I have just seen the first two hours, of six, of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!It was like plunging into a very blue, very icy pool. I got out shivering, sad, angry, and very worried. About my life and all of our lives.

Two wildly strange things came into my mind during the hours afterward. The first is from John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The second is Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which Socrates describes a group of people who have been chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing the stone. These people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are as close as the prisoners ever get to reality. Socrates tells us that the philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave, who can step outside, at last, into the freshness of truth, the real world.

Bob Avakian’s analysis breaks apart the small framework in which we are manipulated. He presents the big picture of Western Civilization and Capitalism—and a corrupted and tragic history it is. Mr. Avakian tell us the truth, wakes us to reality. He urges us to notice how the culture, which we breathe like air, really is in business of blinding, numbing, binding, and using us by its entertainments, diversions, and coercions. How frightening to acknowledge how we have become so enthralled by getting and spending. How we are kept fighting each other instead of the grotesque matrix that holds all of us.

So, the first step toward liberty is to know reality. And reality stings us, because we can begin to see how we have been fooled, how we’ve let ourselves be gulled and manipulated. But there it is. In the beginning is the adult satisfaction of facing reality. This is good in politics, art, and personal life. Real living and real freedom have to start with the real.

Then what? Well, there are four more hours of Bob Avakian live that I haven’t seen yet. And I’m terribly interested to see what he thinks can be done, once reality is grasped. I don’t have a clue yet. I confess that I’m temperamentally unsuited to “masses.” Masses scare me, and the individual, I worry, shrinks into nothing there. I don’t know what a “revolution” means, or how it could be accomplished without anarchy. But, as Mr. Avakian says (and I agree with him): the world is not writ in stone; things can be different than they have been; history and the future are not the will of God.

In the end, I’m open to hear and consider. It seems crucial. We’ll all benefit by a splash of the clean, cold water of reality.

February 19, 2013

We gave her an issue of the newspaper and asked for a donation and offered her a ticket to the film. I explained that it would be very helpful for her to watch this film so she could hear what BA has to say about these issues. And, I told her of my own experience of seeing the rough cut of this talk and how it changed the way I saw the world. It completely transformed the way I think and see all these issues and how I can actually do something about it. So, she bought a ticket and she took the Revolution newspaper. We asked her afterwards “what was the reason” she bought the ticket, and she answered, “Well you just made me think a lot about all these issues and I’m interested to see what he (BA) has to say about these issues.”

March 8, 2013

It would be selfish and counterproductive if those of you reading this did not come to the film premiere of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION–NOTHING LESS! You need to experience this for yourself and get moved like I did.

Spoiler alert: He puts forth several challenges to us at the end, and if you come make sure you experience the whole thing.

From an African-American Grandmother and Freedom Fighter

March 8, 2013

—An Iranian communist living in the US and fighting for the New Synthesis of BA

March 13, 2013

And what he said about not just taking revenge. It just answered so many questions I didn’t know I had. Doubts in my head. Or refuting other people’s arguments. Why this can’t be about doing wrong against those who wronged you. It’s not about raping the rapist or killing the white people, it’s not about that. That’s what I feel like a lot of Black nationalists are about, and I don’t get on board with that at all. It’s the relations that people have with each other, that’s what causes them to be so… cruel. Which became so much clearer to me. It isn’t about revenge at all. Revenge doesn’t, it doesn’t take into account the situations that make people the way they are. Like, if somebody does a horrible thing. It doesn’t question the bigger system, the bigger problems. It doesn’t address that people are born on different levels, people have had horrible lives, and some people have had privileged lives. People didn’t choose that. Revenge doesn’t address what makes that OK to begin with. If you just get revenge, you’re not getting at the root of the problem. You’re not getting at the relations, the whole environment, the causes, the motivations, that made it happen. You just get that it happened. That’s a very narrow form of justice, whatever justice is. People should be questioning the situations that make all that possible. Or they’re not addressing all these deep inequalities, the effects of privilege, all these things that are the basis for what happens in the world.

Before this film I really didn’t realize how many great things people have done, or even understand why people do terrible things. Now I know: people are not done doing great things. This is NOT the best that we can do. People could do so much better than this. It’s so, so possible. Revolution… Nothing Less! speaks to me, more than anything else: this new synthesis of communism has to be fought for and put into place.

Hearing the history of how great humans can be, understanding the past communist revolutions, has really set it in stone for me. Before, I would be like, these are ideas on how something could work. It was never solidified in my brain: this could really happen. In some ways, this HAS happened! People are not all bad. It became real. It became different from just another person’s ideas on how society could work. This is something that can happen. A revolution. And in the right direction. He’s getting into what worked and what didn’t. He’s not just another guy with some ideas about how society could work. It wasn’t like learning from somebody who’s just a philosopher. This is real. He could be our leader. It’s so possible! I just have to stress that because so many people don’t have hope that things can really change. Thinking THIS is all we can do! And he said it in such plain language, that I could understand. Because what a lot of people who have a lot of good things to say do, is use all these terms I don’t know, and then I just shut down. Analysis like this, and leadership like this, and saying it like that, so people can understand, is just a testament to how all this is possible.

