Revolution Books Berkeley

U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates: Danger of War Grows - panel discussion 1-24-12

2012-01-13T15:30:00.000-08:00

Panel/discussion with:
Author and Revolution correspondent Larry Everest & Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at University of San Francisco

Tuesday, January 24 7-9 pm

The danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is escalating rapidly. The U.S. and its allies are ramping up their all-around assault on Iran, including new crippling sanctions, and openly threatening to attack. Ground is being laid daily in the headlines and statements by politicians of every stripe in mainstream U.S. politics calling for aggression against Iran—all justified by unsubstantiated assertions that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

The nuclear issue, however, is not the underlying factor intensifying the U.S.-Iran clash. That conflict is part of something much larger: a sharpening battle for dominant influence across the entire region, a battle with profound global implications.

See, Larry Everest, "U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates-Danger of War Grows," Revolution #255, January 8, 2012

And Who, By the Way, Is John C. Stennis?!? by Toby O’Ryan

Iran Threat Reduction Act Actually Enhances Threat of War by Stephen Zunes

Iraq: Remembering Those Responsible by Stephen Zunes

Discusion of Badiou's "Politics of Emancipation" 1-31-12

2012-01-13T14:00:00.000-08:00

January 31, Tuesday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books in Berkeley

Discussion of Alain Badiou's "Politics of Emancipation"

Philosopher and social theorist Alain Badiou argues his "politics of emancipation" is radically new. He says it rescues communism by "unburdening" it of the past -- rejecting the experience of communist revolutions in Russia and China, and the "party-state paradigm" -- the need for a vanguard party and revolutionary state power.

Discussions, clarification, and polemics of political theory are essential to developing a movement for revolution. In this discussion we ask "will this lead to liberation?" We will interrogate Badiou's theories and compare and contrast them to Bob Avakian's new synthesis:

Is Badiou corrrect in theorizing communism as "a pure Idea of equality" or is real communism something far more radical?

"Were the socialist revolutions in Russia and China Mainly negative, or were they overwhelmingly positive achievements with secondary problems?"

Is Badiou correct in saying the "age of revolutions is over"?

What is the logic behind proposing struggles "at a distance from the state?"

What does Badiou mean by the "party/state" paradigm?

The questions being examined are directly relevant to the issues that humanity confronts, including those being discussed and debated in the Occupy movement. We welcome people from this movement, as well as people who may have studied and want to argue for Badiou's project to voice their thinking and be a part of this discussion.

Join us for a vital discussion of the Introduction and Chapter 5 of "Alain Badiou's 'Politics of Emancipation': A Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World," by Raymond Lotta, Nayi Duniya, and K.J.A. in Demarcations, a Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic, Issue Number 1, Summer-Fall 2009. (This essay is available in print at Revolution Books and on-line at www.demarcations-journal.org.) We encourage reading the entire polemic.

Meet Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth) 2-12-12 --writer and cartoonist

2012-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

TONIGHT! 5 pm C-SPAN-2 BROADCAST OF CARL DIX--CORNEL WEST DIALOGUE

2012-01-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

C-SPAN-2
Broadcast of
Carl Dix—Cornel West Dec. 2 UCB Dialogue
Tonight!
(Wed. January 4)
5:00 pm (8:00 pm ET)
Approx. 2 hr. 45 min.

repeat showing:
Thurs. January 5
3:18 am (6:18 am ET)

C-SPAN-2 will be broadcasting the entire December 2 dialogue between Carl Dix and Cornel West at UC Berkeley—"In the Age of Obama... Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Mis-Education: What Future for Our Youth?" Thousands turned out for this extraordinary evening. One student called it "incredibly powerful." A UC administrator said it was "Fantastic, the best event ever at UCB. It was well-timed with what's happened, it was intellectually challenging, emotionally touched people and relevant." (See "The Cornel West–Carl Dix Dialogue at UC Berkeley: Thousands Turn Out For Unprecedented, Transformative Evening")

It's urgent that many, many more people be able to see this breakthrough event. Let others know and organize viewings in homes, classrooms, or at Revolution Books if possible.

Once broadcast, the Dialogue will be on CSPAN's website permanently and can be viewed (or webcast) at anytime.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/print-schedule.php?timezone=Eastern&date=2012-01-04

NEW YEARS EVE EVE PARTY! 12-30-2011

2011-12-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

A NEW YEARS EVE EVE PARTY

Raise Big Money For A National Bus Tour to Get Bob Avakian's Vision and Works into Every Corner of Society

Friday, December 30th
An art and music happening with food from around the world

The Lake Merrit Lodge Ballroom
2332 Harrison Street, Oakland
8pm to midnight$10 (sliding scale)

Music
Dancing
Auction of Art Work
International Food

Imagine young people hanging out on the corner in front of where they live... or hanging out in a 7-11 parking lot... and this bus with eye-catching decorations rolls up with bright letters REVOLUTION... and "You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics." You hear this voice projected through loudspeakers... "we need a revolution... the most radical revolution in the history of humanity." A bunch of people jump out and start talking about BA, the revolution, about a whole other way the world could be... saying things you felt like you always felt but could never quite put into words.

Discussion -- Occupy at a Crossroads: Tues. 12-20-11 at 7 pm

2011-12-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

Reflection on the Occupy Movement: AN INSPIRING BEGINNING...AND THE NEED TO GO FURTHER

The Occupy protests have raised the hopes of millions in this country and worldwide. Profound discontent with the inequality and injustice in this society has burst to the surface. The atmosphere and discourse in society is changing, and millions are thinking about and asking big questions about the ways things are-and whether and how a different future would be possible. Over the last few weeks, this movement has been repressed in what appear to be coordinated attacks to savagely evict encampment after encampment across the country. This movement stands at a crossroads-in the largest sense.

- Where to now?
- What is the essence of this crossroads and how are we to understand it?
- What direction should this movement take?
- And with what understanding and orientation?
- How will the injustice and inequality this movement is targeting actually be overcome?
- What kind of leadership is needed to bring that about?

Bob Avakian addresses these questions and more in "A Reflection on the 'Occupy' Movement: An Inspiring Beginning... and the Need to Go Further." It is critically important to read, distribute and deeply discuss this statement. And let the ferment and debate spread and heighten in every corner of society.

(Bob Avakian will not be present at the discussion.)

Get this Reflection out to all those who have been spurred to think about the nature and state of this society and to consider how to bring into being a far better world and future. And forward to Revolution correspondence about your experience and discussions!

Pick up a stack of flyers from Revolution Books to distribute widely or print your own 8 1/2 x 11 flyer here or 11X17 poster here.

Atheists Tee Shirt - Oakland Athletics baseball team logo takeoff from Revolution Books

2011-12-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Take the "Holy" out of the holidays!

Get Atheist shirts, books and more at Revolution Books!

Revolution Books is the place to score your Atheists Tee Shirt! The Oakland A's Baseball Team Logo is a hit in the San Francisco Bay Area, but there is a new team free-thinking fans are rooting for. Atheists! Express your reality-based love, critical thinking and team spirit by sporting an Atheists t shirt at the next big game. This design was created by Revolution Books.
Get this shirt here!
Go Atheists!

And be sure to get a copy of the award winning book on atheism: Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
by Bob Avakian, the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

Praise for the book:
"What most distinguishes Avakian's Away With All Gods from other much publicized books of this kind, such as those by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, is the direct connection Avakian makes between combating religious fundamentalism and promoting a radical political agenda. Avakian is also to be commended not only for combining his religious freethinking with an endorsement of the modern Enlightenment tradition, but also for providing a sober warning against 'the smug arrogance of the enlightened.' Anyone who has read any of the other books mentioned above should also take the time to read this one."
—Allen Wood, author of Karl Marx and Kantian Ethics

Go to the Revolution Books online store for great books, more for radical and revolutionary tee shirts like these:

Cornel West & Carl Dix - a dialogue: What Future For Our Youth?

2011-12-08T04:18:00.000-08:00

CARL DIX, CORNEL WEST - A DIALOGUE:

IN THE AGE OF OBAMA…

POLICE TERROR, INCARCERATION, NO JOBS, MIS-EDUCATION:

WHAT FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH?

December 2, 2011 at 7pm
Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley campus (Telegraph & Bancroft)

UPDATE: THIS DIALOGUE WILL BE BROADCAST SOON ON CSPAN

article from Revolution newspaper posted 12/12/11:
Thousands Turn Out For Unprecedented, Transformative Evening

Two of the country’s most outspoken and politically engaged Black intellectuals – Cornel West and Carl Dix – will be speaking at UC Berkeley, at a moment when the campus has become a national focus of student protest, the Occupy movement, and a public outcry over police brutality.

This event will address issues at the at the heart of the campus and Occupy protests, the racism and inequalities facing society’s most oppressed, as well as broader issues of moral responsibility, the roots of injustice, and the prospects and pathways for fundamental social change. It is free and open to the pubic.

Mr. Dix and Dr. West have joined Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy protests, and have recently launched a new initiative against mass incarceration. In October, they were arrested together with other supporters in an action of civil disobedience protesting “Stop & Frisk” – New York City’s program in which 700,000 mostly Black and Latino youth are illegally stopped, searched and harassed every year by police. (See, New York Times link, below.)

Their dialogue is described by organizers as “a spirited back-and-forth between two of the nation’s foremost thinkers -- one in the spirit of the Black church and liberation theology, and the other, Revolutionary Communist.”

Some 22 student groups and faculty departments (see list below) are sponsoring the event. The dialogue has also been announced at Occupy Cal's General Assembly.

A support letter signed by faculty and students, including History and African American Studies professors, and students from African Arts Society, Latin@Sociological Association, Kroeber Anthropological Society, Students for Hip Hop and other groups states:

“Though differing in perspective, they are joined by their profound respect for each other, their love for and commitment to today’s youth, and their shared desire to crack open the national discourse and foster a spirit of critical engagement and daring to confront the dangerous situation faced by this new generation.....This dialogue will stimulate further moral and political engagement at this time of awakening and activism.”

CORNEL WEST is one of America’s most provocative public intellectuals and has been a champion for racial justice since childhood. His writing, speaking, and teaching weave together the traditions of the black Baptist Church, progressive politics, and jazz. The New York Times has praised his “ferocious moral vision.” Dr. West currently teaches at Princeton University.

CARL DIX is a longtime revolutionary and a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. In 1970 Carl was one of the Fort Lewis 6, six GIs who refused orders to go to Vietnam. He served 2 years in Leavenworth Military Penitentiary for his stand. In 1985 Carl initiated the Draw The Line statement, a powerful condemnation of the bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia. In 1996, Carl was a founder of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. Carl coordinated the Katrina hearings of the 2006 Bush Crimes Commission.

Sponsors include: • Black Student Union • Hermanos Unidos • Students for Justice in Palestine • 100 Black Men • African Arts Society • Students for Hip Hop • Latin@ Sociological Association • Kroeber Anthropological Society • A.G.O.R.A. • Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity • Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity • African-American Studies Department • Department of English • Department of Ethnic Studies • Department of Gender and Women’s Studies • Department of Art Practice • African American Student Development Office • Cross-Cultural Student Development Office • Center for Race and Gender • Townsend Center for the Humanities • Ethnic Studies Fifth Account • Laney College Black Student Union • Department of History • Institute for the Study of Social Change • OccupyCAL General Assembly • Revolution Books Berkeley • Project Censored • Media Roots • Media Freedom Foundation

For more on the Dialogue, the speakers, see:
“Protesters of Police Stop-and-Frisk Practice Are Arrested,” New York Times, October 21, 2011,http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/protesters-of-police-stop-and-frisk-practice-are-arrested/?scp=2&sq=cornel%20west&st=cse

Carl Dix, “Why I Am Getting Arrested Today,” Huffington Post, October 21, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/1969/12/31/new-york-stop-and-frisk_n_1024234.html

Cornel West: “Dr. King Weeps From His Grave,” New York Times, August 25, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/opinion/martin-luther-king-jr-would-want-a-revolution-not-a-memorial.html

“Cornel West and Carl Dix in Dialogue at UCLA,” Revolution #233, May 22, 2011, http://revcom.us/a/233/233Dix-West-dialogue-en.html

Sister Mischief reading by Laura Goode 12-18-11 at Revolution Books

2011-12-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

Author Laura Goode will read from her new young adult novel Sister Mischief at Revolution Books on Sunday December 18 at 7 pm.

Sister Mischief is a poignant and often hilarious story of four high school friends in a Minneapolis suburb. These young women are nerds and... they are rebels. Their love for hip hop brings them into conflict with the local Christian fundamentalists and they are faced with the challenge to buckle or fight. Along the way protagonist Esme falls in love and suddenly is forced to contend with homophobia in the midst of everything else.

Join us as Laura reads and raps from "the world's first interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens." She'll discuss important themes from the book including goats covered in Crisco, the pathos of marching bands, lesbians in treehouses, and total word nerdery. Laura will answer virtually any question you throw at her about her "clam-jamming, ruckus-making pursuit of sexual and musical justice.”

Laura Goode's poems and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Faster Times, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Dossier, Slope, Fawlt, and other publications. Follow her on Twitter @lauragoode and visit www.lauragoode.com for total chaos.

Holiday Book Sale Sunday December 18

2011-12-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Come to Revolution Books Sunday December 18 and get 15% off on hard covers and 10 % off of all paperbacks (we're talking new books here). Stop by Revolution Books for gifts and help our store bring in the new year! Stay for the Sister Mischief book reading. We have a great selection of progressive and revolutionary books of fiction, politics, art, history, philosophy, science and more.

A very cool gift idea: This holiday for $20 you can buy BAsics for a friend fulfill a prisoner's request for the book. You will get a gift card that tells your friend that a book has been sent to a prisoner in their name.

This California prisoner expresses the sentiments of many:"I have just received my copy of 'BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian'! I have been looking forward to receiving the book, since I first started hearing about it in 'Revolution'! I first off want to thank all the donors for their contributions! Their support makes it possible for people like me to keep that flame in our hearts ablaze and our minds sharp to fend off the oppressors! Words cannot convey the gratitude I feel! Know that your contributions make a huge difference in our lives...."

Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund has a goal to send 2000 copies of BAsics to prisoners who are waiting for them. 700 have been sent so far. Your gift will make a difference in meeting this goal.

More on the dialogue with Carl Dix and Cornel West: IN THE AGE OF OBAMA… POLICE TERROR, INCARCERATION, NO JOBS, MIS-EDUCATION: WHAT FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH?

