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Watch and share—a video of Bob Avakian’s new speech:
THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible     

The film addresses the most urgent question of the day: how to understand, and what to do about, the threat to humanity itself posed by the Trump/Pence regime. This talk—from the most radical revolutionary on the planet—makes the case for massive, sustained nonviolent outpourings of protest to begin on November 4. It traces the roots of the regime—the deeper and more immediate causes of its rise to power. This hour-long speech is full of substance, and heart.

The daily, almost hourly, headlines cry out with urgency. To see and share this talk: go to revcom.us  and/or download at vimeo.com (click on the film’s name and a download possibility will appear).

Excerpt from the talk by Bob Avakian:

We are confronted by, we are now being ruled by a fascist regime. In confronting and moving to prevent this, one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way and weighing people down is American chauvinism. The disgusting notion that America and Americans are better and more important than everybody else. This is a poison infecting people broadly in this country, even among the bitterly oppressed. And there is a great need for people to break with this American chauvinism.

Free yourself from the GTF, the Great Tautological Fallacy. A fallacy, an idea or way of thinking that is false, wrong. A tautology, a round in a circle way of reasoning, that asserts something and then claims to prove it by merely asserting the same thing again. So the great tautological fallacy to which I am referring is the notion that America is a force for good in the world. And therefore whatever it does is good or at least done with good intentions. Even if the same thing when done by other forces, especially by forces opposed to us, is bad, is evil because, because America is a force for good in the world.

Thus in the grip of the Great Tautological Fallacy when one is told by the authorities and the government and media, etc., that North Korea developing a small number of nuclear weapons and a few long range ballistic missiles, poses a grave threat. One does not ask questions, one does not ask why that is a great threat while the only country that has used them in the world, the United States, having thousands of nuclear weapons and the capability of using them anywhere in the world, is somehow not a great threat.

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4 November participants speak

On 4 November thousands marched in two dozen cities to demand, “This Nightmare Must End, the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.” The full article from Revolution 517 highlights the broad cross section of people who attended and the challenges the movement still faces  (http://revcom.us/a/516/november-4—a-day-of-courage-and-conviction-a-real-beginning-en.html).  Following are excerpted qnd edited interviews in cities where these protests took place. They give a glimpse of the many people of different ethnicities and ages, including many secondary school students, who stepped out, and why and how they look at the battle ahead to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.

York City

“I think the reality is on the side of the people working against Trump. It starts small and it needs to grow. If reality is on our side, and the truth resonates with people, then it will be successful. I have very politically active friends, no specific organizations. On social media, I have people who I’ve been Instagramming about the whole thing. I mean every single individual just has to organically start to be an impetus to move forward the cause.”

“I’m from France and I’m here with my daughter. We were walking in Harlem, we got the flyer, and then we went to a bookstore in Harlem, a revolutionary bookstore. We just passed by it and I went in and we talked to a woman there and she told us about it. We came because we are against Trump, like most people in France, but I was also curious. We wanted to know what is going on in the States, really, rather than just being a regular tourist, in Times Square, and demonstrating, and walking around. So that was interesting talking to people, you know. It was nice to see also, we were in the subway all together, and multi-racial, we had like Black people, white people, Latino people, it was 10 people, and so that was nice.”

Chicago

“Well, I think that we’re going to have to do the same thing we did in the ’60s. No one event changed. It was many events that brought about the change. So we have to continue to have events, and even though, small or large, we have to continue to do this. I think that the masses are the makers of history, so with that I know that wherever we come together against injustice we will win.”

“The thing that tore me apart is Trump took away my DACA status [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a programme to protect immigrant youth from being deported], the DACA of all the students that were here. And I am basically afraid to walk to school or even being taken away from … my parents who worked so hard for it. Why would you do that? To people who basically worked so hard for this country and you’re just doing that and it’s pissing me off, I need my voice to be spoken. Don’t just be quiet for this…What I personally want to say to people is: people, please stop being blind, stop having your eyes closed for so long, say something, open up, walk yourself and make this happen. Get him out of here!”

“And we’re all human beings. Asian people, African people. There’s no time for racism. There’s no way in the world that a president of the United States should be in that office if he’s a known racist. It’s unacceptable. That’s why I’m out here – speaking truth to power.”

“I’m here because I’m an ally. I don’t experience… as a cisgender straight woman, I don’t experience everything that minorities go through but I want people to know that I’m an ally and that I’m here to support you and that there are plenty of allies out there who may not understand completely what you’re going through but who still back you up and still want equality.”

“I think [Trump’s] sexism and racism that’s happening right now have become very strong recently, and the homophobia. I’m a transgender woman and I’m like really scared to leave my house because I’ve had bad death threats. I’m also an immigrant, so it’s like a lot of things. It’s just like one after the other. It’s just like the fear of losing my rights in this country.”

