Watch and spread this video everywhere! It paints a compelling picture of how the movement for revolution is developing, growing and cohering through the BAsics Bus Tour. Hear from people who met the tour and hear Carl Dix, Sunsara Taylor and Clyde Young. The film captures the hope people feel when they find out that there could be a radically different and far better future by encountering the vision and works of Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader who has developed a new synthesis of communism. BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian concentrates all this and is at the heart of the Tour. It needs to be seen by thousands of people today, which can make a big difference in involving people in the movement for revolution.
We highly recommend that it be used for fundraising shown not only at events and collective efforts, but also to individuals who are able to contribute larger sums. Send the intro above and the link to the film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBxMETRSio) to everyone you know, especially people just finding out about all this. Ask people to spread it widely, post it online, and share via their social networks. Make copies of the film by downloading it from Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/45323963) and get these copies everywhere so people can show them on the streets, on portable dvd players and with individuals.
Contribute to the BAsics Bus Tour. Watch and spread this video to make the goal of $25,000 by the end of this weekend towards the next leg of the Tour… kicking off in NYC and surrounding areas. DOWNLOAD this for screenings throughout the weekend: vimeo.com/45323963
The BAsics Bus Tour has its last day in Atlanta… Back in the neighborhood, reading BAsics with people and getting into serious talk about Bob Avakian and the strategy for revolution.
In an Atlanta Neighborhood with the BAsics Bus Tour by Sunsara Taylor
This is an article from Sunsara Taylor about the beginning of the BAsics Bus tour in Atlanta, GA.
The neighborhood has been completely abandoned. Expanses of lumpy shrubs and deep grass surround it on three sides. On the fourth side, the sun glints off razor wire, row after row of it surrounding a federal prison; men inside are forced to live in captivity, routinely brutalized, insulted and humiliated and forced to do backbreaking labor, often on chain-gangs in the Georgia sun. Across a busy street from the lone apartment complex, a tiny parking lot hosts three little shops. No fresh fruits or vegetables are available, but liquor is in abundant supply. Despite the luscious green that surrounds almost everything down here in the South, many of the courtyards of the apartment are filled only with brown dirt. This is where the children play.
The first time w
e visited this neighborhood, I didn’t make it fifteen feet out of our car before a young Black man who had been sitting in the shade on the curb pointed at the poster I carried “That was me,” he said. The first time he was beaten by police he was just fifteen years old. They held him up against a wall by his neck, hanging and choking him before they worked his whole body over with their fists and batons. “Over there,” a slightly older man added as he pointed toward one of the nearby fields. Someone had been killed by police over there just a few months ago.
I told them that I was part of the BAsics Bus Tour, a group of revolutionaries who had come together from across the country to live and travel on an RV through the South to connect people up with Bob Avakian, the leader who has re-envisioned revolution and communism, and to bring people like them into the movement for revolution.
People across the country are supporting — and acting together with — the BAsics Bus Tour… from Seattle:
People gathered at Revolution Books in Seattle for a BAsics Bus Tour kick-off party. A nicely decorated table in the center of the store welcomed everyone with flyers, cards and papers and a sign inviting people to take stacks to help spread the movement for revolution. There was food and celebration of the potential for what the Bus Tour can change in the South and nationwide. People were moved and inspired by the video messages from the tour that we watched online-by the bold projection of BA and communist revolution and by the support for the Tour voiced by youth in Atlanta who had just encountered it.
Through the party, personal donations and money contributed from students in a college classroom, $240 was raised to support the BAsics Bus Tour. An additional large and very generous donation came from a woman and her husband. She shared her thoughts about why they had donated, saying she loves the RCP and cited BAsics 4:21, the analogy that reality is like a burning object, and if you want to move it, you need an instrument. She said she believes the masses can take up revolutionary theory…that people need an instrument to handle fire and Bob Avakian’s new synthesis is that instrument. She expressed a lot of hope in the Bus Tour’s ability to reach people who’ve never heard about this movement for revolution and need to understand how the world can be radically changed.
People created and signed a banner with BAsics 1:13 on the spot. Plans were made take it out to a large street fair over the weekend to spread word of the Tour, as well as gather people to watch video messages from the Tour on May 22nd. The whole idea and reality of the Bus Tour has struck a deep chord with people who are looking for a force to challenge “the way things are”. The Bus Tour has made very real for those who are looking for this and have heard of the Bus Tour, that there is a living force for revolution that is growing.
