User:DJ Silverfish/sandlot2

The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP, USA), is a American communist party founded in 1975. Bob Avakian is the National Chairman and primary theoretical spokesperson of the party, which is the most widely-recognized group in the U.S. that identifies itself as Maoist.

RCP members and supporters have been active in the groups Refuse and Resist (founded by C. Clark Kissinger) and the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. More recently, RCP members were the forefront in establishing the anti-war group Not in Our Name and World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime. Other initiated organizations have included La Resistencia and No Business As Usual. Young supporters join the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB)

Origins
The RCP was created from the fusion of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU) and other Marxist collectives, its origins lie mainly in the the Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II) faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. Prominent leaders at this time H. Bruce Franklin, Stephen Charles Hamilton, and Bob Avakian. The BARU split in 1971, when Franklin and other departing members founded the Venceremos Organization, which attempted to replicate the self-defense work of the Black Panthers in a multiethnic membership. BARU was oriented toward political and labor union work, seeking merger with other so-called new communist organizations with the goal of establishing a new, national communist party based on the democratic centralist model described in Lenin's What is to be Done?. After merging with East Coast and Mid West collectives, BARU shortened its name to Revolutionary Union.

There were unsuccessful discussions with several other Marxist-Leninist formations via the short-lived National Liason Committee, which included the Black Workers Congress and the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization. At the same time competing party-building efforts wor conducted by the October League

It is one of the few surviving direct descendants of the New Left of the 1960s and 70s.

History
After a series of unsuccessful unity meetings with nationality-based communist organizations called the National Liaison Committee, including the Black Workers Congress and theYoung Lords Party, the RU formed the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975. The new organization stated its goal was the building of a "party of a new type," inducing some other Marxists to criticize the move as premature.on the grounds of being either right or left opportunist The organization had a strong "workerist" orientation concentrated upon mass line, and many members became engaged in point of production organizing and trade union struggle.

Tensions between this tendency within the RCP and partisans of Avakian came to a head in 1977, coinciding with the death of Mao Zedong and subsequent leadership struggles between the Gang of Four and Hua Guofeng in the People's Republic of China. Party Vice Chairman, Mickey Jarvis, along with an estimated 30-40% of the membership and most of the Revolutionary Student Brigades formally left the RCP to form the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (RWHq). In subsequent polemics, the RCP has dubbed the RWHq faction "Mensheviks" after Lenin's opponents in the RSDLP.

Subsequent to the overthrow of the Gang of Four, the Chinese Communist Party acted to purge defenders of the Cultural Revolution and other percieved left-win critics. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in November 1979, signaling a further reproachment with the West, after Nixon's visit to China in 1971. The RCP organized demonstrations against the Chinese premier's vist to the White House. As a result of criminal indictments stemming from the protest against Xiaoping, Bob Avakian and other RCP leaders fled the United States and lived in France and England for many years. Mostly as a result of this development, the RCP is active in both the United States and Western Europe. The protest signaled a change in the thinking of the RCP, which now regarded socialism as defeated in China, and that a capitalist-oriented leadership had seized power. To demonstrate against U.S. expansionist policies they briefly occupied the Alamo.

Historically, one of the group's most notable actions was raising the Red Flag over the Alamo Mission in San Antonio on 20 March 1980. This was done by Damian Garcia, who was killed a month later, 22 April 1980, in a Los Angeles housing project. The RCP claims his murder was a result of his actions at the Alamo, and alleges LAPD involvement.

Another notable action was when a member of the RCP's youth organization, the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, burned a United States flag at the 1984 Republican National Convention, leading to the Supreme Court case known as Texas v. Johnson.

Theory
The RCP states that U.S. imperialism will never peacefully change and that the only way for the oppressed masses to ever liberate themselves is through waging a people's war and building a new socialist society on the ashes of capitalism.

Links
Not In Our Name Refuse and Resist World Can't Wait
 * October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation