Learning from "On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics"

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 (issue #230) 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 full article here in Revolution newspaper #236