From the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

To Do This, We Need To Know:

Why we need an actual revolution.
What we need to do now.
How we could defeat them.

ABOUT THE BOOK, ORDER HERE

See excerpts HERE

Pre-publication PDF of this major work—including the appendices—available HERE

Insight Press has announced that in addition to the print book, THE NEW COMMUNISM is now available as an eBook at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble and other retail and library websites.

Points of Attention for the Revolution

The Revolution Club upholds, lives by and fights for the following principles:

1 We base ourselves on and strive to represent the highest interests of humanity: revolution and communism. We do not tolerate using the revolution for personal gain.

2 We fight for a world where ALL the chains are broken. Women, men, and differently gendered people are equals and comrades. We do not tolerate physically or verbally abusing women or treating them as sexual objects, nor do we tolerate insults or “jokes” about people’s gender or sexual orientation.

3 We fight for a world without borders, and for equality among different peoples, cultures and languages. We do not tolerate insults, “jokes” or derogatory names about a person’s race, nationality, or language.

4 We stand with the most oppressed and never lose sight of their potential to emancipate humanity—nor of our responsibility to lead them to do that. We work to win people of all backgrounds to take part in the revolution, and do not tolerate revenge among the people.

5 We search for and fight for the truth no matter how unpopular, even as we listen to and learn from the observations, insights and criticisms of others.

6 We are going for an actual overthrow of this system and a whole better way beyond the destructive, vicious conflicts of today between the people. Because we are serious, at this stage we do not initiate violence and we oppose all violence against the people and among the people.

Now is the time to spread these messages to all of society

"HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution" is a companion to the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP, USA posted on www.revcom.us on May 16, 2016.  Get "HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution,” together with “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution,” out everywhere.  Now is the time to spread the word to all of society.

Download "HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution" HERE (36”x24” PDF): ENGLISH  | ESPAÑOL.  Download “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution” HERE (17"x 22" PDF): ENGLISH | ESPAÑOL.  Our suggestion is that they be printed on white bond paper and posted together in the appropriate ways all over the place. Here’s a rough picture of what this could look like.

“HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution” now in booklet form!

Printing Instructions:
The PDF of a booklet that includes “HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution,” “Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution” and the “Points of Attention for the Revolution”is now available. This booklet is 16 pages long. The size of the laid-out pages is 5 1/2" x 8 1/2". It can also be printed 6" x 9". There are two layouts here. 1) One is a single PDF with 16 consecutive, individual pages. 2) The second is a printer's spread; that is, the first spread is page 16 and page 1, the second is page 2 and page 15, etc., so that when it prints and is folded, the pages will be in order. Printers can tell you which layout they need. Readers should make plans for printing this 5 1/2" x 8.5" booklet, raising money, and getting it out in the tens of thousands everywhere as soon as possible.

ENGLISH:
Download 5.5x8.5 PDF, single pages
Download 5.5x8.5 PDF, printer spread

SPANISH:
Download 5.5x8.5 PDF, single pages
Download 5.5x8.5 PDF, printer spread

Get the BA Film on the Trump/Pence Regime Out in the Midst of All That Is Going on in the World!

June 18, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Right now is a great, and important, time to get out with special vigor and creativity around the film of Bob Avakian’s talk THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible, which has taken on even greater importance. The most recent experience shows that not only does this reach all different kinds of people with an analysis that they have not heard anywhere else—and move them—but there is a special receptivity at this moment. Today—with people out in the streets against the government’s ripping away of immigrant children, new genocidal atrocities in the U.S.-backed war in Yemen, talk of “peace” in Korea even as dangers of war remain very real, and more—there is a real moment to seize.

In the coming week, there should be renewed efforts to spread the film far and wide. Get the palm cards out massively and be ready to show clips from the film on phones and tablets, out at protests, concerts, meetings and conferences, on street corners, and everywhere people are gathering. But more than that, actively and creatively seek out and act on opportunities to show the film in different settings and venues, including the many summer festivals and events; people should even head out to farmers markets on the weekends, in liberal suburbs and urban neighborhoods as well as neighborhoods of the oppressed, and set up showings right there with homemade screens.

As we’ve emphasized, if more people see this talk by BA, it could actually change the political equation—giving people a scientific understanding of the situation we face, its causes, and what to do about it. BA points people toward deeper questions about the society we live in. And, very crucially in today’s situation, the film introduces people to BA, the most important revolutionary thinker and leader of our time, who has brought forward a new communism, which provides a path to a radically new, and much better, world. Let’s open this door for many, many more people!

America’s Jaws Drip with the Blood of Yemen’s Children

The War You Haven’t Heard About

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As we write, troops commanded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), backed by Saudi Arabian warplanes, are fighting to take control of the port city of Al Hudaydah on Yemen's western coast, now held by Yemen’s Houthi movement. Aid flowing through Al Hudaydah is the only thing standing between 22 million Yemenis and starvation. And now it’s being threatened by a reactionary offensive armed, trained, guided, and backed by the USA.

After a week of fierce fighting, UAE forces have reportedly taken over the airport south of Al Hudaydah, as Saudi warplanes bomb the city. Hundreds have been killed, and 30,000 have reportedly fled the city along with 76,000 from the surrounding region. The assault has disrupted supplies of electricity and clean water, and aid workers warn of a cholera outbreak that could spread “with lightning speed” and infect hundreds of thousands. Many aid workers have been forced to leave Al Hudaydah, and others can’t access areas where the fighting has been heaviest.

America: A Force for Barbarity, Not Good in the World

If you want to understand what a truly barbaric, monstrous system America is, look at what it’s done—and is doing—to the 28 million people of this impoverished Middle Eastern country. After creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, it’s now threatening Yemen’s meager flow of humanitarian aid and deliberately flirting with mass slaughter through famine and disease. Closing Al Hudaydah’s port “means that you’re cutting the last artery to Yemen,” said one aid worker. For over three years, behind the scenes and a veil of lies, the U.S. has been deliberately murdering hundreds of thousands of children and starving millions of oppressed Yemeni people. They’ve done so by providing the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with weapons and planes, fuel and training, hands-on direction and intelligence, Green Berets on the front lines, and the political and propaganda support to wage war on the people of Yemen.

This is a war of mass slaughter, mass starvation, and mass disease—waged by blockading food and medicine, destroying the country’s health, water, and power systems—war crimes that have targeted the country’s means for sustaining life.

A war waged so the U.S. imperialists can maintain their stranglehold on the Middle East and the world, and so their murderous Saudi and UAE “allies” can maintain their death grip on the Arabian Peninsula. These predators view isolating and overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) as crucial to this overall agenda, and see the war in Yemen as one front in that struggle. Iran has attempted to advance its own reactionary regional interests through this war, although its involvement in the conflict and backing of the Houthis has been vastly overstated by the U.S. rulers, when in reality Iran isn’t directly involved in the fighting and whatever backing it’s provided the Houthis doesn’t begin to compare to the massive assaults and crimes being carried out by the Saudis, the UAE, and the U.S.

Between 15,000 and 44,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, have been slaughtered by U.S. and British bombs and missiles. More than 22 million Yemenis have been driven to the brink of hunger, over eight million to the brink of starvation. In two years (2016-2017), 113,000 children died of hunger or preventable disease. The U.S.-Saudi-UAE coalition’s destruction of Yemen’s water and sewer system led to the largest outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread by drinking contaminated water, in history. Over the last year, a million people have been infected; 2,300 have died, mainly children. During the epidemic, the U.S.-Saudi coalition, which regularly issues statements of their supposed “concern” for the suffering in Yemen, blocked imports of the chlorine tablets needed to make water safe to drink.

Doubling Down on Mass Murder and Starvation

America claims it’s not involved, and its clients Saudi Arabia and the UAE claim their hands are clean. They say they want to take Al Hudaydah to insure the flow of humanitarian aid. But if that were true, if the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the UAE gave a rat’s ass about the welfare of Yemen’s people, then:

• Why have the Saudis and the UAE—with a green light from the U.S.—continued their assault (and demand for unconditional surrender) when they have already threatened humanitarian relief and when every humanitarian agency in the world demanded they stop?
• Why, according to a new report by Amnesty International (AI), has Saudi Arabia deliberately delayed aid from arriving in Al Hudaydah for weeks at a time, an action AI said constituted the war crime of collective punishment? And why are they holding back a ship with 25,000 tons of wheat now!?
• Why have Saudi planes targeted Al Hudaydah’s port during the war, and are on track to do even more damage now?
• Why, in the areas Saudi- and UAE-backed forces have controlled for years, do Yemenis still lack basic necessities—food, clean water, healthcare—even though the Saudis and the UAE control the flow of goods into the country?
• Why would the UAE be running at least 18 secret prisons across Yemen where the most depraved, unspeakable sexual tortures are rampant according to an Associated Press report, which cites examples where prisoners were lined up, ordered to strip, and then sodomized by guards claiming to be looking for contraband, while being threatened by dogs? One top prison official told the AP, “Americans use Emiratis as gloves to do their dirty work.”

No wonder the International Rescue Committee denounced Saudi and UAE claims as “a publicity stunt meant to draw attention away from the undue suffering the attack is causing,” and that their “so-called relief plan ... must be seen for exactly what it is; a justification to launch an attack that will have catastrophic consequences.”

The U.S. is the godfather behind all this savagery. “When [the Saudis] have the backing of the United States, they’ve been able to wage this war of extreme proportions that they would have never been able to wage on their own," said Yemeni-American researcher Shireen Al-Adeimi in a June 22 interview on The Michael Slate Show. “[The Saudis] don’t manufacture their own weapons, they don’t train their own soldiers, they don’t refuel their own jets. They rely on the U.S. for all these things, and that’s why they’ve been able to wage this incredibly destructive war.” U.S. and British officers have even staffed Saudi command rooms for airstrikes.

After the U.S. publicly rejected their request for minesweepers for the Al Hudaydah attack, a UAE official said: “Not giving us military assistance is not the same as telling us not to do it.”(See revcom.us article “America Targets Yemen’s Children for Death by Starvation.”)