2011-11-30T20:19:00.000-08:00

Check out this film promo Carl and Cornel just made before their arraignment in NYC for stopping Stop & Frisk where they talk about a new film being made that they are both featured in: Occasioned by BAsics: A Celebration of Revolution & The Vision of a New World.

This is a film for everyone who has dreamed of a different and better world or wondered how art and culture can be part of creating it. Contribute today by click HERE.

And...

* Special Broadcast: Friday, Dec 9, 10am: Tune in to the Michael Slate show on KPFK in Los Angeles (online at www.kpfk.org) to listen to excerpts from the Carl Dix - Cornel West dialogue which occurred last Friday (Dec 2) at UC Berkeley. (The show will be available on the KPFK archives afterward).

Also, check back here for news about CSPAN airing the dialogue in its entirety.

Discussion about campaign to get Bob Avakian's vision & works...everywhere 11-29-11 Tues. at 7 pm

2011-11-25T11:28:00.001-08:00

Discussion and planning for the new fund drive:The editorial in the November 6 issue of Revolution, "BA Everywhere... Imagine the Difference It Could Make!" made an important and exciting announcement: A Mass Campaign to Raise Big Money to Get BA’s Vision and Works Into Every Corner of Society.

And to do just that, it said:

We are launching a major, multi-faceted fundraising campaign to project BA, his voice and his work way out into society—far beyond what it is today. A fundraising campaign which will raise the necessary major money to make this possible. A fund drive that unleashes and develops imagination, defiance and community in everything it does.

Imagine what we could change... and imagine how we could change it. more

Check out this new video:

Occupy Oakland GENERAL STRIKE! Get involved w/ Revolution Books!

2011-10-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Donate funds now to get revolutionary literature out to thousands
Download the Revolution Books half-page flyer for the general strike
Monday 10-31 and Tuesday 11-1, come to Revolution Books at 7:30PM to get organized, make banners, signs
Wedneday, November 2: GENERAL STRIKE!!! Meet at the Revolution Books table all day. Mass convergence times: 9am, 12noon, 5pm

GENERAL STRIKE & MASS DAY OF ACTION

called by OCCUPY OAKLAND

Wednesday Nov. 2, 2011

Mass Convergences at 9am, 12noon, 5PM

Everyone to the Streets! No Work! No School!

CONVERGE ON DOWNTOWN OAKLAND TO HELP SHUT DOWN THE CITY.

Revolution Books wholeheartedly joins in supporting the November 2 General Strike & Mass Day of Action called for by Occupy Oakland! We will close our store for the day in solidarity, and bring our books and literature downtown as part of the general strike. Join us!

We urge everyone – individuals, groups, organizations, schools, businesses to do the same. Walk out of school, get your unions to call a one day walk out; don’t work, come down to Oscar Grant Plaza. The whole world will be watching Oakland on November 2: we must make a powerful statement that Occupy Oakland and the whole Occupy Movement Will NOT Be Shut Down – but our resistance will become even broader and more determined. All this can contribute greatly to the emergence of a new, growing movement for revolution that can sweep away the horrors of imperialism and set to work creating a whole new world.

Revolution newspaper writes:

"From New York to Denver to Oakland and other cities, the Occupy movement is coming under brutal and heartless attacks from the police and the powers behind them—and the people at the Occupy encampments and their supporters are responding with determination and courageous resistance.

"OWS, in its audacity and with its cooperative ethos, is challenging the numbing atomization in society, where people feel isolated and left to their own. A new generation of young people is stepping to the fore, taking responsibility, and setting an example. Big questions about economics, the oppressive power structure, and the nature of capitalism are getting posed. All of this is causing concern and consternation in the ruling class—which is striking back, with police attacks as well attempts to pen in, channel, and derail this movement.

"This major development in U.S. society is important, and it’s crucial that this movement continue and intensify and rise to new challenges. As the Occupy movement shines the spotlight on the inequalities and injustices of the system we live under, those in the midst of the struggle are grappling with, debating over, and summing up some crucial lessons…." from Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Everywhere: Police Attacks… Courageous Resistance… Big Stakes for the People

Fight the Power,

Transform the People,

for Revolution!

BAsics discussions at OccupySF and OccupyOakland - "POLICE: 99% or Brutal Enforcers of a Brutal System?"

2011-10-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday at Occupy Oakland, Oscar Grant Plaza (AKA Frank Ogawa) 3:30-5:30PM
Sunday at Occupy Oakland, Oscar Grant Plaza 1-3PM
Sunday at Occupy SF, Justin Herman Plaza (the bottom of Market Street) 4-6PM
Sunday discussions will be led by Larry Everest, writer for Revolution newspaper and author of
Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda.

Discussion circles with Revolution Books will be taking off from these quotes:

Police attacking OccupyOakland & gassing protestors (the 99%).

BAsics 1:24
The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

BAsics 1:21
You can think of this in terms of politics and the state: If you didn't have, not only laws but a state apparatus of repression with the armed forces, the police, the courts, the prisons, the bureaucracies, the administrative function—if you didn't have that, how would you maintain the basic economic relations of exploitation and the basic social relations that go along with that? How would you maintain the domination of men over women, the domination of certain nationalities or "races" over others, if you did not have a superstructure to enforce that, or if that superstructure—the politics, the ideology and culture that is promoted, the morality promoted among people—were out of alignment with those social and, fundamentally, those economic relations? Once again, you wouldn't be able to maintain the order, stability and functioning of the system.

This is fundamentally why a system of this kind cannot be reformed.
This goes back to the point that's in the Revolution talk2 about systems, and how they have certain dynamics and "rules." You can't just play any card you want in a card game or slap a domino down any time you want, anywhere you want, because the whole thing will come unraveled. And you can't have, as any significant phenomenon, cooperative economic relations in a system that operates on the dynamics of commodity production and exchange in which labor power itself, the ability to work, is a commodity.

A lot of reformist social democrats will talk in these terms: "Let's have real democracy in the superstructure" (they don't generally use terms like "superstructure," but that's the essence of what they mean) "and then," they'll say, "on that basis let's 'democratize' the economy." What would happen if you tried to implement this "democratization" of the economic base? That economic base would still be operating on the basis of, would still be driven by, the anarchy of commodity production and exchange in which, once again, labor power is also a commodity—in fact, the most basic commodity in capitalist relations and capitalist society—and soon your "democratization" of the economy would completely break down, because the dynamics of commodity production and exchange would mean that some would fare better than others, some would beat out others—plus you have the whole international arena where all this would be going on.

The two quotes above are taken from

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian
"You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

Police - Back the Hell off Occupy Oakland and the Occupy Movement!

2011-10-26T12:12:00.001-07:00

Latest Revolution article here: http://revcom.us/index.html

Youth marching back to City Hall

after being tear gassed by police

photo credit: Jay Finneburgh

10-25-11 Statement by Revolution Books
Police - Back the Hell off Occupy Oakland and the Occupy Movement!

This Is so Not Over!

The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

Youth in stand-off with police after

gassed & marching back to City Hall

photo credit: Jay Finneburgh

This morning(10-25-11) the Oakland Police, along with other police forces, launched a violent military assault against the non-violent Occupy Oakland encampment and arrested 75 who would not surrender. By this evening over 100 people have been arrested. People were beaten, including a disabled woman. One man was beaten so badly he couldn’t walk to the paddy wagon. Peoples’ belonging were trashed.

Boots Riley speaks to crowd of 500

at Oakland Public Library. 10-25-11

In the late afternoon hundreds of people regrouped at the public library and marched back to the area around Oscar Grant Plaza, their numbers growing. Again people defied the police and the powers-that-be. Again the police launched multiple violent attacks on the people, lobbing tear gas, bean bag projectiles and flash/.bang grenades.

Teachers contingent in march to

police station/city hall. 10-25-11

Some of the media has reported police’ lies that they launched their attacks in response to being pelted with bottles and even injured by demonstrators, but the truth is that 16 different law enforcement agencies converged on downtown Oakland bristling with weaponry to put down peaceful protesters with violent force.

Injured vet attended after being hit in

the head by a tear gas canister.

photo credit: Jay Finneburgh

Through at least 5 tear gas attacks people continued to stay in the streets. Throughout the evening and late into the night hundreds remained downtown, marching and defying police threats. Some were literally dancing in the streets in the midst of tear gas. “Rise up, rise up, rise up with the people of the world!” they chanted. “Let’s go/Oakland!” and “the role of the police: serve and protect – not us– but the 1%!”

Scene lit up by projectile
fired directly at ppl who
helping wounded vet

photo: Jay Finneburgh

Mayor Quan called this a “peaceful resolution,” claiming it wasn’t about suppressing the peoples’ rights – it was about “health,” “sanitation” and “public safety.” These are bald-faced lies. The City of Oakland, and the capitalist-imperialist system it’s part of, are slashing healthcare, “sanitation,” and all manner of social services. This system can’t provide millions with jobs. And where’s the “public safety” for those subjected to the Oakland Police Dept.’s daily insults and brutality – or who’ve been shot down in cold blood by these killers?!

The attack was unprovoked, unjust, and complete outrageous! The rulers yammer on about the Occupy Movement needing demands. Well – here’s one:

People rushing vet away after being
fired on by police while attending.

photo credit: Jay Finneburgh

POLICE BACK THE HELL OFF
OCCUPY OAKLAND,
ALL PEOPLE’S OCCUPATIONS,

AND THE WHOLE OCCUPY MOVEMENT!

These attacks show the truth of the statement by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA:

“The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.” -BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, Chapter 1, Quote 24

At Occupations across the U.S. people have righteously stepped out of the bounds of “politics and protest as usual” and put themselves on the line to seize public space to make known that people are suffering needlessly and unjustly and are refusing to put up with it. The movement tapped into and is now a way for expressing the widespread discontent of millions, with international impact. It has the potential to uncork even greater opposition and resistance to the way things are. This must continue and not be stopped.

People must step up and spread this movement. It needs to lead to even broader, more determined resistance as well as the emergence of a new, growing movement for revolution that can sweep away the horrors of imperialism and set to work creating a whole new world.

All charges against those arrested today at Occupy Oakland must be dropped and Occupy Oakland must continue.

October 25, 2011

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way at Telegraph Ave. Berkeley, CA 510-848-1196

www.revcom.us / www.revolutionbooks.org

Revolution #248, October 23, 2011

Police attack Occupy Oakland with massive force: over 100 arrested

Revolution #248, October 23, 2011

Occupy Wall Street: Showdown and Victory – This Is So Not Over!

Video of crowd being tear gassed with a clear shot of police tossing tear gas canister into group helping wounded vet at end

Police attack Occupy Oakland with massive force: 70-90 people arrested

2011-10-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

CLICK TO ENLARE pics from during/after raid on #OCCUPYOAKLAND 10-25-11

Tuesday, October 25:

Stand with Occupy Oakland, gather at

the Main Library 125 14th St, 4pm

& march to the City council meeting.

Hundreds of cops staged a violent military-style assault on Occupy Oakland this morning at 4 am, surrounding the camp, arresting over 70 people and completely destroying the encampment. Police made a dispersal announcement and simultaneously moved on the camp, ripping up tents, scattering belongings everywhere. Flash grenades went off and smoke filled the air. As word spread of the attack, others came to downtown Oakland to protest. Police made more arrests - we witnessed incidents of police suddenly swarming in on people and taking them away.

The second encampment (Snow Park) near Lake Merritt was also raided. Oakland Mayor Quan defended the raid in the name of “sanitation” and “public safety.” She issued a statement saying “I commend Chief Jordan for a generally peaceful resolution to a situation that deteriorated and concerned our community.”

This is NOT over. all kinds of people must speak out against this attack. Revolution Books will be in downtown Oakland joining with the people and distributing Revolution newspaper this afternoon. If you are part of the 99 percent: join us there or call the bookstore (510-848-1196) to hook up!

Stop Police Brutality, Repression & Criminalization of a Generation: ALL OUT FOR OCTOBER 22 NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST

2011-10-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Read about the bold beginning of the movement initiated by Carl Dix and Cornel West to STOP Stop & Frisk here.

here is video of the end of the protest (10-21-11) at the Harlem precinct with arrest of people doing civil disobedience. Check out Revolution newspaper for reports on this and other protests on October 21-22.

REVOLUTION BOOKS received this announcement:

Kenneth Harding...Charles Hill...Oscar Grant...Raheim Brown...Brownie Polk...Derrick Jones...Andrew Moppin...Gus Rugley...and thousands more shot dead...youth harassed every day...2.3 million behind bars...prisoners abused and tortured...STOP police brutality and murder,mass incarceration and prison torture!

END THE OCCUPATION OF OUR COMMUNITIES!

FRIDAY OCT 21 -DAY OF DEFIANCE

IN SCHOOLS AND IN THE STREETS

WEAR BLACK!

AFTER SCHOOL ACTIONS:

3:30pm Demonstration at Bayview-Hunters Point Police Station located at 201 Williams Ave….This is the station that dispatched cops that murdered Kenneth Harding. The station that sweats and terrorizes the people. The station that’s a pipeline to prison. The Station that’s an outpost of SFPD which murdered Charles Hill and is attacking Occupy SF. Some individuals will do non-violent civil disobedience to protest!

4:00pm March and Rally beginning at Powell & Market SF

_________________________________________________________________________________

Download a large PDF of this Revolution newspaper centerfold

Wear Black!
SF Bay Area: 12:00pm,
3rd & Palou Streets, Bayview - Hunters Point, SF

510-206-0742 oct22BayArea@gmail.com FACEBOOK page

STOP “STOP & FRISK” - From Up Against the Wall to Up in Their Face Download the New York School's walkout STOP Stop&Frisk flyer PDF
October 22 national coalition homepage

Occupy Wall Street's LIVE feed & much more

2011-10-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

We have been showing clips of Revolution Talk and other video and holding informal rap sessions on capitalism, police brutality, revolution, the question of human nature at Occupy SF & Oakland. We'd like to do more but we need volunteers to help, call 510-848-1196 if you would like to go to the Occupy encampments with us.

This LIVE video feed for the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City is sometimes showing live action and sometimes playing back recordings. You can see a bunch of feeds for some of the hundreds of cities participating so far with a search of the live stream website for the word 'Occupy'. Better yet, get over to one of the encampments in the Bay Area in San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley.The Defiance, Determination and Resistance of Occupy Wall Street is a very welcome and fresh wind of resistance blowing across the country and beyond.

