For an Internationalist May 1st

Friends,

THING 1: GET INTO THE STREETS FOR MAY 1ST!

INTERNATIONALISM: THE WHOLE WORLD COMES FIRST

I am getting ready to go out into the streets to join with thousands of others nation-wide in the May 1^st protests. It is very good that the Occupy movement is remounting the political stage. In the face of massive repression, including at least three police raids in the early morning hours today of NY Occupy activists and countless broken bones, bloodied skulls, tear-gas canisters, mass arrests and more of Occupiers last fall, people are coming back!

At the same time, while it is important but not enough to care about the 99% in this country – we really must fight for the “99%” throughout the world. The Pakistanis dying under – and terrorized by – US drones dropped in record numbers by President Obama. The immigrants who die crossing the US/Mexican border or who survive only to be separated from their families and forced to live and work in the shadows of this empire. The 2.4 million people locked into the hellholes of US prisons. The youth and the women and others who slave in sweatshops to produce the clothes we wear and the electronics we rely on. The peasants being thrown off their lands by US corporations and agribusiness. The climate refugees whose whole lives and lands are destroyed by the wanton destruction and pollution of the environment which is advancing everyday under the blind accumulation and competition process of global capitalism.

ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE PART OF THE REAL 99%.

ANY REAL AND MEANINGFUL PROTEST TODAY MUST INCLUDE THEM.

This is why I am marching into the May 1^st protests together with the Internationalist Contingent.

As Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has said:

“INTERNATIONALISM – THE WHOLE WORLD COMES FIRST!”

In NYC, we are hooking up at 3:45 on the SW corner of 14^th Street and 3^rd Avenue. Join us!

THING 2: PURSUE THE BIGGEST QUESTIONS – GET INTO BA, GET INTO THE REAL REVOLUTION!

I was just listening to Todd Gitlin who was a guest on WNYC radio as part of their May 1^st coverage. Among other things, he said that he thought there was work for Occupy to do to establish, “a sustained place in American political life.”

It is hard to think of a worse thing for Occupy to find for itself than a “sustained place in American political life”! Political resistance should NOT seek to become part of the “political ecology” of America – it should contribute to a world WITHOUT America and without everything that America stands for and does in the world.

We do not need, and we should not be seeking, to get a “place at the table” of empire. We need a world without empires.

One of the greatest things about Occupy is that it WASN'T part of the ongoing political terrain of the US. It ruptured out of those ruts. That is why it inspired so many and that is why it opened up such space for people to begin to think and dream differently. And that is why, at least as much as anything else, it was so viciously and brutally repressed and attacked by police who were commanded from the highest levels the state (including nation-wide conference calls among mayors who then did coordinated brutal police attacks in different cities).

Those who rule this country and this system are deathly afraid of the big questions that just began to be posed by the Occupy movement and among those who started to think more deeply about where all the problems confronting humanity come from. But, those of us who dream of a different world – we must welcome and embrace those big questions, we must look and think ever more deeply about the root of the problem and the necessary solution.

Precisely so that we do not have to be fighting the same battles generation after generation – against the Vietnam war back then and the Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan/soon-Iran wars today, against the lynching of Emmett Till back then and the murder of Trayvon Martin today, for the right of birth control and abortion back then and... for the right of birth control and abortion today – plus the wholesale enslavement of millions of women worldwide in sexual slavery, against pollution back then and nearing the brink of total climate disaster today, and on and on – we need REAL REVOLUTION. We need communist revolution as it has been re-envisioned by Bob Avakian.

If you don't know about this – there is nothing more important to be learning about, engaging deeply with, and helping others get access to even as you yourself are learning more.

A great place to start is this incredible new interview which was just released for May 1^st at Revolution Newspaper. Read up. Enjoy. Happy May 1^st. Lets bring into being a whole different world.

http://revcom.us/avakian/what-humanity-needs/interview.html

Sunsara Taylor