Yemeni Lives Are Hanging in the Balance... What Are YOU Going to Do?

Right now, the U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE attack on Al Hudaydah is continuing. They’re attempting to seize Yemen’s lifeline—in order to threaten, terrorize, and if necessary starve the Yemeni people into submission. The lives of millions of Yemenis—men, women, and yes children—now hang in the balance.

American lives are NOT more important than Yemeni lives, and we in this country have a responsibility to loudly and visibly denounce and oppose this offensive, and call for an end to this mass murder before it becomes horribly genocidal! And people need to confront the real nature of an empire based on starving children, HERE, and the real solution to ending it, and all the horrors it inflicts on humanity, HERE.

Excerpt from the sections:
Internationalism and an International Dimension

and

Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism

Editors' note: The following is an excerpt from the new work by Bob Avakian, The New Communism. In addition to excerpts already posted on revcom.us, we will be running further excerpts from time to time on both revcom.us and in Revolution newspaper. These excerpts should serve as encouragement and inspiration for people to get into the work as a whole, which is available as a book from Insight Press. A prepublication copy is available on line at revcom.us.

This excerpt comes from the section titled "III. The Strategic Approach to An Actual Revolution."

From the section:
Internationalism and an International Dimension

In addition to what has been said about how, when it comes down to the struggle for the seizure of power, there will be aspects of a civil war between two sections of the people—and in addition to what has been emphasized about the need to deal with the problem of encirclement, suppression and pulverization—another dimension of this that has to be taken into consideration is that this will not only be a struggle that must be internationalist in its basic orientation, but it is also likely to have a significant aspect of being international. The point has been made that the borders of this country are anything but sacred to us. If you look at the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic, specifically in regard to what is now the Southwest of the U.S., you can see that it is taking account of the close interconnection—historically, in the present time, and looking to the future—between what goes on in (what is now) the U.S., and what goes on to the south. And, given that, when it comes down to it, there would almost certainly be, in significant measure, the interconnection and interpenetration of revolutionary struggle in (what is now) the U.S. and revolutionary struggle to the south, strategic thinking and work needs to be carried out, in terms of the international dimension of this.

From the section:
Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism

What do I mean by revolutionary defeatism, and why is it so important? Revolutionary defeatism means that you oppose the actions of your own government and ruling class in carrying out their wars, which are wars for empire. It means that you welcome any setbacks they suffer in those wars, because that weakens their oppressive hold over masses of people, here and in the world more generally. Now, we do have to recognize that we have a different situation than back in the day with the war in Vietnam. In those days, the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Vietnam was a revolutionary organization of the people in South Vietnam who were waging the fight, along with the government and people in North Vietnam, against the U.S. imperialists. And the leader of that struggle, until he died in the late 1960s, was Ho Chi Minh, who called himself a communist but was actually more of a revolutionary nationalist. Beginning soon after the end of World War 2, Ho Chi Minh led the armed struggle of the Vietnamese people to drive out the French, who had colonized Vietnam, and then to drive out the Americans, who, beginning in the 1950s, attempted to replace the French as the colonial master of Vietnam. Now, back in those days we used to go to demonstrations and people would march through the streets chanting, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win.” It felt very good, and it was right to do it. It was right to be on the side of the Vietnamese people and Ho Chi Minh leading them. It wasn’t just that you wanted your government to lose the unjust war it was waging, you could actually be on the side of the people fighting against your government, because those people represented a righteous cause, they represented a real struggle against imperialism. They weren’t going around attacking civilians. They were fighting against the military of U.S. imperialism that had invaded their country and was bombing it massively. So, in those days, you could actually be with the people fighting against the U.S. government, the U.S. imperialists.

Today, unfortunately, the situation is different and not as favorable in the short run. Nobody coming from a decent place should want to root for these reactionary Islamic jihadists who are in fact also enforcers of brutally oppressive relations—particularly, but not only, horrific patriarchal relations—and who, in the service of that, carry out all kinds of depraved slaughter of ordinary civilians. So you cannot, if you’re coming from the right place, identify in any way with these forces and support them. Now, there are some people around the world who call themselves leftists or even communists or Maoists, people like this guy Ajith, who try to put a pretty face on these Islamic fundamentalist jihadists and insist that they are anti-imperialists, that they’re waging an anti-imperialist struggle. But the fact is that, while they may fight against the U.S., they do not represent a positive, progressive, let alone a revolutionary force; and where they have succeeded in exercising power, their rule is brutally oppressive. That has been shown repeatedly in the real world. In your mind, you can try to make these people into something other than what they are, but that can only do a great deal of harm, because in the real world they are not a positive force, even while, coming from where they’re coming from, they’re opposing U.S. imperialism, to some degree, although not in any thoroughgoing way and not toward any positive end.

This makes for a difficult situation because, especially given how parasitic U.S. society is—where significant sections of the people, particularly among the middle strata, receive some share of the spoils from imperialist domination and plunder in the world—when the U.S. government is able to point to the continuing atrocities carried out by these Islamic fundamentalists, this reinforces the tendency for people to side with, or at least not to seriously oppose, their own country and government in the wars it is waging against these Islamic fundamentalists. It makes it easier for people to go along with what is, and take the position: “I don’t really like these wars, but look at these other people; we have to do something about groups like ISIS.” Never mind the fact that Saudi Arabia, a big ally of the U.S., beheads a lot more people than ISIS does, and embodies and enforces all kinds of horrendous oppression, against women and others. But still, people can say, “Well, look at these people, like ISIS.” This makes it easier for people not to do the hard thing of going up against their own government in the wars it is waging.

Yes, it is true: the Islamic fundamentalists who are opposing these imperialists are no good, they don’t pose a positive alternative. But that does not make the wars of empire being fought by this government just wars. This situation has gone on way too long and needs to be frontally and deeply challenged. These are wars for empire. These are unjust wars. They are carried out with massive means of destruction, killing civilians in the hundreds of thousands, torturing people in the service of these wars. This should be opposed and opposed strongly. It is not acceptable that people just take the stand, “Yes, I wish those wars would be over with, but we gotta do something about these Islamic fundamentalists.” It is crucial that people come to see what the nature of these wars being waged by their government actually is, and why these wars have to be actively opposed; and even if you can’t, and shouldn’t, support the other side, you still have to have the basic approach of welcoming the defeat of your own government in the wars it is waging. The defeat of these imperialists should be welcomed because, number one, their wars are unjust, even if the people opposing them are also unjust. And, two, every such defeat weakens this system and its ruling class and brings closer the time when people can actually bring it down and bring something liberating into being in its place.

Contents

Publisher's Note

Introduction and Orientation

Foolish Victims of Deceit, and Self-Deceit

Part I. Method and Approach, Communism as a Science

Materialism vs. Idealism
Dialectical Materialism
Through Which Mode of Production
The Basic Contradictions and Dynamics of Capitalism
The New Synthesis of Communism
The Basis for Revolution
Epistemology and Morality, Objective Truth and Relativist Nonsense
Self and a “Consumerist” Approach to Ideas
What Is Your Life Going to Be About?—Raising People’s Sights

Part II. Socialism and the Advance to Communism:
            A Radically Different Way the World Could Be, A Road to Real Emancipation

The “4 Alls”
Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right
Socialism as an Economic System and a Political System—And a Transition to Communism
Internationalism
Abundance, Revolution, and the Advance to Communism—A Dialectical Materialist Understanding
The Importance of the “Parachute Point”—Even Now, and Even More With An Actual Revolution
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—
   Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core
Emancipators of Humanity

Part III. The Strategic Approach to An Actual Revolution

One Overall Strategic Approach
Hastening While Awaiting
Forces For Revolution
Separation of the Communist Movement from the Labor Movement, Driving Forces for Revolution
National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution
The Strategic Importance of the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women
The United Front under the Leadership of the Proletariat
Youth, Students and the Intelligentsia
Struggling Against Petit Bourgeois Modes of Thinking, While Maintaining the Correct Strategic Orientation
The “Two Maximizings”
The “5 Stops”
The Two Mainstays
Returning to "On the Possibility of Revolution"
Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism
Internationalism and an International Dimension
Internationalism—Bringing Forward Another Way
Popularizing the Strategy
Fundamental Orientation

Part IV. The Leadership We Need

The Decisive Role of Leadership
A Leading Core of Intellectuals—and the Contradictions Bound Up with This
Another Kind of “Pyramid”
The Cultural Revolution Within the RCP
The Need for Communists to Be Communists
A Fundamentally Antagonistic Relation—and the Crucial Implications of That
Strengthening the Party—Qualitatively as well as Quantitatively
Forms of Revolutionary Organization, and the “Ohio”
Statesmen, and Strategic Commanders
Methods of Leadership, the Science and the “Art” of Leadership
Working Back from “On the Possibility”—
   Another Application of “Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core”

Appendix 1:
The New Synthesis of Communism:
Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach,
and Core Elements—An Outline
by Bob Avakian

Appendix 2:
Framework and Guidelines for Study and Discussion

Notes

Selected List of Works Cited

About the Author

Trump Reaffirms “Zero Tolerance”...
for Brown-Skinned People

Pledges to Keep Refugee Children with Their Parents—IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Time magazine reports the U.S. Navy is planning to build “temporary and austere” tent cities on military bases capable of holding up to 100,000 immigrants. The shelters shown above are now being used to house migrant children in Tornillo and Brownsville in Texas. (Photo: Courtesy of the Administration for Children and Families at HHS.)

Imagine the terror of having your child—who you have risked all to protect—suddenly ripped away from you, and the agonizing fear as days, weeks, months go by without being able to talk to her, or even know where she is. Imagine being told by your captors that you may never see your child again. This has already happened to thousands of Latino immigrants on the U.S. southern border.

But wait... Didn’t Trump sign an executive order last Wednesday reversing the policy that has led to the abduction of around 2,300 children, declaring “We’re keeping families together and this will solve that problem”?

Isn’t this whole crisis over?

FUCK NO! Trump’s executive order was like someone on the defensive in a fight throwing dust in his opponent’s eyes to blind and confuse him, and then immediately slamming his head into a wall.

