Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Execution of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and the Urgency of Putting this Revolution and Its Leadership on the Map

This was posted at revcom.us as a letter from a reader to Revolution Newspaper:
http://revcom.us/a/202/detroit-en.html 

Bob Avakian, the leader of the movement for revolution that we are building, begins his talk Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About by recounting the history of lynching in the United States. As Avakian describes a few especially horrific instances of the lynching of Black men and women at the hands of white supremacist mobs...as he unfolds the details of atrocities that are unbearable and infuriating almost beyond words, he returns to this refrain: "AND THAT'S STILL NOT THE WORST OF IT."

This is exactly how I have felt during the past several days, as details and reaction surrounding the execution of Aiyana Stanley-Jones continue to emerge. For those who have still not heard, Aiyana Stanley-Jones is a 7-year-old girl who was shot and killed by Detroit police during a raid carried out in the early-morning hours of May 16. You read that correctly—7 years old.

Read more »

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 3:29 PM | 0 comments

Friday, May 21, 2010

Interesting on Elena Kagan and the So-Called "Left"

So, I just read this article from David Sirota where he writes: 

"We know Kagan was among the Clinton administration advisers urging the president to support a serious abortion restriction and to avoid reducing racist disparities in criminal sentencing. We know that as Harvard Law School dean, Kagan 'hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members [and] did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian—not one, not even a token,' reports Duke University’s Guy-Uriel Charles. And we know that in her solicitor general confirmation hearings, Kagan stated her radical belief that the government can hold terrorism suspects without trial.

"Again, if this were a Republican nominee’s record, 'The Left’s' pro-choice and civil rights groups would be frantically mounting opposition—or at least raising concerns. But this is a Democratic nominee, so they’ve fallen in line. Planned Parenthood celebrated Kagan’s 'dedication,' the NAACP trumpeted her 'commitment to diversity' and the liberal Alliance for Justice said it 'applauds' her nomination."

What he is describing is both accurate and despicable.  It brings to mind a very important truth articulated by Bob Avakian:

"If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are."

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 4:07 PM | 0 comments

Carl Dix Speaks Out on the Police Murder of Aiyana Jones!



He's going to be at her funeral this Saturday in Detroit. If you are within driving distance you should be there too.

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 10:22 AM | 0 comments

Tune in Today to the Michael Slate Show on KPFK

You can listen online at kpfk.org; click "Listen Live."10:00 - 11:00 AM Pacific Time 


This Week:    
     Larry Everest of Revolution newspaper, reporting live from the Gulf of Mexico on continuing developments in the oil spill disaster, the devastation it is causing and the coverup of the scope of the damage.

     Mary Ellen O'Connell, professor of international law at Notre Dame Law School on the unlawful killing with combat drones. The use of drones, and the number of civilians killed in drone attacks, has increased dramatically under President Obama.

      Wendy Graf, playwright, and
Annika Marks, actor, from Behind the Gates, an exploration of the horrifying oppression of women under religious fundamentalism. Now playing at the Marily Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center. See more.
 

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 10:12 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Photos of Family Grieving Aiyana Jones


Charles Jones, age 25 -- father of Aiyana Jones -- sobbing with head in hands in front of photos of his daughter




Mertilla Jones, grandmother of Aiyana Jones (on left with photo)
Dominika Stanley, mother (on right in front)
Charles Jones, father (behind Dominika on right)




Dominika Stanley (mother of Aiyana) with Charles Jones (father of Aiyana) in front of the home where police killed Aiyana Jones, age 7








Family member putting plexiglass over the window that police shattered with their stun flash grenade -- the same one that landed near Aiyana and burned her before she was struck and killed by a police bullet

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 10:23 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Aiyana Jones -- More Police Lies & Crimes & Cover Up; More Reasons for REVOLUTION!

This morning Democracy Now reported:

"the Detroit News has revealed the officer involved in the shooting, Joseph Weekley, was accused in a 2009 federal lawsuit of being part of a team that broke into a home, shot two dogs and pointed a pistol at children, including an infant."

So, now it is revealed that the police officer who was "involved in the shooting" of 7 year old Aiyana Jones in her own home while she slept had previously broken into a home, shot two dogs and pointed his gun at children -- INCLUDING AN INFANT!

What does it say that this man was still on the police force? Does that sound like one of those "bad apples"? Is it really possible that his superiors ascribe any value to the lives of those his force terrorizes if they let this man continue to carry out no-knock raids on people's homes -- including homes where there were children?

And what about the fact that there were multiple police on the scene. What does it tell ALL OF THEM went along with not only arresting and detaining Aiyana's family, but also that none of them spoke up when the police LIED about how the gun went off and blamed it on a "scuffle" with Aiyana's grandmother, Mertilla?

Read more »

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 12:18 PM | 0 comments

Aiyana Jones -- Police kill 7 year old and terrorize her family

From the Detroit Free Press:


Aiyana’s dad, Charles Jones, said he rushed into the living room after hearing the explosive and gunshot. He says police made him lie face down on the ground, his face in shattered glass and the blood of his daughter.
"Blood was coming down her mouth," said Mertilla Jones. "They killed my grandbaby."
Charles Jones said that police told him his daughter would be ok.

 http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100516/NEWS01/100516012/0/NEWS01/Detroit-girl-7-shot-and-killed-by-police&template=fullarticle

So, the police threw a flash grenade through her window.  It burned the seven year old girl sleeping on her couch.

Then, the police shot her.

Then, when her father rushed into the living room, they pushed him into the glass and blood of his own daughter on the floor.  They treated him like a criminal.  And they LIED to him.  They told him his daughter was fine.

But, she wasn't fine.  She was dead at age seven.  She was shot and killed by police.

And what did this police do when they discovered the body of a seven year old girl bleeding and dying owing to their bullets?

Did they stop everything and immediately tend to her care?  Did they step back and let the father hold his child in her final moments?  Did they show any remorse?

No, they pushed her father face down into the broken glass and his daughter's blood and LIED to him.  They arrested her grandmother and held her for several hours.

Then, they LIED to the news and the public.

From Democracy Now:

Detroit police say an officer’s gun accidentally went off after the officer tussled with Aiyana’s grandmother. But the attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, says video of the incident shows police opened fire after lobbing a flash grenade through the home’s front window—before they had entered. A bullet from the gun pierced Aiyana’s head and neck.


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/18/headlines#7

Now, if you have read all this -- don't just shake your head at the tragedy.  Don't just shrug your shoulders.

Ask yourself: is any of this legitimate in ANY KIND OF WAY?

Fact is, at any point in this entire incident the police handled things in the worst way possible.  And repeatedly they lied about it.

This is not accidental or incidental or one of those so-called "isolated incidents."

Everything about how this entire incident went down reveals the nature of the police force.  They are not there to "protect and serve" the people.  They exist to protect and serve an illegitimate capitalist system that cares nothing for the lives of the people in this country or in any part of the world.

This is a system that was founded on slavery and genocide and has white supremacy woven into its DNA.  It is a system that has perfected the methods for terrorizing oppressed people all over the globe.  I mean, why invent something like the flash grenade?  Why perfect the tactic of throwing them into people's homes in the middle of the night -- the time that is most disorienting, intentionally?  Why bring a whole TV camera crew to film the incident as if it is just another form of entertainment?  (I guess, this is the country that turned genocide -- that is, "cowboys and Indians" -- into a children's game.)

Why is it that you can find parents in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guatemala, in Panama, in Arizona, in Detroit, in Harlem, in Compton, in countries and cities around the world who would know exactly how Aiyana's family felt?  Because they too have had their doors kicked in in the middle of the night and been shoved onto the ground as their family members are killed, as their elderly relatives are thrown around, as their loved ones are dragged off in cuffs as if THEY are the criminals.

For too long the USA has wrecked terror and heartbreak, bloodshed and nightmares, broken dreams and early graves, misery and torment to every corner of this globe.


TIME IS UP!

TIME TO FIGHT THE POWER AND TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE FOR REVOLUTION!

