RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 362 WCF: Convene and Transcend
Episode 362 of RevolutionZ continues the oral history recounting by Miguel Guevara and his interviewees. It delves further with the motives, aims, and mechanics of a successful future revolution. This time, it asks, what if the hardest part of building a movement isn’t the opposition outside, but the pressure inside the room—and inside our heads?
Guevara leads Andre Goldman, Malcolm Mays and Cynthia Parks in a discussion that describes the founding convention of RPS where three thousand people traded posturing for process and built consensus without blunting their ideals. They describe how months of preparation, open amendments, and careful straw polls set a tone that prized clarity over dominance and turned potential stalemates into workable albeit provisional decisions.
From there, the interviewees explore how a “starter program” could be broad without becoming a blur. Wages and work hours. Tax the rich and full employment. Expanded, revised education for all. Immigration and community control of policing. Reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Democratic reforms like ranked choice voting and public financing. Single‑payer healthcare, demilitarization, climate action, and oversight of AI. The initial national platform offered scaffolding that let chapters choose priorities that fit their own local needs—a structure that fed momentum instead of draining it.
Then Cynthia’s story reframes the stakes. Childhood eviction and family violence carved an inner voice in her mind that said you can’t, a crippling voice that many carry with no one else seeing. Rather than pretend that politics is only external, In response to this widespread issue, RPS carved out space to confront internalized doubt and the habits that keep people silent. That attention to the psychological side of participation—paired with humble, flexible strategy—helped the project survive fragile beginnings, temper early rigidity, and welcome new leaders. Guevara's questions also wrestle with the family versus movement dilemma: what does responsible care look like when the future your kids inherit depends on what you build with others today. How much time to allot where? How can we even think about such a vexing choice?
If you’re organizing, if you're curious about consensus that actually works, or about how to fight the voices within that say your effort, or someone else's effort won’t matter, this episode offers tools our interviewees used in their world and time—procedures that can keep trust intact, culture that can tame ego and liberate potentials, and a program that travels from national goals to neighborhood action.
Does the episode resonate with you? If so, perhaps share it and the whole Wind Cries Freedom sequence with a friend who is doing or considering doing movement work. Do you instead find the discussion lacking or even wrong? Okay, in either case, perhaps leave a comment to help improve coming episodes. .
Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. Unless this is your first time with Revolution Z, you are likely aware that I have been interspersing in our flow of episodes a sequence based on a book I have prepared, but which does not yet have a publisher. The book is titled The Wind Cries Freedom. It's an oral history of a future American Revolution. The book is therefore interviews presenting personal reports of, for the interviewers, real events, ideas, motives, and feelings. For us, they're not so real. It's a novel, but it's a novel that means to read like nonfiction. The book hopes to inspire belief in the possibility of worthy, viable fundamental change revolution, and to continu and to convey thoughts and lessons that may prove helpful for attaining such change. In this episode, Miguel, the interviewer, throughout the book, talks with Alexandra and then the Senator and later President Mays, and with Andre, all of whom you have heard from in prior episodes, about how to address hesitance to act due to thinking humans are bad to the bone, as well as to discuss essential changes that were key to attaining RPS's, their revolutionary participatory organization's lasting commitment to the ongoing struggle. You'll notice that the name that I just read off as being in this episode was in fact unfamiliar, even though I said you already met them. That's because this past week I changed all the names of all the actors. That was a result of feedback that I've gotten, which I very much appreciate, and which obviously aims to make the book a better read. Anyway, this time we talk with Andre Goldman, you know his name, and then Senator Malcolm Mays, that name is changed from Senator Malcolm King, about the Founding Convention, and then we meet Cynthia Parks, who reveals the precariousness of initial RPS organizing and also introduces dealing with personal baggage. So Andre, it starts off, tell us about the Founding Convention. Did it matter greatly to what followed? What was it like? How did it emerge? What conflicts occurred? I think having the Founding Convention was of critical importance, though at the time I should say there was considerable apprehension. Personally I was deeply concerned, enough so that basic routines like sleep and eating became difficult in the days leading up to it. There were real substantive uncertainties. Would the turnout be large enough to lend legitimacy and energy to the effort? Would participants fracture over relatively minor disagreements, effectively derailing the entire process? Or would there be sufficient unity around core principles to construct something durable? Could we develop a collective project capable of doing meaningful good? Or would we descend into fragmented silos, each undermining the other, however unintentionally they did so? What we sought was not a marginal protest grouping or a narrowly defined issue campaign. We wanted