Read this article to learn about the WONDERFUL thing more than 1000 Allston-Brighton residents did.
REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
by John Spritzler
May 17, 2019
(Also see Let's Get Organized and Why Wear a PDR Button and Brighton People Posed for a Photo)
HERE'S HOW I AM BUILDING THE EGALITARIAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN MY LOCAL COMMUNITY, AND HOW YOU CAN DO THE SAME THING
[Click here to read a frequently updated account of what's happening in this neighborhood since the events reported here.]
Between February and April of 2019 I recruited more than a thousand new members for an already-existing very good [Postscript: I thought it was a very good organization in May of 2019, but I later learned that it was not, which I discuss here.] local community organization in Boston that I belong to. I did this by asking people to sign an egalitarian revolutionary statement (titled 'No Rich and No Poor') that I wrote as part of a membership sign-up form. The organization is the Brighton Allston Community Coalition and it is for all residents of the two zip-code areas of Boston (02134 and 02135) known as Brighton-Allston or Allston-Brighton (a mostly white and mostly white collar demographic). Its mission statement is online here. Its recent letter (online here [pdf]) sent to the Mayor of Boston says it has "more than 350 members." The sign-up form I wrote is online here and says the following (the words in italics below) with a place underneath for people to sign their name and print it and print their street address and (optionally) their email address and phone number:
------------------------------------------
NO RICH AND NO POOR
We the undersigned joined (or are hereby joining) the Brighton Allston Community Coalition (BACC) because its goals, including adequate affordable housing and good public transportation and an end to gentrification, are part of our larger goal: removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. We hope that the BACC will declare that it also aims for this larger goal; that would make us be even more enthusiastic members of it.
------------------------------------------
I approached all passers-by on the sidewalk in various parts of Allston-Brighton by saying, "Hi there. This is about getting more affordable, not just luxury, housing built in Allston and Brighton. If you live there and if you agree with this statement (I show them the sign-up form) then I would like you to sign this." I also insist that people read and agree with the whole statement before signing. So far, 1021 people have signed.* (If you live in Allston-Brighton go here to read how you can sign it too.)
HOW DO PEOPLE ON THE STREET RESPOND?
I have discovered that about 90% of the people who stop to read the "No Rich and No Poor' statement sign it readily. No persuasion on my part is required. The most common question people ask after reading the statement is, "Where do I sign?"
Of note is the fact that a good number of people expressed pessimism that signing would do any good, but readily agreed with me when I replied that there is a reason why signing THIS 'No Rich and No Poor' statement will be more effective than a petition merely saying what we want. It's true that the rulers don't care what we want and so they often just ignore petitions. But when they hear that we are aiming to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, THEN they fear what might happen if they don't grant the reforms we're demanding. That's a different ball game!
I can understand why some people may be skeptical about the above report that about 90% of the people who read this 'No Rich and No Poor' statement sign it--a statement that says one's goal is to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor! To the skeptics, I say this: Don't take my word for it. Go to a public place and ask random passers-by to sign this statement (or an equivalent egalitarian revolutionary one substituting reference to the reform goals of an organization in your own community for the BACC's reform goals) and find out for yourself what happens, OK? Don't assume that just because you never hear people expressing such a view on television or radio or in newspapers or magazines (the rich who control the media censor such views) that people don't feel this way.
Among the 10% who read this 'No Rich and No Poor' statement, presumably because they agree with my opening words about wanting more affordable housing, but who then decline to sign it, the reason is almost never that they disagree with it's goal. The reasons are things such as: "I never sign anything"; "I'm afraid to put my street address and name on the same piece of paper because of the risk of identity theft"; "I need to research this more"; "I don't want to join an organization"; one person said, "I'm afraid if I sign I will not be accepted into the bar (to be a lawyer)."
Only about 1% of these people who stop to read the 'No Rich and No Poor' statement but don't sign it said they disagree with something in the statement; two people said they wanted some rich and some poor. One person said, "I'm too much a Republican to sign this." One person said, "Capitalism with some rich and some poor is good because it made us the wealthiest nation." I replied that he was in the minority in having that view. He replied, "Yes, I know."
