Discussing BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
By Joe Veale | September 23, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
During the picnic for the celebration and culmination for the summer of BA Everywhere activities, I sat at a table of family members of California Prisoner Hunger Strikers. This was during the hunger strike and I appreciated learning about their families currently on strike and the struggle and discussion we had.
The conversation flowed back and forth between the torture, suffering, and brutality of their relatives in prison, the hunger strike, mass incarceration especially of Black and Latino's—and BA's vision of revolution and communism. This would be a whole new world where prisons and the social conditions that make them necessary, that make poverty, racism (national oppression), war, borders, forced motherhood... the oppressive system and antagonistic relations that makes all this necessary has been revolutionized away and can no longer exist.
While it was clear everyone was having a good time, happy to be at the BA Everywhere celebration, some more saw themselves as "clusters of electrons" orbiting around the movement for revolution, reading Revolution newspaper, watching and discussing the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live. Others see being in this orbit more out of necessity because the movement for revolution is such an essential vehicle in their eyes, doing serious revolutionary political work in relation to Prisoner Hunger Strike—and the lives of their loved ones are wrapped up with this movement being successful.
There was a lot of moving, different, and conflicting understanding involved in all this.
Initially everyone said they knew about BA and were "down with the revolution." "Oh yeah, we read, we know about BA. We are 'down' with the revolution"—is what one of the mothers proudly said to me. "Keep writing those articles in Revolution. Keep putting stuff on Twitter..."
The discussion turned more and more to BA, the content of his re-envisioning of communism, and the fact that humanity can live a whole new way without all this horrible suffering in the world—that she should watch the film today, get it and watch it some more, get a copy of BAsics by BA.
One of the mothers said she goes by her "faith." That she needs this in order not to get depressed. It keeps her going she said, everybody needs something to keep them going and this is what she needs.
I told her that no, we need to understand reality like BA says so that we can change it. I said we need revolution, not sitting around thinking that somebody gonna come down from the heavens or the White House and save the people from all this. How long was this needless suffering gonna continue? She responded: "I know. I know. It has been going on thousands of years."
She went on to say: "Look, people can make it in this system. I have a son in prison but I have a daughter in college."
So we talked some about "choices" and what the brutal exploitation internationally is all rooted in. She said she was very aware of this—the millions of deaths each year. I argued that this is not only a horror but it is unnecessary and we talked a little about why this is true—she said that if the right politician got in office things would improve.
We ended with the two of us having a hearty laugh while sharing what BA had said about Napoleon. Why Napoleon had said in private he believed in none of the gods but in public he believed in all the gods. It is in the book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by BA; I told her she should check it out further.
Anyway we got a big laugh that Napoleon was saying it is impossible to have a society without inequality and it is impossible to have inequality without religion. Which is why BA says we must be scientific—confront reality how it really is so we can change it.
During this discussion another mother began to whisper in my ear that she was down with the movement for revolution. That she had watched the film REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! three times.
She continued to whisper that Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, was her model of a revolutionary. When challenged about what the Supreme Court is, part of the bourgeois state, that Marshall as a judge looked out for what is best for the capitalist-imperialist system, she continued that you have to work inside and outside the system in order to get what you want. She gave Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as examples of this.
But those two were coming from the struggle of Black people—one went back and forth over revolution to achieve that, while the other never was about that. We also talked about how BA is the leader of the revolution to emancipate all of humanity—and bury all this shit this system stands on and stands for. She said she knows about that but went on to repeat what she said earlier.
Another family member told me that I should go stand with someone who had spoken about being on the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride and argue against what he was saying. She repeated the unscientific and harmful thinking that more African-Americans are murdered in a woman's womb than anywhere else.
I said white supremacy and genocide is something that this system imposes on people. You cannot follow that up with doing another crime by denying women their full humanity. When challenged that denying a woman's right to choose when and if she wants to carry a pregnancy to term is denying her right to do just that. Women need to be free to consciously make this decision. She gave me one of those looks and said: how can you say that is something that should consciously be done?
When it was put to her we are fighting for a world where there is just a human community of people cooperating with one another—how people view sexuality will be very different, she repeated what she said and attributed this thinking to people who've never had children. I told her it is really attributed to what is scientifically true and encouraged her to watch BA.
It was significant that at the beginning of this discussion, there was a lot of genuine partisanship but it was important to not just rest with that but to really bring in—and join in debate—the framework of the revolution we need, the leadership, strategy, and vision that exists for this. This broke open the real differences and questions people have, and we were able to join all this—even if in a beginning way. This is what we need a lot more of.
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