Check out this transcript of a talk by Raymond Lotta at Occupy Wall Street: Are Corporations Corrupting the System… Or is the Problem the System of Capitalism?

"Capitalism controls, dominates and mangles humanity!"

Also, check this out: Bob Avakian on "What Is Capitalism?"

PRISONERS HUNGER STRIKE - CDCR SACRAMENTO & LOS ANGELES CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ON 10-14-11

2011-10-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience in Sacramento: Protesting the Torture of Prisoners, -by Larry Everest

Torture Is Unacceptable—Step Up the Struggle to Stop It! Why I Chained Myself to the State Building in Los Angeles -the statement by Keith James

ALL PLAYED OUT - words: Bob Avakian - Music: William Parker

2011-10-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Words by Bob Avakian, Music by William Parker

LISTEN AND DOWNLOAD: soundcloud.com/allplayedout

Yoni Kretzmer, tenor sax...Ben Syverson, trumpet...Zhenya Strigalev, alto sax...Drum track by Brian Forbes...William Parker, bass

Music and arrangements by William Parker

From William Parker on "All Played Out"
All Played Out is a cathartic message by Bob Avakian who like all political strategists is a mover and thinker who is trying to shed some light on this fog of ignorance and gullibility, that is the backbone of our existence here in America. He is telling us that since 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed in Hispaniola and killed the first Tainos Indians things have gone down hill from there. The founding fathers were all gangsters, thieves and liars. He is telling us that we are not free and we have never been free there were never any good old days. Racism, sexism, extreme capitalism has been the word for the last five hundred years and continues to be present at the core of America today. All Played Out is a 12-minute rap with a message to America and anyone else that is listening to Wake Up! Revolution Now!

Music is political because it inspires us to think to see beyond the horizon so it was my intent to give Avakian’s message some lift but also to become the words to bring them to life in another way too. A word is sound, a sound is a word.

William Parker

Take this track around to college, community and alternative radio stations for airplay.
Get this to musicians and artists... play it in neighborhoods, classrooms and barbershops.
Post the link on your Facebook, Twitter and blog. Review through StumbleUpon and Reddit. Post it on other websites you visit.
Send it to everyone you know, through e-mail, text messages, and online social media.
Play it, where appropriate, at open-mics and other events.
Write to allplayedout@ymail.com with your ideas.

A Reading of Prisoners' Letters / A Visual Protest - UCB 10-12-11

2011-10-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

Support the Prisoner Hunger Strike – Demand an End to Torture

Wednesday, Oct 12, 10:30am - 2pm

UC Berkeley – Gather at Sather Gate (enter at Telegraph and Bancroft)

Wednesday, October 12: support California prisoners on day 16 of their historic hunger strike at an interactive installation at UC Berkeley, featuring visuals, readings of prisoners' letters, and family members. Students and professors, family members with loved ones in prison, members of the legal, human and civil rights community -- join us in reading prisoner letters, holding photos of prison conditions, sharing your thoughts, discussing how to support the prisoners. Please forward this call widely, announce in classes, email us messages of support to be read.

Think about everything that makes you human… that keeps you physically and mentally alive… that connects you with the world and other people… that gives you a reason to live, to love, to learn and think…. All this is what the SHU tries to extinguish. In the SHU you're locked up in a small, windowless concrete cell 23 hours a day, with minimum human contact and maximum sensory deprivation, for years and sometimes decades.

“I’m ready to take this all the way,” says J. Angel Martinez, one of the strike leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison. “We are sick and tired of living like this and willing to die if that’s what it takes.”

Over 6,500 prisoners across California went on hunger strike from July 1 to July 20, demanding to be treated as human beings; and an end to barbaric, inhumane conditions and long-term solitary confinement -- a form of torture. Prisoners resumed the hunger strike on September 26, with nearly 12,000 joining, because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reneged on its promise to meet their 5 demands. (Prisoners’ demands )

The CDCR, backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, is retaliating against hunger strikers – threatening to put them in the SHU for going on hunger strike. “We’re freezing," strike leader Ron Yandell told an attorney, as quoted in the New York Times. "The air-conditioner is blowing. It’s like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It’s torture. They’re trying to break us.”

On October 4, Amnesty International called for "swift implementation of reforms to California security housing units," and condemned "conditions in the SHUs at Pelican Bay and other facilities, where several thousand prisoners are held in isolation, confined to windowless cells for more than 22 hours a day, with minimal human contact and no work, recreational or educational programs."

Prisoners write: "our sacrifice now will mean a more humane world for us in the future…many of the conditions for prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay are really better than SHU prisoners in Pelican Bay."

All of us have a moral responsibility to stand up for the basic rights and humanity of those held behind bars, and build a determined movement outside prison walls demanding CDCR grant the prisoners' just demands and immediately halt its retaliation against hunger strikers.

This reading/installation has been initiated by readers of Revolution newspaper and other supporters of the prisoner hunger strike. Contact: D'Andre: Deandre44@gmail.com or 510-926-5207

For more information on the hunger strike, see:

Prisoner Hunger Strike Now in 11th Day

12,000 Prisoners Resume Hunger Strike in California

Voices of those cast off by the system

Letters to Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/

The World Cries Out For Revolution! - LitCrawl at CAFE La BOHEME 10-15-11

2011-10-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 15
8:30-9:30 pm
CAFE LA BOHEME
3318 24th Street in San Francisco's Mission District

The World Cries Out For Revolution! (part of SF's LitCrawl)

One hour of prose & poetry by authors, writers, poets and activists featuring readings of quotes from the new book BAsics, by Bob Avakian.

with:

Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power & Empire and correspondent for Revolution newspaper
Steven T. Jones, author of The Tribes of Burning Man
Michael Lange, actor
devorah major, former San Francisco Poet Laureate & author
Reiko Redmonde, event curator, Revolution Books

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation. It concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian's work. BAsics can not only introduce many more people to the thinking of the author who has put communism back on the agenda as a vital and viable force—it can play a major role in bringing forward and forging a new wave of revolutionaries.
*************
This event is free and wheelchair accessible.

Autumn of Upheaval & Preparing for Revolution, Tues 10-11-11

2011-09-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Presentation & Discussion

Tuesday, October 11, 7pm at Revolution Books

We are beginning a month of great promise. Suddenly, there are signs of life in America!

The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading across the country....over 12,000 Californiaprisoners have joined an ongoing hunger strike....thousands demonstrated against the legal lynching of Troy Davis in Georgia...a major non-violent direct action against the racist NYPD stop-and-frisk policy is being planned in New York, along with demonstrations nationwide against police brutality on October 22...students at UC Berkeley staged a powerful protest against campus Republicans' racist attack on affirmative action...protests against theKeystone XL Pipeline were among the most determined environmental protests yet....in the midst of all this dozens have written Revolution newspaper, responding to the challenge issued in BAsics by Bob Avakian.

Join us Tuesday to discuss this "Autumn of Upheaval," and how the RCP's "On the Strategy for Revolution" (hyperlink: http://revcom.us/a/224online/Statement-on-strategy-en.html) can guide us in relating to all this upheaval -- and making big advances in hastening and preparing for a real revolution.

“Of course revolution cannot happen with conditions and people the way they are now. But revolution can come about as conditions and people are moved to change, because of developments in the world and because of the work of revolutionaries...as people come to see that things do not have to be this way...as they come to understand why things are the way they are and how things could be radically different...and as they are inspired and organized to join the revolutionary movement and build up its forces.

“Revolution will not be made by acting all crazy—trying to bring down this powerful system when there is not yet a basis for that—or by just waiting for “one fine day” when revolution will somehow magically become possible. Revolution requires consistent work building for revolution, based on a serious, scientific understanding of what it takes to actually get to the point of revolution, and how to have a real chance of winning.

“In order for revolution to be real there must be: a revolutionary crisis, and a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions and led by a far-seeing, highly organized and disciplined revolutionary party. Clearly, this is not the reality now. So, how can this come about? And what is the strategic plan?

Applying this whole strategy "can enable the revolutionary movement, with the Party at the core, to confront and overcome the very real obstacles in its path...to advance and grow, through ongoing work, and through a series of critical leaps in times of sudden breaks and ruptures with the “normal routine”...to prepare the ground, and accumulate forces, for revolution—and have a real chance at winning. It is how thousands can be brought forward and oriented, organized and trained in a revolutionary way, while beginning to reach and influence millions more, even before there is a revolutionary situation...and then, when there is a revolutionary situation, those thousands can be a backbone and pivotal force in winning millions to revolution and organizing them in the struggle to carry the revolution through."

"Your Sons and Your Daughters...Are Beyond Your Command", recording by Bob Avakian on his student days at UCB 10-4-11

2011-09-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

7-9 pm Tuesday October 4 at Revolution Books

Listen to an audio recording of Bob Avakian reading from his memoir about his student days at UC Berkeley

From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist

"Your Sons and Your Daughters...are Beyond Your Command"

Into the Student Life… Dylan and “Beatlemania”… New People, New Influences… Malcolm X… Straddling Two Worlds… The Free Speech Movement… Mario Savio… The Assassination of Malcolm X… Deciding about Vietnam… Getting In Deeper

Copies of the audio excerpts, and the book From Ike to Mao will be available for sale.

URGENT - Support the Prisoners Hunger Strike! 9-27-11

2011-09-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Discussion at Revolution Books Tuesday September 27 at 7 pm

Hunger Strike resumes —Support the Just Demands of the Pelican Bay Prisoners
(Who are the REAL criminals?)

Representatives of prisoners who went on a 20-day hunger strike in July at the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in California, declare that the prisoners will resume their hunger strike on September 26. It is urgent that people support the prisoners & speak out against prison authorities' attempts to retaliate against the prisoners. People on the outside have the moral responsibility to act in a way commensurate with the justness of the prisoners’ demands and the urgency of the situation. What people on the outside do will be a big factor in what happens when the prisoners resume the hunger strike.

Mon 26, 3:30pm Panel in Support of the Prison Hunger Strike
UC Hastings B. Mayer Lounge, 198 McAllister St, San Francisco.
Speakers: legal professionals, activists, former inmates, family members of SHU prisoners

Tues 27, 5pm
Emergency March and Rally, Civic Center, S.F.

Tues 27, 7pm Discussion - "Support the Hunger Strike! Who are the Real Criminals?"
Revolution Books, Berkeley
2425 Channing - 510.848.1196

Weds 28, 11-1pm
Protest at CDCR Headquarters - Sacramento
(carpool from W. Oak BART 9:30am sharp)

Thurs 29, 5pm
Vigil - 14th and Broadway, Oakland

Sat-Sun, Oct 1-2
Caravan to Pelican Bay to support prisoners
call for details 510-926-5207

Wed, Oct 5th, 12 noon-2pm
Protest outside CDCR Headquarters. 1515 S St, downtown Sacramento. For carpooling and transportation needs from the Bay Area, please contact: 415.238.1801 or prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@ gmail.com

The prisoners are demanding to be treated like human beings, that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) end their barbaric, inhumane conditions of imprisonment, particularly in the SHUs, including solitary confinement, which is a form of torture.

The CDCR is not only refusing to meet the prisoners’ demands—it is retaliating against those who participated in the strike and mounting a public relations campaign to defend the barbaric conditions in the SHU. CDCR officials have indicated in statements to the media that they won’t allow the kind of mass defiance and solidarity exhibited by hunger strikers at Pelican Bay to happen again.

Come to a discussion with Revolution reporters. Read articles from Revolution here. Some points for discussion:

* who are the real criminals – someone who robs or brutalizes an individual – or a ruling class that robs and brutalizes whole countries, whole peoples, and who maintains a whole system of torture here and globally?

* people say the masses have to take responsibility and get out of the criminal life – yet when they do, like the prisoners have, and acted selflessly for others, and risked their own lives in a NON-VIOLENT struggle – then the system attacks them for doing this! So the system doesn’t want them to change and more importantly wants to crush an example of people lifting their heads and acting in new ways.

* this relates to the point - the deep exposure - what kind of system spends more to incarcerate people than to educate and enlighten them - NOT a system interested in peoples transforming themselves

* why did these youth have the “choices” that they were confronted with – to hurt someone to maintain their own self respect? To rob someone or starve themselves? Why were these the choices they were given in life? What system gave them those choices? No matter what people have done, they’re human beings and deserve dignity and respect – it is wrong to distance yourself from them, and to accept the system’s verdict that they’re animals and anything goes — this is Nazi and genocidal ideology and it’s being promoted daily by this system.

***

Supportthe hunger strike and the demands of the prisoners:

Widelydistribute Revolution newspaper, onthe street, in schools, among all sections of the people. Postarticles from the paper online including on social media such asFacebook.

Staytuned to Hunger Strike Coalitionwebsite(prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com)for updates on the strike and mobilizations in support of theprisoners. Wherever you are, organize demonstrations or pressconferences, including outside prisons, in support of the prisoners.

Ex-prisonersand family members: Cometogether, form networks of support for the hunger strike, speak out.

Studentsand professors: Makethe strike a major issue on the campus—everyone needsto know about this. Reach out to those studying and working on issuesof mass incarceration, prison conditions, criminal justice, policebrutality, racism and national oppression—encourage them to takethis up. Organize and demonstrate in support of the strikers.

Manymore statements of support forthe hunger strike, including prominent people and academics, areurgently needed. Send to Revolution newspaperat rcppubs@hotmail.com or submit a comment at revcom.us.

Manymore religious forces, includingthose who have spoken out against torture, need to be mobilized tospeak out and oppose the conditions in the SHU.

Morehuman and legal rights organizations needto get involved in this issue and struggle. It is unconscionable tostand aside from blatant torture going on within the U.S. whilecondemning other regimes around the world.

CDCRmust give journalists full access tothe prisons and the prisoners, including hunger strikers—in orderto report the truth about the conditions in the SHUs and the prisons,and so the voices of the prisoners can be heard. Students,photographers, and journalists: contribute toRevolution’scoverage—sharing photos, research, suggestions and correspondence.

Susan Cervantes of Precita Eyes Muralists 9-29-11

2011-09-05T16:02:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, September 29 at 7 pm,

Susan Kelk Cervantes will speak about her work, and the book Street Art San Francisco, Mission Muralismo.

