RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 356 WCF: Arundhati Roy and From Academia to Activism
Ep 356 of RevolutionZ begins with a few reflections on Arundhati Roy's memoir "Mother Mary Comes to Me." It praises her extraordinary prose and storytelling to show how powerful narrative can illuminate complex social realities. This brief visit to her work ends with a set of questions about her writing and, by extension, about all writing, including The Wind Cries Freedom. Why does a writer write? Why do we read?
Then from Chapter Five of The Wind Cries Freedom oral history, Goldman relays how his radicalization began in college economics classes. There he discovered a profound disconnect between academic theories and lived reality. "The discourse revolved around formal abstractions," he explains, "generally devoid of context or critical examination." This intellectual dissonance he felt slowly cracked his worldview and altered his life plans. He realized economics education functions largely to legitimize existing power structures rather than foster genuine understanding.
Two transformative events next accelerated Goldman's political awakening: an Olympia refinery occupation and a Schools for the People campaign. At Olympia, Goldman relates how workers seized control of an oil refinery and boldly declared their intention to convert it to solar panel production. In the Schools campaign, he takes us into a school assembly meeting where parents articulate powerful visions of the town school as a community center rather than "factories or prisons by day." Goldman hears there desire: "We want roses on our table, not diamonds on our neck," as one parent memorably stated. In both the struggles we see the motives and feelings of activist participants and also of the defensive owner and principal, respectively.
What makes Goldman's oral history account particularly valuable is his willingness to discuss psychological barriers to activism. He acknowledges how fear of social friction initially held him back, and how developing the courage to take visible stands was essential and required internal transformation. His journey illuminates not just what he came to fight for, but how he become involved and committed through concrete experiences and moral reflection. Does his journey resonate for you in our times?
Are you an ideologically well read seasoned activist or perhaps horrified by Trump and for the first time curious about social movements and their prospects? Either way, Goldman offers rich insights into effective organizing tactics, the importance of building solidarity across different constituencies, and the power of articulating positive visions rather than merely opposing injustice. So is Goldman's oral history account of campus boycotts, workplace occupations, and community campaigns from his time relevant to our times? Is the experience he shares with us worth discussing? Can we extract and refine or augment lessons useful for us? That is this episode's core question.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. You may be aware that I am interspersing in the flow of episodes a sequence based on a book I have prepared, but which does not yet have a publisher. The book that's titled The Wind Cries Freedom is an oral history of an ex American revolution. It hopes to inspire belief in the possibility of fundamental, worthy, viable change, revolution, and to convey thoughts and lessons that may prove helpful for attaining such changes, here in our time and place, though communicated in the oral history by others from another time and place. The oral history's interviewer is Miguel Guevara, and he engages with eighteen interviewees. The whole content is Miguel's questions and the interviewees' answers. In this episode, I will convey the fifth chapter of the book, titled Academia or Activism. Plus maybe I'll add a few interjections of my own reactions to their words as I will shortly read them. I should say to channel it to read it out loud to you, sitting here at my desk, means I hear it rather like you hear it. I channel it in hopes it will be helpful to you and to me too, and who knows, maybe one of you or perhaps knows or perhaps even is a publisher who will choose to bring the book out and print. At any rate, this time we will meet Andre Goldman, who will tell us about his journey from student to revolutionary via his encounters with some organizing campaigns. But first, before continuing with this new installment of the oral history, I would like to offer some commentary about another book, but one that has a publisher and is newly published. It is called Mother Mary Comes to Me, and its author is Arundati Roy. I offer these comments about that book in hopes that some of you who might not have read it otherwise will do so after hearing the comments, and benefit from the book as I have, and also because I have questions that came to mind as I read and thought about the book. Which questions perhaps you might choose to also usefully think about. So my comments on Arundotti's new book now begin. Imagine an okay high school tennis player trying to comment usefully publicly on Carlos Alcaraz's play. Or imagine a squirrel made suddenly talkative trying to comment on the life of a lion. It would be difficult, and I feel like that trying to comment on Mother Mary comes to me. There are many people who are exceptionally smart, witty, funny. Many people who are internally diverse. Such a person channels many others, and many people journey into that one person. Then there are some people, I have no idea how many, who are unfathomably complex, courageous, and creative. And then there is Arundotti Roy, and her mother Mary, or so it seemed