RevolutionZ
Ep 283 - Next American Revolution 1
Episode 283 of RevolutionZ, An Oral History of A Next American Revolution is the first episode of what hopes to be a Sequence of 14 episodes based on excerpts from a book in progress in which Miguel Guevara interviews 18 revolutionaries from a future parallel earth that is shifted 28 years forward from our own earth. The text excerpts will be published earlier in each week that each audio episode appears. The audio RevolutionZ episodes include the text material plus spontaneous reactions to it including questions, criticisms, elaborations, and clarifications that I deliver on my first hearing the material. This week has a foreword to the book by your RevolutionZ host, an introduction by Miguel Guevara the book's co-author, plus the book's first chapter which features a look forward to just after inauguration day 2048, plus many host interjections. What is the point of such a strange and risky project? To provide for discussion, evaluation, and refinement a realistic account of a possible next American Revolution's aims, methods, and lessons as discerned by a set of its very prominent and effective participants.
Episode 283 of RevolutionZ, An Oral History of A Next American Revolution is the first episode of what hopes to be a Sequence of 14 episodes based on excerpts from a book in progress in which Miguel Guevara interviews 18 revolutionaries from a future parallel earth that is shifted 28 years forward from our own earth. The text excerpts will be published earlier in each week that each audio episode appears. The audio RevolutionZ episodes include the text material plus spontaneous reactions to it including questions, criticisms, elaborations, and clarifications that I deliver on my first hearing the material. This week has a foreword to the book by your RevolutionZ host, an introduction by Miguel Guevara the book's co-author, plus the book's first chapter which features a look forward to just after inauguration day 2048, plus many host interjections. What is the point of such a strange and risky project? To provide for discussion, evaluation, and refinement a realistic account of a possible next American Revolution's aims, methods, and lessons as discerned by a set of its very prominent and effective participants.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 283rd episode and it's titled Next American Revolution 1. What is the 1 all about? Well, it means there is more to come. The context is that I asked Znet if it would publish a serialization of a book I am preparing that's tentatively titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution, and they agreed they would do so. So the plan is that they will publish a new excerpt each week, probably each Monday or Tuesday. I'm unsure of precisely how many there will be, but probably 14. Thus a considerable bunch. In addition, I plan to record an episode of Revolution Z the same week that each excerpt appears on ZNUT, to become available the immediately following Sunday. For each such derivative episode, I will present and also comment on the immediately prior article.
Speaker 1:And if that is already confusing, this idea gets even weirder. For one thing, the oral history is conducted by Miguel Guevara. After all, how could it be me asking questions about a time that hasn't yet arrived? I will at best be too old for that kind of thing when the time does come. And, for that matter, who is getting interviewed? Well, it has to be a group of revolutionaries of many backgrounds I think 18, who undertook the ongoing future revolution. So we meet the interviewees via their words, as they aren't here in our time for us to meet and personally hang out with now. So why am I presenting indeed channeling an oral history of a future revolution that this journalist, miguel Guevara, has produced with his various interviewees? Miguel's and my idea or hope hmm, who is channeling who here? Is that a description of an actual possible future revolution might overcome considerable current cynicism about the possibility of such a thing ever happening. Perhaps it might even provide some helpful inspiration and perhaps even some useful ideas. Why else do an episode? But how can I be preparing an oral history of something in the future produced by some guy from the future? That how is clearly a little tricky to answer. So I leave it to you to decide, or to figure out or to ignore the manner of that occurring or whatever. After all, how we got Covara's manuscript isn't itself a defining part of the future history that is the manuscript's subject matter.
Speaker 1:The salient point is that each excerpt article that Z posts and that I then use as material for a Revolution Z episode will appear on Znet some days before it becomes audible for you to hear on Revolution Z. You might even want to not only hear it once it becomes audible for you to hear on Revolution Z. You might even want to not only hear it once it becomes audible but to read it before it is audible, because I think when I speak it on Revolution Z, I will do a lot of interjecting. So if you are familiar with the text itself, then the commentary about it that I offer, conveying my sometimes caustic two bits, will be more interesting and maybe even entertaining. I'm going to try for that. The text that appears as articles on ZNet will always have a note at the top, so that people seeing the article will know the context of what they are looking at. It might be the fifth one, for example. So that text will go something like this, which I'm about to relay, but modified for each new entry. So it might be something like the following is an excerpt from an oral history of the next American Revolution. Please see all excerpts to date at our NAR page N-A-R, and the link will typically appear there On that page too. As things unfold, you may even find some interviews of the interviewer, miguel Guevara, or interviews of some interviewees conducted by others maybe me and there too will be links to Revolution Z episodes presenting the same content but with many critical or even confused and sometimes perhaps caustic interjections.