Before I was like, so where’s he at? Where is Bob Avakian? And he talks about why it’s important to protect the leadership. It’s the same reason why you avoid… avoiding “premature decisive encounters.” He says, don’t create situations where the revolution can be crushed. He talked about Huey. He puts it a lot more eloquently than I do, but he basically said the system doesn’t want leaders like Huey around, doesn’t want people around who have a lot of the right ideas and are actually mobilizing people. The system will kill them, which can crush a movement, or demoralize it. That’s terrible. We need to have him alive! We need to be able to pick his mind, and to have him be our leader, and not only have him be our leader, but to expand on the most thorough, and… I’m trying to say… the new something you can put into action! It’s the most advanced thinking we have! Having him alive is worth not knowing where he’s at. And also we need to have BA EVERYWHERE, not just where he’s at, only relating to people in the place where he is! We need to connect people to him, and everyone should know who he is. So okay. maybe people should not actually know where he’s at. He should be safe. Things like that just checked off so many boxes in my head. This is serious.

Revolution defies a lot of people’s beliefs. They think people are lazy, or they don’t care, or people are too comfortable. People’s views of human achievement are so low. So, so low. Like he’s talking about the human nature argument. Like all these bad things people do are justified because that’s just what humans do! But people are so molded to believe these things that they can’t imagine a revolution. They speak the words of their oppressor. They become different people. They can’t get past what they’ve been told. It makes them unwilling to move, or even hope, even hope that a better world is possible. So you gotta come with the best argument, a real case for it, with the real history, having the analysis, having the evidence, that revolution IS possible! That’s what he does in REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

Like when he was talking about rap and music videos. He called it a “poisonous package of individualism, religion, and misogyny.” He talked about people wearing huge chains with crucifixes on them, and rap videos that have religious references side by side along with degrading women, all along with this message of “getting mine” and “me first.” So he talks about how it’s all three, it’s a package. Young men growing up today come with this package. It was kind of crazy to me, because I never connected them in that way. I was like, oh, I got the individualism. Young men grow up believing that if they try hard enough, they could be a millionaire. Not just the hope, but there’s such a huge value on material things. And women are just part of that. There’s so much misogyny in the rap scene, it’s all that you hear. Seeing they’re connected, and they’re essential for young men to be the way that they are. So many people, so many youth, come with that package, and I never thought it was all connected. It was cool that he could connect them all. And then it all connects to the lack of young people in the struggle. The lack of youth voice, a lot of apathy, in young people. We need those people! We need people who haven’t settled in, who haven’t had decades of indoctrination by this system, and they’re all being held back by this whole package. From every angle. Having those people be a part of the solution is critical! You can attack that package, and see even better how all this is possible. The package is what THEY want you to believe. When I say “they” I mean the media, the church, the government, the people who produce all this propaganda. I mean the system. It’s bigger than rap videos, it’s propaganda, that fuels the religion, fuels the government, fuels the misogyny. This country, with the religion, it’s ridiculous. It comes from everywhere. You can’t escape it. You know what I’m saying? You’re so pressured to believe one thing, without evidence. It’s in the media, it’s in the laws, it’s everywhere. The people that own everything, the only people who benefit from this whole system, are the people who benefit from all the young people believing in this package. They benefit so much more because people believe that package, and so they reinforce it for a lot of people to believe. Most people, which is kinda scary. But it’s so unnecessary! It’s so crazy. Like, so many people are caught in the trap of religion that they believe anything those people tell them. People are so fucked over in so many ways by that package right now. Not only women with misogyny, not only the planet with individualism, and not only, like, the unwillingness to do something about it, or to believe in something even though there’s evidence because of religion, all of the shit that comes along with religion, and what that causes for women, and what that causes people to believe, and when he says there’s a package he’s right. There’s so much in that package, it’s so much to challenge people on, and question people on, and enlighten them on. There’s just so much work to do. A lot of work more people need to be doing.

I think that it’s really important for people to be there [at the premiere] because not only all the questions they have, and all the beliefs they have that need to be challenged, but like, later on, there needs to be more people around that are talking about these things. More people who are informed, and understand what BA is talking about, and give historical references to things and challenge each other, and debate. That’s a great thing! Having a lot of people there, and bringing people with a lot of different outlooks is so important. People will leave with a lot more answers, and a lot more of the right questions. They should be there to talk to other people who care about the world, about making this revolution. About whatever comes up that they hear that they need to debate out. It’s so crucial. That’s why I know I’m going to be there. People will be inspired.

