Watching Bob Avakian at an Inner-City Carwash

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a Revolution Club member:

Thursday October 18. Last night a group of people gathered to watch Part 1 of BA’s new talk, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, inside an inner-city carwash.

How this came together is a story in itself so I will begin there.

Revolution Club members had passed on some lists of older contacts to someone who was phone banking to raise funds for the film. The phone banker wound up having a pretty lengthy talk with one of the people on the list who was very concerned about the parallels between Trump and Hitler and very interested in the film, saying he could show it at his carwash. The phone banker passed this information on to the club. We jumped on this right away, even though I must say I initially had a hard time envisioning a film showing in a carwash—wouldn’t it be too cold and wet, noisy etc.?

I got with the guy at the carwash, which turned out to be a big indoor carwash with lots of room. He said he had spoken with a couple different club members at some point in the past and had seen what we were about and that in his view it was good and important. We watched the trailer of the film, which he really liked. This led to a pretty wide-ranging discussion about the prospects for revolution, the differences between now and the period of upheavals in the ’60s, BA’s history, the parallels between today and Hitler’s Germany, and more. In the course of the discussion he laid out how certain experiences in his life totally changed him and his views. As a youth he wanted to be a cop and believed in the system, but then wound up being wrongly incarcerated, doing time, and realizing that this whole system was about keeping Black people, especially youths like he was at the time, down. If this could happen to him, a middle class kid from a stable family, what did this show about how this system treats people who have nothing?

He thought people he knew might not be down for watching the full two plus hours all at once and decided to show it in two parts. Also rather than waiting until the carwash closed at 7 pm., he decided to do the showing at 6 pm. while the place was still open. He said he wanted to reach out to people who worked at the carwash and also some of his customers to attend. I made a little half-sheet announcement, which he got out to people over the next few days. The club also reached out to people, including a few we knew from the neighborhood around the carwash.

I have to admit I was still a little skeptical about this coming together and actually working, but it worked great. I had envisioned us setting up in the middle of the carwash, but when I got there a couple club members and the carwash owner had arranged a great space in a well-heated area on one side of the carwash where people wait for their vehicles and employees have lockers and take breaks. We had to turn up the volume pretty high and people could hear and watch it fine even while some cars were still being washed in the space nearby.

A club member gave a great and rousing introduction talking about how he came out of the time of the 1960s but how back then we did not have the leadership and understanding of how to make revolution but now we do. And he challenged people there that the revolution needs them. There were 25 or more people there, including some club members, mostly older Black men but also some youths and a couple of women.

A good core of people sat intensely engrossed through the film while some in the crew went in and out, including to continue taking care of the business of the carwash. At times there was clapping or verbal responses, but in the main the audience was serious and quiet.

As soon as it ended a man stood up and announced, “I thought this was really good. I am 60 years old and lived through a lot of what he talked about. I didn’t move from my seat once.” A club member made a short video with him about his response to the film. Another man commented that he thought maybe BA’s vocabulary was too hard for people, that he could understand it but he wondered if others would. The carwash owner kind of jumped in his shit, in a good way, and talked about how he shouldn’t underestimate people. People need to lift their heads, someone else said.

The club member who introduced the film called on people to get with the revolution, the online premier of the film on October 19 was announced, and people broke into little groups discussing the film and how to get with the revolution. People got copies of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution and palm cards for the premier, and were encouraged to join in. Others filled out the survey about their thoughts about the film.

At the conclusion the owner of the carwash announced that he and I would work out when to show Part 2.

On the way home another club member and I were talking about how there needs to be a whole movement of film showings in places like this, barber shops and hair salons, community and rec centers, park houses, church basements, classrooms etc. Don’t rule out locations you never would have thought of. A couple years ago I had been in this same neighborhood trying to figure out a location for where we could hold events like a film showing. I saw the carwash but it didn’t even cross my mind that we could hold an event there. This was an important “new thing” that we need to learn from to grow into a real movement around this important talk.

Watching BA in a car wash. Photo: Special to revcom.us

The Immigrant Caravan Controversy: The Aggression of the Fascists, the Capitulation of the Democrats, the Truth of the Matter, and the Stand of the Revolution

From a member of the Revolution Club

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In the last week, Trump and the Republicans have really seized on the caravan of Honduran migrants, now marching through Mexico, to fire up their fascist base, ramping up the lies and xenophobia... an “onslaught,” and “invasion,” an “army” marching to “our border,” filled with MS-13 gang members and “unknown Middle Easterners,” etc... funded by Democrats like George Soros, or maybe Venezuela.

What’s the Democrats’ response to all this been? As a New York Times op-ed by David Leonhardt points out, basically to ignore it. He quotes congressional Democratic leaders Schumer and Pelosi: “The president is desperate to change the subject from health care to immigration....” They go on: “Democrats are focused like a laser on health care and will not be diverted.”

Leonhardt thinks this is a bad approach—not because the Democrats are shamefully allowing Trump to whip up a lynch-mob atmosphere and threatening to unleash the U.S. military against thousands of poor unarmed refugees—but because it plays into the Republicans’ hands by making the Democrats seem “squishy and insecure on immigration.” And he recommends the Democrats issue a statement like this: “This is a country of laws. We are not going to admit thousands of undocumented immigrants traveling in a caravan. We do not have open borders. But we are and have always been a country of compassion as well, and we are working with Mexican authorities to protect the safety of these men, women and children.”

In another New York Times op-ed, Frank Bruni writes, “[I]mages of [the migrants in the caravan] are more likely to help anti-immigration Republicans than their Democratic adversaries.” But here’s the question: What does it tell you about the Democrats, and the whole dynamic in effect right now, that images of desperate refugees are likely to “help the Republicans”?! Notice the language—why are the Republicans the ANTI-immigrant party and the Democrats are not, and cannot be, the PRO-immigrant party? Why is appearing soft on immigration such a concern for Democrat leaders, and the sage advice they are getting from their strategic thinkers is to reaffirm that “This is a country of laws”?

The answer is in what Bob Avakian lays out in the new Q&A clip posted here. There is a real and objective immigration/refugee crisis in the world caused by the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system, which the Republicans are seizing on (and exaggerating) to rally their base around a fascist resolution of the crisis—i.e., walling off and ethnically cleansing the country. And the Democrats have no proposal for how to deal with the crisis besides continuing with the “normal” workings of the same system that is the source of the crisis.

I mean, what are the Democrats gonna do? Call out the Republicans for the foreign policy that led to this situation? For the militarization of the border? For the inhumanity of the raids and deportations? For presiding over an economic system that requires massive investment in Third World countries, which plunders and devastates the economies and rips apart the social fabric? They can’t do that because they are just as GUILTY of all that! It is very telling that Trump just tweeted a speech from Obama to justify what he is doing!