Speaker 1:Finally, I hope you will perhaps utilize Znet's Discord system to engage with me and with one another and to indicate your own experiences and your own reactions to, concerns about or criticisms of the material. For this first long but, I think, likely one of the shortest episodes of this large project, I offered my forward to the whole work, miguel's introduction to it and its first short chapter. So is this weird? I don't know, maybe it is. It is certainly ambitious and also a bit outrageous. So, okay, I think perhaps, yes, it is weird, and on many counts. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So here we go, except wait a minute. Though the articles as they appear on Znet will sum to a pretty long book, they are actually a draft of that pretty long book.
Speaker 1:I hope that the final rendition will get significantly better by way of your intervention. So comments within Patreon are welcome, and especially comments within Z's Discord system, which you can join from the ZNet site at znetworkorg. Indeed, when there are comments, questions or anything else, I may well use them without names in the subsequent episode and I will certainly reply in the Discord. On the other hand, if folks don't like this episode plan, let me know. I don't want to impose it. If it is too much, I will, in some weeks, add a second episode with a real guest, bearing on current real times.
Speaker 1:Okay, now let's get started. First, we have a short forward by me, written in 2024, that goes like this In his own United States, in his own 2044, miguel Guevara began questioning a group of prominent revolutionaries about their revolution for a participatory society, abbreviated RPS. From the resulting interviews, guevara stitched together an oral history that is here titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. I interject Okay, is Guevara channeling me or am I channeling him To me? Another weirdness it seems like the latter Episode continues. Guevara lives on an alt-earth whose initial divergence from our earth shuffled people, morphed names, tweaked events and shifted time. 28 years. Alt-earth's 2016 closely resembled our 2016, but when we endured our 2016, alt-earth enjoyed its 2044. Our future won't mimic their past, but could their experience inform ours? Guerrero thought it could. I interject.
Speaker 1:A friend asked what the hell has prodded you to try to write a whole book like this. Well, right or wrong. I thought, and I hope, that this strange format might better convey how a possible revolution might come to pass, and thus why winning is not a pipe dream but a real task. Could I do it? Not sure, but I have done hundreds of interviews, so I thought I just have to do them. Wearing other people's shoes, about a future situation. Episode continues and I blink.
Speaker 1:Ago now, in our own, 2016, 52 activists and about a thousand additional advocates initially signed a statement titled we Stand for Peace and Justice. It went like this we stand for peace and justice. We see an organized, anti-worker, anti-minority, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-lgbtq, anti-ecological, pro-imperial, incarceration-minded, surveillance-employing, authoritarian reaction proliferating around the world. It calls itself right-wing populist, but it is arguably more accurately termed neo-fascist. It preys on fear as well as often warranted anger. It manipulates and misleads with false promises and outright lies. It is trying to create an international alliance. Courageous responses are emerging and will proliferate around, issue after issue and in country after country. These responses will challenge the unworthy emotions, the vicious lies and the vile policies. They will reject right-wing world back and repression, but to ward off an international, multi-issue, reactionary assault. Shouldn't we be internationalist and multi-issue? Shouldn't we reject reaction but also seek positive, forward-looking, inspiring progress To those ends.
