Monday, May 12, 7 PM "Where We Are in the Revolution" A Talk from the RCP Monday, May 12, 7 PM Grace Place - 637 S. Dearborn St. (in the south Loop, just south of Harrison,  1 block west of Harrison & State Red Line stop) IMPORTANT TALK from the Revolutionary Communist Party: "Where We Are in the Revolution"          The world needs a revolution. We need a radically new way of living, of relating to each other and the environment. People are needlessly suffering and dying every single day on account of this system. This must STOP-and it can stop. But it can stop only if this capitalist-imperialist system is radically overturned and something new is brought into being. That requires a revolution. We need a whole new state power-one which will mobilize and back up masses of people in transforming society out of the madness of today and toward actual human emancipation. We need a new state power which could organize an economy to meet the people's material needs at the same time as it overcomes exploitation and inequality, and does so without plundering and warring on other nations or destroying the planet. We need a new state power which not only leads people to overcome and abolish the class divisions and inequalities that exist between groups of people, but to get rid of the oppressive institutions like white supremacy and male domination, and get beyond the ways of thinking that back up the rotten, backward order of today. The ultimate goal of this revolution and this new state power is communism: a 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 the 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 a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world. This May an important talk will be given in several major cities addressing how this could be done. This talk will dig into the strategy for making that revolution-seizing power-right here in the U.S. as our share in and as the first step towards struggling for such a world. While it is not yet time to actually go for the all-out seizure of power-the conditions to do so, which require a deep crisis in society and people in their millions having been won to the goal of revolution, do not yet exist-the talk will lay out how things could be brought to that point, through a combination of developments in the world and the active work of the movement for revolution, with the Party as its leading core. The talk will specifically discuss the movement today in relation to getting to that goal-including what must be done right now to propel things further toward the day when such a struggle could be launched, and how to make everything we're doing now contribute to that. It will get into the need to strengthen the leading core for this revolution, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, led by Bob Avakian.  If you have ever hungered for a way out of this suffering and madness... if you care about justice... if you today or at any time have thought we need a better world but despaired that such a world could be achieved... come to this talk. As Bob Avakian has said: Revolution is not an impossible dream. It is not "unrealistic." Changing all of society, changing the whole world, is not a crazy or dangerous idea. What is crazy, and dangerous, is going along with the way things are, and where things are heading, under this system. Revolution-a radical change in how society works, how we relate as human beings, what our values are, how we understand the world and act to affect it-this is what we, what people all over the world, desperately need. And it is a lot more realistic than trying to "fix" this system. Come to this talk. Find out about this revolution, and where we are in the process of making this revolution. Learn how to become part of emancipating humanity. We ARE Building a Movement for Revolution and Building the Party as Its Leading Core. The article above is online here. "Where We Are in the Revolution" talks are scheduled for several cities in May; find out more at here. Doors open at 6:30 m. Program begins promptly at 7 pm.   Call 773-489-0930 or email revbookschi@pobox.com for more information and to reserve a place. As we mobilize people to come hear this talk, a critical and important tool to winning those who want to know what this talk will be about-and why they must be there-is playing BA's New Year Message linked below:    "This is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with a New Year's message-A Call To REVOLUTION..." ▶ Listen  ▶ Read  ▶ Download audio  ▶ Download PDF

Monday, May 12, 7 PM, Grace Place - 637 S. Dearborn St. (in the south Loop, just south of Harrison, 1 block west of Harrison & State Red Line stop)  IMPORTANT TALK from the Revolutionary Communist Party:  "Where We Are in the Revolution"  If you have ever hungered for a way out of this suffering and madness...  If you care about justice...  If you today or at any time have thought we need a better world but despaired that such a world could be achieved...  Come to this talk.  Find out about this revolution, and where we are in the process of making this revolution. Learn how to become part of emancipating humanity.    We ARE Building a Movement for Revolution and Building the Party as Its Leading Core.   Call 773-489-0930 or email revbookschi@pobox.com for more information and to reserve a place. More on revcom.us.        Announcing an Important Talk: "Where We Are in the Revolution" This talk will be given in several major cities in May.  Read more

