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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.
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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?
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
Updated November 8, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
We are still learning about all that happened across the country on November 4. The highlights here from a few of the cities give a sense of the day.
New York City
Fifteen hundred people of all ages and nationalities converged on Times Square in Manhattan on Saturday afternoon to declare their determination to “Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime!” You could feel the sense of seriousness, as well as the spirit and excitement of being among such a large and diverse group of people who were taking the same pledge not to stop until this fascist regime is driven out of power! Refuse Fascism’s striking white on black signs were everywhere, held up by young and old—”This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!”
The people acting with a real sense of community and purpose included those who had only recently learned about Refuse Fascism and November 4. A college-age woman first learned about the demonstrations from Facebook. She said the Refuse Fascism slogan resonated personally for her because she is a part of the LGBT community: “I can’t stand what this regime represents.” She said she’d been talking with others around her about Refuse Fascism and November 4. What message was she going to take back to the people who must become a part of driving out this regime? “If you’re not a part of this, no one’s going to be here to defend you if you don’t come and defend us.”
A recent college graduate said he agreed strongly—“100 percent”—with Refuse Fascism’s overall slogan. “We’ve seen it before. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, as they say... There’s a lot of things going on right now that should worry you. And I’ve read enough to know that something has to be done. This is a start, and the endgame for me, obviously, is the removal of the Trump regime from power. If reality is on our side, and the truth resonates with people, then it will be successful.”
The rally that kicked off the day’s events gave a glimpse of the breadth of people coming forward, as well as a strong orientation for everyone who had come. Sunsara Taylor and Jam No Peanut were co-MCs, and Jay W. Walker, a member of Refuse Fascism’s steering committee and an initiator of Gays Against Guns, spoke for Refuse Fascism NYC. Moving statements of solidarity were read from Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem, and the Grammy Award-winning composer and musician Arturo O’Farrill. Iman Souleimane Konate spoke for the Muslim community. Andy Zee, a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism, delivered the keynote speech, and the rap artist Immortal Technique spoke briefly and performed a rhyme. Father Luis Barrios, Holyrood Church/Iglesia Santa Cruz and John Jay College, City University of New York, spoke. And there were statements from college and high school students. The leadership from the stage projected the seriousness of this moment and what the people there, and across the country were setting out to do, why this is what had to be done to drive this regime out, and the determination and confidence that it can be achieved.
As the protesters set out on their 50-block march through lower Manhattan—the signs aloft almost as far as you could see, and the chants echoing continuously—the announcement in the streets that a new phase of the struggle to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime had begun reached tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and international tourists. And at the same time, the marchers were sending pictures, videos, and messages everywhere through social media.
Over the next two weeks, there will be continuing protests in New York—and on November 11 and 18, days of national demonstrations called by Refuse Fascism. What began on November 4 needs to go to a new level, and open 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!
Austin, Texas: Courage in the Face of Armed Fascist Thugs
About 45 people gathered on the steps of City Hall, rallied, and marched for about a mile through the streets of downtown—in the face of over 200 threatening fascist thugs, many of them openly armed with semi-automatic weapons, knives, machetes, clubs, and shields. Many others boasted of carrying concealed weapons. Some were on rooftops of surrounding buildings. Police prevented an unknown number of people from entering both the rally and march.
The entire event was an intense face-off. But march organizers, MCs, and participants were able to maintain focus on the day’s goal—beginning a process that can turn the thousands who turned out nationwide today into tens of thousands, and ultimately millions, staying in the streets until the nightmare is ended. Several speakers contributed to the rally, among them: a minister, a youth from Austin, a middle-class woman at her first protest, a man who led the crowd in a powerful anti-fascist sing-along, a school teacher who condemned the fascist attacks on public education, another young teacher who passionately and viscerally focused everyone’s attention on people across the planet who already have been killed and victimized by the Trump/Pence regime. All this in the face of a seething mob of fascists and walls of police.
Every time the fascists tried to disrupt the rally and march with their “USA” chants and other provocations, they were drowned out by chants of “humanity first.” This was taken up enthusiastically and energetically by all the protesters. A young Black woman said later that day, “Our actions were righteous, our collectivity, our activities were more powerful than theirs. We’re not afraid of their flags, weapons, president, any of that. They want to create a whole new way of life. We’re saying no, we’re not going to let this country become fascist.”
Afterward, several of the protesters gathered. An immigrant from a Middle Eastern country raised his glass of tea in a toast and said, “Here’s to all the brave ones.” A young Black woman from Houston said, “I was feeling a lot of nervousness this morning, but when I got out there, I felt the nerves went away. We didn’t back down, we kept humanity in our hearts. And I felt the nervousness that had been eating at me went out.”
The march ended with discipline. As the last group of protesters gathered to leave, a knot of dozens of fascists faced off at them, with a double line of police in between. The fascists began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The protesters still there took a knee, raised a fist, and people concluded the day by drowning out the fascists one more time: “Humanity First, Humanity First.”
Chicago: Marching to the Beat of Anti-Fascist Drummers
At least 300 people, possibly more, participated—a Black man in his 50s said, “It felt like we were thousands.” It was incredibly spirited with a bunch of drummers from Degenerate Artists Against Fascism—the Chicago Tribune described them as the protest’s “percussion section”—keeping the beat. Despite hundreds of bike police lining the march, many people joined in as the march went to Trump Tower.
A diverse mix of rally speakers included Minister Edward Ward, who became notorious in 2016 while a student at DePaul University for shouting down Milo Yiannopoulos; a white high school student; Bishop Gregg Greer; Salman Aftab of the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections; Catholic priest and long-time activist Bob Bossie; a spokesperson from Two Spirits indigenous LGBTQ movement; and Noche Diaz of the Revolution Club.
Among the protesters were at least three groupings of high school students, one from a suburban Catholic school, another from a suburb of Milwaukee. College students came, often in ones or twos, from many different schools, including Columbia College and the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). There were also students from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and Dominican University.
There were also middle-aged and older people there, including a woman who said that she had considered herself a socialist for years but now had to act on her convictions. This was the first time she had been to a protest in many, many years. There were a number of people in Bernie shirts and people who had been active in his campaign.
San Francisco: Hundreds in the Streets Defy City’s Permit Denial
Leading up to November 4, there was an intense battle with the city authorities over the permit for the protest, which, outrageously, was denied. In the face of this, there were at least 300 people at the rally in Union Square in the heart of the downtown shopping area, and over 400 at the high point of the four-mile march that went through the Castro area and the Mission district. Among the speakers at the rally were a representative of La Colectiva; Steve Rapport, member of SF Indivisible and impeachment activist; a student from UC Berkeley; Christina DiEdoardo, civil rights activist and reporter for Bay Area Reporter.
There were small groups of students from Stanford, Berkeley City College, UC Berkeley, SF State University (where students are planning an event on Monday), and others, including high schools. A woman came from Reno, Nevada. There were immigrants, tourists from places like Japan and Italy who joined the protest, and a range of local activists including from Code Pink and Veterans for Peace.
Los Angeles: Religious People, Latino Youth, and Others in Defiant, Spirited Action
About 1,000 people rallied and hundreds marched in downtown. The march was defiant and very spirited with a large grouping of young Latinos. People marched with fists raised and chanted all the way, calling on those on the sidewalks with the chant, “Trump and Pence MUST go, march with us.”
There was a strong presence of religious people—those making statements included Rev. Frank Alton of St. Athanasius Episcopal Church and Father Richard Estrada and Rev. Tom Carey of the Church of the Epiphany. Others speaking at the rally included Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq; Graywolf, Director of AIMSoCal (American Indian Movement Southern California); and Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist and an initiator of Refuse Fascism.
A contingent of about two dozen Trump supporters were across the street from the rally, with a few coming across the street and trying to disrupt the protest, to no avail.
Philadelphia: The “Trump Rat” and Giant Nightmare Puppet
The creative ways to bring out the serious message of November 4 included a “Trump Rat,” a 15-food inflatable caricature, with Confederate-flag cufflinks; a giant “Trump/Pence Nightmare” puppet, which people knocked down at one point; a Trump-masked person in an “Alt-White House” that looked like a jail cell; banners and signs contributed by artists; and powerful poems and songs at the rally. A march of 250 people at its height went through the downtown streets, calling on others to join. A group of pro-Trump reactionaries, some armed, followed the march, but as one marcher noted, “We made clear that the people of the world were depending on us, that [the Trumpites] were just another reason why we must get these fascists out of the White House, and people refused to be intimidated.”
Honolulu, Hawaii: An Incredibly Diverse Mix
About 250 people took to the streets of Honolulu in a spirited march through some of the city's busiest streets. They were an incredibly diverse mix. Small kids proudly chanted "No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA" alongside protesters in their 80s. They were of all ethnicities and races—and a few were visitors from other countries. Most brought their own creative handmade signs reflecting the nightmares listed in the Call for November 4th. Others brought flags. Rainbow flags flew beside flags from Korea, Puerto Rico, and Hawai`i, and there wasn't a U.S. flag amongst them.
The march ended at historic Thomas Square, a park of great historical importance for native Hawaiian people, and also the site of Hawai`i's Occupy movement. As marchers entered the park, a band on the stage welcomed them in. People listened raptly as the Refuse Fascism spokesperson delivered the keynote speech. Throughout the afternoon people remarked on its strength and clarity. A visitor from the Philippines asked for a copy so that he could quote it on his blog back home, and another from Myanmar said she had never expected an American to speak so boldly.
Community activists from a number of organizations spoke to each of the nightmares. Speakers were strong, passionate, and determined. An immigration attorney spoke movingly about the fear of her clients; the executive director of the Sierra Club denounced Trump's environmental policies; and an agricultural specialist from Guatemala addressed the effects of Trump's policies on the world's people. An internationally recognized Korean activist, who has herself visited North Korea seven times, choked up as she talked about the threat of a nuclear attack on North Korea and the effect the attack would have on millions throughout Korea, Guam, and Hawai`i. Col. Ann Wright (ret.) joined her in calling on everyone to stand up against Trump's cries for war. A Hawaiian independence activist denounced the militarization of Hawai`i and the ongoing and increasing attacks on Hawaiian lands and peoples.
Emotion-filled calls for people to fight together, to protect each other, and to have the courage to resist, was one of the real strengths of the rally.
Everyone listened intently as poets spoke to their "souls," spitting out rhymes about everything from Colin Kaepernick to critical thinking in the schools.
Going into November 4th, organizers had received a lot of threats from reactionary trolls saying they were going to shut down the march, disrupt the rally, run protesters over, and the like. When people gathered at the park on the 4th, there were a number of Trumpites hovering nearby, some with their MAGA (Make America Great Again) caps and video cameras. About 6-8 Proud Boys showed up to "interview" protesters for their incendiary community TV show, but when the MC exposed them the crowd treated them with disgust and they backed away.