Speaker 1:We stand for the growing activism on behalf of progressive change around the world and their positive campaigns for a better world, and we stand against the rising reactionary usurpers of power around the world and their lies, manipulations and policies. We stand for peace, human rights and international law against the conditions, mentalities, institutions, weapons and dissemination of weapons that breed and nurture war and injustice. We stand for health care, education, housing and jobs against war and military spending. We stand for internationalism, indigenous and native rights and a democratic foreign policy against empire dictatorship and political and religious fundamentalism. We stand for justice against economic, political and cultural institutions that promote huge economic and power inequalities, corporate domination, privatization, wage slavery, racism, gender and sexual hierarchy and the devolution of human kindness and wisdom under assault by celebrated authority and enforced passivity. We stand for democracy and autonomy against authoritarianism and subjugation. We stand for prisoner rights against prison profiteering. We stand for participation against surveillance. We stand for freedom and equity against repression and control. We stand for national sovereignty against occupation and apartheid. We oppose overtly brutal regimes everywhere. We oppose less overtly brutal but still horribly constricting electoral subversion, government and corporate surveillance and mass media manipulation. We stand for equity against exploitation by corporations of their workers and consumers and by empires of subordinated countries. We stand for solidarity of and with the poor and the excluded everywhere. We stand for diversity against homogeneity and for dignity against racism. We stand for multicultural, internationalist community rights against cultural, economic and social repression of immigrants and other subordinated communities in our own countries and around the world. We stand for gender equality against misogyny and machismo. We stand for sexual freedom against sexual repression, homogenization, homophobia. Freedom against sexual repression, homogenization, homophobia and transphobia. We stand for ecological wisdom against the destruction of forests, soil, water, environmental resources and the biodiversity on which all life depends. We stand for ecological sanity against ecological suicide. We stand for a world whose political, economic and social institutions foster solidarity, promote equity, maximize participation, celebrate diversity and encourage full democracy. We will not be a least common denominator, single issue or single focus coalition. We will be a massive movement of movements with a huge range of concerns, ideas and aims. United by what we stand for and against, we will enjoy and be strengthened by shared respect and mutual aid. While we together reject sectarian hostilities and posturing, we stand for and pledge to work for peace and justice.
Speaker 1:That we stand statement got about 120,000 signatures overall in a quite short time but didn't yield a broad, continuing US project. However, black Lives Matter, the earlier Occupy movement, the Sanders campaign, me Too and the Women's March, ongoing anti-war resistance, persistent sanctuary organizing vigorous anti-Trump resistance, wide and persistent global warming activism and the resistance to the Israel-US war on Palestine have evidenced the likelihood of more to come. I interject we stand. Is it real or fiction? Who's time Episode continues? Don't ask how. I have no idea, but I have the privilege of channeling Guevara's oral history, which echoes and greatly enlarges and acts upon sentiments like those in the we stand statement. Can their work, relayed to us from their revolutionary alternative future, inspire advance in our current world? Time waits for no one and time will answer. So in the article on Z published this past Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Next came an introduction written by Miguel Ernesto Guevara in 2049. A quarter century ago, in 2024, another in a long sequence of intermittent massive upsurges took hold and grew. For me, miguel, in my world, it was uniquely historic because, as summer came, the radicalization didn't devolve but only paused and after a time came back. For you, in 2024, being inside it, watching it, cheering it, worrying it, you may wonder. Unlike so many other rebellions, how might this one persist. Indeed, how might this one go from time-bound to timeless? How might it go from narrowly focused to broadly comprehensive? How might it go from rebellion against injustice that afflicts some to revolution for justice that liberates all? Good questions? I know some folks who found some answers. My name is Miguel Ernesto Guevara. I interject. What's with the name game. You will see as this proceeds, that I borrowed names, often concatenations of one real person's first and another real person's second, for Miguel and for each of the interviewees, a way to give shout-outs.
Speaker 1:The episode continues, starting in the 1960s. In their teens, my parents sought a fundamentally better world. They were courageous activists who named me to honor their hero, che, and probably to prod me as well. They stuck true to their desires, but a lifetime that felt to them. So they told me. Like barely a blink of an eye later, they witnessed Trump's first triumph. As I watched them watch Trump, I felt that they felt something must have been seriously wrong about their prior activist path. Their glory days, truth be told, had not led to the glorious results they sought. They died wondering how today's generations would do better. What would their children's success look like? What would a better world include? Next? American Revolution is an oral history of a victorious period running from May 2026 to May 2049.
Speaker 1:I questioned interviewees about their project to build a revolutionary participatory society. I then relayed their story in a book, which you now have. How did that happen? Damn to find out. In any case, might their history's lessons broadly fulfill at least some elements of your future. Might their commitments inform your commitments To those ends. In our interview sessions I tried to elicit generally applicable lessons. You judge. If I succeeded I interject, let me know, please. Episode continues.