May 1 - Join the Internationalist Contingent at the May 1st March May 3 - Come to Internationalist Celebration and Dinner

May Day 2014!  Be Part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Contingent WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT SLAVERY IN ANY FORM HERE AND AROUND THE WORLD! FIGHT THE POWER, AND TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE, FOR REVOLUTION! May 1st, 2014:  A time to raise your voice and fight to end this modern day horror of a system - capitalism/imperialism -- that billions around the world suffer in every day. This contingent will  unite with the fighting spirit of those standing up against  these outrages and bring out the truth that the world doesn't have to be this way. Let's raise the red flag of revolution and real liberation and draw people who gravitate to this into this contingent. Join the Internationalist Contingent at May 1st March, 2:30 pm. Gather at Haymarket Memorial, 175 N. Desplaines St. Look for the Big Red Flag. Join, Invite People, and Contribute Your Ideas to This Contingent. Internationalist Celebration, Saturday May 3, 6:30 PM at Revolution Books As part of the events this May Day join us in a truly internationalist celebration. With music, food, spoken word, and more - with a spirit of people living in this country coming together in unity with people all over the world who are fighting the power. Volunteers are needed to be part of the entertainment, to donate food, drink and bring the spirit of the kind of world that is possible. .  Call 773.489.0930 or email revbookschi@pobox.com to hook up, volunteer and/or support a revolutionary MAY DAY 2014.

A Special Benefit Performance  for the BA Everywhere Campaign

"LEGACY: Our Wealth of Music"  Performed by Maggie Brown     Sunday, June 1, 3:30 pm   Chicago Theological Seminary    1407 E 60th St., Hyde Park   Benefit for BA Everywhere   $20 Adults   $5 Youth  The Chicago BA Everywhere Committee is excited to announce that Maggie Brown, distinguished singer, songwriter, actor and educator, has generously offered to perform her one-woman show LEGACY: Our Wealth of Music as a fundraiser for the BA Everywhere Campaign. Howard Reich, the Chicago Tribune jazz critic, wrote about Maggie Brown's LEGACY show in 2012: "Tracing the history of African-American creativity, the performance piece examines the roots of Black musical culture and its greatest flowerings. From African chant, to early ragtime, from classic jazz to modern blues, LEGACY  represents Brown's view of the noblest innovations in American music.  Part concert, part monologue, part lecture, LEGACY has taken Brown to concert stages around the country, and perhaps more important, to schools across the city."  This benefit is part of a major fundraising campaign, "BA Everywhere - Imagine the Difference It Could Make" to make revolutionary communist leader Bob Avakian's (BA) leadership and new synthesis of communism known in every corner of society. He has developed a vision and viable framework for a new society that is working to dig up the roots and overcome all the forms of exploitation and savage inequality that people suffer from today. The problem is too few know about it. Funds raised at this benefit will contribute to popularizing Avakian and his work so people can engage, discuss and debate what is the way forward to emancipate humankind. Maggie Brown is involved because she lent her voice to the April 11, 2011 cultural celebration in Harlem, On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics: A Celebration of Revolution and the Vision of a New World, and appears in the film, Stepping Into the Future, about this event.  Many volunteers are needed: ticket sales; publicity - social media, emails, distribution of posters & palm cards; media work; decorate and set up event;  greeters.   If you are someone who has ever dreamed of a better world, we urge you to get involved in this special event. People of all ages, from many walks of life and many perspectives are needed to realize the tremendous potential for this event to raise significant funds.  Host Committee

Timuel Black - Eminent Historian of African American History
Pa Joof - Alternative High School principal
Fred Lonberg-Holm - Cellist, improvisational jazz musician
Sekou Tafari - Frontline Books

Tickets Available:  Revolution Books  1103 N Ashland Ave. Chicago   

  773  489-0930    baeverywhereinchicago@gmail.com

"...when I saw it, it changed the way I looked at everything... it made me want to challenge  all that and not go along with any of it."

