February 12, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

“You Think You’re Woke...
But You’re Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare —

This System Cannot Be Reformed,
It Must Be Overthrown!”

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

 

To you who are fed up with this society and “solutions” that are no solution...

To you who are angry and defiant and want to see an end to the white supremacy, the patriarchy and its many forms of gender oppression, the persecution of immigrants, the imperialist wars and occupations and threats, and the capitalist plunder and destruction of the environment—an end to all, or any, of the horrible forms of oppression and exploitation that define and intertwine with this capitalist-imperialist society...

To you who seek not justice for yourself or even just your own people, but the Emancipation of ALL Humanity...

To you who hate the fascism of Trump and Pence, but see through “vote for me and I’ll set you free” and any road that just makes the present horrors a little more tolerable for some within the U.S., while people around the world suffer even more...

To you who choke on “I’m woke,” “I’m good,” “No worries” when the world is being torn asunder and who have no patience for the putrid morals and relations of this culture...

To each and every person who senses that none of these horrors will be solved by this dog eat dog capitalist/imperialist system and that something radical—a real revolution—is needed... even as you have a thousand questions as to what that revolution would look like and whether it is even possible:

There Is a Way Out of This Madness!

“Let’s get down to basics:
We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.”
—Bob Avakian

We are constantly told, openly and by implication, that there is no alternative to the present order. But that is wrong!

There is a scientific approach that makes clear this madness is unnecessary and indicates the potential pathways for change. There is an actual plan for a radically different—and radically better—society, on the road to wiping out all exploitation and oppression, and emancipating humanity. There is a strategy to draw forward the millions and millions needed to make that happen. There is the leadership, in Bob Avakian (BA), the architect of the new communism and the leader of the revolution. These are great strengths on the people’s side. But, what is now missing and urgently needed is YOU—to get with, support, and become an organized part of the revolution.

There is a project to put this revolution before millions and organize thousands into it. That project is the Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour—starting out in Los Angeles in March and going around the country for the rest of the year. We’re going to boldly bring forward that science, strategy, and leadership for revolution and go right up against all the bullshit—the outmoded, petty, self-deceiving, and self-seeking bullshit that just ends up perpetuating the outrages of today.

But that’s not all. There’s no revolution without organization. We’re going to work: organizing for a revolution—enough now of everyone in “their lane,” with eyeballs glued to their screens. We’re gonna go everywhere, from the hard streets to the suburbs, from the hardscrabble rural areas to the campuses, and to wherever people are creating the new or debating the future. We’ll be giving people the concrete ways and means to support, contribute to, and join this revolution, in many different ways, big and small—with ideas and with practical involvement, with support and with questions and criticisms.

The tour will go far and wide, spreading and showing the film of the historic 2018 speech by Bob Avakian, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, that deeply answers the two questions in its title. And, the tour will get out the pamphlet, HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution, which concisely lays out the principles for how we get from the situation we are in today to actually winning an actual revolution.

Busting the People Out of Mental Shackles

We’ll call out the dead-end paths and mental shackles:

• The identity politics and all the similar rationales that end up with people looking out for themselves or their group, while the system grinds on, taking lives and crushing spirits, and dividing those who should oppose it;
• The religions that preach reconciliation and serve to keep minds away from confronting and changing reality as it really is;
• The entrepreneurialism—whether “legit,” gangsta, or NGO-style—that keeps everyone locked in the destructive, horrific capitalist present;
• The phony “socialism” that raises people’s hopes but only aims at repackaging and dividing up the spoils of U.S. domination of the world.

And we will definitely take on complicity with the Democratic Party, which poses as “the only alternative.” When in fact:

The Republican Party Is Fascist
The Democratic Party Is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
This System CANNOT Be Reformed—It MUST Be Overthrown!
We Need an Actual Revolution

The tour will IMPACT everywhere it goes—opening up debate, stirring up controversy, shaking up society so that people no longer feel they have to accept the unacceptable and adjust to injustice, and instead are inspired to get organized for a revolution to change everything.

The tour will work with the Revolution Clubs where they exist and help form new ones where they don’t. The tour will connect with people protesting and resisting this system’s crimes, especially those that concentrate the deep conflicts of this system. Stepping to people with revolution straight up, and coming from that place, we’ll unite in fighting injustice and oppression, and we’ll struggle with them to see the need and possibility for revolution. This is what it means to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution. The tour and the Revolution Clubs are where you learn about the revolution while leading—contributing to building vanguard organization necessary to lead a revolution.

The tour kicks off in March in Los Angeles and Southern California. Your participation and your support are needed to start, sustain, popularize, and defend the tour.

What You Can Do NOW

• DONATE: Without hype, absent fundamental change, without revolution, the future of humanity and the planet hangs in the balance. This tour cannot be sustained without your contribution. Become a MONTHLY SUSTAINER and make it possible to keep the tour on the move through the rest of the year. People are pouring their money into politicians of the Democratic Party—who are nothing but war criminals or war criminals-in-training, competing to be commander in chief or representatives of this bloody empire. Make a Profound Difference and DONATE to the possibility of something that could get beyond this horror and radically change the whole world.
• Learn about this tour. Go to www.revcom.us to view the speech by Bob Avakian and to learn more about the tour, the movement for revolution, Bob Avakian, and the new communism.
• Get onboard. Go to revcom.us to see ways you can spread the word, get with the tour, and get organized.

A Radically Different and Better World IS Possible!

Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

 
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The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour:

 

 

Letter from a comrade

Hastening While Awaiting With The New Call To Get Organized

February 14, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

To the editors:

I was inspired to read the Call for “The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.” Yesterday, I went back to Bob Avakian’s speech from last summer—WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION—and this provoked more ideas on this Tour and how we can immediately begin making this what it needs to be.

Bob Avakian (BA) says in this speech that a crucial next step in making this revolution real is that, “Thousands need to get organized into the ranks of the revolution now, while millions are being influenced in favor of this revolution.” He goes on to call for organizing these thousands right now into “networks of people, working together to spread the word about and organize people into the revolution,” as part of a national movement. He talks about the importance of a “critical mass”—meaning a force which, “although it may be small at first, has sufficient numbers and determination to fight through obstacles to have a real impact on the ‘political terrain.’” I think all this bears very directly on the Tour. 

BA then goes on to quote The New Communism, saying:

You are affecting the terrain by having organized forces united around a revolutionary line... it goes out to the world, especially in this age of the internet. It goes all over the place. And then people do want to know: Who are those forces that did that?.... It’s not that they all join up with you right away, or that you should bring them fully into the ranks of the revolution right away, before they even have a chance to get a basic understanding of what this revolution is all about. There’s work and struggle that has to go on. But you’re able to get this dynamic going where you’re growing, you’re wielding your organized forces for revolution in a way to significantly impact society and drawing people to you, and through struggle accumulating more organized forces... and then you are able to do more to affect the situation, once again through a lot of struggle. This is the dynamic we have to advance while, once again, not narrowing our sights to just that dynamic, but looking at the whole world and how we affect the whole world toward the goal of revolution....

This is the correct basis for ... understanding the point ... about the “thousands” and their relation to the “millions.” It’s not just some vague notion of “thousands of people” who sort of go “thumbs up” on the idea of revolution (or even are very enthusiastic about it). If you’re talking about leading millions, you need an organized force of thousands of people, a growing number of people, in the thousands, who are oriented, organized, trained and led to be an actual revolutionary force and pole of attraction...

I think these sections of the speech are crucial orientation for taking out this Call. Bringing forward these thousands, now, is an immediate objective in actually making revolution at the earliest possible time. 

On that basis, there are tasks that cry out to be done, including right now. I know that some cities are organizing meetings soon to let people know about and enlist their support in this effort. Some ideas I had in this regard:

• we need to rally everyone who has seen and been inspired by BA’s filmed speech, let them in on this, get their ideas on that basis, and give them ways to spread word of the Tour and build for these upcoming meetings;
• when we take out the Black history flyer, or any other key materials, this Call should be right there with it, getting out in tandem with that material, not only letting people know about this but giving them an immediate way to get organized and be part of this (including participating on the spot in donating, flyering, taking materials, etc.);
• we should work with people to get this Call up everywhere, especially where the revolution has had a presence, or where they go, whether to places like Vallejo, Calif., the site of a recent outrageous police murder, or conferences on the environment, or other places people who are questioning the outrages of the system gather.
• very importantly, we need to make raising funds for this Tour an immediate and integral part of taking out this Call, involving people in many different ways to collect and make donations. This is going to be an essential part of accomplishing the mission of this Tour, and a key part of building up the organized networks and bringing forward a different culture of people very broadly who see themselves and are acting as part of this movement for an actual revolution.

All this should be done proceeding not from “building a tour,” or “building a program,” but from what BA in the speech calls the “strategic approach of hastening while awaiting the emergence of the conditions to go all-out to actually overthrow this system.”

I hope the above sparks both effort and creativity.

A comrade

 
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The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour:

The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

Organizing Meetings Around the Country

February 14, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Organizing Meetings:

Bay Area, CA:

Sunday, Feb. 24, 4:00pm
Revolution Books
2444 Durant Avenue
Berkeley
(510) 848-1196

Chicago:

Sunday February 24th 2:00pm
Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E. 71st Street
(312) 804-9121

Los Angeles:

Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019 at 3 p.m.
Revolution Club Organizing Center
2716 S. Vermont Ave Unit 8
(323) 424-6687
revclub_la@yahoo.com

New York City:

Sunday, February 24, 1:30 pm
Revolution Books
437 Malcolm X Blvd./Lenox Ave.
(212) 691-3345

 
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The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour:

How Comfortable Is Your Comfort Zone? How Safe Is Your Safe Space? And for Whom?

Last Week, in the Amerikan Empire: Is THIS the Future You Will Settle For?

