Find Sunsara and the Revolution at…

Friends:

Just letting you know that this blog is no longer being actively maintained.  HOWEVER:

You can find articles by Sunsara Taylor at revcom.us.  

In particular, for everyone interested in a revolutionary perspective on work to end pornography, the attacks on abortion rights and all forms of patriarchy, check out revcom.us/movement-for-revolution/stop-patriarchy/index. 

For news from the broader movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women, check out the website: StopPatriarchy.org

To contact Sunsara about speaking events, interviews, and other inquiries write to: sunsara_tour (at) yahoo.com

Be sure to follow @sunsarataylor

"Let's Be Real Here: As Bad As Bush Was,..."

 

New audio clip from a recent talk by Bob Avakian. Highly relevant going into the elections.

"Let's Be Real Here: As Bad As Bush Was, In Many Ways Obama Is Worse..."

Listen to it, play it for others, and spread it.

Cornel West interviews Bob Avakian

You can find out why Cornel West calls Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, the “legendary long-distance runner in the struggle for freedom” by tuning in:

http://www.smileyandwest.com/this-weeks-show/hot-stuff-bob-avakian/



 

Letter Points to Dangerous Mischaracterization in National Defense Authorization Act Ruling

Threatening Situation for the RCP and Bob Avakian

from Revolution #274, July 8, 2012

The letter by Raymond Lotta, printed below, addresses highly important legal and political issues focused up in a recent lawsuit initiated by several progressive activists, journalists, and scholars. The lawsuit is contesting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, in particular one of its key provisions, section 1021. The NDAA gives any president the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely in military prisons, without charge or trial. It is a very ominous and threatening development. 

On May 16, a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that section 1021 of the law is unconstitutional—and issued a temporary injunction blocking its enforcement. At this time, there is a further legal process underway which will determine whether this injunction will become permanent, preventing this section of the law to be enforced. 

But dragged into this mainly positive ruling is an erroneous and potentially harmful characterization of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman, Bob Avakian. This mischaracterization (reproduced in Lotta’s letter below) could lend itself to false interpretations about the principles, objectives and strategies of the RCP, and could be misconstrued in such a way as to insinuate that the RCP is “terrorist.” 

As the letter points out, this is a very serious matter:

Read more »

An Open Letter to Those Attracted to the ISO:

Not Internationalist, Not Socialist, and Not Organizing for Revolution…
But There Is a Path to Emancipation

by Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution Newspaper

To Those Attracted to the ISO:

You look at the world and it’s a fucking horror.

Life is a living hell from the slums of Mumbai to the favelas of Rio, from the brothels of Bangkok to the sweatshops of Shenzen, from the mines of South Africa to the prisons of the United States. Global climate change; U.S. wars and aggression; global food crisis; repression; attacks against gays and lesbians, against women, against Black people, against immigrants, and against the poor; toxic social relations and a world of alienation – all driven by the workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

Humanity needs revolution, communist revolution. This is a revolution that defeats and dismantles the whole repressive apparatus of the current order. A revolution that establishes a new state power that enables people to carry out the most thoroughgoing economic, social, and ideological transformations towards a communist world: where people work and struggle together for the common good…where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings…where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and the means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.

But the ISO has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with real revolution.  The ISO has nothing to do with communism or forging a radically different world.   As I will show, the ISO:

Read more »

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

STOP EVERYTHING -- START READING! NEW INTERVIEW WITH BOB AVAKIAN

Revolution #267, May 1, 2012

WHAT HUMANITY NEEDS Revolution, and the New Synthesis of Communism

An Interview with Bob Avakian

Watch & Spread this Talk -- STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN!!!!

Here is the footage of the talk I gave yesterday at Revolution Books in New York City (thank you to RB to getting this online so quickly!) called:


From the Expanding Porn Industry to the Aggressive Religious Patriarchs -- End the Enslavement and Degradation of Women!

Watch it... Spread it... Get out in the streets on Saturday!!!


Sunsara Taylor, 3/4/2012 from Revolution Books on Vimeo.

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world..."

Revolutionary Communism and the Liberation of Women -- WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!    

#5

"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."