Also of note, there are quite a few people in this neighborhood who are from the former Soviet Union and who have such negative associations with phrases such as "no rich and no poor," due to the anti-democratic and hypocritical practice of the Communists in power there, that they refuse to sign anything with such phrases. One person said, about having no rich and no poor, "that never ends well."
What about the people who don't read the statement?
Some people don't read the statement (quite a few, actually) because they don't speak English or don't live in Brighton-Allston; many just walk by and ignore me. Some say "I'm all set," [I reply by saying, "this is to help people who are not all set," and occasionally the person then signs].
Some (now and then) say they don't want more housing to be built--affordable or otherwise; one person said that affordable housing is a bad idea because it just means letting people live for free. One person said he opposed affordable housing because he "didn't want those kind of people living here." One person told me that the free market works perfectly and we shouldn't interfere with it. One person said whether there was affordable housing or not made no difference to him. There is for sure a small but very real minority of people who are essentially anti-egalitarian. The point is that they are a small minority.
Allston-Brighton is a mainly working class (and mostly white, by the way) neighborhood, which is probably why so many people readily sign this statement. In more affluent neighborhoods there might be less support for it. I think a solid 80% of the United States population wants an egalitarian revolution (when they hear what it means), and about 10% to 15% may be opposed to it; the remaining 5% may be neutral or even friendly-neutral.
WHAT'S MY PURPOSE?
My purpose in doing this is to make it evident to the rank-and-file members of the BACC and its steering committee members** that the BACC would GAIN, not lose, support from the general public if it explicitly declared that its goal also included egalitarian revolution (i.e., removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor). The more signature/memberships I obtain, the more evident this will be. This in turn will greatly facilitate persuading the BACC to become an openly egalitarian revolutionary organization. The argument for doing this, which I will present to the BACC, is based on the following ten facts:
Fact #1. Most of the members of the BACC want an egalitarian revolution (as will be evident from the fact that LOTS of new members have signed the 'No Rich and No Poor' statement saying exactly that.)
Fact #2. The people who signed the 'No Rich and No Poor' membership statement above are typical of the many more thousands of people who would also do so but just haven't been asked yet.
Fact #3. The vast majority of the general public wants more affordable housing, and the experience of collecting signatures for the 'No Rich and No Poor' statement shows that 90% of these people also say they want to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, and that they would be more enthusiastic members of the BACC if it declared that it too had that goal.
Fact #4. Therefore, the BACC would GAIN, not lose, support from the general public if it became an egalitarian revolutionary organization. Most people in the general public know full well that we live in a fake democracy that is actually a dictatorship of the rich. They know that this is why "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" and why even winning modest reforms such as more affordable housing is nigh on impossible as long as the rich remain in power. And they know that whatever we may win one day the rich somehow take away the next (Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos, just did this as reported here.) This is why many people are less than enthusiastic in their support for a reform organization that ignores rather than aims to seriously address the problem at its root: that we live in a fake democracy in which the rich have the real power.
By advocating not only for good reforms (such as more affordable housing) but for egalitarian revolution as well, the BACC would, in contrast to merely reform organizations, be seen by people as an inspiring organization that was serious about winning what people really want and not afraid to say what the real obstacle is that needs to be overcome.
Fact #5. As an egalitarian revolutionary organization the BACC would be far more persuasive in refuting the arguments that Big Money uses to oppose what the BACC is fighting for. To see why, click here and here.
Fact #6. As an egalitarian revolutionary organization the BACC would be far more able to unify different groups of residents, such as renters and home-owners and students. To see why, click here and here and here.
Fact #7. By telling the wider general public (beyond even Brighton & Allston) that an egalitarian revolutionary aspiration is the REASON the BACC is fighting for adequate affordable hosing and good public transportation and an end to gentrification, the BACC would gain enormous support from people elsewhere who may not even have any particular concern about affordable housing, etc., in Brighton and Allston. Why? Because it would let everybody in the wider general public who also has this egalitarian revolutionary aspiration see that they have a strong reason to support the BACC because it is fighting for what they too so dearly want--an egalitarian society with real, not fake, democracy and no rich and no poor.
The BACC would make this fact even more evident if it explained in its outreach that the REASON it wants to win its modest reform demands for things such as adequate affordable housing is because these reforms, as limited as they are, will make society be at least a little bit closer to the thoroughly egalitarian (no-rich-and-no-poor, genuinely democratic, mutual-aid-based) way it ought to be.