an organization appropriate to its historical moment, an entity capable of aiding the construction of a fundamentally new society, and one that could foster mutual trust and cooperation in the process. Our ambition was large, but with it came a real concern that in attempting to do something so expensive, we might end up divided, speaking past one another, failing to cohere around shared aims. The logistical mechanics of the convention were also no small matter. We weren't aiming for a gathering of fifty or a hundred individuals. We hoped for several thousand. At that point, there were perhaps two or three dozen local groups that wanted to affiliate with a national structure. But no agreed upon organizational form existed. There were no shared membership criteria, no preestablished mechanisms for selecting delegates. We had, I guess, a loose affiliation. Nothing formal, but a lot that was informal. It would have been premature to attempt a convention of formal representatives. And anyway, most of the people we hoped would attend weren't yet connected to local RPS groups. So a number of us took the initiative, and that could easily have gone badly. We might have tried to impose our own preferences, consolidating influence and alienating others in the process. Or we might have been careless and disorganized, failing to anticipate real problems. But as it turned out, our prior work and collective projects had established a degree of credibility. We had experience, we were careful, we were committed to a process of mediation, not manipulation. Fortunately, many of the practical steps required to convene such a gathering were familiar from past efforts. And importantly, they could be carried out in a way that didn't replicate hierarchical or elitist norms. We had to secure a venue, issue a public call, organize housing, construct a provisional agenda, incorporate revisions. The goal was to convene a broad and diverse group of participants for a long weekend of deliberation, one that would produce an initial shared program, not by suppressing disagreement, but by navigating it constructively. We knew some participants would arrive with deep personal or political ties to others, but we also knew most would come with little prior connection to others in the room. Miguel asks, did you have a conscious plan to survive until a more structurally rooted gathering could be held? What was the initial idea for what the immersion organization would look like? We sought to construct a bridge toward a viable and just future, but to suggest we are confident it would succeed, that would be an overstatement of considerable proportions. Nearly everyone involved in planning the convention was deeply apprehensive. There was an acute awareness that if the effort failed, it could significantly delay and perhaps even obstruct for an extended period the emergence of a coherent, multi issue, multi tactic, vision oriented organization. Personally, I lost a great deal of sleep confronting that possibility. In order to engage meaningfully with the issues at stake, participants needed to arrive prepared. That meant familiarity with the range of proposals under consideration on both program and structure. They needed to not only read but engage with the material, to formulate their own views, and to be ready to deliberate. To facilitate this, we circulated those proposals well in advance. Months before the convention, the idea was not passive reception, but active participation. We asked people to bring their criticisms, amendments, extensions, whatever would help collectively forge a workable foundation. We didn't expect perfection. In fact, we were quite sure it was neither achievable nor even desirable in the short term. What we aimed for was an initial agenda, imperfect but viable, something to build from rather than to end with. We understood a basic point that is often lost in political projects that a less than perfect agreement achieved with genuine consensus and mutual trust, real participation, can be far superior to technically better proposal imposed through division or maneuvering. A sense of proportion and a capacity for principled compromise were essential. Accordingly, all decisions reached at the convention were to be treated as provisional. The fledgling organization would continue to evolve. As more people joined, as more local chapters were formed, and as conditions changed, the growing membership would revisit and revise what we had set in motion. We rejected the idea of locking ourselves into rigid formulations. The goal was not immediate, immutable precision. It was an evolving process, flexible, responsive, open to improvement. Miguel asks, so how did that happen? The process involved a great deal of preparatory work. Numerous planning meetings took place, and we consulted extensively with a broader layer of activists about how to design an initial framework that could simultaneously function and remain adaptable. Our proposals emphasized that the organization must directly engage with core domains of social life, economic relations and class, political institutions and power, cultural dynamics and race, kinship systems and gender, sexuality, ecological survival, and international affairs, without allowing any one focus to dominate or displace attention from the rest. We articulated long term aims to transcend capitalism, racism, patriarchy, authoritarianism, and imperialism, structures of domination that have historically shaped and distorted social life. To orient action wisely in the present, we insisted that a compelling, plausible, long term vision was indispensable. We also recognized the historical specificity of all political programs. Circumstances shift, knowledge evolves, strategies must adjust accordingly. Vision and especially strategy and program are not dogma, not one size fits all, not now and forevermore. The framework we proposed was intentionally