to me as I read about their lives. I met Arundotti briefly a couple of times. I found her very impressive, but back then I didn't perceive multitudes in her one in her one body. But now, film script writer and film actor, novelist and essayist, escape artist and loyalist, speechifier and activist, I did not earlier see all that. The book reveals all that. I have read numerous Roy essays, speeches and interviews over the years, and after doing so, I have found her writing quite special. Her prose was inspiring, but I have to admit, even if a bit embarrassed by the fact that I haven't read her novels. How trite it seems that I started to do so, but for me they had too many names to follow. Yet if I had read on, it would have er added another dimension to my awareness of her. But I couldn't manage it. I was deaf to her fiction. Now I have read her recent book. Libraries will call it a memoir. She called it Mother Mary Comes to Me. The book seriously stirred my mind, my heart too, but I don't want to review it. I did, however, read a bunch of reviews, and their composition verified my disinclination to do one. None of them stirred my mind. None did Mother Mary or Arundoty Roy justice. All instead ignored much of what is incandescently present in the book. This kind of book doesn't welcome a review. I write quite a lot. Perhaps in some total I have written more words than Arundati Roy has written. But if what I do is called writing, which is of course a noble and worthy pursuit that all can contribute to, we might need a new word for what Arundati does. She sees herself as a writer. She likes the word. Perhaps I should let her have the word. I could keep on typing words, of course. I could be inspired by her writing and by others who manage similarly, but I can't deny that what she does is different. Maybe it would be good to keep calling what I do writing, but then we will need a new word for what she does. Having now read about her life and her mother's life, each full of incredible tumult, travail, and achievement, if I could, I would ask Arundati some questions. How do you do this? Do your essays, this book, your other books flow to the page finished? Or nearly so? It feels like they do, like they are effortless, like they are born not only free but complete. Or do you instead go over and over the lines of text that compose what emerges with fits and starts? Do you rewrite, revise, and even renovate? When you address your writing in your new book, you indicate that you spent years on each novel. Okay, but still, is the final result when you write just spontaneous talent that births immediately well ordered words? Or is it spontaneous talent plus a lot of powerful perseverance that orders your words? When they first appear, have you already thought hard on your words? Or do your words just arrive like a gift from your unconscious, a gift that lands in your fingers from nowhere? Do you channel the words without a conscious thought? I think that is what everyone who writes, indeed, what everyone who talks mostly does. But maybe you diverge, do you? Your words indicate that you see in your mind the scenes from your life and that you hear in your mind the voices from your life. I wonder, how do you keep all those images and sounds of your distant thens from drowning your immediate nows? Is part of the secret of good, clear, moving, and imaginative writing the way that one sees and hears plentifully? Is it to remember more than others do? To me that is a mystery. Is part of worthy storytelling an imagination which pops up patterns that mystify like seemingly impossible magic? Maybe that capacity is widespread. Is it something all novelists have? It isn't in me. I loved reading it. And I also have, I hesitate to admit, another kind of question I would like to ask Arundotti, if I ever got the opportunity. Given your voice, values, and commitments, which are not a mystery to me since I recognize those, and given your reach, how do you manage to stop yourself from producing new writing every minute you were able to? To share, to affect, to always pursue writing's activism aspect? I would ask that, but I may know the answer. Since Arundotti's novels each took years to complete, and their characters lived and even traveled with her during all that time, how could she have done any more? The answer may be I think she couldn't. She is that writer. She does it when she must. To mess with that would morph her into being a different writer, and thus not who she is. Goodbye to her ghosts would mean so long to her imagination. To force the words out more often than they want to emerge would reduce the words to lesser quality than those she does generate. Is that the answer? Arundati is Arundati, like Mother Mary was Mother Mary, and neither could be other than who they were without losing it all. My point Roy's memoir, memoir in quotes, is not just incredibly effective prose, it is also highly readable. It is rich, but it is not obscure. It requires no higher learning. I doubt there is a page that doesn't have a moving and memorable phrase or sentence. Every word fits. Mother Mary comes to me as personal history, but it is also wit, humor, history, and social commentary. It is specific, local, daily life, but it is also general, large scale political insight. The reviewers all say Mother Mary comes to me is built around Arundati's mother, misses Roy, and around Arundati's experiences of her mother. And Mother Mary is plenty present, for sure, and Mother Mary matters to what occurs, absolutely. But I don't buy that the book is about Mother Mary, even though it certainly is about Mother Mary, nor do I buy that it is about Arundati Roy, even though it certainly is