The following statements were made in the face of slanderous lies and attacks launched by various opportunist forces and media outlets in summer 2022 against Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, on the role of the Revcoms and Sunsara Taylor in it—and especially targeted against Bob Avakian. The attack came at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court had overthrown Roe v. Wade and RiseUp4AbortionRights was playing a singular role in mobilizing people to fight back against, rather than meekly submit to, the ripping away of abortion rights. We received the following statements courtesy of revcom.us. For more see: “Behind the Week of Internet Attacks on Bob Avakian and the Revcoms: Imperialist Fear Mongers and Their Servants.”
Why I Love Bob Avakian
David Zeiger, Filmmaker, Director of Sir! No Sir!
“…When I read the new draft Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America [authored by Bob Avakian-ed.] for the first time years ago, I was floored and exhilarated. No death penalty. No “The ends justify the means.” A society of vigorous debate and contention of the road forward, a society any thinking, feeling person would long to be a part of…. And I love—yes, love—Bob Avakian and what he has created for humanity and the possibility of forging a whole new world. Read more
Coco Das, Texas
The attacks on Bob Avakian, Sunsara Taylor, the revcoms, and Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights are dangerous and extremely damaging to the fight against fascism and any movement for justice. They must be opposed, and good people who are falling into this kind of red-baiting cancel culture need to knock it off!
Since February, I took on a leadership role in Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, largely because of the analysis BA had done on the role of women in society and the importance of the fight for abortion in the overall emancipation of women. I did this while being a “friend” of the revcoms but not calling myself a revcom or a follower of BA, even though I have been very influenced by his work.
For my part, these attacks have clarified the qualitative difference between BA’s leadership and the leadership of these “grassroots” organizations who first launched these attacks. It has clarified for me the difference between reform and revolution, between wanting to find a place within this system and wanting to overthrow the system to put a far better system into place.
BA’s emphasis on a method and principles that are in line with the world you are trying to bring into being, with a thoroughly scientific epistemology that puts critical thinking and truth—which stands up to questioning and evidence and corresponds to reality—as central to making revolution, is completely counter to the lies and petty jockeying for “movement space” represented by these attacks.
Instead of inspiring people to bring the fight for abortion rights to a higher and more determined level, these attacks led people whose hearts were in the right place to give up on the struggle in the streets for legal abortion. It also led many to behave in atrocious ways, with no accountability to the truth or common decency. Maybe these people don’t know what they are doing by launching and joining these attacks. Maybe they don’t know how much they are aiding and abetting the fascists and the rulers of this horrible system. Maybe they don’t understand how damaging anti-communism is to progressive movements, or maybe they do know and don’t care and are only out for themselves. Either way, as stressful and sometimes heartbreaking as it has been to weather this storm, it has brought me to the realization that Bob Avakian is the leader that I want to follow, that the place he has been working tirelessly to get us to is the place I want to go and where humanity needs to go. As I said in my May 14th speech at a Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights rally in Austin, of the something terrible or something truly emancipating that could be the radical resolution of the deep, existential crisis humanity faces under this system, I want the truly emancipating.
John Hedlund, sociology instructor and graduate student
I want to specifically talk about BA’s overall method and approach. As a sociologist (which is a type of social scientist), I find BA’s call for and application of a thorough, rigorous, scientific approach to analyzing both the natural AND (very importantly) the social world to be incredibly inspiring. Simply put, there is no one else who is doing this with the same degree of conviction—of fearlessness, of following the truth wherever it leads you—as BA. Read more
Jim Fouratt, gay rights activist who participated in the Stonewall Rebellion, actor, and former nightclub impresario
[Original posted at RiseUp4AbortionRights.org]
...These attacks on Rise Up are so similar to the attacks that happened in the 60s and 70s under the Cointelpro program by the FBI. And they’re happening today, I believe, because of the success of Sunsara Taylor and the Rise Up movement with the revcoms.
As a senior, I’m a contemporary of Bob Avakian. I was in San Francisco at the time of the Black Panther Party. I remember the white people that stood up and supported the Black Panther Party and their programs. Bob Avakian was a young man and he was there. So I know of Bob Avakian for a very long time. I also was the first gay person to be allowed to speak at a left rally, it was at Yale in support of Bobby Seale. Although we were put on last, it was the first time that an openly gay or lesbian person had been visible and spoken from their sexual orientation point of view.
Cointelpro [the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program which spied on, disrupted, and set up revolutionaries and activists during the 1960s and 70s] wreaked havoc on my life. The FBI’s goal was to seek out who they saw as young people who were potential leaders. This was a story of Fred Hampton in Chicago. He was murdered by the police because he could have been the next major Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King. They went after me because I could speak. Most gay and lesbian people did not because they were invisible. They weren’t protected under the law and their jobs, etc. And they were subjected to police harassment of all different kinds.
