RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 351 - The Wind Cries Freedom - A New Sequence of Episodes: Intro and Chapter 1
Episode 351 of RevolutionZ introduces a special journey as Miguel Guevara and his 18 Interviewees convey chapters from "The Wind Cries Freedom," an as yet unpublished novel that reimagines how revolutionary change might unfold in America.
The novel is thus an oral history of a future American revolution. As such the book is fiction but it works hard to sound like (future) historical fact. It is personal and dramatic but it doesn't emphasize entertainment or character exploration. It instead taps dramatic personal stories to convey the contours of revolutionary change by reporting how a movement called Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS) transforms an imagined near-future America.
This first episode in the sequence presents the introduction and the first chapter of the book. We meet Miguel Guevara, whose activist parents named him after Che, and who undertakes this oral history project to understand how "the next American Revolution is succeeding. After Guevara explains the logic and motives that guide his questions, Chapter One jumps to near the book's endpoint to recount a conversation with then newly-elected President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Noether who reflect on their electoral victory and on what they deem the far more important prior grassroots activism and organization as well as the movement's plans for continued transformation. There are twenty four more chapters to address all that, from conversations to marches, sit-ins, blockades, strikes, occupations, and more.
The Wind Cries Freedom weaves together personal stories with strategic insights. It explores RPS emerges and grows. How its activists organized and faced and overcame obstacles through collective action rather than individual heroism.
The oral history explores a vision of revolutionary change thought the experiences and feelings of its practitioners. It challenges us to see ourselves not as passive observers but as potential makers of history. I hope listeners will share your thoughts and questions via email or in the ZNet Discord channel. Miguel assembled testimonies. Whether and how the imagined future's lessons will be assimilated, corrected, augmented, and otherwise refined to aid our current efforts is up to us.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 351st episode and it marks the start of a series of related entries, sort of like. I did a few on AI and, of course earlier many on participatory economics and no bosses, for example. So what will this series be About?
Speaker 1:Eight years ago I wrote something I called RPS 2044. It was an oral history of a future American revolution RPS was short for Revolutionary Participatory Society as described by various characters who helped conduct it and who experienced it. As such, the book was fiction, a novel, of course, but it was a novel designed to read like non-fiction, like a factual account of a possible future history. So I wrote it and then felt hold on. Ideally, this shouldn't be a book, it should be a film. So I immediately sought to make it over into a script. That was a bit of hubris, but nonetheless it required considerable learning, but for better or worse, I did it. Then I tried to get Hollywood to pay attention to it and indeed to make it happen. That was quite the experience, really quite the experience, but I ultimately failed. Really quite the experience, but I ultimately failed. So it sat the idea and the execution up to that time it all sat. Then, about two years ago, I turned back to it. I decided to retain the idea of an oral history but to refine or augment and fully rewrite the text, add and delete, change, and I did so. So now I have a book currently titled the Wind Cries Freedom.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is a Hendrix reference that I have to try to get published. Honestly, I think the odds are pretty slim, but we'll see. The book is 150,000 words. I am told by people who know the current publishing world better than I do that unless I cut it by a third or maybe even more than that, I have no chance. Few publishers would even look at something so long I am told, much less wind up accepting it. I have to admit that I find that both sad and utterly ridiculous. Some kind of length maximum allowed Even hard to believe. Some kind of length maximum allowed Even hard to believe For me.
Speaker 1:The idea that there should be a maximum length allowed for new fiction writers what nonsense that is. Imagine a publisher saying we love the idea, we love the substance, because we know your work and we take the worth of its ideas as a given, but it is just too long, not for us. Two problems, if we assume substantive merit, can nonetheless arise from length. Perhaps people won't pick it up to read it and perhaps production will cost too much to accept. Those are the two possible problems, I think. But actually, if you think about it it becomes obvious.
Speaker 1:It is the assertion that few, if any, would read such a long work by a first-time novelist, much less by a first-time novelist. They don't know. That is paramount. What a sad thing for anyone to think, much less a publisher, much less for a publisher to accept as an unchallengeable norm. I, the publisher, like it, believe it's important, but I don't think anybody will read it, so I won't publish it.