Boston
Between 125 and150 people came together at the Parkman Bandstand in the Boston Commons to add their voices to those around the country demanding "This Nightmare Must End! The Trump Pence Regime Must Go!" People traveled from as far away as Providence, Rhode Island and Vermont to be part of the day. There was tremendous breadth in the crowd—which included longtime peace activists to first-time participants. There were students from local campuses including Boston University, Wellesley Colllege, and Massachusetts College of the Arts, high school students from a suburban community, and others. People had heard about November 4th from a wide range of sources—including articles that had appeared in the BostonMetro and the BostonGlobe in the days leading up to the 4th, as well as various social media sites and from posters they had seen on their campuses. Others came off the Refuse Fascism email blasts or simply by going to the RF website. A number commented that this was the first time they had come to a demonstration. Others spoke to the personal inner struggle to make the decision to step into the streets but of being proud to be there.
In response to heightened concerns of disruptions by fascist thugs, young Antifa activists along with members of Veterans for Peace came both to participate in the event and to work with organizers to prevent the rally from being derailed in any way. When right-wing provocateurs did attempt to disrupt the rally, the vets and the Antifa activists came together with Refuse Fascism marshals to prevent it from occurring.
In addition to Refuse Fascism, there were statements from the Boston May Day Coalition and the Revolutionary Communist Party. There were also statements from Academics Against Fascism, Manny Lusardi, City of Cambridge Immigrant Liaison Office, and a young Salvadoran woman, among others, who spoke with deep passion to the personal experience of her family immigrating to the U.S. The rally was kicked off with a local folk singer doing a rendition of "Deportee."
As the sun went down and the temperature dropped, a boisterous march of 50 people took off into the busy streets of downtown Boston, periodically stopping and fanning out as the Refuse Fascism light show was projected off the walls of the buildings.
Atlanta
The demo and march of about 175 people was very spirited, in pouring rain. About 30 or so fascists, some armed, tried to disrupt but did not succeed. Many people came despite knowing about threats from fascists, and others joined on the spot. It was a very diverse crowd in age and nationality. As organizers went around the crowd with a microphone for people to speak out, one homeless man said, “My nightmare is that this nightmare won’t end.” Others talked about Trump’s bragging of sexual assault and attacks on LGBTQ people. The aunt of Jamarion Robinson, who was shot 76 times by police, spoke.
Cleveland
About 65 people marched and rallied with great determination and high spirits in the face of armed fascist militias and assorted other fascists trying, and failing, to disrupt. There were people of a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and political perspectives. Many had only recently learned of this movement—from a flier on the street, at their church, or on social media. Others have been following Refuse Fascism from the email list or through the RF website. The spirit of unity, determination, and that we CAN drive them out was projected by the rally MCs and speakers. Several protesters said they had heard the threats of fascist violence against the protest, seriously considered if they should come and decided to because the people have to end this nightmare.
One rally speaker, who identified herself as an organizer in her housing project, said, “We need organization. I’m going to take this to every group I’m part of. It will take different groups to unite and stop Trump. He has to go—cuts in Medicaid, in Medicare, more mass incarceration, he has to go! His cabinet is racist, got to go. We need to have more protest like this. I’m going back and bring many more!” A gay college student spoke with passion on the need to drive out the regime. A gospel singer came to the mic on the spur of the moment and performed Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” and “Choice of Colors,” a capella. A Black youth who just learned about this movement at his church spoke about how Trump is the worst president he knows of and we need to get him out.
Seattle
A local TV news station reported that about 100 people marched through downtown—“demanding an end to what they called ‘our national nightmare.’” The station quoted one protester saying, “I’m sick of the way things are going in this administration. They’re putting us on the brink of nuclear war. This has to stop.”
An activist with Indivisible was one of the co-MCs at the rally, and among the speakers was Weldon Nisly, a retired Mennonite pastor and a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team who was in Baghdad when George W. Bush launched the “shock and awe” bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003; and Tae Phoenix, an international recording artist and activist. Jenn Wallen, a Native American scholar, poet, humanitarian, activist, musician, and artist, opened the rally with a convocation and blessing.
In a number of cities: Small Groups Acting with Tremendous Resolve and Sense of Community
In some areas, handfuls of people courageously stepped out, defying the fascist threats of violence—with a determined sense of purpose and of being part of a community, a movement across the country that was beginning on that day acting in the name of humanity to call on others to step forward. Among them were:
Indianapolis, Indiana: About a dozen people rallied—opposed by a similar number of pro-Trumpites.
Akron, Ohio: Seven people came out, including 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—who made a statement saying in part, “They are talking like fascists, looking 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!”
Pittsfield, Massachusetts: The local newspaper, Berkshire Eagle, reported in part: “Shortly after 1 p.m., about two dozen people had gathered at Park Square, holding signs and waving at passing motorists. Indivisible Pittsfield organized the small rally in solidarity with a national push against what organizers say is a shift toward political fascism.”
Immigrants living in terror—their next step could mean detention, deportation, being torn from children and loved ones.
A Nightmare:
Muslims and refugees demonized, banned and cast out.
A Nightmare:
Millions—children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the poor—denied healthcare, food assistance, the very right to live.
A Nightmare:
Women objectified, degraded, and denied the basic right to control their own reproduction with fundamentalist Christian fascism increasingly being made law.
A Nightmare:
LGBTQ people stigmatized, ostracized, and denied civil rights recently won.
A Nightmare:
Black and Latino people openly threatened by the President, with maximum sentencing, stop-and-frisk going national, intensified police brutality and murder of our youth with no holds barred.
A Nightmare:
People all over the world facing bombings, occupations, war and the threat of nuclear war with Donald Trump’s “America First” finger on the nuclear trigger.
A Nightmare:
The truth bludgeoned—lies and more lies—critical thinking being destroyed in education and public discourse.
A Nightmare:
The whole planet in peril from a regime that denies global warming and shreds all environmental protections.
A Nightmare:
A regime step-by-step discarding basic democratic rights, targeting group after group, and suppressing dissent and resistance. A regime unleashing the violence of white supremacists, anti-Semites and fascist thugs. This is fascism—a qualitative change in how society is governed. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.
THIS NIGHTMARE MUST END. Millions feel this and ache with the question of how to stop this unrelenting horror. The stakes are nothing less than the future of humanity and the planet itself.
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.
JOIN US—Take to the streets and public squares across the country, beginning a movement of protests that continue day after day and night after night. A movement working to grow from thousands to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions. A movement determined to not stop until our demand is met:
THIS NIGHTMARE MUST END: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
Our actions will reflect the values of respect for all of humanity and the world we want—in stark contrast to the hate and bigotry of the Trump/Pence fascist regime.
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 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.
Spread the word and organize. Be a part of making history. Don’t let it be said that you stood aside when there was still a chance to stop a regime that imperils humanity and the earth itself. Join us in taking to the streets and the public squares day after day and night after night. Let’s stand together with conviction and courage, overcoming fear and uncertainty, demonstrating that:
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!
RefuseFascism.org is a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence Regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power through non-violent protest.
Experts Say Trump Threatens Nuclear War WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
November 6, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The danger of a major—perhaps nuclear—war between the U.S. and North Korea looms larger every day. According to experts, as well as major figures in both political parties, cited by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (November 4, 2017), the odds of war breaking out soon range from “20 percent” to “50/50.”
Speaking at the UN in September, Donald Trump said the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea—a country of 25 million people—if its government refuses to bow to U.S. demands. Later, U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham approvingly described Trump’s position: “There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here—and he’s told me that to my face.” Graham told Kristof that if Korea continues to test intercontinental missiles—test, mind you, not use—“war is inevitable.” Republican senator Bob Corker—a former Trump ally—has warned now repeatedly that Trump has put the U.S. on a course toward World War 3.
On the same day as Kristof’s article, an admiral speaking for the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a report to a dozen U.S. congressmen in which the Pentagon stated that the only certain way to wipe out North Korean nuclear capability was through a massive land invasion by U.S. forces.
Now Trump has embarked on a nearly two-week tour of Asia which is again targeting North Korea. On the eve of the trip, national security adviser H.R. McMaster warned that “Our president has been really clear on this. He is not going to permit this rogue regime, Kim Jong-un, to threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon. And so he is willing to do anything necessary to prevent that from happening.” Pause on that for a minute: “do anything.”
At the U.S. military base at Yokota, Japan, Trump told assembled troops: “We dominate the sky, we dominate the sea, we dominate the land and space.... Each of you embodies the warrior creed. Your devotion, prowess and expertise make you the most fearsome fighting force in the history of our world.” He promised the troops “a lot more” advanced weaponry, and urged them to “use it well.”
Everybody understood that this speech was a threat against North Korea.
Pro-imperialist pundits claim that Trump’s threats are self-defense, because North Korea’s oppressive Kim Jong-un regime has developed a handful of nuclear weapons, and perhaps an ability to hit the U.S. with them. And for popular consumption, the U.S. paints a picture of Kim as a “lunatic” who would nuke the U.S. just for the hell of it. The U.S. media goes along with this, promoting hysterical fears of North Korean nukes suddenly slamming into Los Angeles.
But in reality the U.S. knows full well that this is bullshit. Speaking of Kim Jong-un at the Aspen Security Conference this past July, Trump’s national intelligence director, Dan Coates, said:
“[O]ur assessment [is that] he’s not crazy. And there is some rationale backing his actions which are survival, survival for his regime, survival for his country, and he has watched I think what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have, and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. The lessons that [they] learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up [their] nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them, and we see a lot of nations now thinking about how do we get them and none more persistent than North Korea....” (Emphasis ours)
Again, this is Trump’s own director of national intelligence just matter-of-factly admitting that North Korea has nukes in order to deter a U.S. attack on them, and to be able to stand up to U.S. nuclear bullying and blackmail. And it is exactly that ability to reject complete U.S. domination of the economically and strategically vital Asian region that the U.S. finds “threatening,” NOT the made-up danger of a North Korean first strike.
The “America First” fascists find this unacceptable, and the deaths of millions of Korean people count for NOTHING as long as U.S. interests are advanced. Nor are they deterred by the fact that a war between the U.S. superpower and small and weak North Korea could end up drawing in larger powers with big nuclear arsenals of their own, and threatening the very existence of humanity.
It is highly possible that such a war would start with the U.S. delivering a non-nuclear hit against some element of North Korea’s defense structure and provoke a response. The U.S. would then pose as the victim, and move in to do what Trump so baldly threatened at the UN—the wiping out of an entire country and its people.
If such a horror should happen—and if the rest of humanity should even survive it—what will we answer when future generations demand of us, “What were you doing when Trump’s own people made clear to the world what he was planning? How could you not do everything in your power to prevent it?”
Thousands in South Korea Protest Trump and His War Threats
November 5, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Watch video of students taking their message to steps of Korea's National Assembly
On Saturday, November 4, at least 5,000 people in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, protested Trump’s visit to South Korea that is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, as part of his 12-day Asia trip. Trump’s plans during his trip include visiting a large U.S. military base—the U.S. has 24,000 troops stationed in South Korea.
Trump and the whole regime—including his generals—continue to ratchet up war threats against North Korea. The whole Korean Peninsula would be ground zero for any outbreak of war, potentially causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in a few days, and even millions if nuclear weapons are used.