Speaker 1:Che, for whom I was named, sought to become a doctor until his oppressive times waylaid him to become an inquisitive and socially learned guerrilla fighter who led courageous Cuban troops to overcome economic and social injustice. Despite my having Che's name, I dreamed only that I would write novels, but it was not to be. Despite desire and considerable hard work, I found that I lacked sufficient imagination to write engaging fiction. I was into words, but words were not into me. So I shed a tear, had a drink and figured okay, no problem, I'll write fact, I'll be a journalist.
Speaker 1:I got a beat and a boss, and from 2034 to 2040, I wrote topical essays for a Latin American news project. I pegged each story to news cycle excitement. I offered facts. I avoided lessons. I offered names, dates and happenstances. I avoided whys, wherefroms and whereto's. I wrote about 1,500 words, 300 times In some.
Speaker 1:I followed the rules of my job and I got blindingly bored. I wasn't on a chain gang, but nor was I blissfully free and, like my namesake, injustice waylaid me too. I quit my job and blundered about for a time, but in early 2041, I read an oral history of the 1960s. It wasn't a brilliant book, not least because the interviewer's questions were only mildly inspiring. Because of those flawed questions, the interviewee's answers focused more on themselves than on 60s movements, motives and methods. That was a big misstep, at least to my eyes. But even so, the interviewees did describe, reveal, engage and teach the limited substance that they prioritized. Their chattiness and persistence moved me. I didn't particularly like the book, but I did like the medium, and indeed my having discovered oral history gradually overcame my boredom and in 2043, I began asking participants of the then-ongoing US Revolution for a Participatory Society, abbreviated RPS, to recount their stories for the oral history you were posed to read.
Speaker 1:I asked them what did you do? Why did you do it? What were the problems? What were the successes. What lessons did you learn?
Speaker 1:I didn't so much seek information about individuals' lifelines as I sought information about their collective undertaking. The interviewees were my vehicle. Their thoughts, goals and methods were my focus. I was interested in lesson lines, not lifelines. But time exists and I had a problem. When would it start, when would it end? In a process as complex and multifaceted as a social revolution, there really is no start date, no end date. But I had to start sometime and I had to end at another time. It wasn't entirely a free choice. My interviewees lived and experienced what they lived and experienced, and that was not everything, from time endlessly past to time endlessly future. So asking them how they got started pretty much defined start times. That problem was solved by them. However, to end the story was another matter. I was interviewing while it was still happening. It could go on and on. I needed a way to not quite, but almost arbitrarily, end the oral history.
Speaker 1:When to choose, revolutions can be seen as having phases First, reaching out and accruing support. Second, contesting with the powers that be. Third, constructing what will be new. The three phases come sort of in that order, except it isn't all one and then all another and finally, all of the third. Rather, in revolutions, all three happen from start to end, but the weight of each and the whole changes. First consciousness raising, then contestation, then construction is central or preponderant, but all always happen. There is even a name for the third phase transition.
Speaker 1:Transition has arrived broadly when construction of society's new institutions becomes central, still winning people over with consciousness raising, still fighting residual elements that want the past to return and to try to block the future. On reaching transition, the emphasis becomes constructing the future. When does that happen? Roughly, when the revolution has attained so much social power that it is really driving events and the past is merely fighting it from outside. In other words, when the revolution is no longer subordinate to a state and its forces of repression, when the state, now really the polity, has become just a part of the revolution, when the state has become a changing part, a modest part, but no longer an enemy. And when is that? In our oral history, it is when the revolutionary participatory society has risen to creator in most of society and in particular in governance. A brief opening section tells about that milestone place, that pause before transition, which itself occurs after our oral history.
