing anything about this.” And we got into two elements of this—that there have been huge outpourings, such as the Women’s March the day after the inauguration, and people flooding the airports when the Muslim ban was announced, but also that this reflected only a tiny fraction of those who are “yelling at the TV sets,” deeply worried and upset, but not yet out in the street acting. That is our reservoir but also our challenge, bringing out those millions in a way that can really make a difference, all aimed at actually removing this regime from power. And how November 4 is the time to take this to a higher level.
Five hundred palm cards were taken by people who came—to spread. Two people plan to spread November 4 on social media—mainly Facebook. One person wants to get it on her weekly cable television show, and another wants to reach out to people she knows who have Haitian internet radio shows. Some took posters to put up. All this doesn’t count the 1,000 cards that two people (one who unfortunately missed the showing) are planning to broadly distribute at rush hour at a nearby subway station, and with a third person who volunteered at the showing to join them at the station.
Two people who don’t have good internet access got the film on a flash drive, so that they could show the film to their friends, etc.
After a short group discussion, most people stayed for another 30 minutes talking more, one-on-one or in smaller groups. One young man said that he really appreciated the film, how it got at the relationship of the rise of Trump to the history of America, “Man, the way he connected things!” He also mentioned how many are angry that Tina Campbell, a prominent Black gospel singer, voted for Trump and that BA’s discussion of the role of Christian fascists in this regime helped him to understand how such people could be sucked in by those in the regime who are invoking Christianity. One person said that she felt in some ways Pence is even more dangerous than Trump—people don’t see the role of these Christian fascists. This brought out how important it is to call out the whole regime, not just Trump, and how important it is for religious people—including all in attendance—to really speak out AGAINST this fascist regime.
The woman who wanted to share BA’s talk on social media went further afterwards. She said “People shouldn’t shy away from the word ‘revolution’—that is what we need to really change things.” She got BA’s book The New Communism and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, budgeting paying for them over time with her limited income.
There was a feeling expressed by all we talked to that this was an enjoyable, productive and thought-provoking evening, a good beginning.
“This speech challenged me to stand strong in a new way”
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
I am a Black 69-year-old retired public school teacher who has lived my life building for revolution in this country. I have been a supporter of the RCP since 1978. I have followed the line of this organization as it spoke to the highest interests of humanity: an end to oppression and inequality. It has taught me how to stand on the right side of history.
So, I have studied the writings and speeches of Bob Avakian for a while. At the insistence of my best sister friend, I studied the speech about Nov 4th. I got blown away with a 21st wind of analysis that spoke to the horrid reality of what we are living with, in real time. I had thought, “You know what he’s going to say” and quickly had to cast away that illusion. The analysis of history leading us to today’s world was clear & spot on.
I had been going around after the incident in Niger, asking myself and others: 1 Why were they in Niger in the first place, 2 Why did it take so long for them to recover the body of the Black soldier, 3 Why did they so frequently fail to report the deaths of the soldiers from Niger. “African Lives Matter” also. When I posed these questions and others in discussion, I listened to answers of: “They served their country” or “They don’t care about the Why, just the How to stay alive as a Band of Brothers” or some other BS answer. When I asked why, I got blanks stares or “You’re always so angry.”
We are fighting “terrorism” when, as BA said, who is the only country in the history who used nuclear weapons against another sovereign country? The U.S.
Listening to BA was like a cool breath of fresh air to an asthmatic. I finally understood the basis of the national confusion: GTF! [referring to the "great tautological fallacy," which is discussed in BA's speech]. Starting with the false premise that: America is a great democracy. So whatever it does, no matter how heinous and cruel: drones killing civilian populations overseas, the suppression, brutalizations and murder of Black masses, the imposition of grueling globalization which grinds down and impoverishes millions worldwide, poisoning the environment for shortsighted “we don’t give a fuck,” the growing dummying down of the U.S. to mask the political agenda of destroying public education, widening the gap between the ruling class and everybody else. Unconscious people can go along with this, because they haven’t learned anything from the silence in Germany. Silence on the national level can give assent to unspeakable atrocities, AGAIN.
I understood human history with greater clarity, listening to Bob Avakian. The synthesis of the folly and development of the United States of Amerikkka was direct and straight to the point. The U.S. Constitution was written to give free rein to rich white landowners to plunder at will. I really liked the exposing of the real basis of Amerikkkan greatness: the economy built on the backs of African slaves, the theft of the national landscape by brutal murder/annihilation of indigenous peoples and cultures, the exploitation of those who came to the U.S., even to building the lines of the great intercontinental railways over the bodies of Chinese workers who fell down from exhaustion/disease/hunger. The wars the U.S. engaged in domestically or internationally were wars for the development of empire. It wasn’t about “upholding democratic ideas.”
It was refreshing and Marxist to hear that there was a plan, a way out of the cesspool as it were. The call for action on Nov. 4th clearly says there is something that we can do: sustained actions as much as possible, speaking to the highest interests of humanity. Breaking with Amerikkkan chauvinism that ultimately leads us back to: “Me & mine first.” Break with the concept that somehow Amerikkkans are better, more worthy that the people of other countries. We are living in fascism but the speech revealed another pathway, so we don’t just accept it. We have to work together with all that can be united to prevent the consolidation of fascism.
This speech challenged me to stand strong in a new way. We have a responsibility to the oppressed masses of the world to engage in this battle and continue to prepare for revolution. While I am temporarily sidelined by some health challenges, I have had several “grannies” over to watch the video of the speech and make plans. We are looking for ways to get the info out and participate. We will be connecting up with the rev forces in [my city].
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Thank you for (PRLF) that I’ve been receiving. I’ve been having discussions with other prisoners and sharing the (PRLF) to expose them of the truth. Here’s a summary of what I’ve gotten. Trump attacks directly to the agenda of Christianity fascism/fascist ruling class. There aim is to impose rule by dictates of fundamentalist Christianity on the U.S. Tiller[son] tried to work things out with North Korea over nuclear weapons. He was at China which implied he was doin all this through them. Donald Trump immediately tweets Tiller[son] to let him know he’s wasting his time & continues to mock and provoke Kim Jong-Un. Trump is a MORON as Tiller[son] called him. I agree. Trump continues to label Iran non compliant on nuclear deal. He wants them to stop production. As his top advisors give him advice he completely rejects attempts to avoid war. He continues to provocate threats of war the probability that the (US) will end in war, a nuclear war that is high.
The Trump/Pence regime is a severe threat to humanity. Trump acts as if it's a dictatorship policy. They’ve rescinded a policy that protects transgenders, gutted the requirement that employers pay for birth control, lied about fetal development to advance federal abortion ban.
They have threatened military action against North Korea or Iran—the so call “calm before the storm.” Republicans are rapidly disenfranchising people of color, immigrants, and others to lock in a permanent Republican majority in Congress and choosing a President. Now on all the mass shootings in the United Snakes takes us to gun violence. To understand why you can’t just look at the question of guns but look more deeply at the characters of society that is shaping the people who are turning those guns on each other. U.S. relationship with violence in The Homeland has everything to do with slavery, genocide and the theft of land from Mexico. Gun control is not the answer. The system uses its guns in the hands of the police to murder people indiscriminately, Black and Brown people. The urgency of the call for massive, defiant, non-violence demonstrations is in our interest for humanity.
I will end as I entered with revolutionary spirit.
Footnote: I would like to further increase my self and earn some books. What do I need to do as you can see I am indigent but through my knowledge I can educate masses?
October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
What: Delivering banner for Trump from the people in Chicago Trump likes to demonize
When: Monday, Oct. 30, 5:30 PM
Where: Trump Tower
Contact: Revolution Club 312.804.9121
While Mueller’s investigation may bring indictments—or Mueller may be forced out—it is clear that the Trump/Pence Regime is a nightmare to humanity, is a fascist regime, and will not be stopped by the “normal” processes of investigations or elections. It will take, and on Nov. 4 it begins, a mass nationwide movement of nonviolent, sustained and determined protests to demand: “This Nightmare Must End, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!”
Included in Trump’s daily fascist tweets are recurring threats against and demonization of Black youth in Chicago. Trump has repeatedly threatened to “send in the feds” and has called for police to be more violent, while he praises white supremacists as “fine people.” While he talks of carnage in Chicago he threatens to “completely destroy” North Korea, a country of 25 million people.
In conjunction with and anticipation of the Nov. 4 protests called by RefuseFascism.org, on Monday, Oct. 30, some of those Trump likes to demonize will be coming to Trump Tower with the Revolution Club to deliver a message to Trump, written on a large banner and signed by dozens of people throughout the neighborhoods of Chicago: “Hey TRUMP, From those you like to Demonize: You and Your GANG in the White House Are the REAL Thugs & THREAT to Humanity. In The Name of Humanity We will DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!”