In the Saturday protest in Seoul, demonstrators carried banners and posters depicting Trump and saying “No Trump! No war!” Police dragged away students sitting down in protest with signs reading “Dump Trump” in English and Korean. A speaker at the rally said that “South Koreans are trembling with fear of war.” A woman whose son was drafted into the South Korean army said, “My heart stirs at every single word Trump says about North Korea.” A worker said, “I came here to protest because I’m afraid of a war. And if a war breaks out, we all die.” One of the songs sung at the protest had the words “We hate Trump. We love peace. We love equality.”
There were lots of creatively designed protest materials, including big masks of Trump with his mouth wide open, a giant fist with the words “Shut Up” in English, and balloons with pictures of Trump attached. In front of the U.S. embassy, people walked on top of an enlarged American flag on which Trump’s actual threats against North Korea were written: “Fire and Fury,” “Totally Destroy” and “Locked and Loaded.”
A teacher who brought students to the rally had a message for people in the U.S.: “I hope that American citizens pay attention to what’s happening here.”
September 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
A QUESTION, A CHALLENGE FOR PAUL KRUGMAN,
AND ALL THOSE CONCERNED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
by Bob Avakian
Download a printable two-sided, 8.5x11 PDF of this article HERE
Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winning economist who regularly publishes commentary in the New York Times, recently wrote (in a September 11, 2017 column “Conspiracies, Corruption and Climate”) that with Donald Trump in the White House, “know-nothing, anti-science conservatives are now running the U.S. government.” And here is the very sobering statement with which he concluded this column:
The bottom line is that we are now ruled by people who are completely alienated not just from the scientific community, but from the scientific idea—the notion that objective assessment of evidence is the way to understand the world. And this willful ignorance is deeply frightening. Indeed, it may end up destroying civilization. [emphasis added]
This brings into sharp relief the question: If, indeed, the people in power may end up destroying civilization (and this could come about not only through what they do in relation to the climate but through their wantonly unleashing nuclear war), does this not require everyone concerned with the fundamental interests of humanity, with its very fate and future, to act in ways that are actually commensurate with this profound existential threat?
In fact, there are people who are doing so. People who have recognized the grave threat posed by those now ruling us, and the urgency of the situation, and who are therefore determined to act now to not just oppose but remove from power this regime of nightmares. People who have refused to simply hope that the “normal workings” of a process that has brought these people to their ruling position will somehow prevent them from acting in accordance with their “willful ignorance,” and worse. People coming together on the basis of a Call from the organization RefuseFascism with its forthright stand:
“This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!”
They are working tirelessly to create the political and organizational basis for massive and sustained mobilization throughout the country, beginning on November 4 this year, whose unifying stand is the insistence that this whole regime now in power must be removed from power. As the special pamphlet from RefuseFascism.org: “The Crimes of the Trump/Pence Regime and How to Be a Part of Driving Them from Power” explains:
RefuseFascism.org is a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives, united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence Regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power. This means working and organizing with all our creativity and determination toward Nov. 4 when many thousands of people will fill the streets of cities and towns, beginning a struggle that must continue day after day and night after night, eventually involving millions of people, demanding: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
We extend a welcome invitation to individuals and organizations from many different points of view who share our determination to refuse to accept a fascist America to join and/or partner with us in this great cause.
So, that is the crucial point of orientation and the challenge: People who hold many divergent points of view must come together and act politically, in what is really a meaningful and powerful way, to deal with the looming—in fact the ongoing—disaster embodied in this Trump/Pence regime, because of its willful opposition to the scientific method and its utter disregard for and repeated trampling on the truth, because of its overt white supremacy and misogyny, its xenophobic and bigoted attacks on immigrants, Muslims and LGBT people, its raw “America First” jingoism and the grave danger it poses to human existence through its predatory approach to the environment and bellicose wielding of military power, including its expressed willingness and brazen threats to use nuclear weapons.
In “Conspiracies, Corruption and Climate,” Paul Krugman refers to those now in power as “know-nothing, anti-science conservatives”; RefuseFascism agrees that they are “know-nothing,” and “anti-science” but goes further in identifying them not merely as “conservatives” but actual fascists. Krugman is a proponent of capitalism, whereas I am an advocate of communism, a new communism, who is convinced that what is ultimately and fundamentally required to deal with the current horrors facing the masses of humanity, and the looming threat to the very existence of humanity, is a truly radical and emancipating revolution. But that is not the immediate question and challenge before all of us at this present moment. Rather, it is to deal with the grave danger posed by those now in power, through nonviolent but massive and sustained political action—the mobilization of first thousands, growing into millions, determined to get and remain in the streets until this regime is removed from power. Does not the common recognition that this regime “may end up destroying civilization,” demand of us—of all those, of many divergent viewpoints, who can recognize that these are the stakes for humanity—that we act together, and do everything in our power, to bring about the massive political manifestation that is urgently needed to drive out this regime?
It is in this spirit and with this understanding that it is crucial for everyone—those, like Paul Krugman, with a prominent platform from which to influence public opinion, as well as those without such a platform—who do recognize and agonize over what is at stake for humanity to act, from their own perspective, to give meaningful support to, and indeed to become actively involved in, the critical work building toward November 4: publicly endorsing and promoting the Call from RefuseFascism, helping to break through what is effectively a white-out of this by the mainstream media, donating and raising funds, directing people to the RefuseFascism.org website, and in countless other ways helping to develop the necessary political and organizational basis for what RefuseFascism very rightly calls “this great cause.” For it is the massive and sustained political mobilization called for by RefuseFascism that truly represents the prospect of forging a positive path through and beyond this extremely dangerous and potentially disastrous situation.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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!
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.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
And Again... Murdering Pig Acquitted! Justice for Delrawn Small!!
November 6, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Early on Monday, July 4, 2016, Delrawn Small, a 37-year-old unarmed Black man, was murdered by an off-duty NYPD pig during a traffic incident on a Brooklyn, New York City street. Today, November 6, 2017, the pig who murdered him was acquitted in a New York trial.
Delrawn Small was driving with his girlfriend and two children when his car reportedly almost crashed with a car driven by an off-duty cop, Wayne Isaacs. At an intersection, Small got out of his car and approached Isaacs’s car. A video (at right) that surfaced a few days later shows Delrawn Small was almost immediately shot, staggered to the side of the street, and died.
The cop who shot Small said Small came over and punched him in the head repeatedly, and that he (the cop) “feared for his life.”
This murder happened just days before of the murders by police of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. Because of outrage and protest, and the damning evidence of the video, charges were filed against this cop. Today, November 6, 2017, despite the video showing a straight-up cold-blooded murder, this cop was acquitted of all charges. The cop fired his gun barely a second after Small—who, to repeat, was unarmed—reached his car. After shooting Small, the pig gets out of his car, tucking his gun under his shirt as he looks down on the man he just shot down—making no effort to give any aid.
Victor Dempsey, Delrawn Small’s brother, said, “The video is clear as day that shows that everything they told us from the very beginning is a lie. It was a lie, every single thing. And, I don’t know how to feel right now, all I know is that my brother was murdered.”
Once again, “justifiable homicide” when a Black man is killed by police. And now under a white supremacist, genocidal, fascist regime that tells police to stop being “nice” and strives to unleash Nazis and racists.
Enough. Humanity is capable of a much better world than this.
Bob Avakian Film "The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go" to be shown on Chicago Cable CAN TV
November 7, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Bob Avakian's 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 will be cablecast in Chicago on Cable TV Channel 21 (CAN TV) on these dates:
November 4—A Day of Courage and Conviction, a Real Beginning
November 8, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In the face of the lies, distortions, and outright threats of a relentless fascist social media campaign, headed in part by the acknowledged Trump operative, Alex Jones...
In the face of armed fascist militias in at least three cities, and aggressive cores of fascists in most others...
Often in the face of extremely heavy-handed police presence...
In the face of snark, rumor-mongering and plain old-fashioned McCarthyism, as well as caving to McCarthyism by many who know better...
And in the face of a media whiteout until the last few days beforehand—they came anyway. Sometimes in the hundreds and more, sometimes with just a handful of spirited people, four thousand people in over two dozen cities stepped up as a force determined to STOP Trump/Pence fascism on November 4.
Four thousand people participated in the activities of the day—from 1,500 in New York and a thousand in Los Angeles, to 250 in Honolulu and another 300+ in Chicago, to the hearty two dozen in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the ten in Indianapolis and the seven in Akron. In Austin, Texas 45 Refuse Fascism marchers stood up to over 200 armed and taunting fascists, as well as an intimidating police presence that prevented people from entering the march. Philadelphia was marked by colorful floats and displays and, there too, determined and focused courage in the face of armed and threatening counter-demonstrators. Boston saw members of Veterans for Peace and Antifa work together with Refuse Fascism to keep things focused on getting out the message in the face of fascist provocateurs.
And in Chicago, a drum corps formed on the spot and beat out a rhythm of defiant joy that made you want to dance.
They came for many reasons and for one. They came because they could not tolerate the demonization of whole sections of people and the retrenchment of white supremacy to a level not seen in several generations with yet worse to come. They came because they wanted their children to inherit a planet on which people could still live and breathe. They came because they value the truth. They came because they will not tolerate “pussy-grabbers” anywhere, least of all the White House. They came because they refuse to live under a religious government. They came because they do not want a world where the American president not only threatens but seems to yearn to use nuclear weapons, where the doors are slammed shut on desperate refugees, where suspicion and racism and fear set the terms and make the rules, where the snarl and the sneer are the fixed face of power. They came because they think that people need to be able to dissent, to stand up or to “take a knee,” as they see fit—without threat and insult from the highest levels, and from a whole fascist movement. They came because of Charlottesville. They came because they remember the lessons of history, and because they want a future. They came because in the name of humanity, they refuse to accept a fascist America.
Together they began to puncture a season of normalization. Together they began to forge an ethos and culture of determined resistance, of clarity and courage and solidarity in the face of distortion and threat. Together they forged a path.
A Broad Cross Section
Those who spoke or sent messages represented the embryo of what is needed to amass the millions in the streets. This included an ecumenical range of clergy, including Muslims; it included Black, Native American, and Latino activists in a number of cities; there were veterans, Cindy Sheehan (the mother of a Gulf War soldier killed in combat who famously confronted George W. Bush) and, in Hawaii, an activist visiting from Korea; statements from activists and artists like Eve Ensler, Arturo O’Farrill and Gloria Steinem were read from the stage; there were environmentalists, members of LGBTQ rights movements, lawyers, and activists from the handicapped rights movement sharing the platform; and there were members of Indivisible or other Democratic Party-affiliated organizations and revolutionary communists. Musicians and poets graced the stages in many of the cities.
The marchers themselves included parents with children in tow, clusters of students, people from the suburbs and people from the inner cities and projects. Many were those who have been demonized by Trump, with an especially strong and important showing of immigrants. Many were from smaller cities, coming together to sometimes even stand against their own families to say NO!, we will not go along with this, we will NOT normalize, we will NOT accommodate.