The S.F. Mission district has the greatest concentration of street art than any other neighborhood in the world. Susan Cervantes is responsible for over 400 collaborative community murals and is a pioneer of the San Francisco community mural art movement. She is the founder and director of Precita Eyes Muralists. Influenced by the Mujeres Muralistas, the first collaborative group of women muralists, Precita Eyes seeks to enrich and beautify urban environments and educate communities about the process and history of public mural art. Some of Cervantes’ murals considered some of the finest in the country include “Maestrapeace” SF Women’s Building; “New World Tree”, Mission Pool; and “Indigenous Eyes: War or Peace,” Balmy Alley.

Helen Benedict reads from Sand Queen, a novel 09-22-11

2011-09-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

September 22, Thursday, 7 pm Helen Benedict reads from her new novel SAND QUEEN.

SAND QUEEN is a startling, moving, riveting and disturbing story that unfolds in and around a U.S. military prison in the desert in Iraq. It is told from the points of view of two women: one a U.S. soldier and the other an Iraqi medical student.

The novel is based on Benedict’s research for her most recent nonfiction book, THE LONELY SOLDIER: THE PRIVATE WAR OF WOMEN SERVING IN IRAQ which has won several awards, including the EMMA (Exception Merit in Media Award) from the National Women's Political Caucus and the Ken Book Award, both in 2010.

Benedict has testified twice to Congress on behalf of women soldiers, and lectures at colleges and military academies around the country about gender justice and the military. Her book and play about women soldiers inspired the the February 2011 class action suit against the Pentagon and Secretaries of Defense Rumsfeld and Gates on behalf of military women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted while serving.

A play Benedict wrote based on her interviews with women soldiers, THE LONELY SOLDIER MONOLOGUES, was produced in 2009 and 2010 at two New York City Theaters, The Theater for the New City and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and is currently being performed at several campus theaters around the country. The play is available for further productions. See Helen Benedict's website to find out about her other books and projects http://www.helenbenedict.com/

Reverend Billy comes to Revolution Books 09-21-11

2011-09-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

September 21, Wednesday, 7 pm
Reverend Billy and Savitri D discuss their new book The Reverend Billy Project: From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with the Church of Life After Shopping. Bill Talen and Savitri D are radical performance artists who lead dozens of cohorts to perform guerilla theater that skewers consumerism and exorcise shopping malls, cash registers. Their book is a behind the scenes account of their adventures, activism and ...arrests.

Check out their website http://www.revbilly.com/

"We are a post religious church. We hold “services” wherever we can, in concert halls, theaters, churches, community centers, forests, fields, parking lots, mall atriums, and perhaps most importantly, inside stores, as close to the cash register as we can get, within spitting distance of the point of purchase."

"The Church of Earthalujah is a New York City based radical performance community, with 50 performing members and a congregation in the thousands. They are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters, earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities on 4 continents defending land, life and imagination from reckless development and the extractive imperatives of global capital. They employ multiple tactics and creative strategies, including cash register exorcisms, retail interventions, cell phone operas combined with grass roots organizing and media activism. They are entertainers and artists, performing regularly throughout The US and Europe."

Troy Davis Execution Scheduled for Tonight - The Whole Damn System is Guilty!

2011-09-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Just posted on revcom.us, a report from Atlanta.

Clemency Denied for Troy Davis—
Execution Scheduled for Tonight
The Whole Damn System is Guilty!

Revolution received the following report from Atlanta on Wednesday morning:At 9 AM Tuesday morning, Sept. 20th, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a terse statement denying clemency for Troy Davis, whose execution is scheduled for 7 PM Wednesday, Sept. 21st. This outrageous decision, from a Board made up of ex-prison officials and prosecutors, is the latest in a series of rulings by the judicial system going all the way up to the US Supreme Court, hell bent on executing Troy Davis for the killing of a cop in 1989—despite the lack of physical evidence, the recantation of 7 of the 9 witnesses at the trial, including some who have now stated that their original testimony was coerced by the police, and 3 of the original jurors who have publicly stated that they would not have voted for conviction if they knew then what they know now.

As we write this Wednesday morning, there is a last ditch effort to stop the execution through appeals to the Board to reverse its decision and to the district attorney in Savannah where the case was tried. The number of people worldwide who have signed the petition to stop the execution has now topped 1 million, and there have been outpourings of anger and resistance in different cities.

In the streets of Atlanta Tuesday night—24 hours before the scheduled execution—several hundred people gathered in Woodruff Park, in the heart of downtown for an impassioned speak-out organized by the FTP movement. The crowd then marched loudly thru the streets of Atlanta to join a gathering of over 1,000 people at the State Capitol, organized by Georgians for Alternative to the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, and the NAACP. After the rally at the Capitol, a contingent of mainly youth took to the streets for a spirited march throughout downtown. Today, people are preparing to travel to Jackson, Georgia, the site of the planned execution. (Read the rest of the article here.)

***
There are vigils today around the world and at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/09/20/18690867.php

Gather to Protest the Execution today 9-21-11 at Bancroft & Telegraph in Berkeley.

"Attica" film showing on the prison uprising's 40th anniversary, 9-13-11

2011-08-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books
Screening of the film, Attica in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising and in support of the prisoner hunger strikers.

Social unrest in the United States hit a boiling point on September 9, 1971, when inmates at Attica State Prison — after months of protesting inhumane living conditions — revolted, seizing part of the prison and taking 35 hostages. The uprising resulted in the death of 43 people after troopers were called in to suppress the rioters. Three years later, Cinda Firestone released this monumental investigation of the rebellion and its aftermath, piecing together documentary footage of the occupation and ensuing assault with video from the McKay Commission hearings that criticized Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller’s handling of the incident and firsthand interviews with prisoners discharged after the event.

Discussion of Attica rebellion will follow film. See http://revcom.us/a/245/40th-anniversary-attica-prison-rebellion-en.html

40th Anniversary of Attica Prison Rebellion

“We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such.”

We are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace—that means each and every one of us here—has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States.
What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed. We will not compromise on any terms except those terms that are agreeable to us. We call upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens the lives of not only us, but of each and every one of us.
L.D. Barkley, 21-year-old spokesman for the Attica prisoners,
killed by New York state troopers on September 13, 1971

read on.

***Also, check out:Taking the Movement of Resistance to Mass Incarceration to a Higher Level Thru Unleashing Determined Mass Resistance

9/11 Anniversary panel: Reflections on a Decade of US Terror, 9-11-11

2011-08-29T17:37:00.000-07:00

September 11, Sunday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books

Sept 11, 2011: Reflections on a Decade of War, Repression, Crisis...and Resistance. Where Are Things Heading? What Can Be Done?

A Panel Discussion with Cindy Sheehan, Clinton Fein & Larry Everest

Cindy Sheehan: anti-war activist, mother, peace advocate and author of Peace Mom
Larry Everest: Revolution newspaper correspondent, author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda
Clinton Fein: visual artist, activist, sits on the board of First Amendment Project

OPE by Everest

Peace Mom by Sheehan

art by Fein

Stop thinking like Americans. Start thinking about humanity.

Open House, Welcome Students. "Ask a Communist about the BAsics of Revolution and Communism." 9-7-11

2011-08-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

September 7, Wednesday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books
Open House, Welcome Students: "Ask a Communist about the BAsics of Revolution and Communism." Bring your questions!

Discussion on Bob Avakian's memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond…, Chapter 6, “Your Sons and Daughters....” 9-6-11

2011-08-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

September 6, Tuesday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books
From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, a memoir by Bob Avakian.” Discussion of Chapter 6, “Your Sons and Daughters....”, about Avakian’s days as a UC Berkeley student, including “New People, New Influences… Malcolm X… Straddling Two Worlds… The Free Speech Movement… Mario Savio…”
LISTENT TO THE COMPLETE CHAPTER READ BY BOB AVAKIAN HERE:
"Bob Avakian is a long distance runner in the freedom struggle against imperialism, racism and capitalism. His voice and witness are indispensable in our efforts to enhance the wretched of the earth. And his powerful story of commitment is timely." — Cornel West

Cartoonist Ted Rall at Revolution Books this SUNDAY 09-04-1

2011-08-25T15:54:00.000-07:00

CARTOONIST
TED RALL author of
The Anti-American Manifesto

appears at Revolution Books in Berkeley
7 PM SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 4

Cartoonist/columnist Ted Rall has produced the book he was always meant to write: a new manifesto for an America heading toward economic and political collapse. While others mourn the damage to the postmodern American capitalist system created by the recent global economic collapse, Rall sees an opportunity. As millions of people lose their jobs and their homes, they and millions more are opening their minds to the possibility of creating a radically different form of government and economic infrastructure.
But there are dangers. As in Russia in 1991, criminals and right-wing extremists are best prepared to fill the power vacuum from a collapsing United States. The best way to stop them, Rall argues, is not collapse—but revolution. Not by other people, but by us. Not in the future, but now. While it’s still possible.
***
Rall’s cartoons now appear in more than 100 publications around the United States, including the Los Angeles Times, Tucson Weekly, Pasadena Weekly, Washington Post, and New York Times.
Rall considers himself a neo-traditionalist who uses a unique drawing style to revive the aggressive approach of Thomas Nast, who viewed editorial cartoons as a vehicle for change. His focus is on issues important to ordinary working people—he keeps a sign asking “What do actual people care about?” above his drafting table—such as un- and underemployment, the environment and popular culture, but also comments on political and social trends. Check him out at http://www.rall.com/rallblog/

Ask us about the BAsics of revolution and communism. Open House, Welcome Students. 8-31-11

2011-08-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

August 31, Wednesday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books
Open House, Welcome Students: "Ask us about the BAsics of revolution and communism."

Discussion on BAsics, by Bob Avakian, Chapter 4, “Understanding the World,” 8-30-11

2011-08-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

August 30, Tuesday, 7-9 pm at Revolution Books
“Understanding the World,” Getting into the Basics, Discussion of Chapter 4 of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. No experience needed, just come to listen or share your favorite quote.

video showing: Nero's Guests 8-25-11 at Revolution Books

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 25 at 7 pm, showing of Nero's Guests

Nearly 2, 00, 000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this.

Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, P Sainath.

Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act.

Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

***
See these articles from Revolution

The Imperialist Suicide Epidemic in India

Why does a farmer in India commit suicide every 30 minutes?

Special Issue on BAsics -A Plan to Shake Up and Wake Up the Campus 8-23-11

2011-08-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 23 at 7 pm, come to Revolution Books for a discussion of:

100,000 Run for Special Issue on BAsics A Plan to Shake Up and Wake Up the Campus

On August 23, Revolution newspaper will publish a special 8-page all-color issue of the paper that will introduce people to BAsics. The issue will focus on quotes from BAsics, and quotes from different people who have read BAsics and have something to say about it. 100,000 of these will be printed and take the next several weeks—with a major emphasis on the weeks from August 24 to September 7—to get them out in a massive way, mainly focused on college campuses, though with some emphasis as well on high schools."

"thousands, no tens of thousands, of students by the time the leaves turn having not just heard about and been exposed to this work but, in many cases, beginning to engage it, to learn about the leader who brought it forward, and to make contact, in different ways, with the movement for revolution he’s leading.

"This is critically important. The campuses should be a real strength of the movement for revolution. They should be places where students are debating and wrangling over these ideas and daring to dream how the world could be radically different. They should be places which infect the whole society with ferment over ideas more generally. They should be sites of political struggle and upheaval... of cultural revolt... of philosophic debate... of pioneering new relations between people ... of young people demanding the truth, and insisting on living by it."

Come for a discussion and help make plans to go out to campuses with this special issue.

Read the article here.

Rally & Hearing in Sacramento Against Torture in Prisons 8/23

2011-08-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

Rally & Speakout: Tuesday, August 23, 11:30 AM, State Assembly Building (South Steps), Sacramento CA, Legislative Hearing: 1:30 PM (inside)

Support the prisoners! (Read Taking the Movement of Resistance to Mass Incarceration to a Higher Level Thru Unleashing Determined Mass Resistance by Carl Dix)

Carpool with World Can't Wait leaving from the West Oakland BART parking lot at 10 AM Tuesday morning. Call 415-864-5153 or email sf@worldcantwait.net
This is a DAY OF ACTION to support the historic prisoner-led protest against torture in California's prisons. Rep. Tom Ammiano chairs the State Assembly's Public Safety Committee which will hold an informational hearing on conditions and policies of the Security Housing Units at Pelican Bay.

Come and support the courageous prisoners who staged a hunger strike in July and continue to struggle.

On July 1st, prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in California started an indefinite hunger strike to protest inhumane &amp;amp; torturous conditions of their imprisonment. (Revolution article The Prisoner Hunger Strike: A Real Inspiration, A Real Beginning by Li Onesto) After more than 6,600 prisoners across a third of CA's prison system joined the strike, the CA Department of Corrections &amp;amp; Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to review its gang validation &amp;amp; debriefing policies, and the prisoners won a few concessions. The prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU representing the hunger strikers agreed to suspend the strike, giving the CDCR a few weeks to implement more substantial changes in response to the hunger strikers' five core demands.

The prisoners now need our support to make sure their voices are heard during this legislative hearing on August 23rd.

Getting to the rally on Tuesday, August 23:

Carpool with World Can't Wait leaving from the West Oakland BART parking lot at 10 AM Tuesday morning. Call 415-864-5153 or email sf@worldcantwait.net to reserve a ride, to offer rides, or for more info.

For other rides, including from Southern California:

Bay Area: 415.637.8195 or prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@gmail.com
Southern California: 714-290-9077 or dolorescanales@hotmail.com
for other important information and news:
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Committee
WEB: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

BIG BOOK SALE - E X T E N D E D

2011-08-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

We are extending the book sale.

We have more donations of great used books, organized into categories -- most for $1 and $2 dollars.

Please continue to bring in your donations.

The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity - discussion on the interview with economist Raymond Lotta 8-16-11

2011-08-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

Discussion is Tuesday, August 16 at 7 pm at Revolution Books with Larry Everest

The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity
Text of the Revolution Newspaper interview of Raymond Lotta

Listen to the Michael Slate radio interview of Raymond Lotta

* "The struggle over the debt ceiling is an expression of deep problems confronting U.S. imperialism. I am speaking of the effects of the crisis in the world economy… an international economic environment in flux… and real budgetary constraints and contradictions bound up with the vast accumulation of government and private debt."