And what are the Democrats gonna propose? Accepting all the immigrants? Oh no, we’re not for “open borders,” insists Beto O'Rourke and all the Democratic leaders. Of course they’re not, because the system they run—with such an extreme division between a few imperialist nations and the majority of oppressed and exploited nations—requires strong borders. And it requires the Border Patrol and migra to enforce that, or at least enforce it enough that the immigrants who do make it here have to live in a constant state of fear, so they can be more viciously exploited. Even the Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made clear that her use of the hashtag #AbolishICE “does not mean abolish deportation.”

The Democrats will not, and cannot, stop the fascist attacks on immigrants. But the revolutionaries can and must, as part of the fight to get rid of the capitalist-imperialist system that has created the conditions where so many are forced to migrate in first place. The revolutionary communists welcome our immigrant sisters and brothers. As the Points of Attention for the Revolution says, “We fight for a world without borders, and for equality among different peoples, cultures and languages.”

Listen to what Bob Avakian says in this must-watch Q&A clip and think about the reality of what is happening right now... the caravan of men, women, and children from Honduras escaping a made-in-the-USA nightmare, the despicable fascist attacks on them, and the complicity of the Democrats. And listen to how he says a revolutionary state power, aiming at the emancipation of humanity, would handle this.

From the Q&A sessions after the speech:
Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution

The caravan of men, women, and children from Honduras escaping a made-in-the-USA nightmare, approach Zacapa, Guatemala. (Photo: AP)

A Call to Our Readers

On the Midterm Elections and the Fascist Violence

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The elections set for November 6 are shaping up to be a major political flash point. Trump has been holding increasingly aggressive and almost daily fascist mass rallies around the country in the lead-up to these. He has been whipping up his base not only to vote, but to adopt an increasingly aggressive stance to those he has declared to be enemies. At the same time, there has been in the past week a series of violent fascist political acts.

First, this past week someone mailed pipe bombs to leading major political figures who represent what has been the mainstream of the ruling class and others opposed to the Trump/Pence fascist regime, and who the regime recognizes as obstacles to consolidating its fascist rule. Since the 2016 campaign, the regime led by Trump has repeatedly, viciously demonized and targeted these figures with threats of jail and even violence. The pipe bombs were sent to former Presidents Obama and Clinton, ex-presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Biden, two former major figures in the U.S. intelligence establishment, several other major Democratic Party figures (most of whom are African-American), and major liberal donors and philanthropists—as well as to the progressive actor Robert De Niro. Throughout the week, Trump responded in an openly callous and, in the circumstances, extremely aggressive way to this, with pro forma calls for “unity” and continued, and in some ways stepped-up, attacks on both the media and political opponents.

Then on Saturday, someone attacked a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people at worship. This Nazi-style attack sent a jolt of horror and terror through the Jewish community and should both outrage and compel deeper reflection on the part of everyone who opposes racism and fascism. And again, Trump initially responded with a pro forma denunciation that was quickly accompanied by calls for more armed security and the death penalty as a way to deal with this—these are reactionary and fascist watchwords. In both cases, suspects have been arrested and deserve due process, but the fascist content of these actions is clear.

All this—the aggressive rallies, the murderous attacks, and Trump’s response to it all—has heightened contradictions and brought home more deeply both the fascist character and aims of this regime and the sharpening polarization in this country. It has also revealed the utter inability and lack of desire of the Democratic Party to meaningfully oppose this for what it is: fascism. The fact that a number of these bombs were sent to the CNN news network and that Trump continued to stir up the crowds at his rallies to attack CNN, and that he also assigned the blame for the “atmosphere” in which such murderous bomb attempts could happen to CNN and other news organizations, drives this home even further.

 

Watch and spread!

BA’s Film on the Trump/Pence Regime Gets Behind Prison Walls

From a prisoner:

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

So, in figuring out a way to spread the message of revolution while being incarcerated, I put together all the materials I have, and I decided to try something new.

I see the importance of prisoners sharing their feedback about what the conversations are like within these walls in order to scientifically gather evidence and figure out ways to positively engage in a deeper dialogue about the state of this country under the Trump/Pence regime.

I’m going to share a discussion we had a few days back with four of my buddies that have become very interested in the revolution and the new synthesis of communism by Bob Avakian. I started a study group that comes together every day to discuss the things they have learned from the few materials I have to share. I have been studying the science of BA for a lot longer, so I’m sort of the moderator, but I like to see myself as still a student that is learning as he teaches.

I had an open reading of the special issue of Revolution that had the full text of the 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, in order to get a sense of where the thoughts on this issue were within these walls. From my personal observation, the political climate had really changed a lot since this fascist regime took office, now I want to keep fermenting this revolutionary climate in order to stop the degradation and exploitation of humanity. There is an overwhelming majority that agree that the Trump/Pence regime must go! After I got done reading the text, one comrade expressed that the situation we are facing had much more dire consequences than originally thought. I explained that this capitalist-imperialist system is affecting humanity on a grander scale. BA turns to historical facts to see how this corrupt system continues to dehumanize those that look different and do not conform to the status quo of the ruling class. This capitalist-imperialist system uses open terror and violence to discourage any kind of dissent from the most oppressed. I said to the group, BA has put together 40 years of revolutionary work and theory and created, using science, a new synthesis of communism based on material reality. I explained to them that the science is so complex that I’m not the one holding all the answers but that I want to be able to invite them on this journey to emancipate humanity and overthrow this system through revolution. I posed the questions, how can the masses free themselves from the Great Tautological Fallacy that the U.S. can do whatever they like because they are the “good guys”? What are we really facing?

After reading the text by BA, we all agreed that this regime is already forcing its fascist policies on the masses. We see it with the Kavanaugh confirmation. The message being sent is that the privileged class is above the law, and now they enforce and decide what is law! Trump continues pushing his fascist agenda by revoking the security clearance of those that opposed his rhetoric and policies. The suppression of dissent amongst those in high office is a sure sign that those at the base of the strata will suffer more of this fascist oppression being dished out by the Trump/Pence regime. The U.S. has a long history of using open terror and violence throughout the world in order to impose their heinous agenda and capitalist-imperialist hegemony. History has shown that this regime is unfit to run this country and something new is necessary. We all realized that this system, along with this regime, must be overthrown. We are witnessing the fall of the few rights we have left!

The dialogue has been very rich and challenging because some of their questions I have no concrete answers for, but I enjoy searching for the concrete solutions BA has laid out before us. I understand that the approach consists of a solid core with a lot of elasticity based on the solid core. I know that the road may not come easy but we all must stay dedicated to the revolution. Those of us incarcerated are searching for answers, so I don’t see no overwhelming reason why the masses in the streets should not be already mobilizing and preparing for the time when we can win!

Some Basic Points of Orientation on the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Heightened Dangers Internationally

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, while there on personal business. He was mobbed in the embassy by over a dozen high-ranking security officials who flew in from Saudi Arabia specifically for this purpose, and Turkish intelligence maintains that he was tortured and dismembered. As we go to press, Saudi Arabia still has not produced Khashoggi’s body.