about Arundati Roy. I read it. I don't know her mother other than that she was for many an abominable person to be around, while for others she was a saving grace to know, to learn from, and to enjoy. Talk about one being many. In contrast, about Arundati I know lots, at least now, even though I suspect there is likely much more to know. Then again, there being more to know is always true of everyone, isn't it? This book is about life and life only, but life and life only is in turn about everything. That's how the book felt to me. And that would be another question I would like to ask. When you wrote it, Arundadi, did you have readers in mind? Do you have something you want your readers to gain from your book? Or were you only trying to tell what happened, like it happened, to tell it for yourself and for whoever else might tag along? Is that another feature of remarkable writing? To report and not to try to convince? I can't comprehend that. Here I am trying to convince whoever reads this to read the book. Finally, has no one noticed that the book's title is plagiarized in the best possible way from Beetle Poor McCartney's song Let It Be, which he dedicated to his mother, who was also named Mary. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. I admit I don't like that message. Quote, let it be, however much I like the song. K Sira Sira is not for me, not for Arendadio either, I think. So finally, what do the reviewers leave out even though they try to describe what's there? The only way for you to decide for sure is to read the book. I did, and I spewed more laughs and dripped more tears doing so than I have done for any other book I can call to mind. Okay, I will report. The reviewers leave out life. The reviewers leave out struggle. I hope you are moved to read the book. And now, from another, we have another in the sequence of excerpts from the Wind Cries Freedom. This one, the fourth excerpt, starts with Miguel Govera asking Andre Goldman, you are an economist and have been involved with RPS since its origin. You have held various movement jobs while writing a bunch of books and countless articles. You have also continually helped to revise RPS program and vision. Do you remember your first radicalization? Yes, I believe so. I entered economics in college, which in retrospect is somewhat ironic. I suspect the decisions stem partly from a background in mathematics and science, but with a sense that I perhaps lacked the technical acumen to pursue those paths at the highest levels. It may also have been a desire for something more immediately engaged with human affairs. In any event, what I encountered in economics was intellectually stultifying. The discourse revolved around formal abstractions, supply and demand curves, optimization functions, marginal utilities, all generally devoid of context or critical examination. Among my classmates, there was near universal compliance. They engaged energetically with problem sets, debated fine points of fiscal and monetary policy, they recited canonical texts with enthusiasm. But the underlying questions, what are the institutional structures of capitalism? What are the lived realities of people working in factories? What are the social grassroots daily life consequences of economic policy? These were almost entirely absent. The result was a discipline that functioned, I thought, not as a vehicle for understanding economic life, but rather as a legitimating mechanism for existing distributions of power. The emphasis was on technical facility within a highly constrained framework. There was little room for questioning the framework's assumptions. There was even less room for exploring alternatives. The education resembled training rather than inquiry. One absorbed a worldview, not by evaluating its explanatory power, but by rote repetition of sanctioned models. I'll admit, at the time I attempted to internalize it. I tried to emulate the methods and language. That's the gravitational pull of institutional normalization. But the dissonance persisted. I found economists analogous to physicians who memorize home remedies but don't know what a lung is, let alone how to diagnose pneumonia. Economists spoke fluently about equilibrium models but had little understanding of how a corporation functions, much less what a worker actually experiences. The situation was not merely inadequate. It was perverse. Later, during my final years in college, I became more directly politicized through the campaigns against militarism. But the first stirrings occurred earlier. I remember attending a demonstration out of little more than curiosity. I didn't intend to participate. I certainly didn't expect to be persuaded. But the arguments presented that day about war, inequality, the structures of domination were cogent and morally compelling. And beyond the content, what impressed me was the seriousness of the participants, their willingness to act, to take a public stance, to incur personal risk. So I did not join in. I stood at the margins, I observed. I recall feeling admiration, even a kind of solidarity, but I didn't participate. It was new to me, that much is true, but when I left, I was left wondering, what does it mean to approve of something, to be grateful that it is happening, and yet to take no part in it? That tension stayed with me. I didn't become a full fledged activist overnight. But the contradiction between my beliefs and my behavior was difficult to ignore. There was a moral unease, an inquid sense of obligation that I had failed to meet. Eventually I formulated a kind of heuristic. If I believe something is right, if I am in a position to contribute meaningfully to it, and if no more urgent