This Bob Avakian (BA) Official Biography is published here with the permission of The Bob Avakian Institute.
Introduction
"If you don't have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state."
– Bob Avakian
Bob Avakian (BA) 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." Read more
What Does It Mean When Trump's Chief-of-Staff Says Fighting to Maintain Slavery Was "Honorable"?
November 2, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
After going full fascist in his defense of Trump’s phone call to a military widow, on Monday night Chief-of-Staff Gen. John Kelly was a guest on Laura Ingraham’s debut as a host on the Fox Network. Ingraham, a hardcore Trump supporter, asked Kelly what he thought about the recent removal of plaques honoring President George Washington and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a church in Alexandria, Virginia. Kelly said it was a “mistake” to remove Confederate monuments:
“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
The word “slavery” was never mentioned, but that’s what Kelly was upholding. The Civil War was fought over one thing—slavery. Lee and the Confederates weren’t fighting to defend their “states”—they were fighting to preserve and extend the barbaric institution of slavery that for nearly 250 years viciously exploited, mangled, and mutilated the lives MILLIONS of Black people! Kelly calls their fight “honorable”, done in “good faith.” In fact he seems to think Lee’s cause was more important than what the North was fighting for!
As for compromises, there were plenty of compromises between the Northern capitalists and the Southern slave-owners—all of them involved allowing slavery, from the founding of the U.S. with a Constitution that held slaves were three-fifths of a person, right up to the eve of the Civil War. So any compromise to avert civil war would have been a compromise to maintain slavery—there was no other compromise possible, as the South repeatedly made clear. (The South even rejected a compromise that would have allowed slavery to continue where it existed, but not allow it to expand to other territories or states.)
In all this Kelly not only echoes but underscores Trump’s vicious racism and white supremacy. He again makes clear through his answers but more than that his whole demeanor and tone and orientation of his remarks, that there is absolutely no space between him and Trump, that he is fully on board with the fascist program—especially the notion of restoring American “greatness” and the “sacredness” of every rotten, reactionary value of pre-1960’s America.
Think about the implications of having a regime in power that upholds the fight for slavery as “honorable.” A regime that has now signed on, in 2017, to the notion that the Civil War was a war over “states’ rights,” and the Southern “cause” was glorious, one deserving of monuments and presidential praise?
White-washing—literally—the horror of slavery and honoring those who fought to defend it is a clarion call to white supremacists and KKK-Nazis that Black people are less than human—and deserve to be treated with merciless, relentless insult, degradation, abuse and yes murder, even mass murder. And this violent re-imposition of naked white supremacy is at the very core of Trump/Pence fascism. All this could turn what has been a slow genocide into a fast one.
And Kelly, by raising that “compromise” could have averted the Civil War may also have been sending a message to the Trump/Pence regime’s ruling class opponents: if you don’t compromise with us this time around—that is, if you don’t essentially capitulate to what we’re demanding and putting in place to buttress and extend white supremacy—then we’re fully ready to bring it at you again, and fight with everything we can muster to stay in power and implement our agenda.
Yes, there were criticisms by the Democrats. But was there full-throated outrage? Demands for Kelly’s immediate resignation? Calls for the Democratic Party’s base to take to the streets to stop this nightmare? No! No! and No!
All this screams out for massive, uncompromising protest and resistance to bring down this regime whose leaders uphold slavery, “honor” the slaveholding South’s cause in the Civil War, and are now bent on reviving its racist, murderous spirit. There IS a way you can act to do so. It starts November 4. Be there!
In the Wake of the Vicious NYC Truck Attack: Trump Unleashes Further Escalation of Fascism
November 2, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The October 31 truck attack in New York City that left eight people dead and 11 injured was a vile and vicious act reportedly carried out by a man, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, who was apparently influenced by the utterly reactionary Islamic jihadists of ISIS. At the beginning of the month, when a white man opened fire on a concert in Las Vegas and mass murdered 58 people and injured hundreds, Trump and his mouthpieces sternly warned against “politicizing” that act of terror. After the NYC truck attack, Trump launched into an outright fascist political offensive:
* Trump basically charged leading Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer with responsibility for the truck attack, accusing him of being behind the visa lottery program under which the accused truck attacker had received legal status in the U.S. Trump said Schumer and other Democrats were “obstructionists” who “don’t want to do what’s right for our country”—in effect, painting them with the brush of “treason.”
* Trump declared that those accused of “terrorism” by the U.S. must be dealt “punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment” that they are getting now. In other words, Trump was saying that such people need to be dealt with outside the normal judicial system—and, in fact, he blasted the entire federal civilian court system as a “joke” and “laughingstock.”
* Blatantly abusing his position and influence, Trump not only declared the accused to be guilty before any kind of trial has taken place, but went further to tweet a demand that he “SHOULD GET THE DEATH PENALTY.”
* Trump has seized on the situation to further push for more repressive and draconian immigration policies—including ending the visa lottery program and making the “extreme vetting” of immigrants and visitors to the U.S. even harsher.
* Seizing on the name of the visa program—“Diversity Visa Lottery Program”—Trump mocked and attacked the very notion of diversity, saying, “We have to get much less politically correct. We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything.”
All this is extremely serious and extremely dangerous. What can be seen here is a major escalation of attacks by the Trump/Pence regime against the rule of law—going further along the big steps it has already taken. And big steps toward politicizing the courts in line with its aims and making them a direct tool of its fascist agenda. The overt accusation against one of the top Democrats of not doing “what’s right for the country” harks back to McCarthyite witch hunts against those accused of “disloyalty” to America—and far exceeds even the viciousness carried out under Reagan and Bush, who certainly weren’t slouches in this regard. The call to “get much less politically correct” is a further push to legitimize and normalize open white supremacy, male supremacy and “America First” jingoism.
This is the reality of what is going on—even if Schumer and the Democrats themselves, while making this or that critique of Trump, still refuse to call this out as fascism and to call the people out into the streets in their millions to stop this nightmare.
But it is also a fact that there are people who recognize the urgent threat to humanity that the Trump/Pence regime poses—and are acting in ways that are commensurate with this threat. People with Refuse Fascism, who are launching a massive and sustained mobilization beginning November 4 around the unifying stand: “This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!”
November 2, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Film showing in suburb of Chicago
A small group met out in a progressive suburb to watch and discuss the filmed talk by Bob Avakian: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America—A Better World IS Possible.
Even before the film started, questions were being raised about the role of Antifa and violence in the planned rallies on Nov 4. It was helpful that a major article was published that day in the Washington Post, interviewing Andy Zee on that very question. We also had copies of the full page ad for Nov 4 in the New York Times.
The person who organized the showing introduced the program saying that BA gets into the history of how fascism has come to be in America, and the need to do something about it—the Trump/Pence regime has to go! He added that the film will really get you charged up!
After the film, the first question was framed around Naomi Klein’s argument that “NO Is Not Enough,” from a person who identifies with Democratic Socialists of America. The person who organized the showing said he was also inclined toward the DSA. He said that he’d heard that question a lot, and felt strongly that whatever progressive people were for, they needed to have ground to argue and fight for those positions—the very ground that the Trump/Pence fascists were undermining and want to eliminate.
The several people there (aside from the revcoms) had been very active (even traveling out of state) trying to get Bernie elected. They are very alarmed by where things are headed. One woman spoke about how alarmed she is that people aren’t alarmed! She talked about visiting the Holocaust museum in Amsterdam and how people need to understand how this is what is happening here.
It was also raised that “having communists involved can turn people off.” Someone from the Revolution Club was there, and explained that the RCP played a very important initiating role with Refuse Fascism, which also includes a range of diverse groupings and opinions. She referred back to what BA said in the film about everyone who hates this getting involved, and the negative lessons from Germany about distancing and sectarianism. She also directed people to various parts of the Q&A with BA that is now online, for more detailed answers to some of their questions. For example, she got into the less-known quote from Pastor Niemöller that BA talked about—if thousands of Germans had made the necessary sacrifices, then millions would have been saved (while clarifying that these are not the stakes at this time for Nov. 4th). Off of this discussion the people said they would try to get DSA to get involved in the 4th.
Another question was “OK, so the regime is gone; but then the government fails—won’t there be chaos for awhile?” The Revolution Club person again referred to what BA talked about in the film about what could come out the other end of this massive and sustained resistance, and the various possibilities as well as “not having a crystal ball.”
At the same time, people were brought to question their own unconscious acceptance of the GTF, the Great Tautological Fallacy of America being a force for good in the world and rationalizing everything it does on that basis. One person made the point, “It’s hard to see we’re not really good.” There was important wrangling with this and how people are taught to look at America as a force for good. It was like “Ok, yes, this country WAS built on slavery and genocide of Native Americans.”