Speaker 1:So will you now read what emerged? Will you hear my interviewees' words and relate them to your own circumstances? I found the interviewees to be a grand group. They were like you, but already had future stories with happy endings arriving after often tumultuous starts. My interviewees identified precursors, assessed early activities and described aims. They discussed revolutionary participatory society's birth, emergence and maturation. They recounted its ups and downs and they envisioned its trajectory to the point of transition. And, yes, that means that you already know right here at the outset that when this book ends, they are headed for really truly fully winning. Now there is a drama killer, no cliffhanger, but that's okay. Drama isn't my aim. I interject Another weirdness no drama, yes, no drama. Please read the interviews to come. Like you live in Miguel's time, even as you hopefully evaluate them in context of our time and our possibilities. Episode continues.
Speaker 1:The interviews who speak here evaluate RPS's early efforts in health, housing, urban relations, economics, entertainment, sports, religion, law and media. They describe how RPS's policies emerged. They report why disagreements arose. They recount how they resolved disagreements. The interviewees describe RPS's gender, race, class, international and ecological policies. They assess RPS's approach to solidarity, leadership and correcting its own inadequacies. They show by example how they jettisoned their own personal baggage and built their own collective solidarity. The interviewees talk about RPS's shadow government and its shadow society programs. They describe RPS's social vision and its strategic principles. They address ecology, health, legality, education, media, economy, city life, family life and elections. They describe their new society being conceived and struggling to win life. They share its lessons. Their stories often get personal and sometimes even dramatic.
Speaker 1:But this is not a revolutionary manual or a textbook, nor is it a typical novel with one or two central characters who undergo personal travail to later emerge victorious or annihilated. This is an oral history. It describes the interviewee's future time in hopes their vivid experiences will help others to navigate their present times. This oral history is not a travelogue. It is not a trip up technology lane. It doesn't predict and excavate details of how to deal with AI or with energy and research use, much less does it describe fashions and fads. It does not highlight contingent, highly malleable choices, much less review future music or describe future inventions. It isn't about future specifics. It is about future possibilities. It is about plausible revolutionary thoughts, feelings, processes and outcomes. It is about winning a better future.
Speaker 1:I, miguel, questioned the interviewees, sometimes one at a time and other times two or three or more at a time. I chose questions, I mixed and matched answers into topical chapters. The chapters offer lessons but not a precise timeline. People's answers reflect their own views and priorities. What they talk about skips forward and backward in time. I interject Do you watch TV and movies? Have you noticed how often they do flashbacks and then jump forward? I think it is because the directors think the audience needs to flit around to keep its attention from waning sort of like multitasking For me here. I think it is just that the interviewees are each spontaneously examining the same processes, but each in their own ways and with their own emphases.
Speaker 1:The episode continues, miguel again. The interviewees mainly mean to relay the essential visionary and strategic insights that their experience rested on and taught them. The interviewees hope readers will refine, enlarge, augment and then use the emergent lessons. The interviewees are therefore the authors, but so are you. This is their story, but far from a complete history, I only channeled the interviewee's words to you for you to edit as you see fit. I interject.
Speaker 1:I wonder how many who read the article a few days ago noticed the weird last sentence of the above paragraph in Miguel's forward. Truth be told, I only just noticed it, but I will leave it. The timeline got mixed up. Miguel continues. But wait, there is a weird complication. You were about to read these interviews decades before they occurred and even before when the events they recounted to me occurred. You have my gratitude for your patience with the dissonance of that. I know it may make their words feel a little strange, tenses may get confused. Your time, their time, whose time? But please don't let details like that sidetrack you. Ignore that what follows isn't in your history books. The thing to consider, even to concentrate on, is the plausibility, dignity and effectivity of their struggle. This is not an oral history of detailed events, technology, conflicts or even people. Such content appears only enough to convey the possibility, soul and content of a possible next American revolution. This is an oral history of that I interject.
Speaker 1:Next came the first chapter of the oral history titled Looking Ahead, in which President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Curie very briefly discuss their recent election experiences. And first there is a note from Miguel Wait. Who the hell begins an oral history presenting content from its last, or from at least very nearly its last, recorded session? Me, I do. Miguel Guevara. I warned you in my introduction that the timeline might get a little confusing. I even apologized for it.