Jamal Khashoggi had himself been a member of the Saudi “establishment” but ran afoul of the new Saudi ruler, Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS). Khashoggi went into exile in the U.S., where he wrote a column in the Washington Post.

In the nearly four weeks since the murder, Saudi Arabia has changed its story several times—for the first two weeks claiming that Khashoggi had actually left the embassy alive and then, as Turkish intelligence leaked details of what it said was evidence that a team of high-ranking Saudi intelligence officials had murdered and dismembered him in the embassy, gradually changing its story.

During this period, the Trump regime, including Trump himself, has played a reprehensible role, at times downplaying the crime, covering for the regime, then attempting to distance itself, according to how it perceived its imperialist interests. While Khashoggi’s murder puts an exclamation point on what has been a bloody killing season for members of the press, with 47 being killed in the first six months of 2018 alone, during the period directly following Khashoggi’s murder Trump has not only seen fit to continue but to escalate his attacks on the press—complete with stirring up the crowds at his events by pointing to individual reporters—and has gone so far as to congratulate and bray about one of his fascist minion congressmen who actually was found guilty of assaulting a reporter who dared to ask him a question he didn’t like.

This has given rise to a great deal of clash and contradiction, a scramble and potential intensification of the situation in the Middle East and the world as a whole. The Trump/Pence fascist regime had been moving to radically re-order the Middle East and, in particular, move against Iran with aggressive, severe, and absolutely unjust economic sanctions. These sanctions are designed to weaken and destabilize Iran, to aggravate splits in their ruling circles, and to possibly provoke them into resuming a program of nuclear development. The resumption of such a program is only one of the trip wires that significantly heighten the danger of war, with some combination of the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia either potentially using this as pretext to militarily attack Iran, or leading to circumstances that could set a course to further heightened aggression and open hostilities, with danger of a greater war in the region. These sanctions are set to go into effect in early November. To prepare this highly aggressive (and again, highly unjust) move, the Trump/Pence fascist regime tightened the already extremely close alliances between the U.S. and Israel and the Saudis and, in doing so, cast aside certain “international norms ordering the region” (verbal support for a “two-state solution” in which Palestine would be granted some limited autonomy and a [bogus] mini-state by Israel and cancellation of a nuclear deal with Iran). Further, as one commentator put it, the U.S. has moved all its chips into the pot in a massive bet on the very aggressive, repressive, and highly volatile MBS as a force to “stabilize” and “modernize” the highly contradictory, highly fragile Saudi society.

This has now run into potentially significant contradictions. The murder of Khashoggi has both exposed and exacerbated various fault lines (including within Saudi ruling class circles) and enabled other forces representing other interests (for example, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, himself a fascist) to maneuver. The U.S. faces a dilemma—gamble on sticking with a weakened and severely exposed MBS, or gamble on attempting to replace him... on the eve of a major flash point in their move to reorder the region. It has also served to shine a spotlight on the true character of the Saudi regime at a time when the U.S. is desperately attempting to demonize (the equally oppressive) Islamic Republic of Iran as some kind of pariah.

As we wrote last week, “Saudi Arabia has been a pillar of U.S. domination of the region for decades. MBS has launched an unjust war against the neighboring country of Yemen, slaughtering thousands and bringing millions to the brink of starvation; he has violated international norms in other ways, including kidnaping the prime minister of Lebanon at one point; and he has moved to crush internal dissent. But because MBS has cast himself as a modernizer of a country that is both a linchpin of U.S. domination in the Middle East and is itself extremely unstable, many major forces in the U.S. ruling class, Republican and Democrat alike, have backed him up to now and either supported, or turned a blind eye to, what they are now in some cases criticizing. While some people may be genuinely revulsed at what they have learned about the details of this crime, the differences that are now flaring within the U.S. ruling class over how to handle this crisis ultimately focus on how best to prop up U.S. imperialist interests in the Middle East and preserve the brutally oppressive rule of the Saudi Arabian royal family.”

This does NOT necessarily mean that the threat of greater war in the region, involving U.S., Israeli, and/or Saudi attacks on Iran, has receded; given the way that the Trump regime perceives the necessity it faces, it could well mean an even more aggressive move. Additionally, the fluid situation creates a heightened possibility of miscalculation on the part of one or another power that could lead to war “by accident” that rapidly escalates and assumes its own logic, out of the control of any single power or alliance of powers.

Where do the interests of the masses lie? Definitely NOT with the U.S.—both the sanctions set to go into effect and any other aggressive moves against Iran are and would be an assertion of imperialist domination and must not only be opposed by people in this country, but a spirit of welcoming the defeat of these moves must be fostered. At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is a reactionary theocracy in which people have revolted several times in the past few years and in which there is a communist party adhering to the new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian. So in addition to standing firm against and welcoming the defeat of any U.S. imperialist moves in the region, if there should be uprisings in Iran brought on by the increased suffering and chaos imposed by the U.S., people within the U.S. should also oppose all attempts by the U.S. to maneuver and support reactionary forces within those uprisings and should themselves support the genuine revolutionary forces within Iran in their attempts to apply the new communism to the situation, whether it be through participating in the defense of the nation against U.S.-Israeli-Saudi aggression and/or supporting those uprisings of the masses whose main aspect is a just struggle against oppression.

As background to this, we urge our readers above all to review Bringing Forward Another Way, a work by Bob Avakian written over ten years ago but extremely prescient and very relevant in many respects to the current situation. Most critical to this work are not just the various conclusions, but the basic method and approach he uses to analyze the entire situation and the tasks of revolutionaries in that light.

 

Bringing Forward Another Way is a talk given by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, to a group of Party supporters in 2006 and published in early 2007. This groundbreaking analysis, made during the George W. Bush years, continues to be very relevant, especially in the context of sharpening contradictions centered in the Middle East and aggressive U.S.-led moves against Iran. This work is an illustration of applying the scientific method to approaching international conflicts and understanding social and political contradictions—and identifying where the fundamental interests of humanity lie, providing concrete leadership and guidance for the strategic repolarization for revolution and a thoroughly internationalist orientation. Given the current situation in the world, we urge our readers to restudy this important work or to get into it for the first time. Read more

Call from Refuse Fascism:

Regardless of whether you voted...even with a Democratic House

We Must Be in the Streets
Beginning the Day After the Midterm Elections

TO DEMAND AND DEMONSTRATE OUR DETERMINATION THAT:

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY,
THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!

Protest Wednesday, November 7—the day after the midterms, and
Protest Saturday, November 10

Updated November 8, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

This is not a “normal” election season.

11 people murdered in a synagogue while they worshipped, allegedly by a man with a terrifying record of unbridled antisemitism. 

