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Revolution #259, February 12, 2012
Brutal Police Assault on Occupy Oakland March
On Saturday, January 28, more than 1,000 Occupy Oakland demonstrators staged a march to occupy a city-owned building in downtown Oakland, California that has been vacant for the last six years—and transform it into a community center.
STOP the Suppression of the Occupy Movement!
Tuesday, February 28 • Union Square – NEW YORK CITY
BAsics Bus Tour Underway!
By the time many of you read this, the BAsics Bus Tour (pilot project) will have hit the road! The tour is part of the campaign to Get BA Everywhere... a campaign aimed at raising big money to project Bob Avakian’s vision and works throughout society.
On the occasion of Black History Month:
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian
We are presenting on these pages a selection of quotes from BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian that focus on the oppression of Black people and the fight against that oppression. The struggle against the oppression of Black people is a crucial part of building the movement for revolution, which is aimed at getting rid of all oppression and exploitation and transforming society and the world as a whole.
These quotes from BAsics draw from more than 30 years of work by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. BAsics addresses a wide range of questions on revolution and human emancipation and is a handbook for a new wave of revolutionaries.
- PDF Posters: Front | Inside | Back
- The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of This System, and the Revolution We Need
Revolution Special Issue now available in online and PDF booklet format
There Are 2.4 Million People in Prison in the U.S.—Why? What Do We DO About It? And How Does the Notion of a "Prison-Industrial Complex" Get This Wrong?
The last 30 years have seen a massive and unprecedented imprisonment of millions of people in this country. To give some idea of this, there are more than eight times as many people in prison today as there were in 1970! This comes out to 2.4 million people (and that doesn't even include the 363,000 immigrants passing through "detention centers"—many of which are worse than prisons—awaiting deportation). In addition, millions more are being indirectly controlled through probation and parole. No other country on the planet even comes close to imprisoning as many people, or as high a percentage of its population.
Raising Money for BA Everywhere
As part of the campaign to get BA everywhere in 2012, a group of us decided to hold a post-holiday yard sale to raise money for the BAsics bus tour. XX is the woman who hosted a yard sale in a great location just north of downtown. She said, “Yard sales are good for building community... They’re a lot of work but they can build your group.” This idea of “building community” became an underlying theme in our efforts that brought in close to $600 for the BAsics Bus Tour and getting more copies of BAsics to prisoners.
Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 4:00 PM at
The Riverside Church, Assembly Hall, 490 Riverside Drive, New York
Everything You've Been Told About Communism Is Wrong:
Capitalism Is a Failure,
Revolution Is the Solution
Editors’ Note: Revolution is serializing an important speech given by Raymond Lotta during his national campus speaking tour in 2009-10. This version of the speech given at Harvard University in April 2010 has been slightly edited and footnotes have been added for publication. Parts 1 and 2 have been published to date.
Part 3: The Cultural Revolution in China: What It Was Really About
In the rest of this talk, I will be drawing on Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party. This Manifesto sums up the history of communist revolution so far, its breakthroughs and lessons. It explains how communism has developed as a living, creative, open-ended science, beginning with Marx, through Lenin, to Mao, and Bob Avakian. This Manifesto provides a framework to initiate a new stage of communist revolution. And let me add that you cannot say that you are educated and up to date on emancipatory human thought if you have not yet read this Manifesto.
End Pornography and Patriarchy:
The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!
Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!
Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!
We are told that “equality for women has been won” and that “there are no limits to what girls can achieve.” BULLSHIT!
Protests in 80 Cities Demand: "NO U.S. War on Iran"
In a day of united mass action initiated by World Can’t Wait with 59 other organizations, people in about 80 locations, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, protested against the intensifying moves by the U.S. and Israel toward war against Iran.
Sunsara Taylor: “I Hate Religion and Jesus is No Good Either! Read Your Damn Bible!”
In this video clip, Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution, uses Bob Avakian’s book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World to challenge followers of Jesus to defend what Jesus actually said and what he actually did: uphold slavery, condemn divorce, blame sick people for their own illness, preach reconciliation between the oppressors and the oppressed and condemn people who don’t believe in him to BURN IN HELL.