Bob Avakian 

Chairman of the

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

BAsics 1:10

Sunsara Taylor on Abortion, Sonogram Laws, Pyrrhic Victories, Right to Know & Revolution

Sunsara Taylor takes on the logic of the mainstream "Pro-Choice movement" which keeps "winning victories" while losing the overall war on women's right to abortion and birth control.  She exposes the lie behind the so-called "Right to Know" legislation that mandates women who want an abortion be forced to view an ultrasound of the fetus.  She asks, "What about the 'Right to Know' that a fetus is not a baby?" and other extremely pertinent questions.  In sum, this system has no "right to talk about the 'right to know'... further, they have no 'right to rule!'"  Taylor talks about the need for revolution to liberate women as well as humanity as a whole and the need today to fight the power and transform the people for revolution.  In particularly, join her in the streets on March 10th, 2012 for International Women's Day to say: End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!  Abortion on Demand and Without Apology! Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!

http://revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html

Out of Denial and Into the Streets – International Women's Day 2012

Women the world-over are facing a growing assault on their lives, their rights, and even their recognition as full human beings.


In the U.S., Catholic Bishops have turned women's basic right to birth control into a national controversy. At least twenty percent of U.S. female soldiers are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. Every moment we are bombarded by images of women's bodies, half naked and half starved. And strip clubs, which serve up the subordination of women to men in the living flesh, have become so mainstream that annually men spend an estimated $16 billion dollars on them (as compared to the $4 billion they spend on baseball).


In the Congo, tens of thousands of women have been so brutally raped they can no longer hold their bladders or bowels. From Moldova to Thailand and beyond, millions of girls and women are sold as sex slaves. Throughout the world, fueled by the massive dislocations caused by imperialist development as well as imperialist wars, Islamic fundamentalism is rising with its “honor” killings, forced veiling, and hatred of women. And from China to Honduras to Silicon Valley, the near-slave labor – and sometimes outright slave-labor – of women and girls has disproportionately fueled the growth in cheap manufacturing.


These are not “just a bunch of different bad things happening to women."  These are but a few of the many fronts in an all-out war on women. While the forms this takes may appear different – or even unrelated – a common rope is tightening around nearly every dimension of the public, social, political, and intimate lives of women.

Read more »

"TIPS FOR TIM TEBOW"

[Revolution #258. February 5, 2012]


By Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA


Tim Tebow, quarterback for the Denver Broncos in the National Football League, is being widely, and seemingly endlessly, promoted—as an icon not only in the realm of sports but much more broadly. I have followed sports, including football, for many decades now, and I cannot recall ever witnessing anything like this. In a highly orchestrated and concentrated campaign, Tebow is being held up as a “worker of miracles” on the football field but, more than that, as a “role model” and moral standard-bearer.

Exodus 22:18

This hype around Tebow is completely and strikingly out of proportion to any demonstrated ability or actual accomplishments on Tebow’s part, in terms of performance as a professional football quarterback. If you have been paying attention not only to the arena of sports but to things more broadly in this society and the world, you should be able to quickly guess why this is: Tim Tebow is a religious fanatic—of the Christian fundamentalist variety—who aggressively promotes his medieval views and values in a way that is obviously considered useful by significant sections of the powers-that-be in the U.S. Among other things, during the Super Bowl (the American professional football championship) a couple of years ago, Tebow was the centerpiece of an ad whose purpose was to oppose the right of women to reproductive freedom, in particular abortion. The ad was sponsored by a right-wing Christian organization which aggressively opposes the right of women to abortion (it is also a fact, and highly revealing, that as a general rule the reactionary Christian fundamentalist forces that oppose a woman’s right to abortion also want to ban birth control).

 This promotion of what is in reality a fascist outlook and program, in the form of fundamentalist Christianity, is aided by the notion—aggressively championed by some, and far too often unchallenged by others—that there is a direct connection between how religious someone is and how “moral” he or she is. Which avoids the critical question: What is the content of this morality?

Read more »

"Let's get down to basics: We need a revolution..."

BAsics, 3:1 

Let's get down to basics: We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't unite with people in all sorts of struggles short of revolution. We definitely need to do that. But the proffering of any other solution to these monumental and monstrous problems and outrages is ridiculous, frankly. And we need to be taking the offensive and mobilizing increasing numbers of masses to cut through this shit and bring to the fore what really is the solution to this, and to answer the questions and, yes, the accusations that come forth in response to this, while deepening our scientific basis for being able to do this. And the point is: not only do we need to be doing this, but we need to be bringing forward, unleashing and leading, and enabling increasing numbers of the masses to do this. They need to be inspired, not just with a general idea of revolution, but with a deepening understanding, a scientific grounding, as to why and how revolution really is the answer to all of this.

Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity - Part 2:
 "Everything We're Doing Is About Revolution,"
Revolution #114, December 30, 2007

I Hate Religion and Jesus is No Good Either! Read Your Damn Bible!

Using Bob Avakian's book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World to challenge followers of Jesus to defend what Jesus actually said and what he actually did: uphold slavery, condemn divorce, blame sick people for their own illness, preach reconciliation between the oppressors and the oppressed and condemn people who don't believe in him to BURN IN HELL.  Using scriptures and Jesus's own words.

Interview on Michael Slate show: "End Pornography & Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women"

On KPFK on Jan 13, 2012 -

As the anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, I was on the Michael Slate show to talk about the call to   End Pornography and Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women.  The film I mention about the trafficking in women is "The Whistleblower."
Here's the interview including calls from listeners: Listen Here

Indiegogo.com/BAsicsEvent - A Success!!

To all my blog followers:

Here's the wonderful update on the determined effort to fund the upcoming film "Occasioned by BAsics: A Celebration of Revolution & the Vision of a New World."

By the time of the deadline at midnite PST on Dec. 12, $25,002 was raised!

Here's the final message from Indiegogo.com/BAsics event:

WE MADE IT!!  Thank you to the hundreds who contributed in large amounts and small, thank you to everyone who helped call people, attended house parties, participated in bake sales and more!  All of us together accomplished a very important thing in raising and contributing the funds so this film can be produced and released.  The community that came together to fund this film can grow further as the film is released... and every single donation that came in will help reach a greater community and audience from here forward.  We will keep everyone posted on developments with the film.  Thank you!

My Urgent Appeal -- Watch It, Donate, Spread It!!

go to http://www.indiegogo.com/Occasioned-by-BAsics-A-Celebration-of-Revolution-The-Vision-of-a-New-Worldhttp://www.indiegogo.com/Occasioned-by-BAsics-A-Celebration-of-Revolution-The-Vision-of-a-New-World

Only 9 days left -- Be Part of Changing the Culture!

Hey Y'all,

Watch this trailer -- then go and make a donation.  We are trying to get 70 new donations -- of any amount -- by Tuesday.  You can make a big difference!

Sunsara



To make a donation, go here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Occasioned-by-BAsics-A-Celebration-of-Revolution-The-Vision-of-a-New-World

Give $10 today -- write a friend and let them know you did it in their name!

Okay everyone -- I know that 99% of you can come up with $10 today.  I mean in the next five minutes.

I also know that you all have at least one friend (possibly two or three or four) who would be thrilled if you wrote them a little note saying that you gave $10 in their name to this awesome film that needs to be made and get out into the world.

Just tell them... "Come on now, enough of this 'bitches and hos' bullshit... enough of this 'get low'... and how come its always the women who have to get low?... We've already got a situation where the masses of women, and the masses of people generally, are kept down and held down way too low already.  Its time to get up and get on up!"

WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND LIBERATING CULTURE!  GIVE $10 TO SUPPORT AND SPREAD A WHOLE DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK, FEEL, AND BE!
This film won't get finished without your support!
WATCH THIS!

Sunsara Taylor Speaks at Protest Against Backpage.com for Facilitating Sex Trafficking

Yesterday I joined the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and others to protest Backpage.com for making millions of dollars off of paid advertisements which facilitate the trafficking and the prostituting of women.



The overwhelming majority of women and girls in prostitution are tricked, coerced, or forced through male predation, outright violence, and/or desperation. The notion that women's bodies should be available for sale to men for sexual use and sexual degradation and plunder is a product of thousands of years of patriarchy as it is filtered today through capitalism, which commodifies everything -- including the flesh, the sexuality and the lives of women and girls.

The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which is led by Bob Avakian, is building a movement for revolution. This revolution takes the complete liberation of women as a driving force, and a dividing line. Find out more at: revcom.us

Keep up with the new effort to
End Pornography & Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women
here: stoppatiarchy.tumblr.com