15 pipe bombs sent to former presidents, high ranking officials, media institutions, and others who have been repeatedly targeted by Trump.

Two Black people murdered, allegedly by a man who spewed racist epithets and had just been denied entry to an African-American church.

Through it all, Trump never backed off his hate-filled, fascist rhetoric on the campaign trail. Rather, he ramped it up.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” is a 21st century fascist program of Manifest Destiny – “America First” – wrapped in the flag and Mike Pence’s Bible taken literally, with a program of white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia.

Stopping this rapidly escalating fascism cannot be done through the normal process of elections!

Millions of us are shocked and horrified by what is happening, but that only matters if we dare to act in a way that can stop this nightmare. Ultimately, this means millions in the streets day after day, refusing to stop until the whole regime has been removed.

On November 7th and November 10th, join a different kind of protest movement, one that refuses to get swept up in another election cycle that buys our silence and capitulation to fascism, and instead demonstrates our singular demand and determination that:

NO! In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

To endorse, volunteer, donate, and/or partner in this effort: RefuseFascism.org

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 massive nonviolent political protest. We are united in these demands:

This Nightmare Must End:
The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America

 

To endorse, volunteer, donate, and/or partner in this effort: RefuseFascism.org

 

Where to be & when »

New York City

Wednesday November 7, 5:00 pm Union Square @ 14th Street Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 1:00 pm Washington Square @ The Arch Facebook Event

Atlanta

Wednesday November 7,  6:00 pm CNN Center (Downtown Atlanta) Corner of Marietta Street NW and Centennial Olympic Park Dr. NW Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 1:00 pm Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park 450 Auburn Ave. NE @ Jackson St. Amphitheater In the plaza Facebook Event

Boston

Wednes​day, ​November 7, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Rally outside South Station (Atlantic and Summer Street) Facebook Event Saturday, November 10,12:00 Noon to 2:00 pm, Gather at the Park Street T Stop at the Boston Commons on Tremont Street for rally and march Facebook Event 

Chicago

Wednesday, November 7, 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm Federal Plaza, Adams & Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois 60603 Facebook Event Saturday, November 10, 2018, 1 PM – 2 PM Federal Center and Plaza, 219 S Dearborn St, Chicago, Illinois 60603 Facebook Event

Cleveland

Wednesday, November 7, 4:30 pm – 7:00 pm Cleveland Public Square (South side between REBol Cafe and Soldiers & Sailors Monument) Facebook Event Saturday, November 10, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Cleveland Public Square (South side between REBol Cafe and Soldiers & Sailors Monument)  Facebook Event

Detroit

Saturday, November 10, 1:00 pm Corner of 9 Mile and Woodward, Ferndale

Honolulu

Wednesday, November 7, 4:00 pm Thomas Square Facebook Event Saturday, November 10, 4:00 pm Gather at Atkinson/Ala Moana Facebook Event

Houston

Wednesday November 7, 5:30 pm Corner of Montrose & Westheimer Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 4:00 pm Market Square Park 301 Milam Facebook Event

Los Angeles

Wednesday November 7, 6:00 pm Pershing Square, 5th and Hill St., downtown Los Angeles Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 2:00 pm MacArthur Park, 7th and Alvarado, meet at MacArthur Park Metro Station Facebook Event

Orange County

Wednesday, November 7, 6:00 pm Harbor Blvd and Chapman Ave, Fullerton California Facebook Event

Philadelphia

Wednesday November 7, 6:00 pm Dilworth Park [City Hall – West Side] Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 2:00 pm Independence Mall [525 Market St] Facebook Event

San Bernardino

Wednesday November 7, 2 pm to 5 pm, Refuse Fascism Inland Empire, and MEChA of San Bernardino Valley College, are holding a protest to call for removing the Trump-Pence regime, on  at 295 E Street (at the corner of Court) in downtown San Bernardino. Facebook Event

San Francisco

Wednesday November 7, 5:30 pm San Francisco Civic Center (in front of City Hall) Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 1:00 pm Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco Facebook Event

Seattle

Wednesday November 7, 6:00 pm Cal Anderson Park Facebook Event Saturday November 10, 1:00 pm Cal Anderson Park Facebook Event

You Can’t Change the World If You Don’t Know the BAsics

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

Every week, Revolution features one quote from BAsics, by Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution. This week, because of the upcoming elections, we are featuring here a quote on the question of elections that is not from BAsics. We encourage Revolution Clubs and other readers, everywhere, to take the time to discuss the quote—the whole quote—and to write us at revolution.reports@yahoo.com with accounts of these discussions, or thoughts provoked in yourself by reading the quote.

 

Leaked Memo from Trump/Pence Regime “Redefines” Transgender People Out of Existence

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In the United States today, the roughly 1.5 million transgender people are subjected to staggering levels of discrimination, harassment, violence, and outright murder.

A 2015 survey of 27,715 transgender people showed that:

• Thirty percent of those working had been fired, lost a promotion, or experienced other workplace discrimination because they were transgender. Unemployment among trans people is 15 percent, triple the national rate. Twenty-nine percent live in poverty, two-and-a-half times the national rate. Nearly one-third have experienced homelessness.
• Fifty-four percent of those who were out as transgender in school were verbally harassed (often by teachers or staff), 24 percent were physically attacked, and 13 percent were sexually assaulted. Seventeen percent left school before graduating because of mistreatment.
• Thirty-nine percent experienced “serious psychological distress” in the month before taking the survey, and a stunning 40 percent have attempted suicide at some point in their life—nearly nine times the national rate.

And:

• At least 25 transgender people—mainly women of color—were murdered in 2017, according to the New York Times. And trans people widely report that it is part of “normal life” to be threatened with violence—or outright physically assaulted—while in public places.

Now, in an ominous development, on October 21, the New York Times reported on an internal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) memo that aims to strip transgender people of the minimal protections against discrimination that currently exist under federal law. This means that much of the above will now be considered legally “legitimate.” (DHHS is working to have this view adopted by the departments of Justice, Education, and Labor as well.)

The memo aims to do this by defining transgender people out of legal existence. It declares that “gender” means “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate ... unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence”—in other words, by whether an infant has male or female genitalia at birth.¹

But transgender people do not identify as the gender that they are assigned.² Often from a very early age, transgender folk think of themselves and seek to act and live as a different gender (or as no fixed/rigid gender), and find it crushing and suffocating to try to conform to their biologically assigned sex. In the face of the vicious discrimination, ridicule, and violence, which the statistics at the start of this article only begin to hint at, transgender people struggle to live, dress, and act as the gender they feel corresponds to who they really are, and often seek to transition to the gender they identify with through surgery and/or hormone treatments.

But the language of the new DHHS memo will make them legally nonexistent and unprotected by laws barring discrimination based on sex (like Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools). In doing so, it will give free rein to the institutional discrimination and bigotry that is already rampant.