Yes, the order claims to be aimed at keeping families together, and in the signing ceremony Trump did a pathetic impersonation of a human being who “want[s] to be very compassionate.” This was enough to send some liberals into a victory dance, with media describing this as a major defeat for Trump, a “reversal” of his policy.

But at its core, the order reaffirms, as Trump put it, “zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally”—referring to the tens of thousands of desperate refugees who have been attempting to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum, and who have been illegally denied that right, unjustly imprisoned, and then had their children inhumanly abducted and taken to unknown locations around the U.S.

There is not a word in the order—and nothing substantial since—about reconnecting the abducted children with their parents.

The big “promise” in the order is that going forward, the government will put parents and children in prison together while they await being railroaded through bogus immigration courts and deported. This is the kind of concession talked about by Malcolm X—where a man has a four-inch knife in your back and then pulls back an inch and expects you to thank him. But even that promise is filled with loopholes; there is every reason to expect that the government will soon return to abducting children, and some evidence that it has already done so.

And what has gone down since Wednesday?

• Trump gave a hateful speech to parents of people who had been allegedly killed at the hands of undocumented immigrants (mostly in traffic accidents) and used these deaths to justify kidnapping and imprisoning thousands of innocent immigrant children.
• Fascist TV continued to promote Nazi dehumanization of immigrants, with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade declaring, “Like it or not, these are not our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country.”
• Time magazine reported that over the next six months, the U.S. Navy is planning to build “temporary and austere” tent cities—that is, concentration camps—on military bases in isolated locations, capable of holding up to 100,000 immigrants.

Far from being “over,” the regime is driving forward with and escalating its Nazi-like attacks on immigrants, which are at the core of its whole project of fascist transformation of the U.S, and further hardening their base around sadistic racism. It is good and very important that masses of people have remained in the streets demanding this cease and have escalated their militancy around this—and the demonstrations called for June 30 must be massive as well.

There is no “stopping” this without driving the regime itself from power—that is the plain and simple truth. This is what Refuse Fascism is organizing to do—and many, many more people should go to RefuseFascism.org to find out about this and join in.

Abuse of Children Is Planted Deep Within This System—and That WHOLE System Must Be Overthrown

As many people have pointed out, the confinement of refugee children with their parents went on under Obama. And many people have drawn the links between the cruel separation of immigrant children today from their parents to the history of this country—heartlessly selling off Black children away from their parents during slavery times, cruelly kidnapping Native American children to boarding schools where they were taught that they and their people were “evil.”

And an article in the New York Times Friday pointed out that EVEN TODAY over 400,000 children within the U.S. are kept apart from their parents. Mass incarceration—including lengthy jail terms for nonviolent offenses—plus high bail, have put 400,000 single moms in prison or jail, and many have their children taken from them. Women who give birth while in jail generally are separated from their infants within a day or two of birth. And hundreds of thousands of children are taken by the state from their parents’ homes—some for reasons of abuse, but the majority for reasons of “neglect,” which, in the words of an expert cited by the Times, “often just looks like poverty.” Then add to that the 30,000 kids in juvenile jails, 60 percent for nonviolent offenses, some as petty as curfew violations!

In other words, this problem cuts deep into the system.

To get rid of this—to get to a world in which, to paraphrase Bob Avakian (BA), no more generations of our youth are condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality—this system must be OVERTHROWN. We need an actual revolution. This revolution is possible, on the basis of the work that’s been done by BA, and we are working to Prepare the Ground, Prepare the People, and Prepare the Vanguard—Get Ready for the Time When Millions Can Be Led to Go for Revolution, All-Out, With a Real Chance to Win.

Download as PDF

Download as PDF

Who Are the People Whose Children Are Being Stolen By the U.S. Government?

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Who Are the People Being Subjected to This Torment?

The great majority of those having their children stolen are poor people fleeing Central America, where a decade of U.S.-sponsored wars in the ’80s and U.S.-backed dictators since have led to a social crisis of deepening poverty and fear, in which criminal gangs, often in league with police and politicians, control the cities’ poor communities. When the violence comes too close, when your brother is murdered, when your daughter is told that she must be the “girlfriend” of a gang member or face rape and murder, when your son is told he must sell drugs or be killed, it can feel like the only way out is to scrape up the money you have and run. You brave the thousand-mile journey across Mexico, dodging gangs (again in league with the “authorities”) who kidnap migrants and hold them for ransom. You chase the hope of safety for your children in the U.S.

What Happens to the Refugees When They Reach the U.S. Border?

Under both international and (since 1967) U.S. law, refugees have a legal right to enter the U.S. and request asylum, and if they have a “credible fear” of violence in their home country, are allowed to stay until their request can be processed. It is the Trump/Pence regime that is flagrantly violating the law by obstructing this process.

First, the Border Patrol is lined up at official crossings (“ports of entry”) day after day to physically block people from entering to request asylum. Parents, children, and babies are backed up on the Mexican side, living and sleeping for days in the street under the blazing sun, or retreating to the few shelters, where they are preyed upon by crime cartels.

As families run out of money for food and water, desperation grows. Many seek out a coyote to take them across the border, away from the port of entry, traveling on foot through deserts, wading across rivers, children in tow. Many will certainly die on these journeys, as thousands already have in recent years. But if they make it and turn themselves over to the Border Patrol to request asylum, the Trump regime labels them “criminals” who have crossed the border “illegally” because they are not at a port of entry—which the Border Patrol drove them away from!¹

Second, Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week unilaterally overturned U.S. policy since 2014 that recognized fear of domestic violence and of gangs as legitimate grounds for asylum. So people who left their homes, jobs, communities and took this dangerous journey in response to what was U.S. policy a month ago now find their asylum claims are dismissed out of hand.

What Happens When Refugees Make It Across the U.S. Border?

The families are detained by the Border Patrol, often in what are known as “hieleras”—iceboxes. Then in most cases their children are taken from them. The regime’s aim is to take all the children, but it is still ramping up the construction of concentration camps to be able to hold them all.

The separation process is unbelievably cruel. Sometimes kids, including infants and toddlers, are just ripped away, even while breastfeeding. Mothers beg to be able to say goodbye to their children, to hold and comfort them one last time, only to be threatened with additional charges for doing so. Other times the mothers are told “we are taking your child for a bath”... and they are never seen again. When the parents ask where their children are, they are treated with sadistic arrogance, told “you may never see her again,” or that no one has any idea where they are, how they are doing, or when they will be returned.

The treatment of kids still in Border Patrol custody is horrendous. Leaked footage showed children in cages—yes, cages—sleeping on concrete floors, given Mylar blankets. Last week ProPublica released a heart-wrenching tape of children wailing in terror at the loss of their parents, and being mocked by Border Patrol agents.

Next, the Border Patrol sends parents to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, while the kids are taken by the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS). These two agencies have no common database by which the connection of a child with his parents can be maintained and tracked. For all intents and purposes, the children have been “disappeared” and the government admits it has no process for connecting them again!

What Happens to the Parents

Shattered by fear and sorrow, the parents in ICE detention are taken for mass trials before immigration judges—groups of 70-100 people at a time, most without an attorney, are each given about one minute to state their case for asylum. They are also being led to believe that if they abandon their asylum claims and plead guilty to illegal entry that their children will be returned to them. Under this terrifying coercion, it appears most people are pleading guilty, but in fact, they are not then being connected to their children. Many are simply deported to their home countries, from which the task of finding and regaining custody of their U.S.-held children will be vastly more difficult. And many of these children are too young to talk, to know their own names, their parents’ last names, or where they live. So it is very possible that many of these parents will never see their kids again!

What Happens to the Children in HHS Custody?

Mostly, no one knows! It is extremely ominous that the authorities not only will not grant access to most of the “shelters” they have set up across the U.S., they won’t even say where they are! What are they hiding?

One answer might be in 2014 court documents exposing brutal conditions for migrants in HHS shelters. Reportedly, guards at Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center routinely referred to immigrant children as “wetbacks,” and told non-immigrant children that the migrant kids were there because they were rapists or had HIV/AIDS. Kids accused of misbehaving were placed in solitary confinement or strapped to chairs with bags over their heads. One kid described the terror: “You feel suffocated with the bag on. The first thing that came to my head when they put it on me was ‘They are going to suffocate me. They are going to kill me.’” Kids at the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center in Texas report being forcibly injected with psychotropic drugs and being violently choked. One child said, “I would rather go back to Honduras and live on the streets than be at Shiloh.”

Yes, there have been orchestrated press tours of a couple of the shelters kids are in now; these show off colorful bedspreads and neat living areas, but journalists are not allowed to talk to the children. And these tours have only happened where teenage boys are held, in part because this fits with Trump’s absurd allegation that these people who are mainly fleeing from gangs are actually members of MS-13.

But we know that 30 percent of the children are girls—where are the girls? And where are the infants and toddlers? Scattered reports are starting to come in of small children being smuggled into shelters around the country in the dead of night, without city authorities even being informed.

We also know that children as young as five are being hauled into deportation hearings—without lawyers or any adult representing them—to “plead their case” for asylum!

Let’s Not Mince Words

The Trump/Pence fascist regime is imprisoning parents fleeing for their lives from violence that engulfed their countries as a result of U.S. domination and it is putting their children in concentration camps for an indefinite period of time. This is a continuation of the barbaric treatment of Latino immigrants in the U.S. for decades and even centuries; U.S. capitalism has and continues to thrive in large measure through the extreme exploitation of these immigrants, in the fields and factories and throughout the economy, and it has always used both “the law” and racist extralegal brutality to control and isolate them. This is one of the great crimes of imperialism that cries out for revolution to bring about a society based on proletarian internationalism, not imperialist plunder of other nations and peoples.

But what Trump is doing is also a leap beyond this “routine” brutality, and THIS is a watershed moment. The Trump/Pence regime is carrying out crimes against humanity on a rapidly mounting scale and with the same level of sadism and racism as the Nazis. This is ushering in a new stage of open demonization, targeting, persecution, and even murder of the oppressed, by the state and by their fascist supporters, which will increasingly dominate and shape the landscape in the U.S. and around the world... unless the tens of millions of people who abhor all of this take up the necessary determined struggle to drive this regime from power.