Students came in ones and twos and sometimes larger clusters: from Boston University, from Wellesley, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, University of Southern California, DePaul and Columbia in Chicago, Columbia University and City University of New York in New York, and many others. No one knows how many held back in the face of the full-volume rumor and smear campaigns. A student in Chicago who works at an NGO said the office debated coming, but people “feared violence”; she came anyway (and there was no violence). There was more than one case where a group of people had planned to come but in the end only one or two showed up. But because enough people were willing to be first, to step into the unknown, others can now follow ... in the numbers that are so urgently needed.
Refuse Fascism refused to cower or be silent in the face of the slander campaign on the one hand and the whiteout on the other. They combated lies with truth, and aggressively sought out the avenues to tell the real story. They struggled with reporters, and they raised the money to put an ad in the New York Times. Too much was and is at stake to let either slander or silence go unchallenged. By the end, they were able to pierce the fog in a few places and get out the story.
The challenges
The events of November 4 pose big challenges.
To those who are not fascist and say you oppose Trump, but nevertheless saw fit to attack Refuse Fascism: where is your conscience? Particularly those of you who sank to McCarthyism and redbaited Refuse Fascism for the presence of members of the Revolutionary Communist Party within it—have you learned nothing from Martin Niemöller, the German minister who, after much delay and dithering, resisted Hitler? Niemöller, who ended up in a concentration camp, said, “First they came for the communists, but I said nothing because I was not a communist; then they came for the Jews, but I said nothing because I was not a Jew; then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak up for me.”
To those who considered and then stood aside, taking the measure of November 4: there is a place for you here. A path has now been forged; but the times are urgent and the hour is late, and the time is now to begin walking that path. Whatever the work you are doing now, worthy and important as it is, without massive action in the streets, nonviolent and sustained, demanding the end of this nightmare of a regime, the narrow window now open in which we can prevent the full imposition of fascism will close—clamping down on all resistance, basic rights, and remaking the law. Now is the time to unite broadly, recognizing the grave danger of nuclear war and of catastrophic environmental devastation, that humanity cannot wait. It is only ultimately through the actions of millions of people in the streets in waves of continuing protest, that a great calamity can be averted by the Trump/Pence regime being removed from office. Now, we must join together with creativity and determination to build up to that point so that thousands become hundreds of thousands and then millions.
Finally, to those who came out: we must, all of us, learn how to do many things we’ve never done. We must reach out and bring in others. We must support each other when we falter, when we fear, when we get discouraged ... as inevitably we will and do. We must remind ourselves of the great stakes, and rise to them, with conviction and courage. We must, most of all, constantly remind ourselves and each other and the people we meet and reach out to of the huge stakes before us, and work together to rise to that. We can, and we will.
Carl Dix: 11/11 I will protest—No "Fire and Fury" Against North Korea and Iran...
November 8, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Carl Dix is a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. He 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. Carl is a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism. He co-founded, with Cornel West, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and initiated Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City in 2015 demanding a stop to police terror.
This Saturday is Veterans Day, but I’m not marching in any of the “thank you for your service” and “America first” Veterans Day parades being held in cities across the country. I will be in the streets on Saturday—protesting, saying “No ‘Fire & Fury’ against North Korea and Iran; No U.S. Aggression in the Middle East.”
I am a veteran of the U.S. Army. I got drafted in 1968, and a year later I got orders to go to Vietnam. I refused because I was not going to be a part of that war for empire. I did 2 years in military prison for doing that. I came out of prison and became a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, dedicating my life to fighting for emancipation of all of humanity.
Since then I have been fighting to stop police terror and mass incarceration. I co-founded the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. I confronted the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, at a recent NFL owners meeting. I called him, and his buddy Donald Trump, out for acting like old-time Southern racists whipping up a lynch mob when they said football players who took a knee against white supremacy during the national anthem should be punished. And right now I’m throwing my all into mobilizing people to drive out the Trump/Pence regime before it’s too late.
On Saturday, I urge you to join me and others in the streets at one of the Veterans Day protests called by Refuse Fascism. Join us in saying “No Fire & Fury against North Korea and Iran and No U.S. Aggression in the Middle East!” Go to the website RefuseFascism.org to find out where the protests are happening and to get involved.
Why the Democrats' Victories Do NOT Spell The End of Trumpian Fascism...
and How They Could Potentially Make The Situation With The Regime All The More Dangerous
by Toby O’Ryan
Updated November 12, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Last night I watched the MSNBC response to the election of a number of Democrats in off-year elections around the country progress from giddy to rapturous to delirious. I’m always glad to see a stone racist like the Republican pig who ran in Virginia repudiated, but listen: investing our hopes now in a “Democratic tidal wave” in the elections of 2018 would be a deadly illusion. And here are three reasons why:
One, neither these elections nor the ones in 2018—nor the Democrats more generally—will do anything to reverse or even put the brakes on the Trump/Pence regime’s vicious and insanely risky foreign policy. If anything, any sense that he is losing political ground within the U.S. will make it more, not less, likely that he will go to war. Such a war would enable the regime to carry out severe repression within the U.S. and gain support on a “rally ’round the flag” basis. Right now, there is not a single major Democrat offering any substantial or consistent criticism of this. Indeed, the “we are more patriotic than he is” logic of what the Democrats are doing would lead them to support Trump in such lunacy—as they did with George W. Bush in 2002-2003.
Two, the leading Democrats have not only held back from calling for Trump’s removal, they have made it a policy to oppose raising even the question of impeachment. Hence, the regime, which has already done incalculable damage in just 10 months, will have more than three more years to work its lunacy. The Dems are repeating the “strategy” they used during the Bush years: become more like the Republicans in what they will say is an effort to win more voters and supposedly “isolate” Trump, and then do nothing to oppose him (which they couldn’t even if they wanted to, as they will have gotten elected on a basis that does not oppose America’s “right” to dictate to other countries). People in the United States of Amnesia may not remember that when this strategy “worked” for the Democrats in 2006, this meant that they did NOT oppose Bush’s escalation of the war in Iraq right after that election (the “surge”) nor did they roll back the highly repressive Patriot Act or any other of Bush’s extraordinarily repressive measures, all of which were fascistic in their own right.1
Three, on the idea of focusing efforts on elections in 2018 and 2020. First, there is nothing guaranteeing that the Republicans will not use racist gerrymanders and ballot disqualifications to feed into the advantage already given to them by the Constitution.2 So while people are drawn off into the electoral processes of 2018 and 2020, there will be nothing to stop the horrors against all the people and groups under the gun of the Trump/Pence regime from not just continuing but almost certainly intensifying. The regime will be compelled by its own logic, the logic of fascism, to double down on their triad of white supremacy, male supremacy and America First chauvinism. The breakneck destruction of the environment and the violence being done to the rule of law—not to mention the culture—will continue as it has now. Indeed, the very dynamic we see today—where Trump, unable to pass legislation, uses the vast executive powers already available to the president to launch offensives on these fronts as part of feeding red meat to the fascist hordes he’s cultivated and unleashed—will very likely intensify.
This does not mean that Trump has it all sewn up, nor that the divisions that do exist at the top cannot become part of what ends up removing this regime. But this will not happen unless millions take the streets in a sustained, nonviolent movement. This makes it more, not less, urgent to demand that the nightmare end NOW, and that the regime be driven from power; more, not less, important for people to take up and get into or unite with Refuse Fascism.
Why Democrats Are a Flypaper Trap for Anyone Who Hates This Regime
“If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.”
Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:12
Ask yourself—at a time when people who are outright fascists themselves like W. and Corker are criticizing Trump’s foreign policy as reckless, what prominent or even not-so-prominent Democratic politician has done anything close to that? If you said none, you’d be right. We are talking about someone threatening World War 3, and they are saying nothing!!
And let’s look at WHO they have and will have you supporting. Take this guy Northam, who won the Virginia election. Northam voted for George W. Bush twice—that is, not just in 2000, when it was plain that Bush was running as a standard-bearer for the Christian fascism which had already revealed itself as an extremely malignant force, but in 2004 after Bush’s outrageous war against Iraq, after Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, after Afghanistan, after Bush’s administration had begun its threats to go to war with Iran, and after the Patriot Act, probably the most repressive piece of legislation in U.S. history. Northam, now hailed as the new great standard-bearer of diversity, could not bring himself to stammer out an endorsement of the removal of monuments to the southern Civil War murderers—to those who carried out slaughter in upholding slavery—nor would he call out his opponent’s incredibly vicious and racist campaign for what it was: a vicious, racist, fascist campaign. And this is the kind of person you’re going to put your hopes in? Yet this is clearly where Pelosi and Schumer want to go—and this is the whole logic of the Dems.
The Democrats are one of the two ruling parties of the imperialist system. They differ with Trump on how best to serve that system, and this sets the parameters of what they will—and will NOT—criticize him for. Right now, they are moving to siphon the resistance to Trump off into strengthening their party, to put some constraints on Trump with the various investigations being launched, and to confine the terms to certain domestic issues. If there is a massive movement in the streets, some of the contradictions that they do in fact have with Trump may come into play... but they would even then try to constrain things. Without a massive movement clear on its goal, this will go nowhere... and worse.
The point of all this is that, as Refuse Fascism has reiterated, the people in their millions must end the nightmare.
1. These measures included the government’s “right” to try those they deemed terrorists in military trials where defendants are afforded fewer rights; the indefinite isolation of prisoners without charges in the torture chamber of Guantánamo; the use of torture, vastly expanded government powers to legally spy on people, right down to the library books they took out, as well as the right to legally forbid people from even saying that they had been spied upon or were enlisted in spying upon others. [back]
2. The Constitution, as a document originally written to protect the power of the slaveholders, gave extra political weight to rural areas and sparsely populated states in determining representation in a concession to those slave-holders, and that legacy lives on today—which is why not only did Trump get elected while losing the popular vote, but Democrats in many states as well as the country as a whole can and do consistently outpoll the Republicans but end up with fewer seats and less power. [back]
This Week Trump's Maniacal Foreign Policy Gets More Momentum, Not Less
Updated November 12, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Two developments this very week underscore the dangers of Trump’s finger on the nuclear trigger.
First, while Trump did not repeat either his genocidal “fire and fury” and “we will destroy North Korea” rhetoric or his moronic but highly dangerous insults to Kim Jong-un, a) his speech to the South Korean parliament continued to threaten war, if in more measured tone, and b) he informally continued to act every bit the thug, bragging about U.S. military power and how “it doesn’t turn out well” for anyone who challenges it.1 He did it in more measured tones and he read it from a teleprompter—but that is hardly something to take comfort in. Moreover, Trump was constrained by the reality that the currently dominant section of the South Korean ruling class disagrees with him on his approach and has been extremely worried that he will drag them into a war that could mean millions of deaths for that country. So, as the New York Times noted in explaining Trump’s more measured tones:
[T]o let that difference [with South Korea] in approach spill out into the open would have played right into North Korea’s hands. It has tried, over nearly seven decades, to break the alliance. So the two leaders decided to stick to common, long-range goals.
Mr. Trump’s change in tone notwithstanding, his advisers have been making the case that North Korea’s ambition is to reunify the Korean peninsula by force, and that traditional deterrence cannot stop the North once it has a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States.