But more than that, the Trump/Pence regime is trying to stamp the very lives and existence of trans people with the label: INVALID. It is trying to give a legal and scientific veneer to the idea that there is no such thing as transgender people, which really amounts to saying that transgender people are “unnatural” and “an aberration.” This flies in the face of the reality that not all humans fall into the binary categories of male and female, that there is a significant portion of people for whom this is not the case, and there is nothing “unnatural” about this whatsoever—nor do such people deserve the condemnation, stigmatization, humiliation, and outright legal discrimination that the government seems to be considering putting into effect.

In this way, the regime is basically codifying (embedding in the legal structures) and legitimizing the religious fanaticism of Christian fascists (like Vice President Mike Pence) who are at the core of the regime, who are driving to reorganize society on the basis of biblical law, and who want to revive Dark Ages views and treatment of LGBTQ people as a key part of that.

The stunningly ignorant and reactionary views of these forces were highlighted in a September 18 Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) article on some modest legal steps to respect transgender people in New York City. (CBN is a “news” network founded and run by Pat Robertson, a leading Christian fascist who once claimed on CBN that “people in the gay community” try to transmit HIV/AIDS to other people: “[T]hey’ll have a ring, and you shake hands and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger.... It’s ...the equivalent of murder.”)

This CBN article stated that trans people are part of an “agenda ... to erase gender distinctions to confuse the clear distinction that our Creator has given us between man and woman.” They declare transgender “a mental disorder.” They see themselves as waging “a war” against this: “Christians are becoming bold and are taking a stand. ‘There’s a big war going on up here,’ said [a Christian activist]. ‘We’re very upset. The rise is happening.’”

Seen from this perspective, the DHHS memo is not just a continuation, or even just an escalation, of the rampant dehumanization and discrimination that LGBTQ people have faced in the U.S. for decades and centuries. It is in fact a major step towards unleashing an all-out assault on the humanity and even the existence of gender non-conforming people—not just by “legal definition,” but in life-and-death terms.

 

1. In about one percent of births, both male and female genitalia are present, and doctors and/or parents are now compelled to “decide” which sex the child will be; sometimes surgery has to be done on the infant to make that sex assignment work. [back]

2. Whether people experience this conflict with their birth-assigned sex for physiological or psychological or social reasons, or some combination, is not settled. But what is settled is that tens of millions of people in the world do not fall neatly into these binary gender categories, and that trying to live as their assigned gender is a source of tremendous pain and misery. [back]

 

From RefuseFascism.org

I Waited to Vote Them Out

by Adam East

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Originally posted at RefuseFascism.org, October 24.

They came for the Muslims, and I waited to vote them out.

They came for the refugees and I waited to vote them out.

They came for the immigrants and I waited to vote them out.

They dropped the mother of all bombs and I waited to vote them out.

They came for the women and I waited to vote them out.

They came for my queer family and I waited to vote them out.

They burned the planet and I waited to vote them out.

The elections came and went.

When they came for me, the people who were left to watch said, “Don’t worry. In 2020, we’ll vote them out.”

*****

This is based on a well-known quote by Pastor Martin Niemöller that begins, “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist.” Niemöller’s statement describes how the silence of the German people allowed the Nazis to advance on a road to genocide.

In 2018, we are faced with the question of what we are going to do now in the face of the advancing fascism of the Trump/Pence regime. Are we going to accept escalating attacks as this regime targets, scapegoats, and locks up one group after another using the language of genocide? Will we accept children in concentration camps, gleeful plunder of the environment, the evisceration of women’s reproductive rights, the erasure of LGBT people, threats of violence against political opponents, the return to openly violent racial terror? Will we wait through another election cycle, by which time it will be too late to stop the destruction that has been unleashed on a global scale, or will we struggle with all of our determination to stop it now?

For everyone who cares about humanity and the planet, there can only be one answer to this question. No election, fair or foul, legitimizes a fascist regime. Now is the time to draw a line in the sand and say, no more.

The day after the mid-terms, Refuse Fascism is launching the kind of struggle that is needed to drive out this regime. On November 7th and November 10th, join a different kind of protest movement, one that refuses to get swept up in another election cycle that buys our silence and capitulation to fascism, and instead demonstrates our singular demand and determination that in the name of humanity, the Trump/Pence regime must go!

Find out how to endorse, volunteer, donate, and find a protest near you.

From the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

To Do This, We Need To Know:

Why we need an actual revolution.
What we need to do now.
How we could defeat them.

The Illusions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Why nothing short of revolution will meet the needs of humanity

From a Revolution Club writing team

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A couple months ago, I went to see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak. The main theater was packed, hundreds, maybe a thousand people came to see her. Mainly young people made up the crowd; they were super-enthusiastic, looking to her as a symbol of “hope.”

The program started with local grassroots activists talking about local issues and how they are organizing to fight back against what’s happening. People fighting back against city-wide rent hikes and protecting tenants against the property owners, talking about divesting from Wells Fargo and how they were the movement that accomplished putting “public banking” on the ballot for the November elections. Others talked about the police murders of Black and Brown people, focusing on those who have been killed locally with the demand that the local district attorney resign.

There was a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd for all these local issues.

Then Ocasio-Cortez took the stage and got into a lot of things. She talked about the Democratic Party, about what kind of America she wants to live in, about how she made it and defeated her powerful opponent in New York City.

There were a few things that stood out to me about her program that I want to get into here.

One, when she talked about the Democratic Party, she said, “People always tell me that when you become one of them, they change you and you end up selling out your people. But I’m gonna say this: The Democratic Party is not going to change me! I’m going to change the Democratic Party.”

Two, when she talked about what kind of America she wanted to live in, she said, “I want to live in an America that doesn’t incarcerate Black men for having a small amount of weed, or kills them off.”

Three, when she talked about how democratic socialists are going to solve some of these problems, including the problem of homelessness, she said, “I took a walk this morning through Skid Row, and there were thousands of men and women living in the streets. This is unacceptable, when down the street there are vacant luxury apartments that they can live in and we would still have some housing left over.”

But let’s look at the reality!

Bob Avakian says, “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.” (BAsics 3:12)

I think this speaks to the heart of it. We are dealing with a fucking bloodthirsty, monstrous system. If people like Ocasio-Cortez don’t play by their rules, they will be crushed. (See “Revolutionary Communism vs. ‘Democratic Socialism’: Two Basic Points.”) It’s not as simple as just voting in a majority of democratic socialists, and even if that were to happen, in the framework of electoral politics, because of the very nature and purpose of these parties, the democratic socialists will become what the Democrats are right now: a ruling class party that has used and does use a violent state to maintain the horrors of police brutality, wars of empire, and the brutal laws that are used to enforce these horrors. And worst of all, the Democrats play a big role in training people to think this nightmare is good, normal, and the way things are supposed to be.

So let’s just take one of these main points and see what’s wrong here.

