“You Can’t Break All the Chains Except One. Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution.” A talk by Sunsara Taylor at Revolution Books on August 9, 2012, on a quotation from Bob Avakian’s book BAsics. This talk was part of “TAKE PATRIARCHY BY STORM!”, ten days of activism in New York City against patriarchy and pornography.
You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.
BAsics 3:22
Hear Bob Avakian read from his memoir
From Ike to Mao… and Beyond:
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist
Chapter Four: High School
93 minutes / 43.9 meg (mp3)
Available at bobavakian.net
Bud Billikin Parade
On Saturday, August 11, tens of thousands of black people at Chicago’s Bud Billiken back-to-school parade, the largest African-American parade in the U.S, were introduced to this revolution and Bob Avakian through a dynamic contingent that came together around the Basics quotes 1:13 that no more generations of our youth — here and around the world — be condemned to the horrors this system imposes on them.
The response from the crowd was electric. People’s faces lit up and there were cheers, applause and some raised fists as they read the 6-foot signs with BA’s quote “no more generations”, many people reached out for cards and took extra to distribute in the crowd or to take home to spread to their neighborhoods. People in the crowd joined in on the chants “When the revolution comes” and “We say no more.” One young woman was so inspired by the contingent she repeatedly tried to scale the fence to join and only gave up when the police stopped her.
From the Road: Voices from the BAsics Bus Tour… Interview with E, BAsics Bus Tour volunteer, young Latino guy
Reposted from Revolution #277, August 12, 2012
Revolution: I’m trying to get a sense of the diversity of experiences and people who are part of this tour. If you wanted to just talk a little bit about how you first met this movement for revolution, and what brought you on this BAsics Bus Tour?
E: When I was first introduced to this party [the Revolutionary Communist Party], I was like doing a lot around prison reform and like the juvenile justice system. And it was actually my younger brother who found out about this party before me. And the way I used to view it, I was like, “Damn, my younger brother’s getting into a fucking cult and following this white leader, Bob Avakian. I have to go to these meetings!” And I first started coming to the meetings just to argue against him, just to show him, “Well no, you’re leading down the wrong thing,” but as I started to get deeper into this and coming to the meetings, I started realizing I agreed with a lot of what they were talking about. You know, I had a lot of contradictions around religion at that time, but that’s when I first started getting involved.
Threatening Situation for the RCP and Bob Avakian Letter Points to Dangerous Mischaracterization in National Defense Authorization Act Ruling
Read the full article at Revolution #274, July 8, 2012
The letter by Raymond Lotta, printed below, addresses highly important legal and political issues focused up in a recent lawsuit initiated by several progressive activists, journalists, and scholars. The lawsuit is contesting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, in particular one of its key provisions, section 1021. The NDAA gives any president the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely in military prisons, without charge or trial. It is a very ominous and threatening development.
On May 16, a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that section 1021 of the law is unconstitutional—and issued a temporary injunction blocking its enforcement. At this time, there is a further legal process underway which will determine whether this injunction will become permanent, preventing this section of the law to be enforced.
But dragged into this mainly positive ruling is an erroneous and potentially harmful characterization of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman, Bob Avakian. This mischaracterization (reproduced in Lotta’s letter below) could lend itself to false interpretations about the principles, objectives and strategies of the RCP, and could be misconstrued in such a way as to insinuate that the RCP is “terrorist.”
As the letter points out, this is a very serious matter: “A genuine revolutionary organization and its leader have been named and singled out as something they are not. In addition, this ruling could facilitate government persecution and harassment against, and attempts to restrict the political activity of, the Revolutionary Communist Party and its Chairman, with spillover effects to broader forces of dissent and opposition to the powers-that-be. The ruling could also invite and ‘legitimize’ attempts by reactionary forces to act against Bob Avakian and the RCP.”
In mid-July, the BAsics Bus Tour kicked off in New York City, rolling through the streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. Two RV’s filled with volunteers — women and men of different nationalities, ages and backgrounds have taken out Bob Avakian’s communist vision and works and are organizing people into building a movement for revolution.
People protested the Anaheim (just outside of Los Angeles) police murders of Manuel Diaz, 25, and Joel Acevedo, 21, this past weekend. They shot rubber bullets and bean bags into a crowd of women and children and also unleashed a police dog. This is the seventh and eighth police shootings in Anaheim this year. Again we say “What kind of system is this?”
Check out these clips from the Revolution DVD.
“Yes there’s a conspiracy… to get the cops off.” - clip from Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian given in 2003 in the United States. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. This talk, followed by questions and answers, is a wide-ranging revolutionary journey, covering many topics. It breaks down the very nature of the society we live in and how humanity has come to a time where a radically different society is possible. It is full of heart and soul, humor and seriousness; it will challenge you and set your heart and mind to flight. Get with the revolution at http://www.facebook.com/revolutiontalk and watch the entire film online at http://revolutiontalk.net
Revolutionaries took BA Everywhere to the Grand Slam Finals of Youth Speaks’ Brave New Voices Festival on July 22nd. This electric and inspiring yearly event is a place for emerging spoken word artists from across the country to raise their voices to an enthusiastic audience — the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland was humming with excitement. We distributed 28 copies of CDs of BA’s All Played Out (with music by William Parker) to the poetry teams competing in the festival. 1500+ cards with the quote “No more generations…” (BAsics 1:13) were handed out to the crowd. And outside, before and after the event young people added their statements to the two quotes on internationalism. Some people told us they had read the copies of BAsics that teams were given last year. And one woman, on reading the quotes, said “This is what I’ve been searching for!”
Excerpts from An Interview with Bob Avakian
What Humanity Needs
Revolution, and the New Synthesis of Communism
In current issue of Revolution newspaper, #276 — available on line at revcom.us
At the beginning of 2012, an in-depth interview with Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, was conducted over a period of several days by A. Brooks, a younger-generation revolutionary who has been inspired by the leadership and body of work of Bob Avakian and the new synthesis of communism this has brought forward. Brooks is the author of “God The Original Fascist” (a series of articles which appeared in Revolution in 2005, and is available at revcom.us). From the outset and through the course of this interview, Brooks posed probing questions, dealing with a wide range of subjects, including: the challenges of building a movement for revolution in a powerful imperialist country like the U.S., and initiating a new stage of communist revolution in a world marked by profound inequalities and antagonisms, and repeated upheavals, but also the weakness of communist forces at this time; the content of the new synthesis of communism, its vision of a radically different and emancipating society and world, and how this applies to many different spheres of society and social life, such as art and culture and intellectual inquiry and ferment; previous historical experience of the revolutionary and communist movements; and the personal experience, as well as broader social experience, which led Avakian to become a communist and contributed to his development as a communist leader. The fact that Avakian did not know in advance what the questions would be, and that many of them came up through the course of the interview itself, adds to the liveliness of the interview and the living sense of the method with which Avakian digs into, examines from many angles, and “breaks down” the kinds of far-reaching and often complex questions which were posed in this interview and which have to be grappled with in confronting the challenges of radically transforming the world through communist revolution.The following are excerpts from the interview. In preparing this for publication, while maintaining its integrity and character as an interview, some minor editing of the text was done by Bob Avakian for purposes of clarity, and subheads were added.
