What About You?

Sustain Revolution!

Revolution #035, February 19, 2006, posted at revcom.us

In issue #33, we announced that Revolution newspaper was launching an ambitious fund drive to raise $50,000 in sustainer pledges over the next five weeks! The initial response to this drive has provided a revealing look at how people rely on this newspaper. Readers, ranging from civil liberties attorneys to retirees on fixed incomes, from professors to proletarians have sent money and/or made plans to take up collections to help sustain this paper.

• A UPS worker in the South pledged to sustain at $25 a month, and is also planning a film festival to raise money for the fund drive. He said, "I sell the newspaper to people who really disagree but want to look at another point of view. Some people are at first thrown off by the title, and I tell them, 'you need to open your mind.' I think a lot of youth are attracted more to strong leftist thinking because we don't have a voice in the system. It's hard going up against the lies about communism and socialism--there's lots of ignorance about all this, what Stalin faced. That's why I like the Set the Record Straight series."
• An unemployed worker in a small city in the Northwest that is drying up because of the decline of the lumber industry signed up online as a $20/month sustainer: "I will also talk with all my friends and sympathetic family members, but most of my family are fundamentalist Christians of the Pat Robertson variety."
• A reader in Austin, Texas sent a check, and also told us that he purchased a newspaper vending box on e-Bay, and is setting it up outside a progressive bar so Revolution will be more accessible in Austin.
• A veteran antiwar activist shared his critique of the RCP, and sent a check for $300.
• A student originally from China challenged others: "The Revolution newspaper is a crucial force in the struggle for a better world. It was the first to publish Li Onesto’s Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal, still the only comprehensive first-hand journalistic observations on the decade-old Nepalese civil war, and continues coverage of it and many other important struggles globally, which open our eyes to the most radical yet realistic events that are happening and will happen around us in our times now and the times ahead. Don't you want a better tomorrow? Then fight for it. Always remember to ask one more 'why'. Donate to the Revolution newspaper. Take a side, and become part of the revolution."

What about you?

Readers get from Revolution a perspective they can find only in a newspaper that represents the outlook of the class of people on this planet with nothing to lose, no stake in the present order, and no need or desire to pull punches or cover up the abuses of the system. From that perspective, Revolution readers also get exposed to a unique panorama of protest and rebellion from all kinds of people--from progressive clergy to rebellious artists, from the people on the bottom of society to defectors from the power structure.

Revolution newspaper reveals not just the atrocities and outrages that are covered up by the establishment media, and not just the scope and range of dissatisfaction and resistance in society, but also why things are the way they are, and how revolutionary change is possible. In that light, this paper connects hundreds of thousands of people, now, with Bob Avakian.

Bob Avakian is the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. And he is more than that: he's an innovative and critical thinker who has taken Marxism to a new place; he's a provocative commentator on everything from basketball to religion, doo-wop music to science; and he's a pit-bull fighter against oppression who's kept both his solemn sense of purpose and his irrepressible sense of humor. Revolution newspaper is proud to be an important way that people in this country and around the world connect with Bob Avakian.

A solid base of financial sustainers is especially important now, when so much is at stake, and when Bush--as a concentration of the horrors of this system--is steering a course with such dangers for the people but also with the potential to create openings for revolutionary struggle. With a sustainer base, we can expand and improve our coverage, dramatically increase our distribution, improve the look and accessibility of our print and web editions, fulfill the requests of prisoners for subsidized subscriptions, and radically increase our impact on society.

So far, only a small percentage of regular readers of Revolution have responded to this fund drive challenge. As we said when we announced this fund drive: You rely on us, and we take that seriously. But we also rely on you.

We are asking every reader of Revolution, online and in our print edition, to sustain this paper on a regular basis in one of two ways: By going to revcom.us, clicking on the Sustain link, and then using your credit card to commit to $5, $10, $20, $40 a month or more. Or, for those who cannot contribute by credit card, send check or money order to:

RCP Publications Sustainer Drive
PO Box 3486 Merchandise Mart
Chicago, IL 60654.

One form this could take is that groups of basic people, of all nationalities, collect a set amount each month and turn it in through their regular distributor, or send it to RCP Publications.

And, when you sign up to donate on line, or send us your check or money order, add a note telling us, and everyone else, why you sustain Revolution.

Send us your comments.