Join in protests and get out the statement:http://revcom.us/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html

Read and share the whole thing http://revcom.us/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html  -- but here are excerpts below:

It is a system of capitalism-imperialism…a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower…a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor…torture and rape…the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere…wars, invasions and occupations…assassinations and massacres…planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA bombarding people in faraway lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night…while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is "justified," as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future.
...

yes, it is true—now is not yet the time, in this country, to go all-out to seize the power away from those who rule over us and to bring a new power, serving our interests, into being. But now IS the time to be WORKING FOR REVOLUTION—to be stepping up resistance while building a movement for revolution—to prepare for the time when it WILL be possible to go all out to seize the power.
Revolution can be made when there is a revolutionary situation, an even greater crisis in society as a whole: when people in greater numbers come to deeply feel and understand that the present power has no legitimacy…that it serves only a handful of oppressors…that it uses lies and deception, corruption and completely unjust force and violence to keep this system going and "keep the people in their place"…when millions see the need to fight to break this power and establish a new power that can bring about the changes that people desperately need and want. For a revolution, there must be a revolutionary people, among all sections of society but with its deepest base among those who catch hell every day under this system…people who are determined to fight for power in order to radically change society, to get rid of oppression and exploitation. But the point is this: we cannot, and we must not, sit around and wait for "one fine day" when this revolutionary situation comes about and a revolutionary people comes on the scene. No, we must—and we can—work to bring a revolutionary people into being…to enable people to see why they should put no faith in this system, and should not live and die in a way that keeps this system going…but instead should devote their lives to resisting oppression and building up for the time when we can get rid of the cause of all this oppression. Using our Party's newspaper, Revolution, as the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for this whole process, this is what our Party means when we say we are hastening while awaiting the revolutionary situation, preparing minds and organizing forcesfor revolution.
All this is not possible without leadership. But the thing is…There is leadership.

THE LEADERSHIP WE HAVE

In Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party, we have the kind of rare and precious leader who does not come along very often. A leader who has given his heart, and all his knowledge, skills and abilities to serving the cause of revolution and the emancipation of humanity.


READ THE REST AT: http://revcom.us/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 1:10 AM | 0 comments

Monday, May 17, 2010

Aiyana Jones -- 7 years old, killed by police while she slept last night in Detroit

Aiyana Jones



She was just 7 years old. She was not a criminal. She was not a threat. She was not acting unruly. She was not sending predator drones to kill civilians across the world. She was not recklessly drilling for oil deep under the ocean. She was not taking advantage of anyone's poverty to force them to into a sweatshop 14 hours a day.

She was sleeping.

In her own bed.

In her own home.

Yet, she was shot in the neck by police and killed.

How many more will be killed by police...

Anthony Baez

Hilton Vega

Amadou Diallo

Tyesha Miller

Oscar Grant

There's more than we can count. There's rivers of blood and oceans of grief caused by this murderous system.

How many more before you say too much? Before you join in the struggle to put and end to all this?

As it says in the statement, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have":

"It is up to us: to wake up…to shake off the ways they put on us, the ways they have us thinking so they can keep us down and trapped in the same old rat-race…to rise up, as conscious Emancipators of Humanity. The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be."

http://revcom.us/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html 

With revolution, all this madness ends.  With revolution, the youth will have a future worthy of human beings.  With revolution, a new day for the oppressed and for those who dream of freedom.  The revolution is real.  Get with it!

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 7:17 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 15, 2010

So You Wish Communism Could Work... But Are Not Convinced


Last night I was part of a panel on Morality and God(s) together with Ryan Falcioni, Nancy Murphy and Dan Mages at UCLA sponsored by their undergraduate Philosophy Club.

It was a great dialogue/debate among the panelists and with the audience.  Afterwards, it was striking to me how many students came up to ask things about communism.  Some had read a little Marx and wanted to pursue some of the ideas they’d been introduced to, others wanted to understand more deeply what I meant by communist morality, many wanted to get into the themes I had addressed around religion drawing from Bob Avakian’s book, “AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World.”  Almost all of them wanted to know whether communism was really realistic, whether it could really be brought about, and whether human beings could really live differently that capitalism forces people to live.  Most of these questions were from a place of wishing this was possible, but being very skeptical.

I told several of them this last night, but am posting it on my blog today for everyone that these kinds of questions resonate with and for everyone who came last night and drops in here today to hear something more from me:

TAKE THE TIME TO WATCH THIS TALK BY BOB AVAKIAN.