That Trumpian premise—is basically untrue, and they know it. The North Korean rulers correctly understand that without their having nuclear weapons the U.S. will face much less constraint in knocking out their regime, as the U.S. did in making war on Libya after it had given up its nukes based on U.S. assurance. The Trumpian premise forms the underpinning of the highly aggressive policy that Republican Senator Corker has said puts the U.S. on course to launch World War 3. Trump’s actual policy—and yes, he is backed up in this and will be backed up in this by Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis who are not “adults” but war criminals—is a very aggressive U.S. foreign policy which requires “victories” to keep the momentum going. Trump can now say, “Look, I went to Asia and talked with people and tried to be reasonable and peaceful, and North Korea still did not give up their nukes.” Then he can seize on anything—most recently, the rumor has been floated that they will launch a first strike on North Korea if it tests another intercontinental ballistic missile—to pose as the victim and go to war and the Democrats will, almost to a person, “rally ’round the flag”—and Trump’s approval ratings will soar. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The other big thing this week ratcheting up the danger level has been the internal coup in Saudi Arabia and its subsequent provocations against Iran. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman arrested over 500 people in the Saudi ruling class on vague charges of corruption (this coming from someone who used government funds to buy a personal yacht worth more than half a billion dollars), and centralized power in his own hands. In a highly unusual move, Trump raced to his Twitter account to hail the action. At the same time, the now-unchallenged Saudi strongman accused Iran of launching a missile into Saudi territory from Yemen, calling it an “act of war” (the Iranians denied doing this and the Saudis have given no evidence to any international observers of this supposed deed). Just before the arrests the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Harari, popped up on Saudi TV to resign his office, claiming that the Saudi enemy Hezbollah (a powerful Lebanese political party with its own army and an ally of Iran, currently fighting in Syria and Iraq) had driven him into exile. Not only did Hezbollah deny this, there were many who speculated that Harari had been forced to make this move by the Saudis. In writing of this explosive stew, Times columnist Thomas Friedman voiced the worry that those who have been “urging [the Saudis] to be more aggressive in confronting Iran... like the [United Arab Emirates], Trump, Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu [head of Israel]—will push [the Saudis] into a war abroad and at home at the same time, and we could see Saudi Arabia and the whole region spin out of control at the same time. Be afraid.” [emphasis in original]
1. Here it does have to be said for the record that while the U.S. has been able to wreak horrible amounts of destruction and murder on people all over the Middle East, their much vaunted military has not been able to actually win a solid, lasting victory in some time; this is actually part of what led to Trump’s ascension, why he now feels compelled to demonstrate U.S. might in a convincing “victory” somewhere, and what makes the danger of war—which is built into any imperialist system like the U.S.—much more heightened with a fascist regime in power. [back]
Saudi Arabia Accuses Iran of “Act of War,” U.S. Rulers Jump on Board… How Are We Being Trained to See the World?
November 9, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Saudi Arabia claims that this past weekend a missile was fired from Yemen at its capital, Riyadh. The Saudi rulers accused Iran of supplying it for the express purpose of attacking Saudi Arabia, and declared this constituted an “act of war” and a “war crime” by Iran.
Now the Trump/Pence regime has jumped in to back the Saudi story and fuel the fires of anti-Iran outrage. On Tuesday, Ambassador Nikki Haley went before the United Nations, declared the missile in question “may be of Iranian origin,” accused Iran of “perpetuating the war in Yemen,” and called for international action against Iran.
Never mind that neither the U.S. nor the Saudis have provided any proof. Never mind Iran denies it was involved. Never mind that the missile was reportedly of Yemeni design, or that Yemen’s military claims they fired the missile.
But leaving aside for a moment whether or not Saudi Arabia’s charges are true or not, what if Iran had supplied the missile that was fired?
Why should we all get whipped up into a frenzy of outrage about this one alleged Iranian missile … when Saudi Arabia has been dropping hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S.-supplied bombs on markets, churches, apartment buildings, food plants, hospitals, and many other civilian targets in Yemen for over two years?
Why should we focus our outrage on Iran because it may have supplied weapons to the Houthi movement in Yemen fighting the Saudis … when the U.S. imperialists have supplied Saudi Arabia with more than a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons of mass slaughter in the last decade alone—including one $1.3 billion deal for 22,000 bombs and other munitions of murder?
The Saudis and the U.S. denounce Iran for “aggression” and “war crimes”…. as they are carrying out what is unarguably one of the most cruel, barbaric, and murderous wars being waged anywhere on the planet.
This ruthless Saudi bombing campaign—using U.S. bombs, aided by U.S. intelligence, and made possible by U.S. mid-air refueling—and its naval blockade could serve as an encyclopedia of war crimes. It has plunged one of the world’s poorest countries even deeper into humanitarian hell. Today, over 17 million people in Yemen need food aid to survive, seven million face starvation, including more than two million malnourished children—including 385,000 who require aid and treatment just to stay alive. As if this weren’t horrific enough, 900,000 people—including tens of thousands of children—are infected with cholera. This totally preventable epidemic has been brought on by Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen’s water, sewage, health systems, and food production and imports.
And now, after this incident, Saudi Arabia has tightened its embargo, blocked all entry points to Yemen, shutting off even desperately needed humanitarian aid from reaching its millions of hungry, sick, and starving people. Some 15 humanitarian agencies warned of a “nightmare scenario”—the largest famine the world has seen for decades “with millions of victims”—if the blockade wasn’t immediately lifted.
When is a genocidal slaughter by missiles, bombs, and blockades a “good thing”?
When is a genocidal slaughter by missiles, bombs, and blockades a “good thing”? According to the U.S. rulers and the dominant media, when the U.S. or an ally is carrying it out. When is a single missile cause to ramp up war threats and danger of war? When it supposedly comes from a country the U.S. and its allies see as a threat ...
Free yourself from the GTF!The Great Tautological Fallacy. A fallacy: an idea, or way of thinking that is false, wrong. A tautology: a round-in-a-circle way of reasoning that asserts something and then claims to prove it by merely asserting the same thing again.
So, the Great Tautological Fallacy to which I am referring is 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 by forces opposed to “us,” is bad, is evil. Because … because America is a force for good in the world.
This is very harmful and dangerous because our interests actually lie in opposing the interests and actions of America’s global empire of exploitation and oppression, and those of its allies like Saudi Arabia.
Stop Thinking Like Americans, Start Thinking About Humanity!
Watch the full speech by Bob Avakian. The film and video clips are also available for download HERE
Over 30 Students Walk Out from East L.A. High School on Anniversary of Trump Election
November 9, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a member of the Revolution Club, Los Angeles:
Over 30 students from Mendez High School in East Los Angeles marked November 8, the anniversary of the fascist Trump getting elected, by walking out of school and taking to the streets with banners and signs. Coming off of November 4, early Monday morning, we stood outside Roosevelt High School in East L.A. calling on students to walk out on November 8. We had a large-screen TV set up to show the film of Bob Avakian’s talk, “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America: Another World IS Possible.” One student who watched the trailer for the film went to a different high school, Mendez, about a 25-minute walk from Roosevelt. She said she wasn’t good at talking to people, and we told her she could spread the word on social media.
On November 8 we went back out to Roosevelt early in the morning and passed out fliers that called on students to meet outside the school. We heard an announcement over the loud speaker telling students and faculty that the school was “on lockdown” because of a “dangerous situation outside.” We then saw over a dozen students walking toward the meet-up spot—but they weren’t Roosevelt students, they were coming from Mendez High. They picked up the “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go” signs and banners and marched around Roosevelt. One of them then called on others to go back to Mendez before the break was over, so we jumped on a train back to Mendez with a bunch of rowdy students chanting, “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”
We got to Mendez as students were being called back into class and starting chanting “Walkout! Walkout! Walkout!” We then started doing agitation on why they should walk out and told them that doing the right thing right now meant breaking the rules. Security tried to stop them, but kids started hitting the gate anyway and yelled back, “fuck you...” to the security guard while others made it to a side door to get out. The students were taking a lot of initiative on deciding where they should go to call out students and led us to another entrance that was being guarded by school police and staff. One student walked right over a police car as we made it to the guarded entrance and gathered right in front of the authorities that were trying to keep these young people locked inside the school. They defiantly called on other students to find another way around to get out.
Then we headed toward downtown and took the street as we chanted “Trump and Pence Must Go! Trump and Pence Must Go!” The people in cars that went by honked their horns in approval and raised their thumbs as they rolled by.
We stopped for a break and took the opportunity to ask the students why they walked out. One young woman started talking about how she hated Trump and everything that he was doing, and how he was so sexist. A couple of other students said how they were afraid that their parents were going to get rounded up and deported. These groups of students weren’t going to just sit by and be afraid, not today—they started discussing where they should go next and started texting their friends who were still in school calling on them to walk out as well.
They decided to march back to Roosevelt, where we found pigs parked outside in an effort to intimidate these students. Some of the youth started yelling insults at the police and later spoke bitterness about how the police always mess with people, how they kill people and always get away with it. We talked to them about how Trump made a speech where he told cops “please don’t be too nice” and how the genocidal thrust of that statement further highlights the need to drive out the whole regime.
Throughout the day we made sure to emphasize the fact that we needed to rise above petty squabbles and be really on a mission to drive out this whole regime. We’re going up against a fascist regime and its storm troopers, who would rather the students be well-behaved children in the face of the catastrophic danger that this all poses to all of humanity. And there’s the shit that the masses of people are caught up in themselves. A Revolution Club member had to pull back a couple of youth from getting caught up in gang bullshit and struggled with them to see that this is about something much bigger. At another point an older gang member complained about how these youth were “going to make the spot hot” and that they needed to get out of his hood. The Revolution Club member told him to think about what it would mean if this fascist regime consolidates power and how instead of complaining about these youth he needed to join them.
Before people dispersed, we let the students know what we started on November 4 and how they were now part of this movement to drive out this fascist regime. They plan to walkout again next Wednesday and really build for the next one so that this keeps growing.
D.C. Students March to Defend DREAMERS, Storm Senate Building
November 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Students from high schools and colleges all over the Washington, DC area and beyond walked out of school on Thursday morning, November 9, and marched on Congress to demand that a law be passed to replace the Executive Order that President Obama signed in 2012—DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)—that Trump killed over two months ago. DACA provided work permits and temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the U.S. as children. In less than four months, these “Dreamers,” as they are known, will start facing deportation as their two-year temporary DACA status expires.
Some 500 Dreamers and their supporters stormed into the Hart Senate Office Building and took over four floors of balconies overlooking the indoor courtyard! They came in silence at first, with fists raised. And then suddenly they filled the building with chants: “Dream Act Now! Dream Act Now!” And “Si se puede! Si se puede!”
One group of students carried a huge sign into the center of the plaza: “Congress—We Demand A Clean Dream Act Now.”A clean Dream Act means restoring the DACA provisions without linking DACA to passage of border enforcement measures, like funding a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, or refusing to allow refugees escaping from Central American countries to enter the U.S.
Another group marched on House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office after they learned he had just announced that Republicans would not include restoring DACA in the tax bill they intend to vote on before the end of the year. The students hung a second huge banner, directed at Ryan, over the side of the fourth-floor balcony.
