Humanity Needs Revolution, The Revolution Needs Revolution Books, and Revolution Books Needs You

Remarks by Andy Zee, Spokesperson for Revolution Books, to our December 12 Holiday gathering

Revolutionary Greetings.  Your celebrating with us tonight reflects your appreciation for Revolution Books and I deeply thank you for that. 

Take a look around you tonight – at this place, at the people, and take it in ....and, think about what it would mean for it to be gone.  As you listen to the testimonials, as you are moved by the music, as you enjoy the food and provocative discussions ...  think about what this store is all about, why that matters – not just for ourselves but without any hyperbole, what RB means for the future: for people all around the globe and for the planet itself.  Ask yourself, talk with others tonight, about what are you going to do to see to it that this store not only does not close but has even greater impact in the world beginning now.  Right now, right here is the time to decide how much are you going sustain RB for this year? What are you going to do to spread the word of what Revolution Books is like and why it matters? 

Are you going to let people know what they have in Revolution Books?  Will you join in bringing this to students?  To teachers and faculty – High School and College? To Artists, actors, writers, musicians, and to scientists? To everyplace people are talking about the state of the world and wanting to do something to change it?

All who care about humanity being free of oppression and degradation, all who recognize the deep distress of the planet’s ecosystems brought on by the ravages of capitalism, are they going to know that Revolution Books needs them to be part of a movement to save the store as part of saving humanity and the planet from its current course of monstrous misery, deprivation, war, and environmental destruction?

Is Revolution Books the temple or hang out for a few of us?  Or, is it the potential locus for all dream of revolution and radical change? Are we going out far and wide to fight – face to face & out in the world – to theaters, forums, galleries, shopping malls, neighborhoods and out on the campuses – struggling with people about what is at stake for this place to really be a center of  a movement for revolution; where people indeed come to find the books and the engagement with each other about why the world is the way it is and the possibility of a radically different way the world could be?  Everyone who wants a different world should be on a mission to let people to know that this is Revolution Books’ mission.

Do we tell people that at Revolution Books they can dig into why all things that cry out for change – from police brutality and murder; to the degrading objectification and brutalization of women, to living in the seat of empire that sends remote controlled death and carnage across the oceans to enforce a decadent and depraved culture and way of life –  that all of this stems from the system we live under?  Are we inviting to come to discussions at RB where – like no other place in the city – people can find out about and engage why all this is totally unnecessary?

That here at Revolution Books there is a movement for revolution and a leadership for that revolution in Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party.   That here at Revolution Books there is the unique opportunity to find out about a scientific understanding of what the problem is that we face at this juncture of human history and how humanity could move beyond this to a much better society and that all this is concentrated in a new synthesis of communism developed by Bob Avakian,?  And that RB is the center where this can be thoroughly explored in relation to other analyses and programs?

Do you realize what it means to have a place where people can get their hands on the revolutionary Constitution for a New Socialist Republic in North America, (draft proposal) – put out by the RCP and compare that to the much vaunted US Constitution that is held up as the pinnacle of the rule of law, when it is a document that straddles and codifies two forms of exploitation and oppression – slavery and capitalism?   

Whatever you know or understand about this now, and if you have engaged this theory, and whether or agree or not with some or all of this, have you deeply thought about why it is so essential that there is a place where this highly developed, scientifically grounded theory of a whole different way the world could be through revolution is engaged, debated, and applied?

Let’s be real and honest.  Everywhere else the most you find is critique and perhaps some ways to struggle to relieve some of the misery some of the people face.  Why does RB matter? It’s in its right there in the name: Revolution Books.

And if you’re “talkin ‘bout a Revolution,” then you need to know about BA.  This is why over the past year RB has been a hub of promoting the BA EVERYWHERE campaign - - - hosting the fund raising dinners and gatherings for volunteers who were a part of the BAsics Bus Tour – taking this handbook for revolution from talks and writings of Bob Avakian deep into the ghettos here and in the deep south – awakening a yearning for a way out and fusing this revolutionary theory and strategy with people’s need and desire to fight back.

Why does it matter that at RB you can find and dig into Bob Avakian’s work, most especially the new synthesis of communism that sums up the positive and negative experience of the communist revolution so far, drawing from wider human experience so that there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world? And, why does it matter that at Rev Books you can find out more about the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal? Because without this, the world stays as it is... and, that is unnecessary and unconscionable because it means the people of the world continue to be ground up when another world really is possible.