There is nothing more important that we can investigate, contribute to, and put our lives in the service of than the emancipation of humanity and the rescue of the planet – this is what communist revolution can accomplish.

So, look into this fully.  Get into it deeply.  Don’t take my word for it, but also don’t form your opinion based on a superficial engagement.  There is too much at stake.

Carve out the time – even if it is over the course of several weeks, to watch this whole talk: REVOLUTION: Why Its Necessary; Why Its Possible; What Its All About.





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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 4:28 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 08, 2010

"A New Generation of Revolutionary Leaders": BOB AVAKIAN ON THE ESSENCE OF COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, AND BRINGING FORWARD NEW LEADERS

http://revcom.us/a/200/new_generation-en.html
Note: The following is the text of the answer by Bob Avakian to Question 14 in the "Questions and Answers" Section of the DVD: Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About. This has been slightly edited for publication, and a footnote has been added. 


Now, finally, as far as written questions—because we wanted to allow time for people to ask questions from the floor, so to speak—the question is: "Given how crucial the revolutionary upsurge of the '60s was in forging the leadership of the RCP, how can a new generation of revolutionary leadership be brought into being in the absence of such a revolutionary upsurge?"

Well, those were favorable times. There was a revolutionary upsurge generally in the world, in many different forms and many different levels and with many different kinds of programs and ideologies. But there was a general revolutionary ferment in the world, and this did find very broad expression even within the U.S. itself. I mean this even penetrated into some of the mainstream silly popular culture. Like some of you might remember the movie Car Wash—it was made in the '70s. There's a scene in there where the son of the owner of the car wash brings in the Red Book [Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung] and is trying to propagandize the other people working in the car wash about how great the Red Book is. Well, this was kind of silly, on one level, but it reflected something about what was going on in the culture. There was another movie made with Peter Sellers called I Love You, Alice B. Toklas. This was all about how... Alice B. Toklas was this woman who developed this recipe for making cookies with marijuana, I think. And it involved this guy [played by the actor] Peter Sellers who was a mainstream, really straight-by-the-book lawyer who's supposed to have one of these marriages that's sort of, you know, almost like a merger. And at the last minute he drops out and goes and joins his brother in kind of a hippie life, and he keeps going back and forth between these two lives. And at one point his brother takes him to a bookstore and says, "Oh, the Red Book—you really gotta get one of these." So this is a kind of reflection, even reaching into the mainstream culture, of what was going in the society at that time, especially among the youth of different nationalities, but not only them.

And of course this provided very favorable terms and conditions for people to develop into revolutionaries and into communists. Now, naturally, it didn't happen automatically. Just because there was all this stuff around, just because there was a Red Book there, you didn't have to read it. And just because you read it didn't mean you understood it. And just because you read it and understood it didn't mean you really went deeper and understood something more fundamental than that. I mean the Red Book is a condensed version of a lot of things. It's very good, obviously, but to really understand these things and really develop as a communist you have to go a lot deeper and a lot broader than that. You have to get into a lot of the underlying principles that are being spoken of and concentrated there. And you have to get into all the complexities of this.

But this general kind of atmosphere created very favorable conditions for that, it's true. This is a situation in which I myself and others in the RCP—or what became the RCP—this is the context in which many of us developed. But, of course, we shouldn't romanticize that. There were lots of people who developed in that time, became very radicalized, even became revolutionary-minded, who did not become Maoists, who did not become communists. They went in other directions. Or they proclaimed themselves Maoists and communists but it wasn't really that. And when some real twists and turns and some real tests came, like when the revisionists seized power in China [in 1976], they just fell all apart. So it wasn't some kind of automatic or easy thing to be..."oh, you know, everybody was being a communist then, man, all you had to do was fall into it." It wasn't like that. And a lot of people got killed in that period of time, especially members of the Black Panther Party, who might have also developed into revolutionary leaders in a more developed way but never got the chance. This is the way it goes. Some of this is accident—who emerges and who doesn't as a revolutionary leader and what emerges as a vanguard party.