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last week, in the Amerikan empire, the following happened:

• The U.S convened a conference in Warsaw of 45 countries, the purpose of which, according to what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blurted out in a later-edited tweet, was to discuss “the common interest of war with Iran.” Mike Pence, “looking presidential” according to the press, demanded that European nations follow the United States and “stand with us” in violating the treaty they all signed with Iran just two years ago. Along with Israel, another key player at this conference was Saudi Arabia, currently conducting an extremely genocidal war against Yemen, with U.S. military and diplomatic backing, as this article makes clear.
• The U.S. continued to use starvation as a weapon against the people of Venezuela in its support of a coup attempt against the government there, as we outlined last week. And it continued to keep “all options on the table”—that is, it continued to threaten armed invasion.
• While the U.S. pursued combative trade negotiations with China, David Brooks, a prominent columnist for the New York Times, pointed to what he called “the grave, economic, technological and intellectual threat to the United States and the world order” posed by its main imperialist rival, China. He welcomed the unity that Republicans and Democrats have found in attacking China, and talked about the “existential threat” that China poses “to the liberal international order.” But Brooks forgot to mention the more than 10 million murdered by the American war machine just since 1945, and the countless millions more driven from their homes to construct this “order,” as this chart makes clear. And as this chart also makes clear, this imperialist slaughter was thoroughly “bipartisan”—when it comes to aggression against the world to preserve imperialist interests, both parties find it very possible to “reach across the aisle” and act in a “bipartisan” way.
• Within the empire itself, the fascist-in-chief declared a state of emergency to gain the funds to build his wall. If upheld by the increasingly fascist-dominated courts, this would be a further leap in the concentration of power in an executive branch dominated by the fascists and a violation of the rule of law. This move came after the Democrats basically both voted for a wall and for significantly heightened repression at the border, but did not allot as much money as Trump demanded.
• And in Vallejo, California, yet another young Black man was murdered by police, as he sat in his car, windows rolled up, as this details.

Meanwhile, Democrats did basically nothing to oppose the fascist barrage of hate-mongering against immigrants, led by Trump, that dominated TV and the internet. The manufactured hysteria about the border further hardened the fascist base and served the regime’s overall goal of normalizing “ethnic cleansing” and open white racism and American chauvinism. And they did nothing while Pence war-mongered in Poland. Well, actually that’s unfair. The Democrats did do something—they rushed to make sure that everybody knew that most of them supported the coup in Venezuela too!

Again, just this week: from Iran and Yemen to the border and “detention facilities,” from Venezuela to Vallejo, the blood to ensure empire flows. And you’re hoping one of these Democrats, neck deep in all the crimes above and more, is gonna DO anything in the face of this? When it’s clear that they, like the Republicans, are an imperialist party?

The fact is this:

At this extremely fraught juncture for humanity, when its very future existence has been called into question, there are only three possible futures: the openly fascist future being steamrollered into place by Trump and Pence; the fundamentally similar future of imperialist war, white supremacy, patriarchy, environmental destruction, and persecution of immigrants on offer from the Democrats, who differ with the fascists on how that should be carried out; and the revolutionary future, the new communist future, the possibility of which is pointed to by the leadership and work of Bob Avakian (BA)—the science, the strategy and the leadership for an ACTUAL revolution.

It would be unconscionable at any time, but it is especially so now, to not just refuse to engage this work but to fail to support the movement around it. This third future, and the movement for revolution embodying it, needs to contend! Right now, there is a concrete and very urgent opportunity to support and take part in that with the Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.

Be part of fighting for the future humanity needs.

 

 
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Vallejo, Calif.:
Pigs Take 3 Seconds to Act as Judge, Jury and Executioner... 20-Year-Old Willie McCoy Murdered ... for Sleeping in His Car

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

It was Saturday night, February 9, and Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old Black man, was seen asleep or passed out in his car in the drive-through lane of a Taco Bell in Vallejo, California. Then someone called the police....

According to police, when six cops arrived on the scene, they found the driver “unresponsive,” and they allege that he “had a gun on his lap.”

“In a video that contains audio of the shooting—posted to YouTube [on February 13]—police can be heard yelling commands to McCoy and firing at him less than three seconds later. Many shots can be heard,” the San Jose Mercury reported.

3 seconds!!

“It seems like an execution,” David Harrison, Willie McCoy’s cousin and manager said. “It looks like my baby cousin was executed by a firing squad.”

Once again, loved ones describe a beautiful human being whose life was snatched away. Willie was a rapper and in a group called the FBG. Harrison said he loved making music and spending time with his nieces and nephews. “If you needed a few dollars, he was there. If you needed a ride, he was there.”  

“My boyfriend was shot by the police,” Willie’s girlfriend said. “I just want him to get justice—this hurts me so much. My baby was an angel and they took him from me.”

How Many More Times Will the Lives of Loved Ones Be Stolen by Police?

The Vallejo police declared their officers fired their guns “fearing for their safety.”

“Fearing for their safety”?

Twelve-year old Tamir Rice was murdered 2 seconds after the pigs rolled up on him (based on a 911 call saying someone at the playground had gun that was “probably fake”) ... the police said they feared for their lives!

Seventeen-year-old Laquan MacDonald was holding a knife at his side and moving away from the cops when he was murdered by 16 shots, seconds after the killer cop rolled up on him...the police said they feared for their lives!

And now, Willie McCoy joins them ... and countless others.

“Feared for their safety” is just a justification for the pigs to execute any Black, Brown, or Native person—for any reason or no reason at all—that is upheld by the so-called justice system, which is really the injustice system! It’s a death sentence hanging over every Black, Brown, or Native person whether it’s carried out or not.

How Many More Times Will Police Get Away with Murders Because They “Feared For Their Safety”?

The execution of Willie McCoy is part of a raging epidemic of police murder taking place across this country. This remains a continuing and horrific epidemic of needless deaths of mainly Black and Brown youth at the hands of the police, even if it is not in the news, or there is far too little mass protest and resistance demanding it STOP!!

White supremacy and the vicious oppression of Black and other oppressed peoples—from the nightmare of slavery... to the horrors of lynching and Jim Crow... to the epidemic of racism, mass incarceration, and police brutality, terror and murder today—are woven into the very fabric of this capitalist-imperialist system. This system cannot be reformed. It can and must be overthrown—through an actual revolution. The time to be working toward that revolution is NOW!  

HOW LONG MUST THIS GO ON!?

HOW MANY MORE WILL BE MURDERED BY POLICE BEFORE THIS ENDS!?

THIS IS INTOLERABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE, AND IT MUST STOP!

THIS SYSTEM CANNOT BE REFORMED, IT MUST BE OVERTHROWN!

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IDENTITY POLITICS AND PRIVILEGE

February 13, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Have you ever noticed that the one privilege these “identity politics” hustlers don’t talk about is American privilege?—the privilege that comes from living in the USA, a country that plunders the world and whose wealth and power rests on brutal exploitation and oppression throughout the world, backed up by the massive violence of the American military. These hustlers want all they can get of that privilege. In opposition to that, what the masses of humanity need is to do away with and move beyond this whole vampire system, putting an end to all exploitation and oppression.

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.

You Think You Are Woke...
But You Are Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare

Get Organized for An ACTUAL Revolution to Emancipate All Humanity

Updated November 10, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

 

 

Noche Diaz Presenting the Lifetime Fire Extinguisher Award to Al Sharpton at the Sacramento, CA State Capitol.

 

This is a leaflet that the Revolution Club Chicago is passing out at Louis Farrakhan's February 17 'Saviours' Day' speech:

Stop Being Farra-CONNED!
We Don't Need to GET IN ON Oppression, We Need to END Oppression
Get With the Real Revolution

February 16, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Welcome to Farrakhan’s “Saviours’ Day” message, where he will tell you how after 400 years of being bitterly oppressed, you should now learn to be a more obedient slave, prove you can be useful to your oppressors in hopes of negotiating a better deal and becoming their junior partners, and look to an imaginary ruler in the sky to one day give you a chance to be big-time oppressors.

All the terror and torture and brutality inflicted on Black people since the beginning of the USA is God’s way of leading his chosen people to their destiny? What kind of sadistic, tyrant God would that be? And why should anyone want a destiny of becoming new rulers over others?

Farra-CON, with his worshipping of American capitalism and American chauvinism, his ridiculous Yakub story, his vicious attacks on Jews, and his disgusting patriarchal program of male domination over women and demonizing LGBTQ people, is selling oppressed people a package of trying to get in on oppression, not get rid of it.

If you want to follow a wanna-be oppressor who begs Donald Trump to give him land so he can try to set up his own version of Israel—a genocidal state that serves U.S. imperialism—while he organizes Black men to act like police against people who protest and rebel against this system, and trains people in a slave mentality... follow Farrakhan.

If you want to put an END to ALL oppression, get with the scientific theory and leadership we have for making an actual revolution to overthrow this whole system and emancipate all of humanity: the new communism forged by, and the ongoing work of, Bob Avakian (BA). BA has developed the science, the strategy, and the vision and concrete plan for a real revolution and a radically new society on the road to full emancipation.

Bob Avakian says,

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

Revolution Club Chicago 
(312) 804-9121 
revclub.chi@gmail.com
FB/Twitter @RevClubChi

revcom.us

 

 

From our readers:

Reform vs Revolution at a West Coast Climate Conference

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Members of the Revolution Club, LA went to a conference at UC Irvine called Fire and Ice: The Shifting Narrative of Climate Change. The conference, attended by about 500 people, featured well known activists and authors against climate change like Bill McKibben, initiator of 350.org; Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction; and Nathaniel Rich of the New York Times.

Through our interventions and impact, we repolarized to where a central question at the conference was reform or revolution. Various speakers felt compelled to speak to that question from the stage, and our interventions drew clear lines that repelled some and drew in others who were either curious or appreciative of the sharpening of the terms.

In preparation for the conference, we looked at the content of what the speakers had been saying, we looked at how the question of the environment was shaping up on the terrain, and we made a hypothesis that the main thing we would have to struggle over to really stir things up in a good way was the Green New Deal. We prepared ourselves for ideological battle by writing a short one page polemic with simple analysis and clarity, and this made all the difference: “The Green New Deal: Sustainable Snake Oil for a Green American Empire.”

The audience was made up mostly of older white liberals and academics, not many students attended, and people were really agonizing about the state of the planet and the effects of climate change. Most people at the conference, especially McKibben, said, if we could only pressure Congress and get some campaign finance reforms we could actually stop climate change.