First, how does this system actually function?

In a profit-driven system like capitalism where companies and even countries are compelled to compete with each other, constantly fighting to be the top dog, profit is the bottom line and people and the environment are the means of exploitative profit-making.¹ That competitive drive forces companies, representing blocs of capital, to look for cheap labor and resources in order to keep up their profits, which later can be used to invest to make more profits, in order to continue to compete and stay on top, and on and on. This constant search for more and cheaper labor and resources has forced companies to move their production from the inner cities of the U.S. to countries with significantly lower wages² and weaker labor laws that allow companies to pay pennies a day and abuse their workers and violate hundreds of safety laws that are supposed to protect the lives of people. In order to maximize profits, goods not only have to be made with cheap labor, but the materials that make up these goods also have to be gotten cheaply. Usually this involves natural resources as well as minerals, oil, and agricultural products, not all of them found in the U.S. Some companies, like Apple, that require specific minerals like coltan, get them from the mines of countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where people are used for cheap labor to mine these materials in extreme conditions of poverty and exploitation. And this is also fueling horrific civil wars.

What if a country doesn’t want to play ball with the U.S. and its interests? What if it doesn’t want to allow companies to go in and take its natural resources and give back whatever they want instead of nationalizing its resources and using the profit from that for their own interests? Or if it doesn’t want to put in place laws that allow international companies to super-exploit its people? The U.S. does what it has done time and time again. It goes in, supports coups, topples governments, crushes resistance, and places in power puppet dictators or governments friendly to U.S. interests, as was done in Chile, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and on and on.

So with that as a backdrop, let’s start to grapple with what would happen if Ocasio-Cortez tried to put all these homeless people in the vacant apartment complexes that she’s talking about.

In order to speak to this, we can’t start with the buildings as they stand; we have to look back at where did the money to build the apartment complexes come from, at who owns them.

In order for the landlord—or property developer—to build an apartment complex, it would have to invest a certain amount of money, turning that money into capital, and that means they would have to invest in labor power, raw materials, and everything else that is necessary to build the apartment complex.³ So this landlord, instead of asking, “What is a human need that I can put my money into,” would ask, “How do I make back my investment, and make a profit?”

The defining feature of capitalism is profit in command—and that profit is accumulated privately, taking place in the form of private capital and profit in private hands. In the world today, much of this happens through investment and speculation. For example, many of these luxury empty apartments that Ocasio-Cortez was talking about are just sitting there empty, not waiting for somebody to rent them, but as an investment for large companies or finance capitalists. Or in other cases, a landlord will involve major financial capitalists, banks, etc., in order to get funds to purchase or build the complex. Even if the landlord didn’t care about winning back its profits, it has already involved major finance capitalists, who won’t be giving up their investments so easily. It’s not just up to one “nice” billionaire to give their whole building or buildings to house the homeless, because there are major investments in that building, and that’s all privately owned. In order for that building to be used to house the homeless, without making profits or being privately owned, the government would have to come in and take the building from the landlord and the investors, which goes against this whole system of capitalist private ownership.

Or what if the homeless people decide to just start taking over the properties and live in them? The police, the same police that evict people from their homes when they miss payments to keep a roof over their heads, would come and forcefully take the homeless people out of the apartments. These are the same police that jail and kill people to enforce and maintain this system’s rule of law. Why? Because, again, this whole building would be privately owned, and in the case of the luxury apartments Ocasio-Cortez is talking about, would exist mostly to make profit, not to meet the basic needs of people.

If you’re a “progressive politician” in this context, you would be faced with a choice: either stand with those homeless people and end up in jail or be repressed in some other way, or have to call out the forces of the state to clamp down on the people trying to occupy those apartment complexes.

So, it’s not as simple as just coming into an empty apartment complex and winning over a landlord to permanently open up its building to house the 75,000 homeless people in this city because the apartments are empty—there are these underlying dynamics of the capitalist system at work.

American Lives Are NOT More Important Than Other People’s Lives

In addition, the world that Ocasio-Cortez is fighting for is a world with America on top—an imperialist world. How is this so? Even if she were able to successfully house all 75,000 of the homeless population in the city, the wealth that exists to do this is gotten on the backs of the vast majority of the oppressed people of the world.

Where did the wealth come from to build all those vacant luxury apartments? And how was the U.S. able to get to the point where it is the top superpower? It has accumulated the spoils of empire on the backs of the exploited here and around the world and from the theft of land. First the foundation of the U.S. economy was built on slavery, which allowed the U.S. to grow economically and militarily. The need to continue to grow led to westward expansion, the theft of land from the indigenous people and Mexico, which was largely to expand the slave system... to today, where the profit is being made by the super-exploitation of people all over the world that are kept in conditions hardly any better than those of slaves.

There may be good intentions in wanting to house the homeless, and doing this would be great for all those this system has cast away in the literal shadows of these luxury apartments. These conditions of suffering really are an outrage—and again, you have a system that needs this kind of suffering in order to gain these spoils to have empty luxury apartments. Meanwhile, millions of people throughout the world would continue to live a life of tremendous suffering and misery. So, yes, let’s house the homeless, but that’s not possible under this system, and even if it were, what about the rest of humanity?

As communists, we want to house all people—not just here, but all over the world. Because not only are American lives NOT more important than other people’s lives, but housing all people IS possible. You just can’t do it under this system, which requires and needs to exploit people to accumulate the wealth as it has through centuries of oppression.

The means are there to house and feed all of humanity, so let’s raise our sights and think more than just about Americans first but ALL of humanity. Only a communist revolution can deal with the problem of homelessness, not just in this country but throughout the world. This revolution is possible; we have the science in the new communism, the strategy in HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution and the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party and Bob Avakian—the most radical revolutionary alive! Take this up! Get with this revolution!

---

1. For more on this, see “On the ‘Driving Force of Anarchy’ and the Dynamics of Change. A Sharp Debate and Urgent Polemic: The Struggle for a Radically Different World and the Struggle for a Scientific Approach to Reality”, by Raymond Lotta at revcom.us. [back]

2. Since the beginning of the 20th century, this system of capitalism has developed into capitalism-imperialism on a world scale, a highly lopsided system with the vast majority of humanity living in the oppressed countries, mostly the previously colonized countries of the Third World, such as Mexico and Bangladesh, where due to the workings of this system, the wages are significantly lower than the imperialist countries, like the U.S. and Western Europe. [back]

3. For a much deeper look at this, see Bob Avakian’s work, “‘Preliminary Transformation into Capital’... And Putting an End to Capitalism.” [back]

Hurricane Florence Hits the Carolinas:
A Natural Occurrence—An Unnatural and UNNECESSARY Disaster

III. Outlawing Climate Science to Serve Profit-Driven, Environmentally Destructive Development

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Editors’ note, October 29. This fall, intense storms, including Hurricanes Florence, Michael, and Willa, and Typhoons Mangkhut, Jebi, and Yutu have battered countries in or along the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and caused at least 200 deaths.