elastic. It was designed not only to accommodate insights that might emerge at the convention itself, but also to remain responsive to future developments. The first convention institutionalized this ethic of continual improvement. People didn't attach their identities to fixed doctrines, singular solutions. Instead, our shared principles were understood as a contingent foundation for collective learning and solidarity. We would change course when necessary, not as a sign of failure, but as an expression of success. The relevant metric was not fidelity to yesterday's conclusions, but openness to today's evidence and tomorrow's possibilities. I know I keep repeating that, it's because it was so central. Miguel asks, did you propose specific societal vision? Some, yes, but we emphasize that everything we proposed, even if unanimously ratified, would remain contingent, subject to revision by a better grounded future convention. Our view was that for an organization to succeed, it needed a significant degree of initial consensus, but just as critically, it had to institutionalize the capacity for ongoing innovation. We aimed to offer just enough societal vision to generate just enough organizational coherence to move forward, recognizing that deeper clarity would have to develop over time. We expected the convention would endorse some elements, set aside others, modify or reject others. Whatever decisions were made, we emphasized they would remain in effect only until a second, more representative convention could revisit them, one supported by expanded membership and local chapters enriched by actual organizing experience, one that facilitated Phil participation. Miguel asks from a session over lunch in Washington DC. Malcolm, you attended the convention, though you weren't an organizer. How did you relate to the preconvention proposals? Were you confident that the convention would work well? Did it? What are some key things you remember from it? When I got the preconvention packet, I'll be honest, I had hope, but I also had serious doubts. Confidence? Not exactly. First, I worried not enough people would even show up. And then I thought, what if we get all these amazing principled folks in one room and they can't agree? What if it all splinters? So many issues, so many priorities, so much frustration in the air. But I'll tell you something. The convention was a success, a real success. When I walked in, I was impressed right off the bat. The size of the crowd, the diversity, the energy, and then as things got underway, I noticed something else. People didn't show up to posture. They didn't show up just to push their line, but they also weren't there to compromise just for the sake of compromise. What they wanted was solidarity. Real, principled, honest solidarity. And you could feel it. People had done their homework. They had thought through the proposals. They weren't treating ideas like academic exercises. They were taking them seriously. That kind of respect for ideas, we hadn't seen it in a long time. Miguel asks, what a change to cause this almost miracle. I think perhaps it was the new blood. Younger folks, newer activists brought energy. They brought seriousness. They weren't jaded by years of factional infighting. They hadn't picked up the bad habits of endless debate for debate's sake. They brought hope, and we all needed that. Now don't get me wrong, plenty of veterans were there too. Some were brilliant, thoughtful, dedicated, but others, even with good intentions, brought a lot of baggage, skepticism, turf battles, prepackaged answers, plus defensiveness. What made the difference was that the new folks outnumbered them, and they set the tone. The process helped too. Each session started from broadly amended proposals. We went item by item, and because people had already seen the proposals, had already commented, refined, critiqued, and discussed before the convention, most things moved quickly. Sometimes a proposal passed with barely any discussion. Other times someone would suggest a change, they'd speak. Then the chair would ask for a straw vote, a simple show of hands to see if it had support. If almost no one supported it, we moved on, no endless debate, no hard feelings. If a change did have significant support, then and only then did we really dive into discussion. And what was amazing was this. People didn't speak just to win. They spoke to clarify, to find consensus, to build something. Egos stayed in check. And when an issue proved tough, really divisive, we tabled it. We let it breathe, we thought it over, and we came back stronger. In the end, every decision that was ratified had overwhelming support. Two thirds at least, usually much more. Why? Because we knew this wasn't about scoring points. It wasn't a game. This was serious. We believed if we get this right it will matter. So we acted accordingly. We dumped the ego, we practiced respect, and that tone, it was contagious. Even the few who might have wanted to dominate the room, they kept quiet. They adapted. I remember the late night conversations, small groups, honest talk, no one angling to dominate, no one clinging to their own wording. Everyone was excited about the trust, the unity, the sense that we were actually doing something historic. Even when we got to the activist program, which had less consensus coming in, we started fresh. More discussion, more back and forth, but still always that tone of mutual respect. And when the dust settled, we had something we all stood behind. Miguel asked, You remember the initial activist program? Sure. We didn't want a laundry list, but with three thousand people at the convention, to avoid that was easier said than done. On the one hand, we needed to concentrate our initial energies. We had to pick some priority campaigns that we could really organize around, focus, mobilize, get traction. But on the other hand, people were coming