Join us, send in your photos, reports, and statements of support to baeverwhere [AT] gmail.com
One of the things that I see, something that I haven’t lost sight of, is this: I see all the strength of the ruling class, but I also see all the way through all this shit, all the contradictions in society—I actually see a force in this society that, if it were developed into a revolutionary people, actually could have a go at it, could have a real chance of making a revolution, or being the backbone force of a revolution, when the conditions were ripe. I see a force of millions and millions and millions—youth and others—for whom this system is a horror: It isn’t going to take some cataclysmic crisis for this system to be fucking over them. The ruling class, ironically, sees them too. It is those who once had but have lost—or those who never had—a revolutionary perspective…it is they who can’t see this.”
—Bob Avakian’s BAsics, Chapter 6 Supplement: “The Revolutionary Potential of the Masses and the Responsibility of the Vanguard
On the way to an outing two people stopped to ask for directions early in the morning. They pulled up to a corner where migrant workers were waiting. People from Mexico and Africa waiting for work saw the car and approached thinking it was an opportunity for work. “These guys are pushing each other and fighting each other to open the door,” The volunteer described through tears, “waiting to be exploited.”
It was hard to find the words to describe this, but very clear that a system that creates these kinds of situations needs to get the fuck out of the way of humanity. And the fact that we have a leader like Bob Avakian, that sees all the way through all this shit, means the masses have a chance.
Getting Oriented and Getting Started, the first 2 days of the BAsics Bus Tour, by Sunsara Taylor
Its been two days now on the BAsics Bus Tour. The volunteers are an impressive bunch. What hit me first is our obvious diversity. Younger and older, Black, white and Latino, male and female, with a tremendous range of different life experiences and depth of experience in the revolution. What hits me just as hard, though, is our common enthusiasm for Bob Avakian and the real revolution.
The first day’s orientation began with a showing of the first segment of Bob Avakian’s Revolution talk, “They’re Selling Postcards of the Hanging,” where he gets into the founding of this country in slavery and the hundreds of years of white supremacist terror which was inflicted on Black people as part of the enforcing the “American way.” BA describes not only the lynchings, but how white people would gather in a festive atmosphere to witness the lynchings of Black people and to snap pictures and make postcards of the hangings.
BAsics Bus Tour kickoff video! This collage video will be played at sendoff parties tonight all across the country. FOLLOW this blog, SHARE with others, and CONTRIBUTE towards the rest of this leg of the BAsics Bus Tour… and for the next leg. So we can connect people up with the movement for revolution, and with Bob Avakian - the leadership we have for the revolution we need.
People in Atlanta respond to meeting the BAsics Bus Tour. This will be played at parties across the country TONIGHT along with another video (soon to come). Be part of “pushing the Bus forward”… Start organizing a gathering Tuesday night (a special video announcement about the Tour will go up Tuesday morning for people across the country). FOLLOW this blog, SHARE with others, and CONTRIBUTE towards the rest of this leg of the BAsics Bus Tour… and for the next leg. So we can connect people up with the movement for revolution, and with Bob Avakian - the leadership we have for the revolution we need.
The First 48 Hours on the BAsics Bus Tour
by Alice Woodward
Bus riders, its only been two days and it feels like the Basics Bus Tour has swept through Atlanta with the leadership of Bob Avakian and the revolution we need, and a lot has happened that’s new for everyone that’s become a part of it. This bus has stopped at a high school twice, housing projects, an immigrant community, a radio show, a forum on the murder of Black men, and an excellent Carribean restaurant that donated a meal to the volunteers.
The first night volunteers were in Atlanta a supporter of the bus tour brought us to a neighborhood where the bus would touch down for the first time the next day. This is a Black neighborhood with run down housing complexes lined with stark black iron fences. All the public housing in Atlanta has been torn down recently and some people who were pushed out live here. Across the street is a prison that can be seen from the bus stop where people wait every day. Jordan, a volunteer was almost in tears describing these conditions to the group.
Inside the Basics bus a group of other volunteers made up of people from all over the country, Black, white, Latino, women and men, young and older, rehearsed before touching down, the chant they would be singing was,
When the revolution comes, won’t be no mass incarceration!
When the revolution comes, won’t be no police brutality!
When the revolution comes, no oppression of immigrants!
When the revolution comes, won’t be no wars for empire!
When the revolution comes, won’t be no dissin’ the sisters!
The tension was palpable, “I’ve got butterflies.” Jordan says, because its the first time they’re going into the neighborhoods, and we don’t know how people will respond.