1. In fact, U.S. law does not require asylum applicants to go through a port of entry. And even if they were “guilty” of illegally crossing the border, that is a misdemeanor, like disorderly conduct or trespass, charges for which people are generally not jailed, much less have their children taken away.  [back]

Why do people come here from all over the world? - clip from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian given in 2003 in the United States.

“Across The Borderline”
(featuring Bob Avakian) | Outernational

Revolution Club Member at rally in NYC to Stop Ripping Families Apart

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New Gestapo ICE Raid in Ohio: “This is about decimating the Latino community”

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

ICE agents carried out their largest workplace raid in a decade on June 19, Brooklyn Heights, Ohio. A local church official said the arrests caused “fear and heartbreak” among families of those detained. Above, processing center where people arrested in the raid were taken initially. Photo: AP.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out their largest workplace raid in a decade on Tuesday, June 19, arresting 146 allegedly undocumented workers at four meatpacking plants in Ohio. It was the second time in less than two weeks that ICE had raided an Ohio business. Most of those arrested on June 19 are from Guatemala. ICE officials said those arrested will be detained at facilities in Michigan and Ohio while they await deportation proceedings.

The impact on the community was immediate and terrifying. A local church official said the arrests have caused “fear and heartbreak” among families of those detained. She estimates about three-quarters of the 60 families she works with were directly affected by the raid. One man, whose wife was taken in the raid and who has two children under the age of two, said, “I feel like my heart is being pulled out.” A woman who was taken and later released is the sole adult at home—she has five children.

Veronica Dahlberg, executive director of the immigrant rights group Hola Ohio, told the Washington Post, “This is about decimating the Latino community.” Her group is helping families get in touch with relatives who have been arrested. Already about 200 children have been affected by the raid two weeks ago, and that number will only rise. Dahlberg said bluntly, “We’re quite sure that a majority of them will end up deported. We’re quite sure that a majority of them will end up separated from their children. This is an unfolding catastrophe that will be felt in the weeks and months and years to come.”

As we wrote after the earlier workplace raid in Ohio:

These vicious anti-immigrant attacks are a key link and battering ram in the Trump/Pence regime’s moves toward consolidating fascist rule. “Making America White Again,” the real underlying meaning of “MAGA,” the rallying cry mobilizing tens of millions of Trump’s white supremacist supporters, goes hand in hand with their message on undocumented immigrants—and really, ALL immigrants of darker skin: “You are NOT Americans, you don’t belong here—expect to be treated that way.” This is a program of ethnic cleansing: aiming to deport immigrants in record numbers; creating an atmosphere so ugly that others will be convinced to leave; and increasing the dangers facing those seeking to come to this country across the southern border.

Get These BAsics Palmcards Out Everywhere

June 22, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Protests Across the Country Denounce the Cruel Separation of Immigrant Children from Parents

Updated June 27, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This IS a Regime That Could Destroy Civilization with Nukes—It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

“A regime that could destroy civilization. You think you know... but you don’t” says the poster for the film of Bob Avakian’s talk THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. Yet many people not only don’t know, but don’t want to know or outright deny this possibility. There is real contention over just how serious a threat does the Trump/Pence regime pose to all of humanity.

It IS hard to imagine and confront the worst-case scenario for the planet that a nuclear war could bring. But just because we don’t think about it, it doesn’t mean it won’t or can’t happen. Trump’s rants threatening to “unleash fire and fury like the world has never seen” (on North Korea, but clearly the warning was meant to be heard far beyond) must be taken seriously, even if the threats have simmered down for now. (See revcom.us analysis on why the situation is still volatile and dangerous.)

People should never forget (and they should learn, if they don’t know) that the U.S. is the first and ONLY country to actually drop nuclear bombs. Under Democrat President Harry Truman, the U.S. nuked two cities in Japan in August 1945, massacring 140,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians. (See Case #97 in revcom’s American Crime series.) Since then, the rulers of America’s global empire have used their ghastly weaponry to terrorize the whole world with nuclear brinksmanship and blackmail.

And NOW, the U.S. demand and drive for global domination has leaped to a whole new, dangerous level with the rise of a fascist regime to power, headed by a demented bully with his finger on the nuclear button. Trump has menacingly said, three times, “If we have nukes, why can’t we use them?” His regime is FULL of Christian fascists whose fanaticism includes yearning to see Armageddon so they can “rapture” (the end-times religious belief about when all Christians, living or dead, are supposed to rise to the sky and join Jesus). This regime has recently assembled a hard-core fascist war cabinet with Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Gina Haspel.

As of January 2018, the U.S. military was waging war in 76 countries, or nearly 40 percent of the planet, much of it in Africa and the Middle East. As murderous and criminal as these “conventional” wars are, any conflict that involves a nuclear exchange—even a “limited” one—could quickly spiral out of control into a bigger unleashing of nukes involving different powers. Or, as in the case of the Korean Peninsula, U.S. military moves that begin as a conventional war have the real potential to leap to nuclear war, involving not just the U.S. and North Korea but China and others as well. Any such nuclear war would not only directly cause tens and hundreds of millions of deaths—it could interact with the environment and climate change to affect the planet and human civilization in ways that cannot be anticipated. One scientific study¹ noted that even a nuclear exchange limited to India and Pakistan would release unprecedented amounts of soot into the atmosphere and lead to climate change resulting in widespread crop failures and famine for years. One of the study’s authors said that with a larger nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, “we are talking about possible—not certain, but possible—extinction of the human race.”

What if the Trump/Pence regime feels that developments domestically or internationally are seriously threatening their fascist agenda, given all the unpredictable forces and factors in the world not under their total command and control? Couldn’t this be a pull for Trump et al. to, for example, quickly switch tracks on North Korea and manufacture some incident as a rationale to unleash “fire and fury”?

Nuclear conflicts could develop from errors and accidents too. In 2015, the U.S. deployed over 1,000 nukes or about 20 percent of its nuclear stockpile into the world’s waters onboard ballistic missile and attack submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and supply ships. Nukes brought along on naval exercises, spy missions, navigation demonstrations, and port visits are prone to accidents. Some of these nuked-up vessels have indeed collided, ran aground, caught fire, or sunk.

All this is not to say nuclear war is inevitable with Trump at the nuclear button. Yet the very real possibility of this horror should greatly heighten the urgency for millions to act in the broadest, deepest, and most determined ways to drive out the regime, through mass, sustained nonviolent protest.

But beyond that, there is no necessity for humanity to live with nuclear weapons at all. A horrible end to most or even all of humanity is not the only possibility that exists. It is possible to bring an end to the capitalist-imperialist system—with the aim of ending all class divisions and the relations of exploitation and oppression, and the ideas that enforce those relations. It would take an actual revolution to do this—to overthrow the system by defeating its forces of violent repression, at a time when millions have been won to the need for this revolution and the rulers of the system are in deep trouble.²

There exists today the profoundly challenging, visionary but realistic plan by Bob Avakian for a radically different society to replace capitalism-imperialism—the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. Among the pathbreaking, liberating components of this Constitution is a part that says:

The New Socialist Republic in North America will not develop, and will not use, nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. It will wage a determined and many-sided struggle to rid the world of all such weapons—and it will do this as part of the larger, overall struggle to defeat and dismantle all imperialist and reactionary states and forces and to advance toward the achievement of communism, throughout the world, which will finally make it possible for the desires and dreams of countless human beings throughout history, and the fundamental interests of humanity, for a world without war, to at long last be realized.

This Constitution is a great thing, including for all those agonizing and losing sleep over the nuclear mushroom cloud hanging over humanity. There IS a different world to fight for, where we no longer have to worry about our brothers and sisters anywhere being terrorized and blown to pieces by weapons of mass destruction. To get there, what’s needed now is for growing numbers of people to follow the revolutionary leadership of BA and the RCP he leads, joining the Revolution Club and taking up the strategy embodied in HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution. It is past time to GET ORGANIZED FOR THAT.

1. “Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk?”, November 2013, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility.  [back]

2. Some of the dynamics involved in how this could be done at such a time when circumstances have changed is addressed by the essay “On the Possibility of Revolution” and in several of Bob Avakian’s works, including Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles—But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon, Part 1 and Part 2; and BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!  [back]

Supreme Court Legalizes Religious Bigotry, Xenophobia, Fascist Presidential Powers

Down with the Muslim Ban! The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

June 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump/Pence regime’s openly bigoted, xenophobic Muslim Ban, which severely restricts travel from seven countries. Five of the countries are predominantly Muslim (Yemen, Iran, Syria, Somalia, and Libya), and the two others are North Korea and Venezuela. 

This decision came on the same day the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of anti-abortion fanatics in NIFLA vs. Becerra, the day after it upheld racist gerrymandering aimed at further marginalizing Black and Brown voters in Abbott v. Perez, and two weeks after it upheld anti-LBGTQ bigotry in a case from Colorado.

The Muslim travel ban decision means that the Trump/Pence regime can now go ahead fully with making it enormously difficult, if not impossible, for people from these targeted countries to emigrate to or seek political asylum in the U.S., join their families already in the U.S., get needed medical care, study in the U.S., or just visit as a tourist. (As revcom.us has exposed, while fighting temporary injunction against the Muslim Ban in the courts, the regime had already gone a long way in imposing severe travel restrictions in various ways.) All this represents a vicious, even life-threatening attack on thousands upon thousands of people because of their religion, and because U.S. imperialism has targeted the countries they live in.

This is a reactionary and fascistic decision. The Supreme Court’s Chief Justice and the four others who sided with him claim this is not an anti-Muslim ban based on unconstitutional religious discrimination, because “The text [of the ban] says nothing about religion” and is on the surface “neutral toward religion.” Never mind that Trump has been telling the whole world it’s a Muslim Ban for two years, and it still overwhelmingly targets Muslim-majority countries! 