* "the tentative deal will cut three trillion dollars in domestic spending over the next ten years. This includes what's spent by federal agencies. It includes different types of social spending and its early effects will impact education, public housing, mass transit, environmental protection, and the Medicaid program. And then a new wave of cuts will be phased in after the 2012 election."

* "What kind of system puts human lives on the chopping block of fiscal austerity? This is the logic of capital. This system cannot act in the interests of the people. It can't because it operates according to the rule of profit above all else."

* "…most progressive and radical critiques are arguing that this whole debt crisis has just been manufactured as a way to push political-ideological agendas. I think this is wrong. It's more complicated than that… but more fundamentally, there IS a global economic crisis which is the larger backdrop to all this."

* "there is no permanent necessity to existing conditions. Things do not have to be this way. The Revolutionary Communist Party has recently published the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). It sets forth an inspiring vision and concrete measures for building a new society."

* "This vision can play a tremendously powerful ideological role on the current terrain. Projecting this vision is a crucial part of building a movement for revolution that can bring such a new society into being."
____

Raymond Lotta is a revolutionary communist intellectual and political economist.

Screening of "The Codes of Gender" 8-9-11 at Revolution Books

2011-08-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

See the film The Codes of Gender and stay for a discussion. (7-9 pm)

Written and directed by Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture's most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.

In striking visual detail, The Codes of Gender explores Goffman's central claim that gender ideals are the result of ritualized cultural performance, uncovering a remarkable pattern of masculine and feminine displays and poses. It looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that focus on biological difference or issues of objectification and beauty, to provide a clear-eyed view of the two-tiered terrain of identity and power relations.

With its sustained focus on how our perceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman get reproduced and reinforced on the level of culture in our everyday lives, The Codes of Gender is certain to inspire discussion and debate across a range of disciplines.

(Revolution Books would like to thank the Media Education Foundation for making the film available for this showing)

Praise for the Film
"Completely engrossing... For a generally jaded viewer such as I, perhaps the best measure of the effectiveness of this work is the fact that it made me see things I hadn't seen before and made me think in new ways about the ubiquitous images and messages that inundate and inform everyday life."
- Gary Handman | Educational Media Reviews Online

"...A fine, powerful, and important film."
- Jack David Eller | Anthropology Review Database

"The Codes of Gender will be of interest to all who question the visual images of what is deemed natural and normal. The film is well-made and presented, and it serves as a fitting tribute to Goffman (who died in Philadelphia in 1982). His work was underestimated when he was alive, but his contributions to 'the codes of gender' are as equally valid today as they were thirty years ago."
- Anna Hamling | Feminist Review

Fundraiser for Revolution Books on Hiroshima Day 8-6-11

2011-08-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 6, 4-9pm

Fundraiser for Revolution Books on Hiroshima Day

Music Spoken Word Potluck

If you can conceive of a world without America - without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world - then you've already taken great strides and begun to get at least a glimpse of a whole new world.

- From BAsics by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan and on August 9th, it bombed Nagasaki, Japan. Over 250,000 were killed from the bombs and the aftermath. The U.S. is the only country in the world to drop nuclear weapons on anyone.

On the 66th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: come together with others who refuse to accept this as the "best of all possible worlds" and join with others who are building a movement for revolution.

Donation: $5-$25. Tickets available at the door or at Revolution Books. Volunteers needed to help organize and publicize the event. Call (510) 848-1196 for the location.

Occupy Wall Street LIVE feed

2011-08-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a movement that began on September 17 with an encampment in New York City.

"Communism: A Whole New World and the Emancipation of All Humanity-Not ''The Last Shall Be First, and the First Shall Be Last.'": Getting into the BAsics 8-2-11 at 7 pm

2011-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

7 pm, Tuesday July 12 at Revolution Books

"A Whole New-and Far Better-World": Getting into the BAsics
Discussion of Chapter 2 of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian No experience needed, just come to listen or share your favorite quote, and talk about why:

"Communism: A Whole New World and the Emancipation of All Humanity-Not ''The Last Shall Be First, and the First Shall Be Last.'"
"Marx said about the future world, the world of communism, that it will seem as ridiculous and outrageous for one part of society to privately own the land, and everything that goes along with that, as it now seems for one human being to own another. Communism will mean that we have reached the point where the very idea that the way society should advance is for a few to benefit and then to proclaim that to be in the general interest of the society, where that idea will seem so ridiculous and outrageous that in a certain sense, to put it simply, it couldn't get a hearing."

"It is right to want state power. It is necessary to want state power. State power is a good thing-state power is a great thing-in the hands of the right people, the right class, in the service of the right things: bringing about an end to exploitation, oppression, and social inequality and bringing into being a world, a communist world, in which human beings can flourish in new and greater ways than ever before."
"In socialist society, there needs to be struggle, and criticism/self-criticism, but there also needs to be "air" for people to breathe, room for them to disagree, allowance for them to come to the truths that Marxism reveals in their own way-and allowance for Marxism itself to breathe and grow, to discard outmoded concepts and analyses and to deepen its reflection of reality, as the liberating science it is, in opposition to suffocating religious dogma."

BAsics is a new book of quotes and essays from Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. BAsics concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian's work on everything standing between humanity and complete emancipation into a single concise book of essential quotes and short essays.

"You can't change the world if you don't know the Basics"

International Day of Solidarity with Prisoner Hunger Strikers 8-1-11

2011-07-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

Just received from World Can't Wait:
World Can't Wait is calling for a Day of Action on Monday, August 1

San Francisco plans:
NOON Rally and Speakout at the State Building (Van Ness and McAllister)

March to 455 Golden Gate Avenue, for a short rally at the offices of Governor Brown and the State Attorney General. March back to State Building for a closing rally

The action will amplify the voices of the prisoners themselves, especially the hunger strikers (including readings of their statements, letters and messages). Also we will bring out the voices of a diverse and growing movement of people on the outside, for a struggle which is so clearly - in the words of one hunger strike leader - only in the first quarter.

EXTREMELY URGENT: Support the CA Prisoner Hunger Strikers!!!

2011-07-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

Click here for REVOLUTION Newspaper hunger strike in-depth resources.
Click here for PRISONER HUNGER STRIKE SOLIDARITY Network updates.

ACTION TO SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKERS

San Francisco: Vigil every weekday at 12 noon in front of the State building at intersection of Van Ness Avenue and McCallister Street near the Civic center BART

Los Angeles: ENCAMPMENT SOLIDARITY W/PELICAN BAY PRISONERS HUNGER STRIKE! KRST Unity Center of Afrikan Spiritual Science, 7825. S. Western Ave.

Pelican Bay: Julie Tackett's Vigil outside Pelican Bay State prison. Read her blog here and join her if you can.

recent news reports in print, radio, TV & online

DAY 21 of hunger strike 7-21-11
* UK Author & journalist Andy Worthington: …Calling for An End to Solitary Confinement as Official US Prison Policy
* Alternet: Inmate Health Dwindles as Prison Hunger Strike Enters Fourth Week
* PRESSTV: Media denied access to California jails
* Examiner.com: Pelican Bay Prison force-feed showdown: Just follow orders or human rights?
DAY 20
* KQED Radio: Prisoners on Hunger Strike Show Signs of Starvation, Official Wants to Force-Feed
* KQED Radio: Interview: What is the Hunger Strike by California Prisoners About?

* KPFK Radio, (Pacifica affiliate): THE MICHAEL SLATE SHOW; Dolores Canales, mother of Pelican Bay Hunger Striker, talks about the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike and the conditions the prisoners live under.
* Black Agenda Report: The Humanity and Courage of the Prisoners at Pelican Bay and the Moral Responsibility to Support Their Demands
* LA Times EDITORIAL: California's hidden hunger strike
* San Francisco BAY VIEW Newspaper: Repression breeds resistance!
DAY 19
* San Francisco BAY VIEW Newspaper: Mobilize to support the hunger strike! Let’s win this fight!
* LA Times article: Prisoners' hunger strike in its third week
* Huffington Post: Pelican Bay Inmates Hunger Strike to Protest Inhumane Solitary Confinement
DAY 18
* NYTimes OP ED: Barbarous Confinement
* KCRA TV Sacramento: Good TV report on protest at State department of corrections main office
DAY 17
* Revcom.us: Statements from Prominent People in Support of Prison Hunger Strikers
* Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Broadcast:"Dying For Sunlight" (Pelican Bay Hunger Strike)
DAY 15
* DemocracyNow: Protests Grow in Solidarity With California Prisoners As Hunger Strikes Enters Third Week
* Russia Today news report: Massive CA Prison Hunger Strike, interview with Clyde Young
* KTVU TV San Francisco: Good TV report on street protest
DAY 13
* Revolution Books YOUTUBE: PRISONER HUNGER STRIKE SOLIDARITY COALITION Press Conference
* Free Speech Radio News report on YOUTUBE: Ongoing Hunger Strike at Pelican Bay Prison
DAY 8
* Russia Today news report: California prisons on hunger strike, interview with Clyde Young

Kathleen Barry, author of Female Sexual Slavery and Unmaking War, Remaking Men speaks at Rev Books 7-26-11 at 7 pm

2011-07-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Come to Revolution books on Tuesday, July 26 (7 pm) to hear Kathleen Barry, Professor Emerita of Penn State University. Barry's latest book, Unmaking War, Remaking Men, challenges the masculinity of war and reveals through the ongoing wars of today how and why peace is only possible with the remaking of men. She looks to those soldiers who have resisted and refused to fight as models for the new masculinity already in the making.

In a world where Arabs are often being demonized, it is soothing to read a book by such a fine Western intellectual with so much empathy who offers us a unique perspective on how we could untangle the knots of an explosive situation. A must for anyone trying to find solutions to war. —Evelyne Accad, Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East

With the courageous vision, scrupulous scholarship, and heartfelt writing that has illumined her books on female sexual slavery, Kathleen Barry here focuses her laser-like intelligence on violence, militarism, and core masculinity. Unmaking War, Remaking Men makes the connections that could save us all. Ignore this book at your peril. —Robin Morgan

Kathleen Barry is the author of five books, including Female Sexual Slavery which exposes the epidemic of world-wide female sexual slavery -- practices where girls and women are sexually exploited, physically abused and cannot get away. This pervasive practice cuts across all lines of race, class, and culture. It is the subject of entertainment in pornography and ultimately affects all women. Groundbreaking when it was published in 1979, Female Sexual Slavery is a seminal work on the subject

John Gibler discusses To Die in Mexico 7-19-11 at 7 pm

2011-07-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

Revolution Books is excited to host John Gibler who will discuss his new book, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War Tuesday July 19 at Revolution Books, 7 pm.

To Die in Mexico tells behind the scenes stories that address the causes and consequences of Mexico's multibillion-dollar drug-trafficking business. Gibler tells the hair raising stories of a Mexican journalist kidnapped, interrogated and threatened with death by the Gulf Cartel before being miraculously released; family members of people killed in the conflict; survivors of assassination attempts and massacres; along with crime-beat photographers, funeral parlor workers, government officials, convicted traffickers, cab drivers and others who find themselves working against, with, or for the drug cartels. Gibler sees beyond the cops-and-robbers myths that pervade government and media portrayals of the unprecedented wave of violence and looks to the people of Mexico for solutions to the crisis now pushing Mexico to the breaking point.

"If you want to cut through the lies, obfuscation and sheer lunacy that surrounds Mexico's so-called drug war, read To Die in Mexico. John Gibler reports from Ciudad Juarez, Reynosa, Culiacan--the bloodiest battlegrounds in a fever of violence that has left more than 38,000 dead. But he accepts none of the prevailing myths--that this is a war between rival criminal enterprises, or between a crusading government and assorted barbarous bad guys, that it is a war at all. An antidote to the sensationalism and mythologizing that dominate the discourse, To Die in Mexico is at once a gripping read and the smartest, sanest book yet written on the subject in English." --Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Suitors and Ether

San Francisco Bay Area support for striking prisoners on Times homepage

2011-07-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

News from Pelican Bay Hunger Strike and Protests

Check out this week's issue of Revolution with cover story on the strike

We Are Human Beings!

Also, posted July 4, 2011 at revcom.us REVOLUTION NEWSPAPER

There is a another rally this Saturday, July 9 at UN Plaza in San Francisco. For more information see www.prisonerhungerstikesolidarity.wordpress.com

Click photo to see a screenshot of the NY Times homepage featuring this photo and story

New York Times article here

EMERGENCY MEETING: SUPPORT PRISON HUNGER STRIKERS! Tonight, 7-12-11 at 7 pm

2011-07-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Tuesday July 12 at 7 pm at Revolution Books!

(the discussion of BAsics, chapter 2 which was scheduled for tonight will be rescheduled to a later date)

On Friday, July 1, prisoners in California's infamous Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison began a courageous and determined hunger strike. This then, very quickly, turned into a display of collective outrage and solidarity among prisoners throughout the state and beyond.

More than 500 inmates refused food at Pelican Bay State Prison and 6,600 prisoners in 13 different prisons participated in the hunger strike on the weekend of July 2-3. At least 2,000 prisoners at 11 California prisons are still on hunger strike, and there is a hard-core group of 50 prisoners in the highest-security special isolation wing in the SHU who say they will refuse to eat until their demands are met.

These prisoners are subject to brutal, inhumane and illegal conditions that amount to torture. This includes, according to prisoners, "indefinite confinement, sensory deprivation, withholding food, constant illumination and use of unsubstantiated lies from informants."

Prisoners have courageously stood up and demanded justice. This is an extremely significant and extraordinary development. It demands our full support!.

Come to Revolution Books to discuss the situation and how to build broad and determined support for these courageous hunger strikers.

Demands of Prisoners on Hunger Strike at Pelican Bay SHU

1. End "group punishment" where an individual prisoner breaks a rule and prison officials punish a whole group of prisoners of the same race.

2. Abolish "debriefing" and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. False and/or highly questionable "evidence" is used to accuse prisoners of being active/inactive members of prison gangs who are then sent to the SHU where they are subjected to long-term isolation and torturous conditions. One of the only ways these prisoners can get out the SHU is if they "debrief"-that is, give prison officials information on gang activity.

3. Comply with recommendations from a 2006 U.S. commission to "make segregation a last resort" and "end conditions of isolation."

4. Provide Adequate Food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food. They want adequate food, wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals and an end to the use of food as a way to punish prisoners in the SHU.

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates-including the opportunity to "engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities..." which are routinely denied. Demands include one phone call per week, one photo per year, 2 packages a year, more visiting time, permission to have wall calendars, and sweat suits and watch caps (warm clothing is often denied even though cells and the exercise cage can be bitterly cold).