Some speakers emphasized the social justice aspects of the Green New Deal. One person upheld it for being “intersectional” and overall it was presented as being capable of overcoming all forms of inequality because of its focus on disadvantaged and marginalized communities!

The first day McKibben presented and really pushed the Green New Deal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the solution to climate crisis. Repeatedly he and others posed the problem as “Big Oil’s influence in politics.”

Our intervention during McKibben’s speech and the Q&A portion put forward the basic position in the polemic—the Green New Deal is nothing but a better business plan for a Green American Empire, that peddling this as the solution is driving people right back into the jaws of the system that caused this mess, locking people in the voting booth as the planet burns—we need revolution to really deal with the climate crisis. McKibben spoke to the question from the stage, and acknowledged that we were supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), led by Bob Avakian. He said he thought it was possible that Bob Avakian and the RCP very well may have the only solution to the climate crisis, but that he really doesn’t think that is the case. He went on to say that the RCP hasn’t really gotten anywhere and “we don’t have time for ‘impractical’ solutions like revolution.”

We didn’t get the chance to respond to this, but after the Q&A people came up to debate us and to get clarity on the difference we were speaking to. A dozen or so people were visibly flustered and upset. Some thanked us for the intervention or wanted to know more, but the line was clearly drawn with real substance.

We came back the next day with sharper agitation, having summed up the night before that we had to hit at the American chauvinism and the idea that we could use the institutions of the state to solve the crisis as part of speaking to the question that revolution is something we need to go to work on NOW.

The impact of our agitation the previous day rose to the surface. Nathaniel Rich of the New York Times spoke on writing the Times special issue on the environment. Within his speech he polemicized against revolution several times. After this speech, handfuls of the conference were reading our polemic, and several people came straight up to us to ask what this is about and why we weren’t for the Green New Deal, and what we propose as the solution. An organizer of the conference even came up and begrudgingly thanked us for our “heckling” the day before saying that they thought that it advanced the conversation.

Other speakers were putting forward different ideas about climate change, presenting important scientific work, but when it came to proffering solutions, most everyone believed or really wanted to believe the Green New Deal would solve it. There were some important skeptics raising questions about the impact of the Trump/Pence regime’s rollback on regulations, about complications of applying national policy to try and mitigate a global problem (regulations in imperialist countries lead to African countries consuming the dirtiest oil), and about whether the raw materials for these solar panels and things would still come from the exploitation of the people of the world.

The last panel was about the law, activism, etc., basically giving people a way to act. The panelists were talking about the Green New Deal and recognizing the need to combat various ideological barriers to our ability to deal with climate change, including the individualism, consumerism, etc. The person who stood out most though came straight out with some basic materialism about the Green New Deal—he laid out the fact that fossil fuels are so integrated into the global system of production that you would not be able to implement this without wreaking havoc on the whole global economy. He said capitalist competition will not be able to deal with this and nothing can deal with this in the framework of time that we have except a planned economy. This was very good, and the intervention we did here was along the lines of “the biggest delusion plaguing this conference is that you can somehow use the murderous institutions of this system to change anything in the interests of humanity... these institutions are what back up capitalism all over the world—they have to. Yes, we need a planned economy but in trying to carry that out, you will come up against the power of the state which is why you need an actual revolution.” No one really spoke to that question except the guy who talked about a planned economy, and he just kind of skirted over it calling the Democratic Party imperfect, and agreeing you will need to deal with “militarism.”

Looking back, there is more back and forth contention we could have done, but with what we did do, we became a force to contend with at the conference. We were a magnet for people who were working through different kinds of questions. Working as a team of scientists was critical in this. We summed up every intervention and tried to identify how to make the next one sharper, and figure out what were the questions that needed to be spoken to. Having the short polemic ahead of time played an essential role, including leaving people with the basic argument who heard pieces of what we were saying from the floor. A lot of people responded to us in contradictory ways, with a lot of people challenged by what we were putting forward. Many people were vacillating between delusional unscientific hope and soul crushing cynicism and defeatism. Among a few people there was clear existential panic. People were really weighed down by the severity of this crisis and the seemingly impossible odds to stop it.

We want to do better in the future at not just promoting revolution, but bringing it more to life as an active goal to strive for. Partly this means doing better at having it out over what is really practical and what is not, in terms of solving this terrible problem; and partly this means doing better at giving people ways to act and be part of this, now, in ways that move that possibility closer. But even with that, we feel that we learned, and transformed, a lot through this experience.

Going After the Sacred Cows of Identity Politics on a College Campus—Opening the Debate on Reform or Revolution

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From the Revolution Club, NYC (@NYCrevclub)

You Think You’re Woke... But You’re Sleepwalking Through A Nightmare! Intersectionality, “democratic socialism,” and all the rest of that stuff will keep you locked within the system we have now. These approaches can only lead you to bickering, begging and bargaining for seats at the imperialist table. We need a revolution—NOT reform—a revolution to OVERTHROW everything rotten and emancipate all humanity.

We brought this message to an Ivy League campus and challenged people to debate. Before we got very far, campus security freaked out and kicked us off campus. So we came back, but this time with a satirical flyer from campus security that said, “A Message From Campus Security: Do Not Talk To The Communists On Campus.” We dressed up in a police jumpsuit and the ugliest pig mask you have ever seen and handed out the flyer. A picture of our flyer was tweeted out by a writer to 47+ thousand followers, we ended up in group texts and somebody told us that we’d been made into a meme. We succeeded in flipping the repression to create a buzz on campus and some initial engagement, even as this was still on a small scale so far. But it opened up enough for us to identify at least two wrong arguments that came up frequently from students who did engage and one bullshit excuse many used to avoid this engagement.

[1] “Yes we need fundamental change but I don’t want violence.”

First, let’s be real: In not working to overthrow this system, you are allowing tremendous violence to be carried out every day. You are allowing thousands of Black and Latino people to be murdered by police, to be locked up in the hellholes of the prisons. You are allowing people around the world to be blown apart by American bombs, millions to be brutally enslaved and exploited in sweatshops in Bangladesh and beyond. You sit in a country (the USA) whose entire wealth was built on violence and this wealth is expanded today through more and more brutal forms of violence. These are ALL un-reformable elements of capitalism-imperialism. In not working to end this through an actual revolution, you are ultimately putting your stamp of approval on all this oppressive violence.

Second, not all violence is the same. The violence of a woman acting to stop her rape is NOT the same as the violence of the rapist. It’s true that when the time comes and millions are ready to put everything on the line to bring this system down and put an end to the horrors it causes, these millions will be confronted by the violent repressive force of the machinery of the state which embodies and enforces the existing system of exploitation and oppression; and in order for the revolutionary struggle to succeed, it will need to meet and defeat that violent repressive force of the old exploitative and oppressive order. Would you have opposed the Civil War to end the violence of slavery?

To be clear, now is not the time to launch this revolution, but it is the time to be getting organized for it. To quote Point of Attention #6 of the Revolution Club: “We are going for an actual overthrow of this system and a whole better way beyond the destructive, vicious conflicts of today between the people. Because we are serious, at this stage we do not initiate violence and we oppose all violence against the people and among the people.”

[2] “It’s not my place to talk about oppression because I’m white.”

Bullshit! Everyone of every nationality and gender is capable of and has a responsibility to understand this and fight for the fundamental change needed to end all oppression. Truth is what corresponds to objective reality; this is established through evidence, not through “identity.” For example, if a Black person says that they don’t believe that police are indiscriminately murdering Black people, this would not make it true because the evidence shows that police murder Black people at epidemic rates.

Until you learn to evaluate the CONTENT of different programs and where they lead rather than following people based on their “identity,” you will get played. You end up following people who carry out mass deportations of immigrants and drone strikes like Barack Obama did during his presidency. Or you will cheerlead for women war criminals like Hillary Clinton, who led the charge to depose Muammar Qaddafi, plunging Libya into chaos, leaving a crime scene of thousands dead and refugees fleeing the collapse of society, drowning as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

And let’s be honest, “I can’t speak out because I’m white” more often than not becomes an excuse to sit on the sidelines and do nothing as the horrors of the world rain down on the masses of people here and around the world.

[3] One Bullshit Argument Used to Avoid Debate:
“I don’t need to engage this because I talk about these issues in my ‘safe space.’”

Stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about humanity first. News flash: You sit at the top of the global food chain. Every corner of this world is drenched in brutal exploitation and oppression from the capitalism-imperialism which the U.S. dominates on a world scale. It’s in the blood of the women who make your clothes, in the blistered hands of the immigrants who pick your food and the Black children who have been cast off, with a third living in poverty. A safe space for YOU doesn’t do shit about all this. The fact that people yearn for “safe spaces” shows how oppressive this society is. But to argue that you don’t want to engage with revolutionaries who have a real plan and strategy to end oppression for people all over the world because it takes you out of your comfort zone is bullshit. That is just yourself first, America first, and giving a big fuck you to the rest of humanity.

And a challenge to all:

As Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution, has said,

“...It is not acceptable to refuse to look at something—or to refuse to believe something—because it makes you uncomfortable. And: It is not acceptable to believe something just because it makes you feel comfortable.” (from BAsics 5:11)

If the young minds of this generation feel no responsibility to debate, to think critically, to step outside of our comfort zones for the seven billion people on this planet, humanity will remain in shackles. The future is unwritten: which one we get is up to us.

So we came back, but this time with a satirical flyer from campus security that said, "A Message From Campus Security: Do Not Talk To The Communists On Campus." We dressed up in a police jumpsuit and the ugliest pig mask you have ever seen and handed out the flyer. Photo: Special to revcom.

"The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Towards Justice."

Bullshit.

This System Has Enslaved, Brutalized, Tortured and Betrayed Black People for 400 Years!

We Need an ACTUAL Revolution to Emancipate ALL Humanity!

February 11, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

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

– Bob Avakian, leader of the revolution

The Most Important and Urgent Truth Demonstrated by the History of Black People in America

From the Revolution Club, NYC (@NYCRevClub)

If ever a history brings out in vivid color that where there is oppression, there will be resistance, it is the history of Black people in America: a history of over 400 years of the most vicious, brutal and cruel oppression, from slavery, through Jim Crow lynchings and segregation, to today’s mass incarceration, police murder and brutality, with an open white supremacist back in the White House... and a history of heroic resistance and rebellion that has rocked this system on its heels and inspired people the world over, from slave rebellions to the Civil Rights Movement and Black Liberation struggles to today's fights against police terror and mass incarceration.