Speaker 1:I conducted one interview after another over quite a few years, so I started the first interview well before I finished the last More. The interviews do not span the whole revolution but only a part, albeit pretty much and right off. To be really clear that the point of it all isn't will they win or not? Here in Chapter 1 I offer some excerpts from one of the last interview sessions that certainly suggest total victory is coming. It was recorded mostly in the Oval Office in Washington DC in 2049, where the new Revolutionary Participatory Society president and vice president offered some remarks on their new situations just after being inaugurated and at a kind of pausing point, a kind of takeoff point for all that would then follow the continuing acts of RPS, the construction of the sought new society, and now come the questions and answers of the first chapter.
Speaker 1:I, miguel, began. Mr President, are you kidding me? The new Vice President, celia Curie, interrupted Jeez Miguel, call him Malcolm. I do, we all do. But, madam Vice President, miguel, seriously, I am not a statue, I am not a label, I am Celia. I interject. Can you guess the origin of Celia and Malcolm's names? Or are you as confused at this point as I am, episode continues.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, celia. Malcolm, what a pleasure to celebrate your victory. How do you feel? Eager, cautious, but, miguel, ideas won not us. But you and Celia traversed the country, you campaigned, you won, right, celia? No, not right. Yes, malcolm, and I walked, rode and flew a lot, we talked a lot, we got horse talking, sure, but millions of volunteers won, miguel. Do you remember at the convention after choosing candidates, when we were celebrating and Malcolm spoke, and I think I can repeat it, but, malcolm, they were your lines. So you repeat it, malcolm, okay, well, I think it went like this. I think I said 35 years ago, someone running and winning for president with my views was an impossible dream. Then Bernie Sanders brought hope, black Lives Matter exploded, activism flourished Me too. Too Horrible. Covid, incredible Palestine support and on to RPS. And here we are. I interject. Is Malcolm right Ten years ago? Could you dream this? How about now? How about after you read the whole oral history? Episode continues.
Speaker 1:Celia Miguel asked what are your first reactions to the Oval Office? Look at these portraits. My first reaction is the same as anyone with eyes. We need to redecorate, I interject. Would removing a lot of mass murderers from the walls to put up portraits of the namesakes of the interviewees. Be historical savagery or delayed but desirable justice, you decide.
Speaker 1:Episode Miguel continues Ancilia. What about immediate program? It will, of course, be what our supporters desire Hold a constitutional convention and build local assemblies to revamp government. Enlarge the Supreme Court to reflect society. Build housing, schools and clinics. Drastically downsize the military. Pardon many, many prisoners. Renovate judicial procedures pardon many, many prisoners. Renovate judicial procedures further. Innovate energy and all production to obtain ecological balance. Further restrict AI support unending workplace takeovers and then more. Test and refine new allocation. Empower and federate neighborhood assemblies. Demolish income and wealth inequity. Tax and repossess. Advance real self-management. Follow the will of the people. Follow the will of the people.
Speaker 1:Rps has waged a quarter-century journey of ceaseless struggle. Rps has reached a new stage. It is now time to build new institutions. It is time to build our new society. We certainly won't let up now.
Speaker 1:Malcolm, do you agree? Do you feel pressure for RPS to do all that? Do you feel fear? I feel excited tension. We need to construct, even as we win over some who have yet to agree with liberation, and also overcome residual resistance. Imagine the impact this movement, this revolution, can have. And yes, I feel some fear Ignorant government choices, like ignorant choices in other ongoing construction, could slow change and yes, I do fear that. But good government choices could speed up change. So we will seek that. This is just one more notable flex point in our journey and we will flex forward, of course, in tune with the health workers' advisory to do no harm and the ecologist's precautionary principle. We will have to do good and also avoid damage.
Speaker 1:Miguel asks Malcolm is there sufficient unity of will and vision to accomplish that? At RPS's beginning, do you remember how friends, workmates and relatives often feuded? Rps members were few and we often clashed with non-RPS neighbors and workmates and even with each other? We want, no, we want. We all endured such conflicts, even on our own families. To advance we had to arouse hope and raise consciousness. We had to overcome many differences, not with each seeking to be right and to prove others wrong, but with everyone seeking to move forward effectively. And we had to do that while high water was rising and hard rain was falling everywhere. It was a daunting but not impossible task and we did that with our strikes and sit-ins. We did it at immigration, detention centers, in courts, jails and at military bases. We did it in workplaces, schools, neighborhoods and homes. As RPS membership grew and our vision developed and spread, we initiated our own new community centers and daycare programs. We created new schools and changed laws. Rps planted seeds of a better future with our new projects. But we also fought inside existing institutions and we won initially modest but steadily escalating victories there. We also endured many losses and suffered many setbacks. Of course there was repression and conflict, but mostly RPS marched forward. Celia and I and all of us learned from grassroots efforts every day. The movement was the star, the movement was the school, the population was the teacher. We were just precocious students.