Speaker 1:Regardless, I have this book in hand. It is fundamentally new now and quite unusual, as well as quite long and, of course, highly political. So I need to send it around and I will albeit thinking that success is unlikely. So I need to send it around and I will albeit thinking that success is unlikely. That being the case, while I await what may turn out to be publisher silence or maybe something better, what next? Well, to decide, I have to ask myself is this any good? Is it readable? Does it say things worth saying. The goal of it is not to entertain per se. It is not a novel in that sense. It doesn't mean to titillate nor to induce laughter, though that would not be unwelcome. Nor is it a novel that mainly tries to explore the human condition. It is instead a novel that means to read like, feel like and affect like an oral history. In this case, it means to make plausible the idea that in our future we can, you can, revolutionize society. So it is a novel that means to convey lessons regarding how others admittedly hypothetical others did just that, how they made a revolution.
Speaker 1:There is an interviewer Of course there is. It's an oral history. His name is Miguel Guevara. There are 18 interviewees. They have 18 names, 36 counting both first and last, and many others are also drawn from history, like Miguel Guevara, not to replicate or to mimic historical characters, but just to acknowledge and pay respects. The point is, however, that the interviewees are a diverse bunch. They have different origins, histories and priorities. They tell their stories. As a result, they bring some drama and some human condition, but that is decidedly not the priority focus. This is not an oral history of the participants. It is an oral history of a revolutionary process. The interviewees do not mainly present their own life lessons, though some do naturally arise as the interviewees describe their revolutionary thoughts and actions. This is an oral history of social change lessons, and the lessons are front and center throughout.
Speaker 1:So why am I going to construct many coming episodes and present them every so often, though not every week, based on segments of the Wind Cries Freedom? I have chosen to give that a try because I think these hypothetical interviewees have lots of not only interesting, because I think these hypothetical interviewees have lots of not only interesting, not only moving, but also highly relevant things to say, and because they say these things in a manner likely quite different and hopefully highly engaging and congenial to your ears. The interviewees address us from the future. Their lessons are relevant to our current and coming choices. At times I will likely, I suspect, maybe interject spontaneously a bit of my own reactions to their words. That may occur because in reading it to you, I realize there is something I should cut or something I should add, and I then comment on that, or because I am simply provoked to evaluatively react. But I will try to keep my interjecting to a minimum so that what you hear is what the book currently includes, though if you have ideas for changes, that would be very welcome.
Speaker 1:My guiding idea was to try to present a fictional account that reads like revealed truths and that will, as a result, speak to people who doubt that another world is possible, or who believe it is possible but deep down doubt we can ever win it, or who think we can conceivably win it but wonder how, wonder what kinds of steps might succeed. Fair warning According to my word processor, the book is currently a little over 150,000 words. Episodes of Revolution Z have been up to now, at most about 10,000 words, and often half that. The book has an introduction and 25 chapters. Since the oral history episodes will run interspersed with other episodes with guests or on other topics. This sequence may be with us for quite some time, perhaps even a year or possibly more. So I hope you find it worthy. I also hope you will sometimes be moved to email me to let me know what you do find worthy and what you could do without, or even find damaging or wrong. Find worthy and what you could do without, or even find damaging or wrong. You could also pose any questions in the Znet Discord channel and I will certainly reply as best I can.
Speaker 1:Okay enough, spontaneous prologue To begin. Here is the short introduction and also the relatively short first chapter to the Wind Cries Freedom. The introduction reads like this Before my eyes, in the shadows of a dying empire, a new wave of collective awakening stirred, tentative, fragile but unmistakably alive. I watched as one watches first sparks in a dry brush, uncertain if they will ignite a blaze or die in the wind. How would those who seek a better world go from time-bound to time-less, from narrow to comprehensive, from rebellion to revolution? Could their history reveal paths to another world? Was our Revolutionary Participatory Society, rps, applicable for more than just our time and our place? This is, I interject, an introduction by Miguel Guevara to this oral history written in the future. I am Miguel Guevara.
Speaker 1:In the storm-tossed 1960s, my future parents exited their childhood and threw themselves into struggle. They dared to envision a better world. They didn't sit on a sideline. They didn't idly dream, they fought. They named me Miguel, but stamped upon me a nickname heavier even than blood Che. Perhaps they sought to provoke me, or perhaps to remind themselves, but I never wore it. I go by Miguel, though I write rather like Che did.
