Snapshot from a park in the hood: August 11th
Report Back from New York Bus Tour
On Saturday, August 11th, an enthusiastic gathering of 40 people came to hear a Bus Tour volunteers talk about the impact of BA Everywhere in stories about the New York leg of the BAsics Bus Tour. This was in a neighborhood park that has hosted previous revolutionary events like an anti-July 4 picnic; and increasingly it has been the neighborhood people themselves, including those in a new Revolution Club, who are taking up the tasks to make these events happen.
Voices from the BAsics Bus Tour
Notes from a journal of a young woman volunteer on the BAsics Bus Tour:
It was a Friday morning when I got dropped off in the city. I was wondering what this bus tour was going to be like and how the people were going to be. I got to the RV late that night and the next morning we drove to a city a couple of hours from New York.
I was wondering how the first day was going to be. This was my first time ever doing something like this. We went around into the projects and the poor neighborhoods. There were two guys about 18 years old and one about 13. We walked over to them and they looked nervous. They didn’t know who we were. We said we were the BAsics Bus Tour. One guy in our group had a pin that said stop “stop and frisk” on it and one of the kids said “Can I get one of those buttons?” So we gave him one. Then the kid that got the button was telling us a story about how he gets stop and frisked so much. He said that just because he had his hand in his pockets that [the cops treat him as if] he has a gun and that the cop said that whenever he sees him, he is going to check under cars and stop and frisk him even though he never has anything on him.
Carl Dix speaks in Brownsville, Brooklyn, with residents and BAsics Bus Tour volunteers.
Follow the Tour, support and participate:
http://basicsbustour.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/baeverywhere
Source: SoundCloud / BAeverywhere
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.
100 Days - 100 Hoodies in Harlem, the impact of BAsics 1:13
Yesterday’s march “100 Days – 100 Hoodies” was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in Harlem. People expressed over and over that the system is greasing the skids to let George Zimmerman free and once again making the victim out as the criminal. And they want this to stop! Click HERE for pictures, and click below to read on.
June 2nd Celebration at Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem, NYC:
picnic and report back from the BAsics Bus Tour
On Sat. Jun 2 we had a picnic at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem to celebrate and welcome back the volunteers who had participated in the recent leg of the BAsics Bus Tour that went into the deep South.
A group of young girls ranging in age from 5-12 years old were the first to arrive. A week before the picnic one of the girls had run into revolutionaries and signed the BAsics 1:13 “No more generations of our youth…” quote banner — writing “Fair is fair” as her contribution. She had been thinking about the picnic all week and invited her friends. The girls read the quote palm card aloud in unison. The 5-year-old wanted to add “No Racism” to the banner and since she had not yet learned how to write an older girl wrote it for her.
![From Carl Dix’s blog:
June 5: WE ARE ALL TRAYVON; THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY!
Dear Friends!I just got back from Sanford, Florida, where I spent the weekend standing together with people there, speaking bitterness about Trayvon’s murder, and about all the other Trayvon’s; and taking to them a message of No More — “No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over… who have been condemned to a life of oppression and oblivion, even before they are born.” [BAsics 1:13]I’ll write more about that trip soon. Right now I’m writing you about June 5th, which is 100 days since the vigilante murder of Trayvon, and the call to make that day a day of Justice for Trayvon; a day to wear hoodies and say defiantly “We Are All Trayvon.”Whether or not people act on June 5th matters.