Actually everyone seemed to agree when it was raised that people who watched the film came out with a deeper understanding of the need to drive out the Trump/Pence regime and the possibility of doing so.
It turned out that there was also overlap with the progressive faith community, so we also watched the inspiring call for Nov 4 by Tom Carey on a cell phone.
From an organizer for Nov 4:
Billboard for Nov 4
I went to see the neon sign at Clarendon and Broadway. It is so striking. I sent it around to my friends to remind them to come. Then I started to get calls back. One person who works on issues for Mexico said their Saturday meeting is cancelled so people can come to November 4.
From a Reader:
Reaching out to Teachers
Tuesday evening I took November 4 to the Chicago Teachers Union monthly delegate meeting (about 250 people). I taped the big color posters for Nov 4 (with Trump in a KKK hat) on my front and back, so my message was bold and clear to everyone as they arrived.
I talked to people about the stakes for the world if we don’t act now and end this fascist nightmare. And many stopped and said yes, that is so true. I immediately asked if they could take more flyers back to those you work with. Many said yes and I got out over 500 copies of the Call to Nov 4 and 150 pluggers in an hour. I challenged them to be downtown on Saturday.
A number of people said they already knew about Nov 4. Some had seen people the night before leafleting the line at Hillary Clinton’s book signing event. One guy said he had seen the Refuse Fascism Nov 4 ad today (Tuesday) in the New York Times.
There were also several other people outside flyering for candidates, for a social justice fair, and other causes, who I reached out to. I stressed that this was about doing what the world needs us to do, and people of all different perspectives coming together to do that. I talked to two groups of people working for candidates and asked them to ask their candidate to endorse 11/4. They both took materials and said they would.
Sunsara Taylor Calls on Mic.com to Retract Smear Piece Against RefuseFascism.org, the RCP, Bob Avakian, and November 4th Protests
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
To Mic.com,
I am writing to demand that you immediately retract the smear piece published yesterday on Mic.com by Jack Smith against RefuseFascism.org, the RCP, Bob Avakian, and the November 4th protests. I also demand that you prominently publish a statement from RefuseFascism.org that makes clear what it and the November 4 protests are actually about, and that corrects your lies and misrepresentations about the RCP, Bob Avakian, and Revolution Books.
The Trump/Pence regime is carrying out one vicious attack on the people after another. For weeks, they have escalated threats to destroy North Korea. This week they openly upheld white supremacist slavery-defender Robert E. Lee and took advantage of a horrific incident in New York City to further demonize Muslims and attack the rule of law.
RefuseFascism.org is the only national organization that sounded the alarm that this is a fascist regime and has an actual plan to stop it before it is too late. That plan takes a leap with nationwide protests on November 4. Even in the face of a tidal wave of threats that are very serious and not the joke that your article treats them as, RefuseFascism.org has refused to be intimidated and pledged itself to carry forward with these protests.
Yet, two days before this mobilization that anyone with their eyes open to the dangers of this regime should be coming out to attend, Mic.com chose to prominently feature a lie-filled, anti-communist smear piece on RefuseFascism.org, Bob Avakian, and the Revolutionary Communist Party. Despite the fact that I spoke extensively to your reporter about these questions with substance, this piece never truthfully reports on or engages what RefuseFascism.org, the Revolutionary Communist Party, or Bob Avakian are actually about. Nor does it engage the question at hand: Are we confronting a fascist regime and what should be done about it? Instead, it strings together one anti-communist trope after another from unnamed “experts,” who, by the way, offer no serious assessment of the current situation or plan for stopping the nightmare represented by Trump/Pence either.
In fact, the RCP has played a significant role in initiating Refuse Fascism, joining together with others from a wide range of viewpoints from the very beginning around a single unifying demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go. But don’t take my word for this—go to RefuseFascism.org and find out for yourself. If you want to know what the RCP actually says about its role in this, then go here for its statement on this. Bob Avakian has led the RCP in taking this up, as can be seen from the recent speech he gave which is available to all on film here, as well as extensive earlier analysis (see here, here, and here)—which your writer refuses to quote or engage!
Far from being “shrouded in mystery” (another classic McCarthyite slur) the orientation and plans for November 4 are there for all to see at RefuseFascism.org. As for Bob Avakian—there are not only distortions but outright falsehoods in your article. Serious and principled people will find out the truth by going here for Bob Avakian’s official biography and here to find out what he actually says, rather than being scared away by “unnamed sources” who throw around slanders.
Your reporter also refuses to confront the question as to whether we are indeed facing a fascist regime in power moving to consolidate actual fascism. If anything is a mystery, it’s this—what does he actually think of the analysis available at RefuseFascism.org, analysis coming from a wide range of sources with a wide range of viewpoints? And here’s another mystery: why is Mic.com publishing “journalism” that positively reeks of the COINTELPRO* hit jobs of the late ’60s and early ’70’s?
But here’s what’s not so mysterious—how this kind of anticommunism works. Many of your readers—at least, those who have at all looked into the Holocaust—may be familiar with the German pastor Martin Niemöller, who resisted Hitler and spent years in a concentration camp. Niemöller wrote:
First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Let it not be said that Mic.com responded to this historical warning by answering, “First they came for the communists, so we joined in the attack.” That would do great harm to everyone under attack and to all those seeking to stand up to injustice.
Take down the article and put up something real.
Sunsara Taylor
Writer, www.revcom.us
Advisory Board, RefuseFascism.org
*COINTELPRO is short for the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program during the 1960s and ’70s which viciously targeted—with lies, smear campaigns, and violence—groups and individuals who were generally resisting the U.S. government’s many crimes, in this country and around the world.
Special Delivery From the Revolution Club, Chicago
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Every day the urgent need cries out for what Refuse Fascism has called for on November 4: massive sustained nonviolent mobilizations beginning with thousands, growing and continuing until the Trump/Pence Regime is driven from power. The Revolution Club, Chicago, has been going all-out to make November 4 a powerful beginning, and we just went to deliver a banner to Trump Tower that had been signed by youth from Chicago high schools and people in the South Side neighborhoods. This banner reads “Hey Trump, From those you like to Demonize: You and Your GANG in the White House Are the REAL Thugs and THREAT to Humanity. In The Name of Humanity We Will DRIVE YOUR ASS OUT!”
The Revolution Club has been working among people who are most oppressed under this system, consigned to a future of being blown away by police, put in prison, or brutally exploited. These are youth who are right now trapped in doing what this system wants us doing, killing each other off. We have been working to win people to see their real enemy, and common cause with people of the world to make revolution to overthrow the system that has them in these conditions, and to connect them with the leadership we have for that revolution, Bob Avakian. These are people constantly demonized by Trump and Co. and threatened in ways that literally echo Hitler’s genocidal talk of dealing with Jewish criminals and cleaning up the Jewish Ghettos. This genocidal White Supremacy is one key dimension of the whole monstrous program being hammered through by the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime and why November 4 is so urgently needed. This is why we felt this banner was needed to cut through the bullshit, and the way Trump and his fanatics use the youth in Chicago as a punching bag to justify just about anything including KKKlansmen and neo-Nazis (who have actually killed people) marching in the streets, and to silence people who protest. So we made and took this banner all around Chicago, working to get people to see that this was the stage they were acting on when they add their name.
When the day arrived to deliver the banner with several dozen signatures, our crew of about 14 was made up of the same mix of people who had been signing it. This included people we had just met in the week since we made the banner as well as people who have been with the club longer than that. A high school student, people from the South Side neighborhoods, and people from other areas in the city, along with volunteers from the Revolution Club.
This crew gathered together downtown near Trump Tower in Chicago, chanted and took pictures with the banner, and read it out loud together. This drew in passersby who wanted to know more about what was happening and were finding out about November 4. We then walked to the Tower, chanting “Trump and Pence Must GO,” “November 4, IT BEGINS.” We arrived at the front entrance to the Tower and were confronted by building security. We had come to deliver this banner on behalf of those signatures to Donald Trump and we demanded to know who would be the person responsible for receiving such a delivery. The security would not answer who was the manager of the building or who was in charge if the manager was not there. Instead of answering they called out the Chicago Police, who are never far from Trump Tower and immediately showed up. An intense stand off ensued for about 15 minutes, with our crew continuing to read the message on the banner and demanding to be allowed to leave it with someone responsible, and speaking to onlookers about why we were there and why we were getting ready for November 4. Unfortunately, there was no responsible person to be found at the Tower who could receive the delivery and ensure it made its way to Trump. (The only name we were able to get was from a Black man who eventually came out from the building who, it apparently seems, literally had forgotten who he was, and was convinced that his own name was Mr. Security). We concluded the evening by holding a concluding rally with those who had come speaking about why they were there, and then we split up with some people going out to a concert to let the audience know about November 4, while other people got together to watch parts of the filmed talk by Bob Avakian “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In The Name of Humanity We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible.”