WE CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM AT ITS ROOT, NOT JUST AIM FOR BAND AID REFORMS
Fact #8.
Once organizations such as the BACC become openly egalitarian revolutionary organizations, people will start to see that not only do LOTS of people want such a revolution but that growing numbers of people are so determined to make it happen that they are organizing for that very purpose. As awareness of this determination spreads, the egalitarian revolutionary movement will be on the road to gaining strength and confidence. People will see that egalitarian revolution is not just a nice but impossible pipe dream but something that is truly POSSIBLE and worth devoting time and energy to building the movement for it. This, and only this, makes it possible to one day abolish class inequality and thereby make our society truly equal and democratic.
Egalitarian revolutionary organizations--unlike all others!--can do things to make the vision of an egalitarian society clear, persuasive, exciting and inspiring. They can promote a grand public conversation about how society can and ought to be so much better than it is today, and not anti-democratic like Communist or Socialist nations (read here why Marxist regimes are so anti-democratic). They can create venues and opportunities for people to talk with each other about the changes they will make once they have removed the rich from power and have genuine democracy.
An inspiring vision shared by LOTS of people will emerge, a vision of a world in which the big social decisions are made by the vast majority of people who value no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid. (Read about some of the things this visionary conversation might include here. For example, here's an egalitarian "Notice" (pdf) about how and why squatting would be legal and small landlords would be better off than they are today.) This widely shared and openly discussed egalitarian revolutionary vision will make it clear that egalitarianism is not some impossible Utopia that could never exist until all humans become saints. No! It is simply the way the vast majority of people can make society be when they, not a small minority of greedy domineering a**holes, have the real power for a change.
This vision makes the goal of egalitarian revolution stop seeming "nice but impossible" and start seeming like the no-brainer goal to aim for that it truly is. When lots of people start to see see it that way, it becomes possible to build a truly massive and determined egalitarian revolutionary movement that can actually remove the rich from power, as discussed here.
This is in contrast to the present situation in which there are virtually no organizations of a substantial size in the United States that call for egalitarian revolution, and the rich who own or control the mass media censor any expression of egalitarian revolutionary aspiration on TV or radio and in newspapers and magazines. This censorship of, and silence about, the egalitarian revolutionary aspirations of people makes people assume that hardly anybody else wants an egalitarian revolution. It makes people believe that therefore it is futile to even think about making such a revolution happen. It makes people believe that anybody who advocates egalitarian revolution will be perceived by most other people as crazy--or worse--so it's better to keep one's mouth shut on this topic.
The BACC could make it so that imagining a better and totally possible world and talking with neighbors about it would be fun, unifying, exciting and inspirational--no longer viewed as a taboo activity that one should never be caught doing. This is what can make it possible to build the kind of truly massive movement that can one day truly and thoroughly win the reforms we're fighting for such as affordable housing for all--by removing the rich from power.
Fact #9. The existence of even a single egalitarian revolutionary organization of any substantial size--as the BACC might become--gives enormous encouragement to people elsewhere to create another egalitarian revolutionary organization in their own town or neighborhood. This is what can lead to LOTS of egalitarian revolutionary organizations coming into existence.
This in turn will result in hundreds of millions of people in the United States (and other nations too!) discovering that they are in the vast majority in wanting an egalitarian revolution and being organized to act on a large scale for that goal. No longer will people be isolated individuals or at best members of non-revolutionary organizations that the rulers have no reason to fear and no reason to give in to their demands. This is how people can act in solidarity on a large scale in defense of the egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid.
This is how an egalitarian revolutionary movement can grow large enough and determined enough to win over to its side a critical mass of the members of the military and police forces and thereby actually remove the rich from power (i.e., solve the problem at its root), as discussed here and begin making our society truly equal and democratic the way most people want it to be, and the way the billionaire ruling class works so hard to prevent it from being.
ADDRESSING THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE BACC BECOMING AN EGALITARIAN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION
Argument #1. If the BACC becomes an explicitly egalitarian revolutionary organization it will anger powerful people, such as the mayor and/or Big Money donors, who otherwise might help us gain our reform goals.
Yes, it is undeniably true that rich (and hence powerful) people do not befriend or support (financially or otherwise) explicitly egalitarian revolutionary organizations (which by definition aim to remove the rich from power and have no rich and no poor.) The question is, What conclusion should we draw from this fact?