Speaker 1:My parents held tightly to their dreams. But precious time, relentless and cruel, interfered. Did my parents and their predecessors fail because the quest was impossible? Or did they fail because they made mistakes, were inadequately prepared or were even misdirected? Whichever, it was, a grotesque monument to a society drunk on power and greed ascended. I watched them, watch Trump. I saw their souls recoil. They gave their youth energy and ideals to their cause. Then Trump made runes of their aspirations. Their revolution did not bear the fruit they had imagined, not right off, at any rate. My parents died in the thick of Trump's second reign, their eyes searching the horizon, wondering what would their child's success look like? What would a better world include? They believed it would come. But was that delusion? Was it wishful thinking? Was my own confidence just their madness lodged in my brain, surviving beyond its expiration date, or what? My parents never spoke to me about my name and I never asked, despite its influence.
Speaker 1:I didn't seek armed struggle or militant banners. I sought to sculpt fiction. I wanted to move hearts, but no matter how much effort I expended, fiction didn't yield. I did not have what fiction required Fiction. My first love refused me. I wept, I drank and I said Fine, if I cannot invent, I will reveal. I will write truth, and truth, it turned out, welcomed me, albeit slowly.
Speaker 1:I found a job, a beat and a deadline. For five years I poured ink onto the pages of a Latin American news project. I anchored each essay to the frenzy of the news cycle. I offered facts, never lessons. Names, dates, events, yes, but not wise. Not where it came from, not where it was headed. Over 500 times I delivered 1,500 to 3,000 words, each word wrapped in the moment, never stretching beyond its own packing date. I obeyed my job's rules. The Times presented endless crimes to chronicle. I chronicled and my soul went dry. I hadn't worn chains, but nor had I marched free. So I stumbled away into odd jobs and a year of disconnected days.
Speaker 1:Then I read an oral history of the 1960s. Its questions were passable but not piercing. Its answers hovered around individual memories, not the movement's pulse. The interviews did not reveal deeper motives. They did not convey guiding methods. They offered no harvest of lessons to further refine. They reminded me of my earlier essays just facts.
Speaker 1:Then I read another oral account whose interviewee was Fidel, my namesake's partner in arms. This too did not lift the curtain on collective process. It did not sing the song of vision or strategy. It narrated events, not methods. It recounted battles, not purpose. Yet something in those two oral histories stirred me. There wasn't an intimacy to offering voices untarnished by academic filters, and so I began to interview those then participating in our time's struggles. I asked what did you do? Why did you do it? What were the problems? What were the successes and failures? What did you learn? I did not chase the details of their personal lives or even of the events. I sought motives, I queried methods, I emphasized goals. I wanted to reveal lessons. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Revolutions are messy, but even in their chaos there is rhythm. First, revolutions awaken the people. They reach out, open eyes, raise consciousness, ignite hearts. Then, with some but far from all people assembled, they challenge power. They confront, disrupt, dismantle and contest. Finally, power subdued, they construct, they give form to the future that they earlier only dared to dream. These three phases consciousness raising, contestation and construction do not follow neatly one after the other. They intertwine, all occur. Always, though, the emphasis shifts what begins as mostly consciousness-raising becomes mostly conflict and finally settles on mostly creation. The third, more creative phase, transition, becomes a new battlefield. It takes hold when the forces of transformation no longer mainly resist current evil but instead mainly establish new life. The state, a cold machine built to serve capital and hierarchy, transforms to become a collective organ of people's will. Transition begins when the past, still fighting, is no longer in command and the new begins to direct history.
Speaker 1:In the interviews I gathered, my partners in struggle described where they came from and especially the situations that gave rise to their radicalization. They reflected on their early actions, the sparks and stumbles that began their march. They charted the birth of their organization, revolutionary Participatory Society, or RPS, not as a lonely idea but as a living movement. They chronicled how it emerged, faltered, regrouped, matured and surged. They gave witness to its organizational heartbeat, daily work, victories and wounds. They tracked its evolution up to the beginning of transition, along the way they addressed gender, race, class, power, ecology and internationalism. They explored how RPS reached toward solidarity and what it demanded from leadership. Perhaps most important, they examined how the revolution turned its gaze inward, how it faced its own flaws and contradictions, not to excuse or bemoan, but to overcome.
Speaker 1:They offered stories not of purity but of perseverance, not of saints but of partners struggling to shed their inherited burdens and stand taller as a collective force. They offered vision, not abstract but lived. They offered principles of strategy, not abstract, but one through trial. Their stories at times got deeply personal, raw and even wrenching. Their stories at times got almost tediously academic. Their history is not a novel with a single hero who rises through fire. Their story is not a dry textbook with rules and footnotes. My interviewees did not chase trends. They did not imagine far-off technologies or speculate about inventions yet to be born. They did not over-detail fascism's orange mask or the planet's ecological decay. They lived all that. No, they gave a glimpse into what it feels like to walk through fire, what it takes to win.
