This is something that’s been on my mind anyway. I’ve been having to deal with this since it happened. Me and a few other people—we had to defend the work of the RCP, Ferguson, Refuse Fascism, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights – we’ve had to defend all of that. And that’s ongoing.

The first thing I want to say is I felt totally insulted—and that’s what I felt about this. I felt totally insulted for somebody to say I’ve been working with a cult all these years. Because working with the RCP and following the leadership of BA who I think is the leading thinker in the world right now, not that I agree with everything he says but I will say he is the leading thinker in the world forging forward the strategy of liberation for all mankind. Working with the RCP and following the leadership of BA has done nothing but test my thinking, made me stretch my thinking—my imagination—to grapple, to understand different complex situations that we get in the world today. My mind has been stretched, has been tested to the limit in trying to understand complex situations like thinking how revolution is possible.

If this was a cult, a cult is based on certain unchanging religious principles. There’s no religiosity in this movement. BA and the RCP, particular people like Sunsara Taylor & Andy Zee raised alarms around the coming onslaught, the emergence of fascism, in the U.S. before anybody else saw it. To be able to see the oncoming of fascism before anybody else did and then start preparing people for it—I commend the RCP and Bob Avakian for doing that. And to ask people to get into the streets to stop the reversal of Roe v Wade, abortion rights was, I think, kind of remarkable. And I think BA and the RCP are to be commended for that.

I think what people need to do despite this onslaught by a lot of the so-called left, then the so-called “Woke” movement that’s full of identity politics. People, like BA says—people need to be scientific. People need to get up into these questions about today, what’s going on. Particularly regarding the strategy to reverse the Supreme Court Decision against abortion rights. BA and the RCP have been instrumental in pointing the way how to deal with this problem—the streets.

A cult wouldn’t have done all that. A cult is the philosophy of religion. RCP, BA, is the philosophy of growth. Of analyzing life, and the objective situation as they are developing. So in the end I say like BA—are we headed for a horrible end or is humanity headed toward a much better future?