Spring Into BA Everywhere!

A plan to make a leap in changing the world

March 10, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The frigid winter that’s gripped much of the country is giving way to spring—a time of blossoming and new growth. In this editorial, Revolution presents a vision and plan to bring this spring spirit to the BA Everywhere campaign. "BA" is revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. And BA Everywhere is a multifaceted mass fundraising campaign to make BA a household word so that the vision, framework, and strategy for a radically new society concentrated in the new synthesis of communism that he has developed becomes known throughout the country, reverberating around the world.

In this editorial, we aim to outline a plan for making significant advances in the BA Everywhere campaign as part of a plan for the whole year. Key to achieving these goals and this vision is involving people from all walks of life in many different ways. This plan is envisioned to provide many ways into the campaign.

Monthly Focal Points

In the last issue of Revolution the BA Everywhere campaign announced that a key element of the plan for this year is that each month, there will be one weekend of nationally coordinated and focused fundraising and popularizing of BA. These punctuation points will be an important way for the campaign to develop momentum and to raise the kind of funds needed so that BA and the vision and framework for revolution that he has developed become a contending pole for a liberatory new society arrayed up against the killing program and oppressive reality that people live today.

These monthly focal points will have themes and financial goals that will enable the consistent and ongoing work of the fundraising campaign to make leap upon leap so that BA Everywhere advances in waves over the course of this year. The focus weekends will provide opportunities to forge real community and a substantial boost to fundraising.

BA Everywhere should involve all who see, or can be won to see, that it is very important that what is represented by BA and the new synthesis of communism he has brought forward become a major point of reference, and subject of discussion and debate, throughout society. An atmosphere and the means should be forged so all these people can participate and contribute to the campaign. BA Everywhere should be continually growing—including many people who are not (or not yet) won to full agreement with what is represented by BA and the new synthesis of communism, but are in agreement that this, and the big questions it raises, should be broadly known, and actively discussed and debated, throughout society. And in the course of working together with revolutionaries, they are finding out about and engaging how and why this campaign is the leading edge of an overall ensemble of revolutionary work, and they are learning about and being inspired by the Party at the core of the movement for revolution.

Everyone across the country will pull together for the weekend—involving new people together with those already active, with everyone feeling they are a part of something larger than just what is happening in their city or town. And people will be able to see this reflected on the BA Everywhere section of the revcom.us website: photographs, YouTubes, testimonials of people donating and why they are doing so, reports of how the campaign is stirring things up, along with the questions and controversy that engaging BA and the revolution are provoking.

Dinners or picnics may be held as a part of these weekends. These will be occasions where people exchange stories and get into the big questions—forging the unity and the camaraderie essential to struggling together for a better world...having fun and digging into and struggling over what is the PROBLEM we face with this brutally oppressive capitalist/imperialist system...and, even more fundamentally, getting deeply and scientifically into what is the SOLUTION in the new synthesis of communism that Bob Avakian has brought forward—which is at the heart of the BA Everywhere campaign.

Before getting into the specific themes and plans for March, April, and May, we want to underline that these focal weekends are not the whole of the campaign. To make the difference it must make, the BA Everywhere campaign needs to be, as we wrote in the last issue of Revolution, “out in the world organizing fundraising among all sections of the people on a continual basis. Mass fundraising among the most oppressed people and among middle class people and setting up house meetings, individual appointments, etc. should be ongoing... consistently tracked, summed up, and a sense of national progress toward goals projected. The numbers of people donating should increase, with cores of people working on the campaign growing in cities as well as outlying areas to make this possible. Among the wealthy as well as the upper sections of the middle class, including opinion makers, fundraising must also be ongoing with methodical attention paid to breaking into scenes, meeting many new people, developing relationships, and working with people who are able to contribute significant funds."

The weekend focuses will marshal all of this ongoing work for leaps in the campaign as a whole.

Throughout the spring and on into the rest of the year, BA Everywhere will be promoting the work of Bob Avakian, most especially the film of his seminal talk, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live and the book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. These two works provide the foundational understanding of problem and solution—why the world is in the state it is, and what must be done to radically change the face of everything that is rotten.

And running through the BA Everywhere campaign this year, starting now, is an initiative to have youth—especially those for whom this system has no future as well as students and people of all ages and from other sections of society—take up wearing the T-shirt that says “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” This will contribute to the wide promotion of, engagement with, and fundraising for the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live! Wearing this shirt should over the course of the year become an act of collective defiance. And it is envisioned to be a source of a lot of fundraising—from individual “sponsorships” that youth solicit from friends and family to support wearing the shirt, to large donations to make it possible for many youth to get and get into the shirts.

Also, throughout the year and beginning this spring, BA Everywhere will be promoting The BA Institute—a nonprofit institute organized for educational purposes whose mission is to preserve, project, and promote the works and vision of Bob Avakian with the aim of reaching the broadest possible audience. The BA Institute can be a powerful impetus to raising funds, especially among the intelligentsia and people with financial resources, underscoring the overarching importance of the work that Bob Avakian has done.

On this foundation, here’s the plan for the spring focuses.

March

As announced in last week’s Revolution ("March 27-30: National Fundraising Weekend for BA Everywhere!"), beginning on Thursday afternoon, March 27, on campuses and at high schools and continuing societywide through Sunday, March 30, will be a weekend of national fundraising for BA Everywhere—with a concentration on utilizing and popularizing the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live.