“I’m LGBT, so that obviously made me aware of the problem for those people, but essentially I’m not here for myself. I am a white secondary school student. I’m someone with tremendous privilege and I came out because I see the policies that are happening, especially I started coming out here after seeing the Nazis organizing in Charlottesville and seeing them murder Heather Heyer. And it’s just… the evil… we have to all do something to stop it. Nobody can be a bystander, nobody can just sit back and let evil take over the country.

“I would say to look at what Trump and Pence’s policies are doing, really look at them. Even if you aren’t personally affected by any of them you have to know somebody who is, you have to have a friend or family member who is gay or Black or Latino, an immigrant, disabled. No one except a very, very, very few are unaffected, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere. And there’s no freedom if there’s someone who’s enslaved. There’s no freedom for anyone if there are people who are enslaved in this world. So we all… to ensure freedom for every human being we all have to… god-damn, tell these fascists that we’re not going to stand for this. We’re not going to stand for these policies that rob people of their humanity.

“We started at Standing Rock [a protest initiated by Native Americans against the construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota] and it changed our lives. And we know that we have to clean up our act. That’s why we came. We heard about you guys on Facebook, I think.  It woke us up on what’s going on and what the military force there was doing and what kind of power they’re trying to push on us. Things they’ll do to unarmed people that were peaceful in their own lands, and grabbing…. We pay attention to a lot of things that are happening now.”

“The part of the nightmare that called me here and into action is that me myself feeling powerless and the people I care about, people that I don’t know, and people that are just people feeling powerless because of what systems put against us. And I honestly believe that the entire system needs to be fucking overthrown and that this is one of the steps to doing so and protesting is one of the steps to doing that. ”

“I’m here on behalf of Fempowerment, which is an intersectional feminist youth-led organization that’s been around for about a year. And we come to protests as a group, and so part of what the organizers do is we look up and check our resources online, newspapers, upcoming protests, and then we go on all the networks and get people together. And so, yeah.”

“I love how we call it a regime, just because that’s what it is. Like with Columbus Day, let’s not call it Columbus Day, let’s call it the Killing of Indigenous People Day. Just like once you identify what it is people automatically become more aware and more keen to want to fix the thing. Like I think that’s why people still have barbecues on Columbus Day, because it’s like: oh, this dude who colonized America – you probably wouldn’t have a happy meal with your family if you knew what it is actually about. We need to do more of that.”

Austin, Texas

“Knowing what I know of the history of Nazi Germany, and what Donald Trump has done and said they want to do since they took office, pretty much they’re going the same route as the Nazis did in Germany, with the only difference they have their finger on nuclear weapons. But I’ve seen also in the past rallies in Houston and Austin, these groups coming out, Texas Freedom Force, whatever, there are several groups. And they want to come to the streets and scare people off so they get their foothold on the ground, and establish pretty much what Trump is trying to do, and establish a fascist society, a fascist environment so people won’t be able to speak up and they’ll be scared to speak up. So if we don’t stand against this right now, and back off and go to our homes and get scared, for sure what we’ll have to face is what Jews and others, communists and others faced in Nazi Germany.

“And they’re threatening to attack North Korea, and that’s 25 million people. I mean, these are human beings on the other side of the world. I don’t know any single one of them, but they’re people like us. So, if they’re threatening to drop bombs and kill 25 million people, what’s to stop them from doing it in other places, from doing it here?”

“What troubles me the most, the fact that I see people supposed to be the opposition, not standing up and saying something is wrong, they’re being silenced in many ways. And I feel like there’s gonna come a time when we’re not gonna be able to speak, strictly because of what type of regime this is, and how they feel about the opposition. For instance, the Black Identity Extremism, the protesters who were arrested at the inauguration, and are facing charges with many years. That’s what I fear the most about this regime.”

Los Angeles:

“Having a perspective on what’s happened in the past and being able to see trends and the road we’re on and how we’re very close to a very dangerous situation of a fascist state. We’ve been on this road for a while, but the election of Trump and the movement that got him into power has activated a sleeping monster. If you see this alt-right, it has all the characteristics of fascism – rabid nationalism that makes anything that is not their conception is un-American, less valuable. It’s dehumanizing to the rest of the world. There’s a racist character to it. There’s just so many aspects of it that are really terrifying and I just feel that it is so important that we drive them out as a part of anything that we can do to make the world better has to involve this.

“How do you think Nazis came to power in Germany – they take over the government, you have good people unwilling to stand up and confront their leaders and you put your judges in place and your judges start rubber-stamping your regulations. It starts with ICE [immigration police] raids in the night that are not covered by the media and where does it end? You know, people who say that it can’t happen here are people who are not paying attention and haven’t studied history.”