The video is available online at Sunsara Taylor’s blog, and also at Youtube.com (search for “Sunsara Taylor” and “I hate religion”).
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,
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
BAsics 1:13
- Color PDF - 11x17"
- Color JPG for posting on web
From A World to Win News Service
India: CP (Maoist) on Death of Leading Comrade Koteswarlu (Kishenji)
January 30, 2012. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a press release signed by Abhay, spokesperson of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), dated January 13.
On November 24, 2011, the Indian revolution lost its great leader, and the oppressed masses of India lost their most reliable servant. November 24 would remain a dark day in the history of the Indian revolution. On July 1, 2010, the Indian ruling classes had murdered our Politburo member and spokesperson Comrade Azad. Within one and a half years, another Politburo member, Comrade Koteswarlu (who is popular among the people and party ranks as Kotanna, Prahlad, Ramji, Kishenji and Bimal), was caught alive in a covert operation, tortured inhumanly and was killed in a fake encounter.
BOB AVAKIAN ON "TEBOW-MANIA," "HIGHER POWERS" AND "AMERICA'S GAME"
TIM TEBOW AND THE "TUCK RULE"
Editors' Note: The following is part of a major interview that was recently conducted with Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Given its timeliness, this part of the interview is being published now (see also the article in this issue, "Tips for Tim Tebow," written by Bob Avakian to accompany this excerpt from the interview). We are looking forward to publication, in the near future, of other parts of this interview, and the interview in its entirety.
TIPS FOR TIM TEBOW
Tim Tebow, quarterback for the Denver Broncos in the National Football League, is being widely, and seemingly endlessly, promoted—as an icon not only in the realm of sports but much more broadly. I have followed sports, including football, for many decades now, and I cannot recall ever witnessing anything like this. In a highly orchestrated and concentrated campaign, Tebow is being held up as a “worker of miracles” on the football field but, more than that, as a “role model” and moral standard-bearer.
- DOWNLOAD POSTER OF THIS ARTICLE (PDF, 17x22")
BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON
We are building a movement for revolution…
That movement needs a website…
We need your help to make it happen
This is a world crying out for revolution. Over a billion people on this planet live on less than $1 a day. The earth’s critically endangered ecosystem is under profit-driven assault. In one form or another, everywhere in this world women are degraded as commodities. Creativity is marginalized, coopted, or squashed. And killer police and unjust wars serve and protect all this…
COMMUNISM: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW STAGE
A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Available in English, Spanish, Turkish, German, and Farsi from RCP Publications, P.O. Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 $5 + $1 shipping.
A new draft translation in Arabic is now available online at revcom.us
The first Arabic draft translation is still available also.
We envision a movement of people working to produce high-quality accurate translations in many languages which can then be distributed around the world on the Internet and in print. We invite your comments. Send them to RCP Publications, Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 or rcppubs@hotmail.com.
Some Principles for Building A Movement for Revolution
In each issue of Revolution, you'll find "Some Principles for Building A Movement for Revolution," by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. The events covered in this issue of Revolution demonstrate the critical importance of these principles, and of proceeding from them.
- Poster (PDF)
Support... Sustain... Revolution
In this world of unjust war, unbearable suffering and environmental catastrophe… in these days of discontent, upheaval and questioning… it is critical that this newspaper—Revolution—publish! And that it continue to improve its content and look, and expand its readership.
A Statement from the
Revolutionary Communist Party
ON THE STRATEGY FOR REVOLUTION
Under this system of capitalism, so many in this society and so much of humanity are forced to endure great hardship and suffering, exploitation, injustice and brutality, while wars and the ongoing destruction of the natural environment threaten the very future of humanity. In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) our Party has set forth an inspiring vision, and concrete measures, for the building of a new society, a socialist society, aiming for the final goal of a communist world, where human beings everywhere would be free of relations of exploitation and oppression and destructive antagonistic conflicts, and could be fit caretakers of the earth. But to make this a reality, we need revolution.