in thinking about programming two different but equally legitimate ways. First, they wanted to support campaigns that were good for the organization as a whole, initiatives that met the core principles we had already agreed upon. But second, people were also bringing their lived experiences, their personal commitments, campaigns they were ready to pour themselves into right away. So yes, there were many favorite proposals, but somehow, and I'd call it a bit of a miracle, we managed to narrow it down to a relatively succinct set of starting campaigns. thirty hours work for forty hours pay, thirty dollars an hour minimum wage, sharply progressive property, wealth and income taxes, comprehensive full employment, K twelve, smaller class sizes, better curriculum, free education through college, cancellation of student debt, amnesty for immigrants, relaxed borders for political and ecological refugees, community control of police, restorative justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, universal public daycare, equal pay requirements, and electoral college, publicly funded elections, ranked choice voting, convert overseas military bases to peaceful purposes, single payer, publicly funded comprehensive health care, public oversight of pharmaceuticals, nationalization where warranted, phase out fossil fuels, restore ecosystems, expand AI regulation and oversight. Okay, it obviously wasn't a short list, but the plan was simple. RPS would support the whole agenda at the national level, but each chapter would emphasize the campaigns that best fit its local conditions, member interests, and community priorities. Miguel asks, Cynthia, from a session at her home outside Indianapolis, Indiana. Back in nineteen ninety eight, you watched your parents lose the modest home your family had built a life in. That early trauma from the housing crash planted a seed, and years later you emerged as a fierce advocate for affordable, high quality public housing. You championed what was then called the right to the city and have stayed deeply involved in RPS organizing ever since, staffing campaigns, shaping programs, and serving as Secretary of Housing in the second RPS shadow government. To begin, can you recall when you first became radical? What lit the fire? Yes, I remember it with a clarity that feels etched into my bones. I was eight when we lost our home, and the ache of it, sharp, bewildering, settled deep. I remember the confusion, most of all how it pulsed with anger. I didn't yet have words for it. My mother tried to explain. Quote The economy's in trouble. I stared at her like she'd spoken in code. What did that mean to an eight year old? What did it mean to anyone? We didn't have money to cover the bills. The bank was taking our house. I asked her how it possibly helped the economy for me not to have a home. How it helped anyone. She told me it helped the bankers, it helped the rich. I remember my father retreating into the bottle and a mood dark and unreadable. I know now to call it depression, but then it was just rage, moods that shifted like thunderheads, scowls, outbursts, silence you could choke on, and my mother trying to hold the seams of our family together, patching over the poverty and his anger as best she could. I remember ice forming on the insides of the windows. I remember the crawling presence of mites and lice. I still dreamed sometimes of toilets overflowing, the stink of it rising through the air. Survival was our daily ritual. We didn't have the luxury of imagining something better. No one spoke of hope or justice. At eight years old my life already felt cast in iron, but it took many more years before I could look back and see what I'd been made into. Miguel asks, It is incredibly daunting to discover how many people we know or think we know, whose past resembles yours. What lives on from all that inside you to restrict you still? There's likely more to it than I even know, but let me share one thing I believe is far more widespread, though it wears many disguises and comes from all sorts of places than most people are willing to admit, especially in those of us who don't outwardly show the effects. Inside my own mind there's a voice that doesn't belong. It's an intruder of sorts, persistent and unwelcome, always poised to scold, to shrink me. This voice didn't come from nowhere. For me it traces mostly to childhood, though for others it may have roots in classrooms, teachers, bullies the thousand paper cuts of a life spent being told no. The voice says you can't, you can't, you can't. Over and over it hammers my head with a drumbeat of defeat. It imprints its own agenda to wear you down, to strip your will by whispering you're too dull, too weak, too irredeemably stupid to try that. It's a strange thing really to find such cruelty living inside your own head. You wonder how your own thoughts could betray you so completely, but it happens, and for those of us saddled with such a derogatory hitchhiker, it's as though we're walking uphill in mud, every effort made twice as hard. The truth is you don't early shuck it off. Sometimes you never do. A person might appear accomplished, might seem to move through the world with confidence, but underneath there's often a private war waged against this bitter hidden ghost. It's a weight that bears down hardest on women, on people of color, on working folks. The voice makes you small. Some manage to silence it completely, others keep it at bay most of the time. But many are swallowed by it little by little. And maybe this is one of oppression's cruelest victories, not just what it takes from your life, but what it plants inside your mind. And almost no one speaks of it. Even those close to me wouldn't guess that I carry this snarling passenger, always mudding the waters of my thinking. Miguel asks, it seems like it would have many effects. Perhaps in some it would even make you stronger to