I came to Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights because they were out there standing up against the Supreme Court overturning Roe from the beginning, with their green posters and their green bandanas. I still wear them. I saw that it was important to find unity on the issue of the right of women to choose and the right of women to control their body. That includes trans people or people who identify as trans people. I own my body. You own your body. No government and no religion should be putting their hands on it. That’s what brought me to Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights.
These attacks on Rise Up are so similar to the attacks that happened in the 60s and 70s under the Cointelpro program by the FBI. And they’re happening today,
I believe, because of the success of Sunsara Taylor and the Rise Up movement with the revcoms.
We don’t all have to agree about lots of issues, but we come together because we feel unity with abortion rights. And I said it when I spoke at a Rise Up protest in February at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, if you want to disagree with me about someone or some person or history or whatever, let’s go talk over there in the corner. But today we’re here to fight the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions that control our lives today. (I made a point of saying not all Roman Catholics are bad people.)
You know, I went back and read all the papers of Bob Avakian. I knew the name, I knew some things, but I didn’t know his politics of today. I tell you, if you haven’t done that, and you’re out there making these kinds of accusations, you’re being really stupid and dangerous. It’s a kind of anti-intellectual culture. Read the ideas. Discuss them. That’s dialectics. That’s how we learn to talk and listen to each other.
I want to say thank you, Sunsara Taylor, for all the work you did. Rise Up was there in the beginning, making the link with the activists of the past of the women who had spent 20 or 30 years making sure that Roe stayed in place. I remember what it was like when women could not legally get an abortion. I remember how it impacted on poor people of different races and different sexual orientations. The idea that they’re calling Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights “homophobic” is bizarre to me. I have a whole history of being in the frontlines of fighting for civil rights for lesbian and gay people and bisexuals and trans as we went forward. So I say thank you to everyone who was involved in Rise Up, including Sunsara and other revcoms. Let’s just move forward. Those green signs were everywhere in Washington, DC when Roe was overturned. I was sick at the time, but I watched and I thought, they can’t stop showing them because we, and all of the young people and all of us old people that came together to try to stop the Supreme Court have not given up!
Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist since 1960
Why are you attacking Bob Avakian? Someone who is all about justice and making things better for all the people. That’s his goal. That’s how I see Bob Avakian.
We can’t allow rumors to be spread. Anyone who spreads lies about people and groups, such as the lies spread about Bob Avakian and Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights—anyone who spreads disinformation and targets those who are demonstrating on behalf of others being persecuted and oppressed, including half of humanity, women—those people spreading these lies are people who really do not care about stopping this persecution and oppression. It could be said they have infiltrated movements for progress and emancipation.
Bob Avakian is a worldwide leader. Jesus made a revolution against the Roman Empire, telling the truth. Today Bob Avakian is revolutionizing against injustice, and is for abortion rights. I’m not comparing Bob Avakian to Jesus Christ, I’m saying you are spreading lies against a communist. I’m a religious person, and I see Jesus as being the first communist. That is why Jesus was crucified. And with Bob Avakian, you are attempting to carry out a modern-day cancellation of a man trying to do good. Bob Avakian talks about revolution. That is why you are spreading the lie about Bob Avakian being a “cult” leader. If anybody leads a “cult” its Donald Trump. It takes millions and millions of people for there to be a revolution—here is a man who is trying to bring forward a revolution and a new society and people are lying about him, defaming him.
The Supreme Court is part of the dictatorship that exists in the U.S.… ruling and dictating over women! I’m 84 years old, and isn’t this attack on abortion rights about ruling over women? For people against abortions, if you are doing it for religious reasons, just stop. If you believe in religion, then let the women decide what she will face when she dies. It’s her choice. A woman has a right to choose. I do believe that this country has dictators: including the Supreme Court. We can’t allow the dictators to mandate over a woman’s body.
A medical professional, after reading Sunsara Taylor’s rebuttal to the hit-piece by Robert Mackey at the Intercept
[Original posted at RiseUp4AbortionRights.org]
...Detailing the complete lack of journalistic integrity, both by Mackey and by [the Intercept’s] editorial staff, is important. Illustrating the trumpian methods of ‘argument’ he employed to extremely dangerous ends, here directed by ‘progressive’ journalists against some of the only organized forces that mobilized protest and resistance.
