“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
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.
BAsics Bus Tour New York Street Scene
July 19, 2012
Today was an important day on the BAsics Bus tour. We met all kinds of interesting people that were examining what BA was talking about. My comrade and I talked to one lady who had a lot of anger towards the people for killing each other and for doing what the masses do to each other on a daily basis. We struggled with this lady for quite awhile. At least we put some questions in this woman’s mind. After we were finished discussing the situation that Blacks find themselves in, we moved on to speak with another lady who was interested in what we were doing. We told her that Carl Dix, one of the founders of the Revolutionary Communist Party was speaking out on this block at 6 pm. So we built the day up and in the neighborhood for Carl’s speech.
Who Says Revolution Can’t Happen Here?
By Sunsara Taylor (about the author)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Says-Revolution-Can-t-by-Sunsara-Taylor-120712-266.html
In just two days the BAsics Bus Tour is kicking off in New York City! The following video captures just a glimpse of the profound connection and revolutionary energy and potential that has been opened up through connecting the work of Bob Avakian, leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with sections of the most bitterly exploited and oppressed people living in this country.
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.
Rolling in New York City… Reverberating Across the Country
Reposted from Revolution #275, July 22, 2012
The BAsics Bus Tour is rolling again! This time, the crew of volunteers—women and men of different nationalities and life experiences from all over the country—are going right into the global financial heart of the capitalist-imperialist beast, New York City, and surrounding areas.
Already, before the kick-off of the tour, people have been out in the neighborhoods to find housing and food for the volunteers, and build expectation, support and participation from the people in those areas. One person wrote, “We have already begun to see in these neighborhoods … what it means that they have some of the highest concentrations of housing projects in New York City, block after block after block after block, until you feel the reality of people being warehoused…
It’s summer in New York City and things are heating up as the BAsics Bus Tour is set to roll through in just a few days
Article by Alice Woodward- Building support for the BAsics Bus Tour beginning this Monday in New York City
Donate to support the BAsics Bus Tour
Greetings fellow bus riders around the country, all those who know about this movement for revolution and are finding out about it, contributing, working on it in so many ways, becoming part of the campaign to get BA everywhere. It’s summer in New York City and things are heating up as the BAsics Bus Tour is set to roll through in just a few days. Seriously hot, like you’re covered in sweat in a few minutes kind of hot, like the sun sets and it still feels like there’s a damp towel wrapped around you. It’s a blazing July in the city.
If you traveled through the city on a late afternoon when the streets bustle and you might by chance catch a cool breeze, you’d find in several locations large public pools with long lines snaked around the block as people wait to soak up the cool relief. Ice cream trucks and bicycles, fire hydrants that kids mess with spraying cars as they go by, basketball courts where the heat somehow loses out to how good it feels to play a game of ball. Think of the millions of people, many without air conditioning, packed in together in housing projects and apartment complexes, sometimes families of immigrants living together, many to an apartment. It was not the heat itself, but it mixed with the smoldering contradictions in a society where the masses of people are kept down and pit against each other, that first compelled the city to open up large public pools decades ago. Today those same contradictions among the people and even more so, the systemic overt racism and fear of Black people that gets whipped up, came to the surface when one of these pools reopened this summer in a recently gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn. The NY Times has contributed to this dynamic with reports on “complaints” about youth coming there from “other neighborhoods”.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday – Kick out the jams to get ready for the BAsics Bus Tour to hit New York
Preparing for the BAsics Bus Tour coming to the Bronx: Going to Soundview
Photo: At the door where Amadou Diallo was shot and killed by NYPD. Neighbors hold up Revolution posters (PDF|JPG).
This week, as we have gone to community centers and people we have met in the Bronx to prepare places for the tour volunteers to stay and more, we went to the Soundview area and to the block where Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by NYC police in the alcove of his apartment building in 1999.
Raising Funds for the BAsics Bus Tour!
Raising Funds for the BAsics Bus Tour!
We will report in a few days on the results of the efforts to raise $25,000 by the weekend of July 6-8 for the upcoming leg of the BAsics Bus Tour set to begin in New York soon. Volunteers across the country are packing their bags, teams in NY have been spending time in the areas the Tour will be going to… people are beginning to get involved. In order to make all this happen, fundraising for the Tour needs to go to a whole other level… reaching and involving many more people, and giving them the opportunity to be part of something that can make a big difference in the world: a Bus Tour aimed at spreading Bob Avakian’s vision and works throughout society, connecting with sections of NY and the surrounding areas that are most cast off, repressed and brutalized by this system as well as reaching out further to other strata who don’t like this situation… through this Tour, all these people finding out about Bob Avakian, and getting organized into the movement for revolution.
A total of $50,000 needs to be raised by August 1. For the coming week, along with ongoing forms of mass fundraising – the yard sales, tamale sales, events, all of which are essential in the BA Everywhere Campaign, we also want to encourage people do a lot of meetings with individuals about contributing. See this post for a call for matching contributions as one aspect of what people can do (though there are also people who can give larger sums who should be reached about this Tour).
Remember to also ask people for a statement saying why they are contributing and encouraging others to donate too.
Here are some key fundraising materials to use (also see the “What You Can Do” page of this blog):
Video about the last leg of the Tour
BAsics Bus Tour Phone Banking Script (Word file)
“I gave to the BAsics Bus Tour” card (to give to donors as a memento of their much appreciated contribution)