Speaker 1:Let me speak plainly about the task I had. I collected a mountain of testimony, unfiltered, undigested. But then what next? What should I cut? What should I retain? How should I combine segments into chapters? How should I turn chapters into a whole personal thread, offered the raw and intimate human dimension, it is what someone with talents vastly beyond mine might have shaped into a wonderful novel. It revealed the messiness of real people, their pasts, their dreams, their wounds and their triumphs. It breathed life into the revolution. Through that personal thread one can feel that people like us can rise and win. That my interviewee's world, or something broadly like it, is possible.
Speaker 1:The second thread, the political thread, was sober, disciplined, strategic. It was not emotion, it was organization. It could have become a political manual, something cold and sharp, filled with lessons and only lessons. It was the infrastructure of revolution, the vision, the how-to. But of course the personal is political and the political is personal. So I had to weave. If I leaned too heavily on the personal thread, I might lose the political lessons. The oral history might become a series of fascinating tales, full of drama but stripped of strategic direction. On the other hand, if I lean too heavy on the political thread, I might drain the revolution's blood. The history might become a lecture, precise, yes, but lifeless.
Speaker 1:It became clear that from the sea of voices I had to extract those elements that would simultaneously carry both fire and structure, what was most moving in its humanity and what was most revealing in its lessons. Too much of either and the other would suffer. I should also not present what I personally found most stirring, nor would align best with my private conviction. I should not convey my own preferences, nor even what I imagined would delight a reader the most. No, I should faithfully represent the voices of the interviewees and only weave their words into chapters that would not only hold the reader's attention but also spark real and practical reflection. But there was also a trap I refused to fall into. I had seen it too often in those earlier testimonies.
Speaker 1:I spoke about Pages heavy with the size of repression, it's stench clubs, it's jails, it's victims Lamenting the fallen. My questions had to aim higher to celebrate the work of organizing, to dig out the lessons in how to win, to learn how to blunt their blows, but not to dwell on how much their blows hurt, that pain we all know too well. To succeed, oral history had to remain grounded in the lives, struggles and insights of those who dared to imagine and build a better world, my interviewees and those like them, those involved. Nonetheless, in the end, the work's meaning lies in what you do with it. The plausibility of the stories told here, their power, truth and relevance will be determined by how they live in your imagination, how they move in your hands. Revolutions are not the work of heroes. They are not the legacy of martyrs. They are the patient, persistent, courageous labor of millions. We were not born to watch history, we were born to make it Okay. So that's the introduction to the book.
Speaker 1:Chapter one follows. I hope it's clear enough now. The book is an oral history. Miguel Guevara is the interviewer. There are diverse interviewees. They're talking about something that happens not in our time, not in our place, but in a world exactly like ours. Chapter 1 is titled Oral Histories End Civilizations. Beginning In it, miguel Guevara offers some excerpts from the then newly elected President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Noether's final oral history interview sessions, in which they discuss their then recent election experience and plans.
Speaker 1:Miguel thus begins his book at its end point, at the start of participatory revolutionary transition, obviously expecting then or obviously we can expect then, after this brief intro chapter, to go back and go through the process. To start, miguel asks Mr President, are you kidding? The new Vice President, celia Noether interrupts Call him Malcolm. I do, we all do. He will get pissed if you keep that up. But, madam Vice President, miguel, seriously, I am not a statue, I am not a label, I am Celia.
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? Yes, malcolm and I walked, rode and flew a lot. Malcolm and I walked, rode and flew a lot, we talked a lot, we got hoarse, sure, but millions of volunteers won, still more so. The movement 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. Okay, celia, I think it went like this Some decades ago, someone running and winning for president with my views was an impossible dream.
Speaker 1:Then Bernie Sanders brought some hope. Black Lives Matter exploded. Activism flourished Me too. Horrible COVID, incredible Palestine Support and the Existential Battles Against Trump and Company. And finally, on to RPS. And here we are.
Speaker 1:Celia asks Miguel, what are your first reactions to the Oval Office? Look at these portraits. My immediate reaction is the same as anyone with eyes. We need to redecorate. Miguel asks Would removing a lot of mass murderers from the walls be historical savagery or delayed justice? The latter, don't you think? And in good taste too. We can keep the rogues' gallery for historical accuracy, but I don't want them perpetually staring at us.