Some Thoughts on the Normalization of Kelly-Trump Racism and the Problem of People Who “Get It” NOT Taking Up the Fight TO Drive Out the Regime
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
We have to lead people to grasp that John Kelly’s lauding of genocidal warriors as “honorable men” along with Trump’s consistent upholding of the openly Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville as containing “good people” is the consistent and coherent position of a fascist regime. This is the overturning of norms, morals and very importantly laws to return to the days when Black people have no rights that a white man is bound to respect. This as an outgrowth of centuries and decades of Black people being dehumanized and criminalized as a means of hammering down the oppression of a whole people, an oppressed nation within a nation. These reactionary values—which Kelly obviously includes in his list of what was and should be made again “sacred”—were only begun to be overturned only as a result of the most heroic sacrifice and struggle of the oppressed themselves and those who joined them . This is now being plunged backward to a horrific future. Bob Avakian's points on how American fascism has a direct line to the Confederacy and slavery and a direct connection—which means not just more of the same but immeasurably worse if they are not stopped. It's just one reason this speech should be watched and spread.
I attended a Shaun King event this afternoon. He did some powerful exposure that connects with the experience of college students and went into how history does not mean the steady improvement of humanity. He spoke from his own heart about how hard it is to come to the realization that there is no one in power who is listening to us and how demoralizing the unanticipated election of Donald Trump has been. He had graphs with big dips in the history of humanity, with this being one of them. He showed the famous graphic of the slave ships to warn that such dips can last generations. Utilizing the same Harriet Tubman quote as BA does in his speech, he used this quote to tell people how much work it's going to be for humanity to climb its way out of this dip—citing the Tubman quote on how the slaves themselves often hold back from risking all to seek freedom, in a slightly different version—that went to people not knowing any life other than slavery for generation after generation. He said I've always wondered what kind of person I would have been in the ’60s—and came to the conclusion that if you are not doing anything now you wouldn’t have been doing anything then—and strongly urged people to get involved.
But there was no analysis as to why this is happening other than that the rights Black people win have always been followed by a backlash and Obama's election was creating a new low. No solutions other than a criticism that the Democrats have no plan (and upholding the NRA as an organized well-funded example of what we have to have). Some students as they were leaving told us they had come to hear solutions and did not get one. Shaun King is correctly appealing to people to not be silent—but it’s striking the lack of answers or hope coming from even the best of the Black intellectuals like Shaun King and Ta-Nehisi Coates who see no hope of this system ever being able to eliminate white supremacy, but see no way out or don't see beyond the confines of the present system of globalized capitalism. It’s not just that the slaves don’t know they are in a dip—the intellectuals can’t see that the dip they are in is a result of a political and economic system that is moribund and not only constraining what humanity could be living like but threatening to extinguish its very existence. A threat that is accelerating with the Trump/Pence Regime. It struck me that what they need most is some engagement with BA and that the real problem is in the mode of production. But as the leading edge of that, people like Shaun King—like everyone else, for that matter—most need to be challenged with what needs to be done NOW to stop this regime. This is not an abstract idea or a paper proposal—this is happening NOW.
After watching again Stanley Nelson’s film on the Freedom Riders (with a number of people in and around our local chapter of Refuse Fascism) and being reminded of the hideous hatred of those white people in the South and just how viciously they defended "their way of life"—you realize in the sweep of history, it IS just yesterday. It makes you think about what happened in places like Yugoslavia when the lid of the state is lifted and all the age-old but temporarily suppressed ugliness gets unleashed and the horrors that ensued. As horrified as we are already, we are just getting a taste of what a fascist regime whose reason for existence, celebration and purpose is white supremacy, male supremacy and American chauvinism will mean for the oppressed.
We know enough to know what it meant when Woodrow Wilson screened A Birth of a Nation in the White House—and the decades of lynching and its celebration that followed. We know the cost of people accepting the rampant murder of Black and Brown people by police and the mass incarceration of millions of people—including under Obama. We know we can be the people who said NOT THIS TIME—and made the sustained mobilization of millions to stop it possible.
How Much Damage Could Trump Do in Three More Years?
Pig-losi Essentially Says Trump Must Stay in White House Till at Least 2020 Join Us November 4!
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Politico.com reports that “Pelosi moves to muzzle Trump impeachment talk.”
Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, is “peeved” at Tom Steyer’s impeachment ad, which she sees as distraction, according to Politico.com, and her entire strategy is geared towards the Democrats winning the House in 2018.
The verdict is in, hammered and delivered in no uncertain terms—the Democrats, left to their own devices, are NOT going to do ANYTHING to unseat Trump, far less the fascist regime, and constrained by an electoral calculus, will not risk, in her words, “drama,” till 2018!
2018? What happens between now and then...
To the people of the Korean peninsula, and Iran, with Trump’s escalating threats of nuclear war, to unleash “fire and fury,” threatening to totally destroy North Korea in a speech to the UN!
To the millions of immigrants whose lives are torn asunder by this fascist regime
To the civil liberties being shredded, to a press under siege
To every gain of the civil rights era under assault and being rolled back with Sessions’ white-supremacist Justice Department
To the open brazenness and violence perpetrated by fascist white-supremacist thugs, given license and backing to march, chanting “you will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!”
To a planet hurtling toward the point when the effects of global warming become irreversible
To women whose right to abortion and birth control are under threat from a misogynist, Christian fascist regime
To LGBTQ people, to Muslims, and others deemed “other” by a genocidal regime whose head Trump decries “diversity” and “political correctness”?
Pelosi’s is a deeply chauvinist position, seeing these monstrous horrors as “distractions.” But from the standpoint of humanity, WE cannot wait till 2018. There will be no savior from the top.
What is needed is a political crisis that creates the conditions in which this regime is driven from power! What is needed is millions of us who feel this is a nightmare, that this must end, to manifest and create this crisis! What is needed is a real beginning, November 4, towards this, mass nonviolent sustained mobilization, till this regime is driven from power. What is needed is a massive political movement that changes the calculus of every political force in the country. JOIN US!
In This Time of Trump/Pence and the Struggle to Drive Them Out: You NEED Revcom.us … Every Day
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
There are many liberal, progressive or radical websites and media, and a lot to be learned from following them. But there is only one revcom.us, and it is indispensable both to understanding what is going on in the world right now and to playing the most effective role in changing it. Every day we add new articles exposing what the regime is doing and what the people are doing to oppose it.
Three Things You Consistently Get Only at www.revcom.us
1. Revcom.us wields the communist method of digging beneath the appearance of things to the underlying forces, historical and present, that shape and drive events—a method that has been qualitatively deepened, and grounded more fully in science, by Bob Avakian (BA). Because of this, revcom.us focuses on the main and essential things about what is happening.
Looking beneath the conflicts among ruling class forces that are real but have many people pinning their hopes on these disputes, revcom.us analyzes the sharp limits to these differences—and points to the disastrous consequences of people looking to generals, prosecutors, and the Democratic Party for “salvation” from the fascist regime. At the same time, we show how a powerful movement of millions could make use of these differences to actually accomplish the goal of driving out the regime.
Looking beneath the “incompetence” of Trump’s response to the devastation in Puerto Rico, revcom.us exposes this as both a continuation of the 120-year history of U.S. colonial domination, and as a leap towards genocide. And, as Trump and the system tries to silence the NFL players who are righteously “taking a knee” to protest racism and police murder, revcom.us brings out the reality of America’s horrendous crimes, and the righteousness of disrespecting the flag and anthem. Revcom grounds these and other assaults (against immigrants, against Muslims, and other oppressed peoples) in a deep analysis of the links between white supremacy, this capitalist-imperialist system that spawned and requires it, and the now even more horrific fascist regime that has come to power.
Revcom analyzes as well the driving forces at the bottom of the all-round assault against women and against LGBTQ people, linking these to both the Christian-fascist "Handmaid’s Tale" future these fascists aim for and the deep roots of patriarchy in all forms of class exploitation.
Finally, revcom comes at the world not as patriots—not even as “enlightened” patriots—but as internationalists, working not for “American greatness” but for a world without a handful of imperialist oppressor nations (of which the U.S. is “number one”) where the majority of peoples and nations are oppressed in horrendous ways. We don’t prettify or apologize for America; we expose the whole history and present-day reality of this empire of blood and bones.
Most of all, we show not only the depth and the source of these horrors, but how they can be overcome—and only overcome—through revolution.
2. Along with RefuseFascism.org, revcom.us is the best place to follow: The emerging movement to drive out the fascist Trump/Pence regime … the ways in which this is starting to take hold and catch fire among key sections of people … and the ways in which it is coming under attack from the authorities and from the fascist movement.