Meanwhile, on October 8, two days before Hurricane Michael hit Florida, a new report by the United Nations’ leading body on climate science, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that the climate crisis is not a far-off problem—it’s happening right now, and it’s accelerating more quickly and having more devastating impacts much sooner than previously understood. The report called for radical, “unprecedented” transformations starting immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to prevent a global catastrophe. A co-chair of the group of 91 scientists from 40 different countries who wrote the report calls the next few years “probably the most important in our history.”¹

In this five-part series on Hurricane Florence, we examine how the capitalist-imperialist system of today fuels such hurricanes and worsens the death and destruction, and start to grapple with why and how it would be radically different in a genuinely socialist society.

A 325-mile-long string of narrow sand islands—barrier islands—form North Carolina’s outer coast. These islands and their wetlands are breathtakingly beautiful, yet also extremely vulnerable to rising seas and devastating storms—as are many islands and coastal cities around the world, some home to millions of people.²

Hurricane Florence’s wind and storm surge hit North Carolina’s barrier islands on September 14, breaching sand dunes, inundating islands with sandy water, eroding, even washing away, some beaches, and dramatically changing the shape of North Carolina’s coast in some places.

People have a great need for recreation, natural beauty, leisure time—the question is how is that going to be done? Is it going to be driven by profit, in an environmentally devastating way that privileges access to those with the greatest means? Or is it going to be done in ways that preserve the natural environment and make it widely accessible to all?

Over decades, North Carolina has built up its precious, fragile barrier islands in ways that accelerate environmental degradation, make them more vulnerable to storms and put ever more people and animal and sea life in harm’s way.³

Why? Because it’s been enormously profitable to develop its coasts as a tourist destination, with homes, vacation homes and rentals, hotels and more.

North Carolina’s outer islands are facing some of the world’s highest rates of sea level rise. Yet their profitable development is so woven into the economic and social fabric of the Carolinas that North Carolina law forbids state and local agencies from using a 2012 North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) report as a guide to coastal development. This report had warned that sea levels would rise by 39 inches—over three feet!—by 2100. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects the oceans will rise by more than six feet, enough to wash over some barrier islands at every high tide.⁴) The legislature insisted instead that decisions be guided by unscientific, outdated “business-friendly” estimates that vastly understated this danger. The Democratic governor could have blocked the bill, but did nothing.

This year, South Carolina did likewise. Its legislature “changed the preamble to a 30-year-old law governing beachfront development,” the New York Times reports, “striking out a state policy of ‘retreat’ from the shoreline in the face of erosion and replacing it with a policy of ‘preservation’ of the beaches.” In short, keep building.⁵

Federal government recovery policies, including the National Flood Insurance Program, are also shaped by capitalism and its short-term, profit-driven horizons. In the wake of these monster storms they are encouraging (paying) people to rebuild in place rather than relocate to more environmentally safe and more sustainable areas, in order to maintain housing prices, and profitable developments and tourist industries.⁶

An analysis in the Pacific Standard found that federal recovery funding along the Carolina coast overwhelmingly favored owners of high-priced properties situated right along the beaches (and therefore more environmentally damaging and vulnerable), that rebuilding projects undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers were explicitly shaped by profit-in-command criteria, and that all this reinforced white supremacy:

A ProPublica analysis of 16 North Carolina communities directly behind beaches that have received federal funds shows they're 94 percent white on average; a quarter of owner-occupied housing in these areas is worth more than $500,000 (compared with 7 percent in North Carolina as a whole)....

The Corps, tasked with managing flood risk across America, takes on engineering projects like building levees and renourishing beaches ostensibly because they prevent property damage from future disasters and lock valuable beaches in place. The Corps prioritizes projects that would prevent the most amount of damage per dollar spent. This tends to favor beach building in high-income communities full of pricey properties. The Corps generally funds projects only when the expected benefit is 2.5 times as high as the project’s cost. Poor communities can’t meet that criteria....

Andrew Kahrl, a history professor at the University of Virginia, said he couldn't think of a single project that primarily benefited people of color. His research shows how the historically black communities that lived along the Carolinas’ coast were forced out by developers and federal infrastructure projects, including some built by the Corps.⁷

The same is true of efforts to restore and “protect” beaches and shorelines through beach “nourishment” (bringing in tons of sand to replace what has been swept to sea), building artificial dunes and reinforcing beaches with rock piles and sandbags. First, these “fixes” are temporary and they can actually accelerate further erosion. “These projects also cause substantial ecological damage,” Mat Gendle writes in Greensboro.com, “as they significantly alter habitats for sea life both in the underwater areas where the sand is dredged and on the beach where the sand is deposited.”⁸

Nonetheless, since 1939, federal, state, and local governments have spent over $828 million to restock beaches in North Carolina alone, renourishing the same beaches over and over. (One, Carolina Beach, has been renourished 31 times since 1955.)

One environment group calls it “flood, rebuild, repeat.” MIT professor of meteorology Kerry Emanuel calls these “unnatural disasters—disasters we cause by building structures” in places vulnerable to devastating storms. This is the kind of lunacy—from the standpoint of humanity and the planet—that capitalism-imperialism gives rise to and perpetuates, over and over and over.

A Revolutionary Approach to Recreation, Meeting Social Needs, and Being Caretakers of the Planet

As we’ve touched on in previous sections, revolutionary socialist society would no longer be imprisoned within the parameters dictated by the economic and social relations of capitalism-imperialism. How would this new society deal with the challenges posed in regard to North Carolina’s barrier islands?

One important dimension of this would be the way the new society would treat precious natural spaces:

Land, waters, forests, minerals, and other natural resources are protected and managed as “public goods.” They fall within the scope of public-state ownership. Socialist-state ownership recognizes its responsibility to preserve the “commons”—the atmosphere, oceans, wildlife, and so forth—for all of humanity and for the future.⁹

The new society would also be making it a priority to “provide for the recreation of the people, and to encourage their appreciation for nature and sense of awe and wonder at its many and diverse manifestations...”—and this means all sections of society, including especially those who’ve largely been denied these joys.

Another dimension would be that the new society would promote and train the masses of people, including the formerly oppressed, in a scientific approach to understanding and changing the world, including through the educational system. This would both enrich “recreational” time, but also better equip growing millions to contribute to dealing with natural disasters and the environmental devastation bequeathed by the current system. Science-denying, know-nothingism, relativism, and “it’s in God’s hands”-type thinking would no longer be promoted by society’s most powerful institutions!