- Poster (PDF)
THERE IS NO "PERMANENT NECESSITY" FOR THINGS TO BE THIS WAY
A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND BETTER WORLD CAN BE BROUGHT INTO BEING THROUGH REVOLUTION
One of the more important statements in the Manifesto from our Party (Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage) is the quote from Marx: "Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice." This is not just a matter of abstract theory—it has a broader effect. That belief weighs heavily on people who don't like the way things are—they are weighed down by a belief in the "permanent necessity of existing conditions." Over and over we are confronted by the fact that people can't see beyond the way things are now.
What Is Communist Revolution?
It is this system that has got us in the situation we’re in today, and keeps us there. And it is through revolution to get rid of this system that we ourselves can bring a much better system into being. The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good…Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings…Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.
This revolution is both necessary and possible.
Who Is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party?
In Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party, we have the kind of rare and precious leader who does not come along very often. A leader who has given his heart, and all his knowledge, skills and abilities to serving the cause of revolution and the emancipation of humanity. Bob Avakian came alive as a revolutionary in the 1960s—taking part in the great movements of those days, and especially working and struggling closely with the most advanced revolutionary force in the U.S. at that time, the Black Panther Party. Since then, and while many others have given up, Bob Avakian has worked and struggled tirelessly to find the way to go forward, having learned crucial lessons and built lasting organization that could continue the struggle, and aim to take it higher, while uniting with the same struggle throughout the world. He has kept on developing the theory and strategy for making revolution. He played the key role in founding our Party in 1975, and since then he has continued the battle to keep the Party on the revolutionary road, to carry out work with a strong revolutionary orientation. He has deeply studied the experience of revolution—the shortcomings as well as the great achievements—and many different fields of human endeavor, through history and throughout the world—and he has brought the science and method of revolution to a whole new level, so that we can not only fight but really fight to win. Bob Avakian has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need, and he is leading our Party as an advanced force of this revolution. He is a great champion and a great resource for people here, and indeed people all over the world. The possibility for revolution, right here, and for the advance of the revolution everywhere, is greatly heightened because of Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing. And it is up to us to get with this leadership…to find out more about Bob Avakian and the Party he heads…to learn from his scientific method and approach to changing the world…to build this revolutionary movement with our Party at the core…to defend this leadership as the precious thing it is…and, at the same time, to bring our own experience and understanding to help strengthen the process of revolution and enable the leadership we have to keep on learning more and leading even better.
Works by Bob Avakian (PDF)
Now available
The Ascendancy of Obama
and the Continued Need
for Resistance and Liberation
A Dialogue between
Cornel West and Carl Dix
This historic event took place in Harlem, N.Y. on July 14, 2009
$20.00 per copy
15% discount for 10 or more copies
Add $5.00 shipping for 1-5 copies
For shipping costs for 6 or more copies contact Revolution Books.
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Video Available!
- Rough cut of the video without the audience Q&A
- Rough cut of the of the Q&A that followed the dialogue
- Click here for the audio only of the July 14 dialogue (mp3)
- Watch the Youtube video announcement of the July 14 dialogue
- Response to Obama's "No Excuses" speech at NAACP convention by Carl Dix (Part 1 / Part 2)
Go to YouTube for these must-see videos:
Inaugural issue now online! demarcations-journal.org
Demarcations
A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic
Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic seeks to set forth, defend, and further advance the theoretical framework for the beginning of a new stage of communist revolution in the contemporary world. This journal will promote the perspectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
¡FUERA CON TODOS LOS DIOSES! Desencadenando la mente y cambiando radicalmente el mundo
AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
Is believing in gods actually harmful? How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation? Why is the "Bible Belt" in the U.S. also the "lynching belt"? Why is there a rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world? In the intensifying conflict between U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, is the only choice to take one side or the other? Why is patriarchy and the oppression of women foundational to so many religions? Can people be good without god? These are just some of the questions explored in this provocative work by Bob Avakian.