If it was just a question of courage, of determination, and of sacrifice, Black people, and many oppressed people all over the world, would be liberated by now.

But the most important and urgent truth demonstrated by this history is this: “[W]ithout the necessary scientific theory and leadership, the struggle of the oppressed will be contained, and remain confined, within the system which is the source of oppression, and the horrors to which the masses are subjected will go on, and on.”¹

We have seen this too with the struggle against the oppression of Black people repeatedly being misled, betrayed, and channeled back into the confines of the very system that is the source of this oppression.

But today, this is no longer necessary. Today, we have the scientific theory and leadership we need to get free in the new communism forged by, and the ongoing work of, Bob Avakian (BA). BA has developed the science, the strategy, and the vision and concrete plan for a real revolution and a radically new society on the road to full emancipation. As part of this, BA has shown how, “White supremacy and capitalism—they have been completely interwoven and tightly ‘stitched together’ through the whole development of this country, down to today; to attempt to really put an end to white supremacy while maintaining the system of capitalism would tear the entire fabric of the country apart.”²

Indeed, only a REAL REVOLUTION can put an end to this nightmare. Right now, “Those who catch the worst hell under this system, and those who are sickened by the endless outrages perpetrated by this system, need to join up with this revolution. Thousands need to get organized into the ranks of the revolution now, while millions are being influenced in favor of this revolution.”³

You think you are woke but you are sleepwalking through a nightmare. We Need an ACTUAL Revolution to Emancipate All Humanity.

Let go of the vicious notion that getting Black faces at the top of this system of global plunder and exploitation will change anything meaningful for the masses of people here and worldwide when history has shown time and again exactly the opposite...

Stop getting played by basing who to listen to or follow on someone’s “identity” rather than critically evaluating the objective content of what they have to say and what it will mean for humanity’s future....

Cast aside the paltry notion of Black people striving to compete on the terms of this dog-eat-dog system through “Black capitalism” and Black entrepreneurship....

And it’s time for oppressed people to get off their knees and stop praying to a nonexistent God to come down and save them. Like BA says: “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.”...

And one last thing to white people specifically (as well as others who are not Black)—there is no excuse for sitting this fight out, even under the BS guise of “staying in your lane” or acting merely as an “ally.” All of us of every nationality bear full responsibility for ending this oppression by taking up this struggle, scientifically digging into the cause of the problem and solution, and acting on that understanding—as part of emancipating all humanity.

If you are ready to stop getting played and get on the road to real emancipation, you need to get into the science, the strategy, and the leadership we have to make the revolution we need.

“The chance to defeat them, when the time comes—the chance to be rid of this system and to bring something far better into being—has everything to do with what we do now. Everyone who hungers for a radically different world, free of exploitation and oppression and all the needless suffering caused by this system, needs to work now with a fired determination to make this happen, so we will have a real chance to win.”⁴

 

Humanity Needs Revolution and the New Communism

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution

 

---

Footnotes

1. Six Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, January 1, 2016 [back]

2. Bob Avakian: Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution [back]

3. Excerpt from HOW WE CAN WIN, How We Can Really Make Revolution, the strategy for an actual revolution from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. [back]

4. Excerpt from HOW WE CAN WIN, How We Can Really Make Revolution, the strategy for an actual revolution from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. [back]

 

Why I Went to Challenge Brittney Cooper—and What We Could All Learn From This

By a member of the Revolution Club, NYC

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

I recently went to an event on Black Feminism and Hip Hop to challenge Black feminist author Brittney Cooper. I brought an open letter written by a comrade of mine titled, “Hey Brittney Cooper—Do You Realize How Politically and Morally Bankrupt It Was For You To Invoke the War Criminal Nancy Pelosi When You Shut Down A Revolutionary?” When two of us in the audience separately posed this question to Cooper, she refused repeatedly to answer the question.

But the question matters. The problem of people taking up leadership based on “identity” rather than on the content of what is being brought forward and where those ideas will lead is extremely widespread and very damaging, far beyond Brittney Cooper as an individual. This kind of identity politics prevents people from thinking critically and sets them up to get played. For example, while Cooper claimed to agree that the problem is capitalism and patriarchy, leading people to cheer for a war criminal simply because that war criminal is a woman only strengthens capitalism and patriarchy. As it turns out, so did most of what Cooper had to say that night as she proceeded to advocate the whole night about how oppressed people can get inside of it, and be part of the same system that is down-pressing other people worldwide.

Here are some more things we can learn from the content of what Cooper and her Crunk Feminist Collective revealed that night...

First, they talked about what they saw as positive advancements in hip-hop in the time that they’ve been blogging about it. They cited as advances, artists such as Young Thug because he wore a periwinkle dress, Jaden Smith because he doesn’t conform to traditional masculinity, Syd Tha Kyd because she is openly gay, Cardi B and Beyoncé as icons of feminism. They even cited Jay-Z’s album 4:44 as some kind of breakthrough because he has a song about his mother who is a lesbian.

It is true that there have been changes—some positive—in the last 10 years of hip-hop. And some of these changes have been influenced by hard-fought struggle from below that Black feminists and others have been a part of. With that said, what they highlighted as hallmarks of advance shows the limits of where elevating “identity” over content will take you.

Although the song that was mentioned about Jay-Z’s mother and her life living in the shadows as a Black lesbian woman, and the heaviness of what it meant to hide who you love and hide that part of you and to still be there for your child coming up in the projects of NYC, was a positive thing, this does not negate the overall message that the album “preached.” Beyoncé and Jay-Z are artists that have straight-up popularized Black people becoming a part of the bourgeoisie. From lines like, “I just might be a Black Bill Gates in the making” in Beyoncé’s song, “Formation,” to Jay-Z’s song, “The Story of OJ,” which spouts the same BS story that if only Black Folks invest in themselves then they will have a better life, and rubs people’s faces in how high he’s climbed, despite the fact that the masses of Black people remain trapped at the bottom. And that doesn’t even count the anti-Semitism in that song! We don’t need any cutthroat Black Bill Gates or more Black entrepreneurs looking down on the masses of people, blaming them for what this system does to them. We need to get rid of the system that has for so long enslaved, tortured, beaten, and exploited Black people and frankly the vast majority of people on this planet. Getting in on that plunder and that hustle doesn’t stop that. It just adds a chocolate face to that already massive dung heap of a system.

As for Cardi B, what she is an “icon” of is raunch culture—celebrating everything filthy and degrading about how men treat women in this patriarchal world. She celebrates taking “ownership” of that with the insane logic that if you somehow do it bigger and badder than it has been done to you, it is positive and uplifting (empowering even) because you are a woman. As if somehow objectifying other women and oneself and treating them and oneself like a sex object is “liberating!” No, it’s just reinforcing the same tired patriarchal relations. The fact that it is a woman doing it doesn’t make it any less ugly.

These are dead-end expressions that lead one to upholding everything ugly about what the system does to people and has people doing to each other. The relations among people being celebrated in these examples aren’t “human nature,” they flow from the nature of the system of capitalism-imperialism. Repackaging them with the face of the oppressed doesn’t change this. We don’t need more expressions of this. What we need is a radical revolt against this revolting culture, one that not only calls out the bullshit but reflects the kind of society that is possible. The Points of Attention for the revolution that the Revolution Club upholds, lives by, and fights for lays out what kind of world we can fight for and challenges the conventional way that people are trained to relate. These two points in particular concentrate the radical direction that humanity needs: Point #2 says, “We fight for a world where ALL the chains are broken. Women, men, and differently gendered people are equals and comrades. We do not tolerate physically or verbally abusing women or treating them as sexual objects, nor do we tolerate insults or ‘jokes’ about people’s gender or sexual orientation.” Point #4 says, “We stand with the most oppressed and never lose sight of their potential to emancipate humanity—nor of our responsibility to lead them to do that. We work to win people of all backgrounds to take part in the revolution, and do not tolerate revenge among the people.”

We need this kind of culture, basing ourselves on the highest interests of humanity rather than on the interests of one group over another. We shouldn’t be striving to just flip things upside down and fight for a world where the oppressed get their chance to be on top or their seat at the table. We shouldn’t be striving for “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Rather we need to fight for the emancipation of all of humanity. This needs to be opened up as part of the fight for an actual revolution to bring that better world into being.

Next, the speakers were asked to comment on the current political moment. During this portion, Cooper said that Stacey Abrams, the Black female Democrat who gave the response to Trump’s State of the Union, was her champion. Cooper’s argument: “She looks like me.” She even said, “If you don’t fuck with [Stacey Abrams], I won’t fuck with you.” Cooper also argued that a big problem “we” need to take on now is “white women” and “white feminism,” saying that white women were “treacherous” and are only good as allies, not as friends. After going on about this for some time, she laid out a whole polemic against actual revolution. She talked about how Black people, who already grow up in rubble, don’t need the violence that tearing down the system would cause. She said that Black Folks who grew up poor don’t need to go through that kind of trauma again and that it would only bring harm to people who have been through so much. She claimed that only someone from the middle class (insinuating someone with privilege) would advocate for that.

First, let’s deal with what she said about “rubble.” The question that begs to be asked is, what caused this “rubble”? In this country, the normal workings of capitalism-imperialism are inextricably interwoven with white supremacy. From the foundation of this country to today, white supremacy is a defining part of what makes America AmeriKKKa. This system can’t stop the continuation of the oppression of Black people and its only “solution” is more mass incarceration, more police brutality, and more murders by the hands of the police. This horror has been overseen and expanded by both Democrats and Republicans and it will continue until the system is overthrown through an actual revolution.

Look at what the Democrats, the party Stacey Abrams is representing, have brought humanity. Not only have the Democrats played a role in this, they are actively getting people to go along with what this country is doing to people all over the world. That includes the nightmare that they have put the people through in Yemen, Gaza, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala. But that is only a fraction of the rubble that is caused by this system—again, overseen by both Democrats and Republicans. But all this gets hidden, and excused, when you proceed just from your own identity out in a country like this. Even if you are from among the oppressed, proceeding in this way will blind you to the full scope of what that rubble really is. Whatever your intentions, you end up upholding “America First.” Capitalism-imperialism can’t stop that plunder or those wars for empire but it can find new Black and Brown female faces to get people fooled into supporting that nightmare.