The justices claimed Trump’s words don’t matter—only days after they cited the words of a county commissioner’s factual statements about the role of religion in justifying bigotry as reason to give a green light to anti-LGBTQ bigotry in the Colorado case. Both decisions attack the separation of church and state, codify Christian religious bigotry and discrimination, and represent steps toward imposing the rule of Christian fascism. And the Muslim Ban decision legalizes racism and xenophobia as well!

The Court ruled that a President can do pretty much whatever he or she wants when it comes to immigration and the borders, including banning entire nationalities from entering the U.S., as long as they provide a fig leaf excuse of “national security,” which the Court claims is “largely immune from judicial control.” Their ruling even drew on openly racist decisions used decades ago to justify the exclusion of Chinese people. 

This decision represents yet another assault on the rule of law and the centralization of fascist power in the hands of the Trump/Pence regime.  

What These Latest Supreme Court Decisions Say…and What We Should Do

1. The recent reactionary round of Supreme Court decisions—on the rights of LGBTQ people, on the voting rights of Black and other oppressed peoples, on the travel ban enacted against Muslims, and on the “rights” of religious people to hide the truth about abortion as part of denying them their right to control their own reproduction—are no more legitimate than the Dred Scott decision that stated that Black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect, the Korematsu decision that upheld the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II in concentration camps, and others. Nobody should respect these decisions from the “highest court of the land” at all; people should fight against them and everything they represent.
2. These decisions show both how deeply woven racism, misogyny, and jingoism are in the American system of capitalist-imperialism and how, with the rise of the fascist Trump/Pence regime as an “answer” to the system’s problems, these are taking on an even more aggressive and directly ominous form. The 250 years of American history do not show a steady march to justice, but the stubborn persistence of racism, misogyny and jingoism and the continual reassertion and adaptation of these evils into even more virulent forms of racism, misogyny, and jingoism. This system cannot be reformed; it must be overthrown. As the work HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution puts it, “…we have the leadership, the science, the strategy and program, and the basis for organizing people for an actual, emancipating revolution. We have Bob Avakian (BA) the leader of this revolution and the architect of a new framework for revolution, the new synthesis of communism.” It is urgent, in the midst of this crisis now rocking this society, to make this known far and wide. 
3. These decisions underline the fact that, as Bob Avakian drives home in his filmed speech on this fascist regime, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible—it is useless and worse than useless to expect the “normal channels” to deal with the fascism that has now been brought forward. Indeed, Trump and Pence continually point to their relentless packing of the courts with Christian-fascist theocrats as one of their great “accomplishments.” People have to act outside these channels, and drive out this regime through mass struggle.
4. Talk by the top Democrats as to how they oppose these decisions and “that’s why we must vote” blur over and take people away from the fact that we face a monumental struggle in which new horrific things go down every day and the future is ever more uncertain; putting hopes in a so-called blue wave while a fascist onslaught continues is suicidal.

Down With the Muslim Travel Ban!

This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America

This system cannot be REFORMED—It must be OVERTHROWN!

Immediately After Supreme Court Decision:

People Raise Their Voices and Get Out Into the Streets to Protest the Muslim Ban

June 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Protests against the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Trump/Pence regime’s hated racist “Travel Ban” (i.e., the Muslim Ban) started as soon as the decision was announced on the morning of Tuesday, June 26. (See here on what the decision means.)

From thousands marching through New York City, to dozens in Detroit, Muslims, Japanese-Americans, Christian clergy, and many others took to the streets in dozens of cities around the U.S., in some cases merging with protests against the imprisonment of Latino children on the U.S. southern border and ICE centers across the U.S.

Many people were deeply hurt and profoundly shaken by the decision, including people whose families are now ripped apart, and people who see this decision as a major part of broader and very ominous developments. But the protests were marked by sober determination to do what it takes to resist and defeat the ban and the white supremacist agenda it is part of.

Here are initial reports on today’s protests. Protests were also scheduled in Raleigh, North Carolina; Anaheim, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and San Jose, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Birmingham, Alabama; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas and Houston, Texas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; Plainfield, New Jersey. And many more are planned for the days to come.

New York: Hundreds crowded Foley Park across from the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan chanting “No Ban, No Wall.” The crowd included many whose families are now indefinitely ripped apart by the Supreme Court ruling. A Yemeni woman who has been trying for four years to get her sons out of that war-ravaged country told the Boston Herald, “Today we were broken.”

The crowd grew to thousands and took off on a march to Battery Park in the Wall Street area, with signs reading “No ban, no wall, no raids, NY is for all,” and chanting “Muslims are welcome here” and "No ban, no wall, the Trump regime has got to fall!" A 70-year-old woman told AM NY “I think right now Trump is winning in his racist struggle against immigrants, and we’re all going to have to resist very hard.”

Washington DC: Several hundred people chanted “No Ban, No Wall” on the steps of the Supreme Court. The group Muslim Advocates was joined by members of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), who see the ugly history of people of Japanese descent being put in internment camps during WW2 being repeated. A freelance journalist tweeted. “Overturning Korematsu [1944 Supreme Court decision approving the internment camps] to uphold a Muslim ban is a vile insult to the Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII. I miss my grandparents every single day. But we're relieved that they aren't alive to see this monstrous decision.”

Seattle: Muslim groups held a press conference at a public library, joined by a diverse crowd of about 100 people. They marched down the street chanting “No Muslim Ban, No Wall.” Several speakers compared today’s ruling to the 1944 Korematsu decision.

Atlanta: Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church (which Martin Luther King Jr. led) and other clergy of many faiths gathered outside Ebenezer in protest. Rev. Warnock declared: “The Supreme Court's decision today was not only an injustice committed against our Muslim sisters and brothers, it's a threat to justice everywhere.”

San Francisco: City officials held a rally on the steps of City Hall; many protesters had signs reading “No Ban, No Wall, Sanctuary for All.”

Minneapolis: Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the federal courthouse. Protesters held signs reading “Demand an end to anti-Muslim bigotry” and “No Muslim ban ever.” At one point the crowd chanted, "The Muslim ban will not stand."

Detroit: Over 50 people from several Muslim groups as well as supporters rallied at Campus Martius Park.

Portland, Maine: A #WeStandWithMuslims rally of 100 on the steps of Portland City Hall opened with 30 minutes of silence... and then at the urging of the local pastor leading it, people began to speak bitterly about the SCOTUS decision. A minister said: “The travel ban is based on a white nationalist racist agenda. This rally shows that Portland is a city that embraces people from all over the world regardless of their religious beliefs or their place of birth.”

Statement from Amnesty International: “This hateful policy is a catastrophe all around—not only for those who simply want to travel, work, or study here in the States, but for those seeking safety from violence as well. While this decision doesn’t address the separate and equally harmful ban on refugees, it cruelly traps people in conflict-afflicted countries and prevents them from seeking safety in the U.S. or being reunited with family. Some of the people banned from this policy are fleeing conflicts that the United States has had a direct hand in creating or perpetuating, as is the case in Yemen and Syria. In those cases especially we are essentially lighting a house on fire and locking the escape door shut. This ban, and the anti-Muslim sentiment in which it originated, has no place in a country that claims to value human rights.” (Emphasis in original)

New York City, Refuse Fascism marched with others.

Crowds in NYC are chanting, "No ban, no wall, the Trump regime has got to fall!" #SCOTUS #NoMuslimBanEver #TrumpPenceMustGo pic.twitter.com/uUMjZduHzY

— #TrumpPenceMustGo (@RefuseFascism) June 27, 2018

Revolution Club at the march in NYC, June 26

Activists march in full-day protest at Richmond, California jail over ICE detentions, Concord camp, travel ban https://t.co/qa4ucWqtdJ via @eastbaytimes pic.twitter.com/xigb4Vi932

— Anda Chu (@anda_chu) June 26, 2018

Richmond, California

Minnesota, June 26, march against the Muslim ban (Photo: Twitter/@iawmusse)

Seattle, WA, June 26. Protests against the Muslim ban and against separation and deportation of immigrant families converge. (Photo: Twitter)

Raleigh, NC, June 26.

Los Angeles, CA, June 26. The Arab American Civic Council rallied in the Little Arabia area of LA.

From RefuseFascism.org

It is high time to cast aside illusions about the normal channels

by Coco Das

June 27, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This was posted at RefuseFascism.org on June 26.

Today’s Supreme Court rulings should make us cast aside all illusions that there is a way out of this fascist nightmare through “checks and balances” from the judicial branch.

First, the court upheld the Texas voting maps, reversing lower court rulings that found evidence of racial discrimination and violations of the Voting Rights Act. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “…after years of litigation and undeniable proof of intentional discrimination, minority voters in Texas — despite constituting a majority of the population within the state — will continue to be underrepresented in the political process.”

In another ruling, the court sided with Christian fascists, absurdly through the first amendment, by striking down a California law that would require so-called “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to disclose if they are not medically licensed and inform women about affordable abortion and contraception services provided by the state. This is a huge loss for women’s reproductive rights. These clinics exist to coerce women and girls to bear children against their will, lying to them and stalling them until it is often too late for them to seek an abortion.

Finally, the court upheld the third version of Trump’s travel ban barring entry INDEFINITELY from several predominantly Muslim countries as well as Venezuela and North Korea.

When Trump first issued his Muslim travel ban through an executive order in January 2017, waves of determined protests disrupted a smooth roll-out of the policy. It was challenged in lower courts, revised, and largely put into effect with virtually no opposition. People who were justifiably outraged when the first Muslim ban was issued were lulled into believing that the courts would intervene on the side of justice.

But this is a fascist regime, changing all the rules of the game, remaking the courts, stealing a Supreme Court seat, and advancing their heartless “America First” program of white supremacy, xenophobia, and Christian theocracy. The people who are affected by this ban are full human beings who are trying to live their lives, be with their families, and survive.

It is high time to cast aside illusions about the normal channels being a way out of this mess. SCOTUS has declared that it does not care about voting rights. It is time to take the fight for abortion rights back into the streets. And we never should have stopped protesting the Muslim bans, versions I, II, and III, which is now the law of the land.