Go to Revcom.us for in depth coverage of the strike:

Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strikers - We Are Human Beings!

Hunger Strikers Inspire Solidarity Actions Inside and Outside Prisons

News from the Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strike

The Living Hell in Pelican Bay Prison

EMERGENCY MEETING: CA Prisoners HUNGER STRIKE; Updates, Reports, Planning to STEP IT UP, Thursday, 7-21-11, 7pm

2011-07-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday July 21 is Day 21 of the CA prisoner's Hunger strike which began on July 1. Join us at 7 pm at Revolution Books for an update on the hunger strike, a report back from Pelican Bay, Solidarity Actions, Letters from Prisoners, Statements of Solidarity and discuss ideas and plans to step up the struggle.

For updates on the strike go to revcom.us and http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/

Second Sunday meeting 4 Friends of Revolution Books 7-10-11 at 6 pm

2011-06-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

Every Second Sunday of the month - meeting for the Friends of Revolution Books

come over this Sunday and help make Revolution Books the revolutionary spot it needs to be:

Share experiences, make suggestions and criticisms.
strategize,
sum-up,
make new plans

Plans to take Revolution Books on the road - to concerts, fairs, festivals. To the barrio and the lettuce fields, to protests and to the hood.

Figure out fund raising events - book sales, art auctions, author events, video showings and music nites.

Suggest topics for discussion nites, share reviews of new books you have read.

Spread the revolution, spread the word about Revolution Books

Your ideas and energy NEEDED!

Bring a friend and a snack to share.

Bedrock forces for revolution, breaking with dogma and stereotypes... Presentation & discussion 7-5-11 at 7 pm

2011-06-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 5, 7-9 pm

In his recent talk, "Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, but Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon," Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, explores the recent development of U.S. imperialism, shifts in social relations and conditions in the U.S. and the world, and the challenges they pose to making revolution.

Avakian digs into why:

“This is not the time of Marx. Reality does not correspond to the Trotskyite superimposed screen placed over reality—England in the 1840s or Western Europe in the 19th century in general. There is the reality that what we are about does have to be a proletarian revolution, in the sense of its grounding in the most fundamental and largest interests of the proletariat as a class: advancing human society to communism and emancipating all humanity. But this is not a revolution that is going to be made solely by even real proletarians—those in what Lenin referred to as the lower and deeper sections of the working class—and it is certainly not going to be made in some sort of stereotypical "classical" form by ‘THE WORKING CLASS.’”
“In fact, most of the forces who will most actively carry out the fight for the seizure of power—and even those actively involved to a large degree in revolutionary work before the conditions emerge to wage the struggle for the seizure of power—will very likely be mainly not proletarians in the strict sense. We are not setting down, and we shouldn't be setting down, some sort of principle and "rule" about this—inventing a stereotype and a convention and imposing that on reality in a different form—but it is quite likely that it will not be mainly proletarians in the strict sense who will be the most active fighters for this revolution, now and at the actual time when everything's on the line in terms of which class is going to hold power in society and what the basic character of society will be.”

“So this underscores again why we have to have a living scientific approach, and a living scientific method, in relation to transforming reality.”
“There are contradictions, fundamental contradictions, that are asserting themselves today: Profound contradictions in the economic relations, in the social relations, of this society are unresolved—and are unresolvable within this system.”

Anti-4th of July Rooftop Party! Berkeley Benefit for Revolution Books

2011-06-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Revolutionary Rooftop
Anti 4th of July Party!
Benefit for Revolution Books

*With Special Guest Big Dan of BRWN BFLO*

words
music
food
art
dance

Come into the bookstore and get tickets! $5-$25 Call 510-848-1196 for details and location (Berkeley)

Call and let us know if you have a poem to share....

On July 4th, 2011...

Spin the globe.
Everywhere you look: oppression, misery and death—carried out by/for the USA. Massacres in Afghanistan… environmental catastrophes, fascistic laws against immigrants… police brutality and
hellish prisons.

The World Cries Out for Revolution!

New audio version of the RCP's statement On the Strategy for Revolution.

The Imperialist Suicide Epidemic in India, with Larry Everest 6-28-11 at 7 pm

2011-06-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 28, 7pm: Presentation and discussion with Revolution writer and author Larry Everest.

Between 1995 and 2009, 241,679 farmers in India committed suicide, and by the end of 2010 the number had probably risen to 250,000—a quarter of a million people. In 2009 alone, 17,638 farmers committed suicide—an average of one every 30 minutes. What has caused this largest wave of recorded suicides in human history? What role has the U.S. and the global capitalist system played? How does this show the urgent need for communist revolution and creating liberating societies where people could flourish and never think of ending their lives?

See, “The Imperialist Suicide Epidemic in India,” by Larry Everest, Revolution #236, June 19, 2011, http://www.revcom.us/a/236/imperialist_suicide_epidemic-en.html

A farmer in India swallows a bottle of pesticide and falls dead. And the tragedy of this suicide is compounded. His wife and children now have to pay the debts he owed that drove him into such desperation. They may not have a way to farm the land. They may be forced to work another farmer's field for 45 cents a day.

Since 1995, about a quarter of a million farmers in India have committed suicide. Most are small farmers, more than 85 percent were deeply in debt. In 2009, 17,638 farmers killed themselves—an average of one every 30 minutes.

In a country the U.S. upholds as a model of capitalist democracy, tens of thousands of farmers are driven to kill themselves because they have gone deep into debt to feed their families.

Celebration dinner Friday 6-24-11 for conclusion of fund drive, Changing the world with the BAsics - $30,000 in 30 days

2011-06-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Celebration Dinner: June 24th, 7pm
at
La Placita
2375 Fruitvale Avenue, Oakland
(near 23rd street)

Bring something to share
a special Iranian dinner will be for sale.

"A Whole New—and Far Better—World": Getting into the BAsics 6-21-11 Tues., 7 pm

2011-06-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

Learning from "On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics: A Celebration of Revolution and the Vision of a New World"

by Annie Day

On April 11 of this year, an amazing cultural event took place: "On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics: A Celebration of Revolution and the Vision of a New World." As Revolution newspaper put it: "Hundreds of people of diverse ages, backgrounds, and political perspectives came together in one place for an evening of jazz, funk, soul, rock, theater, dance, poetry, visual arts, commentary and film. All of it aching for, giving voice to, and infused with the possibility of a radically different world than the maddening planet we live on now. All of it unleashed by—and cohered around—the occasion of the publication of BAsics, a comprehensive yet succinct new book of quotations and short essays by Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with much of the evening's performances flowing from and a large portion of it explicitly inspired by the life and the work of Avakian."

This was an extraordinary night—a space where there was a palpable and living sense of the potential for a new world, and a feeling among people they were part of it.
Our imaginations took flight and we created a space with different ways of relating. People who came were inspired and provoked to learn further... about Bob Avakian; about the times that Avakian, and other speakers that night, came out of; and about the need for revolution, argued for from different perspectives.

There was also a great deal learned in the process of organizing and curating the night, lessons that tell us a lot about the broader movement for revolution we are building and even what it means to lead in socialist society—the significance of BAsics and what can be broken open when Avakian's work is directly engaged, the importance and richness of the method of solid core with a lot of elasticity, the material basis for this and the creativity and initiative that was developed in relation to this.

I want to share some of this with the readers of Revolution.

Read the complete article quoted above.

Socialism and Capitalism, Constitutions and Laws: Similarities — and Profound Differences - discussion 6-14-11 Tues, 7 pm

2011-06-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 14 - 7pm: "Socialism and Capitalism, Constitutions and Laws: Similarities — and Profound Differences" – Presentation & Discussion

In October 2010, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) published a pathbreaking "CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America (Draft Proposal)" based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism. In his recent talk, "Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, but Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon," RCP Chairman Bob Avakian explores:

Why laws and constitutions in any society are ultimately based on and must reflect the prevailing economic and social relations

The similarities – and profound differences – between the constitutions of states ruled by exploiting classes (like the U.S.) which exist to maintain and further capitalism, and a socialist constitution which is a vehicle for the furtherance of liberation and the communist revolution

Why socialism requires continuing struggle against spontaneity, and why this necessitates the institutionalized leading role of the communist vanguard, embedded in the Constitution - even as this Constitution also embodies basic principles and "rules" which will apply to all members and institutions in society, including the communist vanguard

The applicability and non-applicability in socialism of the "separation of powers" and "checks and balances," and what is the role of elections?

The crucial role this Constitution can and must play in a radically new, socialist society that is uprooting all forms of oppression, while giving great scope to intellectual work, ferment, and dissent as integral to the complete emancipation of humanity.

Presentation & Discussed drawing from sections: "The Basic Nature, and the Constitution, of a Socialist State" and "Socialism and Capitalism, Constitutions and Laws: Similarities—and Profound Differences"(excerpted in Revolution # 229 and #230)

Donate Books for our Big Used Book Sale! Sat & Sun, June 18-19

2011-06-14T12:42:00.001-07:00

USED BOOK SALE

Donate Books NOW!

Volunteers needed to run book table outside store!

Forward this post to all you know.

"Friends of Revolution Books" has hundreds of recently donated used books, including textbooks, on sale this week in front of our store. Older and newer titles on many subjects including philosophy, art, science, sociology, anthropology, history and fiction.

DONATE BOOKS! WE URGENTLY NEED BOOKS IN USED BUT GOOD CONDITION.

Students - we are especially looking for used text books. Email the bookstore for further details or questions on donations, or just bring books in during business hours. Proceeds go to support the work of Revolution Books -- a revolutionary center and bookstore - part of the movement for revolution.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS FOR THIS SALE Fri-Sun!
JOIN US ON FRIDAY FROM 4-8PM TO SORT BOOKS FOR THE SALE.
Support Revolution books even if you only have an hour to spare.

Your help is needed to sell books and straighten up the bookstore to make way for new inventory. Hang out and brainstorm with us about fund raising.

Challenges in making revolution: shifts in social relations and conditions....bedrock forces for revolution...breaking with dogma and stereotypes 7-5-11 Tues. at 7 pm

2011-06-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 5 at 7 pm: Presentation and discussion

In part 2 of his recent talk, “Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, but Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon,” Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, explores the challenges of “Building the Movement for Revolution,” including:

“The development of U.S. imperialism, shifts in social relations and conditions, and challenges in making revolution”
“Bedrock forces for revolution, breaking with dogma and stereotypes”
Why “we have to have a living scientific approach, and a living scientific method, in relation to transforming reality”
“We are not going to make revolution by trying to superimpose on reality a model of how a socialist transformation is ‘supposed’ to take place. That is why, among other reasons, the Trotskyites seem so ridiculous. They come around talking about ‘the labor movement’ and ‘the trade unions,’ as if they are in Western Europe at the end of the 19th century.”
“The most bedrock force for revolution will include ‘lower and deeper’ sections of the proletariat, certainly .. It will include many immigrants among them...But it will also be, and perhaps will largely be , basic masses, particularly those concentrated in the inner cities—many of whom are not strictly speaking part of the proletarian class—who will make up this most bedrock force.
The profound contradictions asserting themselves today in the U.S. that are unresolved—and unresolvable – within this system and which can be driving forces for revolution.

Presentation & Discussed will draw from sections: “The development of U.S. imperialism, shifts in social relations and conditions, and challenges in making revolution,” “Bedrock forces for revolution, breaking with dogma and stereotypes”and “Profound and acute contradictions, real potential for revolution.”(online at: http://revcom.us/avakian/birds/birds02-en.html)

"A Worldwide System of Exploitation and Oppression," Getting into the BAsics 6-7-11 Tues. at 7 pm

2011-06-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

7 pm Tuesday, June 7: Getting into the BAsics: "A Worldwide System of Exploitation and Oppression,"

Discussion of Chapter 1 of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. No experience needed. Come listen or share your favorite quote, and dig into why:

* "There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth."

* "The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy, but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism
and political structures to enforce that imperialism."

* "These imperialists make the Godfather look like Mary Poppins."

* "No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, who the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that."

BAsics is a new book of quotes and essays from Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. BAsics concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian's work on everything standing between humanity and complete emancipation into a single concise book of essential quotes and short essays.

"You can't change the world if you don't know the Basics."

Showing of video "Freedom Riders", 6-2-11 Thurs. 7 pm

2011-05-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Join us Thursday, June 2 - 7pm for a viewing of the new documentary "Freedom Riders," which premiered May 16 on PBS.

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives-and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment-for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, but sparked a massive social movement that ended legal segregation. A must-see for anyone concerned with racism, the oppression of African-Americans, and changing the world.

Light refreshments. Good conversation. Suggested donation: $5-$10 to support Revolution Books.

"In 1961, 13 courageous people, seven Black and six white, refused to accept all this as "the way things are." They refused to be complacent, to "look the other way," to "be patient." They understood the dangers and threats that lay ahead of them. They really didn't give a damn what "respectable society" thought about them. Instead, they stepped into a volatile, dangerous situation and began a journey that would change the course of history."
– Revolution #233, May 22, 2011, "50th Anniversary: Freedom Riders—A Legacy of Defiance"

***

"Freedom Riders" Documentary
Website: http://www.pbs.org/freedomriders

$30,000 in 30 days, plus 100 new sustainers for Revolution newspaper... Changing the world with the Basics 6-5-11 at 6 pm

2011-05-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 5, 6pm

$30,000 in 30 days, plus 100 new sustainers for Revolution newspaper... Changing the world with the Basics.

Discuss, sum up experience so far, and make further plans to complete $30,000 fund drive by
June 21:

"We are announcing a 30-day plan - to start Monday, May 23 - to raise $30,000 plus 100 new Revolution sustainers, for beginning but bold promotional plans for BAsics to have a societal impact, for covering the remaining small debt incurred in the production of April 11 and the very initial production costs to make a documentary about this event, and for the critical functioning of RCP Publications. In addition, thousands of dollars are needed now by the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund to make important initial headway in their goal to get BAsics to 2,000 prisoners."

*Read full article in Revolution #232, May 15, 2011

ENDING Women's Oppression: Fighting for Revolution and a Whole New World, Talk & Discussion with Sunsara Taylor 5-31-11 at 7 pm

2011-05-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Just announced for this coming Tuesday, May 31 at 7pm
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper discusses
ENDING Women's Oppression: Fighting for Revolution and a Whole New World

Donation: $5-$15

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them - the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born - there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination.
And this is true not only in the Third World. In 'modern' countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who - if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this 'new world' where supposedly there are no barriers for women-will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways."