Next, let’s deal with this notion that “white women are treacherous.” That is just bullshit—the problem isn’t white women, it is the system and the way it trains people to act. Yes, white supremacy is a part of how this system has trained people and, yes, there have been white women who have acted in horrific ways towards Black people, but it is not in their DNA. And just like there are Black people fronting for oppression, there are white people in the struggle for liberation for real—and there needs to be many, many more of them. This is a good thing. Writing off all white people is harmful and it is wrong. It lets the system off the hook, and it is training people to stay within the divisions that have been made by this system.

To overcome these divisions and all the oppression this system enforces, we (humanity) need a revolution to overthrow this system and destroy the institutions of the old order and build a society that people can thrive in and that is aiming toward the emancipation of all of humanity. I felt the responsibility to put forward this challenge and to struggle with Cooper and those in the room to look beyond their own “identity” because this outlook works against ending the very oppression many of them care so much about. I used to think that the problem was white people too, until I read Bob Avakian, or BA. My first thought in encountering him was “What the hell does this white guy have to tell me that I don’t already know?” But then I read the quote from him at the end of this article and—it really shook me that he had written something so serious on the oppression of Black people, acknowledging the pain and the brutality that they’ve been through, connected that to all of humanity, and put a real way it could be stopped so poetically. The quote challenged me to go deeper and see what BA had to say and learn more about the new synthesis of communism he has forged and the deeper connection that all oppressed people and all of humanity have to one another. This system not only has people closer than they’ve ever been in human history, but has us all tied in a deep web of exploitation and oppression. My eyes were opened up to the reality that the same system that enslaved the African people and brought them on these shores in slave chains is the same system that is starving and bombing the people of Yemen in this day and age. I learned that this can be stopped and that there is a real chance humanity has at winning this fight. I remember being not only inspired but having real clarity for once on why the world is the way it is and how it could be. This took science and it took work for me to fully grasp where that oppression comes from, but it also felt liberating to know that this isn’t a part of any supposedly unchangeable human nature and that human beings can consciously change history. We have a real responsibility to do that now. So, not only do I challenge people to stop proceeding based on “identity” and to stop cheering for the Democrats and join in a real revolt against this revolting culture, most of all I challenge you to get into BA and the new synthesis of communism.

Quote:

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

 

Standing Up Against Trump’s National Emergency & Calling Bullshit on American Chauvinism and Unprincipled Attacks on RevCom

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From the Revolution Club, NYC (@NYCrevclub)

On Friday, February 15, the night Trump declared his illegitimate National Emergency, the Revolution Club of NYC went to a rally called by the Democratic Socialists of America and Cosecha, an immigrant rights group. About 80 people turned out. Speakers denounced the fear that immigrants live in. Some also argued against Trump’s wall from an American chauvinist perspective, emphasizing that the $6 billion for the wall could be better used for education, housing, health, and other things “that could help this country.”

The organizers wouldn’t let us speak, and in this situation of a relatively small rally, we didn’t feel like it was necessary to throw down over this. Instead, we joined the rally and talked to all kinds of people passing by.

When the rally was officially over, we raised our voices and spoke about why we were there and drew forward people who were more serious. A smaller but good crowd, some from the rally as well as some who were just passing by, gathered to listen. We agitated about how Trump’s declaration of emergency is an escalation of fascism, but also went hard at the delusion of the “Blue Wave,” “Women’s Wave,” and the Democratic Party in general. It hasn’t stopped anything—but it has got people sleepwalking as this nightmare intensifies.

We went right up against the imperialist chauvinism of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). We called out how, by placing their focus on health care, education, and housing for people in the U.S., they are just fighting for a bigger share for Americans of the wealth America extracts through vicious exploitation and plunder from the sweatshops of Bangladesh to the starvation in Yemen to the mass rapes and civil war in Congo and beyond. In contrast, we are fighting for—and what humanity needs—is an actual revolution to overthrow this system of global imperialism and bring about a radically new world for all of humanity.

This got under people’s skin in a good way. Some folks came up after and commented on really being hit by the idea that DSA was just fighting for a bigger piece of America’s imperialist plunder. There was a lot of meat to what we said, and some good calling out of bullshit in a way that connected—some folks (including some from the rally) listened raptly for 15-20 minutes and were clear that while we were in unity with standing up against the wall and war on immigrants, we were calling bullshit on the harm of some of the “solutions” being proffered.

We got into how it is the system of capitalism-imperialism that is destroying people’s homelands and forcing them across borders—through global networks of capitalist exploitation, through unjust wars, through environmental destruction. This cannot be solved under this system. The fascists have a genocidal “solution” to it and they are deadly serious and gaining momentum. But the Democrats are also a ruling class party of American empire. Not only are they conciliating and capitulating to Donald Trump and his fascism—refusing to take on his Hitler-like dehumanization of immigrants—they have also played a hideous role in militarizing the border, in criminalizing and deporting immigrants, and in making people’s homelands dangerous and unlivable in the first place.

We hammered at the truth: Only an actual revolution that overthrows this system can bring about a world without borders and where everyone—no matter where they were born, the color of their skin, their gender or sexuality, or their language—is treated as a full human being. And we got into how big a deal it is that BA has developed the scientific approach, the strategy, and the vision and plan for an actual revolution and a new society on the road to real emancipation. We promoted the upcoming “You Think You’re Woke... But You’re Sleepwalking Through a Nightmare—The System Can’t Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown! Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.”

All this was controversial—not surprising—as well, and some debated this with us afterward, but in a good way (do we really need leaders, isn’t that part of the problem—and in an earnest way, and moving through the struggle). We also did the Mighty Mighty RevComs chant and some masses joined in.

After a while, one of our crew pointed out that we were being listened to very deeply and we should call on people to come and get organized with us, get connected, make sure this went somewhere—so we did.

After the rally, Cosecha NYC posted an unprincipled attack on us on Facebook claiming we had interrupted several times and tried to drown them out (lies easily disproved by their own livestream of the event). We called on them to retract this dishonest statement, but also took this as a further opportunity to clarify the differences that had played out at the rally over political program and outlook and challenged people to break with their American chauvinism and get into the real revolution. Shamefully, they deleted our response repeatedly. But we posted it on our own pages and are sharing it here.

From Cosecha NYC:

Thank you all for coming out tonight in solidarity, rallying against this so-called national emergency and rallying to fight against all walls, and all border!

However, we noticed that Refuse Fascism (also known as Revolutionary Communism) did not come in solidarity with Movimiento Cosecha and specifically attempted to upstage our messaging. They came in an hour early to try to draw people to their rally rather than ours, tried to interrupt us several times, and tried to force themselves into our program. They were not part of our coalition and we specifically asked them to step back; they outright disrespected us and tried to drown us out.

Cosecha is an immigrant-led movement organizing for immigrant rights; our politics are for the people, and we will not be co-opted. Thank you again to all the people and organizations willing to work with us in good faith, and we are excited to continue the fight in the future.

*****

The Revolution Club NYC response (deleted repeatedly by Cosecha NYC, but posted on our pages):

This is false. Speaking for the RevComs, we joined your rally in unity. We asked to speak and were denied with the inane rationale: “This is OUR event.” As if anyone owns the struggle against oppression. Whatever. We joined the rally with everyone else. Never disrupted. (As your own livestream posted above shows.)

AFTER the rally was completely over, we raised our voices to those who chose to listen.

We said Trump’s State of Emergency and Racist Wall are a leap in asserting a FASCIST America that can only be stopped through massive struggle by the people from below to drive out the regime.

We called out the delusion and moral bankruptcy of relying on the Democratic Party—whether outright or by putting fresh “woke” faces on top of this same imperialist system. The Dems are part of the PROBLEM—a ruling class party (Bill Clinton began the militarization of the border, Hillary Clinton backed the coup that drove so many more to flee Honduras, Obama was the Deporter-In-Chief). DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is just for more spoils for those inside the empire at the cost of blood, exploitation, and misery around the globe.

The system can’t be reformed, it must be OVERTHROWN. As such, we got into the strategy, the scientific approach, and the leadership that exists in Bob Avakian who has developed a new communism and authored a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

We heard snarky bullshit from some about this, but weren’t surprised. Avakian is the most radical revolutionary on the planet who has a highly developed approach to get to a world WITHOUT America. We know some at the rally prefer the “USA! USA!” chanting Ocasio-Cortez and are allergic to real revolution. If that is you, have the courage of your convictions and make an argument. Don’t make up LIES.

Still, many were not so jaded and stuck around, listened intently, and dug into things deeply as the night went on.

Final point: While we actively work with Refuse Fascism (RF) and deeply support its mission, we are NOT synonymous. There are many—and need to be more—people in RF who were there who are not RevComs and it is tremendously disrespectful to them to treat them like they don’t have their own volition and didn’t participate in their own way tonite. They came to the rally in unity and did their thing and righteously so.

****

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

February 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

Every week, Revolution features one quote from BAsics, by Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution. 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.

 

Reposted from RefuseFascism.org

Women in White Surrender to Trump's Thoroughly Fascist State of the Union

February 8, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The following article, written by Coco Das of Refuse Fascism and originally posted on Refusefascism.org, sharply analyzes important elements of Trump's important – and fascist – State of the Union speech.