Speaker 1:What about your immediate program, asks Miguel? It will be what we have said. Of course, the movement will build local assemblies to hold a constitutional convention and revamp government. It will enlarge the Supreme Court to reflect society. It will build housing, schools and clinics. It will drastically downsize and reorient the military, pardon many prisoners and renovate judicial procedures. It will further innovate energy and all production to attain ecological balance. It will further restrict AI, further support workplace takeovers and much more. Of course. Yes, okay, the movement will empower and federate neighborhood assemblies, demolish income and wealth inequities, tax and repossess from the rich, test and refine participatory planning, advance collective self-management, transform living arrangements and daily life to preserve and extend diversity. This government and the movement itself will follow the will of the people.
Speaker 1:Rps has waged a quarter-century journey of ceaseless struggle. It's time to build new institutions. It's time to transform to our new society. Miguel asks Malcolm, do you agree? Do you feel pressure for RPS to do all that? Do you feel fear? Look, I'll be straight with you. I feel what I'd call a sense of historic responsibility. Yes, there's pressure, but it's not the kind of pressure that weighs you down. It's the kind that gets you moving. It's when you feel history tapping you on the shoulder and saying now's the time. We have an opportunity not just to fix what's broken but to build something vastly better. We can help profoundly transform this country. That's exciting, but sure it's scary too.
Speaker 1:If people in power make wrong calls, if we ignore the will of the people, we could lose ground. But if we stay focused, if we govern with boldness and compassion, lose ground. But if we stay focused, if we govern with boldness and compassion, we can move forward fast. We're in a pivotal moment. We won an election. Now we've got to help build the future. Miguel asks do you think there is sufficient unity to accomplish all that? Let me be very clear.
Speaker 1:Early on, things were tough. People disagreed. Sometimes those disagreements got heated. We weren't just debating the system, we were debating each other. I've been in those rooms among our friends debating. I felt that tension. But we had to ask ourselves a different question not who's right, but how do we move forward together? That was a hard question. It was not always comfortable, but we found our way, not through lectures or speeches, but through strikes, protests, organizing in the streets, the schools, the prisons. We didn't wait for the perfect moment, we didn't wait for permission. We started creating child care centers, new laws, alternative schools. We started winning local victories and those victories gave people hope Celia, myself, others. We didn't lead by telling people what to do. We listened, we learned, the people led. That's how solidarity was built, miguel asks.
Speaker 1:Do you remember? Just after election day, I was in New York City when RPS's Alexandra Voline stepped up to introduce the city's mayor, bill Hampton? He wore an RPS cap, dressed head to toe in green. He looked overjoyed. A massive crowd faced the stage, lit like it was New Year's Eve. Above it waved a banner that echoed the words of Arundhati Roy.
Speaker 1:Quote Another world is not only possible, it is ours. Yes, I remember, but Celia and I were already in Washington, not New York, so we watched a wonderful video of it. Our friend 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, home, neighborhood, city and state. I give you your mayor, bill Hampton. Celia takes up the account. And then Bill, in that way of his, lifted his arms, half conductor, half brother, half dreamer and gestured across the undulating crowd. The air pulsed. It felt like midnight, on the edge of a new year, like the birth of something too large to name. It felt like the fierce, improbable buoyancy of hope Bill's voice carried low, steady and then rising.
Speaker 1:Quote politics used to be competitive and elitist. Politics was money-grubbing, hypocritical bureaucracy. Politics served wealth and power. It dripped with innocent blood. As mayor, I struggled to reduce its inanities, its criminalities, often to little avail. Politics was mostly disconnected professionals dictating from above. Now, politics is you you demand, you enact.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a speech, not really. It was a public remembering a collective redefinition, a summoning. And when I watched the video, still in the governor's office, still performing the theater of that crumbling institution, I knew exactly what Bill was talking about. Not just the surface of his words, but the deep undercurrent, the ache and exhaustion of having tried to maneuver within the rotting architecture of officialdom, the bitter taste of wanting to believe while knowing the structure itself was a lie. So even then, even before he reached the marrow, I felt a sting of joy, a strange sensation of tears, not from sorrow but from something braver, something wilder.