Sunday, April 27, 4-7 pm at Revolution Books BA Speaks: REVOLUTION-NOTHINGG LESS! Disc 3 Film Showing and Discussion  $15 - available at Revolution Books  Here are the topics that Bob Avakian (BA) addresses on cisc 3:  A REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION...THE ROLE OF YOUTH...& HOW TO WORK TODAY SO THAT THERE IS A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE WHEN THAT TIME COMES COULD WE REALLY WIN...REALLY? RESISTING THE BRAINWASH - A RADICAL REVOLT AGAINST A REVOLTING CULTURE PEOPLE ARE SYSTEMATICALLY MISEDUCATED UNDER THIS SYSTEM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP - THE ROSETTA STONE WE NEED TO WIN  Straight Talk on BA THE CHALLENGE: REVOLUTION-NOTHING LESS!  "...when I saw it, it changed the way I looked at everything... it made me want to challenge all that and not go along with any of it."   -A young Latina from LA    "Fearless"  -A Black college student describing what he thought of BA Speaks: Revolution-Nothing Less!

    

April 26 2pm, Revolution Books

The Negro in Illinois
The WPA Papers

with Brian Dolinar, editor

  A unique chronicling of African American history,The Negro in Illinois, was originally produced during the 1930's Depression era by the Illinois Writers' Project, a program of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under President Roosevelt. Headed by Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps and white proletarian writer Jack Conroy, The Negro in Illinois employed major Black writers in Chicago during the 1930s, including Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, and Katherine Dunham. Doing interviews and scouring old newspapers and courthouse records, the writers told the story of the African American experience in Illinois. They wrote about music, the movement to abolish slavery, sports and housing, from the beginnings of slavery to the Great Migration. After Roosevelt pulled the plug on the project in 1942, most of the writings went unpublished for more than half a century...until now. 

"Some of the original writers, such as Richard Wright, would go on to great acclaim. And because many of them were novelists and poets, their writing style wasn't at all dry but literary as they wrote about a variety of issues and people, including entertainers like Louis Armstrong; a young Nation of Islam..."   Read full review of The Negro in Illinois from Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice at A book that binds black history in Illinois.

Editor Brian Dolinar unraveled a mystery, searching for the missing pieces over several years and over several states to resurrect all 29 chapters of this historic Illinois Writers Project. Dolinar is a scholar of African American literature and culture from the Depression era. He is the author of The Black Cultural Front: Black Writers and Artists of the Depression Generation. Brian has taught history and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Go to University of Illinois Press to read comments on The Negro in Illinois by Richard Courage (co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950),Christopher Robert Reed (author of The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920-1929), Bill V. Mullen(coeditor of Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans), and Adam Green (University of Chicago).

  

 Revolution Books 

1103 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago IL

1 block south of Blue Line Division St. "L" stop

Sunday 4/27 BA Speaks: REVOLUTION-NOTHINGG LESS! Disc 3

"...when I saw it, it changed the way I looked at everything... it made me want to challenge  all that and not go along with any of it." Sunday, April 27, 4-7 pm at Revolution Books BA Speaks: REVOLUTION-NOTHINGG LESS! Disc 3 Film Showing and Discussion  $15 - available at Revolution Books  Here are the topics that Bob Avakian (BA) addresses on cisc 3:  A REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION...THE ROLE OF YOUTH...& HOW TO WORK TODAY SO THAT THERE IS A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE WHEN THAT TIME COMES COULD WE REALLY WIN...REALLY? RESISTING THE BRAINWASH - A RADICAL REVOLT AGAINST A REVOLTING CULTURE PEOPLE ARE SYSTEMATICALLY MISEDUCATED UNDER THIS SYSTEM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP - THE ROSETTA STONE WE NEED TO WIN  Straight Talk on BA THE CHALLENGE: REVOLUTION-NOTHING LESS!  "...when I saw it, it changed the way I looked at everything... it made me want to challenge all that and not go along with any of it."   -A young Latina from LA    "Fearless"  -A Black college student describing what he thought of BA Speaks: Revolution-Nothing Less!