This struggle is life or death for humanity, and will be filled with intense twists and turns. Revcom.us will be both covering new developments and offering key guidance on a day-to-day basis. It is urgent to follow this coverage closely—all the more so given that, at least up to this point, this struggle is largely being ignored or outright suppressed by other media.
3. We revolutionary communists are “all in” on driving out this regime, and we urge the broadest forces to jump into that. At the same time, revcom.us approaches this crucial struggle from the standpoint of going through it, through the twists and turns, as part of preparing to make revolution at the soonest possible time, in order to bring about a whole new world free of all forms of oppression and exploitation. The most important thing we do is show the solution to the madness of a system that makes life intolerably miserable for billions and now threatens the very future of humanity. Revcom is where you come to dig deeply into the work of Bob Avakian, the architect of the new synthesis of communism.
Go here for a more comprehensive collection of the work that Bob Avakian has done over decades and continues to do.
These three things and more point to the crucial role revcom.us plays that cannot be found—at least in any consistent way—on any other site.
So people involved in the struggle to drive out this fascist regime, and everyone concerned with the future of humanity and understanding why the world is the way it is, should be coming to revcom.us every day—reading at least the key articles, and sharing those with others. This is a key part of pushing forward the struggle to drive out this regime—and a key way of engaging and being part of the vision of and struggle for a radically new, and much better, world.
November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 24, 2017
To Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now Team:
For over a year, with the exception of a quote in a Democracy Now! piece after Milo Yiannopoulos’s Berkeley appearance in February was shut down, DN! has consistently avoided covering RefuseFascism.org’s actions and teach-ins, and has never interviewed our leaders. Without rehashing the past year, right now RefuseFascism.org is in a sharp and intense political battle which we detailed in a press advisory yesterday that has been whited out of the mainstream media. We expect different from Democracy Now!
In 11 days, on November 4 RefuseFascism.org launches a sustained, mass movement of nonviolent political protest aimed at creating a political situation where the Trump/Pence Regime could be removed from power. The organization and its supporters have come under sharp attack from the fascist “Alt-Right.” And yet, not a word from DN!, despite your stated mission which includes providing your audience with “access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media.”
Our members around the country consistently ask, “Why doesn’t Democracy Now! interview a spokesperson from RefuseFascism.org to get into our understanding of how this regime that is bringing fascism to the U.S. and why, therefore, only the people acting outside normal political channels through nonviolent protest can remove the regime?”
Why indeed?
Right now, RefuseFascism.org is confronted by a serious and growing fascist campaign of lies, intimidation tactics, the doxxing of thousands of supporters, and credible threats of violence. These lies—that we are “initiating a violent civil war on Nov 4”—are being issued by white supremacists and fascists with direct ties to Donald Trump and have unleashed many thousands of vile, unhinged, and violent threats. Additionally, in New York and San Francisco RefuseFascism.org is engaged in a political battle for permits which are being denied for the November 4th protests.
The situation now is that people can learn more about November 4th from the fascists and even the mainstream media than they can from DN!—a show people rightly value for reporting what the mainstream won’t. Why?
Just last week, RefuseFascism.org’s Carl Dix and Linda Solotaire politically confronted Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, in the luxury Conrad Hotel where the NFL owners meeting was being held. Video of this political confrontation has been seen more than half a million times and this story was featured in the NY Daily News, The Root, New York Post, Dallas Observer, CBS Sports, ESPN and many other outlets.
Yet, you chose to keep this story about RefuseFascism.org’s work from your audience, why?
Over the course of ten months: we led nightly protests in DC leading up to Trump’s inauguration, placed full page ads in both the New York Times and the Washington Post signed by major luminaries and public figures, spearheaded dozens of other political actions and mobilizations, consistently developed, published, and held teach-in’s with unique political analysis of the biggest question now facing humanity—how to understand and stop the nightmare being imposed on humanity by the Trump/Pence Regime. This past July 15, we organized the first national protest to explicitly demand that the whole Trump/Pence Regime be removed from power in which thousands participated. Yet none of this has been covered by DN!Why?
If you have ignored RefuseFascism.org because members and supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party were involved in co-initiating and work with Refuse Fascism, then, we refer to the famous quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller (“First they came for the communists…”) and to the McCarthy period and ask, how does anti-communism help resistance.
Your mission includes the following: “Democracy Now!’s War and Peace Report provides our audience with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts.”
We believe your omission of RefuseFascism.org in your coverage for nearly a year in which the whole political landscape has been jolted repeatedly by the shock of the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime which RefuseFascism.org has uniquely analyzed and mobilized against, does an incredible disservice to the people across this country and around the world who are agonizing about how this whole nightmare can be ended and fails to live up to your stated mission.
Therefore, we urge you to break with this pattern by having RefuseFascism.org on your program this week so that people can learn the truth about the major political battle that is shaping up around our November 4th mobilizations that is being suppressed by almost all progressive media. Your audience needs to know that this mobilization is going forward as originally envisioned—as a mass, nonviolent, political protest movement aimed at driving the Trump/Pence Regime from power—and your audience needs to hear why it is so important to defy this campaign of fascist intimidation and terror.
We would like to hear from you within the next 48 hours about scheduling an interview with our spokespeople and some of our prominent supporters.
Signed,
Herb Boyd, activist, author, journalist and teacher, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org
Coco Das, writer, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Rev. Gregg Greer, President, Freedom First International
Perry Hoberman, USC Professor of Media Studies, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org
Ted Jennings, Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Constructive Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary
PZ Myers, evolutionary biologist, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Arturo O’Farrill, composer and musician, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Peter Phillips Ph.D., Professor Political Sociology, Sonoma State University
Ted Sirota, musician, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org
Sunsara Taylor, writer RevCom.us, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Jay W. Walker, NY Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org, Gays Against Guns, Rise and Resist
Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
David Zeiger, director of Sir, No Sir!, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org
Keynote Speech by Refuse Fascism at Rallies and Marches on Nov 4:
Who will end this nightmare? WE WILL
November 4, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Today it can and must be said that there ARE people in this country who REFUSE TO BE SILENT, WHO HAVE STOOD UP with courage and conviction, braving the lies and even threats of violence and death by fascist trolls. Today, we, and people just like us in cities and towns across the country, are overcoming fear and uncertainty, recognizing the grave danger that the Trump/Pence regime poses to all of humanity, TO STAND TOGETHER AND SAY:
THIS NIGHTMARE MUST END: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept A Fascist America.
We rally and march today to BEGIN a new phase of the struggle to bring about what millions of people ache to see: the end of a regime that imperils the lives of millions of people, a regime that denies their basic rights, their humanity and even their very health, and yet its danger is even greater than that. Without exaggeration, the future for humanity and the planet hangs in the balance from the Trump/Pence regime. This regime is playing roulette with nuclear weapons and is denying science and climate change while discarding environmental protection laws. Millions know and feel this horror.
Who will end this nightmare? WE WILL. Only the determined struggle of millions of people acting together with courage and conviction can drive this regime from power. Today we begin a process of continuing protests demanding this whole illegitimate regime be ousted from power. We will reach out to all sections of the people, spreading everywhere, growing week by week and month by month with the movement increasing in size and determination. We will not be deterred by naysayers, cynics, by those who normalize, accommodate or conciliate with a regime such as this. We are right to do this and the hour is late. Our actions today across the country reflect the values and respect for all humanity and the world we want—in stark contrast to the hate and the bigotry of the Trump/Pence regime.
Nov 4 NYC March through Midtown
We have what we need to begin:
[1] An understanding of what we are fighting. This is not a normal presidency. This is a regime working every day to bring about an American Fascism—Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism—a fascism wrapped in the Bible taken literally and the American flag, saturated with racism, misogyny and xenophobia. [2] We have a plan to bring forward the hundreds of thousands and eventually the millions of people to create a situation where this regime is driven from power. [3] We have a plan for the next two weeks that will be a springboard, so that we can work to change the calculus from what may seem impossible now to become a movement that shakes the political ground.
For 11 months there has been one outrage after another from the Trump/Pence regime that assaults the conscience, threatens the world and in its very extremeness fills people with anguish and anger. This is the basis for millions to act on our demand.
Can anyone seriously deny that the Trump/Pence regime is working to radically eviscerate the rule of law, bludgeon the truth, demonize and terrorize immigrants, refugees, Muslims? Deny that this is a regime that stigmatizes LBGTQ and disabled peoples; tramples Native people’s rights, threatens Black and Latino youth with more police brutality and mass incarceration, that threatens the environment and more wars including with nukes? That this is a regime that despises women—from the sexual predator-in-chief to a vice president and much of the cabinet who would return women to the Middle Ages without rights to control their own destinies?
