RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 373 - WCF: Actors, Movies, Art, Beauty and Revolutionary Change
Episode 373 of RevolutionZ hears about people trained to perform deciding to build power. Celia Crowley—actor, organizer, and then California’s governor but later to become Vice President—to unpacks how a quiet coalition inside Hollywood traded optics for organization and turned celebrity into a conduit for collective action. From a first awkward meeting in a palatial living room to strikes that rebalanced power on set, Celia lays out some moves that mattered: an intensive “social school” for film workers, a high-stakes push for pay transparency, and films that funnel surplus revenue into real campaigns.
Perhaps most revealingly, Celia dismantles the myth of artistic exceptionalism with great clarity. Creativity doesn’t need hierarchy to thrive. It can do still better with equity, shared decision-making, and room for many voices. She discusses how democratic planning can fund cultural work without dictating its content, how balanced jobs expanded total creativity, and how evidence from RPS-style productions challenged the old game of genius-for-power. She also gets personal about beauty as currency, the risks behind the red carpet, and the hard line to draw between admiration and structural privilege.
Along the way, she answers questions about a pivotal Oscar night, a landmark industry strike, and the steady rise of worker councils across sets and studios. The episode provides a template with lessons for journalism, sports, and any field where a few have long held center stage. Celia provides reason to rethink who decides what gets made, who gets paid, and how audiences become stakeholders. Her experience offers strategy, examples, and proof points to use whatever your work and passion may highlight.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our three hundred and seventy third consecutive episode, and it continues our presentation of the forthcoming book The Wind Cries Freedom. This time it is two chapters for this one episode. The first is titled Actors Activism. The second is titled Activism's Actors. Cute, huh? Except I honestly do not remember why I broke the original one chapter into two. So here I will take them together in one episode. We start with Miguel Guevara interviewing the then California governor and future vice president Celia Crowley in her office in Sacramento. They discuss her personal evolution as a participant in the movement for a revolutionary participatory society with an emphasis on her Hollywood experiences and organizing. But first, a very brief comment on now. Now is spiraling toward nevermore, never again, never. Maybe twenty twenty six will take the US House away from MAGA, supposing the election happens. It would need to happen to have that effect. But what ensures the election happens? Maybe twenty twenty six will not cast the world into a new arms race punctuated by insanely immoral US imperial forays against sovereign states, like the ongoing one against Venezuela and the proposed one against Greenland. But what will obstruct those? Maybe twenty twenty six will see IC exit, see inequality narrow, see AI shackled, see health care unshackled, and so on. But for all that, what has to happen? The resistance must grow, become more sustained rather than episodic, more varied in its approaches, more militant, and more intent on outreach and onboarding new participants. But next level, what must happen for all that to happen? I think one thing is that the main locus of energy and the scope of the aspirations of resistance have to readjust. Those resistors older than thirty have to persist and indeed grow their involvement and their numbers. But mainly those younger than thirty, those younger than twenty five have to grow greatly in their involvement and numbers to become the main locus of the greatly increased energy and commitment of resistance. That is the kind of development needed to sustain the rollback of MAGA and then to continue on to win new institutions able to facilitate the opposite of MAGA, another world that is possible. And just perhaps another part of that last trajectory is foreshadowed, at least broadly, in the oral history titled The Wind Cries Freedoms Interviewee's lessons regarding their motivations, values, ideas, organization, and choices toward those same ends. So to reenter their world and their time and to hear from them, for this episode, Miguel Govera questions Celia Crowy. Celia, you were an aspiring actor around the time of the first RPS convention. You went on to become deeply involved with RPS even as your Hollywood career took off, famously punctuated by your unforgettable Oscar acceptance speech. Later you served as Secretary of Popular Culture in the RPS Shadow Government, a cabinet position created specifically for the cultural dimension of the movement. And from there you eventually became governor of California, a role you still hold as we speak. Can you tell us when and how you first became radical? This story is well known by now, Miguel, personal, but