obligation intervenes, then I ought to act. That's what first drew me into various boycott movements, campaigns with a clear ethical foundation and tactical coherence. I felt I could contribute, and yet I still pulled back from deeper political engagement. I think in hindsight, part of my resistance was fear, not physical fear, but social friction. I anticipated that taking strong positions, pointing out uncomfortable truths, advocating on popular views would provoke argument, alienate peers, and even fracture friendships. That prospect was not attractive. Guevara asks, but you finally did all that, so what happened? Maybe the motivation was principled. Maybe I recognized that sustaining honest relationships required alignment between belief and action. That maintaining friendships at the expense of suppressing my convictions was, in effect, a form of self censorship. Or maybe it was less deliberate. Perhaps I simply drifted into activism because the cognitive dissonance of remaining aloof became unsustainable. I honestly don't know which of these is more accurate. But in the other case, once I crossed that threshold, the path opened quickly. The Schools for the People campaign drew me in, and the Olympia refinery occupation shattered any remaining illusions I had about the immovability of the existing system. For the first time, the prospect of profound structural change seemed not just desirable, but achievable. That was the inflection point for me when I became, in a meaningful sense, revolutionary. Guerrero follows up. Do you remember those events? Yes, vividly. Shall I provide a bit of context? Of course. Go ahead. At the Olympia refinery, the situation was emblematic of broader dynamics, concentrated economic power, environmental devastation, labor subordination, and also of what resistance might look like when it rises to meet those dynamics with clarity and resolve. I was present during the occupation. Workers seized the facility, blocked access, and initiated a standoff. Outside, community supporters gathered. Surveillance drones buzzed overhead. One of the refinery owners, an older man in a gray flannel suit, clearly unaccustomed to defiance, screamed at us with a vitriol born of entitlement. My workers, my company, my machines, my product, you earn what I pay you. You produce what I tell you. That's how it is. I boss, you obey. I pay what I choose to pay you. Now move your lazy asses out of my way. The response was swift and unambiguous. One worker calmly replied, No, we work for our families, for our community, for ourselves, not for you. We will get worthy pay, respect and essay, and we will get ecological sanity as well. That's how it will be. Then another step forward with words that seem to crystallize the whole historical moment. We will not violate nature any longer. We will not move. Not you, not your scabs, not anyone else will refine oil here again. Your drones won't intimidate us. Your commands won't move us. Your wealth doesn't scare us. Your time is over. It is you who will move. No more bossing, no more rising oceans and howling hurricanes. No more you. Henceforth, we are converting this workplace to produce solar panels. Stay on and work for a participatory workplace with us or get the fuck out. The future will be what we make it, not what you dictate. It's difficult to overstate the power of that moment. These were individuals who society had rendered invisible, confined to repetitive labor in environmentally destructive facilities, now articulating a vision for a fundamentally different economy and ecology. Their grasp of social relations was not only coherent, it was morally and intellectually superior to what I had encountered in years of academic economics. They spoke from lived reality, not theoretical abstraction. Their analysis emerged from participation, not detachment. In contrast, the economic professors I had studied under, however well meaning, often floated obliviously above the material conditions they claimed to describe. This was not an issue of intellect, but of engagement. That was a pivotal moment for me. I began to think, what can help this persist beyond this event? But there was more. After graduation, I visited several workplaces to test a lingering hypothesis. Was my economics training as hollow as it seemed, or had I simply misunderstood it? What I found confirmed my suspicions. In the factories and offices where people spent their days, I discovered dimensions of labor that the textbooks had not even acknowledged, much less seriously addressed. I watched people perform repetitive, exhausting tasks. Then I listened to them describe how those tasks affected their minds and bodies, their relationships, their sense of self. It should have been obvious work doesn't just produce outputs, it shapes those who do it. Yet this basic fact, central to any serious theory of labor, was absent from everything I had been taught. It wasn't even a contested point. It was simply ignored. That gap between theory and reality, between what academic economics claimed and what people actually endured, made the discipline seem not merely inadequate, but complicit in maintaining the very conditions it purported to explain. Guevara adds, I covered what unfolded in Olympia, watched workers take their fate into their own hands, not just protesting, but reorganizing the very shape of their lives, their clarity, their dignity, their collective courage. It hit me like a thunderclap. I was already a radical journalist, yes, but until then I was still on the sidelines. Because of them, I stepped in. I joined RPS. What about you? What was your path to joining? Can you tell us which moments in the arc of RPS history left the deepest