Chicago Nov 4: "No Trump/Pence; No WWIII"
We act now because fascism gets normalized as it gathers momentum. While group after group gets demonized, others “get by” and go about their daily lives. The unthinkable becomes routine and the abnormal becomes normal. And, then it might only take a single incident—intentional or not—to drop the hammer. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.
For those who thought that letting Trump's generals run the show would bring “adult supervision into the room”—now you see that you have a president and a chief of staff who deny the horror of slavery and the necessity of a civil war to end it.
Today, November 4, as Trump stomps into Asia, seven billion people hold their breath for fear of what he might unleash, or put in place, while he’s there... All this makes painfully clear that we cannot wait. We cannot stand by. We must fight from where we are now. We must unite and struggle together to drive out this monstrous regime.
Nov 4 Seattle
Some will tell you that we cannot do this. They are wrong. This IS possible. Last year, the South Korean people took to the streets, in demonstrations that took place every week at first, and then mushroomed over a few months to politically engulf the entire country and force the removal of their president. They created a crisis of legitimacy and, on that basis, all kinds of previously hidden truths began to pour out. Cracks that had existed in the ruling apparatus turned into fissures through which the truth and outrage of the people erupted. The legitimacy of the regime began to unravel. Faced with that situation, the powers that be somehow found the mechanism to remove the duly elected president, replace her, and call new elections.
Some people will tell you that the U.S. is not South Korea. Duh. In fact, the horrific danger and horror of the Trump/Pence regime far exceeds that of the former president of South Korea, with therefore far greater potential to arouse broad and determined struggle.
Our objective is nothing less than creating the movement from below that forces the removal of the Trump/Pence regime. Starting today—we are calling on every person, every group, to be a part of beginning a movement of protests that gathers momentum. Where people are out every day—reaching out and protesting in waves.
Every day there are new outrages from the regime, and new divisions and conflicts among the powers that be. Republican senators are forced out of their party and then speak some truth of the danger of Trump. Indictments. Scandals. Infighting. Our Call to Action, which everyone should circulate and sign, says that:
“Our determination to persist and not back down will compel the whole world to take note. Every force and faction in the power structure would be forced to respond to our demand. The cracks and divisions among the powers already evident today will sharpen and widen. As we draw more and more people forward to stand up, all of this could lead to a situation where this illegitimate regime is removed from power.”
Nov 4 San Francisco
How do we get where we need to go? We start with a two-week plan to springboard forward from today.
We start today with our march showing people that there IS a force now daring to demand that this regime GO NOW, chanting, saying and signifying in every way to the people we meet: JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US.
Then, there are plans for different protests, speak-outs, outreach and rallies most every day in most cities. Across the country we are calling for three nationally coordinated protests.
First, on the anniversary of Trump's election—Wednesday 11/08—Take to the streets! This is no time to reminisce over our shock last year. Go to high schools. Join protests at night and march. Let's move people from “Not My President” buttons to joining us so that this dangerous buffoon really is NOT PRESIDENT. Everywhere we go reach out and bring more and more people into the streets.
Second, NEXT SATURDAY, November 11, Veterans Day; at the end of Trump’s Asia trip: Come out for major protests against the unconscionable way this madman and his generals have put all of humanity at direct risk of extermination. Take to the streets next Saturday with the lives of our sisters and brothers around the world in our hearts, letting them know that this narcissistic madman will not take the world down in our name.
Third, two weeks from today, November 18: Hit the streets and multiply the size of today's march... more cities, more people, more organizations all saying together: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
All week leading into November 18 there will be different protests, rallies and ways to organize. Most important, what each of us must do is reach out and spread the word—flyering, marching, speaking to groups. This is new and out of the ordinary for most of you. But, there is nothing ordinary about this regime. It is time for ordinary people to do the extraordinary.
On November 18 we must have thousands more people getting to a situation where every time some new outrage of Trump comes up—which is every day—people think of the “THEY MUST GO” movement... And, they think: “I really do need to be a part of that.”
There are also those who tell us that we shouldnot do this. Who look at this regime and their determination to vilify and repress opponents... who see the bloodlust and coarseness and bigotry at the very heart of it... and who say out of honest concern that this regime is too vicious and we have no choice but to wait for elections or to fight the attacks as they come and hope for the best. Our answer: every great struggle everywhere has demanded courage and has often demanded sacrifice. But we cannot shrink from that. We will not be provoked into foolish and alienating actions. Nor will we be cowed by the slander and vilification this regime wallows in, or attempts to divide us against each other. There is too much at stake.
We remember the words of Martin Niemöller, the German clergyman who ended up in Hitler’s concentration camps. Niemöller said: “First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I said nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist so I said nothing. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I said nothing. Then they came for me... and there was nobody left to speak.” Many people here have heard that quote, and over these next two weeks we will be called upon at times to remember and apply that lesson anew.
Niemöller also said that had they stood up to Hitler at the very beginning, at a time when the direction and logic of the Nazis was clear but the carnage had not yet fully begun, that even though there would have been tremendous sacrifice, it would have been worth it. It might have worked, he said, and think of what we would have avoided if it had. We surely face a situation no less grave.
We honor the memory of those who stood against the Nazis, and of all those who stood for justice throughout history against heavy odds. We do not seek unnecessary sacrifice; on the contrary, we will do everything we can to prevent anyone in this movement from coming to harm, to protect each other. But we know that sacrifices are necessary in any great cause against entrenched power, and we know this: that we are not acting in isolation but together with many others who recognize this great danger and are part of this great fight, and that we represent the interests of humanity as a whole.
The people and the planet are depending on us. This nightmare must end. There is a way to do this, beginning here and beginning now, and beginning with each of you to make a crucial beginning in these next two weeks and then go on from there.
Join me in pledging: In the Name of Humanity, I REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
Several thousand people in two dozen or more cities marched today in demonstrations called by Refuse Fascism around the slogan This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO! From a high of 1,500 in New York at its peak, to the 45 people who marched defiantly in the face of over 200 armed fascists in Austin, Texas, to the several hundred in Chicago who marched to drums in the cold November rain...to hundreds on a defiant and spirited march in Los Angeles... hundreds in San Francisco who, defying the city's denial of permit for the protest, rallied in the middle of busy downtown and then marched for miles through neighborhoods... a core of people, a critical mass, emerged who want to see this regime go—NOW. People who are acting, with a real sense of community and purpose, as the Trump/Pence regime continues forward with one fascist outrage after another—including the heightened danger of nuclear war, highlighted by Trump’s trip to Asia and continuing threats against North Korea. And they went up against the unconscionable attempts by the media to minimize and white out the movement to drive out the regime--and the vile, violent threats by fascists leading up to and on the day of the November 4 protests.
Also important were the people from the arts, from the clergy, from political movements who spoke or sent messages to the rallies. These include: Eve Ensler, playwright, The Vagina Monologues; Dorothy Reik, president, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains; Perry Hoberman, media artist, associate research professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts; Rev. Gregg Greer, Chicago; Father Lawrence Lucas, Black liberation theologian, longtime Harlem activist; Father Richard Estrada, Church of the Epiphany, LA; Rev. Tom Carey, Church of the Epiphany, LA; Immortal Technique, hip hop artist; Salman Aftab, American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights & Elections, Chicago; Arturo O’Farrill, musician; Rev. Frank Alton, St. Athanasius Episcopal Church, LA; Cindy Sheehan; Graywolf, director AIMSoCal (American Indian Movement, Southern California); Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist and an initiator of Refuse Fascism; Father Luis Barrios, Holyrood Church/Iglesia Santa Cruz and John Jay College, City University of New York; Bob Bossie, Catholic priest and long-time activist; Rev. John Beaty, Akron Interfaith Immigration Advocates.
Now all this must mushroom, and quickly. As the fundraising email sent out the night of
November 4 by Refuse Fascism said, “Trump is on his way to Asia as we write you and the whole world is holding its breath. Nobody knows exactly what new outrage will greet us tomorrow or the day after... but we do know there will be one, be it to women, the rule of law, the rights and dignity of Black people and historically oppressed peoples, the environment, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, or the very notion of the truth... or all of those. There remains a real urgency to this moment.”
Over the next two weeks, there will be continuing protests in different cities—and on November 11 and 18, days of national demonstrations called by Refuse Fascism. What began on November 4 needs to go to a whole new level, opening the way for the thousands to grow to hundreds of thousands and to millions, acting on a unifying demand: the Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!
Andy Zee delivered in NYC the November 4 Keynote speech, “Who will end this nightmare? WE WILL”. Andy Zee is an initiator of RefuseFascism.org, and the spokesperson for Revolution Books in New York City.
Father Lawrence Lucas, author, lecturer, Black liberation theologian, chaplain at Rikers Island prison, longtime Harlem activist:
Congratulations to the leaders and all involved in the November 4th beginning to end the Trump/Pence nightmare.