Thursday April 24, 7pm - An Evening with Greg Kot

Author Greg Kot presents his new book in a special fund raising event,   April 24, 7pm at Revolution Books: I'll Take You There:  Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway  I'll Take You There tells the story of Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers, major figures in the music that shaped the civil rights era. The Staples straddled a range of 20th-century popular music, fusing gospel, soul, folk and rock. Their story goes from the Southern gospel circuit to Martin Luther King, Jr. marches, to the legendary Wattstax festival, to accompanying The Band on the song "The Weight" captured in the film, The Last Waltz. We learn about Mavis' life, from her love affair with Bob Dylan to creative collaborations with Prince and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Kot takes us back to the beginning, to Mississippi where Roebuck "Pops" Staples grew up on the same land where his grandfather had been a slave and his his father a sharecropper. Although forbidden by his parents from playing "sinners music" (the blues), "Pops" picked up the guitar and slipped out to local juke joints to hear neighbors Charley Patton and Howlin' Wolf. Leaving Mississippi, "Pops" came to Chicago, worked in in the slaughterhouses, and found new musical influences like Sam Cooke and Mahalia Jackson in his South Chicago neighborhood.   Greg Kot is the Chicago Tribune music critic and co-host of Sound Opinions, "the world's only rock 'n' roll talk show," on national public radio, nationally syndicated out of Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ-FM 91.5. Kot's previous books include Wilco: Learning How to Die and Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.    Revolution Books 1103 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago IL 1 block south of Blue Line Division St. "L" stop

Thursday April 24, 7pm at Revolution Books!   Purchase advance Greg Kot tickets now: $5   $10   $20:                      Or order by phone at 773.489.0930. Your ticket price will be deducted from book purchase.

April 26 2pm, Revolution Books

    

April 26 2pm, Revolution Books

The Negro in Illinois
The WPA Papers

with Brian Dolinar, editor

Environmental Emergency! The Criminal System  and the Revolution Humanity Needs

   

Earth Day Film Clips & Discussion

Sunday, April 20, 4 PM  

Earth Day (April 22) arrives this year on the heels of the latest, even more grim, international report on the climate crisis facing life on this planet.  Join us on Sunday, April 20 (4 pm) to dig into the forces driving this environmental emergency, how the criminal system dominating the planet not only won't but can't stop this trajectory, and how socialist revolution can open the way to confront this crisis. 

Watch video of Carl Wassilie, Yup'iaq Alaskan, biologist and co-founder of  Alaska's Big Village Network describing the devastation of Alaska indigenous people's environment, creating the first climate refugees in this country; Orpheus Reed, one of the writers of the  Environmental Emergency special issue of Revolution, breaking down the rules of the capitalist system driving the climate crisis and how socialism based on the new synthesis of Bob Avakian can build a sustainable society (both videos from the 2013 Climate Crisis Conference in Chicago); and a clip from Bob Avakian's Revolution Talk, followed by discussion:

• Don't the latest reports confirm that it's just too late to put a halt to this climate devastation?
• Won't the system collapse of its own weight, along with multiple eco-systems on which it depends?
• Building a movement for revolution takes way more time than we have, given this crisis.
• A change of system is not going to change the greed and individualism of the majority.
• If revolution is the only way to stop climate change, does that mean we just wait until that becomes possible, one fine day?

Join us to dig into these and other questions - the future of humanity depends on how we understand them and what we do!