Speaker 1:And then, as he gathered every filament of memory in the crowd and tried them together, he spoke again. He told maybe a million in the street, maybe more, and many millions witnessing it through glass and screen, of a boyhood spent in the shadows of a kind of silent apocalypse. Of a boyhood spent in the shadows of a kind of silent apocalypse, he said he 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. There was a moment after that, an inhale that seemed to sweep the crowd into stillness, a silence so complete. It felt like something sacred or terrified, or both, and Bill, sensing it, paused, not to manipulate, not to perform, but to let the truth settle. Then he smiled. The smile was not simple. It held sorrow, yes, but also the wildness of resistance. And he said but I woke up. We all woke up. We got into each other's nightmare of war, climate collapse and fascist violence and we turned them into colorful, inspiring dreams of freedom. Vision replaced fear, Confidence replaced doubt, action informed and reflected thought. And so now we celebrate a new milestone. We dance, we cheer and tomorrow we will carry on. All of us, we are now joint architects of our collective future. This was not rhetoric, it was a spell of sorts, maybe a map showing us where we had come from and insisting that the future was ours to claim.
Speaker 1:Miguel asked Malcolm, what was in your mind when you heard Bill's words? What I saw in that moment were memories of my own childhood, my own nightmares I used to see cattle cars, not with animals, but with corpses, human corpses. It was people left behind, people lost to cruelty, to indifference, to systemic failure. I saw an endless killing train. It went from ocean to ocean and back and back again, over and over. In my nightmare it was humanity's horrible realism Dead by guns, dead by starvation, dead by preventable diseases. Cattle cars with windowed walls. So I saw in Cattle cars of those who died too young or who died cruelly, horribly, unnecessarily.
Speaker 1:But when I looked at Bill's audience, a million people cheering, alive, hopeful, and I felt this is different. These people are standing up, they're eager to continue, they're eager to build a future rooted in dignity and justice. And I thought to myself 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 long in struggle and those still entering struggle. We all need a moment's rest, a moment to celebrate as we set out to win still greater victories to come. And Celia, she said, and she was right. And listen, I'm not much of a dancer, but even I wanted to dance that night. So we said let's do it, let's go big. Every city, every county, 2,000 celebrations and people danced, not just for what we won, but for what we still had to fight for. They danced for the future because, for the first time in a long time, we could feel it in our hands.
Speaker 1:Miguel asked but how, malcolm? Not what do we seek? How do we attain it? Okay, let me say something that might make some folks uncomfortable, but stick with me. Let's talk about Trump. Yes, that Trump, the man, was racist, he was sexist, he was a demagogue, he was a human cattle car, but he did want change. He wasn't content to manage the system, he wanted to break it. His tools executive orders, top-down decrees, authoritarian power, fear.
Speaker 1:Now, let's be absolutely clear. Our goals could not be more different. We want equity, we want dignity, we want justice. But one similarity we want to change the institutions too. The difference is we don't want power at the top, we want power in the hands of the people, power to the people. Beyond different aims, do you have a different approach in mind, asks Miguel? Of course, our approach is fundamentally different. We don't believe in saviors, we believe in movements. The real leadership, it's not in the White House, it's in our communities, our schools, our workplaces. Sure, maybe we'll sign a few executive orders, but not to impose change from above. We will do that only to carry forward what people are already doing at work, in worship, in struggle, in celebration.
Speaker 1:Our main tool, like always, will be organizing conversations, people in motion. That's how you get durable democratic change. It doesn't come from tweets, it comes from door knocking, from talking, from organizing. That can't be ignored and, yes, there are still skeptics. There are still people who don. From organizing. That can't be ignored. And, yes, there are still skeptics. There are still people who don't believe things can really be different. We've got to reach them too, not with slogans but with substance, not with guilt but with solidarity.
Speaker 1:What's different now from recent years is from here on, we're not mainly fighting against the current system, we're mainly building the next one. We're showing what's possible. And I'll tell you I believe that with our vision, with the organizing power we've built, with the unity and resolve we've shown, we're going to win. Not just some of us, all of us, the people, their passion, their persistence, their hope. They've always been the movement's compass. They are our leaders. Our job is to amplify that.
Speaker 1:Are there still obstacles? Of course, are there still structures to challenge Absolutely. But our election marks that we're no longer mainly resisting, we're constructing. We're not mainly protesting what is, we're mainly building what will be. That's our path ahead and no, it won't be easy. But I think RPS vision, adapted as we go, grounded in the real lives of real people, will take us forward step by step, more and more of us, all of us, starting now. Okay, so that's the end of the first chapter. Next time we return to the book, we'll do the second chapter, maybe even the second and the third, depending on their length. It'll go back to the beginning, to the formation of RPS, the organization that carries through the revolutionary process, and it will trace the events, the feelings, the thoughts, in particular the methods, the strategy and the vision. And that said, this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.