Updated July 5, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

update from RefuseFascism.org:

Children torn from parents... concentration camps for tens or hundreds of thousands... threats to bypass judicial process... The assault on immigrants is the linchpin and battering ram of a whole fascist program:

* The Muslim Ban. * White supremacy and terror. * Environmental deregulation as the planet burns. * Open misogyny and theocratic restrictions on abortion and even birth control. * Stripping away rights recently won by LGTBQ people. * 8 million on the verge of starvation in Yemen due to U.S. backed war. * Threats of nuclear annihilation. * A thoroughly fascist Trump/Pence Supreme Court for generations.

This is an American Fascism: “Trump/Pence regime’s ‘Make America Great Again’ is a 21^st century fascist program of Manifest Destiny—‘America First’—wrapped in the flag and Mike Pence’s Bible taken literally, with a program of white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia.”

ENOUGH. ¡Basta Ya!

We know enough to see what has been put into motion. If we allow them to get away with caging and torturing children, they know there is nothing they can’t get away with. We must not allow them to pack the Supreme Court and wipe out women’s right to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and more and worse. Every crisis this regime gets through strengthens the regime. This is a shock we cannot normalize.

We—the masses of people—must act to stop this whole fascist program and demand that this illegitimate, immoral, regime be removed from power.

This cannot wait until November. The Trump/Pence Regime will not be bound by the normal political process—they are shattering norms, remaking the courts, radically altering the whole political and global landscape. The Democratic Party will not stop this. For them, empire and order is more important than justice, even if that means the order of fascism.

On July 7^th: Join Refuse Fascism, mobilize your organization or your friends and neighbors and take to the streets across the country to raise the demand: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

Printable PDF

Saturday July 7: When and where...

• Atlanta: 11 am at the MLK Historical Site in Atlanta (Meet on corner of Jackson St. and Auburn Ave.) Facebook Event
• Boston / New England: 12:00 – 2:00 pm Park Street Station T-Stop, Boston Commons Facebook Event
• Chicago: 2:00 pm Michigan & Congress Facebook Event
• Cleveland: 2:00 pm at The Free Stamp, Willard Park, Lakeside @ East 9th Street Facebook Event
• Detroit: 1:00 pm 333 Mt. Elliott at the ICE Field Office, site of ongoing Occupy ICE protests Facebook Event
• Honolulu: 6:30 pm Meet at Honolulu Zoo (corner of Kalakaua & Kapahulu). March through Waikiki.
• Houston: 5:00 pm at proposed Immigrant Detention Center 419 Emancipation Blvd.
• Los Angeles: 4:00 pm Meet at Mac Arthur Park Red Line Station on Alvarado between Wilshire & 7th Facebook Event
• New York City: 2:00 pm Union Square, 14th between University Place & Broadway. Form a human chain around the military recruiting center because military being used to house 100,000 people Facebook Event
• Philadelphia: 3:00 pm Love Park North 15th & Arch Streets Facebook Event|
• San Francisco: 12:00 pm San Francisco Federal Building, 7^th and Mission. Facebook Event
• Seattle: 2:00 pm Westlake Park, 4th Avenue & Pine Street Facebook Event

A Moment to Seize, an Urgent Appeal

BUILD THIS WEBSITE—REVCOM.US

June 27, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This is a moment when people are being shocked by this system’s horrors and outrages. Growing numbers are questioning and resisting what they normally accept. Whether revolutionaries are able to seize on this could end up having a lot to do with how things develop in these extraordinarily crucial times for humanity.

HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution says:

We have the website of the Party, revcom.us, and its newspaper Revolution, which sharply expose the crimes of this system, scientifically analyze why it cannot be reformed, and give guidance and direction for people to work in a unified way for revolution. 

There is an urgent need, right now, for revcom.us to even more fully play this role. To all those who see how important this is: Join in and be part of BUILDING THE REVCOM.US WEBSITE! So it can reach many, many more people. So it can contribute even more to organizing thousands into the ranks of the revolution, as millions are being moved to act by what is happening in the world and can be influenced in favor of this revolution!

• CONTRIBUTE AND RAISE FUNDS—for developing media and graphics, for promotions, and for enabling reporters to go where they’re most needed. Donate here.
• FOLLOW REVCOM.US every day and spread the materials on the website broadly, including on social media (@tuneintorevcom).
• VOLUNTEER to write or report on and send pics/videos of what’s going on where you are. Write/send to: revolution.reports@yahoo.com
• BECOME part of the staff producing this website, especially if you are in the New York area. Contact: spreadrevolution@gmail.com

When you do any of this, you are making a real contribution to building the movement for revolution, by making revcom.us the website more and more people come to every day to be part of Fighting the Power, and Transforming the People, for Revolution.

Four points on the retirement of Anthony Kennedy and the storms now looming

June 28, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

1) Anthony Kennedy was a so-called “moderate” Supreme Court justice who voted against voting rights for Black people, who voted against union rights, who voted for unlimited corporate financing of political campaigns, and on down the line. In other words, he could only be called “moderate” in the context of the Dark Ages fascists that now make up the solid core of the court. Where he differed from the Christian-fascist consensus most vividly was on the right of women to abortion and the right of LGBTQ people to marriage equality. Left to the “politics as usual” of passively waiting for elections, both of these will now come directly into the theocratic crosshairs.

2) The fact that Kennedy gave Trump the opportunity to appoint a new, much more fascist judge, indicates the acquiescence of a whole section of the ruling class to the Trump/Pence fascist regime. The further fact that many so-called liberal judges and law professors are counseling people to put their trust in the process and the responsibility of those on the Trump/Pence short list (which have all been vetted by top Christian fascists) indicates the same.

3) Historically, the Supreme Court has reflected the consensus of the capitalist-imperialist class that fundamentally rules over this society. It was a bulwark of slavery during the 1850s (when the ruling class consisted of capitalists and slaveowners), insisting that Black people “had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.”  After the Civil War, as part of cementing into place the “new” order of segregation, exploitative sharecropping, and lynch-mob terror it upheld segregation.  Then, after World War II, when the needs of U.S. imperialism demanded a more “democratic” face, it reversed the laws upholding school segregation (though refused to actually mandate the enforcement of those decisions, calling instead for “all deliberate speed,” a loophole wide enough to preserve and expand de facto segregation).  After this brief 'liberal period', the Court has shifted increasingly to the right.  Now, as many people have pointed out, left on its own and given the myths of “checks and balances,” “proper channels” and the rules of the game, the imperatives of Christian fascism will determine the “law of the land” for decades to come.

4) We are on the verge of not a “conservative” Supreme Court but a Supreme Court with a solid Christian-fascist majority. This should not be seen as a mere wake-up call, but an air-raid siren screaming as night falls and the planes draw near.

At a time like this, this passage from Bob Avakian’s 2017 speech on the Trump/Pence fascist regime stands as the challenge of the moment:

June 28, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Reposted from RefuseFascism.org:

You Don't Need Permission to Do What's Right…

by Coco Das

This was posted at RefuseFascism.org on June 25.

You don’t need permission from elected officials …
You don’t need permission from the media …
You don’t need permission from pundits …

You don’t need permission from lawyers … your favorite non-profit … from Canada or Switzerland or the United Nations …

Children are being terrorized. Locked in cages. Put in concentration camps. Used as hostages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

You know what this regime is doing is criminal, so act without permission. Follow your conscience.

We cannot accept this, not in any form, under any circumstances. ANY non-violent disruption of business as usual is better than doing nothing. ANY non-violent action right now is better than waiting until November.

Shaming fascists in restaurants? Do it!

Stopping an ICE van, putting our bodies on the line and saying no more! Yes!

Taking your baby to a sit-in? Why the hell not, when mothers in detention can’t hold their babies?

Get some friends together and yell Trump and Pence Must Go at the top of your lungs. Find actions near you, or make your own action.

Disturb the air. Do not cooperate. Do not conciliate. Do not accommodate. Do not make peace with fascism.

Refuse Fascism is mobilizing for a time when millions will be ready to fill the public squares of cities and towns across this country, demanding and not backing down until the Trump/Pence regime is gone. That time must be soon.

Until then, don’t wait. Act without permission.

NYC 6/26/18 at protest against SCOTUS upholding Muslim Travel Ban

East Pittsburgh: Police Murder Antwon Rose Jr.—Hundreds Go Into the Streets in Outrage

Updated June 28, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Update June 28: The pig who murdered Antwon Rose was charged with criminal homicide on Wednesday, June 27. Criminal homicide is a broad category, and the prosecutors could pursue the case as murder or manslaughter. A judge or jury could find the killer cop, Michael Rosfeld, not guilty or convict him of a manslaughter charge, which would be a slap on the wrist. The judge gave Rosfeld “unsecured” bail, and he was released within hours. The only reason Rosfeld was even indicted—unlike most killer cops who don’t even get charged—was because of the determined struggle of the people to not let Antwon’s murder be swept under the rug.