San Francisco

“I heard about it through my daughter, who is here beside me. She heard about it through Facebook. And then passed the word on to me. I think the thing that I worry the most about is the environment because he is basically sabotaging the whole Environmental Protection Agency, and putting really a watch-dog on there who really is hand-in-glove with the oil companies, and hand-in-glove with all of the major industries that are polluting our earth. And I feel that it’s really really worrying to think what’s gonna happen, you know, the environment and the fact that he really doesn’t care about it,”

“This is one of the few organizations that is trying to do what I think is needed, which is sustained protests. The Women’s March, the March for Science… all those things were wonderful, but then they were over and there wasn’t any official follow-up. There were little groups that atomized and split and there’s lots of groups that formed up until the election, and then went their separate ways. What we need is a broad-based coalition that is united around what we are united around, which is that this regime has to go. And I don’t think that we can afford to be… we can’t afford to be distracted by our partisan disagreements. We can have those disagreements but we need to not be distracted, and we need to be persistent because they’re counting on us to get fatigued or give up. So those are the two things we have to defeat. We have to defeat destroying each other, and we have to defeat fatigue.”

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National Week of Resistance in Mexico: “Stop the War Against the People!”

5 December 2017. A World to Win News Service. The following is from Aurora Roja, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR), Mexico (aurora-roja.blogspot.com). It has been slightly edited for length.

They are killing, disappearing, torturing, and repressing us in unprecedented numbers, we women, activists, journalists, youth, immigrants, poor people, LGBT people, and the people in general. We must resist, we must unite, we must say no more, we must stop this war against the people. We cannot let them get away with it, we cannot let them reduce us to people who are frightened, paralyzed and demoralized, trampled under the boot of those at the top. No! We need to double down in the struggle, and we need to forge an independent movement opposed to the state, the ruling classes and the criminal system, which without hesitation calls out their criminal nature, and strives to develop the consciousness, militancy and organization of the people in order to stop this reactionary war and contribute to finally put an end to the current inhuman system we live under.

In response to the Urgent Call to Action for the Fifth National Week of Resistance 6-12 November 2017, there were several actions in the Oaxaca Mixteca [an area in south-central Mexico that is part of the homeland of the Mixteca indigenous people] and Mexico City, as well as agitation and leafleting in the state of Puebla and the city of Oaxaca, with the central slogans of “Stop the War Against the People!” and “The State Isn’t Negligent, It’s Criminal!”

An important advance this year was the participation of a wider range of forces in the Week, including the National Network of Resistance “Stop the War Against the People!” (RNRAGCP), Teachers’  Commission on Human Rights, National Union of Educational Workers Chapter 22 (COMADH), Revolutionary People’s Movement (MPR), Revolutionary Communist Organization Mexico (OCR, M), Francisco Villa Independent People’s Front  (FPFVI), Norma Esther Andrade, 28 October People’s Union of Street Sellers and Peddlers (UPVA-28), Carmen Zamora Foundation, General Assembly of Workers (AGT), Representative and Sectorial Coordinating Committee  of the National Union of Education Workers Chapter 22 Sector 01 Tlaxiaco and students at the Teposcolula Experimental Teachers Training College.

In addition to distributing thousands of copies of the Call for the Week, thousands of copies of a text by the OCR, M were also distributed, analyzing the war against the people that has meant more than 200,000 murders, 30,000 disappeared, and 7 femicides [killings of women] a day, “a kind of preventive counterinsurgency, in which hundreds of thousands of people are being killed, before a mass insurgency has emerged.”

In Oaxaca, the Week began with a speakout forum in the Teposcolula Experimental Teachers Training College, with the participation of the students, who were welcomed by the MC, a woman student. She read parts of the Call at the beginning and during the course of the forum, which included presentations by a representative of teacher and student organizations, and an activist of the Revolutionary People’s Movement. Approximately 30 people attended, most of them women students, some with their babies.

In a public space in the small city of Tlaxiaco there was a screening of a documentary about the massacre by federal and state police in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, on 19 June 2016, with film of scenes, eyewitness accounts by people who were wounded, children who suffered from the tear gas, and one who lost his father to police bullets. Before dark, teachers and MPR people placed a clothesline  to hang posters and reports of various crimes that military forces, federal and state police have committed and other state institutions are covering up. There were about a hundred people at different points watching the screening of the documentary, including students, teachers and others. The next evening, an enthusiastic political-cultural event was held with the participation of urban youth culture performers. Another  clothesline of posters and banners featured the two main slogans of the Week and another from the MPR: “Humanity Needs Revolution and the New Synthesis of Communism!”