Your Used Books Can Help Save Revolution Books! We are assembling a collection of good used books, including a treasure house of rare books - the hidden histories of the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, memoirs from the 60s Black liberation and women's movements, out-of-print chronicles of struggles in Africa, Latin America, Asia... art books, novels, poetry...   Donate your books to Revolution Books and we will get them back in circulation to the people who yearn for a different future.   Do you have good used books? Donate them to Revolution Books now and you will help Revolution Books stay open and grow. Our Spring used book sale is May 3-4. Contact us to donate used books or just drop them off during regular business hours.(See box below.)Volunteers are needed to organize and promote this fund raiser used book sale.

Sunday, April 13, 4-7 pm at Revolution Books 

$15 - available at Revolution Books

Here are the topics that Bob Avakian (BA) speaks about in these film excerpts (Disc 2) that we'll be discussing afterwards: 

• A Radically Different and Far Better World is Possible  
•  We Need a Revolution to Overcome All Oppressive Divisions  
•  Remind Me: "Which System, Capitalism or Communism, Is the Nightmare for Humanity?"  
• The Election Hustle: "If They Draw You In, They Win"
• Internationalism-The Whole World Comes First   
• Emancipating Humanity... Transforming Conditions & Transforming Human Nature   

"Fearless" 
A Black college student describing what he thought of Bob Avakian's talk Revolution-Nothing Less!

"...when I saw it, it changed the way I looked at everything... it made me want to challenge all that and not go along with any of it."
- A young Latina from LA 

Revolution-Nothing Less! film showing, Disc 3, is scheduled for Sunday April 27, 4 pm.  

Thursday April 24, 7pm at Revolution Books: Author Greg Kot presents his new book  A special Revolution Books fund raising event  I'll Take You There:  Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway  I'll Take You There tells the story of Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers, major figures in the music that shaped the civil rights era. The Staples straddled a range of 20th-century popular music, fusing gospel, soul, folk and rock. Their story goes from the Southern gospel circuit to Martin Luther King, Jr. marches, to the legendary Wattstax festival, to accompanying The Band on the song "The Weight" captured in the film, The Last Waltz. We learn about Mavis' life, from her love affair with Bob Dylan to creative collaborations with Prince and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Kot takes us back to the beginning, to Mississippi where Roebuck "Pops" Staples grew up on the same land where his grandfather had been a slave and his his father a sharecropper. Although forbidden by his parents from playing "sinners music" (the blues), "Pops" picked up the guitar and slipped out to local juke joints to hear neighbors Charley Patton and Howlin' Wolf. Leaving Mississippi, "Pops" came to Chicago, worked in in the slaughterhouses, and found new musical influences like Sam Cooke and Mahalia Jackson in his South Chicago neighborhood.   Greg Kot is the Chicago Tribune music critic and co-host of Sound Opinions, "the world's only rock 'n' roll talk show," on national public radio, nationally syndicated out of Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ-FM 91.5. Kot's previous books include Wilco: Learning How to Die and Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.    Revolution Books 1103 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago IL 1 block south of Blue Line Division St. "L" stop

Support Revolution Books!  Purchase advance Greg Kot tickets now:
$5   $10   $20:                   

Or order by phone at 773.489.0930.
Your ticket price will be deducted from book purchase.