One of the questions we didn't get into here—we didn't have time—is somebody asked the question of did I think that as a white male I could actually lead the revolution. Well, the answer is no, not as a white male--but I think I could play a leading role in it as a communist [applause]. This is the challenge: what you follow is not people based on what nationality they are, or what gender they are, and so on, but whether they really represent the way forward out of all this and whether they have a plan and a program for actually leading people in that way, and developing in that kind of a way. Like I said, there's a lot of accident that goes into that. A lot of other people who might have emerged as leaders in forming the new vanguard party reached a turn in the road and couldn't keep going forward on the right road for a lot of different reasons—or maybe they got killed or thrown in jail and didn't have the opportunity to do it.

So we shouldn't idealize that period of time. There were very favorable conditions. But, first of all, on the one side it's not automatic that you're going to develop into a communist out of conditions like that, or that you can forge the leadership necessary to form a vanguard party out of all that. See, that's something else I want to say—just a little detour here. Leadership is not a matter of ego, it's not a matter—at least proletarian leadership, communist leadership—it's not a matter of asserting that you know better than everybody else, you're smarter than everybody else and everybody should follow you blindly without questioning what you say. Leadership is essentially a matter of responsibility. It's a matter of being willing to be ruthlessly scientific, caring enough about this revolution—having a deep enough grounding and understanding that this revolution is necessary and possible—to be willing and on that basis to develop the ability to apply yourself to actually lead this revolution and to take up all the daunting and heavy responsibilities that go into actually providing that leadership, learning but also leading and not shirking the responsibility. Yes, I'll say it straight up: I'm ready and I'm willing to take the responsibility of leading this revolution all the way. And our party is willing and ready to do the same thing. [applause]

But this is a matter of responsibility. It's a matter of taking this seriously. It's a matter of saying: this is where this needs to go, this is where this is tending to go, these are the forces that are resisting and pulling back away from it, this is what has to be overcome, this is what has to be overthrown, this is how people have to be led, this is how we have to go out and work among people and learn from them while we're giving them leadership, this is the process of the mass line that has to be applied, these are the problems that have to be studied. This is what it means to lead—it means you're willing and you're ready to take that responsibility and you're prepared, not just as an individual but collectively—collectively in the party and together with the masses of people who come forward to join the revolution—you're ready to carry that all the way through and to take up every challenge, both in theory and in practice, that has to be confronted and dealt with in order to make that revolution and contribute to it in the whole world. That's what it means to develop and to take the responsibility as a vanguard and to develop revolutionary leadership.

Now, while there were particular circumstances that were favorable to develop people like that out of the '60s, there are also plenty of favorable conditions to do that now. That's why you see many young people coming forward as communists right now, a number of whom are sitting right in this room. Where do they come from? They came out of the upsurges of this time. They came out of a different way, not the same way as the '60s, a different way that things are posing themselves now. They came out of recognizing, as we recognized then, that all these things stem from the same system. As they were introduced to this idea, they embraced it and took it up, and that's how they began to develop and are continuing to develop as communists.

Now, in order to bring forward new leaders in any kind of period...there's lots of upsurge going on now—look around you. Even [with the war] in Vietnam we didn't have a million or more people demonstrating against the war at that time.1 Overall, things then were more advanced than they've gotten to be now, but there are plenty of elements of upsurge and resistance now that hold great potential.

And it's a very tricky and complicated issue how you develop new leaders when you already have leaders. Because there's a tendency when you have long years of experience...well, first of all there's a tendency to get stuck in your ways. That's one thing you have to struggle against all the time, constantly trying to not get stuck in your ways and to recognize new things that emerge that might look to you like nothing significant but then you look deeper and you dig deeper and you see that they are, and that they do represent something that's shaking things loose. So there's not getting stuck in your ways and stuck in a rut.

There are positives and negatives to being a veteran, to having been around in the struggle for a long time. The positives are obvious—you gain a lot of experience, you learn a lot. One of the things you develop is a certain subtlety about things, you don't see things in oversimplified terms. You understand the complexities of things, at the same as you see the simplicity within the complexity. What do I mean by that? Like, for example, to actually make a revolution is very complex, but it's also very simple that we need this revolution and that's what we have to do. And you have to not lose sight of either part of that. Then there's a question of not getting stuck in a rut or stuck in your ways, but there's also a question of not getting in the way of new people sometimes. Because you can look at what people are doing who are new and you have years of experience and you say, "I've seen this movie before, I know where this is going." Well, sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't because nothing is ever exactly the same as the way it was before. But even when it is in its main lines the same, there's still always new things to learn, and there's still always much to learn from people who are newly encountering these things and maybe coming up with new ways of confronting it that you didn't think of before.