The week closed on Saturday, 11 November with a rally and march from the Tlaxiaco plaza to the public prosecutor’s office, with the participation of some 200 angry demonstrators, mainly teachers.  They chanted slogans such as: “Stop the War Against the People! The State Isn’t Negligent, It’s Criminal! What do the people who died in Nochixtlán want? Justice! What do the missing students of Ayotzinapa want? Justice! What do women want who are raped and murdered? Justice! The problem is the system, the solution is the revolution! Nationwide resistance against the criminal state!” People came out of businesses to watch the march and take the flyers.

In Mexico City, the Week began with a forum at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, San Lorenzo Tezonco campus, with a student as moderator. In the forum, Carmen Zamora called out the crimes against women in Ecatepec, in the state of Mexico, pointing out that it is a criminal state because they cover up for the aggressors. When women call out the officials of these institutions, the police harass and threaten the women themselves. She also said that through the mobilization of the people, they managed to rescue a teenage girl who had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Although she was kidnapped by traffickers, the institutions of (in)justice drag their feet, covering up the criminals. A woman activist also spoke in representation of the fathers and mothers of the 43 disappeared education students from Ayotzinapa. She pointed out that the central state is criminal because in the case of the education students who have been murdered and disappeared, “It has been demonstrated and it is known that the army and the police were involved in all this.” She made a call to support the struggle, saying, “We are determined to get to where we have to go, we call on you to continue accompanying us to demand justice, punish the guilty and find out what happened with our young people, to get to the truth.”

An activist from the Revolutionary People’s Movement spoke to the dimensions of this war against the people, giving examples of people disappeared by the state security forces or whose disappearance the state has covered up. He said the state serves the predominantly capitalist system where a handful of Mexican and foreign capitalists and landowners exploit and oppress the majority of the people. In this situation it is both necessary and possible to generate a resistance that opposes this system and its state. What is needed to put an end to these crimes against the people and many others is a communist revolution. A communist revolution that can create a new socialist society. For this revolutionary struggle we have the guidance of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism, and we also have the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico.

From the auditorium one person said: “You talked about the source of what is causing all these crimes. What do you hope to get from their cases, do you think that they will be solved, and those of so many more people? Or should we get to the root of things in order to get rid of them?” In response to this question, the MPR person stated that it is important to stand up and fight together with the thousands who are already doing so, and to be able to generate a movement of growing resistance that calls out without hesitation the state as criminal and which opposes this state. You need militancy and struggle. And this contributes to the communist revolution that is the only thing that can definitively end these crimes and many more that are being committed against the people. Two things are needed: resistance opposing these state crimes, and to urgently prepare for the revolution that can free humanity from this capitalist-imperialist system.

A rally for justice for Carlos Sinuhé Cuevas Mejía (a political murder the Mexico City government is still trying to cover up) and Victoria Pamela Salas (a young woman brutally murdered last September) was held on 10 November at the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office. Some 60 people participated, including people from the General Assembly of Workers, the MPR and relatives of Diana, a young woman murdered in Chimalhuacán, a State of Mexico municipality on the outskirts of Mexico City, Lourdes Mejía (the mother of Carlos) and family members of Luís Roberto Malagón, a student found unconscious on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His father opposed the authorities’ attempt to close the case on his death by claiming it was a suicide.

The Week of Resistance culminated in Mexico City with a march and rally from the Palace of Fine Arts to the federal Attorney General’s Office, in which some 65 people participated, including, importantly, slum dwellers from the Francisco Villa Independent People’s Front  as well as some people from the General Assembly of Workers and the MPR. Lourdes Mejía and the relatives of Luís Roberto Malagón also participated.

In the course of promoting the National Week of Resistance, other crimes were learned of. For example, in Veracruz, eight young athletes were arrested by the police in 2009 and are still missing. The police have denied detaining and slandered the victims, declaring that maybe they were “involved in something” (criminal activity). The relatives themselves are the ones who are investigating and finding evidence that prove the police are guilty and who oppose the criminalization of so many murdered and disappeared youths.

In another case in Veracruz, a woman reported that a young man appeared before the civil authorities to complain that he faced threats from organized crime for his refusal to get involved with them. Soon after, members of the military tracked him down to tell him, “You don’t know anything!” When he insisted that he did have information and that he was threatened, the soldiers raised their tone, threatening him: “You don’t know anything!” These soldiers, as well as the police and civil authorities, are criminals in collusion with other criminals. And this happens not only in Veracruz but in different ways throughout the country.

(Just before the Week of Resistance, on 4 November, people chanting “Away With Trump, Away With [Mexican President] Peña Nieto, Down With the Whole System!” demonstrated in the streets of Puebla,  Tlaxiaco and Mexico City, in unity with the militant demonstrations in 24 cities in the United States demanding, “This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!”)

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