From Ramona Dvořák, MD, Harvard Medical School*
I signed the "Engage!" statement because I am in agony over the fascist direction this country is headed and because of U.S. policies, which condemn millions of people in this country and around the world to horrific conditions of abuse and slaughter.  It is through the talks and writings of Bob Avakian that I have a more enlightened understanding of why I have always been troubled by how this system operates.  Bob Avakian "woke me up" to the realities of this system and its true nature as a brutal dictatorship, not a democracy, driven forward by a quest for global domination, at any cost.  He enhanced my knowledge about the oppression of Black people and Immigrants in this country and how this connects to the underlying economic structure which depends on this type of enslavement of the masses in order to survive.  He provoked my interest and intrigue in re-considering Communism with his "New Synthesis" of Communism and Socialism and his formulation of what these worlds would look like.  He breaks down complicated issues around religion and fundamentalist movements in ways I had never understood until now.  Although I do not agree with all of his ideas, for example, I struggle with the concept of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", and some of how he envisions the construct of "Truth", he has challenged me to conceive that revolution is the path that is needed and that a different kind of world is possible in which all people can live in dignity and without exploitation.  I feel an urgency for others to engage this work at a dark time in our history where there is an opening for millions of people who are also devastated by the events of the world as I am, to break loose from a lifetime of brainwashing about the "Good of America" in order to come forward to resist this government and its Imperialist crimes and bring about change that is for the good of all of humanity.

* Identification purposes only