mark on you personally? My path wasn't so different. I'd been politically engaged, but mostly in an analytic role. I wrote critiques, I signed petitions, gave the occasional talk, but RPS demanded more than commentary. It was built on the premise that understanding injustice is necessary, but insufficient. One must also act to dismantle it. The Olympia events played a role, certainly, but what affected me most, I think, were the internal debates in early meetings, the effort to develop a coherent vision, and even culture, not only of what we opposed, but of what we proposed. That kind of deliberate participatory program building was rare. It elevated strategy beyond slogans. It demanded rigor, humility, and imagination. For me, that process, grappling with others about vision, learning from the experience of teachers, nurses, software engineers, single parents, warehouse workers, and even a few professors was more transformative than any single event. It reshaped how I thought about power, class, race, gender, and ecology. It also clarified for me the limits of academic inquiry that remains isolated from practice. RPS's first convention gave me a context in which economic theory could become a tool for liberation rather than a justification for hierarchy. That's what most affected me. Not just the boldness of the goals, but the seriousness of the methods. I don't think it's particularly useful to try to rank my formative experiences, but I can say without hesitation that the public schools for the people campaign and shortly after, the Amazon sit down strike were decisive for me. Both moments crystallized a kind of latent understanding that had been forming in me, and in many others, I think. I had the opportunity to observe each up close, and what struck me most was not just the content of the demands, which were significant, but the spirit, remarkably open, courageous, and in many respects better informed than the formal discourses I'd encountered in the academic realm. Take the school's campaign, for example. The setting I experienced was a high school auditorium. Parents, community members, teachers. The principal, clearly frustrated, essentially implored the crowd to accept the status quo. Quo, what do you want from us? We teach your children. We house them. I'm a good principal. Damn it, let me educate your kids. For Christ's sake, be grateful. Our school is what it is. Where's your gratitude? Go home. That's what he said. It was the kind of response one might expect from someone invested in an institution that has failed the community it claims to serve. The responses from the parents, though, those were revolatory. Parent after parent rose to speak, often with hesitation, but always with unmistakable conviction. Quote, I graduated eighth grade, one said. No high school, nothing more for me. Can you understand that life out in the world is all too lonely? Community out there is often little more than attending mole sales and avoiding scams and greed. So yes, I would like to have a center here in my children's school where I could learn and also socialize at night. These are not minor sentiments. They indicate the desire for social life, for communal solidarity. Things the institutions in question have consistently undermined. Things change required. Another parent, quote, I heard something once. I want roses on my table, not diamonds on my neck. I like that. Fuck the diamonds. I want to talk to someone who wants to talk to me. That's the roses. So why are schools empty at night? Sounds of silence, and why are they like factories or prisons by day? The indictment here is more profound than any journal article I've read on public education. And another said, quote, we want education, not warehousing. We want a community center where we can all learn. For Christ's sake indeed, you wake the hell up. I can't sleep. Teachers want better wages, and they are right. We want better access and we are right. Can you even hear us? Do you even try to hear us? We want a second home right here in this building. Our school isn't what it could be. We are going to make it over. We are going to make it ours. The clarity and directness of these desires cut through much of what passes for policy discourse. Quote, it isn't what it could be, that phrase stayed with me. These parents, teachers, students understood something that official economists, policymakers, and many academics were apparently unable or unwilling to recognize. They understood what education is for. They understood what community means, and they knew intuitively that the existing structure not only failed to provide it, but actively suppressed it. The task was becoming clear unify and expand. Then came the Amazon strike. I wasn't an employee, but I participated in the support mobilizations. The level of discipline, the willingness to resist, the outright refusal to surrender short of achieving dignity, fair income, and humane treatment. These weren't abstract values. They were lived experiences. Here were workers doing difficult, monotonous, and deeply alienating labor, asserting control over their own conditions, and the risks they took were not small. There were efforts to demoralize them, of course, the circulation of false threats, rumors of imminent violence, of retaliation, but the incredible strength of outside solidarity dispelled much of that. What I found especially notable was the internal leadership. This wasn't a movement directed by some remote organizational elite. The workers set the tone. Their resolve defined the terms. They were militant, yes, but And also humane. They remain they retained compassion while making demands. Could this exist beyond specific issues? The workers