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Refuse Fascism

Pictures & Notes from October 11: Student Day

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October 11 through 14: Nationwide Mass Fundraising and Organizing Blitz to Prepare for the Kind of Struggle Needed to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime – October 11: Student Day

University of Houston

We set up outside the library with a big sign and an Indictment panel of the regime for Waging War on Women and LGBTQ People. We were getting out the Call for November protests after the mid-terms, and palmcards for the film of the Bob Avakian (BA) talk THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible!

As we started talking to students, a couple of Muslim students stopped to talk and a debate broke out about the indictment panel. This went on for about an hour. At its height there were maybe twenty students who were there. Students started getting into a heated discussion with each other over the implications of the Supreme Court ruling that allowed discrimination against LGBTQ people (under the pretext of “religious freedom”). The discussion went into the question of rights, role of government, capitalism and what it’s doing to the environment, and what about people. In the midst of this we kept reframing the debate to what is going on with the Trump/Pence fascist regime and why we need to drive them out. A couple of the students started passing out flyers to the many other students who stopped to find out what was going on. Many more students took flyers to get out in their classes. Over 50 students signed up to join the RF movement, and organize for Nov 7th. Later we played clips from the BA film. We got out over 500 calls, 250 film cards, stickers, and a few students took posters to put in their dorm or apt windowns. Some students promised to donate online – we have to follow up on that.

NYC High School

Temple University

San Francisco State / the Mission District in San Francisco / Meeting with Immigrant Women’s Group

This was the first time we have taken this campaign – to have protests after the midterms – out in any significant way. The response, overall, given everything, was quite good. There are a lot of people who think this makes sense among the students. An example from San Francisco State (SFSU): we were talking to two young women, they agreed with us about fascism, the need for masses to be in the streets in their millions, they like the idea of protesting immediately after the midterms. They want to do things at SFSU around this, and they wanted to set up a meeting, which we did, for next week to get going. They may come to some of what we are doing on the weekend. While we were talking to them another young woman overheard all that and said that she wanted to be part of it as well, and we found a day and time that we, and all three of them could get together.

This was National Coming Out Day, and we had been invited by the Queer Alliance to speak at their event in the plaza. Well, that got nixed apparently by another level of leadership of their organization which did not want anything except the voices of queer people talking about their experiences. So that was unfortunate, but we set up a space on another part of the plaza, with banners, “NO!” posters in many languages, a Kavanaugh meme, and posters for sale spread out on the ground. We talked to many people, asked everyone who would talk to us to contribute funds, and met a lot of good people who want to act and want to take this up. We got about 20 or so names, and raised $48 from the students.

Some people are very into the elections. Some are really new to politics – I talked to an 18-year-old who said “this is the first election I will be able to vote” and she is sort of looking around, trying to understand what is going on, was very interested in this notion of demonstrating the day after the election, it made sense but she is still trying to figure out what is going on, and is planning to vote. And there were a number of people who are not happy with the Democrats, who are looking for a way to fight against Trump and who signed up with Refuse Fascism.

One professor from the business school, who was from South Asia, told us that he was very angry with the Democrats, that he had supported them, but that they did not fight around Kavanaugh, or around anything. He is very disappointed, he did not like what they did with the Kavanaugh confirmation, he did not think that they fought around the right question in the right way. He would not sign up with us but he was clearly very supportive of what we are trying to do. it was interesting.

Also, an interesting story – we are having our pot luck tomorrow at the Unitarian church. The person who arranged for us to get the space was there, talking to one of the members. The guy from the church said “They are coming for us. You were right from the beginning when you said it was fascism. I didn’t agree. But that is what it is. That is what we have to deal with.”

In another outing we did today, in the Mission, we encountered again a lot of anger and a desire to fight.

Another interesting experience yesterday – we went to a meeting of an organization of immigrant women, overwhelmingly spanish speaking. We read them the Call for the post midterm protests in Spanish and also English. The meeting was pretty chaotic, there were 30+ people there, packed in a tiny room, asking questions about whether Kavanaugh had been seated on the Supreme Court, what were we trying to do with our plan (we realized we needed to present it more clearly), kids running around, all kinds of personal business going on, and we ended up getting 13 volunteers from the group who want to help this weekend with our plan. This came out of deep concern for the situation with the immigrants but also a broader sense that this is fascism and people want to fight it – and not just fascism.

What all this points to I think is that our call for protesting immediately after the midterms is hitting a nerve and there is potential for it to have significant impact.

And we are organizing phone banking in between doing other things.

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