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A challenge from two friends of Revolution Books:

My partner and I are issuing a $1,000 match challenge for the Revolution Books $10K Year End Fund Drive. We have been inspired by earlier match challenges, and moreover, as we approach the end of 2023 in the midst of this holiday season, we are also confronting key questions of where is humanity heading?

I remember growing up during the late ‘50s and ‘60s, with the social upsurges against injustice throughout the country, I began to question why were things the they were. My mother would say to me in Japanese: Shikata ga nai – “It cannot be helped” or “There’s nothing that can be done about it.”

Photo: Janet with her parents, c. 1949

I took it that she meant there were large forces at work and you – just a person – couldn’t do anything about it – just like the forcible uprooting of over 120,000 Japanese Americans – including my parents, their parents and sisters and brothers – in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. [For more information on this, get into the American Crime, Case #89: 120,000 People of Japanese Descent Put in U.S. Concentration Camps During World War 2 which you can read at revcom.us.]

I didn’t like that saying. It never sat right with me. That’s the way things are? And will be forever? How could that be? Really? There’s nothing to be done? Then the 60’s hit, and things changed and I changed.  

Photo: Janet's family at site of Topaz concentration camp, 2022

Last month my younger brother died and it was a jolt. We wanted to do something in his memory – for someone who was dedicated to the Japanese American community and its institutions which played a critical role in ensuring the viability of a community that had been so traumatized during the incarceration period. Furthermore, it had been just a year ago that my siblings and our families (21 of us) engaged in a pilgrimage to the Topaz concentration camp to experience where my parents’ families had been incarcerated during WW 2. So glad that we were all able to make the trip together.

With all this in mind, we wanted to find a way to honor his memory. And as we thought about it, it’s more than him or our family or this country for that matter. We wanted to and thought about donating to Revolution Books NYC. 

We are living in a rare time. There’s a tension in the air. Society is being ripped apart. They keep saying the country (or the world for that matter) is being split into two and there are only two choices: the Republicans and the Democrats. The fascist Republi-nazis on one side and the Democrat imperialist warmongers on the other. Neither of these “two” sides is for the people.

Yes, we are closing 2023 and some of us are able to celebrate and be with cherished family and friends while turmoil is all around us. To restate the above: We are also confronting key questions of where is humanity heading.

Yes, something can be, and needs to be, done. Yes, there is a way to go beyond our individual circles. Yes, there’s a way for everyone to take part.

Revolution Books exists as a beacon for a new society, for a new people, for not destroying the planet or humanity. It’s the place to go to learn about and figure out why the world is the way it is and the possibility of a radically different way the world could be – introducing people to Bob Avakian and the New Communism.



So, yes, step forward and match our $1,000 challenge to Revolution Books for all our people, for the planet, for humanity. This is for real. This is for now. Your donation makes a difference.

Janet and Steve Yip

Hidden History That Is

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