Here is why I think the BACC should become an explicitly egalitarian revolutionary organization despite this fact.
If the BACC decides not to become an explicitly egalitarian revolutionary organization in order to successfully gain the support of rich and powerful people, then it will commit itself to being an organization that a) never seriously makes the ruling elite fear it and thus never wins substantial long-term reforms AND b) keeps people busy NOT aiming to solve our problems at the root (by removing the rich from power) and instead focused forever on mere band aid solutions for a cancerous problem.
A good nearby example of this is the otherwise very good reform organization in Jamaica Plain called City Life/Vida Urbana, which focuses on fighting gentrification by helping poor people resist being evicted from their apartments. City Life uses a combination of lawyers in court and occasional demonstrations during a forced eviction to prevent evictions. It succeeds sometimes and fails other times. It has been doing this since the 1970s. City Life/Vida Urbana has two "Our Vision" paragraphs on its website that say:
"We at City Life/Vida Urbana embrace a vision of a society and world where there is: peace among nations and peoples; respect for our cultural, racial and sexual diversity; cooperation rather than competition; no extremes of wealth or poverty; respect for nature and the condition of the environment for ourselves and future generations; production that serves the needs of the many rather than the greed of the few; as well as a guarantee that each person has the right to food, housing, health care, education, meaningful employment, and the right to exist in freedom without fear of displacement or deportation.
"We understand that these changes will not happen spontaneously. We hope to be part of a city, state, national, and international movement that believes in a similar vision and is prepared to build organizations and leadership that it will take to create this new world."
Unfortunately, however, while this vision could be construed to mean no rich and no poor it could also be construed to mean simply reducing the gap between the rich and poor ("no extremes of wealth or poverty"). Also, the phrase "meaningful employment" suggests that some people will still be employers and others (most people) their employees, in a society still based on wage labor and the inherent unequal status of employers and their "hired help" in that kind of society--the same as today. This vision is hardly a clear and inspiring vision of an egalitarian society with genuine democracy in the workplace and in society overall, but rather an ambiguous vision that is consistent with simply a reformed capitalist society with an upper class of employers and a lower class of employees just like today.
But even if one chooses to construe this vision in the most egalitarian way, the problem is that City Life/Vida Urbana does not make this vision, construed as egalitarian, the focus of its day-to-day activity; it just buries it (in an ambiguous form) on its web site. It doesn't use this vision to mobilize people and to challenge the legitimacy of the "capitalism/realism" arguments that are used against people denied affordable housing and evicted when they can't pay a high rent. It doesn't engage in activities to make the vision widely understood (for example by showing concretely how it would change specific aspects of society such as housing and medical care, etc.) and perceived as totally practical and desirable. It doesn't explain why the vision is different from Communism, which is well known to be extremely anti-democratic. The absence of such vision-focused activity reflects the fact that the vision is not taken seriously and is on the website mainly just to make leftists happy.
Has it stopped gentrification or even slowed down gentrification in Jamaica Plain? No.
A 2017 news article about Jamaica Plain reports, "However, gentrification seems to have sped up in the past decade. According to the Boston Planning and Development Agency, rent in Jamaica Plain has increased by 15-percent between 2014 and 2016."
An earlier 2011 article about gentrification in Jamaica Plain reports on a community meeting to oppose it. The speakers included Steve Meacham, the Organizing Coordinator of City Life. Some of the speakers pointed out that capitalism is the root of the problem, but none of them advocated ending capitalism or, equivalently, removing the rich from power. Instead they only spoke of band aid solutions such as a "speculation tax."
Organizations such as City Life that refuse to advocate removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, get big funding from Big Money, as I wrote about here in 2014. Specifically, City Life/Vida Urban, in addition to other Big Money funding, also received $150,000 in 2013 from billionaire George Soros's (personally worth $8.3 billion) Open Society Foundation, whose website states the following:
"To provide a tie-off to solidify the gains made from the replication of the CityLife/Vida Urbana’s Bank Tenant Association (BTA) organizing model. In the two years since OSF originally funded CL/VU to expand its organizing model to other communities in the Boston region and train organizers in other cities across the country on post-foreclosure defense strategies, CL/VU’s BTA campaign has become a national model for community-led responses to the foreclosure crisis."