Eventually 15 protesters were arrested for ignoring a police order to stop the chants.
The GW Hatchet, an independent student newspaper at George Washington University, reported that at least eight progressive GW student organizations came together and organized about 100 students to take part in the walkout and protest. One student told the Hatchet that he had just told his peers that he was an undocumented student. “There are undocumented youth at GW. That’s the most important thing for me. This is not just a Hispanic issue. This is an immigrants issue.” Another student said, “Actively resisting and getting exposure is how to create real change. I’m proud of people who engaged in civil disobedience today.”
What the Hell Does It Mean for a Roy Moore Defender to Cite the Authority of the Bible in His Defense Against Child Molestation Allegations? And What Does That Say About the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and Christian Fascism?
November 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
An investigative report published in the November 9 Washington Post detailed allegations that Roy Moore—the Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama that was vacated when Trump picked Jeff Sessions as Attorney General—sexually molested a 14-year-old girl in 1979. According to the Post, the alleged victim, now 53, said that Moore, then 32 years old, drove her to his home and “took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants... and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.” She says she remembers thinking, “I wanted it over with—I wanted out.” Aside from this one woman, the Post reported that they interviewed three other women who said Moore “pursued” them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18, around the same time that the alleged sexual assault on the 14-year-old girl took place.
It should be noted that the age of consent for sexual relations under Alabama law, then and now, is 16. A person who is 19 or over who has sexual contact with a child younger than 15 and older than 12 has committed “sexual abuse in the second degree,” a misdemeanor; and enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the intention of carrying out sexual intercourse or touching of genital parts is a felony. The fact that Moore was an assistant district attorney at the time of the alleged incidents would make this even worse—this was a man who was approaching teenage girls as a figure invested with the power and aura of the state.
Moore flat out denied the allegations of sexual molestation of a minor. Then a Republican official in Alabama, state auditor Jim Ziegler, took that an outrageous step further. He told the Washington Examiner that even if the charges of molestation of a girl are true, it was “much ado about nothing.” After all, he said, the allegations are that a 32-year-old man “dated” teenage girls, stopped short of sexual intercourse. Never mind that the allegation isn’t that Moore “dated” a 14-year-old but that he removed her clothes, touched her, and guided her hand to touch his penis—which would be clearly illegal acts.
Then Ziegler turned to the Scripture to defend Moore: “Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist... Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus... There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”
This is utter lunacy coming out of the mouth of a government official—but it’s also deadly serious, pointing to just how far Christian fascism has gotten in the U.S. Roy Moore himself is an open advocate of theocracy—the view that government and society should be based on religious law, and in the case of those like Moore, on a literal reading of the Bible. Moore was twice removed from the Alabama state Supreme Court for “trumping” secular law with religious law: once in 2003 for refusing to follow a federal court order to remove a 5,200-pound monument of the Ten Commandments from a judicial building in the state capital; and then in 2016 for directing lower-court judges to continue to enforce the Alabama ban on same-sex marriages even though the ban had been ruled unconstitutional. This is the man who was slated to win a U.S. Senate seat until the uproar over the sexual assault allegations—and still may.
Whatever happens to Moore, the reality is that he is just the tip of the iceberg. The Christian fascist movement in the U.S. has been growing ever stronger over the past several decades, with backing from powerful forces at the top levels of the power structure. And, with the election of Trump, Mike Pence—a leading Christian fascist—is now a step away from the presidency. As a part of their overall fascist agenda, the Trump/Pence regime is determined to, and is taking one step after another, to impose a reactionary morality on society, including in terms of laws, based on a literal reading of the Bible.
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As Bob Avakian (BA) breaks it down in his work AWAY WITH ALL GODS: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, it is truly the case the “The Bible, Taken Literally, Is a Horror.” BA points out “some of the extremely oppressive relations and beliefs that are upheld—and not just upheld, but advocated, commanded and celebrated—in the Bible”:
Slavery and other forms of ruthless exploitation.
The domination and degradation of women by men, including the so-called right of male conquerors to carry off women, especially virgins, as prizes of war, rape them, and make them concubines—sex slaves—of the conquerors.
The killing of women who are not virgins when they get married.
The execution of women alleged to be witches.
The condemnation of homosexuality as not just a sin, but an abomination deserving of death.
The right, and indeed the duty, as commanded by God, to plunder and slaughter people—including the babies and infants of people—following other religions.
The slaughter of people of the one true faith who displease that God.
Killing of children who rebel against their parents.
Belief in superstition and fear, and fear-inspiring ignorance, such as demon possession and exorcism.
The cruel notion that disease is caused by sinfulness.
The condemnation to eternal damnation and unbearable suffering in hell for all those who do not accept “the one true God”—and, in the case of Christianity, Jesus as the son of God who was crucified but then raised from the dead.
As BA goes on to note, “All of this, along with many other atrocities and outrages, is upheld and promoted in the Bible. If you believe in the Bible—and especially if you believe and insist that it is the divinely-dictated, or divinely-inspired word of God and all of it must be taken literally—then all of these atrocities and outrages are things that you must say are right and good because the Bible says they are right and good. And that is precisely the case with the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who can be very accurately characterized as Christian Fascists.”
Leading Republicans are trying to preserve some distance from Roy Moore now—after having backed Moore’s Senate campaign. The White House itself issued a statement saying that Moore should step aside if the allegation of sexual molestation of a minor proved true—while also calling the charges “mere allegations” that are “from many years ago.” But this does not change the fact that Pence and others now in powerful positions at the top of the regime heading up the U.S. are Christian fascists determined to push forward their nightmarish vision of society and the world and bring it more fully into reality.
Pence often says that “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” In other words, it’s not that his religious beliefs “influence” his politics but that his political views are an application of his religious belief that society should be based literally on the Bible and “word of God.” In 2006, for example, Pence spoke in favor of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman that this was “ordained by God.” He is also a rabid opponent of abortion rights for women, declaring that the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion should be “consigned to the ash heap of history.” These are arguments for enslavement and subordination of women by confining them to “traditional roles” as bearers of children, as well as advocacy of open persecution of LGBTQ people.
Since day one of their regime, the whole cabal now heading up the U.S. government has been moving with reactionary determination in pursuit of this horrible vision. Some of their attacks against women and LGBTQ—the extremely oppressive actions they have already taken and plan to take, and the reactionary forces this has unleashed throughout society—are laid out in a poster of indictments put out by Refuse Fascism.
The Christian fascist aim of a society based on the Bible taken literally is a horror—and they have and are continuing to take big steps toward actually imposing this nightmare. This horror must be STOPPED.
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!
NYC: Marching from Columbus Circle to Trump Tower.
New York: Voice from Nov. 11
Q: So tell us something about yourself and why you came out today.
A: I’m a corporate lobbyist and an attorney for a multibillion-dollar multinational, I can’t say which one. I’ve been involved pretty much my whole life in politics. I think it’s really important to come out every day, especially as a Jewish person ... I’ve always been against Trump, but especially after Charlottesville and the Nazis were marching, and especially after Trump had the audacity to say that there were good people on both sides—and that’s about as obnoxious as you can get. I was a big Bernie Sanders supporter during the whole election. I was really disappointed that he lost. But, I mean, Trump the entire time... every time you think he can’t go any lower, whether it’s repealing, or trying to repeal, the Obamacare for those who really need it, or trying to repeal gay rights for gay people and trans people. Pretty much everything he’s done... every time I think he can’t say something more stupid, or attacking those in need, for example the recent tax cuts, giving more money to people who don’t need it. I mean, [I’m] in one of the high tax brackets—I would technically benefit under his tax plan. What am I gonna do... I’ve looked at it... what am I going to do with the extra money? Nothing good is going to come of it for me. The people who actually need those tax cuts... he just keeps taking money from people who actually need it. I think it’s a total disgrace. I think it’s absolutely horrible, and I don’t understand what he’s thinking. I mean, the entire Reaganomics has been disproven time and time again, by even the inventor. Even the guy who initially came up with the idea of Reaganomics has said it’s a farce, but yet again it’s still propagated by those in power like Trump. And even, he gave a recent phone call yesterday saying that he needs the estate tax to be passed—he has to give something to his base. He openly said that.
Q: I mean, you went through a lot of things there. What is it that most infuriates you about the Trump/Pence regime?
A: That he’s so willing to pander to these right-wing extremists. It’s all these right-wing Nazis. They hate everyone. There’s no room for hate in a modern day country and we’re really the only place in the world where we still tolerate it under this false sense of liberty, the only place that still thinks it’s okay. It’s great that there’s maybe a hundred people here—but there should be a million people here. Hate has no place in America: We’re the only place that tolerates it, the only place that tolerates shootings in schools, the only place that still allows this... that type of hatred. It still happens other places, but this is the only place that tolerates it. To me, that’s the reason he has to go. He’s normalizing the type of hatred that hasn’t existed since the 1950s. And that has to go.
Q: Today’s focus especially is on the fire and fury, the threats he’s been making against Korea and elsewhere. Carl [Dix] spoke rather eloquently to his experiences. What do you think about that: his threats on Iran, his threats on North Korea, revelations about U.S. forces in Niger?
A: I mean, that’s really just an extension of the American policy for the past 60 years. I mean, Trump... to an extent he’s a little more firebrand than Obama or Bush was, but Obama started more wars that Bush ever did. I mean, in my opinion, Obama was no better when it comes to starting wars than any other president; he was just as bad. Obama gets a lot of credit he doesn’t deserve on those matters. Obama was quite the warmonger, to be quite honest. But Trump’s absolutely horrible, Trump’s the first one who’s actually threatening nuclear war, which is absolutely horrifying. And it’s horrifying that there’s really nobody to stop him, he has no checks and balances, he’s surrounded himself with his team of staff who are warmongers in general. And if we don’t do something soon, there’s a good chance it could happen.
Q: There is us to stop it. That’s what this whole thing is about...
A: [T]o get him out. The problem is, we have to get more people to come out. It’s getting Americans to actually care. The problem is Americans are apathetic, for the large part. The people that are coming out now are people that do care, people who have protested their whole lives. It’s up to us to get our friends out, that’s the trick, that’s the hard part.
In Chicago a wedding party saw the rally from across the street. The groom came running over when he saw the Trump and Pence puppets. The rest of the wedding party followed and they all started flipping off the the puppets and taking pictures of themselves doing it. Note the joy on their faces. Credit: Ted Sirota.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles: 100 people rallied and marched in Hollywood, CA on Saturday night, as Refuse Fascism took to the streets saying "NO to Nuclear War! NO to America 1st!
San Francisco
Crowds in San Francisco right now at @RefuseFascism rally.
The lead contingent in the march wore hazmat suits.
Members of La Colectiva de Mujeres participated in march.
Hawai'i
Atlanta
Cleveland
Statement from Kathy Najimy in Support of November 11
Hello dear people who care about the state of humanity.
I wish I was there to speak in person, but more selfishly—I wish I was with you because being in a group of folks who actually care—who actually give a shit about SOMETHING—is the only placeI feel whole and in my skin these days. Rallies, Protests, Marches, or even pussy hat knitting circles... are our salve, or relief.