By Coco Das, contributing editor to RefuseFascism.org

Trump’s State of the Union address on February 5th was a disgusting display of white supremacist demonization of immigrants straight out of Hitler’s playbook, Christian fascist lies about abortion that went almost completely unchallenged in the news commentary, vicious “America First” chauvinism putting Iran, Venezuela, and the people of the world in its crosshairs, and a grim glimpse of our nightmare future if fascists are allowed to consolidate their power. This was a speech in which new groups of people were being recruited and won over to fascism, with great success. People who should be fiercely resisting the Trump regime instead played by the rules and got played:

• Those who celebrated Trump’s endorsement of the First Step Act as some kind of prison reform got played. Last night we saw the true aims of the First Step Act in full bloom, as a cynical mechanism to recruit new collaborators into the fascist program.
• Those who call everything Trump does a distraction and insist on talking only about healthcare for “hard-working Americans” got played. Trump talked plenty about healthcare, using a child recovering from cancer as a prop in a program where only the lives of certain Americans matter.
• Those who say “Of course we need border security, we just don’t need a wall,” got played. The obscene cataloguing of brutal crimes allegedly committed by “illegal” immigrants should have sent chills down the spines of everyone who claims to care about immigrants or have even a basic knowledge of Nazi Germany. This should have been the moment when these women in white should have turned their backs and walked out. But no, it was met at best with stony silence until the moment passed.
• Those celebrating the Women’s Wave got played. The Women’s Wave at the State of the Union was wave after wave of cheers and applause coming from the new, hip, radical Democratic representatives.

If you have a heart for humanity, as sickened and disgusted as you should have been by Trump making crude conciliatory gestures and then going in for his vicious attacks on immigrants, women, and the people of the world—you should be more disgusted by the response from the women in white who were supposed to represent the people most under attack by this regime. The color white was chosen as a tribute to the Suffragette movement, but it is also the color of surrender, and surrender they did. Despite a few eye rolls and grim expressions at the most hateful parts of Trump’s speech, quickly forgotten once he moved on, despite their crisp white outfits contrasting with the stiff suits of the GOP, despite “raising the roof” when Trump boasted about women entering Congress, and despite Nancy Pelosi’s supposed sarcastic applause, they did nothing to oppose Trump. Nothing to draw a line in the sand for the people who are under the boot of ICE, Homeland Security, the police, the prison system, the military, and all of the departments and institutions now guided and controlled by Trump’s fascist regime. They stood when they were supposed to stand and clapped when they were supposed to clap.

But, believe it or not, it got even worse than that. The lowest point of the night was this: when the women in white chanted “USA USA USA,” louder and more exuberantly than any of the Republican fascists in the room, that was the moment when Trump won. That ugly MAGA chant coming out of the mouths of those women as they celebrated America’s gangster power around the world, showed us what this #resistance is really about. It’s about maintaining American empire without all the ugly words. Let’s dress prettier and use prettier words and go bomb the shit out of some people. Let’s plunder the world’s resources and distribute the spoils among us. Fuck the rest of the world.

At Trump’s State of the Union, the women in white showed us that they are ready to do their job—to COLLABORATE with a fascist regime and lead their followers to do the same. This is what it is ... not the “politics of resistance,” as Trump called it, but the politics of conciliation, the politics of complicity, the politics of collaboration.

If you found yourself fooled by this spectacle, if you were comforting yourself with some hope that this regime will be stopped by sarcastic clapping and eye rolls, snap out of it. It’s long past the time to dispense with the “leadership” of those who are leading you down a road to disaster. It is up to us to stop this catastrophe for humanity at the soonest possible time, thousands leading to millions in the streets, day after day, acting with courage and determination and refusing to go home until this cruel, illegitimate, fascist regime is removed from power.

 

From RefuseFascism.org:

Our mission: Millions in the streets demanding In the Name of Humanity, Trump/Pence Must Go

Updated December 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Our singular demand:

In the Name of Humanity, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

How does that happen?

Every fascist move by the Trump/Pence regime should be met by more struggle and involve more and more people and diverse political forces opposed to the moves of this regime. And this struggle needs to be aiming at and preparing for nothing less than driving out the whole regime through the non-violent massive struggle of people staying in the streets day after day, creating the kind of political crisis that could drive out the whole fascist regime.

[1] The most defining thing about the recent elections is that the fascist program of the Trump/Pence regime became more consolidated and its fascist social base was more fully unleashed. Pipe bombs sent to leading Democrats and CNN. A hideous antisemitic massacre. Racist murders of African-Americans. Vicious anti-immigrant lies of an “invading caravan” to be met by US Troops who Trump said should shoot if the refugees throw rocks. Trump whipping up his rallies – Nuremberg style. On top of two years of the regime eviscerating what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, banning Muslims, locking in a majority fascist Supreme Court, stoking violent white supremacy and xenophobia, hateful misogyny, and ripping up international alliances and ramping up the threats of war. The Trump/Pence regime and the forces within it have said they view this presidency as the “last chance” to secure their vision for this country. This will continue and grow worse – with Trump now firing Sessions, attacking reporters, doubling down on his racist nationalism – unless and until it is stopped by the masses of people acting in fierce and sustained opposition outside the confines of politics as usual.

[2] The Democrats winning a majority in the House did not change this. The Democratic opposition throughout the elections and Nancy Pelosi’s post-election speech, refused to confront Trump’s fascism, but instead normalized, accommodated, and then promised to collaborate with the regime that is bringing an American fascism. About the Democrats, it could be said:“ First they came for the Muslims, and I protested once and then let it happen… Then they came for the immigrants, and I voted for healthcare and stayed mum.” They are determined to maintain order – even if that is the order of fascism – rather than risk the instability that it would take to confront and drive out the fascist regime and the nightmare they are hammering into place.

[3] The people who hate and fear this whole fascist nightmare and direction must now ACT with great determination in the streets – while organizing to move tens of thousands and soon millions to join them in the streets – with sustained determination until we drive this fascist regime from power in the name of humanity.  This is why we are organizing a movement – aiming to bring hundreds of thousands and millions into the streets – to say: In the Name of Humanity, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

From Revolution Club, Chicago:

Music, Dancing, and Revolution at Fundraiser for #FreeMaya

February 11, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On Friday, February 8, a #FreeMaya fundraising party on the North Side of Chicago brought together fantastic musicians and a diverse grouping of about 50 people for a night that was a lot of fun and raised over $2,500 (and an additional $1,000 was donated online the next day). The night opened with Mariachi Tradiciόn Juvenil, an ensemble of youth musicians, playing traditional Mexican music, followed by a performance from world-class Chicago blues musicians led by award-winning songwriter and harmonica player Matthew Skoller. The music lit up the night as people took to the dance floor to the sounds of Mexican music and blues.

Maya is facing trial and the possibility of seven years in prison as part of a national trend of political arrests of Revolution Club members and Refuse Fascism activists. She was arrested for doing a silent protest for immigrants at the University of Chicago (more details below). Her outrageous case has begun to inspire people from different political perspectives to step forward to support her and fight to get this case known widely and raise and donate money for the legal and political battle. The fundraising party was a real expression of that, hosted by Refuse Fascism and Revolution Club, Chicago with different kinds of people really throwing in to make it happen. It was held at the Centro Autόnomo (Autonomous Center) of Albany Park which gladly opened up their space to contribute to fighting this case, and two representatives of the center spoke at the party. The musicians donated their art and their time, and some really threw in a lot of effort to help it all come together. A number of people worked with the #FreeMaya Defense Committee to do outreach and get donations from local restaurants, bakery shops, and incredible gifts to raffle such as drum and singing lessons and other art.

Speakers from the Revolution Club challenged people with the need for revolution, not reform, and being part of meeting the needs of making revolution. One speaker called out the craven “USA, USA” chants of the “hip new Democrats” at the State of the Union and challenged people with the reality that this system has no solution to what is being done to immigrants other than to continue it, but the revolution does and people need to get with this revolution. Another Revolution Club member gave a fund pitch that put in front of all the great need for people to financially support the revolution and fighting the cases that stem from going up against this system so that we can break through and take this fight all the way to getting rid of this system.

To donate to Maya’s legal defense go here.

---

Maya is a member of the Revolution Club who is being politically prosecuted for daring to be part of working for revolution and leading others to do so. She is facing trial and the possibility of seven years in prison for a silent protest for immigrants at the University of Chicago last March: 11 minutes of silence for the 11 million undocumented immigrants under attack by the fascist Trump/Pence regime. This protest was in conjunction with similar actions nationwide called for by RefuseFascism.org which was sounding the alarm about what this regime was doing to immigrants well before things like separating families and caging children even came to light. The protest was inside the public dining hall and was a challenge to the students, many of whom did in fact join in the 11 minutes of silence on the spot. University of Chicago police have a history of targeting the Revolution Club—as does the Chicago Police Department with which they work closely - and came down hard on this protest that wasn’t breaking any laws or even campus rules. They violently removed Maya from the building and then charged her with a bogus charge of battery on a police officer. At her first court appearance the real reasons she is facing trial were made clear by the prosecutor who laid out Maya’s political affiliations to argue against releasing her without bond.

Maya, a member of the Revolution Club, is being politically prosecuted for daring to be part of working for revolution and leading others to do so.

Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger by Rebecca Traister

Or: How to Domesticate Your Rage and Get In on a System That Exploits and Torments Women All Over the World

By Toni Redtree

January 16, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Rebecca Traister is a commentator on politics from a feminist perspective.  In her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, she exposes how anger works for men in ways that it does not work for women within the system—and how women’s anger has been the fuel often igniting movements for social change in the history of the U.S. Traister goes after the rampant misogyny that marked the 2016 election, and the more general and pervasive oppression that female political candidates and women in the professions and business must face. To be clear: there is valid exposure of this in her book including in the treatment of Hillary Clinton. But the election of the first female president would not have changed this, nor will Traister’s prescriptions do anything but keep the same machine that generates that oppression going.

Traister in Good and Mad posits the problem as government not being truly representative, prescriptively implying that if that representation can be wrested from these white patriarchal men the majority of women could be free from subjugation. She states in her chapter Let’s Get Elected: “In the wake of Trump’s defeat of Clinton, a gang of women were eyeing the aging cast of men who’d been hogging America’s political power ... forever, and imagining they might replace them. Replacement. It was a particularly charged concept...” [Emphasis ours]

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that fear of being “replaced”—backlash against the relatively minor concessions made to women and people of color—has fueled the rise of the Trump/Pence regime and the fascist movement more generally. But—much more fundamentally—NO! Replacement—that is, changing the faces in a system that remains fundamentally the same—does not make it represent those groups this system continues to oppress. "Replacement" just means you want to get to the top of it and grab “your” share of the spoils too.