have dealt with it. I think there is probably more than one variant, yes. The creature has various modes and personalities. But yes, this is certainly one effect, as for me, no doubt. But maybe we can move on. Miguel asks, I have to think about how to perhaps address their hitchhiker baggage with others. But okay, can you tell us what were for you the most personally inspiring early RPS events or campaigns? For me, and by that I mean for the shape my life took, the paths I followed, there were so many moments and movements that left a lasting mark. Especially those grounded in city life. The push to turn military and prison infrastructure into building housing, for instance, those campaigns weren't just causes, they were lived experiences, vivid and urgent. But if you're asking about the kind of deep soul shifting moments people sometimes have, the kind that sneak up on you and linger, I couldn't fully explain it, not even to myself, but to memory surface, strange and unexpectedly powerful. The first time I used RPS's people social media, and the first public talk, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs gave after being pardoned and welcomed home. Miguel asks, really? Yes. I think what stirred me so deeply about using that new platform was how utterly ordinary it was. It was just sharing something, reaching out like we all do. And yet I was doing it through a system dreamed up and built by people I knew, people who fought for a different world. And I knew this system, this tool was going to last. It wasn't a prototype or a proof of concept. It was part of the foundation of something enduring. For the first time I felt that rare and almost sacred certainty we're going to win. What we were building wouldn't be swept away. This was a quiet revelation that left me breathless. And Snowden's talk, it wasn't just what he said, though he spoke with insight and clarity. It was the air in the room, the feeling of something monumental having shifted. Sitting there, I had this sudden, unshakeable sense that the walls we so often crash against, the divisions that fracture our movements and our hope could be crossed. Not with some saccharin version of unity where we paste on smiles and pretend everything's fine. I felt real understanding, pushing us all forward. I don't know why it struck me so strongly that day, but it did. Miguel asks Once the first convention was over, what do you think kept things going? There was a lot of conflict in the early period, wasn't there? In any collective effort to build something new, time has a way of smoothing the path. If things don't unravel entirely before they start to mend. And nearly always, the most difficult part is the beginning. Starting something means stepping out before there's any proof your steps matter. You act with reason, yes, and with passion, yes, but also with something that doesn't come easily to many of us. A kind of faith. That first leap is always into uncertainty. You can't know for sure what will come, but over time, if you're lucky and steady, the evidence begins to grow. And as belief in your own effectiveness strengthens, it gets easier to act. Not because the stakes are lower, but because hope becomes more grounded than guessed. That was true for RPS. In the early days we had to leap with no net. We had to conjure motivation from scraps, build hope from thin threads. Nothing assured us we would succeed. And the uncertainty bred another challenge. In the early stages of any new venture, bad decisions can do real damage. Sometimes they can be fatal. When you're just getting your footing, a single misstep, choosing the wrong strategy, framing your message poorly, can throw the whole thing off track. Think what would have happened if that first convention had collapsed. We might never have recovered. The same holds true when forming a local chapter. Early misjudgments loom large. But once momentum builds, the fragility begins to ease. Mistakes are still mistakes, but they aren't necessarily deal breakers. The foundation is stronger. You can patch a crack without the whole house falling down. And when your project welcomes a range of voices and perspectives, when it makes room for genuine diversity and even difference, it gains a kind of flexibility, a built in resilience. If one path fails, well, there's another next to it waiting. After the first convention, we were barely past the starting line. The fear of failure clung to us. It made every decision feel monumental. People worried that one wrong move could doom everything. We overinvested in every detail, every fork in the road. We grew rigid, protective. Just imagine, you're sitting in a room with a dozen or so people, trying to sort a chapter. Your whole life might be about to shift. This matters. You're discussing when to meet, how often, who to bring in next, and suddenly these small decisions carry the weight of the world. Everything feels like it's always on the line. So you argue harder, hold tighter, because to let go might mean letting the whole thing slip away. That's the strange pressure of beginnings. Minor choices take on exaggerated importance, not because they are truly monumental, but because we are afraid they might be. And that fear can make us lose sight of the long road we need to walk together. Miguel says, Yes, I have experienced it. We analyze little stuff to death. I once heard that An old timer called this problem the paralysis of analysis. Yes, during the convention itself, the sheer scale of it, the energy, the shared hope held back some of the usual pitfalls. It's hard to get mired in petty fights when you're swept up to something so full of promise. But once the convention ended and we scattered back into smaller, newborn chapters, the old patterns began to resurface. Clashing viewpoints would often harden into deadlock. We hadn't yet learned how to lean into disagreement with grace. Later on, when the roots