SO thank you for UNITING and giving your soul the honor of this rally today.
We march, we vote, we scream, and we demand our basic human rights. For ourselves, our families and the lives and rights of the citizens of the world. RESIST SPEAK UP REFUSE FASCISM.
It isn’t hard to point out why we need to meet and demand. To have our hearts and voices heard. THIS IS REAL RIGHT NOW. It’s not a passing Republican in office. It’s not the result of a wave or whim or backlash. It’s an assault on democracy, safety, rights, our bodies and our lives.
Trump and Pence are representatives of the darkest most reprehensible of the swell of RACISM, FASCISM, HOMOPHOBIA, MISOGYNY, ISLAMAPHOBIA, White supremacy, Sexism and disregard for humanity.
That gun violence and death are now barely even news anymore. An expected order of the day. As disregarded as bad weather. RESIST REFUSE SPEAK UP!
And speaking of weather, that our animals, daughters and sons have a decreasing chance of a safe walk in the mountains or swim in the ocean or even a full healthy BREATH IN! RESIST SPEAK UP REFUSE FASCISM!
Our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, our families of multi-cultured sisters and our brothers, our girls and women raped, harassed, trafficked. No more. RESIST REFUSE SPEAK OUT!
It’s groups like REFUSE FASCISM and YOU here today who will NOT TAKE another breath until this administration is driven out and we find our way back to peace. Peace and equality. Yep, I’m using all my bumper stickers sayings from the ’70s—but we had it right. LOVE IS ALL THERE IS.
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Let’s restore peace, respect, compassion, democracy, equality and... LOVE
THANK YOU ALLL!!!
On November 11, people in cities across the country responded to the call from Refuse Fascism and went into the streets to rally and march in opposition to the Trump/Pence fascist regime’s threats of war against North Korea and Iran and aggression in the Middle East. This was a week after thousands stepped out on November 4 in a real beginning to what Refuse Fascism has urgently called for in the name of humanity: mass, sustained, non-violent protests, in the streets day after day, with a unified demand of “The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!”
The numbers of people out on November 11 were relatively small—but they were acting, passionately and with determination, on an understanding of the real and intensifying war dangers under the Trump/Pence regime, and the intolerable horrors those wars can bring down on tens of millions of people and, indeed, humanity a whole. It was very important that these protesters were calling out this immense and immediate danger, and calling on many, many others to act. And it was important that they were doing this as part of what was begun on November 4.
In a message to the protesters, University of Illinois Law School law professor Francis Boyle sharply pointed out how the Trump/Pence threats against North Korea (DPRK) were clear violations of international law, and then brought out the big stakes involved:
It is an extremely dangerous situation. It is really up to the United States to take the first step down the Ladder of Escalation that it has constructed here. Instead it appears that the Trump administration is going to escalate up the Ladder of Escalation in the hope and expectation that DPRK will capitulate. This is what International Political Scientists call a Game of Chicken—with cosmic consequences. Who will blink first? Anything can go wrong. Thank you so much for being here today to prevent World War III.
November 11 was Veteran’s Day—when the U.S. wars for conquest and empire around the world, and the troops that carry out the crime in the interests of the imperialist rulers, are celebrated. In the New York City protest, Carl Dix, from the Revolutionary Communist Party and an initiator of Refuse Fascism, spoke about how in the 1960s, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and then refused to go to Vietnam when he learned about the horrors the U.S. was committing in Vietnam and around the world. Dix said the rulers try to rally support for their wars by saying people should back the troops. But, as Dix said, the GIs and veterans that actually deserve our support are those who “refuse to fight in their imperialist wars...who refuse to carry out war crimes.” Going into November 11, a powerful video clip showed a vet who had been in Iraq call on past, present, and future members of the military to join the movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.
Dix also hit at the dangerous illusion that Trump’s generals, like Mattis and Kelly, were somehow the “adults in the room” that will keep Trump in check. Dix spoke to the truth of the situation:
What’s gonna stop the threat of war is us and people like us—people who recognize this threat for what it is. And we have to go out and wake others up to this threat and get them to join us in acting to stop it. That’s what’s gonna stop this threat of war.
And it is only the people—in their millions, in the streets continuously with courage and determination—that can bring about a situation where the whole Trump/Pence fascist regime is stopped in their tracks and driven from power. November 18 will be a day of national mobilization: Break the Silence—Bring the Noise!, sounding the alarm to break through the deadly silence of normalization of fascism. Check at www.revcom.us and at RefuseFascism.org every day for news of what is going on and alerts about actions being called for.
Here are some highlights from November 11 from some of the cities:
New York City
Broadway and other Manhattan streets were teeming with military personnel Saturday morning: veterans of wars going back to World War 2, people on active duty, high school and college youth in ROTC programs. A small crowd gathered to watch them march in New York’s Veterans’ Day parade—an ugly tribute to participants in this country’s war crimes. A celebration of the occupations, invasions, bombings, and outright genocide the U.S. has perpetrated and continues to inflict on the people of the world.
A short distance uptown at Columbus Circle, a powerfully different scene took shape. About 65 people gathered for a rally called by Refuse Fascism. Its specific focus: “No ‘Fire & Fury’ Against North Korea or Iran, No U.S. Aggression in the Middle East! This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.” Sunsara Taylor, a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism and writer for Revolution, introduced the co-MCs Travis Morales and Eva Sahana. Speakers included Diane Beeny of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Remembrance Committee; Carl Dix, also a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism and from the Revolutionary Communist Party. Messages were read from actor Kathy Najimy, known as the voice of Peggy Hill on the animated TV series KingoftheHill, and peace activist and veteran Tarak Kauff.
After the rally, spirited and determined marchers headed past a glittering array of luxury hotels towards Trump Tower. Chants denouncing the fascist Trump/Pence regime, and calls to bystanders to break with their routine and join the fight to drive them out pierced the normalcy of Saturday afternoon on Fifth Avenue. Reaction from pedestrians here and elsewhere was mixed, but mostly favorable, indicating both the potential and urgency of bringing many more into this fight, soon. Most people were receptive to the message that the Trump/Pence nightmare must end; some were enthusiastic, raising their fists and joining in chants (and several people joined along the march route). A small number of Trumpites clustered at a certain point and unsuccessfully tried to disrupt the march. Their chants of “USA, USA” were drowned out by enthusiastic marchers raising their fists and chanting “Humanity First! Humanity First!” and “Trump says America First, Hell No, Humanity First!”
The march proceeded to a military recruiting center in Times Square for a final, brief rally. Travis Morales from Refuse Fascism outlined plans for the coming week: for more deeply consolidating those who had participated in the November 11 events, but even more importantly doing that as part of reaching out to bring thousands and millions more people who hate everything the Trump/Pence regime is about into the fray, and organizing bigger events on November 18.
Chicago
In freezing temperatures, a crowd, initially about 50 people, gathered for the 2 pm rally in the downtown south Loop. The rally was MCed by jazz and reggae musician drummer Ted Sirota; speakers included blues harmonica player Matthew Skoller; Rosalie Riegle from the War Resister’s League; a Vietnam Era vet from Refuse Fascism speaking about the war threats against Korea; and Lena from Refuse Fascism.
A small band of fascists with a Trump banner, American and “blue lives matter” flags gathered across the street playing the American anthem, which was drowned out by the rally.
In the middle of Lena’s speech, a wedding party came running over from the across the street, and all joyously flipped off the Trump and Pence puppets as a sea of cameras was clicking. Lena said, “The fact that a wedding party joined in a protest today gives you a sense of just how many people there are who hate this fascist regime. These are the people that we are mobilizing, that we are not going to stop until everyone in this society has to take a stand. Are you for or against this fascist Trump regime? There is no standing to the side.”
The march took off heading north to Trump Tower in a raucous way. Skoller played his harmonica along with the chants and at one point, outside a department store, he joined in with street musicians in an anti-Trump song. People from the streets joined with the protest. Among them was a young Black man who had never protested before who was jumping up and down in excitement. An art student said, “I was going to do homework and I actually met somebody who just approached me—and this chant was incredibly captivating and I said, of course, this is what I need to be doing, screw the homework... I’ve been waiting for this for a year.”
As the march approached Trump Tower, a white man and woman and their three small children joined. They had come in from the suburbs to visit downtown and had gone to Trump Tower in hopes of finding a protest. The man said he was a union member who had stopped speaking to friends of 30 years over their support for Trump. He said, “When you start listening to the things they are saying by standing behind their Bible, well the Bible taught to treat your neighbor well and to help your fellow man with a leg up. And all they are doing left and right is stepping on their fellow man and oppressing them down.”
The ranks of protesters increased to 100 or so as the march approached Trump Tower. Many protesters were older people who understood the threat of nukes and feared the prospect of war, but the crowd was diverse and most who joined along the way were young people. The rally at the tower was kicked off by an actor, who portrays Mark Twain on stage, delivering Twain’s piece “War Prayer,” followed by a high school student who said we must not become complacent and let this regime start to become normalized.
The people then took off marching again, in the same raucous way with harmonica and drums, this time up the Michigan Avenue “Magnificent Mile” filled with shoppers. Many stopped to film or clapped to the chants and some joined, many of them youths. A final brief rally was held at the Water Tower plaza. As people dispersed, a revcom correspondent noticed a crowd of around 50 youths, some holding up the Refuse Fascism signs, in the plaza. They turned out to be a tour group of 15-years-olds from South Bend, Indiana. They continued to carry the signs as they walked down Michigan Avenue for half a mile to catch their train. Their chaperone said she would help organize them into an action in South Bend on November 18. They were gathered in a large group outside the train station, still holding some signs when three young women, who had joined the march earlier, started leading them and the crowd around them to chant “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Donald Trump has got to go!”
A high school student who was part of the day reflected people’s sense of the heavy stakes involved: “It’s fucking scary. Like the threat of nuclear war, we probably haven’t been this close since Reagan to our president pushing the red button. It is a crime against humanity waiting to happen.”
Chicago: Voices from Nov. 11
Young Woman
I know what’s going happen, like none of this is going to pass. That’s what the Supreme Court’s for—like none of this can happen, right? But it started happening. We’ve all watched it start happening—there’s been travel bans, there’s been the slow degradation we have for trans people. It’s just been going downhill. And it’s been horrifying. And I think what we need to do is—we have to be out here, we have to be doing something to try to change it. Because as scary as it is, it’s not going to get any better if you sit home. You have to be out and all of us are but we need to get more of us out here. Because even if your friends and your family aren’t convinced—they’re like maybe this isn’t the right way to do it—okay, are you doing anything?
Young Black Man and Woman
What brought you out here?
Man: We’re both into photography and she’s been looking up these different protests and what-not. Honestly, I’m completely against Pence and Trump. What they’re doing isn’t right, it’s not right for humanity, not right for America. You can make America First and you don’t need to make other countries feel inferior. And that’s what Trump and Pence are doing. They’re bullies. This isn’t the school ground any more—this is humanity. People’s lives are at stake here. I just wanted to show my support towards that.
Today is Veterans Day and there’s the question of danger of nuclear war. Anything to say around that?