(BAsics, from the Talks and Writing of Bob Avakian, Chapter 1, # 10)

USED BOOK SALE - Buy & Donate Books NOW! Volunteers needed to run book table outside store! Forward this post to all you know.

2011-05-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Mon 5/23 through ~~Fri 5/27~~ Sunday, 5/29, 11AM - 7PM (12-6 on Sunday): "Friends of Revolution Books" has hundreds of donated used books on sale this week in front of our store. Older and newer titles on many subjects including philosophy, art, science, sociology, anthropology, history and fiction.

Bring some friends to step up and support us while getings some great books cheap at the same time. Prices are 50 cents - $1. Bring some books to donate at the same time to make space for your new books. Proceeds go to support the work of Revolution Books -- a revolutionary center and bookstore – part of the movement for revolution.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS FOR THIS SALE!

Even if you only have an hour to spare, we need you to support Revolution Books. spend some time helping to sell books and straighten up the bookstore to make way for new inventory. Hang out and brainstorm with us about fund raising.

IMPROVE AND EXPAND THIS SALE BY DONATING books in used but good condition:

Email the bookstore for further details or questions on donations, or just bring books in during business hours.

Sikivu Hutchinson discusses Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Value Wars 5-27-11 at 7 pm

2011-05-18T23:21:00.000-07:00

Don't miss Sikivu Hutchinson discussing her unique book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Value Wars

"In the book I examine the implications of black Christian religiosity, skepticism, humanism, and atheism from an African American feminist perspective, taking on Christian fundamentalist fascism and the hijacking of public morality....despite longstanding traditions of secular humanism, skepticism, and Freethought espoused by such thinkers as Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen and Richard Wright, atheism remains a taboo belief system in black communities."

Dr. Hutchinson will appear at Revolution Books in Berkeley on Friday, May 27 at 7 pm.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles and has published fiction, essays and critical theory in Social Text, California English, Black Agenda Report and American Atheist Magazine. She is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies.

She has recently defended Planned Parenthood from the "right-wing lynch mob" in an article Planned Parenthood and the Rape of American Women.

Read Dr. Hutchinson's blog here.

Click here to read an excerpt of Moral Combat.

“Revolutionary Leadership and Responsibility” – Discussion of Chapter 6 of Basics 5-24-11 Tues. 7 pm Revolution Books

2011-05-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 24 at 7 pm
“Revolutionary Leadership and Responsibility”
Discussion & Presentation of Chapter 6 of
Basics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

Share your favorite quotes and dig into why:

“...the more highly organized and centralized the party was, the more it was a real vanguard organization of revolutionaries, the greater will be the role and initiative of the masses in revolutionary struggle....Nowhere has such a [proletarian] revolution been made without such a party and nowhere has the lack of such a party contributed to unleashing the initiative of the masses of the oppressed in conscious revolutionary struggle.” (From #1, p. 179)

“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.” (#10, p. 186)

Why am I—why is my body of work, and method and approach—important? Because this is bringing forward an advanced understanding, a heightened understanding, of what revolution and communism are all about and how to move toward the objective of revolution and communism, as well as a method for engaging and struggling through the contradictions that are inevitably going to be encountered in that process.” (#11, p. 186)

“When I look at all this, I think again of my friend who decided to dedicate his life to ending cancer–and of the even greater need to put an end to the system of capitalism-imperialism and all the suffering and oppression this system embodies and enforces throughout the world. You see that there isn’t anything more important that your life could be about...” (#18, p. 194)

“BAsics, from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian” is a book of quotations and short essays that concentrates 30 years of Avakian's work on questions of revolution and human emancipation. Journalist Herb Boyd calls BAsics:

“...a fundamental primer on revolution and into the imaginative and gifted political mind of Bob Avakian.”

Presentation & Discussion: “The Notion of ‘Human Nature’—As a Reflection of Capitalist Society” 5-17-11 at Revolution Books

2011-04-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17, 7 pm

Revolution, socialism, and communism? This is supposedly impossible and “utopian” because “human nature” is inherently “sinful” and “selfish.”

But in his recent talk “Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, but Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon,” Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party Bob Avakian shreds these defenses of today’s capitalist system, exposing how:

* In reality, human nature is “a ‘nature’ that is conditioned by, corresponds to, and is reinforced by....the dynamics of capitalist commodity production and exchange”

* Capitalism compels people by “to compete with each other in a thousand ways, and this system too in a thousand ways promotes and rewards selfishness and surviving, and if possible thriving, at the expense of others. Survivor!—think what that television show is about and promotes”

* Communism represents a transition to an entirely new era in human existence. It’s not some kind of "perfect state,” but a whole new "plateau" upon which human beings will interact with each other and with the rest of nature, on a qualitatively, radically different basis from the past.

* Capitalism conceives freedom in negative terms – as protection from government and other people. Communism sees freedom in positive terms – moving beyond commodity relations and alienation between atomized, competing individuals, and fostering social intercourse on a cooperative basis among the members of society while giving greater scope to individuality in this collective framework.

Presentation and Discussion based sections: “The Notion of ‘Human Nature’—As a Reflection of Capitalist Society” and “Communism and Capitalism: Fundamentally Contrasting Views of Human Nature and Human Freedom,” from “PART 1: REVOLUTION AND THE STATE” of Bob Avakian’s recent Talk: “Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, but Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon.” (Excerpted in Revolution # 229 and #230.)

See also, Basics, from the talks and writing of Bob Avakian, page12, quote #19.

Steven T. Jones discusses The Tribes of Burning Man 5-13-11 at Revolution Books

2011-04-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

Steven posted a musing on his upcoming talk at our store, Is Burning Man a Revolutionary Camp on his blog.

On Friday May 13 at 7 pm Steven T. Jones will appear at Revolution Books to discuss his book: The Tribes of Burning Man, a special and intimate view of the most popular, unique, and enduring countercultural event of recent times. Each year, for a week at the end of summer, artists and others celebrating a more egalitarian ethos, build and populate a temporary city in the Nevada desert, centered around a giant wooden effigy called “The Man”. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world have made the dusty pilgrimage to Black Rock City to take part in this experiment in participatory art, gift culture, and celebration—and many say their lives were fundamentally changed by the experience. Through Steven, we are introduced to the people, and the vision, that have shaped this event.

This current look at the expansion of the lifestyle reveals how in recent years Burning Man has taken on a new character, with the frontier becoming a real city and the many tribes of the event—the fire artists, circus freaks, music lovers, do-gooders, grungy builders, and myriad other burner collectives developing a perennial presence in sister cities all over the world. Chronicling Burning Man’s renaissance years from 2004 to the present, this epic journey features some of the culture’s most inspiring and colorful leaders and is a search for meaning in the most unexpected places.

Discover within the pages of The Tribes of Burning Man assorted artist groups that work from the artist workshops American Steel, The Shipyard, The Box Shop, CELLspace, NIMBY Warehouse, and other Bay Area work spaces and art collectives, as well as interviews with internationally acclaimed DJs Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Lee Coombs, Dylan Rhymes, DJ Dan, Christopher Lawrence, Scumfrog, Syd Gris, and more. Plus a candid, six-year running conversation with Burning Man founder Larry Harvey.

Chernobyl in Japan: The capitalist nuclear horror - discussion 5-10-11 at Revolution Books

2011-04-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 10 - 7pm

Chernobyl in Japan: the Capitalist Nuclear Horror

Presentation and Discussion

For a month,

radioactive contamination has poured out of the Fukushima nuclear reactors after the huge earthquake and tsunami along Japan's eastern coast. Radioactive materials have spread over wide swaths where millions of people live. Food crops, tap water, and soil have been contaminated, endangering human health and poisoning ecosystems. Farmers' and fishermen's livelihoods are being ruined...And bodies from the tsunami and quake are still being found. 28,000 people are dead or missing, and 150,000 are still living in temporary shelters.

The response of the whole world capitalist system to this immense catastrophe has been one of paralysis, lies, cover-ups, denial and the reckless endangering of people's lives.

Click here for a Revolution newspaper article

Some Key Principles of Socialist Sustainable Development

Celebrate Revolutionary May Day at Revolution Books 5-7-11 at 7 pm

2011-04-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

Join us on the evening of Saturday May 7 at 7 pm and celebrate Revolutionary May Day!

May 1st is the holiday of the international proletariat, a day to boldly put forward our aims of revolution and communism. It is time to both celebrate and to step back, to take stock and to lift our sights even further. A time of struggle and of celebration.

Music - Food - Revolutionary Culture and Readings
with jazz poet Raymond Nat Turner and others

If you can conceive of a world without America—without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world—then you’ve already taken great strides and begun to get at least a glimpse of a whole new world. If you can envision a world without any imperialism, exploitation, oppression—and the whole philosophy that rationalizes it—a world without division into classes or even different nations, and all the narrow-minded, selfish, outmoded ideas that uphold this; if you can envision all this, then you have the basis for proletarian internationalism. And once you have raised your sights to all this, how could you not feel compelled to take an active part in the world historic struggle to realize it; why would you want to lower your sights to anything less?

Bob Avakian, Revolution #169, June 28, 2009

The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way.

Bob Avakian, Bringing Forward Another Way, Revolution #83, March 25, 2007

You Can't Change the World If You Don't Know the BAsics." 5-03-11 at Revolution Books

2011-04-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 3 - 7pm

"You Can't Change the World If You Don't Know the BAsics."

People can read and talk about their favorite quote from the new book, Basics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

. And we'll all discuss why "you can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

Get into BAsics! This book speaks to-and strikes a chord with-many people, coming from different places and with widely different perspectives. This book is for everybody who is straining to understand why the world we live in is the way it is, how to change it, and who dreams of a new and far better future. Everybody. Read a little at a time-maybe just one quote-and think; or read a lot. Discuss the quotes and essays with your friends and neighbors, colleagues and fellow students.

- Carl Dix, "Get In, Get Out, Get Connected!"

Informal discussion of Ngugi's Dreams in a Time of War 4-28-11

2011-04-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, April 28 at 7 pm join the staff of Revolution Books. We will be discussing Ngugi wa Thiongo's recent talk at our bookstore and charing our impressions regarding his memoir. (You do not have to have read the book to come and participate. We will read selections aloud.) Make suggestions for future book discussions and author events.

Frances Driscoll reads from her book The Rape Poems 4-27-11

2011-04-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 27 at 7 pm, Frances Driscoll will read from her book which has been adapted for stage in the play Lucky Girl which will be performed at the Exit Theatre in May.

Praise for the book:

"Powerful. Sad. Touching. Sad. Inspiring. Sad. What a gift she has." -- Nikki Giovanni

"These are stunning poems, in every sense of the word. Tracing the circuitous and torturous paths of memory, Frances Driscoll fearlessly looks back on, and into, rape. Her triumph is that she refuses to trivialize through a mode of confessionalism. Instead, these are poems that are lush with a common, familiar, evocative language that cuts through the surface detritus of our lives, the 'pastel drugs' of therapy, the police reports, the 'cheap filler' of the national wire. What she ultimately reveals are the beauty and terror of what she hesitantly calls 'real life.' These are poems of great courage. And if these are poems of terror, they are also poems of beauty, as Frances Driscoll takes us to a place finally colored by the 'lemon-green of very young leaves.'" -- Gillian Conoley

BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON PART 1: REVOLUTION AND THE STATE - Tues. 4-26-11

2011-04-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tuesday April 26 at 7 pm

Presentation & Discussion

Continuing our discussion of "BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON" by Bob Avakian, we will focus in on two sections (excerpted in Revolution # 227 and #228), "Constitutions and Laws, Property Relations and Class Interests", and "Bourgeois Political Philosophy, Its Limitations and Distortions.

Turning his scrutiny once again to the "founding fathers" of the US, like Paine and Madison, Avakian shows how even the most far-sighted and radical (for their time) of these founders of the new US order saw things from the underlying framework of the emerging, oppressive capitalist relations of their time - which they then idealized and made into "universal" principles. Avakian also once again digs further into some key questions having to do with the exercise of political power in capitalist society. Law itself, far from being something above social antagonisms and interests, reflects and enforces the dominant property (and fundamentally production) relations of society. And going further, he points to how in socialist society, with radically different laws, serving fundamentally liberatory production and social relations, laws will both enforce rights and also exert coercion. This will ultimately be overcome only with communism.

All of this is extremely relevant in deepening our understanding of the nature of political power in this society, and in understanding and digging deeper into the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).

The articles can be found at: #227: http://revcom.us/avakian/birds/birds01_09-en.html and #228: http://revcom.us/avakian/birds/birds01_10-en.html

The Movement for revolution and BAsics 4-19-11 at 7 pm

2011-04-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Join us Tuesday, April 19 for a presentation and discussion on "The movement for revolution and BAsics"

Communism is "encircled" on a global scale, and the RCP's campaign “The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have” is crucial in breaking out of this encirclement, and building a movement for revolution. The campaign's three objectives concentrate urgent needs: to put revolution back on the map in people’s thinking; to make Bob Avakian a well-known point of reference in society; and to bring forward new cores of revolutionaries, of emancipators of humanity.

BAsics, from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian, ia a potentially powerful contribution to achieving all three of these objectives.

The presentation will be based on the speech “The Movement for Revolution, BAsics, and the April 11 Celebration”, at http://revcom.us/a/229/basics_speech-en.html

Discussion: The Rights of the People and the Struggle to Uproot All Exploitation & Oppression from the CONSTITUTION of the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) 4-12-11

2011-04-05T23:55:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, April 12 at 7 pm there will be a presentation and discussion on Article III: The Rights of the People and the Struggle to Uproot All Exploitation & Oppression from the CONSTITUTION of the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).

Article III includes:

Section 1. The Basic Right of the People, the Purpose and Role of the Government, and Contradictions Between the People and the Government, in the New Socialist Republic in North America.

Section 2. Legal and Civil Rights and Liberties.

Section 3. Eradicating the Oppression of Women.

Section 4. Uprooting National Oppression and Overcoming Gaps Between Regions
and Other Great Differences.

Section 5. The Mental/Manual Contradiction.

You can purchase a copy of the CONSTITUTION at Revolution Books or you can read or download the CONSTITUTION here.

Mathematical Physicist Matilde Marcolli: The Geometry of the Universe. Saturday, 4-9-11 at 7pm

2011-04-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

JUST ANNOUNCED!