Hope it wakes up millions of Americans including many sleeping and/or duped clergy.
With You
Salman Aftab at Refuse Fascism rally in Chicago
Dorothy Reik—President, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains:
In the name of humanity, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains will not accept a Fascist America!
Decades ago the United States fought and helped defeat the Nazis in Europe. But even then there was support for Nazis and for Fascism in the United States. Anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Walt Disney thrived and the companies they built still prosper. And under the radar the Nazi movement made its plans, infiltrating the Republican Party on the local level, funding fascism-loving think tanks, and working under the radar until they could assume the reins of power. Now they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have taken over most of our states, elected their followers to federal office in the House and Senate and gotten their judges appointed on all levels and now even to the Supreme Court! One of their own now sits in the Oval Office and another sits next door as Vice President! And they will fight to protect their power. They are turning us against one another and their militarized police increase our anger instead of tamping it down. J20 inauguration protestors are facing 70 year prison sentences while the White Nationalist Nazi thugs who beat a Black anti- fascist protestors have not even been charged—but their victim has! WE MUST FIGHT BACK. ON THE STREETS, IN THE STATE HOUSES AND IN THE HALLS OF CONGRESS. WE MUST TAKE BACK OUR STOLEN ELECTORAL SYSTEM! WE MUST END VOTER SUPPESSION AND GERRYMANDERING. WE MUST VOTE IN 2018 AND 2020―THE YEAR THE NEW ELECTORAL DISTRICT LINES WILL BE DRAWN AND A NEW PRESIDENT WILL BE ELECTED! WE MUST PROTEST THE MAN WHO SITS IN THE WHITE HOUSE NOW WHEREVER HE GOES. TODAY IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE TRUMP/PENCE FASCIST/RACIST REGIME. POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
Rev. Gregg Greer, President, Freedom First International, At Chicago Refuse Fascism Rally
Perry Hoberman of Refuse Fascism explains how today will "start the process of driving out" the Donald Trump regime in Los Angeles
Perry Hoberman of Refuse Fascism explains how today will "start the process of driving out" the Donald Trump regime in #LosAngelespic.twitter.com/fO1su95XPw
Sunsara Taylor, one of the MCs of the New York protest, a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism, and writer for www.revcom.us
Photo: @EinoSierpe
U.S Veteran who went to Iraq, powerfully calls on Past, Present and Future Members of the Military to join this movement to DRIVE OUT THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME!
@ImmortalTech says "Human rights are at an all-time low because people can't seem to even decide who is human & who is not."
Rev. John Beaty, Co-convener of Embracing Justice and Peace; Member of Akron Interfaith Immigration Advocates; Retired United Methodist Clergy active in Grace United Church of Christ of Loyal Oak in Norton, Ohio:
My Fellow Americans,
This is why I believe that both Trump and Pence are not fit to be President and Vice President of the United States of America:
They have lied to the American people. They claim to be for the American worker, but have done everything they can to withhold fair wages, and not to honor our right to protect ourselves by collectively bargaining with our employers. They have claimed to represent the forgotten citizen, when they have tried to take away our right to healthcare, our right to breathe clean air, to drink clean water, to eat food that is not poisoned with pesticides and cancer producing additives, to know what they are doing in collusion with megabillionaires, mega corporations, megabanks, and mega polluters.
They have promised to make America Great Again, but they are destroying the America that is struggling to be a beacon of freedom, prosperity, inclusiveness, kindness, fairness, and equal justice for all.
They prey upon people’s fear, anxieties, and prejudices to divide us from one another and to provoke us to violent conflict.
They are utterly corrupt with secret deals with shady foreign and domestic influences that enrich the favored few at the expense of the unfortunate many.
They seem hellbent on destroying our climate, our environment, our wildlife, our national parks and monuments.
They are enhancing a system of taking from the many poor and giving to the richest few of our citizens.
They are criminalizing and incarcerating blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the poor.
They are encouraging the most zenophobic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic elements of our society.
They are taking money from needed programs and spending it on unnecessary walls, prisons, weapons.
They are threatening the Constitution of the United States in a lust for power, privilege, and partisanship.
They are talking like fascists, looking like fascists, acting like fascists, entertaining white nationalist neo-Nazis in the highest echelons of government.
Do you think they just might be fascists?
This Nightmare Must End! The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!
This is my belief!
Trump/Pence regime must go! Join the thousands peacefully gathering & marching in US cities today to demand an end to this clown show
Take To The Streets And Public Squares
in cities and towns across the country continuing day after day and night after night—not stopping—until our DEMAND is met:
This Nightmare Must End:
The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
November 4, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revcom.us editors' note: This letter was sent from Refuse Fascism to supporters. We encourage our readers to send it out broadly.
Several thousand people today took to the streets in over two dozen cities around the slogan This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO! From the 40 in Austin who stood up against 250 armed militia to the diverse crowd of 1,500 at its height in New York to the spirited hundreds in Chicago, with a lot of high school youth, who marched with drums through cold November rain... this was a real beginning.
But what happens next is up to you. This means coming forward to participate, but right now it means DONATING to make the next urgent steps happen.
Trump is on his way to Asia as we write you and the whole world is holding its breath. Nobody knows exactly what new outrage will greet us tomorrow or the day after... but we do know there will be one, be it to women, the rule of law, the rights and dignity of Black people and historically oppressed peoples, the environment, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, or the very notion of the truth... or all of those. There remains a real urgency to this moment.
The beginning momentum of today must now be built upon. Refuse Fascism has called for demonstrations next Saturday, November 11, focusing on both the threats of war and actual aggression being carried out, and then another demonstration on November 18, which again brings in the all-round threat posed by this regime to the many targeted groups and to humanity as a whole. Both these days must witness a growing momentum to this movement, unlocking the sentiment of literally tens of millions into a movement that can actually drive out this regime.
We need you. Again, we need you to generously donate, as we went deep into debt for today and now must do even more in the two weeks now directly upon us. But we need you as well to help us meet with your group. We need you to volunteer. And we need you to share this note with as many people as you can.
Together we have a chance to change the future, to prevent something of unimaginable horror. Let’s seize it.
Updated November 4, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
1. “Why are you wearing the BA SPEAKS: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt?”
This T-shirt represents people getting free. Putting on this shirt means I’m no longer standing on the sidelines watching with no hope for the future or of getting free. I’m making a statement to be on the side of the people and getting ready for a time when there is a basis to go all out for revolution and end the nightmare that humanity has been trapped in for way too long.
Why aren’t YOU wearing the shirt?
2. “Why should I follow BA if he is white? How can I trust BA as a leader if I haven’t met him?”
No one should follow a leader because they’re white. Or Black. Or male. Or female. Or any other identity. People should follow Bob Avakian because he has answers on how we get free. He has answers for how we can make revolution to overthrow this system of nightmarish oppression, and how we can lead a new society on the road to real emancipation. BA is not leading any one group of people to try to get ahead of others. BA is leading a revolution to end all oppression and emancipate all of humanity. And if that’s not the leadership you’re looking for, what’s the point?
There are plenty of leaders you can meet who aren’t worth following to the grocery store. You can meet Farrakhan. He’s not even trying to lead a revolution! He’s so eager to get a piece of the capitalist-imperialist pie he even said he’ll make deals with the most powerful white supremacist in the world today, Donald Trump! You can meet with plenty of other forked tongue politicians and others who will stroke your ego, tell you what you wanna hear, and promise you a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That’s not what BA is about. BA tells you the truth, whether you like it or not. BA will struggle with you over where things need to go and what you can and need to do about it. BA has made a breakthrough in the science of human emancipation that provides us the tools to understand and radically change the world. And BA is leading the revolution with a deep connection to what people are actually going through and why it is so unnecessary. We’ve never had a leader like BA. And he needs to be defended and protected by the revolutionary people from a vicious enemy that would like nothing more than taking him out.
What people can do, and should do, is get to know this leader and his work. Great efforts are made to make this available at revcom.us, where you can get his writings and audio talks, including his memoir; the film of him dialoguing with Cornel West, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION; as well as the film of him talking straight up, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
3. “The revolutionaries don’t believe in God?”
“Let’s call this what it is—it is a slave mentality, with which people are being indoctrinated. All this ‘thank you Jesus!’ is a slave mentality.” (BAsics 4:18) Whose interests does it serve for people who are being fucked over and oppressed to accept this way of life as the will of a god who is punishing them or testing them with the promise of something better when they are dead? Who benefits from that? Think of what religion has been used to justify just in the history of this country: the pillaging and mass murder of the native peoples; enslaving, raping and selling African people; legalizing the beating and raping of women by their husbands.