were deeper and the branches stronger, we could approach tensions with more patience, working toward compromise or even testing competing ideas side by side to see which held up best in practice. But back then we weren't there yet. Back then we were still trying to find our footing. Three thousand people had shown up to that convention. Then they went home, to their cities, their towns, their jobs, and their families. We never traced every step, but looking back, the pattern became clear. About five hundred of us dove in headfirst. We didn't just believe in RPS, we were ready to shape our lives around it. For us, the standard for decision making was simple. First, contribute to building the movement, and then within that frame, tend to our families and our other work. The revolution wasn't something we fit into the margins. It was the container for everything else. Another thousand or so came back lit up, committed, but with fewer hours in the day. They wanted to help genuinely, but life's other obligations held a tight grip, and the rest, around fifteen hundred, were supportive in spirit. They might have called themselves revolutionaries, and they meant it. But they hadn't yet made the leap. Their day to day still revolved around the old world, and the new one hadn't yet become the axis they turned on. It was no fault of theirs. Change runs on a spectrum. Some of us rush forward, others follow at their own pace. The challenge is to find a way to move together, even when our feet fall differently. Miguel asks, okay, but why didn't RPS implode? Why did it persist? Keeping RPS alive, making it breathe and grow meant planting seeds, local chapters, that could take root, run campaigns, draw in fresh energy, define what we were becoming, and stand in solidarity with kindred movements. But right out of the gate, we ran headlong into a catch twenty two. At the start, it was the five hundred of us most committed, those who came back from the convention and got to work, who were the ones calling the meetings, gathering neighbors, friends, coworkers, sometimes people who hadn't yet touched RPS at all. We were the spark and the glue. Where we weren't, not much happened. Had that been true everywhere, the whole effort might have faded before it ever had a chance to bloom. But where we were, we called meetings, we planted chapters, we kicked off campaigns. Miguel asks, okay, so what was the catch twenty two? It was that the very people who were most invested in RPS's success, the ones essential to getting it off the ground, were also the most afraid of seeing it fail. And fear like that doesn't always bring out the best in us. It can make us rigid, it can make us argue too hard over every detail. So from the beginning, we were up against two hard truths. First, we leaned too heavily on too few people. Even when those efforts bore fruit, they risked creating an imbalance, those few holding too much sway, having too many connections. Second, because we were relying on such a small group, we became so determined not to let it fall apart that we sometimes stopped listening with open minds. We shut ourselves in. We got through it just barely, maybe, and I don't say that lightly. This enormous thing we now call RPS, the one with real traction, the one that's holding steady decades on, it could have unraveled more times than I care to count. If I were to sing the praises of anyone for RPS's success, it wouldn't be the big names, not even the original visionaries. I'd point to that subset who poured themselves into the early days. Not just with tireless energy, but the ones with enough grace under pressure, enough compassion to cool the tempers when things ran hot. They created space just enough for new people to come in, so that fear could give way to grounded hope, a real flexibility. In my mind, that might be the single most important thing we ever accomplished. Miguel asks, was it personally difficult for people? Of course it was. After the convention, after the fireworks of possibility, we all went home. Let's say you were one of the five hundred. That's a sliver of a fraction in the big picture. And really, I don't even know if it was that many. Could have been fewer, could have been more. But either way, even within only the larger progressive world, it was a vanishingly small number. It meant in any given city, you might have known as few as two or three people as committed as you, maybe none. So now here you are trying to start a local chapter. You're running yourself ragged. You believe in the vision, you feel the weight of its promise, but also the burden of others not showing up the way you hoped. You start to worry that their absence might sink it all. Do you see how you could become hostile and bitter toward many? You start to think that mistakes could kill the dream, and that your deep commitment and growing experience qualifies you to know what's best. Do you see how you might become inflexible and even sectarian about your views? Miguel asks, so what did you do to keep those natural tendencies from taking hold? Those seemingly justified reactions that, at least in part, might even have been warranted. How do you stop them from distorting the whole course of things? We had to get ourselves to understand that progress and success depended easily as much on the way we interacted with folks, our patience, our willingness to abide what we thought were poor or even wrong choices, as on arriving at some abstractly right decisions, while having fewer and fewer people feel committed to those decisions. I think everyone had their own way through it. Maybe there were some among us immune to those darker impulses, but I doubt it. For most of us, myself included, it took having a person or two close by who could keep us honest, someone who could help us remember what mattered, help us keep our baggage of self-doubt and resentment in check. And beyond that, I think a lot of