By one measure, City Life's refusal to be an egalitarian revolutionary organization has paid off big time. It now has a lot of paid staff and can afford to rent an office for them at 284 Amory St. This is great for people who have turned the problem of gentrification into a solution to their personal problem of how to get a job that pays one to "fight the good fight." But there is a huge downside:
City Life/Vida Urbana, in order to keep its Big Money funding, must keep people--the very ones who are most oppressed in our society and most likely to start thinking about building an egalitarian revolutionary movement--busy NOT building an explicitly egalitarian revolutionary movement. It thus keeps people on the treadmill of defeat, where they will be fighting unjust evictions--winning sometimes and losing others--forever and ever and ever, and never solving the Big Problem--that we live in a dictatorship of the rich--at its root with the Big Solution of egalitarian revolution. This makes Big Money very happy.
But if the BACC did this, would it make us happy?
Argument #2. If the BACC becomes an egalitarian revolutionary organization then we increase the risk that powerful people (the rich) will use violent repression against us and there may be bloodshed and innocent people killed or injured.
Yes, it is true that building an egalitarian revolutionary movement increases the risk of violent repression. The question is, again, what conclusion should we draw from this fact.
The first point to consider is this. It is extremely unlikely that the ruling elite would use violent repression against the BACC if the BACC declares it is for "removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor." Making such a declaration is a perfectly legal thing to do, just as it was legal for people to sign the statement. If the BACC did this and the rulers then used violence against the BACC the rulers would be viewed by the general public as totally in the wrong; this is something the rulers want to avoid at all costs because it would severely undermine what remains of the legitimacy they require to stay in power.
The next KEY point to consider is this. Nothing makes the rulers more willing to grant our short term demands--for things such as adequate affordable housing--than a growing egalitarian revolutionary movement that makes them fear there will one day be revolution unless they grant such demands. (Read here how this is what made FDR implement the New Deal, and read here why this--and only this!--is what made LBJ force through the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
When the rulers see the BACC gaining members and enthusiastic support on the basis of being an openly egalitarian revolutionary organization, they will start to fear what will happen if they continue to ignore the BACC and refuse to grant its demands the way they do today. Until then, the rich will continue to treat us like dirt, the way they treat all ordinary people that way--to make us "know our place" at the bottom of a very unequal society (read more about this here.)
Making the rulers fear us, fear what will happen if they don't grant our demands, is the only way, historically, that people have gained substantial improvements such as Social Security and unemployment compensation (in FDR's New Deal.)
Some people, however, say that it's a big mistake to try to make the rulers fear us. They say that doing this, even if we stay within the law, might still cause the rulers to use violent repression, and we should not do anything that increases this risk, no matter how minimally it may do so. This point requires serious consideration.
As I discuss in great detail in my article, "WHAT DID IT TAKE TO MAKE FDR'S NEW DEAL HAPPEN, AND WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE BERNIE SANDERS'S NEW NEW DEAL HAPPEN?", FDR implemented the New Deal ONLY because he and the ruling upper class he represented feared what would happen if he didn't. This fear was caused by the fact that in the 1930s there were enormous and increasingly revolutionary labor strikes all across the country, so large (some were general strikes in a region) that National Guardsmen were given "shoot to kill" orders and federal troops were also called in to violently repress the rebellious workers. At least twenty-four workers were killed and many more wounded in strike actions that had been declared illegal.
All of us who enjoy the benefit of having Social Security (for ourselves or our parents) and unemployment compensation and the right to form a labor union must acknowledge that we only have these things because workers in the 1930s frightened the rulers with the very real threat of revolution. And yes, when workers did illegal things some were killed or wounded by the consequent violent repression.
So, what is the moral of this story? Was it a mistake for the workers in the 1930s to have frightened the rulers? Should they instead have avoided frightening the rulers and accepted their consequent impoverishment and starvation?
If one says the workers in the 1930s made a big mistake then one must also say that one agrees to give up Social Security and unemployment compensation and the right to form a labor union today, not just for oneself but for the entire United States population. This is the actual choice. It is wishful thinking to deny it.