weren't members of RPS, at least not yet. And of course there were ideological contradictions, organizational limitations, and lingering bad habits. But compared to the ease with which authoritarian and even fascistic impulses earlier took root, the clarity and mutual respect that defined the Amazon action marked a genuine historical shift. It had bubbled up, not trickled down. Those two moments, one centered in the community, the other in the workplace, each brought something profound into focus. And though many campaigns would come after, each building on the gains and the lessons of the last, those early experiences shaped my own understanding in ways that proved lasting. Guevara asks, returning to the origin of RPS, what role do the early boycotts play? They were quite central, actually. The Wall Street March served as a kind of ignition point, not just because of its size and visibility, but because of what it revealed, that a substantial portion of the population recognized that the status quo wasn't just insufficient. It was fundamentally untenable, and more importantly, they were willing to act on that recognition. There was a widespread and very explicit demand for dignity. That's not a trivial shift. When large numbers of people begin to demand dignity as opposed to only modest material concessions, the logic of control begins to falter. At the time I was studying economics in Boston, an endeavor I have referred to elsewhere, not entirely facetiously, as somewhat akin to theological training. That is, it had very little to do with understanding actual economic life and quite a lot to do with sustaining elite friendly narratives. It was against that backdrop that student activism emerged, and the focal point quickly became the university's involvement in or tacit support for militarism. The boycotts were an effort to sever those ties. The campaigns had their roots in prior mobilizations, opposition to the supply of arms and financial support for the Israeli American assault on Gaza. That resistance fed directly into the momentum behind the campus boycotts, and the logic was fairly straightforward. If institutions are complicit in violence and repression, then that complicity must be exposed and disrupted. The idea was to disrupt their machinery of support, not symbolically, but materially. It wasn't about petitioning power to behave more ethically. It was about creating costs for them for unethical behavior. In that respect, the boycotts were both morally clear and tactically effective. They also played an important role in creating the conditions for RPS to emerge, not only by highlighting institutional complicity, but also by demonstrating the potential of coordinated, sustained, grassroots action to shift the terrain. One of the speeches at the Wall Street Gathering issued a fairly direct appeal that everyone present and all their family and friends, and indeed anyone they could reach, should stop purchasing products from manufacturers of automatic high velocity weapons, the kind commonly used in mass shootings. The appeal wasn't complicated. The connection between these weapons and public carnage was clear and more to the point it gave people a practical, immediate action they could take. The idea spread rapidly. It wasn't simply that the campaign addressed a real and horrific problem. It was also that people saw a path, however narrow, through which their efforts might their efforts might matter. They believed they could contribute to something that could actually succeed. That perception was critical. Now personally, I didn't own a gun, nor did I have any intention of buying one. That's relevant because it illustrates a key organizational issue, targeting the wrong audience. It would be a waste of time for anyone organizing a gun boycott to approach me or any of my peers at school. We weren't the relevant demographic, we weren't the problem, and we weren't the market. So it was clear that anyone serious about the campaign needed to engage instead with gun owners, or at least with people likely to become buyers of those weapons. And that's precisely where it got interesting. The campaign, to be effective, had to explicitly reach into constituencies that most progressives, to be frank, had either ignored or dismissed, often out of fear or condescension, or both. That was an error, not a small one. Some activists had made attempts in that direction during the electoral cycles involving Trump, Clinton, and then Harris, but this was different. In this case, activists had to bring the gun owners a message those gun owners typically regarded with intense suspicion or outright hostility. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, they began to develop methods, some of them modeled on Tim Waltz's earlier outreach approach, and began to learn not only how to communicate, but how to listen. In hindsight, I think this was a pivotal moment in the evolution of what would become RPS. Guevara asks, in what sense was it such a turning point? Historically, left activism has often directed its efforts toward its own base, trying to consolidate and bolster an existing constituency of supporters. That's rational, but also limiting. What distinguished RPS early on and increasingly over time was a conscious decision to invest its most creative and strategic energy into reaching those who fundamentally disagreed with us. That kind of outreach began in the boycotts, and perhaps even earlier, in the resistance to the rise of protofascist tendencies during the earlier Trump years. But the boycotts gave it structure. At MIT, where I was a student at the time, we had attended the Wall Street March and heard the We Are the Future speech, which