If you want to organize people to actually make a Revolution, it's not about running down the street with masks on smashing windows while the average person looks on in fear and confusion, it's about raising consciousness and inviting people to join you, and even if they disagree with the things being said, it will at the very least get the ideas out there and debated. Read:
Fighting for the Thousands to Lead Millions to Make Revolution
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Snapshots of a day with the NYC Revolution Club in Harlem
The following are a series of excerpts from different people who took part in an outing led by the New York City Revolution Club to spread and organize people into the movement for an actual revolution.
A Revolution Club member oriented people, emphasizing that we are organizing the thousands today to get into the revolution and hasten and prepare for the time to lead millions to go all out for revolution. She showed the new sign-up form that quoted at the top from HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution (HWCW) on organizing thousands, and then said something like, “Yes, I want to be one of those thousands nationally.” And she highlighted the passage from HWCW about becoming the authority the masses look to, not the lying politicians, and drew lessons from the recent experience of the Chicago Revolution Club leading and organizing people into the revolution on the spot in the struggle against the police murder of Harith “Snoop” Augustus. She showed the banner that masses could sign to send a message of support to the revolutionaries and masses rising up in Chicago.
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The agitation hit hard at the horrors and unreformability of the system, while calling for people to step forward today as part of the thousands and getting ready to lead millions to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. It projected the strategy for an actual revolution in HWCW, made it clear that this is a national movement for revolution, and got into the great strength we have in the leadership of Bob Avakian as architect of the new communism and someone who has solved the biggest problems of the revolution. It called on people to get his official biography that was available on the table. This was part of the deal, too, we had a much bigger and more serious-looking table than in the past with a lot more materials stacked on it—making clear visually that they were there to ORGANIZE people.
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Two young Black women joined in approaching strangers with copies of HWCW. I came near just in case they ran into questions and heard an older woman from Eastern Europe telling them, “Well, yes, things are bad but communism is not the answer.” The young women began agreeing. I interrupted them and challenged them to interrogate where those ideas come from and who is served by having a population that thinks that the only real alternative to the capitalist system is a nightmare: the capitalists themselves! I told them about how the new communism is a breakthrough that has been developed through critical analysis of the historic communist project and how one big summation point is that communist revolution is actually the way in which all the horrors that people see and live today can be put an end to. I told them about the interview with Raymond Lotta on “You Don’t Know What You Think You ‘Know’ About...The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation.”
The younger women started wrestling with how people’s thinking is shaped by the rulers, including their own. We talked about what is capitalism, and what would be a different way of organizing society, including in regards of police because this is a big concern of theirs, “The murders by police have to stop!” They were thinking about coming the next day to the bookstore to get deeper into all of this. It will be important to read with them “You Don’t Know What You Think You 'Know'...” and HWCW, and work with them to be barefoot doctoring back home.
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Signing the banner gave a sense to people that this is a national movement, that when they write a message, it is part of something larger. One of the ways new people who joined on the spot were helping out was to ask other new people to sign the banner. It was definitely an entry way for people.
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An older Latino guy who was inspired by the agitation said: “What she is saying is that she wants to stop what is happening to people right? I think that is good!” We talked about what a revolution is and how precious it is that there is a plan to carry it out, but that people don’t know about it. We talked about planting a pole in society where people who hate what is happening to people can look to revolution. He took a marker and wrote, “Alto a la brutalidad policia” [Stop police brutality] on the banner. He helped hand out HWCW pamphlets for about an hour on the street and took another four HWCW in Spanish to give to his co-workers in construction.
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People liked the stickers of “America Was Never Great” and we gave people the sense that spreading it in social media, or wearing it, or putting it up, was part of doing meaningful revolutionary work because the website revcom.us is where people go to learn about the overall movement for revolution, what is going on in different parts of the country, how do we need to understand what is going on in the world from the perspective of humanity and not from the perspective of the ruling class.
Photos from an outing led by the New York City Revolution Club to spread and organize people into the movement for an actual revolution.