us at some point made a very deliberate shift. We chose to make avoiding those traps our own personal contribution to the cause. I remember actually promising myself this will be my offering. It helped that some of our PS's founders and early organizers had the wisdom to see these challenges as they unfolded. They didn't pretend the road was smooth. They wrote about it, they spoke about it honestly with heart, even while they wrestled with the same weight the rest of us carried. And in that we found a thread of strength to hold us together. Miguel asks, I'd like to ask something a bit more personal if I may. After the convention, while you were devoting yourself to building the movement, you also had a young child at home. How did you navigate the choice between family responsibilities and movement commitments? And how did those around you think about that balance? I remember when Trump was elected, or maybe it was a little after, when I had my first child. Honestly, it felt disorienting, seriously unsettling to bring a child into a world with his presence looming over everything, his cruelty, his vulgarity, his indifference, it all seemed to seep into the corners of our daily lives, and it made me start thinking hard about what it really means to care for your family, to serve those you love. Even if we leave aside just for a moment, our obligations to humanity at large, what does it mean to act in the best interest of your children? It seemed to me that it couldn't possibly be true that the best I could offer was just to earn as much as I could, or for that matter, to shield them from anxiety about the way the world was going. Though I know that's more a question for when children are old enough to understand. Don't get me wrong, of course we need to provide for our kids, but I've come to believe that to think our main responsibility is to rake in enough money to cushion them from chaos is itself a byproduct of a broken, competitive, every family for itself way of living. The world was veering toward catastrophe. Our children's futures were on the line, and it felt like delusion to believe financial provision alone would make things okay. As if someday we'd look back and say, Well, thank goodness we hit those income targets. That kind of magical thinking never sat right with me. Even if we ignore social responsibility, which I don't think we ought to, but even if we do, it still doesn't add up. If we want to protect our children, we need to change the conditions they're inheriting. Later on I heard a story from a friend who had spent time with Dave Dellinger, one of the most devoted American civil disobedience activists of his generation, maybe of any generation. My friend asked him whether he ever questioned his sacrifices he'd made, missing time with his children because of jail sentences, meeting speeches, or even more pointedly, whether he regretted not building financial security for them, something he easily could have done. And Dellinger's response struck a chord in me that hasn't stopped echoing. He said he had no misgivings, no doubts, though he did carry deep sorrow, not for what he did, but for the state of the world that forced him to make such painful choices. He believed his job as a parent wasn't just to be present, but to model what a caring, socially responsible life could be like, not just for his own kids, but for everyone's. He had done what he could, and from there it was up to his children which road to take. Still, his sorrow was real. It was rooted in the heartbreak of having to choose between the urgent work of preparing a broken world and the tender work of tucking your children in at night. Hearing Dellinger's words helped complete my own understanding. It helped me see that caring for your children sometimes means refusing to accept the world as it is. As to others' views, I don't know, but I can guess. Over the past few decades, I think there's been an enormous amount of pressure on parents, siblings, sons and daughters, all trying to sort out the right balance. And the choices weren't easy. This assumes you weren't already drowning, so poor, so overwhelmed, so sick that you couldn't even ask yourself. Should I largely ignore society and mainly pursue my private agendas to enhance my family's well being? Should I pay peripheral attention to social turmoil, but overwhelmingly address my own private agendas? Should I give more time and even more so, more focus to concerns about society? Or even elevate attention to that to the prime place in my thinking? Should I shield my kids, keep my home a sanctuary of fun and internal caring, and not address society and the responsibilities it raises? Or should I bring concerns about society home, share them, and hope all will address them? These questions were real for so many of us, and of course people answered them in all sorts of ways, different strokes for different folks. I don't believe in one size fits all, but here's what I do believe with certainty. If, over time, the larger tide hadn't turned toward a more participatory, more socially engaged view of life, there would be no RPS today. And more than that, I don't think there would be much of a societal future to speak of. Not a future with dignity, not a future worthy of our children, not even a future for the species as a whole. That's what was at stake. Miguel asks, as you went towards steadily greater involvement, were you hostile toward those who didn't? Sometimes I was, to my own regret, but mostly no. What I did try to do was shift their thinking. I believed a mindset centered only on oneself and one's family, unwilling to adjust priorities even as the world around us changed, was, in the long run, really harmful. Not just misguided, but dangerous. If that world outlook became dominant, I feared it could wash away the very possibility of something better. So I pushed to offer a different way of seeing, gently when I