Message on the occasion of December 22, 2007 demonstration in Belgium

From Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper, US
It is with great revolutionary enthusiasm that word of Iranian students and others marching against both the US and Iranian Embassy in Brussels reached the ears of revolutionaries and youth in the United States.
Increasingly humanity is being confronted with two intolerable choices: U.S. wars of aggression or a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist response. The aggression of the U.S. is the greater danger to the people of the world -- already having claimed as many as a million lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, driven millions more from their homes, shredded the bonds of family and friends as sectarian rivalries have been built up and played off each other, and now threatening to expand their aggression into Iran. In response to this, the accelerated growth of Islamic fundamentalism has made life a living hell for women, children, secular and revolutionary forces, and has only served to reinforce – and offer a foil for – more imperialist aggression.
Neither of these “choices” offers anything good for humanity. As Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has pointed out: "What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both."
As the U.S. threatens to expand their aggression into Iran – a move that could enflame the whole Middle East and massively escalate the deadly global dynamic of McWorld vs. Jihad – the protests by Iranian students and others on December 22 stand out as all the more critical. With the future at stake, the world is hungry for a new voice and new songs to animate a struggle to bring a whole new, emancipated world into being.
Having been on dozens of campuses across this country, building resistance to the crimes against humanity of the Bush regime and spreading revolution, I have seen and tasted how deeply a new generation in the U.S. is disgusted, disturbed and enraged by what is being done in their names. But I also know how deeply this is paralyzed by the way it appears that the only choices out there are McWorld or Jihad. How big a difference it will make for them to see and hear you, as part of a new voice emerging.
How big a responsibility those of us living in the U.S. have to bring forward resistance to “our own” government –mass political resistance that is so powerful it cannot be hidden from the victims of the U.S.’s wars, who are justifiably seething with hatred for all this brings down on them.
It is possible – and the youth more than anyone else must dare – to bring about a competing global dynamic, where our new voices reverberate across oceans and echo across continents, opening up new possibilities, giving hope and fueling forward truly emancipatory and liberating struggles, in opposition to both McWorld and Jihad , from within the imperialist citadels as well as out of the rubble of homes caused by U.S. aggression.
It is possible – and the youth more than anyone else must dare – to explore and bring forward revolutionary movements aimed at getting to a world without the grinding wars of imperialist plunder, without the massive lopsidedness of extraordinary wealth concentrated among a handful in the imperialist countries and the growing mass of exploited, degraded and expendable humanity brought about by the global system of capitalism, without its corresponding ideas such as patriarchy and false concepts of some unchanging, selfish “human nature.”
It is possible – and the youth more than anyone else must dare – to bring about a world without the enslavement of religious ignorance whether propagated by the evolution-denying George Bush or of his ideological counterparts in the Islamic clerics. Instead, a new generation must fight to, and increasingly enable, the oppressed to take up a scientific approach towards everything, including the project of humanity’s emancipation.
It is possible – and the youth more than anyone else must dare – to bring about a world where women are treated as human beings, not as slaves or property of men, where women are neither plundered as sex objects nor shrouded and veiled to protect their virginal “purity.” It is no longer tolerable – or necessary – for half of humanity to be subjugated, enslaved and brutalized in either the “modern” forms of the West or the traditional forms being reasserted in the Middle East. Instead, across the globe, the fury of women must be brought forward as a mighty force for a truly liberating revolution aimed at emancipating all of humanity!
All this will require not only fierce struggle, resistance and sacrifice against the actions of the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran, but also scientifically searching and honestly engaging the vexing problems that lie before us. All of this will require struggling and studying and thinking and dreaming beyond the confines of what today seems “possible” and “realistic.” This requires looking deeply at the structures that have brought the world to where it is today and the ideas that have reinforced all this – and what kind of revolution and communism it will take to really enable humanity to get beyond the many nightmares that are so commonplace today.
And the youth, more than anyone else, must fearlessly enter into that search –refusing to listen to the cynics who say you can't change the whole world, who try to lower your sights. History shows that the dreamers and fighters are right. Follow your principles, work to realize your deepest and highest aspirations, and follow THAT where it leads you.
As the cries of the imperialists and the reactionary fundamentalists escalate towards a confrontation in Iran, do not underestimate how hungry humanity is for another way. Play the role that youth have always played – get way out front, build uncompromising mass political resistance to any moves towards U.S. war on Iran and to the repression carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, refuse to be confined by the limitations of what now exists, reject everything that is reactionary, challenge the passivity of others, and dare to struggle and sacrifice in the service of dreams big and liberating enough to offer real hope for humanity. Do it with urgency, do it with determination, and do it with tremendous joy --– for there is nothing that could matter more.
Sunsara Taylor
Writer for Revolution newspaper, USA