We need to get beyond ALL lords and masters, and beyond all the oppressive economic and social relations, and traditional ideas, on which they rest. And to do that we have to confront reality as it really is. The truth is there is no god. And that is a great thing! It means we ourselves can understand the world using science and we ourselves can change it. It means we don’t have to be chained by books like the Bible that teaches that women should be killed if they are not virgins when they get married, children who rebel against their parents should be killed, gay people should be killed, and people who displease god or believe in other religions should be killed, including children (and if you bring us your Bible we can show you where it says that). We can get free of this kind of hate and this way of people treating each other.
At the same time, to join the Revolution Club you don’t have to agree that there is no god. Many good people, including revolutionaries, are motivated by their belief in a loving god that drives them to fight for justice. To make revolution, many, many of these kinds of “believers” are needed. To join the Revolution Club, you have to agree to the Points of Attention for the Revolution and while it is not a requirement to give up belief in a god, it is a requirement that we base ourselves on what we understand to be true and be open to discussing and debating what is true. Point of Attention #5 says this: “We search for and fight for the truth no matter how unpopular, even as we listen to and learn from the observations, insights and criticisms of others.”
4. “I heard BA’s a cult leader.”
This is the farthest thing from the truth and would be laughable if it wasn’t so harmful. Ironically, when people tell you this they are trying to get you to stop asking questions and stop thinking for yourself (which is what real cults do!). And even more ironically, what most characterizes BA’s leadership is that he leads people to think critically, which is the exact opposite of a cult leader!
So, we could all just laugh this off as ridiculous and idiotic. But it is actually harmful for people to be going around saying BA’s a cult leader—because it attempts to put a wall in between the people and their revolutionary leadership. It attempts to keep people disconnected from the leader they have who is on their side for real and leading them to rise to the challenge of freeing themselves and all humanity. BA has developed a new communism, an advance in science to understand human society and the world and how to change it, a toolkit that can be used to work through and fight through all the problems that stand in the way of getting all of humanity free of all oppression. He is also providing incredibly high-level leadership right now to the process of making revolution in the most monstrous empire on the planet. And he is hated and threatened by the powers that be and their followers and enforcers. What we need, what humanity needs, is A LOT MORE FOLLOWERS of BA. People taking up that toolkit and becoming leaders for this revolution. NOT RELIGIOUS WORSHIPERS OF BA. SCIENTIFIC FOLLOWERS. And a movement for revolution that will defend and protect this precious leadership.
5. “What’s in it for me?” / “I have to take care of me and mine first.”
What’s in it for you is losing those damn chains that got people held down! Getting PAST all that. Also while you’re “taking care of yours,” others are being murdered, rounded up, demonized, facing horror after horror on a daily basis. Quite frankly, it isn’t about you. It’s about the masses of people here and around the world putting a stop to this the only way it can be done—revolution, nothing less.
And we have a saying: “for whom and for what,” why are we doing this? We’re not doing this because it personally makes us feel good. No, it’s bringing forward another way outta this madness and we have that WAY. So break with that outmoded way of thinking and start living for humanity.
6. “You can’t win.”
How do you know? Have you studied past revolutions? Have you studied the strengths and weaknesses of this system? Have you studied how imperialist armies fight and how revolutionary armies fight and how “insurgent forces” fight? The Revolutionary Communist Party has done this work and a lot more. It has developed a strategy for revolution and a doctrine for how to fight with a real chance of winning, once a revolutionary people in the millions, and the necessary conditions for revolution, have been brought into being. The outline of this is laid out in the statement, “HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution.” We should dig into that statement together.
One thing it says in HOW WE CAN WIN is: "To make this revolution, we need to be serious, and scientific. We need to take into account the actual strengths of this system, but more than that its strategic weaknesses, based in its deep and defining contradictions. We need to build this revolution among those who most desperately need a radical change, but among others as well who refuse to live in a world where this system spews forth endless horrors, and this is continually 'justified' and even glorified as 'greatness.'"
The problem: this capitalist system of oppression and exploitation of millions of people here and around the world, along with the plunder of the environment. The solution is revolution.
Revolution requires millions of people who see or can be won to see the illegitimacy of this system and those who rule. The Revolution Club is organizing, NOW, for revolution to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time with a real chance to win. We are Preparing the Ground, Preparing the People, Preparing the Vanguard for Revolution. What is needed is YOU!
7. “You’re going to get people killed.” / “The police are going to come down harder on me if I get involved in the revolution.”
What is actually worth living and dying and risking something for? This system kills and destroys people every single day, and gets people to take up its dog-eat-dog mentality and destroy each other. Why not put your life to something worthwhile? Getting rid of this system and emancipating humanity from this hell.
Yeah, if you step out of the life and get into the revolution, the police are going to hate it. They are going to fuck with you. We know all the dirty shit they are capable of—setups and murders and a whole court system backing them up. The police and the system they enforce would much prefer that you stay in your place, fighting over drug territory, taking revenge on other people in the same situation as you, going in and out of their prisons, always on probation or parole, always trying to stay low, on the run... and not causing any trouble for their system which keeps grinding you up and grinding up people all over the world. Children blown to pieces in wars for empire or washing up dead on beaches as their families try to escape war and poverty. Women killed in sweatshops that catch fire, or murdered for trying to go to school, or beaten and raped by men who consider them objects and property. Black and Latino people in the U.S. murdered by police, Rohingya people in Myanmar slaughtered...
So. What are you going to do inside this slave system? Bow your head and be an obedient slave? Or learn how to end the whole system of slavery and become a leader for the revolution to do that?
When you step into the revolution, you will not be alone. Every time the police try to take revenge on you for joining the revolution, you will have the movement for revolution at your back. We must mobilize people to support each other, mobilize lawyers to defend revolutionaries, raise money to fight cases, and most importantly bring forward more forces for revolution as we do all this. You stepping into the revolution now, putting on the T-shirt, living by and fighting for the Points of Attention for the Revolution—yes with all of the risks—inspires and gives strength to others to do the same.
8. “Black people will never get together.” / “White people are too fucked up.”
In saying that you are taking up the way the system wants you to think. Let’s look at this scientifically. It is the system that creates the conditions in which people are divided and not a predetermined human nature that says people are doomed to fight each other and exploit and oppress others. There are examples throughout history, even very recent history, where people from all walks of life have come together to fight the outrages of this system. People in times of acute crisis in society can have their thinking transformed and have their sights set higher and unite with others against the real enemy... this capitalist imperialist system and those who rule over it. Stop thinking the way the system wants you to think and step into the revolution.
9. “I have a responsibility to take revenge for my loved ones or I’m not a man...”
You are being played by this system that set up your loved ones to be killed in the first place and got you going after people who are just like you that this system rules over and oppresses. Give the lives of your loved ones some REAL MEANING by taking up the fight to get rid of this system that is really responsible. And when you start talking about being a "man" and not being a "bitch," this system has you played twice—now it has you trying to make your life count by dominating over and devaluing women.
Lift your sights and change what you are fighting for. Get out of that revenge shit that is just another form of “me and mine first” that is the way of life under this capitalist-imperialist system. Get out of that “man up” shit that keeps women enslaved and holds all of humanity back. Become an emancipator of humanity. Join the Revolution Club.
10. What does it mean to join the Revolution Club?
When you join the Revolution Club you join an organized group of people who are preparing for revolution—preparing the ground, preparing the people, and preparing the vanguard leadership, getting ready for the time when millions can be led to fight, all-out, with a real chance to win. In the Revolution Club you get trained to become a leader for this revolution.
In the Revolution Club you live by a different morality. You live by and fight for the Points of Attention for the Revolution. You are fighting for a morality that stands for a world in which there is no more exploitation of the many by the few and no more oppression of one group of people by another.
In the Revolution Club you learn how to lead people to stand up against the injustices of this system and learn how to come together and fight together against the system and all the ways in which it comes down on people. You learn about and do that in a way that contributes to and builds up the forces we need for a real revolution. This means learn how to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution.
In the Revolution Club you learn about science—what it is and how to apply it to everything, including making revolution. This means learning about Bob Avakian’s new communism—and spreading this everywhere. You transform your own thinking and lead people to transform their thinking to start thinking about the interests of humanity first instead of “me and mine first” and to lose their fear of fighting to change the world. You struggle with people to break free of the system’s way of thinking. You learn—and learn to apply—the strategy for an actual revolution to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist system. You get into the vision and plan for the new society in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America authored by Bob Avakian (BA)—a society on the road to wiping out all forms of exploitation, oppression, and destructive conflicts among the people.
When you join the Revolution Club, you learn about and follow the leadership of Bob Avakian (BA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party. The most precious thing the masses of people have in their fight to get free is their vanguard party, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), which leads the Revolution Club and the whole movement for revolution. In the Revolution Club you learn about the Party and how you can make the leap to becoming a communist leader and prepare to join the RCP.