Can you hear the shape of the cosmos?

Jeff Weeks "The shape of space"

Professor Matilde Marcolli from the California Institue of Technology, Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy will discuss how mathematicians are constructing models to explain the geometry of the universe. This is her third talk at Revolution Books! Here is a pdf of the slides from her first talk.

Ph.D. 1997, University of Chicago. Advisor Melvin Rothenberg, UChicago Math Department
(1997-2000): C.L.E. Moore Instructor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Math Department
(2000-2008): Associate Professor, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn
(2001-present) Courtesy Appointment: Mathematics Department Florida State University ( my webpage at FSU )
(2006-present) Honorary Professorship, Bonn University

Ngugi wa Thiong'o at Revolution Books 04-08-11

2011-04-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

A Rare Evening with Ngugi wa Thiong'o

at Revolution Books in Berkeley

7 pm, Friday April 8, 2011

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the world-renowned Kenyan writer, will read and discuss his book Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. (click to purchase)

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o is respected and beloved around the world for his path-breaking novels and plays that paint an unsparing picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya. He has broken new ground in bringing the oppressed onto the literary scene, and his outspoken resistance to imperialist culture is also reflected in his innovative theoretical work on post-colonial literature. He has been imprisoned more than once in Kenya for his works. In the late '70s he began writing novels in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. The first of these, Devil on the Cross, was written in prison on toilet paper.

Ngugi now lives in exile in the U.S. Formerly a professor at NYU, he is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.

For more on Ngugi, go to http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/

Celebration on the Publication of BAsics, on 04-05-11

2011-03-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

BAsics concentrates more than 35 years of Avakian's work on everything standing between humanity and complete emancipation into a single concise book of essential quotes and short essays. Join us at Revolution books for music, words and celebration and get this new book hot of the press!

7 pm Tuesday, April 5, 2011

BAsics, from the Talks and Writings of

Bob Avakian

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1:	A WORLDWIDE SYSTEM OF EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION
Supplement:	Reform or Revolution Questions of Orientation, Questions of Morality

CHAPTER 2:	A WHOLE NEW—AND FAR BETTER—WORLD
Supplement:	Three Alternative Worlds

CHAPTER 3:	MAKING REVOLUTION
Supplement:	On the Strategy for Revolution

CHAPTER 4:	UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD
Supplement:	"A Leap of Faith" and a Leap to Rational Knowledge: Two Very Different Kinds of Leaps, Two Radically Different Worldviews and Methods

CHAPTER 5:	MORALITY, REVOLUTION AND THE GOAL OF COMMUNISM
Supplement:	Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right

CHAPTER 6:	REVOLUTIONARY RESPONSIBILITY AND LEADERSHIP
Supplement:	The Revolutionary Potential of the Masses and the Responsibility of the Vanguard

Building the Movement for Revolution: Culture and Morality—a Critical Arena of Struggle - Discussion 3-29-11 at Revolution Books

2011-03-24T01:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 29 at 7 pm, join us for further discussion of the section "Culture and Morality—a Critical Arena of Struggle" and "A Radical Revolt Against a Revolting Culture" from Part 2 (Building the Movement for Revolution) of the piece by Bob Avakian Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon.

We'll dig into two key topics:

1) further pathbreaking analysis by Avakian of the cultural and moral dimensions of fascist and right wing movements in the U.S. Avakian dissects "suburbanism" and the right wing currents that have emerged there--suburbanism not simply as place, but an ethos and ideological force in America, based, from its origins, on oppression and exclusion of black people and other oppressed, and also based on the "seal of parasitism" that stamps life in the imperialist United States. Avakian draws from Lisa McGirr's characterization of suburbia as "individual privacy, private property, and public spaces defined by consumption."

2) Avakian's urgent call for a "radical revolt against a revolting culture." "In short, we need, in today's circumstances, a counter-culture that contributes to and is increasingly part of building a movement for revolution—in opposition to a counter-revolutionary culture. We need a culture of radical opposition to the essence of everything that is wrong with this society and system, and the many different manifestations of that; we need an active searching for a radically better world, within which revolution and communism is a powerful and continually growing pole of attraction."

Showing of "Paperback Dreams" followed by brainstorming session - March 27, Sunday, 7 pm

2011-03-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

video showing will be followed by a Brainstorming session to support the store.

PAPERBACK DREAMS is the story of two landmark independent bookstores and their struggle to survive. The film follows Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books, and Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler’s Books, over the course of two tumultuous years in the book business.

YOU and your ideas are urgently needed to help Revolution Books not only survive, but flourish! Let's make a strategic fund raising plan together!

Brainstorming topics

Building a sustainer base (see below)
Author events
Artist appearances/special fund raisers
other projects to raise money, yard sale, bbq's, socials

Here's the situation with our revolutionary bookstore, and why we cannot survive without your help:

Revolution Books needs your support now - without it, this bookstore cannot exist…and grow!

Revolution Books is about revolution. It’s a hotbed of intellectual ferment and defiant resistance that is grounded in the fact that we do NOT have to live this way and that a whole other world is POSSIBLE.

When events break out in the world, Revolution Books is the place to go: to pick up a stack of Revolution newspaper with it's red hot analysis and science of revolution, to dig deeper through our excellent selection of books, and to engage with a community of people who are eager to understand the world…and transform it! For two weeks running, while millions took to the streets in Egypt, people here crammed into Revolution Books to discuss this historic uprising with a writer for Revolution and wrangle with others about what this means for Egypt and for the world.

Think about how rare and precious this institution is in today’s world…a volunteer store with books, discussions, and major events -- engaging, learning from, and struggling with a wide array of divergent viewpoints -- all working to address and redress the political, ideological, and ecological disasters that we face. At Revolution Books this engagement is integral to the revolutionary society we are working to bring into being, a society founded on the new synthesis of communism developed by Bob Avakian.

But we have a serious problem and we need your help to solve it: our expenses far exceed what we have been bringing in through book sales and donations. We are asking you to be part of our economic support structure, so that, together, we can impact society on a whole other level with literature, critical engagement, and determined action -- all as part of building a movement for revolution!

Fundraiser for the forthcoming book BAsics on Wednesday 3-23-11

2011-03-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

Celebrate the forthcoming publication ofBAsics

with Dinner at the Thai House in Berkeley

This book can not only introduce many many more people to the thinking of someone who has put communism back on the agenda as a vital and viable force--it can play a major role in bringing forward and forging a new wave of revolutionaries.

BAsics is a new book of quotes and essays from Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Join us for dinner and be part of making Bob Avakian and his revolutionary leadership a reference point to all those who yearn for a different world.

Wednesday, March 23rd - 6 p.m.
2511 Channing Way, Berkeley

$25 per person, $15 for students and the unemployed

For more information and to purchase tickets, please contact -

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way

Berkeley, California 94704

510-848-1196

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AND IN NEW YORK CITY -

On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics -

A Celebration of Revolution and the Vision of a New World

An Evening of Music, Visual Art, Poetry, and Readings

Monday, April 11th, 7pm

Aaron Davis Hall on the Campus of the City College

of New York 135th & Convent Avenue

Tell everyone you know in New York about this exciting event,

donate, and make plans to go yourself!

lebration

Revolution Books Berkeley

U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates: Danger of War Grows - panel discussion 1-24-12

Discusion of Badiou's "Politics of Emancipation" 1-31-12

Meet Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth) 2-12-12 --writer and cartoonist

TONIGHT! 5 pm C-SPAN-2 BROADCAST OF CARL DIX--CORNEL WEST DIALOGUE

NEW YEARS EVE EVE PARTY! 12-30-2011

Discussion -- Occupy at a Crossroads: Tues. 12-20-11 at 7 pm

Atheists Tee Shirt - Oakland Athletics baseball team logo takeoff from Revolution Books

Cornel West & Carl Dix - a dialogue: What Future For Our Youth?

Sister Mischief reading by Laura Goode 12-18-11 at Revolution Books

Holiday Book Sale Sunday December 18

More on the dialogue with Carl Dix and Cornel West: IN THE AGE OF OBAMA… POLICE TERROR, INCARCERATION, NO JOBS, MIS-EDUCATION: WHAT FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH?

Discussion about campaign to get Bob Avakian's vision & works...everywhere 11-29-11 Tues. at 7 pm

Occupy Oakland GENERAL STRIKE! Get involved w/ Revolution Books!

BAsics discussions at OccupySF and OccupyOakland - "POLICE: 99% or Brutal Enforcers of a Brutal System?"

Police - Back the Hell off Occupy Oakland and the Occupy Movement!

Police attack Occupy Oakland with massive force: 70-90 people arrested

Stop Police Brutality, Repression & Criminalization of a Generation: ALL OUT FOR OCTOBER 22 NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST

Occupy Wall Street's LIVE feed & much more

PRISONERS HUNGER STRIKE - CDCR SACRAMENTO & LOS ANGELES CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ON 10-14-11

ALL PLAYED OUT - words: Bob Avakian - Music: William Parker

A Reading of Prisoners' Letters / A Visual Protest - UCB 10-12-11

The World Cries Out For Revolution! - LitCrawl at CAFE La BOHEME 10-15-11

Autumn of Upheaval & Preparing for Revolution, Tues 10-11-11

"Your Sons and Your Daughters...Are Beyond Your Command", recording by Bob Avakian on his student days at UCB 10-4-11

URGENT - Support the Prisoners Hunger Strike! 9-27-11

Susan Cervantes of Precita Eyes Muralists 9-29-11

Helen Benedict reads from Sand Queen, a novel 09-22-11

Reverend Billy comes to Revolution Books 09-21-11

Troy Davis Execution Scheduled for Tonight - The Whole Damn System is Guilty!

"Attica" film showing on the prison uprising's 40th anniversary, 9-13-11

“We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such.”

9/11 Anniversary panel: Reflections on a Decade of US Terror, 9-11-11

Open House, Welcome Students. "Ask a Communist about the BAsics of Revolution and Communism." 9-7-11

Discussion on Bob Avakian's memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond…, Chapter 6, “Your Sons and Daughters....” 9-6-11

Cartoonist Ted Rall at Revolution Books this SUNDAY 09-04-1

Ask us about the BAsics of revolution and communism. Open House, Welcome Students. 8-31-11

Discussion on BAsics, by Bob Avakian, Chapter 4, “Understanding the World,” 8-30-11

video showing: Nero's Guests 8-25-11 at Revolution Books

Special Issue on BAsics -A Plan to Shake Up and Wake Up the Campus 8-23-11

Rally & Hearing in Sacramento Against Torture in Prisons 8/23

BIG BOOK SALE - E X T E N D E D

The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity - discussion on the interview with economist Raymond Lotta 8-16-11

Screening of "The Codes of Gender" 8-9-11 at Revolution Books

Fundraiser for Revolution Books on Hiroshima Day 8-6-11

Occupy Wall Street LIVE feed

"Communism: A Whole New World and the Emancipation of All Humanity-Not ''The Last Shall Be First, and the First Shall Be Last.'": Getting into the BAsics 8-2-11 at 7 pm

International Day of Solidarity with Prisoner Hunger Strikers 8-1-11

EXTREMELY URGENT: Support the CA Prisoner Hunger Strikers!!!

Kathleen Barry, author of Female Sexual Slavery and Unmaking War, Remaking Men speaks at Rev Books 7-26-11 at 7 pm

John Gibler discusses To Die in Mexico 7-19-11 at 7 pm

San Francisco Bay Area support for striking prisoners on Times homepage

News from Pelican Bay Hunger Strike and Protests

EMERGENCY MEETING: SUPPORT PRISON HUNGER STRIKERS! Tonight, 7-12-11 at 7 pm

EMERGENCY MEETING: CA Prisoners HUNGER STRIKE; Updates, Reports, Planning to STEP IT UP, Thursday, 7-21-11, 7pm

Second Sunday meeting 4 Friends of Revolution Books 7-10-11 at 6 pm

Bedrock forces for revolution, breaking with dogma and stereotypes... Presentation & discussion 7-5-11 at 7 pm

Anti-4th of July Rooftop Party! Berkeley Benefit for Revolution Books

The World Cries Out for Revolution!

*New *audio version of the RCP's statement On the Strategy for Revolution.

The Imperialist Suicide Epidemic in India, with Larry Everest 6-28-11 at 7 pm

Celebration dinner Friday 6-24-11 for conclusion of fund drive, Changing the world with the BAsics - $30,000 in 30 days

"A Whole New—and Far Better—World": Getting into the BAsics 6-21-11 Tues., 7 pm

Socialism and Capitalism, Constitutions and Laws: Similarities — and Profound Differences - discussion 6-14-11 Tues, 7 pm

Donate Books for our Big Used Book Sale! Sat & Sun, June 18-19

Challenges in making revolution: shifts in social relations and conditions....bedrock forces for revolution...breaking with dogma and stereotypes 7-5-11 Tues. at 7 pm

"A Worldwide System of Exploitation and Oppression," Getting into the BAsics 6-7-11 Tues. at 7 pm

Showing of video "Freedom Riders", 6-2-11 Thurs. 7 pm

$30,000 in 30 days, plus 100 new sustainers for Revolution newspaper... Changing the world with the Basics 6-5-11 at 6 pm

ENDING Women's Oppression: Fighting for Revolution and a Whole New World, Talk & Discussion with Sunsara Taylor 5-31-11 at 7 pm

USED BOOK SALE - Buy & Donate Books NOW! Volunteers needed to run book table outside store! Forward this post to all you know.

Sikivu Hutchinson discusses Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Value Wars 5-27-11 at 7 pm

“Revolutionary Leadership and Responsibility” – Discussion of Chapter 6 of Basics 5-24-11 Tues. 7 pm Revolution Books

Presentation & Discussion: “The Notion of ‘Human Nature’—As a Reflection of Capitalist Society” 5-17-11 at Revolution Books

Steven T. Jones discusses The Tribes of Burning Man 5-13-11 at Revolution Books

Chernobyl in Japan: The capitalist nuclear horror - discussion 5-10-11 at Revolution Books

Celebrate Revolutionary May Day at Revolution Books 5-7-11 at 7 pm

You Can't Change the World If You Don't Know the BAsics." 5-03-11 at Revolution Books

Informal discussion of Ngugi's Dreams in a Time of War 4-28-11

Frances Driscoll reads from her book The Rape Poems 4-27-11

New audio version of the RCP's statement On the Strategy for Revolution.