Abortion Rights Emergency! April 11  6 pm CDT Webcast from New York City  April 12 Protest Click here for Statement from Sunsara Taylor Host a webcast viewing party wherever you are. Go to StopPatriarchy.org  for instructions. Click on "Current Mobilizations" and then click on "Host a Webcast Party"   Abortion rights are in a state of emergency, and headed for disaster. Already, women in this country who cannot access safe abortions are attempting to self-abort by inserting sharp objects in their vaginas, taking pills, asking their boyfriends to beat them up, and more. Others are being forced to bear children they do not want. This is the future for all women if this war on women is not massively resisted and defeated.  WE MUST ACT TO STOP THIS NOW!  Forcing women to have children against their will is a form of enslavement.  Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!                                Revolution Books will also be hosting webcast party April 11 at 6 pm Webcast Speakers include: Dr. Willie Parker, award-winning doctor at the last abortion clinic in Mississippi Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution Newspaper (revcom.us), leader of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride, and initiator of StopPatriarchy.org Merle Hoffman, CEO of Choices Women's Medical Center which has provided abortions and other health services to women since 1971 Donna Schaper, Reverend of Judson Memorial Church, on her abortion and women's moral agency Marge Piercy, poet, novelist, memoirist, via video message on her near-lethal illegal abortion  click for statement Bill Baird, reproductive rights pioneer who was jailed 8 times in the 60's for lecturing on abortion & birth control David Gunn, Jr., son of first abortion doctor to be assassinated via video message Testimony from: Susan Cahill, owner of the abortion clinic that was destroyed and closed on March 3rd, 2013 about how this is an attack on all women. Dr. Susan Robinson, one of the only 4 doctors in the U.S. who openly provide late-term abortions - featured in the acclaimed new documentary "After Tiller". True stories of illegal abortions before Roe v Wade. Saturday, April 12th: PROTEST!  Join in emergency protests in Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, other places or PLAN YOUR OWN NOW.   RAISE BLOODY COAT-HANGERS AND BREAK THE SHACKLES OF WOMEN'S ENSLAVEMENT. Hold silent protests at institutions behind this war on women: Crisis Pregnancy Centers (anti-abortion fake "clinics"), headquarters of GOP or Democrats who've opposed abortion, churches that mobilize anti-abortion protesters at clinics, etc. Raise bloody coat-hangers (representing the lives of women) and shackles (representing female enslavement).  After an hour of silent protest, recite a pledge to continue resisting until we have defeated and reversed these attacks and won Abortion On Demand and Without Apology! This war on women will not go away on its own and will not be stopped by politicians or the courts. We must take responsibility for resisting and defeating these attacks - the lives of women depend on what we do. The Blood of Women Is On Their Hands! Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!   *Wire coat hangers were used by many women as an instrument to self -abort when abortion was illegal. 5,000 + women in the US are estimated to have died every year from illegal, unsafe abortions before Roe v. Wade legalized abortions.

Available at Revolution Books                            $12.00 $15.00   $10.00 Important books on the battle around abortion  rights and the oppression of women

BA Everywhere planning meeting to bring Revolution to EARTH DAY April 22

The planet is burning... a global emergency is

accelerating...

 

 If you are one of those honestly confronting this global emergency and agonizing over what can be done to stop and repair the damage... (read more)

Join us at the 

BA Everywhere Campaign Meeting

Sunday April 6, 4pm 

Revolution Books 1103 N Ashland Ave

 

The world doesn't have to be this way. It needs to be radically changed  and the work Bob Avakian (BA) has done creates a new possibility at this excruciating time for humanity-- an opening for whole different future - But not enough people know about it. 

BA Everywhere will be going out to meet with as many people as possible about donating to the campaign - bringing out why nothing less than revolution has a chance of really stopping environmental devastation.

Bring your ideas on how to make this campaign ring out though out society - on campuses among students and professors, among environmentalists and all kinds of other  people who need to know there is a viable, radical future

On April 22, people everywhere on the globe will mark Earth Day, and the "BA Everywhere... Imagine the Difference It Could Make" campaign will be there

Material that can be used in the BA Everywhere efforts in April can be found at revcom.us. These include: the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America; the special issue of Revolution on the environment, State of EMERGENCY! The Plunder of Our Planet, The Environmental Catastrophe & The Real Revolutionary Solution; and the excerpt from BA's Revolution Talk titled "Not fit caretakers of the earth." And these are all framed around the palm card with this quote from BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian:

This system and those who rule over it are not capable of carrying out economic development to meet the needs of the people now, while balancing that with the needs of future generations and requirements of safeguarding the environment. They care nothing for the rich diversity of the earth and its species, for the treasures this contains, except when and where they can turn this into profit for themselves....These people are not fit to be the caretakers of the earth. (BAsics 1:29)

BA Everywhere Committee 312 860-8167

baeverywhereinchicago@gmail.com