On Sunday, June 24, Antwon’s mother said on Good Morning America that Rosfeld “murdered my son in cold blood” and told people to “keep fighting” for justice for Antwon. The next day, Antwon’s family, schoolmates, and friends gathered at the auditorium of his school for an emotional funeral. On Tuesday, June 26, one week after Antwon's murder, a hundred protesters, mainly youth, resumed their righteous actions in the streets, this time marching to the downtown area and disrupting traffic all along the way.

~~~~~~~~~~

As of Sunday, June 24, people have taken to the streets of East Pittsburgh for four straight days and nights following the murder of Antwon Rose Jr., an unarmed 17-year-old Black teenager, shot three times in the back in cold blood by a pig on Tuesday, June 19.

Friday evening, protesters gathered in several different locations across the city. They blocked a bridge downtown for an hour at rush hour. Then protesters marched across the Roberto Clemente Bridge, which crosses the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh toward the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball stadium, where a game was still in progress. Protesters flooded the streets as the Pirates game let out, creating a gridlock for both cars and pedestrians. At one point during a rally, people gathered to form a large circle, and all of the 17-year-olds there stood in the center.

Saturday was the start of Pittsburgh’s annual Juneteenth weekend parade and festival.¹ This year the kickoff march was joined, and magnified, with the outrage at the murder of Antwon. More than 200 people showed up in the rain for the march. Antwon Rose’s young cousin, who carried a photo of Antwon, took the mic and said to the cops, “Stop killing us.” At the end Antwon’s great aunt told everyone to not just go home and say “I’ve done my part,” and that the protest “has to continue.”

Saturday evening the protests continued, with people mobilizing and marching in the streets at 9 pm, this time with Leon Ford taking the lead. Ford was paralyzed by Pittsburgh pigs in 2012 who “mistook him for another man.” Many protesters carried signs, which became a major chant, saying: “3 shots in the back. How do you justify that?” About 10:30 pm, cops came out in riot gear and blocked protesters from continuing down the street. The crowd marched right up to them, chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” then split off and continued on the sidewalks, continuing for another hour or more.

Earlier in the week on Wednesday over 100 people protested in front of police headquarters, with some pushing back against and lying down in front of a police car to stop it. On Thursday afternoon 1,000 people came together for a rally at the county courthouse. That evening people marched through the streets, eventually going onto Interstate 376. For over two hours they blocked traffic in both directions. At 2 am pigs in riot gear began moving on the protesters who’d refused to leave. At least one woman was arrested.

 The murder, partly captured on video, shows the killer cop firing three shots into Antwon’s back just seconds after he and another passenger began to run from the car during a traffic stop. On the video, you can hear the woman recording it shout, “Why are they shooting? All they did was run and they’re shooting at them!” Antwon had no weapon on him.

Antwon’s friends, family, and teachers are reeling from Antwon’s murder. A woman who operated an organization that distributes donated goods to people in need told the Washington Post that she got an email in 2015 from Antwon asking if he could volunteer for her organization. She thought it remarkable that a 14-year-old would do this. She said of Antwon, “He was friendly, easy to work with, smart, vibrant. He was a caring person, and everyone loved him.”

A poem Antwon wrote at school last year when he was a 10th grader is titled “I Am Not What You Think!” and says in part, “I see mothers bury their sons/I want my mom to never feel that pain/I am confused and afraid.”

Tamir Rice … Trayvon Martin … Eric Garner … Sandra Bland … Stephon Clark … Maurice Granton Jr. … now Antwon Rose Jr.  These and thousands of other equally outrageous executions are part of an epidemic of wanton police murder and terror against Black, Brown, and Native American people—especially the youth—to enforce the oppression and white supremacy this whole putrid system is based on.

The protests in East Pittsburgh are righteous. They need to continue and be joined around the country by everyone who sees that what this system does to Black people and all oppressed is completely intolerable and unacceptable. And people need to join the movement for a real revolution to end this and all the horrors this system brings down.

STOP! Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality and Murder of Black and Brown People!

1. Juneteenth Day is a holiday commemorating June 18 and 19, 1865, when Union troops seized Galveston, Texas, and declared the emancipation of slaves throughout the state.  [back]

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This Film Can Make a Major Difference in How People See the Political Situation... and the World—Now, More Than Ever, It Must Be Spread

June 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As hundreds of thousands across the country are taking to the streets against the cruelty being perpetrated on the border—cruelty with prefigurations of genocide ... there is nothing more important for them to hear than the deep historical analysis of Bob Avakian’s speech, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. And as people reel from—and respond to—the prospect of a rock-solid Christian-fascist court system for a generation—there is nothing more illuminating for them to see than the way Bob Avakian lays out his analysis of the character of that Christian fascism. Right now, when people on a greater scale are in anguish but simultaneously refusing to be passive and raising their heads, there is nothing more crucial for them to experience than the challenge put to them by BA and the direction—the leadership—he gives at this crucial moment.    

If you follow this website, think about how you and your comrades can maximize this during the outpourings happening now. What are the ways that this film, now more timely and urgent than ever, can reach the audience that needs to hear it? Imagine if hundreds of thousands of people—imagine if more—were exposed to this film. Imagine the difference it could make in how people understood the situation, what they thought was possible, and what they wanted to do. Imagine the doors that would be opened.

As we have said:

If more people see this talk by BA, it could actually change the political equation—giving people a scientific understanding of the situation we face, its causes, and what to do about it. BA points people toward deeper questions about the society we live in. And, very crucially in today’s situation, the film introduces people to BA, the most important revolutionary thinker and leader of our time, who has brought forward a new communism, which provides a path to a radically new, and much better, world. Let’s open this door for many, many more people!

Send your ideas. Send your experience. 

Today's Message from the Revolution

October 26, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

October 26, 2019

Revolution Club Contingent in Pride Parade in NYC

TAKING THE REAL REVOLUTION TO PRIDE 2018

June 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolution Club NYC took its message—This System Cannot Be Reformed; It Must Be Overthrown—to the Pride March here. We went out with a big banner that said just that, with several thousand copies of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution (HWCW), with Revolution—Nothing Less! t-shirts and with so many other materials that it was hard for the about half a dozen of us to transport it all to our gathering spot.

We were registered to be part of the Pride parade, and we got out there an hour before the contingent was supposed to step off in order to rally people to join us in taking the message of the revolution out to the many tens of thousands of people who came out to Pride 2018. And people did join us. Our banner and our chanting drew people to our presence. At times we did agitation that laid out what the revolution was all about and about the leadership we had for the revolution in Bob Avakian, and how HWCW laid out the strategy for revolution. A couple of groups of young people got t-shirts, and they and others held up and carried the banner (that took three people) and started getting out the flyers.

The revolution had an impact on the crowd before the parade stepped off. People signed up to be part of our contingent and march with us, and some people who were already signed up to march with other contingents decided to join ours instead. And when we stepped off, after several hours delay, we had a real impact on many of the people lining the parade route.

To be accurate here, most of the people paid little attention as we went past them, and a few reacted like we were intruding on their party. But a lot of people were drawn to our presence. People took pictures of our banner and videoed our agitation and chants. We did “This System Can’t Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!” and “1, 2, 3, 4, Slavery, Genocide and War; 5, 6, 7, 8, America Was Never Great!”

We weren’t just marching down the street, we were rocking thru the parade. We gave our chants a rhythm. We had a beat and a presence, and many people rocked with us, taking up our chants and snatching up copies of HWCW and the flyer. Some of them joined our contingent, climbing over police barricades or jumping in as the parade stopped to let people cross the street. Some of the newer people gave our contingent a real vibrancy, dancing down the street carrying big posters of the “5 Stops.” At one point, the Refuse Fascism contingent in front of us took a knee, and we joined them in doing that. People in a religious contingent behind us joined in taking a knee.

All together two or three dozen people ended up joining our contingent at some point during the day, and at the end of the parade about 20 of us sat down for about 30 minutes to sum up what we had just done. About a dozen of the people involved in this summation had met the revolution for the first time that day. Those of us who had led the contingent posed whether people thought we had succeeded in taking out the message of the revolution to Pride, and we summed up what that message was.

Thru this brief summation, it became clear that people had been drawn to our contingent because they felt that the system couldn’t be reformed and needed to be overthrown, whatever their different understandings of what overthrowing it meant. (One person asked whether we thought buying some land and setting up communes where people could withdraw from capitalism was a viable strategy.) People mostly told us who they were, what their political experience had been; and they raised their questions about the revolution. And they also asked what was next, along with raising their ideas about what should be done and how they could be a part of doing it. (About a half-dozen of the new people were college students, and some of them wanted to bring the Revolution Club to their schools.) Basically people had taken part in the revolution, were discussing continuing to work with the revolution, and they were digging into what the revolution was all about.

Following this brief summation, a few of the new people and some of the revolutionaries had dinner together and continued the discussion.

This system can't be reformed, it must be overthrown!
Taking a knee at #Pride #NYCPride with @Carl_Dix @NYCRevClub https://t.co/yhgXETH0HY pic.twitter.com/nS7wc6UETq

— Sunsara Taylor (@SunsaraTaylor) June 25, 2018

Over 600 Arrested in DC Action Against Immigrant Family Separations

June 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

June 28, Washington, DC—More than 600 people, mainly women, were arrested in a sit-in at a Senate office building in a protest against the government’s detention and separation of immigrant families. The protesters wrapped themselves in Mylar blankets like the ones given to children locked up in the detention (i.e., concentration) camps and chanted “Abolish ICE.” The action was led by organizers of the Women’s March. The protesters also blocked the entrance to the Department of (In)Justice and marched through the streets.

Police arresting hundreds at a Senate office building, Washington, DC, June 28. Credit: twitter #WomensMarch

Federal Pigs Raid “Occupy ICE” Encampment in Portland, Oregon

June 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

For 11 days, since June 17, the operations of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE—had basically been shut down by an “Occupy ICE” round-the-clock encampment and protest. Then on Thursday, June 28, heavily armed riot police from the Department of Homeland Security raided the encampment, tore down signs and banners, and arrested at least eight people.

The Portland encampment has inspired Occupy ICE protests across the country, including in San Diego, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, DC, Louisville, Tacoma, Washington, and New York City. These are righteous and must be supported!

Riot police at the Portland, Oregon, ICE facility after tearing down the protest encampment. Credit: Twitter @pdxlawgrrrl

June 30: Hundreds of Thousands March Across the Country Against the Government's Detention and Separation of Immigrant Families