When I checked this morning, the Intercept still had the original story [attacking Rise Up and the Revcoms] featured prominently (middle of the page, one of the top stories in the “politics” section) without a printed rebuttal. The article by Sunsara was very well constructed. Detailing the complete lack of journalistic integrity, both by Mackey and by editorial staff, is important. Illustrating the trumpian methods of “argument” he employed to extremely dangerous ends, here directed by “progressive” journalists against some of the only organized forces that mobilized protest and resistance.
Continuing to press for the Intercept to publish the rebuttal should be seen by MANY as a just demand given the embarrassing lack of journalistic standards in Mackey’s article, and if they don’t do so soon, finding ways to make this a point of controversy among people who would generally read the Intercept could serve an important role, especially linking their article to the other unprincipled attacks published around the same time and with remarkably similar content, as the “Behind the week of internet attacks…” piece [by the revcoms published at Revcom.us] does. And doing this with the aim of exposing the putrid values and impoverished political vision and program that these attacks stem from and serve, and showing by way of contrast what a difference it makes to seek to understand the nature of this attack on abortion rights and the objectives of those pushing it, a scientific analysis that shows the way to fighting these outrages today and does not turn away from what is needed to take on the source of these regenerating horrors at their root!
I thought the section [in Sunsara’s rebuttal] “Canceling Bob Avakian to Erase Revolution” was especially powerful. It opens by tackling head on why these accusations of “cultishness” are not only shameful and have nothing to do with honest reporting or discourse, but have the effect of placing “out of bounds” any engagement with BA’s work on these crucial questions of the basic nature of this system, whether there is a path beyond all of this system’s horrors through revolution, what makes that possible and what characterizes the radically different society that would take its place—all questions of critical importance, that any reader of the Intercept who honestly confronts the magnitude of the crises and crimes of this system should want—or be challenged—to engage. I also think it’s helpful to enumerate the ways that the charge of “cult” plays with people, the labels that get affixed (“Everyone knows that cults are creepy and unthinking and dangerous. Everyone knows they are predatory.”). It places what people think out in the open, allows it to be taken on directly, and allows the hollow accusations and the whole innuendo-laden to be torn apart.
Prof. Rafael C. Angulo
I write not as a communist but as a left-leaning progressive who respects the remarkable sort of social analysis that Bob Avakian has engaged in for decades.
He provides multiple factors through social science, reason, history, culture and economics that allow me to actually “see, judge, and act” as a social worker and professor committed to the preferential option for the poor and marginalized in our community. After analyzing the psychological mob attacks by my own “left” on Bob Avakian and the RCP, I condemn the outright falsehoods and ad hominem vitriol that masquerade as truth without any evidence. The RCP is courageous—more courageous than I—in taking it to the streets. I just wonder if there is an unconscious wish by the left to see Bob Avakian go away to cover up their own paltry activism. As a Christian, I am reminded that in the New Testament, Jesus exhorts that a prophet is never accepted in his own land. These attacks only illustrate the point.
Rafael C. Angulo
Clinical Professor, Field Education
Children, Youth & Families
University of Southern California
USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Anahita Rahmani, ex-political prisoner in Iran and supporter of the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners NOW
…The contribution of RCP and Bob Avakian cannot be even touched upon in these few lines, but I, as one of the communists who is dedicating herself to a world without exploitation and oppression, a classless world of communism, will always appreciate the contribution by Bob Avakian in wrestling with the most difficult contradictions of the revolution. In these difficult times particularly in the current crazy situation where all kinds of revisionist, reformist, social democratic, parliamentarians, and other post-modernists and identity politics and views are suffocating the air, I cherish the principled revolutionary approach of RCP and particularly Bob Avakian. Read more
Rev. Frank Wulf
I have followed with dismay the attacks on Rise Up for Abortion Rights coming from a variety of progressive groups also engaged in the struggle to ensure that people in the United States have free and unrestricted access to reproductive and abortion care.
Like most who will be reading this statement, I am angered and deeply troubled by the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. As predicted, this decision, formally titled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, has resulted in a wave of anti-abortion laws being enacted in state after state, some of which amount to outright bans. The damage that is being done by these laws to women who are or might become pregnant is unconscionable. On the one hand, I have no doubt that we will soon see a tremendous negative impact on the health and well-being of those whose access to adequate and appropriate reproductive health care is now being severely curtailed. On the other hand, we have not yet even begun to understand the scale of the emotional and psychological toll that this decision will take from those who are losing the essential health care support that they need and deserve from the communities to which they belong. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a cruel and deadly decision that must be undone as quickly as possible.
This is the source of my dismay about the attacks being leveled by abortion rights groups against Rise Up for Abortion Rights. The effect of these attacks is to divide us at a time when we desperately need to be working in concert to achieve a common goal—access to full reproductive health care, including abortion, for all who need it.