I love this film. You know? I love this speech, and the way he, like, breaks it down. If it even causes someone to question what he’s talking about, and having people there to speak to it, that’s so much more beneficial than even just researching it on your own. This will help you not only be more politically conscious, but it pulls out the right questions. But not just that. It answers questions but it calls on people to ask more questions! You SHOULD be questioning what makes your society the way it is! To be less quick to trust what somebody says to them. It’s incredibly important.

You can’t wait for the revolution to come. You shouldn’t wait. It also speaks to you not being passive about knowing the world can be a lot better, and doing nothing, knowing there’s a place and people that you could be helping. It’s crazy to me. It sounds horrible. Like, if you know, if you’ve watched the speech, I’m not saying people are horrible, but I’m saying if you know the system can be better, and you understand, but you just go back about your daily life, it’s… appalling. It’s appalling! I couldn’t imagine ever being the same, knowing what I know. I can’t imagine anybody finding out what’s really going on and then not doing anything about it! You can’t. Your life will be changed. Even understanding the things that make your life the way it is. If you know, really know, about American imperialism, if you know about the state of the world that is crying out for your help, only at the expense of you being a comfortable American person, like if you know that? And understand that? And go back to your life as it was? No way. You’ll be stuck with something at the end of this premiere. The movement needs you. Like if you give a rat’s ass about what the fuck is going on in the world, and you see this, you would be taking it up and getting with a revolutionary party that needs you, and is trying to make all the shit that’s going on in your life, shit that you hate, make it non-existent! Trying to liberate all of the rest of the seven billion people on the planet! Not only is it ultimately important, but you should feel the drive and the fire and the anger inside yourself to be a part of this revolution. Because of what you know now, now that you’ve seen this film. To be a part of changing the entire world!

These are the words of a high school student who saw the rough cut of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! The only questions she was asked were, “What stood out to you?” and “Why should people be in the theater on March 16 / 17 for the premiere?”

March 12, 2013

I’ve seen many billboards in that corridor trumpeting everything from black Atheism to Obama-ism. One that caught my eye this past week was an invitation to Crenshaw denizens to come see a film featuring Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It’s screening this weekend downtown at the L.A. Theatre Center and records a marathon seven-hour speech by Avakian that he delivered recently. I won’t get into the complex and controversial history of the RCP here, but suffice it to say that it is very much alive and believes that the black freedom struggle is foundational to the many other ongoing struggles in the country for justice and equity. Of course, unlike traditional black advocacy groups like the NAACP, the Party doesn’t believe that the American system of capitalism can ever deliver that freedom—it simply wasn’t designed to—and that the only real option is to institute another system altogether.

This proposal of radical change has always presented black people with a paradox. We want inclusion, meaning we want access to what every American has access to (theoretically), from functioning schools to safe neighborhoods to meaningful employment. But generation after generation we fail to secure these things, or not enough of these things to declare the struggle over. It has become clearer to many of us that we may always be in this state of gross inequality, a realization that prompts a question that sounds not radical, but perfectly logical: why not live some other way?

Nobody black that I know believes for a minute that America was created with his or her interests in mind. Nor does anyone I know believe that American hostility to true racial equality has relaxed to the point where blacks can claim that we have assimilated with reasonable success. And yet the determination to soldier on as part of the fractured and deeply flawed American project is almost universal. I guess blacks have been knocking on the door so long, we’re loath to stop now. We’re loath to stop being a thorn in the side of a nation drifting toward total racial indifference that needs all the reality checks it can get. True, we aren’t exactly holding anybody’s feet to the fire, as we did in the ’60s, but somehow our mere presence, even the thoroughly mainstream presence of President Obama (who undoubtedly would live west of Crenshaw, if he lived here) makes the point that we still await our forty acres and a mule. That’s how unassimilated we remain.

But there are certainly those among us who, like Malcolm X, see waiting on the system for justice akin to waiting for Godot, the title character of the world’s most famous absurdist play who never shows up. It’ll be interesting to see who shows up Saturday to hear Avakian. “Revolution—Nothing Less!” is what the ad encourages. I don’t know about nothing less, but what’s indisputable is that black folks here—and elsewhere—need something more.

March 17, 2013

Well when you hear someone like BA and in his BA way bring it all into focus you can’t just walk away from that and not think anything of it…you could try, but I bet you’d be going about your life and every once in awhile it will be tickling the back of your mind or some jolt will happen in the world like Trayvon Martin or you hear more children were killed in a drone strike or maybe some injustice happens to you or someone close to you and you’ll remember this talk and what will you do then? I’ll just end this by saying this if you know this system is nothing but a horror for the majority of humanity and you wonder if there is anything YOU could do to be a part of transforming the world then you need to see this film.