had considerable resonance. The speech called for a boycott of arms manufacturers, and we started discussing what that would mean for us, practically. There was clearly momentum for action. The moral clarity of the issue was compelling. But then a contradiction emerged. We could certainly pass around petitions urging MIT students to boycott consumer grade assault weapons, but there was an obvious problem. MID students weren't buying AR-15s. Organizing them to boycott these weapons would be like organizing penguins to avoid jogging. Irrelevant. So the discussion evolved. If we're going to challenge militarism, why restrict ourselves to the consumer weapons used in domestic mass shootings? Why not also address the far more powerful and consequential military contractors? The ones who manufacture tanks, missiles, and drones. After all, those are the weapons used not by loan gunmen, but by nation states to inflict devastation on entire populations, often under the euphemism of defense or humanitarian intervention. Now clearly, individual students weren't purchasing hellfire missiles, but MIT as an institution was deeply enmeshed in the military industrial complex. Our university was a research arm of war, so we concluded that our more meaningful target was institutional complicity. The campaign shifted. Rather than urging individual consumer restraint, we would build a campus movement to demand that MIT cut ties with arms contractors and divest for militarized research and development. This reorientation didn't arise in a vacuum. It reflected the cumulative influence of earlier boycott campaigns, against Israel's assault on Gaza, for instance, and before that against South Africa and apartheid. Each campaign informed the next, creating a lineage of tactics and principles. That universities had earlier resisted Trump's attempt to control them was necessary, but it was time to go further. And so we said, without pretense, that MIT should not be a profit center for weapons development. It should pursue knowledge and social contribution, not military efficiency. And the timing was important. When we spoke to fellow students and raised the issue of war profiteering and institutional complicity, it wasn't met with only confusion or hostility. In fact, it was remarkably well received. You could almost say it was like offering cold water on a hot day. The resonance was immediate. Guerrera asks, come on, it can't have been that easy. There must have been obstacles, no? Yes, okay, sure there were. I was too glib, too taken with my own analogy. The truth is there were significant and entirely predictable obstacles. For instance, one of the immediate responses we encountered was that if MIT was to halt war military research entirely and without delay, the budgetary consequences would be catastrophic. The language used was suicidal. That was the framing. So we adopted a dual track approach. On the one hand, we would present a direct and unequivocal demand, no more war research. But on the other, we understood that if we wanted to be taken seriously, if we wanted this demand to be implementable rather than symbolic, we had to offer concrete viable alternatives. Otherwise, it would be too easy for opponents to dismiss our position as naive or economically unfeasible. We began outlining in considerable detail how MIT's resources could be reallocated. Specifically, we pointed to the university's capacity to lead in areas of truly existential urgency, climate change, ecological collapse, and the disintegration of critical infrastructure. There was no shortage of grim needs. We argued that funds currently committed to developing increasingly advanced systems of violence could instead support research into sustainable energy, infrastructure resilience, and environmental renewal. In doing so, we made use of publicly available data, drawing attention to the bloated federal budget for military spending and proposing targeted shifts, such as increased public funding for non military research and the imposition of steep taxes on corporate weapons producers. These proposals were, by any reasonable standard, common sense, but common sense is often threatening to entrenched interests. We carried these conversations across the campus, dorm by dorm, lecture hall by lecture hall. Ours wasn't a brief or symbolic gesture. It was a sustained organizing effort. We didn't simply post demands. We created forums for discussion, hosted teach ins, debated and listened. Eventually we called for a campus wide referendum. And while the formal demands were moderate, the conversations surrounding them became quite radical. One line of thinking questioned not just what MIT produced, but how it produced it. Could we design production tools that not only ensured safety, but also enhance the autonomy and dignity of the people using them? Could the structure of scientific labor itself be reimagined? These weren't tangents, they were logical extensions of the critique. So our effort was situated between the pragmatic and the transformative. The demand was straightforward, but the implications, if taken seriously, were systemic. Our political consciousness had been shaped by earlier opposition to Trump, but even more by sustained organizing around Israel's genocidal assaults on Palestine. So we were well aware of the dangers of letting outrage substitute for analysis. We knew that clear communication, especially to audiences initially skeptical, was essential. That meant not just deciding what to say, but also anticipating how our messages might be misunderstood or co-opted. We thought hard about the broader consequences of our actions, not just for ourselves, but for students at other campuses, for