I come from a big military family, so for me it’s kind of personal. I just had my youngest first cousin sign up for the Air Force and it’s just kind of scary. So for me, his parents, both of his parents, both of my parents, all five of my aunts, both of my grandfathers were in law enforcement or in some kind of service, whether Coast Guard or doing something here in the States. Still—you don’t want to see them in that position that they have to fight for something that they may not want to. And I know they signed up for it but personally for them to have fought for something, it should mean something to them and it should mean something to us, and we should be doing it for the right reasons.
Woman: I agree 100% with what he’s saying.
Los Angeles
Refuse Fascism Los Angeles held a march and rally on Veterans Day on Hollywood and Highland beginning at Trump’s star. We gathered under the slogan, “Say NO! To nuclear war! NO! To America 1st!” We started out with around 50 or so people. The makeup of the crowd at the rally at the beginning was middle-aged people, older people, and some young people. At the rally, an organizer with the National Student Task Force of Refuse Fascism spoke on the importance of students and called for walkouts on the 15th, like some Mendez High School students did on November 8 in response to the one-year anniversary of Trump’s election. A veteran spoke about how was part of bringing death and destruction on innocent people in Iraq, but now is against wars for empire and stands with the people of the world. A woman from Military Families Speak Out, an anti-Iraq War group, spoke against wars and people’s responsibility to act right now, in the streets and calling their congresspeople. A person on the Steering Committee of Refuse Fascism read the Refuse Fascism speech, and a member of the Revolution Club Los Angeles spoke about the new talk by Bob Avakian (The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A New World IS Possible/ and the role revolutionaries are playing in driving out the regime.
The march took off with Aztec dancers performing and uniting with everyone there. It was contentious at the beginning with a small number of fascists yelling at us with bullhorns and saying vile shit. They were very rabid and vicious, one of them saying “nuke them all!” when the speakers were doing agitation around the threat of nuclear war which could kill 25 million people in North Korea. One of the fascists yelled to a Refuse Fascism organizer who is trans that “we’re gonna hang you and rape you!” when she was speaking. There was a heavy police presence and they created a line around us that was blocking and preventing people from coming into the rally. However, most people were ignoring the fascists and paying attention to the speakers on the stage.
The march grew because a good amount of people joined in on the spot from the sidewalks as we went down the Hollywood Blvd. A lot of them were Black people, and young. We called on people to join us from the stage, and when they did we gave them signs to hold, and some of the people took up carrying the banners. A lot of people came into the protest in a joyful way. People not only put their fists up when we were marching, but came in dancing. There was a contagious joy in the march—there were young skateboarders and couples joining us while we were marching. People left with materials about Refuse Fascism and signed up at the table we had. There were some middle strata people, and Latino families were really into the Spanish chants. There were women that we met who joined in the march spontaneously and told us that they are part of the San Francisco chapter of Refuse Fascism. We plan to organize all these people in a telescoped way and to have the energy that was out there be the energy we have in an even bigger way on November 18.
San Francisco
About 100 people rallied and then marched through the city. The message of the march reached thousands, loud, determined, and clear: this was a group on a mission to end the nightmare and drive out the Trump/Pence regime. Throughout the rally, and all along the march, the protesters called on and challenged the people along the route to join in.
The march, headed up by 30 people in hazmat suits with the “danger, radiation” symbol painted on the back, presented a powerful image of the stakes for humanity—sounding the alarm about the threat of war, including nuclear war. The march ended in a mass die-in at Union Square, jammed with tourists and shoppers, including people from around the world.
The speakers at the rally at the Civic Center, across the street from City Hall, were: a crew from La Colectiva de Mujeres, holding their banner; another activist from the Mission District; Alex U Inn, Grand Marshal of the 2017 SF Pride Parade; and a representative from the local chapter of Refuse Fascism.
A crew of perhaps 10 fascists came to the rally at Civic Center, seeking to disrupt the rally. They were not allowed to get away with this and eventually left.
Through the course of the day, thousands received flyers, many excited and glad to see a march like this. For most it was the first time hearing of Refuse Fascism and the audacious plan to drive out the regime through drawing forward millions in to mass nonviolent political struggle. Some were very glad to hear about this, and joined in or signed up. Others spoke with passion about how glad they were to see the march. One woman said that she was married to a Latino and said, in tears, that racist comments that would not have been acceptable two years ago are now commonplace. New people who had not even heard of Refuse Fascism before the day made commitments to come to the Sunday organizing meeting and to take up the battle to make November 18 a powerful demonstration.
Seattle
Thirty people rallied and took to the streets against the threats of nuclear war and genocide from the Trump/Pence regime and demanded they be ousted from power now. They marched through the downtown core and stopped traffic with a die-in in the middle of the busiest shopping area. The street theater featured a giant, gesticulating Trump “bobble head” (donated for use by the Backbone Campaign), and an activist reading the terrifying but real quotes by Trump threatening the use of nukes and the total destruction of North Korea. An air raid siren went off and protesters lay down in the street with a banner of a mushroom cloud as the backdrop. Two protesters wearing hazmat suits and gas masks drew chalk outlines around the bodies. All of this was watched by crowds of people on every corner, most of them supportive, and many of them taking photos and video on their phones.
The rally began with a Lakota blessing from longtime freedom fighter Fennette Blackbear, who prayed for the lives of the people, animals, and Earth hanging in the balance under threat of nuclear war. Singer-songwriter Susan Harper did a rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” (with the words “Think it’s time we stop Trump, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down...”). Rev. Jim VanderWeele, interim minister at the Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church, spoke about the need to see and heed the fascist warning signs and stand up before it’s too late. A Refuse Fascism organizer spoke about Refuse Fascism’s unity and objectives, and the need to bring forward the millions of people capable of driving out the regime. November 18 was announced as the day to Break the Silence and Bring the Noise! and there was discussion about reaching out to marching bands, artists, and “Honk Fest” people that some folks know.
Some new people who found the movement this week: a student from Arlington, a couple who said they saw a poster in Capitol Hill, a young woman who joined in as the march passed who was in town from Kent and had been a part of Occupy Houston, and a prominent nonviolent activist who consciously broke the U.S. sanctions against Iraq (responsible for the deaths of over half a million children) in 1997 to deliver medicine. Several people came back from the previous weekend of November 4. It goes without saying that all of the organizers wanted more people, but it was also quite notable that everyone who came felt really uplifted by what we had done together and there is a clarity of purpose and deepening commitment finding its hold.
Hawai‵i
In front of the U.S. Army Museum at Wakiki’s Fort DeRussy, 15 people held up signs opposing the Trump/Pence regime and attacks on North Korea. Hundreds of pedestrians, people on tour trolleys, and in cars passing by saw the protest. Many thanked the protesters, took leaflets, or otherwise showed their support. Several U.S. war veterans joined the protest. The author of Brothers Under a Same Sky, a historical novel based on the U.S. war on Korea, and a Korean-American activist for the reunification of North & South Korea made statements at the short rally after the protest. There was a heavy police presence but no interference. Five members of the fascist Proud Boys, sporting their rooster polo shirts and a big American flag, showed up across the street from the protest.
Austin, Texas
(Posted at RefuseFascism.org) Texas Refuse Fascism activists rallied briefly at the Capitol, to protest the regime’s threats and moves toward war against N. Korea and the Middle East. We regrouped at a busy touristy intersection. Channeling Ray Charles, we sang our message, challenging people to break out of complacency and complicity—the “normalizing” of fascism. Some passersby joined in, and our stand, and our flyers, got spread to near and far-flung parts of Texas.
Statements to Rallies for November 11
Statement from Law Professor Francis A. Boyle to the November 11 Protests
The following statement was sent by Francis A. Boyle, professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law, to the November 11 protests called by Refuse Fascism.
1. The US government threats of “preventive warfare” against DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)] are illegal and criminal. The Nuremberg Tribunal in their Judgment of 1946, which the US helped organize, condemned “preventive war” when the lawyers for the Nazis made the argument on their behalf. This is an illegal and criminal threat in violation of international law. According to the World Court in its Advisory Opinion (1996) on the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the legality vel non of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as if the threat were carried out.
2. The repeated US government threats to “destroy” or “annihilate” DPRK are an international crime under the 1948 Genocide Convention to which the United States is a party. These genocidal threats are also illegal and criminal under the rationale of the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion mentioned above.
3. The United States has an absolute obligation under UN Charter article 2(3) and article 33 to open “negotiation” with DPRK in good faith in order to produce a peace resolution of this dispute. Instead, the US government has repeatedly rejected these obligations under the UN Charter.
4. The proposal by Russia and China for a “dual-freeze” is an excellent basis to produce good faith and direct negotiations between USA and DPRK as required by the UN Charter.
5. The United States is deliberately provoking DPRK, ratcheting up these provocations in the hope that they will provoke the DPRK to commit an act of aggression against the United States that the USA can then use as a pretext for war. Pursuant to the terms of their mutual self-defense treaty, China has stated that if the US attacks first it will defend DPRK, but that if DPRK strikes first, China will remain out of any war. So the United States is trying to provoke DPRK into striking first.
6. It is an extremely dangerous situation. It is really up to the United States to take the first step down the Ladder of Escalation that it has constructed here. Instead it appears that the Trump administration is going to escalate up the Ladder of Escalation in the hope and expectation that DPRK will capitulate. This is what International Political Scientists call a Game of Chicken—with cosmic consequences. Who will blink first? Anything can go wrong. Thank you so much for being here today to prevent World War III.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of Law
University of Illinois College of Law
Native Chicagoan
Statement from Tarak Kauff in Support of November 11
Tarak Kauff is a peace activist and veteran.
The chickens may be coming home to roost. America committed genocidal wars against the indigenous people living on this continent, built the country largely on the backs of slave labor, has depended on wars and conquest for most of its history, none of which are sane or peaceful societal behaviors, and now we have an expression of that very insane, racist, misogynistic, proclivity to use violence, or threats of violence running around loose in the White House. Add to that the personal demons of extreme narcissism and insecurity that so make up the Trump persona and we have a deadly mix.
Of course this is nothing new for America, except that a loose cannon like Trump not only has his little fingers within reach of nuclear Armageddon but has been threatening in so many words that he is willing, if not eager to engage in this most dangerous and powerful form of killing. One wonders if this lunatic even realizes that nuclear demons of this magnitude once loosed could mean not only the end of millions of lives but potentially the end of all life?
There is an added insanity in not only Trump but others of the current corporate/political elite, in that they seem to believe that they and their riches and power will somehow be miraculously immune to the effects of nuclear war and the following nuclear winter. We are witnessing the madness of someone sawing off the branch they (and many others) sit upon. They think that their plushly equipped subterranean shelters will save them, not realizing that the demons inside them are as bad as the ones they will have unleashed upon the world. Those demons will cause them to self-destruct sooner than they could even imagine. There is no safety and little chance of surviving a nuclear war. Only the insane would even dream of survival in the aftermath of such terror.
Trump and all he represents are madness running out of control, rampant. The only way to stop this, and it must be stopped, is by a massive uprising of the people. It may be our last chance.