Beginning with work on the campuses, this will be a weekend of screenings, house parties, and fundraising appointments for BA Everywhere, with Revolution—Nothing Less! at the heart of bringing to people the difference this campaign will make.

April

The focal point for April will be Earth Day 2014. Earth Day is Tuesday, April 22, so the focus will be over the weekend of April 19-20 leading into it.

The disastrous trajectory of the global environment and ecology underscores the utter inability of the capitalist-imperialist system to do anything that comes close to repairing the environment. Indeed, the competitive drive to make ever more profit is only worsening and accelerating the destruction of Earth. This acute environmental crisis can be arrayed up against how a radically new socialist economy and state power that is laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal), based on the new synthesis of communism brought forward by BA, would make a sustainable environment a bedrock principle and matter of law.

Saving the Earth is one of the most compelling reasons why revolution is necessary, and why BA’s new synthesis of communism needs to be known and debated throughout society as the viable road to a sustainable planet.

This provides a real opening to do lots of fundraising all month among middle class and wealthier sections of the people. The campaign should reach out to people it knows already who are concerned about the environment—involving them in sponsoring fundraising events and reaching out to and engaging lots of new people.

There are prominent people in the arts for whom ecology and the planet are their great concern and passion. There are people of wealth and influence in environmental organizations to reach out to. This is also an opportunity to do broad mass work on campuses—including going to the professors and graduate students in the science departments. There should be broad work among the diverse social forces taking up environmental issues in the weeks before Earth Day. And during the weekend before as well as on Earth Day itself, there should be broad work in the neighborhoods and barrios.

The heart of popularizing BA in the course of fundraising will pivot around the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, the special issue of Revolution on the environment, "State of EMERGENCY! The Plunder of Our Planet, The Environmental Catastrophe & The Real Revolutionary Solution," and the excerpt from BA's Revolution Talk titled “Not fit caretakers of the earth,” all framed around BAsics 1:29.

May

The focal point for May will be taking up a proposal that was made by people from one city called: “1,000 Years—1,000 Dollars." This is a fund raising project to unleash and lead ex-prisoners, the families of prisoners, and people in the neighborhoods to raise a dollar for the BA Everywhere campaign for each year they or their loved ones were or are still incarcerated. These funds will be utilized to get BAsics into the prisons and as "seed money" to spread the work of BA into the prisons on an ongoing basis. More, this project should inspire and provide impetus for matching grants from all sections of the people, both for this specific project and for BA Everywhere as a whole.

We want to launch the project in as many cities as possible. And as part of reaching out among all sections of the people on a continual basis, work can begin now to discuss this effort with those who are already involved in the BA Everywhere campaign as well as seeking out and uniting with new people who have been in prison or who have loved ones in prison, people who can and should be inspired to take up this whole campaign. We should not underestimate the societal impact this could have, nor the importance of some people beginning concentrated work now to make it a reality.

Memorial Day weekend will be the target date for the first $1,000 raised for the specific project in one or two cities, and perhaps reaching a portion of that goal in other places. At the same time, as a theme for the month, several times that amount should be raised for the campaign overall as described below. There should be a ceremony that celebrates reaching the goal in conjunction with a BA Everywhere dinner or picnic on Memorial Day weekend. The ceremony could include families and ex-prisoners, along with all who supported the effort, as well as Revolution Clubs and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, all coming together to mark the achievement of the goal.

The plan for mass fundraising will mean reaching out to people from all sections of society for “matching” grants for BAsics for prisoners and additional funds for the national BA Everywhere campaign. Such grants would seek to raise anywhere from $2 to $10 (or more) for every dollar raised by the ex-prisoners, families, and supporters in the neighborhoods. Students could give $1 to match the donation for BAsics to the prisoners, and $2 or more for BA Everywhere. People from better-off strata should be asked to donate $10 for every dollar raised in the neighborhoods. We should also be seeking donations from wealthier people of $500-$5,000 divided between this great project and the overall campaign—all inspired by bringing the light of revolution and BA and the new synthesis of communism to those this system has cast off.

We call on prisoners themselves to step up and write to Revolution and to those they communicate with on the outside to join in the BA Everywhere campaign and the 1,000 Years—1,000 Dollars initiative. Prisoners have a dynamic role to play in the struggle for people across society to engage BA and support BA Everywhere.

* * * * *

This is a plan to reach out to, inspire, and involve many people in contributing to the BA Everywhere—Imagine the Difference It Could Make campaign. Over the past month Revolution has called for people to write with ideas for how to make new breakthroughs in the campaign, and two of these ideas have been incorporated in the plans we have outlined here.

This plan is ambitious—yet it has a pace and a rhythm. Achieving the fundraising goals and spreading BA in the ways envisioned here will open up the possibility for thousands and ultimately millions to see that there is a revolutionary way out of the madness and horror of the world today—that there is a movement, with a party as its leading core, that is preparing to lead this great emancipatory struggle. As people find out about, engage, and financially support BA Everywhere getting out in the world, they will be contributing to making a very big difference now—opening up the biggest questions of “where can humanity go, where does humanity need to go, what is possible in terms of transforming the world, and how should we go about that,” as Bob Avakian has put it.

What a difference this will make, with society once again resonating with big dreams for fundamental change!

Read more about BA Everywhere here.

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