The actual choice we in the BACC face today is to win affordable housing by frightening the rulers with our explicit and legal support for egalitarian revolution, which is unlikely to meet with violent repression, or accept that working class people who have lived in Allston-Brighton for generations will continue to be evicted (violently by the police if they don't move out on their own) from our neighborhood because they can't afford their high rent or property tax. This is the actual choice we face. It is wishful thinking to deny it.
The ruling upper class (the billionaire plutocracy, three individual members of which own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the entire United States population) treats us ordinary people like dirt to maintain class inequality, as discussed in some detail here. Because this upper class is not sufficiently frightened of us, many people in the United States today are homeless or living in tents, as you can see in this video and this video and this video and this video. This is the future of our "affordable housing" if we fail to make the rulers fear being removed from power by a huge egalitarian revolutionary movement.
On May 2 I delivered the last of the 1021 signatures (signup forms) to the person in the BACC in charge of memberships.
On May 6 and 7, I sent a long email, to the 16 BACC individuals who were either on the organization's steering committee and/or one of the 12 founders of the organization, saying why it would be both a wise and wonderful thing for the BACC to do what more than 1000 new members say they hope it will do--declare that the BACC aims to help remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. My email to these BACC leaders is verbatim online here.
As of May 17 I have not had a reply to my email from any of these 16 individuals, which may be simply because they need time to collectively decide how to reply.
Yesterday I was interviewed by a reporter for The Bulletin newspaper, which is a neighborhood free weekly paper. The reporter examined my copies of the 1021 signatures (signup forms), took a photo of me and the two volumes containing copies of the signatures, and said he will also try to interview some of the BACC leaders to get their view about all of this. The reporter also said that it was noteworthy that the number of signatures I had collected was a substantial part of the total number of people living in Alston-Brighton and, as he told me in an earlier email, "John, this is awesome."
I have now shifted from collecting more signatures to informing the Allston-Brighton public, as best I can by standing in public places again, that more than a thousand residents of Allston-Brighton did something wonderful (go here for the webpage about it.)
Click here to see the Boston Patch article about this.
YOU CAN DO THIS TOO
I bet that you can find an organization in your local community that is like the BACC, i.e., is aiming to make things better (or prevent them from becoming worse) and that in this regard tries to stand up against the rich but is, of course, on the treadmill of defeat because we live in a dictatorship of the rich instead of a real democracy. If you haven't already, why don't you join this organization and then recruit new members to it the way I am doing?***
Clearly what I am proposing makes more sense than participating in the elections, which are designed to prevent us from building an egalitarian revolutionary movement and thus designed to keep the rich in power.
We obviously need to remove the rich from power. But it's not possible to do that until people start saying out loud and explicitly that this is their goal. Not a single politician running for office says that he/she advocates removing the rich from power (which means confiscating from the rich the immense fortunes--all their wealth that is in excess of what an ordinary person needs or reasonably desires--that are the basis of their power) to have no rich and no poor.
Isn't it time we build a movement that advocates what we really want?
We Can Remove the Rich from Power to Have No Rich and No Poor.
Here's how.
Click here to read Frequently Asked Questions about how, and why, to have No Rich And No Poor.
------------------------
* I initially aimed to collect 1000 signature/memberships this way. Since almost all of the people who stop to read the sign-up form and who live in the appropriate neighborhood and who speak English sign it, the only limit to the number of signature/memberships I can collect is the number of such people I can talk to by standing in public places such as in front of laundromats or grocery stores or the post office, etc. Of note, once I made computer translations of the 'No Rich and No Poor' statement into other languages I started to get signatures from people who didn't speak English too.
** I emailed the founding members and steering committee members of the BACC what I was doing and received a very friendly reply from one of the founders who is also on the steering committee thanking me for recruiting new members and asking me to distribute to prospective members the one-page mission statement of the BACC, which I gladly agreed to do.
*** Note that what I am NOT doing is organizing a separate organization distinct from the BACC. Also note that I am NOT organizing a caucus within the BACC. (A caucus is generally an organization of a subset of members of an organization who aim to remove the current leaders of the organization from power because they view these leaders as profoundly bad leaders for some reason such as personal corruption. In my case I am merely trying to persuade the current leaders of the BACC, as well as the members generally, that the organization would gain, not lose, support from the general public if it advocated egalitarian revolution, and that this would be a wonderful thing to do for all of the reasons given above..)