[[MORE]]
Right now the mouthpieces of the system are telling us that protest has done its part now that Zimmerman has been indicted and that it’s time to get out of the streets and let the courts work. The truth is that the system was working when it let Zimmerman walk free the night he murdered Trayvon and when it drug tested Trayvon’s dead body but didn’t drug test his killer. And it’s still working as story after story turns up in the media portraying Zimmerman as the victim and dragging Trayvon’s reputation thru the mud.IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE ACT WITH DETERMINATION TO DECLARE THAT WE WILL NOT SIT BACK IN SILENCE WHILE THE SKIDS ARE GREASED TO EXONERATE TRAYVON’S KILLER AGAIN!June 5th, 2012 — Wear your hoodies, and encourage others to wear theirs too. Organize others to get involved thru Face book and on Twitter. Create posters that say, “We Are All Trayvon!” and spread them to others. Take this message into your schools; bring it out at rallies after school, in your communities and in every way possible. And take pictures of whatever you do and send them in to the Stop Mass Incarceration Network at stopmassincarceration@gmail.com so people everywhere know that this is happening all across the country. Make sure there are no secret actions on June 5th.People in Sanford were very heartened to hear that people around the country haven’t given up on fighting for justice for Trayvon. Some of them are talking about what they could do there to be a part of this nationwide action. Join with them and others all across the country.
June 5: WE ARE ALL TRAYVON; THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY!
Carl DixMay 29, 2012](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4wg2dD1Nd1rowtzko1_500.jpg)
June 5: WE ARE ALL TRAYVON; THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY!
Dear Friends!
I just got back from Sanford, Florida, where I spent the weekend standing together with people there, speaking bitterness about Trayvon’s murder, and about all the other Trayvon’s; and taking to them a message of No More — “No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over… who have been condemned to a life of oppression and oblivion, even before they are born.” [BAsics 1:13]
I’ll write more about that trip soon. Right now I’m writing you about June 5th, which is 100 days since the vigilante murder of Trayvon, and the call to make that day a day of Justice for Trayvon; a day to wear hoodies and say defiantly “We Are All Trayvon.”
Whether or not people act on June 5th matters.
Carl Dix at a speak out in front of the Sanford, FL police station on May 25, 2012.
Sanford is where 17 year old Trayvon Martin was murdered in a modern American lynching
Speakout at the Sanford Police Station – WE SAY NO MORE, by Alice Woodward
Sweltering afternoon sun beats down through towering oaks and Spanish moss on the streets of a Black community in Sanford, Florida. A community that has witnessed a very different scene for the past two days. The BAsics Bus Tour has been rolling through bringing the BAsics of revolution and building for a special speakout right there in Sanford. For two days fliers went out with a picture of Trayvon Martin, “We Say ‘No More’ Speakout at the Sanford Police Station 4pm,” the news spread by word of mouth from friend to friend and on the radio with Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor making appearances on local stations to announce that the BAsics Bus Tour came to Sanford with a purpose and a message.
We came to Sanford because this is the place where Trayvon Martin was gunned down by the racist wanna-be-cop George Zimmerman. The place where the killer of a young Black man went free and police refused to arrest him for six weeks and only arrested him and charged him because people stood up and protested in the streets for weeks all around the country. We came here not because this is the only place that this kind of thing happens, but because this kind of thing happens all the time in cities and neighborhoods, to Black youth everywhere. The killing of Trayvon Martin concentrates the reality for oppressed youth throughout this country every hour of every single day and that’s why this resonated so deeply and people declared, “We are all Trayvon Martin.” Now people are being told to sit back, get out of the streets and allow the courts to “do their job” as the media goes into motion creating public opinion for Zimmerman’s acquittal, painting him as the victim and dragging Trayvon Martin’s reputation through the mud, all this working to lay the basis for this system to do what we’ve seen it does again and again – let the killer of a Black man go free.
We Say "NO MORE" printed in Florida Star
We Say “NO MORE” statement was published in the Jacksonville Florida Star on Thursday, May 24th. Click this link and go to page A3 of the e-edition.
Signed by Don Cheadle, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Carl Dix, and others. This is a statement that the killing of Trayvon Martin and the 2.4 million in prison make clear that there is a whole generation of Black and Latino youth marked and treated as a “generation of suspects” to be murdered and jailed. This is not an issue for Black people alone but for all who care about justice; it is not a random tragedy. We say NO MORE!
Share this Statement with everyone you know, say “no more!” and mean it, and spread the message widely!
