| abstract
| - Formed out of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU) and collectives that had been rooted in the Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II) faction of the Students for a Democratic Society after the latter fell apart in 1969.There were also discussions with several other Marxist-Leninist formations in the short-lived National Liaison Committee. The party is led by its elected National Chairman and primary theoretical spokesperson, Bob Avakian. It is one of the few surviving direct descendants of the New Left of the 1960s and 70s. It is by far the biggest, most active, and most widely-recognized group in the U.S. that identifies itself as Maoist. More generally, 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). Prior affiliated youth groups included the Attica Brigade and the Revolutionary Student Brigade. 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 Republican National Convention in 1984, leading to the Supreme Court case known as Texas v. Johnson. The RCP upheld the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles and nationally as a "rebellion" in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts. Then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates alleged that the RCP was involved in the riots. Los Angeles has long been one of the RCP's larger and more active branches. William "Mobile" Shaw was a local leader who recently passed and received public commendation from the party. As a result of criminal indictments stemming from a protest against Deng Xiaoping at the White House in 1979, Bob Avakian and other RCP leaders fled the United States and have been living in France and England ever since. Mostly as a result of this development, the RCP is active in both the United States and Western Europe. The protest, known colloquially as the Deng Demo, was part of re-aligning the international communist movement to recognize that socialism had been defeated in China, and that a capitalist-oriented leadership had seized power. The RCP helped found the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, an association of revolutionary communist parties and oraganizations from Afghanistan to Italy. The RCP is the main voice of support in the United States for fellow RIM participants leading People's War, including the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The RIM is a significant fraction of the international communist movement that sees the socialist period as one of continuing class struggle, with the role of a vanguard party in government to bring the lower classes increasingly into the administration of society as a whole. Major RIM parties, including the RCP and the CPN-M, argue that while the Soviet Union was essentially socialist under Stalin's government, that "absolutism" hindered the ability of the masses to rule, and to replenish the revolutionary ranks over time. Avakian in particular says that communists must acknowledge the real history, and "do better." The RCP has been active in a wide variety of social struggles, including but not limited to: the fight against police brutality and mass incarceration of African-Americans, women's reproductive rights, defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, opposition to the Bush "regime", and government authoritarianism.
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