Traister’s Fantasies vs. Historical Evidence

While a constant refrain, it is one that is thoroughly refuted by a mountain of historical evidence that women (and oppressed people) can come to the head of oppressive governments while the majority of the people they supposedly represent remain locked in subjugated existences and change anything significant for those people over any length of time. Did Obama’s election and presidency fundamentally change the situation of the vast section of people in the U.S. who are Black? Nearly every single country in South Asia has had women in power, sometimes for decades, with no real change in the horrifying oppression of women. There is more than enough evidence that women are equally capable of being pigs—presiding over a monstrous system—from Hillary Clinton to Theresa May to Angela Merkel.

There is NO historical evidence that women being equally “represented” in government have been able to fundamentally change or “reform away” the basic functioning of the capitalist-imperialist system, the very functioning of which engenders and reinforces—every second of the day—the systemic oppression and worldwide subordination of women. To the degree legal rights have been extended to women and other oppressed groups, they have largely required tremendous struggle and sacrifice from “below,” from the people—they have not been merely granted from on high!

Along with slavery, patriarchal rule was encoded into the nation’s founding—something Traister recognizes—but the fact is that the oppression of women continues to be integral to this system’s ability to function and exist. Even while a vast majority of the world’s female population has been drawn into the labor force, forces of reaction that aim to reassert and reinforce patriarchy have gained ascendance. Mike Pence, a Christian fascist, now sits within a heartbeat of the presidency; someone who believes in the literal biblical relegation of women to a man’s authority, and won’t sit alone in a room with a woman. 

Revolution Does NOT Mean Old Wine in New Bottles

Anyone who gets into the halls of Congress must play by the rules required by the system’s functioning and learn to “compromise,” as we hear incessantly from the Democrats… and as their actions prove. The subordination of women in this system cannot be “reformed,” “elected” or “represented” away—it’s in the nature of the beast.

None of this—especially changing faces atop this monstrous system—is remotely “revolutionary,” despite what Traister may claim. An actual revolution means a DIFFERENT system, not just different people administering oppression. An actual revolution requires the OVERTHROW of the system. It speaks to the ignorance of this society that one can get away with using the word revolutionary in the service of women motivated by something as hideous as getting atop—or their fair share in—a system as predatory, monstrous and outmoded as U.S. capitalism-imperialism!

Hillary Clinton—Exhibit A for Traister… and an Exposure of the American Chauvinism Saturating Her Approach

If there is a single example of the logical outcome of the political solutions in this book, it lies in Rebecca Traister’s shameless apology and support for Hillary Clinton.

Let’s state what should be an obvious and indisputable truth: Hillary Clinton is NOT a standard bearer for the liberation of women—she is a woman who is a war criminal. Just to take two examples:

• She is a woman who proved her hawk credentials as head of the Obama State Department—leading the charge to depose the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, as part of U.S. efforts to dominate the region. Traister, who laments Clinton’s inability to show emotion, has conveniently forgotten her Hannibal-Lecter-worthy performance gleefully announcing the slaying of Muammar Gaddafi. As Libya plunged into chaos, Clinton’s “competent” fingerprints are all over the crime scene of the thousands dead and the refugees fleeing the collapse of Libyan society, drowning as they try to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
• Clinton’s fingerprints can also be found on the women and children stranded in squalid encampments at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2009, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras told Secretary Clinton that the removal of the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, a left leaning liberal populist, would be an “an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” Despite this, and while issuing mild criticisms, Clinton lent legitimacy to elections that forbade Zelaya’s participation. The regime brought to power with the coup was openly fascistic and pro-U.S., plunging the Honduran people even more deeply into the grip of U.S. domination, state-sponsored political assassinations, and the intensified violence, poverty, and oppression that people are now fleeing by the thousands.

Hillary Clinton’s active support for the main policies of her husband, Bill Clinton, while he was President (and she was a major, if unofficial, member of his team)—policies of mass incarceration, of NAFTA and its devastation of Mexico, of the profoundly anti-woman and racist ending of welfare—were themselves criminal. Her role in the promotion of the slogan that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” (thereby ceding the moral high ground to the Christian fascists) was particularly damaging.

Anyone who can put “Hillary Clinton” and “using your anger as a catalyst for change” in the same sentence—much less the same book—is automatically disqualified from using the word “revolutionary” in their book title.

Ultimately, the problem is Good and Mad not only reinforces “let’s get elected” as the horizons of what is needed, but it’s fundamentally not really all that mad—commensurate with the depth, the scale, the intensity of women’s oppression all around the world. The fury of women can indeed be a catalyst for fundamental and radical social change—one that gets to the roots of the problem through an actual revolution. But Traister’s outlook and program can only channel that fury into futility or, worse yet, becoming a cog in the machine.

(Next week: Traister on #MeToo—And what happens when “me” eclipses “too”)

U.S. Senate Moves to Pass Law Effectively Censoring Criticism of Israel

February 11, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The “Combatting BDS Act” is part of the very first bill moving through the United States Senate in 2019. It should be called the “Targeting Exposure of and Enabling Genocidal Crimes by Israel Act.” It aims to silence and criminalize—in the form of official blacklists—exposure of and opposition to genocidal crimes being committed right now by Israel against the Palestinian people, and the role of the U.S. behind those crimes.

How many Americans know, to take just one example of what this act is aimed at covering up, that on January 26 of this year, eight heavily armed Israeli settlers stormed into the small Palestinian village of Al-Mushayyir and opened fire on villagers with live ammunition, injuring dozens and murdering 38-year-old Hamdi Naasan, who was carrying a wounded villager to an ambulance. The Israeli army stood by during the killing, then later joined in the assault on the village by firing teargas at outraged and defiant villagers. The only people arrested were Palestinian protesters. This kind of KKK-style terror is increasingly a daily fact of life—and death—for the Palestinian people. (For an exposure of the nature of the Jewish settlers, see the short Al Jazeera documentary Thou Shalt Not Kill: Israel’s Hilltop Youth.)

And how many people know the real story behind the origin of the state of Israel? That it is a product of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, accomplished through terror, rape, and massacres known as the “Nakba” (catastrophe in Arabic) leading up to, through, and beyond the year 1948? On April 9, 1948, for example, Jewish forces occupied the quiet Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. A 12-year-old survivor described what happened: “They took us out one after the other; shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him—carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her—they shot her too.” Women were raped, then killed. Dozens in this small village were massacred. Jewish terrorist organizations publicly bragged about the massacre to spread terror among the Palestinians, as part of driving the vast majority of them out of Israel. (See The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé, which draws extensively on firsthand accounts of crimes like this by the founders of Israel.)

As a result of the Nakba and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, today there are now almost 4.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli military domination in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (the “occupied territories”), and about 1.5 million Palestinians in Israel itself, where they are officially second-class citizens. The state of Israel now occupies about 78 percent of historic Palestine, and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to grow.

The U.S. has provided essential financial, military, and diplomatic backing for Israel. That is not because of the influence of this or that lobby, but because of the strategic nature of a “special relationship” where Israel—with its massive high-tech military machinery and nuclear arsenal—serves as a contracted hit man for the interests of the U.S. empire in a strategic part of the world.

Targeting Telling the Truth About Israel

In the face of ongoing and escalating horrors, people around the world, including in the U.S., have increasingly come to oppose what the state of Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinian people, especially, but not only, in the occupied territories. Among the movements exposing and opposing these crimes, BDS advocates boycotting Israeli institutions, divesting (withdrawing investment in Israel), and sanctions—severing diplomatic and other institutional ties with Israel.

The bill moving through the U.S. Senate puts a formal, federal stamp of approval on a wave of anti-BDS laws that are already in effect in over 25 states, and in the pipeline in many more. Some of these laws have been stayed by courts, and the federal law is aimed at overriding those impediments. Others are in effect with chilling impact. Last year, Bahia Amawi was fired from her job as a contracted speech therapist with a Texas public school district because she would not sign a pledge that she “does not currently boycott Israel” and “will not boycott Israel during the term of [her] contract.” After New York governor Andrew Cuomo issued an anti-BDS executive order, an attorney for a Palestinian rights organization said “[T]he chilling effect is very real. We have received calls from groups who are concerned they would lose state funding if they hosted a speaker in favor of B.D.S.”

The torrent of anti-BDS laws converges with intensifying censorship of any exposure of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. The organization Students for Justice in Palestine and their activities have been slandered as anti-Semitic, and their activities banned on campuses. (See “Opposing Israel Is NOT Anti-Jewish: Major Fascist Move to Repress Campus Criticism of Israel.”) Last November, author, professor, and activist Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN right after he spoke at the UN calling out Israel for “normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death.” (See “Professor, Author & Activist, Marc Lamont Hill, Fired by CNN,” by Carl Dix.) And on campuses across the country, academics and student activists who criticize Israel have been threatened, censored, and fired. (See “Major Fascist Move to Repress Campus Criticism of Israel.”) All this, and now the Senate bill adds up to an ominous, coordinated offensive, aimed at suppressing views critical of Israel and ostracizing and blacklisting anyone who dares express even the mildest opposition to Israeli policies.

This vicious attack must be exposed and defeated. Revolutionaries should enter into these battles: targeting and firmly opposing this naked censorship and supporting those who come under attack; exposing the breadth of the crimes of America and its attack dog Israel, and their roots in this system; and fighting for the only solution to that—revolution.

In doing this, we should be guided by HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution, especially the following: “While many people will do positive things in opposing the crimes of this system, we need to approach everything—evaluate every political program and every organized force in society, every kind of culture, values and ways of treating people—according to how it relates to the revolution we need, to end all oppression. We should unite with people whenever we can, and struggle with them whenever we need to, to advance the revolution.”

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From Revolution Club, Bay Area:

Barack Obama comes to Oakland to make you think this meatgrinder of a system works!

February 19, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Editors’ note: This leaflet was passed out at a "My Brother's Keeper" national event in Oakland on February 20, 2019

My Brother’s Keeper has arrived to peddle the played-out notion that competing for some pitiful charity money will bring "systemic change," that the problem is an “opportunity gap,” "youth violence" and the need for “safe communities.”

To this WE CALL BULLSHIT

Welcome to Oakland, where Oscar Grant was shot in the back execution style by BART police. Welcome to the Bay Area, where the Vallejo police just pumped over 20 bullets into Willie McCoy, killing him for sleeping in his car. Welcome to America, where NO Black or Brown person is safe from being murdered by the police who do this over and over with impunity. Where racism is written into the law to protect the police, who serve and protect a capitalist system that vampire-sucks the wealth out of the planet, dominating, plundering, exploiting, and crushing the lives of billions. 

To the former President of the most predatory imperialist country to ever rule over the planet.

To the Commander-in-Chief who waged war on 7 countries, drone bombed wedding parties, presided over torture at Guantánamo, and backed Israel’s genocidal massacres in Gaza.

To chief demagogue & peddler of false "HOPE," whose MBK (My Brother’s Keeper) program is predicated on the notion that the problem is our youth, that it's their outlook and their "bad choices " that need to be reformed.

Who blamed and shamed Black people in a speech at Morehouse College saying, “We know too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices,” and now “There’s no time for excuses.”

Whose Justice Department supported every single act of police violence that came before the Supreme Court, but called the youth in Baltimore “thugs” after they dared to rise up in rebellion after the murder of Freddie Gray.

Who names his charity after a Bible quote in which God incites jealousy by favoring one brother (Abel) over another (Cain), and when Cain kills Abel, God banishes Cain and curses his descendants. Well, there is No God, but your fairytale is actually a good metaphor for this system that divides people, sets them up to fight each other, and then blames them for the “choices” they make.

To the Deporter-in-Chief who deported more immigrants, tearing apart more families than any president before him.

And then went on to normalize Donald Trump, the fascist white supremacist, saying “We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country... We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team.”

To Barack Obama, we say NO MORE EXCUSES. This system has enslaved, brutalized, tortured and betrayed Black people for 400 years! Your system can’t be REFORMED, it must be OVERTHROWN!

Your presidency is proof that mentoring a few “leaders,” and getting some Black and Brown faces in high places is one of the most useful cons from the oppressor’s playbook. It helps to spread the illusion that in America “you can make it if you try,” and if you don’t make it it's your fault.

As the leader of the revolution Bob Avakian said:

Determination decides who makes it out of the ghetto—now there is a tired old cliché, at its worst, on every level. This is like looking at millions of people being put through a meatgrinder and instead of focusing on the fact that the great majority are chewed to pieces, concentrating instead on the few who slip through in one piece and then on top of it all, using this to say that “the meatgrinder works”!

BAsics 1:11

If you want to be one of the chosen few who “make it” through the meat grinder, and then get held up as an example of how “the meat grinder works,” go with Obama. If you want to get rid of this meat grinder system, get with the real revolution—one with the leadership, strategy and blueprint for a radically different and better society that is actually possible.

www.revcom.us

Revolution Club, Bay Area
revclub.bayarea@gmail.com
Twitter & IG @revclub_bay

On the cold-blooded police murder of Willie McCoy in Vallejo

This System Has No Future For Youth,
But The Revolution DOES

From the Revolution Club, SF Bay Area

February 21, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

“We are being targeted ... Police have a campaign of executing young black men who fit a certain profile. Willie dressed the part. He represents hip-hop music. They are profiled.”

—David Harrison, Willie McCoy’s cousin

This system has enslaved, brutalized, tortured, and betrayed Black people for 400 years! They have NEVER valued Black lives, except as labor to mercilessly exploit in building up the wealth of this country. And now, because this capitalist system has moved so much industrial work to places where they can pay people even less and make even more profit—and because Black people in racist America have always been last-hired and first-fired—this system has no jobs and no future for millions of people besides a jail cell or a police bullet. And they patrol whole neighborhoods like an occupying army, treating people like Willie McCoy as nothing but a “problem,” to be caged or killed off.

Willie McCoyThese pigs didn’t even think twice about walking up to Willie McCoy’s car while he was SLEEPING and pumping his body with 25 bullets! Same thing police did to Demouria Hogg when he was passed out in his car in Oakland in 2015. This was nothing but an execution, just like what they did to Oscar Grant, shooting him in the back while face down on the BART platform. Or when a Vallejo pig jumped up on the hood of Mario Romero’s car and blasted him through the windshield with 40 bullets (and even reloaded!), and then had the nerve to claim he “feared for his life.” And we could go on and on. If you “fit the profile,” as far as these pigs are concerned, you’re just a “thug” that deserves to die.

Here’s the basic truth about the police:

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

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:24

Listen to what he says—The police enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. Why are young people like Willie in the situation they’re in? Why was Willie struggling to get out of Vallejo, as his friends told us, and the poverty he grew up in? During World War 2, thousands of Black people fleeing lynch mob terror in the South and looking for a better life came to the Bay Area to work in the shipyards and other industries in places like Hunters Point, Oakland, Richmond, and Vallejo. Black people were exploited and discriminated against, paid less and working in more dangerous conditions than white workers, but at least they had jobs and could buy houses. At that time, the Mare Island naval shipyard in Vallejo employed almost 50,000 people. By 1996 the shipyard was completely closed down. Willie McCoy wasn’t even born yet.

After that, the Black unemployment rate shot up, and so did police terror, to the point where the small city of Vallejo now leads the whole Bay Area in per capita police shootings. Willie McCoy didn’t create this fucked up world, where you have to hustle just to survive, only to end up dead or in prison. He was born into it, and into the culture that this system created. As Tupac expressed it:

I’m tired of bein’ poor and even worse I’m black
My stomach hurts so I’m lookin’ for a purse to snatch
Cops give a damn about a negro
Pull the trigger kill a nigga he’s a hero
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares
One less hungry mouth on the welfare
First ship ‘em dope and let ‘em deal to brothers
Give ‘em guns step back watch ‘em kill each other

And Vallejo is known for that culture, from Mac Dre and E-40 to the youth coming up today like Willie, who went by the rap name Willie Bo, and his group FBG. The good side of that culture is the rebelliousness, the fuck-the-police attitude. We saw that the other day when the Revolution Club joined Willie’s many friends and community in a righteous and defiant march from the Taco Bell where he was killed, walking right into the Target store chanting, “Say his name: Willie McCoy! Willie didn’t have to die, we all know the reason why: The whole damn system is GUILTY!” We need a lot more of that fighting spirit! And we have to struggle to transform it into revolutionary understanding, determination, and organization.

The bad side of the culture is the celebration of killing and dying over turf you don’t even own—which is what the system wants you to do—and the glorification of pimping, which is just a way of acting like a little slave master toward women. The revolution we need is not about “getting yours” on the backs of other people, or trying to “make it” in this fucked up system. Even if a few can make it that way, the system is set up so the masses of people can’t. And the nightmare of this system will go on and on, one stolen life, one hashtag, one Willie McCoy after another. The only way the masses of people can get free, is by OVERTHROWING the system that is the source of all this oppression.

As the leader of this revolution, Bob Avakian put it:

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

Prison Abolition: How to Feel “Woke” Without Fundamentally Changing a Thing

A REVOLUTIONARY Intervention from Tala Deloria
Revolution Club member and UCLA student

February 23, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

If you’re serious about ending mass incarceration and police terror, you need to be talking about the OVERTHROW of this system. Anything short of this, in the final analysis, is bullshit.

This system of capitalism-imperialism is what’s driving the genocidal police terror and mass incarceration of over 2 million people, over half Black, Latino and Native American men and women. This same system terrorizes the globe with wars for empire, economic sanctions, coups, bombing and torture. It drives people from their homelands in desperation for a life and livelihood and then warehouses them in detention centers and concentration camps at the border. This same system enforces vicious misogyny, oppressive gender relations and has now brought to power a fascist regime reigning through undisguised dictatorship and intensified repression, concentrating the naked vileness that makes up the heart of America. This system CANNOT be reformed!

“...we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!” – Bob Avakian (BA), the leader of the revolution, from the speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can REALLY Make Revolution.

In opposition to revolution, what is the meaning of Angela Davis’ call for “abolition democracy”?

“...as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment—demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.” – From Are Prisons Obsolete?

This an argument for a paltry set of reforms. Illusions and delusions that will never be achieved under capitalism. In the same speech mentioned above, BA shows:

“White supremacy and capitalism—they have been completely interwoven and tightly ‘stitched together’ through the whole development of this country, down to today; to attempt to really put an end to white supremacy while maintaining the system of capitalism would tear the entire fabric of the country apart.”

To the degree any of Davis’ proposed reforms could be won under this system, the resources for this would come from America’s blood-sucking exploitation of the people of the world.

In the face of the desperately urgent need for real fundamental change, all “abolition” is doing is training you to nibble around the edges, begging and bargaining for a piece of the bloody imperialist pie. Those who do care about the nightmare of mass incarceration are funneled into endlessly working within – and even strengthening – the same system that causes this. This gets you to contribute to the tried and true hustle that this system can “do well by doing good,” while it keeps grinding up billions here and around the world.

Reality check: We live in a brutal capitalist dictatorship. This oppressive economic and social system is enforced by an illegitimate state power, a violent apparatus of repression and suppression. They keep oppressed people – Black, Latino and Native American people – in line through arbitrary and blood-thirsty police and vigilante terror. In every corner of the globe, it’s the US army with their bombs and torture, CIA backed-coups, and proxy wars that enforce the US’ dictates, global domination and plunder of resources.

This system’s violent hold on power does need to be broken. But that will take nothing short of an ACTUAL revolution: “Revolution where millions go up against, defeat and dismantle the system’s armed forces of violent suppression. Revolution that sets up a totally new power, with a different economy and different ways people relate to each other.” – From Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution, Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party

The leadership exists for this revolution in Bob Avakian: the most radical revolutionary on the planet who has developed a new synthesis of communism which includes a constitution with a re-envisioned legal framework and concept of justice for a future socialist society aiming to uproot all the oppressive and antagonistic divisions plaguing humanity. (At revcom.us/socialistconstitution)

Revolution IS possible and we are getting organized for this revolution NOW. There are answers for HOW to make revolution in this imperialist beast and HOW to bring forward the needed millions to do that. There is a strategy for this, concentrated in How We Can Win—How We Can Really Make Revolution, a battle plan for revolution from the Revolutionary Communist Party and further developed in the speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can REALLY Make Revolution (at revcom.us).