Announcing: New BA Everywhere DVDs!
These DVDs will include three videos: “BAsics Bus Tour, Atlanta to Sanford, FL… and Beyond…”, “BA Speaks — 1969, 1979, 2003”, and “Bob Avakian, ‘No More Generations of our Youth…’.” These ought to be gotten out very broadly to introduce people to BA and BA Everywhere, and would be very good for fundraising.
Stop by your local Revolution Books to pick up a few copies, and make plans to distribute these on campuses, in neighborhoods, at events, give them to potential donors, and make sure everyone who needs to know about Bob Avakian, the BAsics Bus Tour, and BA Everywhere sees these videos.
Juneteenth at Richmond CA, and connecting folks with Bob Avakian and the revolution
Richmond, California drew thousands for the annual Juneteenth festival last Saturday. The legendary musician George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic was the highlight of the day. It was a scorching hot day. At the end, the combination of clouds rolling over and the soothing voice of George Clinton brought some relief and brought the mostly Black participants to their feet.
The Juneteenth Festival commemorates the end of the civil war and the end of legal slavery in Texas. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the slaves were free.
It was in this setting that a crew of revolutionaries set up a table under the shade of a huge tree and decorated the area with displays of quotations from Bob Avakian (BA), and enlarged covers of BAsics. Our focus was on the BAsics 1:13 quote, “No more generations of our youth…” We had a large banner for people to sign to support the BAsics Bus Tour - we talked about the trip through the South to Sanford, Florida and were calling for donations for its just-announced upcoming mission to the Greater New York City area!
TODAY: June 5th is 100 days since Trayvon Martin’s modern American lynching. We Say “NO MORE!” Wear a hoodie and spread this message — share this video on your social network.
For actions today go to stopmassincarceration.org
This video is an illustration of Bob Avakian’s statement:
“No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.”
— Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:13
We are all Trayvon Martin! The whole damn system is guilty!
Continue to Advance: Build off the BAsics Bus Tour Through the South
This editorial has been reposted from Revolution newspaper, revcom.us:
The second leg of the BAsics Bus Tour, which went through parts of the South in May and rolled into Sanford, Florida, had a big impact. It spoke to and captured the imagination of thousands… in the South and throughout the country—and many hundreds of people across the country were part of making something very important happen. In doing so, those people around the country and those who the Bus Tour met in the South have been part of beginning to cohere a national movement around the mass fundraising campaign to project Bob Avakian’s vision and works into every corner of society: BA Everywhere… Imagine the Difference It Could Make!
Build on the momentum of the BAsics Bus Tour — Attend and Build for Report-Back Celebrations in Your Area!
Over the past few weeks, many hundreds of people across the country have stepped forward to make something very important happen… the second leg of the BAsics bus tour which went through parts of the South and delivered a message from those hundreds to the people of Sanford. In accomplishing this,people around the country, the volunteers on the bus and those that the Bus Tour met in the South have been part of cohering a national movement around the mass fundraising campaign to project Bob Avakian’s vision and works into every corner of society, BA Everywhere…Imagine the Difference It Could Make! More than $30,000 has been raised, to pay for this leg of the Tour and for materials and initial seed money for the next leg of the Tour.
Come to the report back in your area or write us so we can put you in touch events in your area or near by. (See below for celebrations in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Cleveland.) And find out other ways, where ever you are and whether you only have a couple of hours a week or the whole summer (!) to build on the momentum created by the BAscis Bus Tour in the South. Write baeverywhere [AT] gmail.com to volunteer to work with press, social networking, developing a web site and much more! And to let us know of other events.
Bringing a message to Sanford with BAsics and 100s of voices from across the country
This following piece has been reposted from Revolution newspaper. It was first published HERE.
by Sunsara Taylor
Down in Sanford, Black people are still seething over the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on February 26 on his way home from a 7/11 convenience store. It is NOT “old news.” Neither is the fact that the police refused—for 45 days—to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman. More, they are following the case closely and recognize the preparations underway to exonerate Zimmerman.
When we rolled in on the BAsics bus, projecting the leadership of Bob Avakian and calling on people to get into the movement for revolution to put an end to the system that has foreclosed the lives of so many generations of Black youth through the entire history of the USA and of millions more throughout the world, it didn’t take any work to get people to open up with their outrage or their own bitter experience at the hands of the police, in the prison system, or in their dealings with the thick white supremacy which permeates the entire country but is more openly trumpeted in this part of the confederate-flag-waving South.
Black mothers told of having had to bury their teenage sons due to violence the police didn’t even bother to investigate, of having lost their sons to police murder where there was never even a case opened up, of struggling to be strong for other sons as they were sentenced by racist judges for crimes they didn’t commit or which were too petty to merit years of hard prison time, and of fearing for the indignities and brutality that was destined for the grandbabies they were now raising whose fathers had been stolen.
Everywhere we went, outrage poured forth. Bitterness. Anger. Heartbreak. Fear for the future. What took work—in many cases it took repeated and sharp struggle—was for people to really hear and get the meaning behind the word REVOLUTION. Not just protest. Not just “marching till our feet bleed” or “screaming until our voices are hoarse,” which is what many people told us was good but would never change things. But REVOLUTION. An actual victorious struggle for power and the defeat and dismantling of the oppression institutions of the old state power, when the time for that is on the agenda—when the system is deep in crisis, when millions of people are ready to put everything on the line to bring the system down and with the necessary leadership and strategy.
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.
A volunteer on the BAsics Bus Tour at the speakout in front of the Sanford Police Station in Sanford, FL speaking on the significance of the BAsics Bus Tour, the revolution we need and the leadership we have in Bob Avakian. Play this in parks and neighborhoods all over the country. (The first 15 seconds are quiet, but the volume goes up from there.)
BA Everywhere… Imagine the Difference It Could Make!
Source: SoundCloud / BAEverywhere
