First Published: The People’s Tribune (Online Edition), Vol. 21, No. 17, April 25, 1994.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
We need a name for our organization. “The National Organizing Committee” is a temporary name for our organization. We carried this into our founding convention and we have been using it for the past year. We need to choose a permanent name as soon as possible. This is a call for all NOC committees and members to submit written proposals to the Steering Committee by July 1, 1994.
We need your help in getting the following:
1. a new name for our organization;
2. a symbol for our organization.
We also need suggestions for organizational slogans, songs and a uniform (one or more articles of clothing).
You should use the following as guidelines for your political thinking and creative imagination:
1. The NOC program for action and education is what we agreed to at our convention and therefore on that basis we need a name that represents what we stand for.
2. We have a revolutionary history: the resistance of the Red Nations, the African Americans, the Mexican people, Puerto Ricans and the general working class movement and therefore we need a name based on our history that expresses our revolutionary striving.
3. We are people thrown into battle as revolutionary fighters from all aspects of the society and therefore we need a name that loudly proclaims our revolutionary outlook in a bold and militant way, especially to young fighters.
4. We need to base ourselves on the insurgent popular culture of those forced into poverty and victimized by police and prisons, especially when we transform the original language of rap poetry as well as the songs of the church, the trade union movement and the civil rights movement into forms of collective expression. (We need to sing at our meetings and find ways to renew our spirits).
5. We need to point to greater struggle and final victory in such a way that people grasp our name, symbol, slogans and songs as their own, deep in their bosom, with great emotional attachment, and with such fervor that they will go against great odds, holding high our banners with great optimism.