March 10, 2013

“Overall the movie—like the book BAsics itself—is basic. Some parts are hard to comprehend but most of it was easy to understand and captures and things make you laugh—it’s true you say—things about Obama. Interesting he points out these things—the detailed things that a lot of people are missing—without making it too heavy and complex. Even though the film is six hours, it fits in your brain, it goes in there easily. It’s not six hours of reading like Marx or something.

“What I’ve noticed is it makes things clear to people who don’t know anything about revolution and communism, and getting out to all variety of audiences. With revolution and communism, the ideology, he answers—I’m not saying he answers everybody’s questions—but different audiences, like intellectuals, people who said look what happened in the past, he speaks to them. He put 40 years into it. You couldn’t find anybody else who could answer questions like he does it. Not a long answer—look up some of his videos about what is capitalism, the unchanging human nature crap. He has a good way of addressing things—not answering everybody’s problems (in sense of individual problems), but giving answers to those things.

“This country has a lot of different kinds of people with a lot of different ideas about revolution and especially communism—and lies are being told. There’s Set the Record Straight which is really awesome. Recently I had an argument about the Great Leap Forward and what happened with the three million who died. BA and the rest of the Party helped—they’re together on this mission to move for revolution, to make revolution and get stuff out plus tell people what really went down in those previous revolutions. He’s not saying they’re perfect, he’s summing up the positive and the negative and learning from it. There will always be mistakes he says, but he talks about what happened back then and how to improve on it. This country is known to lie and push down the history of communism and socialism and what happened in Russia and China.”

What jumped out at you?

“The end part—toward the end. It doesn’t matter what age you are, we need more youth. He’s giving confidence to everybody it doesn’t matter what age they are—encouraging the youth this is their future—this system has no future for the youth but revolution does.”

What do you say to people about the film?

“Holy shit this was good! Better than all the Lord of the Rings put together. 6 plus hours can impact 6+ billion lives. What is it about? I really can’t answer it for you—you have to see it for yourself. You’ve just got to see it for yourself. It’s incredible—you’ve got to see it for yourself and then judge. This premiere can make a big difference because afterward people will have a lot of strong reactions.

“When friends ask about the film, I say he speaks the truth about Obama and why things can’t be reformed, but there’s an alternative. Then people say, well this movie sounds like something I might want to go to. Even if you’re not clear who this guy is, I say, he makes strong case for revolution, even if you don’t agree with all of it, it’s excellent. Personally, I saw it and I loved it, and thought it was very well executed. If you’ve never heard of BA—go see it. If you have questions—go see it anyway.”

March 10, 2013

Redstik

April 15, 2013

March 3, 2013

Rev. Robert B. Coleman Chief Program Minister and Minister of Social Justice The Riverside Church in the City of New York

March 12, 2013

The film was very well done and I liked that he talked about how the government was like Nazi’s.

I appreciated the audacity of Bob Avakian’s talk.  For Bob Avakian to have retained his passion for all these years and to do something about it is admirable.  Bob Avakian has that spirit and his genuineness and believability came through.  He believes in this and that gives it credibility.

April 15, 2013

BA Everywhere is endurance, perseverance and equality.  This about justice and equality—it is direction on how to.

People want to stand together, but when you look out someone has fallen out the tree.

Meeting BA was overwhelming—the leader had to show a good example.  It took laziness out of the program.  With his mind set if you throw it at him, he catch it and give it to you in the raw.

BA should be shielded at all times.  If it came down to someone trying to shoot I guess I’d have to take that bullet for him because I don’t want his ideas to die—I want his ideas to live on and for him to be able to make plans and preparations for us to be able to go forward.

This is an analogy that I have found helpful:  Reality is like a fire, like a burning object, and if you want to pick up that burning object and move it, you have to have an instrument with which to do it.  If you try to do it bare handed, the result is not going to be good.  That’s another way at getting at the role of theory in relation to the larger world that needs to be transformed, in relation to practice, and in particular revolutionary practice, to change the world.

BAsics 4:21

BA is like a fiery burning bush—getting this system torn down and then replaced in the way it should be—he is the man.”

March 24, 2013

Here’s what I like best about it:

The new synthesis of communism thrives on not only learning how to take on the contradictions in society; it also actively and positively seeks out contradictions to allow their expression and evolution in the bright daylight of scientific inquiry. [Check out the RCP’s Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).]

Just look at the world after this movie opens your eyes. Nothing else is working. Do I want to be part of this push for revolution? Damn right I do!

March 9, 2013

Revolutionary brother in Harlem

March 8, 2013