But still there would be extremely difficult contradictions and problems to deal with. In relation to the barrier islands, for instance:

• Given rising sea levels (which revolution will not be able to immediately halt, and which will be with us for some time), what resources—if any—should be devoted to protecting or building on the islands? And how would this be done in an environmentally sustainable way?
• It is possible (as one house in Mexico Beach proved by surviving Hurricane Michael¹⁰), to build structures that survive even powerful storms. But should resources be devoted to that, and if so, what kinds of structures and facilities should be built?
• Places like the barrier islands would be opened up to the masses of people, both through state ownership and also by stressing public over private or individual development. However, many who were better off in the pre-revolutionary society would likely still own homes on the islands, and the new society would not take a revengist attitude towards them. In fact the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America has specific provisions allowing some people (“who were not part of that ruling class and did not play an active role in opposing the revolution”) to keep some personal property, homes, and land for a period of time (provided it was not used as a means of production). So how would the new society handle the contradiction that some of these people would likely have the land best suited to public recreation? Although the CNSRNA authorizes the new state to acquire private land (with compensation) and convert it to public-state property, this contradiction would overwhelmingly be handled through public debate and discussion over how to best meet the needs of the new society – and the world – and persuading people, including the property owners, to put that first.¹¹
• And the new society would be fighting for everyone to see these problems in a broader context, which would itself be controversial: our main goal should be protecting the coasts (and the environment overall) for future generations. In other words, being caretakers of the planet—not simply being guided by the needs and demands (however just) of those alive at the time. In his Greensboro.com opinion piece, Gendle, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina, argues that this means, in regard to the state’s barrier islands, that “we need to let the natural processes that govern island migration run their course. This almost certainly means abandoning properties to be overtaken by the sea and radically rethinking all future development of the ocean side of barrier islands.... If we want to preserve our islands, we must stop all artificial erosion interventions and let the islands move as they will.” Such a proposal would likely be vigorously debated, not only by those who may have homes on the island, but those who want to preserve historic Black communities, for instance, or others who want to open the islands up for people’s recreation more broadly.

In putting these contradictions before society and the masses of people, and fostering debate, discussion, and initiatives to address these issues, it would be important for communist revolutionaries to tap into and unleash the love millions of people have for the beauty of nature, their desire to save the environment, and their feeling that the outdoors, parks and so on should be shared by all.

---

 

1. See “United Nations’ Scientists Call for Drastic Action on Climate Change—The World Cries Out for Revolution,” revcom.us, October 15.  [back]

2. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that if temperatures rise 3.6° F (2° C), rising sea levels will flood coastal regions and Pacific islands. It is estimated that sea levels will increase 1.5 feet at these temperatures and that cities such as Miami and Shanghai will be largely submerged, along with a number of island nations around the world.  [back]

3. The rapid increase in the numbers of people living on or near the coasts—many directly in the path of hurricanes and storms—is a global phenomenon which has continued even as the growing danger of rising seas and warming air and water has been scientifically established. For instance, in 2010, 123 million people in the U.S.—39 percent of the population—lived in counties directly on the coasts. This is a 40 percent rise since 1970. This, too, has been shaped in many different ways by the overall workings of capitalism-imperialism.  [back]

4. “After Florence, barrier islands still doomed by rising sea,” Associated Press, September 13, 2018.  [back]

5. “‘It’s Back’: Underwater Yet Again, the Carolinas Face a New Reality,” Jack Healy, Richard Fausset, and Campbell Robertson, New York Times, September 18, 2018.  [back]

6. See “On the ‘Driving Force of Anarchy’ and the Dynamics of Change. A Sharp Debate and Urgent Polemic: The Struggle for a Radically Different World and the Struggle for a Scientific Approach to Reality,” by Raymond Lotta at revcom.us.  [back]

7. “After Florence, North Carolina Must Rebuild Vulnerable Beaches Once Again,” Pacific Standard, September 27, 2018.  [back]

8. “To preserve our beaches, North Carolina must rethink coastal real estate policies,” Mat Gendle, Greensboro.com, October 19, 2018.  [back]

9. From “Some Key Principles of Socialist Sustainable Development,” revcom.us, April 18, 2010.  [back]

10. “Among the Ruins of Mexico Beach Stands One House, Built ‘for the Big One,’” Patricia Mazzei, New York Times, October 14, 2018.  [back]

11. From page 80 of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.  [back]

Hurricane Florence’s wind and storm surge hit Nags Head, North Carolina, September 14. Over decades, North Carolina has built up its precious, fragile barrier islands in ways that accelerate environment degradation and make them more vulnerable to storms. Why? Because it’s been enormously profitable. (Photo: AP/Gerry Broome)

Some thoughts on responses to seeing the film Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution

October 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader

At the film showing in Los Angeles, “several people commented that Part 1 presented an ‘airtight, irrefutable’ argument for why this system can’t be reformed—but that Part 2 was going to be ‘uphill.’ However, they were thinking about real revolution in the U.S. in ways they had never considered before. A Latino organizer and activist responded, ‘WOW! This is just on a whole other level. Avakian went to a whole other place. Wow.’”

I thought the comment about “a whole other place” spoke to the heart of the film. BA takes us to a place like we have not seen before. BA is a person who not only does a scientific analysis of the cruel system we live under, but has an answer as to how to defeat that system and all the horrors that go with it when the time comes, and bring into being a society based on what humanity yearns for and needs.

BA contrasts two societies in the film: capitalism-imperialism that enslaves the world today and a socialist society that could be won—through struggle. To me, the phrase “a whole other place” implies not only the end result but also what it will take to get there—our thinking and actions. It means our thinking has to change, from only seeing the hammer they hold over our heads, to start now to look at jolts that bring cracks to the system, which are happening in rapid succession, and cause people to look at things differently and act accordingly; how we think about people who are not like us; whether we think of revenge when we think about revolution. It will take struggle to build up the forces now in preparation for the time when the conditions are such that an attempt to begin to bring down this system is on the table. It means people coming forward now to be trained as leaders. “A whole other place” means everyone who hates what this system does—whether those on the bottom who are treated as less than human or people who see what the system does to others—coming together in whatever way they can to be part of this movement for revolution, to accumulate forces in order to impact the situation we find ourselves in; accumulate more, impact more.

“A whole other place” means being challenged—and meeting that challenge. Some people who view the film are challenged to see the system as it really is; others are challenged to get out of their comfort zone and decide to get their heads out of their asses; some are challenged to make a life-changing decision and become part of the movement for revolution, right now, with thousands of other people working together.

“A whole other place” means looking at the possibility of revolution for the first time, or in a new way, and being scientific about what it takes to make revolution. It means hopes and aspirations put on a scientific basis, questioning one’s belief in some supernatural being who will one day put things right.

Basically, “A whole other place” means getting into BA and the new synthesis, all the things mentioned above, and being open to and getting into what a different, liberating society looks like, what it means that people actually can run society for the benefit of all, not an elite group who dominate, oppress, and exploit billions of people.

Home page for the film:

WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION
A speech by Bob Avakian

Watch the film—find out more about this speech—and get organized to spread it