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.