Bob Avakian
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Robert Bruce "Bob" Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist group in the United States.
Avakian was originally from Berkeley, California, and was a noted basketball player for his high school. His father was Spurgeon Avakian (1913-2002), an Alameda County judge in Oakland, California, and member of the Berkeley School Board. Bob went on to the University of California at Berkeley, where he became very involved in radical politics. He participated in the Free Speech Movement alongside Mario Savio. His political activities continued and he became spokesman for the Peace and Freedom Party, and an active supporter of the Black Panthers.
Bob Avakian was active in Students for a Democratic Society and was a leading figure in the Revolutionary Youth Movement II. In the Bay Area he worked to form the Bay Area Revolutionary Union. BARU expanded nationally by absorbing other Marxist-Leninist collectives coming out of the SDS. It became the Revolutionary Union.
Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Union, along with others such as H. Bruce Franklin,C. Clark Kissinger and Carl Dix, led the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1976. When Deng Xiaoping went to the United States to visit Jimmy Carter, the RCP led protests at sites throughout Washington, D.C.. Avakian and others allegedly broke into the White House grounds while Deng was being welcomed in the Rose Garden. Faced with the prospect of a prison sentence for this action (reportedly 241 years), Avakian went to Paris until 2003 when he returned to the USA to give his famous speech titled Revolution: Why it's Needed, Why It's Possible, and What's All About.
Bob Avakian is an outspoken atheist and proclaims that humanity needs "Liberation Without Gods".
He writes for the newspaper of his party, Revolution (formerly titled The Revolutionary Worker), and has written several books including:
- Preaching From a Pulpit of Bones - Two essays on morality.
- Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? - An analysis of what democracy is and means.
- Could We Really Win? - A talk about how revolution could be possible in a country like the U.S.
- Phony Communism is Dead; Long Live Real Communism - A response to claims of the "Death of Communism".
- The Immortal Contributions of Mao Tse-Tung - Articles summing up the importance of Mao Tse-Tung.
- Bullets From the Writings Speeches and Interviews of Bob Avakian (Little Silver Book) - A collection of quotes.
- For a Harvest of Dragons - A collection of essays.
- From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist ISBN 0976023628 - An autobiography.
He released an audio recording in 2001 entitled "Bob Avakian Speaks Out", which is available in two segments. [1] (http://rwor.org/s/cd-e.htm)
He also released a film, "Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, and What It's All About", which records a speech he gave in 2003.
External links
- Writings of Bob Avakian (http://www.rwor.org/chair_e.htm)
- Bob Avakian Speaks (http://www.bobavakian.net/)
- A book review of From Ike to Mao (http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs02052005.html)
- Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to communism (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/29/EBGBICCPDC1.DTL) from SFgate