Speaker 1:Miguel asked do you remember? Just after election day I was in New York City hearing Alexandra Villeen introduce the city's mayor, rps member, bill Hampton? He wore an RPS hat and looked elated. A massive crowd looked upon a New Year's Eve-like stage. A banner waved another world is ours. I interject More interviewee names. Can you guess their origin?
Speaker 1:Episode continues as Malcolm answers. Yes, I remember, but Celia and I were already in Washington, not New York, though. We saw videos and they were wonderful. Miguel interrupts. Alexandra was the emcee and she said here we are, inauguration day, another milestone on the way toward fulfilling our aims in every workplace, school, neighborhood, city and state. I give you your mayor, bill Hampton. Celia takes up the account. Yes, and Bill reached out and swept his arms and eyes across the massive, buoyant New Year's Eve-like crowd. And I remember Bill said politics used to be competitive and elitist.
Speaker 1:It was money-grubbing, hypocritical bureaucracy. As mayor in recent years, I struggled to reduce its insanities, often to little avail. Politics used to be disconnected professionals dictating from above. Now you all demand and enact. Now politics is you.
Speaker 1:When I saw the video as governor of California this is Celia I knew exactly what Bill was talking about. Even at that point he had me leaking happy tears. And then he got to everyone. He described to a million in the street, maybe more, and to so many more by video, how, as a child, as he put it I suffered nightmares of big planes silently, ominously, almost gently, dropping massive parachutes and beneath each chute, swaying to a devil's dirge, huge cylindrical nuclear coffins drifted down. I interject. Truth be told, I did have that dream too as a kid, back in the age of duck and cover. I guess maybe I lent it to Bill. Episode continues.
Speaker 1:The crowd went silent and Bill smiled. But I woke up. He said. We all woke up. We got into each other's nightmares of war and climate collapse and fascist violence and we turned them into colorful, inspiring dreams of freedom. Visions replaced fears and now we celebrate a new milestone and tomorrow we will carry on. All of you are now architects of our collective future. I interject After mildly morphing his hard rain reference a bit back. Malcolm slid in another. I'll let you be in my dream if you'll let me be in yours. Episode continues. Malcolm, what were you thinking?
Speaker 1:Just after the election, I had my own childhood nightmares. I used to see cattle, cars full of human corpses, thousands of them stretching across the country east to west and back Society's killing train. And so when I watched people cheering Bill in the street, I thought these people are not corpses, they are not mourning, they are celebrating, they are ready to build a new, far, far more worthy world. And I said at the time, since Inauguration Day was still coming, at that point, rebels and rakes, outcasts, the gentle, the kind, poets and painters, bricklayers and truck drivers, doctors and dreamers, saints and sinners, those incarcerated in jails and those incarcerated in boring subordination, those in struggle and those still getting in we all need a moment's rest, a moment to celebrate as we set out to win still greater victories to come. I remember Celia said history has shackled society's citizens so long that many millions now want to dance in the streets and that she wanted to as well. And me. I did too, and I am no dancer. I interject. Whole lot of borrowing going on there.
Speaker 1:Episode continues, malcolm says. And so for inauguration. To accommodate so many celebrants, we held events in all big cities and in hundreds of counties. We danced to decades of struggle, we danced to battling on all of us and we now must undertake transition east to west and north to south. All of us Go back to the start. A rider on the storm. Yikes, too many interjections, too much confusion. I hope not. And yet if, going forward, you read the articles on Znet before I audio-episoded them here on Revolution Z, I think the interjections will spice things up, clarify a bit and amuse, or at least I hope so. They definitely amuse me and I just want to have some fun too. And that said, references and all this is Michael Albert signing off until next time when Miguel and I and some additional interviewees will return with NAR2, n-a-r-2, first Breaths.