Yes, there's a temptation to say, "Well, look, we know how to do this." I like this new generation, but let's face it, you know, they make a lot of fucking mistakes. [laughter] And it's very tempting to say, well we just can't let them take this initiative here because these are not times when we can make a lot of mistakes. This is a serious situation we're dealing with. These people that we're up against, the core of this ruling class—they're not playing. The shit that I was talking about is not some kind of thing I made up. The dangers that are represented are very real, and mistakes can cost a lot in this situation. So, it's very difficult to handle this contradiction of saying: "OK, let's let people take initiative even if they make some mistakes—some that I might have made too and some that are all their own." Because if we don't let that happen, first of all we're not going to learn as much as we might learn, including from how they handle it that might be different and even better in some ways—to our surprise—than the way we might have handled it. And second of all, if we don't do that they're never going to learn in this whole furnace of the struggle and, even if making mistakes, how to advance to the next level so that they can develop more as leaders and come forward.

So, part of it is actually leading people to develop as leaders, but part of that is knowing when to assist and when to get the fuck out of the way. And that's not easy to determine. One of the hardest things and one of the most important things in life in general, and especially in the revolutionary movement and socialist society, is knowing what are the things and when are the circumstances in which you really have to pay a lot of focused and very concrete and detailed and calibrated attention to everything, and what are the situations and what are the circumstances in which you should really step back and let things develop. This comes up all the time: You're working with other people, you want them to take initiative. Well, what are the times when you really have to kind of walk together with them step by step to help them do it, until they can do it more on their own? And what are the times and circumstances when you just have to have a general discussion and then let them go, and get out of the way?

So bringing forward new leaders is also a matter of handling that kind of contradiction, and there is a strategic importance to this. But one of the principles we stress—whether you're talking about youth or people with more experience, whether you're talking about people of different genders or different nationalities—leadership is not a joke, and leadership is not a matter of tokenism. Leadership is responsible to the masses of people, here and all over the world. Leadership is something that has to be brought forward on the basis of people developing the ability, and being helped to develop the ability, to actually lead for real, to actually apply the revolutionary ideology and scientific methods to solve the real contradictions you're up against.

Otherwise, what we're doing is playing around so that we can feel good among ourselves and forgetting about the larger world and the masses of people out there, not just here but all over the world. You can feel good setting up arrangements that look good to other people—but what about the real contradictions that the masses of people are up against and the ways in which they're suffering everyday? Are you really doing something to change that? Or are you just playing around? Developing leadership has to be done in line with and in mind of actually changing the world—that's what I'm trying to say. You have to change the world out here! It doesn't do any good if we don't change the world! I don't care whether we look young or old, what nationality or gender we are, if we don't change the world the masses of people are going to be fucked again! And that's not what we're about, that's not what this is about.

Yes, we have to bring forward the youth, we have to bring people forward from among the oppressed nationalities and from among the proletariat, and we have to develop them not only as communists but as communist leaders, and we are doing that and we have to do more. But it's gotta be on the basis of applying this ideology to change the world and to mobilize the masses of people and lead them to emancipate themselves, or else it doesn't mean anything. And that's what we're about. That's the standard we apply. That's what we're aiming for, and that's what we're thinking about and keeping uppermost in our minds when we're working to bring forward leaders from among the youth and from among the proletariat and oppressed masses. And there's plenty of circumstances and conditions to do that—there's plenty of work to be done and plenty of people to be brought forward. And I say: Let's get busy with it. [applause]

1. This talk, and the question and answer session that followed, from which this text is drawn, was given in the summer of 2003, a few months after there were massive protests against the impending war in Iraq; this is what Bob Avakian is referring to here, in speaking of "a million or more people demonstrating against the war."

posted by Sunsara Taylor at 2:51 PM | 0 comments

 
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