could, more firmly when I had to. But as for hostility, well, how would you feel if someone looked you in the eye after you'd invited them to learn, to march, to organize, to join, and they answered, Why should I? I don't think you stand a chance. Injustice and degradation will prevail. More, what the hell can I contribute? What can I do that would matter? I don't think your project has a chance in hell of succeeding. But even if it does, I am sure my adding myself to it would have no significant impact. On the other hand, I know I can work with considerable chance of some success to make my family more healthy and fulfilled. My spouse, my sister, my brother, even perhaps my closest friends. But the whole country, the whole world? Come on, I can't impact that. It's a fool's errand. You are deluded. To deny my kids, my spouse, my family, my friends, to go off on that tangent, not me. That's not irrational. That kind of response doesn't come from ignorance or malice. It comes from fear, from weariness, from something very human. Still, if everyone thought that way, or even most of us, it would have guaranteed our failure. A person thinking like that, were they to blame? Or was it those of us who had the knowledge of history and of possibility, who had the bigger picture in view, but who hadn't yet found a way to make that picture feel real and reachable for others? Was that lone person wrong, even? If so, in what way? Committing to real change requires a leap of faith. That's the truth. And some people took that leap early, thank goodness, then a few more, then many. What drew me most to RPS was that it kept helping people again and again to find the courage to jump. Miguel asks, I said I wouldn't go there, but I have to. I know you've worked closely with people facing deeply personal blocks, inner walls that kept them from acting. Can you talk a little about that? Politics, real politics, has never been just about ideas, and social change, revolution certainly isn't. It's not even ideas plus action, plus empathy, though those matter deeply. It's also about the landscapes inside us, the mental terrain, because the ills we're fighting out in the world don't stop at our front doors. They settle in our minds, they become habits of thought, voices that travel with us like unwanted passengers. Sometimes people call it baggage. It comes from where we're raised, how we're taught, what we've lived through, and it can act like an enemy lodged in the brain. Sometimes it shows up in the obvious ways, prejudices and hierarchies we absorb from the world around us, racism, sexism, classism, even the pull toward authoritarianism. Sometimes it makes us act cruelty. Sometimes it convinces us to accept cruelty done to us. Sometimes it pushes us to lash out at others who aren't even the source of our pain. But just as often it takes the quieter, more insidious form of self doubt. That's the form I knowed best. For me, it sounded like this. You can't do that. You're no good. Don't speak, don't act, don't write. You'll never be good enough. That voice didn't come from nowhere, and it didn't go away easily either. What RPS did, and the and this may have been one of its most fundamental contributions, was to take inner voices seriously. Where earlier movements had focused on shedding the behaviors of the oppressor, RPS added something new. It openly recognized the damage done to those who had learned to shrink themselves, to doubt themselves, to believe that they had nothing to offer. It tried to remove chains, it also tried to heal bruises. RPS helped people confront the self denial and reflexive anger that got in the way of creativity, of participation, of connection. I don't know exactly how it managed to be so attuned to all that, but it was. It gave people the tools to build confidence. It gave people the space to grow into themselves. It wasn't easy. I knew those voices well, the ones planted in me by childhood, by school, by the long and winding road of life. I'd argue with them, I'd curse them, but silencing them was something else altogether. Still, with the help of others, through mutual support, through the shared work of RPS, I found ways to make room for something better in my mind. Something more like faith, more like strength. The baggage didn't entirely vanish, but it lost its grip. That part of what we were building, it felt like a secret ally, not something you could touch or measure, not a program or a policy. But it was real, and it had power. But then there was an issue. How do we give it collective, lasting, local organizational strength? And so ended that chapter of the Wind Cries Freedom. Do you have reactions, concerns, criticisms? I would certainly like to hear. As I said at the start of this episode, it feels a little strange for me to be delivering to you the text of interviews from a time and place where a next American revolution is barreling towards success. And yet, on two grounds, now two, it feels simultaneously right. First, even in our time and place, a degree of clarity about our long run aims and about plausible long run methods as well, which is what The Wind Cry's Freedom seeks to deliver, seems to me to be essential ingredients of sensible practice. And two, perhaps it is idiosyncratic to me, but Mamdani's marshalling of ninety thousand volunteers into a campaign that went from essentially zero support, I think one percent at the outset, to winning in the largest city in the US and in the center of US corporate power and control, against that corporate power and control, buttress my belief that fundamental change can happen, not overnight, but much faster than most people, and even those who believe in such change is possible anticipate. More like on the timeline of Guevara's oral history, and at least broadly in the manner of his revolutionary interviewees. And that said, this is Michael Albert, signing off until next time for Revolution Z.