Getting BA's "Nat Turner or Thomas Jefferson?" Challenge Out in the Community
May18, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From Readers:
Our crew took BA's "Nat Turner or Thomas Jefferson?" challenge out in a largely Black community and to the county jail on Sunday. We did a sound truck in a housing project we have been to a lot. Many people came to their doors to find out what was going on, and we ran into a lot of different responses. As on the campus, people had never looked at the question of revolution from this perspective and it really got people thinking in a different way.
Several people who bought the paper off this said they don't really think about these things much. One youth in a car was really intrigued by the challenge. He knew about Nat Turner, but didn't really have any understanding of the revolutions of the 20th century. The link provoked him to ask his mom for money for the paper. A while later, he ran up to us to get a second copy. As they drove away, they waved at the revolutionaries.
The point about "excesses and errors" made people think about the complexities of struggle, and how it relates to rebellion and revolution. Most knew something about Nat Turner's Rebellion, but were shocked to hear that they had killed the slave masters' children as well as the slave masters. They were also shocked to know that Jefferson, who they were led to believe was a representative of freedom, owned 600 slaves during his lifetime. People didn't know much about the communist revolutions, especially their overwhelmingly positive nature, but raising this question in relation to them provoked people to want to know more.
Several people expressed pessimism about revolution. One woman in her 40's said, "Revolution is dead... it's over!" Another guy said, "You can't win." However, these people were engaging with the revolutionaries on this issue, and it raises the importance of getting "On the Strategy for Revolution" out there in a much bigger way.
We ran into a lot of controversy over religion, and through the course of discussion dividing lines shifted in some cases. A group of guys sitting on a stoop were only mildly interested, and at first did not get the paper. Then, when a controversy erupted over religion across the street, they didn't want to talk. One of them said, "You need to be here when the cops are messing with us," looking at the crew as outsiders. But he wouldn't engage on that. When we ran into a couple of those guys later, we approached them, and told them part of the movement for revolution is about building up the strength of the people in the neighborhoods to deal with that... that we have the basics of what we need to make revolution, but that what is missing is you! We talked about the initiative against mass incarceration and the Blow the Whistle movement that is part of this. This led to some struggle over the strategy for revolution, and they got a paper and a copy of "On the Strategy for Revolution."
Throughout the day, including at a store in the 'hood, and at the jail at night, we ran into people who wanted to hook up, or in one case re-hook up, with the revolutionaries.
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