We can be sure that those who are rallying to expand what has happened with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in order to create a nation and a world where abortion is even less accessible than it is in the current moment are not all of one mind. And yet, they are able to set aside their differences in order to pursue their common goal. If we are unable to do the same, then we can be sure that this is a battle we will lose. And our world will be the worse for it.
Ideological and political disagreements should be aired in a principled, substantive way—this is not a time for making false accusations or flinging ad-hominem attacks. Now is the time to work together on various fronts to ensure that those who need abortions or other forms of reproductive health care will be able to get them.
So, I appeal for an end to the vicious and untrue attacks on Rise Up for Abortion Rights and on the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) which is one of its initiators. It is not only unfair but profoundly untrue to portray Rise Up for Abortion Rights as a front organization for the RCP. The RCP is merely one of the groups that has helped Rise Up for Abortion Rights to formulate and proclaim its courageous and passionate message that the decision to strike down Roe v. Wade is both unjust and cruel and that it must be reversed immediately. While other abortion rights groups may choose to take a different path in their advocacy, there is no room for attacking the good and important work that Rise Up for Abortion Rights is doing by getting people into the streets to demand the immediate reversal of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Along these lines, I appeal to all of us in the movement to guarantee the rights of women to control their own bodies and to make their own decisions about reproductive health care including abortion, to stop the unconscionable attacks that are being made on the RCP and its leader Bob Avakian. These attacks not only divide us at a time when we need to be acting in unity, they are also dangerous. We need only look at the damage done in the 1970s by the U.S. governments’ COINTELPRO program to discredit, divide, neutralize and destroy domestic political organizations that they had deemed subversive to understand the damage that can be done when we attack and discredit those in our own movement using similarly inflammatory and often untrue attacks. Bob Avakian is not a cult leader. Whether or not we agree with him and his revolutionary approach to social change, he is a person of deep principle and powerful intellectual capacity who has fully committed himself to “the emancipation of humanity.” Those who follow him are not puppets. They join the movement because they find Avakian’s description of history and his scientific approach to social and political change to be compelling. Finally, organizations like Rise Up for Abortion Rights and Refuse Fascism, which have significant support from the RCP, are not pyramid schemes designed to raise huge sums of money to support the leadership of the RCP. This accusation is nothing more than an insulting and inflammatory attack against all who have participated in these movements whether or not they have actually been members of the RCP. These attacks are not made on the basis of any real evidence; they are rather used as propaganda whose only purpose is to demonize and to divide. As such, they must stop immediately! Not only can we not afford the damage that some of us are doing to the larger movement through these attacks, we must also recognize how dangerous and—honestly, immoral and unjust—it is to create or even take part in such smear campaigns.
I encourage all of us to engage the RCP and its leader Bob Avakian in a manner that is respectful and open. There will be time for us to debate our differences in approach. But for now, stop the attacks. This type of internecine battling does nothing to advance either our struggle for abortion rights or our ultimate efforts to emancipate humanity and create a better world. In fact, it almost certainly guarantees that the unjust and intolerable situation created by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will continue long into our future.
Sincerely,
Frank Wulf
Aurora Roja, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico
This was an introduction to the reposting on the Aurora Roja blog of the revcom.us article “Behind the Week of Internet Attacks on Bob Avakian and the Revcoms: Imperialist Fear Mongers and Their Servants.” The translation from the original Spanish is from revcom.us.
Unprincipled attacks, based on lies and slanders, on the organization Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR), as well as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, are completely unacceptable. RU4AR is the only national organization in the United States that mobilized thousands of people in the streets in defense of the right to abortion for months before the decision of the Supreme Court that eliminates this constitutional right, while others advised not to fight to stop this decision. Bob Avakian, based on 50 years of work, has developed the New Communism, a more scientific, revolutionary and inspiring guide to making revolution and emancipating humanity in today’s world, and leads a determined fight to make an actual revolution amidst the great turmoil and crises that are ripping U.S. society apart now. To those who repeat or get taken in by the orchestrated campaign of lies and slanders against this important revolutionary leader, we want to ask: Are you against a liberating revolution in the belly of the world’s biggest imperialist oppressor? Do you prefer that this oppressor continue? In the real world, disqualifying this revolutionary leader without even reading and knowing his work can only serve the reactionary interests of U.S. imperialism. We welcome debate and reasoned criticism, which helps to clarify opposing positions. On the other hand, every decent person must categorically reject snarky attacks based on lies, slanders and insults, which does so much damage to the interests of the people. As follows, we reproduce from revcom.us one of several articles about these unprincipled attacks.