Updated July 1, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

June 30, 2018. Across the country, from large cities to smaller ones, hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demand that the government stop the cruel, brutal detention and separation of immigrant families. News reports say that at least 750 protests took place, in almost every state in the country—in major U.S. cities but also in many smaller cities and towns. The crowds were very diverse, people of all ages and nationalities—many coming out to protest for the first time. People drove, took trains and got on planes to rally, march and voice their opposition to the heartless immigration policies of the fascist Trump/Pence Regime that is ripping children away from parents and detaining many thousands of immigrants behind bars. In the crowds were immigrants, some who talked about their own stories of family members being deported. Lots of people came with their children and talked about how they had conversations with their kids, even very young children, about what is happening on the border and why it’s important to go out and protest against this. One woman got up in front of the crowd at the rally in LA and said, “I am undocumented, unapologetic and unafraid.” Refuse Fascism activists and contingents were part of marches in cities across the country. The Revolution Club joined protests in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles with "This System Can't Be Reformed. It Must Be OVERTHROWN!" banners.

[Read reports from readers on June 30 protests HERE.]

In Washington, DC, tens of thousands of people gathered in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, chanting, “We care” and “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA.” People carried signs in English and Spanish. People carried signs like: “We are all immigrants,” “Seeking safety is not a crime,” “Melania & Ivanka, stop the child abuse” and “What’s next? Concentration Camps?” People came from towns and cities all along the East Coast and farther including North Carolina and Tennessee. A number of celebrities addressed the rally. Alicia Keys and America Ferrera read letters from families separated from children. Lin-Manuel Miranda sang a lullaby to the children who have been ripped away from their parents. Actress Diane Guerrero from Orange is the New Black, whose parents were deported when she was 14 years old, addressed the crowd, saying, “How many more children are we willing to subject to a lifetime of pain... What kind of country do we want to be when it violates the fundamental right of those seeking asylum? ...I have to believe that this is a chance for us to rise above the tyranny.” One man compared this moment to other periods in U.S. history, such as when Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps during World War II, or when Jews fleeing persecution in Europe sought refuge on America’s shores and were turned away.

In New York City, news reports said 30,000 protesters gathered at a park in Manhattan and then marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, chanting “shame!” and “shut detention down.” The march was at least a mile long. Signs included: “Kids should not be in cages” (worn by a kid), “This episode of Handmaid’s Tale sucks.” Actress Kerry Washington, who’s from the Bronx, was at the NYC protest and said, “We actually have to participate to make it work. When you have those moments—and a lot of us are having them now, of feeling overwhelmed and afraid and heartbroken about the state of affairs in our country—you have to speak out and come together with other people who care about this country doing the right thing.” A pediatrician, Dr. Steve Auerbach, was in the crowd and told a reporter, “Doing this causes permanent physical and mental health harm to children. This is child abuse. This is torture and as a mandatory reporter, I am hereby reporting it.”

Tens of thousands demonstrated in Los Angeles. People held up a big banner at the front of the crowd near the stage that read: “What Side are You On—Sanctuary Cities.” People gathered in front of City Hall and marched through downtown. “Human rights should have no border!” a protester yelled at the start of the L.A. rally. Kids waved signs that said, “Familia, si! Trump, no, no, no!” People chanted, “Where are the children?” and carried signs like, “Separating children from their families is illegal.” Jimmy “Taboo” Gomez of the musical group Black Eyed Peas helped get things started by performing the hit song “Where is the Love?” John Legend also performed at the rally with a new song written for the occasion called “Preach,” urging people to action, that it’s not enough to preach. Legend told the crowd: “We see them as human beings who deserve the chance to flourish and be the best versions of themselves they can be. If you are committed to this kind of love, it means you believe in justice. But it’s not easy. It requires you see through the eyes of another. You can’t just talk about it, or read about it. You’ve got to do something!” [Read a report from a Revolution Club member in Los Angeles HERE.]

In San Francisco, CA thousands of people rallied and marched to City Hall. See video here.

Protesters beat drums, blew horns and carried signs like, “Deport Trump” and “I Really Care, Do You?” One news report described how the crowd at Dolores Park grew exponentially, mushrooming from a handful of protesters at 9 a.m. to perhaps thousands within an hour. Participants strummed banjos, pushed strollers and dangled handmade signs with the slogan “Families Belong Together.” There was also a rally across the bay, in Berkeley.

People took to the streets in Portland, Oregon after earlier demonstrations in the week where police in riot gear attacked protesters—Sign: “Zero Human Policy.” People have set up a tent city surrounding the ICE office with about 100 people who have been sleeping overnight, saying they will not leave until this inhumanity against immigrants stops. Several stay-at-home moms organized their first rally while caring for young kids. “I’m not a radical, and I’m not an activist,” said Kate Sharaf, a Portland co-organizer. “I just reached a point where I felt I had to do more.” Jess Morales Rocketto, political director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents nannies, housekeepers and caregivers, many of whom are immigrants, said “We just kept hearing over and over again, if it was my child, I would want someone to do something.”

In Chicago, a large crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Daley Plaza downtown. Some protesters shouted, “If we don’t get it, shut it down,” and held signs saying “Abolish ICE.” Protesters marched through the downtown Loop area to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Chicago office and set up tents. A protester said, “We’re in a battle for the soul of the country.” One man, when asked by a reporter what message he had for Trump, said, “Leave Office.” [Read a report from a Revolution Club member from Chicago HERE.]

Thousands gathered in El Paso near the US-Mexico border, and converged on the International Bridge that carries traffic between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. People carried signs like, “We are all immigrants." There were other protests in Texas. Protesters in Dallas gathered outside City Hall, many carrying signs that read: “Compassion not cruelty.” According to news reports, people began blocking the road and at least five people were arrested when they refused police orders to move. In Houston people chanted, “No baby jails” and there was also a protest in McAllen, near a detention center where immigrant children are being held.

Trump was at the Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey where more than 100 protesters lined the side of a major New Jersey highway waving anti-Trump signs and chanting, “Where are the children!”

At least 7,000 people demonstrated in Minneapolis, chanting, “Build bridges, not walls,” “Education, not deportation” and “Love, not fear—immigrants are welcome here.” The crowd, which packed at least six downtown blocks, marched to the Hennepin County jail after an opening rally near the Minneapolis Convention Center.

In Boston, a “Rally against Family Separation” began with a march in the morning from City Hall to Boston Common to rally. There was also another demonstration in the afternoon with a march from Wellington Common Park to the South Bay House of Correction, a county jail in Boston where undocumented immigrants are put behind bars.

Thousands of people took to the streets of downtown Atlanta. People carried dog crates with baby dolls inside.

Japanese American survivors and descendants of those who were incarcerated during World War II in concentration camps in America, rallied at the site of the Tule Lake prison camp in Northern California. Protesters held signs that read: “Kodomo no tame ni. They’re our children. Set them free”—sending a message that whether 1942 or now concentration camps are unacceptable.

Hundreds of people gathered to protest in Detroit and 22 other Michigan cities. In Denver, 4,000 rallied. Thousands gathered in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico calling for an end to the detention of immigrant families. A banner at the protest in Louisville, Kentucky read: “Immigrants and Refugees Welcome.” 500 rallied in Ithaca, New York, where one sign read: “Nazi’s separated families. We shall not.” Protesters gathered in Indianapolis, the state capital of Indiana. One protester, a grandmother of nine, said, “I’m hoping that decent human beings come together, and enough is enough." In Onancock, Virginia, an Eastern Shore town with a population of under 1,300, some 60 people turned out for a march and a “Rally for the Children.” Some 200 protesters gathered Saturday outside the federal building in Binghamton, NY. 1,000 people protested in St. Louis, Missouri. In Columbus, Ohio, at least one person was arrested at a protest of about 2,000 people near the statehouse. A nurse told the crowd that she had never been to a rally before and said, “You don’t have to be a parent to be outraged. You just have to be a decent human being.”

4,000 people protested in Denver, Colorado, some wearing foil blankets, similar to the ones given to children separated from their parents. One sign read, “Keep the kids, deport the racists.” Around 400 people rallied in downtown Dayton, Ohio. About 300 people protested in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. About 125 people rallied in Marshalltown, Iowa. A father was inspired to organize a rally in support of immigrant families after seeing news on Father’s Day of immigrant children separated from their parents and held in cage-like structures. It brought him to tears. More than 1,500 people gathered in downtown San Luis Obispo, California. There were also protests in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; Alaska and Puerto Rico, as well as Antler, North Dakota, which has a population of 27. More than 2,500 marched and rallied in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In Delaware, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the State Office building in Wilmington. One woman, addressing the crowd with her two daughters standing by her side, said, “I do it with the hope of a better world for them, which means when there’s oppression, hatred and intolerance, you stand up and fight!” There were two other protests in Delaware, in Dover and Milltown. Several hundred people marched outside the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood—one of several protests across South Florida. An Orlando area schoolteacher who joined the Hollywood demonstrators said, “I came out here because I teach a lot of immigrant children. I’m the daughter of a refugee, my mom, who came here in the early 90s seeking asylum from Romania.”

There were protests in HUNDREDS of other cities and towns across the country and also outside the United States, including in Mexico City, Copenhagen, Paris, London, Tokyo, Halifax, Toronto, and Taiwan. In London, dozens of Americans gathered to protest outside the U.S. embassy.

Bay Area Revolution Club. Photo: Special to revcom.us

New York City, NY. Photo: Twitter/@bradenking

Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Special to revcom.us

Portland, Maine. Photo: AP

Japanese American survivors & descendants rallied today at the Tule Lake WWII prison camp. We have a message for those who jail children, whether now or in 1942:

Kodomo no tame ni. They're our children. Set them free! #FamiliesBelongTogether #NoCampsNoCages #EndFamilyDetention pic.twitter.com/9pNpmNgjXe

— Tule Lake Pilgrimage (@SaveTuleLake) June 30, 2018

San Francisco, California. Photo: Special to revcom.us

Carl Dix and the Revolution Club, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC. Photo: Special to revcom.us

Denver, Colorado. Photo: Twitter/@krassenstein

Los Angeles, California. Photo: Special to revcom.us

Seattle, Washington. Photo: Twitter/@stearnsseattle

#FamiliesBelongTogether: I'm in the middle of Lafayette Square, this is what I'm seeing. PACKED. The whole park is shoulder-to-shoulder. pic.twitter.com/PfvnO1xw6c

— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) June 30, 2018

Washington, DC

Massive protest for Families Belong Together Day of Action (as seen from @cbschicago newsroom windows) #FamiliesBelongTogether #daleyplaza pic.twitter.com/Up6Y0dk64k

— Damara Anderson (@DAndersonCBS2) June 30, 2018

Boston, Massachusetts. Photo: Twitter/@VestalMcIntyre

Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo: AP

Raleigh, North Carolina. Photo: Twitter/@BravoAriana