academic labor generally, and ultimately for society as a whole. We wanted short term progress, but we also wanted durable change. Unify and expand. I remember long, often difficult conversations with friends and comrades. How should we approach a student who wasn't yet supportive? How could we bring along faculty who shared some of our values but remained reluctant to act? What tactics would deepen support without simply generating headlines or venting anger? It would have been easier to escalate immediately, to occupy buildings, shut down classes, make noise, but we were convinced, based both on principle and past experience, that a slower, more deliberate approach would be more effective in the long run. That meant engaging in research, listening carefully, revising plans. In return, the administration found it increasingly difficult to mount a credible response. What could they say? Quote, MIT proudly supports militarism and ecological collapse? They couldn't say that, and they couldn't refute the evidence we provided. Occupying buildings, shutting down classes, making noise, that followed. All this came in the wake of earlier confrontation over MIT's ties to Trump era policy, but we were no longer operating in defensive mode. We were no longer just trying to stop fascism. Now we were articulating a vision for what should replace it. The shift was significant. Perhaps this is too much detail, but it's worth emphasizing how much we learned in the process, not just on our own campus, but from similar campuses elsewhere. This wasn't limited to one location. It was part of a broader generational awakening, and like all such movements, it wasn't without error. There were lessons in what not to do. Guevara asks, what lessons? For instance, we learned how to avoid being dragged into endless performative negotiations that exhausted our energy and yielded little. We learned how to prepare for, and in some cases, preempt police intervention. We understood the necessity of increasing pressure without isolating ourselves. That meant making the cost of repression higher than the cost of negotiation. What was new and particularly effective was the way students refused to let themselves be trapped in a reactive cycle. They created moving encampments, interrupted courses, organized parallel countercourses, and connected actions across campuses in ways that amplified their impact. They understood that repression was predictable, but not inevitable, and if it did come, it should be met with solidarity, not despair. Guevara asked, What was your own experience of the boycott? The boycott was my first serious political engagement. And fortunately, the moment was ripe. The effort gained traction almost immediately. I remember early on watching an interaction between a student organizer and an administrator. It wasn't a discussion in any traditional sense. It was more a public indictment. The activist said quite bluntly, quote, how can you sensibly oppose our calls for greater attention to global warming? Do you want to fry us all? How can you reject focusing research on new energy sources and needed health campaigns? Do you want tsunamis, hurricanes, pestilence and disease? How can you sensibly refute our rejection of weapons research? Do you want relentless fear and murder? The administrator didn't really reply. There wasn't much he could say. And while the direct target was silent, the actual audience was the cluster of students nearby. The activist wasn't just protesting. She was trying to activate, trying to compel moral and political reflection in others. That kind of engagement, if done well, can break through apathy and detachment. Once I began to find my footing, I participated in rallies, used social media carefully, and also helped organize small group discussions in student living units. These were intentionally unstructured spaces for genuine dialogue, not just for speeches or lectures. We also set up teachings, planned marches, and eventually, once support had reached a sufficient level, we organized office and lab occupations. These were not symbolic gestures. They were intended to assert collective will and disrupt institutional complicity. To be candid, my work was made easier by the timing. The earlier wave of resistance to supplying arms for Israel's brutal war on Palestine had required greater persistence under more hostile conditions. It had laid essential groundwork. Much of what we were doing had been made possible by that prior round of organizing. Guevara asks, You said you got involved when you got courage and confidence. Well, how did you get that? I don't know. Initially, both the courage to take a visible stand and risk consequences, and the confidence to speak publicly or even act meaningfully without feeling like an imposter eluded me. Watching others do it seemed almost incomprehensible. What combination of personal experience, social encouragement, or accumulated frustration produced the change in me is hard to identify. But one thing is clear. Without those inner shifts, meaningful political action is nearly impossible. That was an insight I came to understand more fully later. Activism doesn't just rely on ideas. It requires transformation of personal assumptions about risk and legitimacy. That's the end of this excerpt of this chapter. Are there other questions you would have asked if you were the interviewer? Did Andre's answer seem realistic to you? Did the events seem possible to emerge in our time? Are you hopeful other messages from other future revolutionaries in this oral history may prove not only interesting but useful? Whatever your reaction may be, this is Michael Albert, signing off until next time for Revolution Z.