Humanity NEEDS Revolution.  The Revolution Needs Revolution Books. Revolution Books Needs You. 

So again I ask: Are you tonight going to become a sustainer of Revolution Books?  Are you going to be a part of a movement going forward from tonight to see to it that by the time RB’s lease runs out, in March 2013, this store is financially self sufficient.

I ask again, are you, are we taking RB out as Revolution Books  to all the women who are fed up with suppressing their righteous rage at the vicious objectification and denial of themselves as human beings, with their bodies a battleground (and men who feel the same way)? Are we taking RB out to all those youth whom the police sweat daily in their thousands and for whom the system has no future?  Taking RB to all those young people who want to make a difference but whose dreams and creativity are suppressed by the debt and the conformity of a lying education system, and, to all those students who want to use their education, their talents, and their training for a totally different world who are taught by all too many of their professors that this is the only possible system, who promote and parrot the anti-communist distortions of the actual history and lessons of the revolutions of the 20th century  and tell their students that the best they can do is to try and make this system work a little better — serving up these youth who are desirous of change to be channeled into one band aid project or another?

Are we reaching all these people and more with the word that Revolution Books needs them right now to be a part of making RB what it can and must be – making it financially viable by changing the situation so that 100 people a day are stopping by the store instead of 30 or 40? So that programs and discussions – large and small – are happening every night.  So that people are stopping by to read and to talk and to buy books. So that hundreds of people – yes, hundreds of people are becoming sustainers of RB.

RB should be known for being the place to come to engage with the revolution when new things happen, when intellectual controversies erupt – whether about Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln The Great Leap Forward in revolutionary China – when events sharpen in the world as in the intensifying struggles in Egypt, Syria and Israel, or the latest police or racist vigilante murder.

Next semester RB is going to be a center of much needed debate between Slavoj Zizek and Raymond Lotta  – a debate that will get to core of whether or not a radically different viable and liberatory economic, social and political alternative to capitalism is possible – whether or not there is the potential for human emancipation or must the world stay as it is.

RB is all about whether or not the sacrifice and dreams of the billions of people of the planet to be free of the oppression of millennia and the brutal reality of this current moment in history will be realized in a far better world through revolution or suffocated and even drowned in blood.

Saving Revolution Books is about much more than a bookstore. It is about people’s lives and what kind of world we live in.

Three High School Juniors sitting in their car listening to music pumped up loud, so you can feel it and know you’re alive – dreaming and chilling – at the fucking gas station, but your with your friends in your ride with your beats.  And some MF comes and tells you turn it down.  How many times does this happen in the world?  But, the teenagers are black, and guy white, and its Florida and this is America.  The racist pulls out his gun shoots 8 times – a teenager’s life bleeds out on what should be just another night out.  But, all this may be legal under modern day“Stand your Ground” lynching  laws. Legal or not it is all too routine in America.  Why is this allowed to be in 21st century?  Why are such racist laws continually regenerated under this system?  Why does this happen, what will it take to uproot the oppression of black people, why is a place like RB necessary to dig into this?

Yes and why should young women at the beginning of their adult lives going off to college full of promise know that 1/4 of them will be raped before they leave school? And, yes when people ask about why almost 20 elementary students were murdered will we also ask why were 176 children killed by US drones in Pakistan and why 10 million other kids, with just as much potential when they were born, will die needlessly because this system will not provide them with clean water and enough to eat when there is the productive capacity to do so?

Revolution Books is the place to find out why this is so. It is the place to experience film and poetry and plays and novels that get you inside people’s lives – their struggles and their dreams.  Revolution Books is the place where the essential debates over what is the problem and what are the solutions must rage with passion and science and comradeship. Revolution Books is the place to learn the history of the first communist revolutions, to learn about their achievements, their struggles, and how we can do much better, because of the BA’s new synthesis of communism.  RB is the place where people can hook up with the leadership and the movement that is setting out anew in the 21st century to bring about a new stage of revolution.

You can buy your books for less elsewhere.  You can donate to organizations that offer charity to meet basic needs of some of those brutalized and abandoned by this system, but there is no place else, no other bookstore, no other culture center, that is a center of a movement for revolution that could make all the difference in the world.   I urge you to sing its praises and fund it so that the songs for the emancipation of all of humanity can reverberate out from here, and a radically new future can soar.

Humanity Needs Revolution!
The Revolution Needs Revolution Books!
Revolution Books Needs You!