also not personal, because so prevalent. I was raped by my uncle when I was fifteen, which was in two thousand eight. I didn't tell anyone. I was afraid of how it would be seen and perceived, and really at first of whether it was my fault. Later I didn't want to create what would have been chaos in my family. My father's brother did it. The fallout would be horrendous for my dad and then for my uncle's family. I didn't think he was violent like that with others, or inside his family for that matter, but I have to admit, I didn't know for sure. Afterwards, which is a word that here covers a long span and much disruption and pain, I used the internet in private to learn more about rape and about rape victims and perpetrators. On the sly I went pretty deeply into the subjects and became familiar with and indebted to many feminist writers. Together they saved my life. So that was my doorway to radicalism. My impression is that for many people, rape or watching a loved one killed or jailed or torn apart by unemployment or drugs, or turned violent within families, or suffering preventable illness lurks in their memories of their formative years. It was true for me, and I had a hard time getting beyond that, not least because all around me there were always reminders in what I saw and endured. So first I was attacked, then I was feminist. Miguel asks, as you have written and spoken of that elsewhere, here we can jump ahead. A little over ten years later, RPS was starting to percolate, I suppose, and not that long thereafter what became the Hollywood arm of RPS got going. Do you remember the start of it? Hollywood, that strange mirror of the American soul, has always had its performers, its occasional flashes of conscience. At almost any given moment, a few actors have spoken out, gestured beyond their red carpeted confines towards something like political commitment. And yes, donations to electoral candidates have also always been common, performed as if they were acts of daring, but mostly, even the noblest of Hollywood's political ventures have been like candlelight vigils during a storm, visible for a moment, then drowned out by the noise. Single issue sympathies, carefully contained statements, a spotlight on one injustice, often unaccompanied by any broader reckoning with the architecture of power. When you subtract the cruel reactionary showmanship of someone like Ronald Reagan, or the shallow egoism of actors who emit only scripted silence, you're left with a landscape of mostly ineffectual gestures, well meaning, perhaps, but rarely radical, rarely enduring. So the Hollywood Orum of RPS didn't begin with spectacle. It began improbably and quietly in rooms, real rooms, actual people, actors, screenwriters, producers, editors, sitting across from each other, sometimes nervously, sometimes defiantly, and asking the question what would it mean to truly relate to this, to be part of something larger? It was not long after RPS held its first convention, the idea was still tender, still forming its own vocabulary. But something had shifted. The timing was different. We weren't gathering just to have our hearts warmed, egos stocked, or our image rehabilitated. We were trying, truly trying, to join a struggle we had not authored, but to which we could contribute. A few meetings in we knew we would join, we would not be an annex, we would be a part of it, and we would do so through three strands of action. The first was internal, reaching out to our peers, our coworkers, the communities we moved in professionally and creatively, inviting them in, not to a brand, but to a process. The second was structural. Hollywood has always been a machine that manufactures ideology. It cloaks itself in glamour and speaks in the language of representation, but behind the curtains, it has long reinforced the very power structures it claims to critique. We wanted to push back. We wanted to change not only what was seen on screen, but the processes behind the camera, the labor, the hierarchies, the exclusions. We wanted our work to reflect the values we claimed to hold. And the third strand was outward facing. We knew the strange currency we carried, our visibility. Fame is a kind of gravitational field, often absurd, often toxic, but nonetheless powerful. We didn't want to pretend it wasn't there. We wanted to redirect it, use it to draw people toward ideas, toward struggle, toward one another. Hollywood RPS began with eleven people, not a title wave, but a beginning. Seven were women, many had been active in Me Too, not just as hashtags, but as witnesses and warriors. Most had engaged with Black Lives Matter, with the movement to end Israeli genocide against Palestine, and with the endless drumbeat of resistance against Trump's grotesque assaults on everything that had not yet been fully crushed. Joining RPS after all that felt less like a leap and more like a continuity. For people in Hollywood, it was like choosing to become part of a film, not one already scripted, but one still being written by those living it. We read the RPS materials, we talked, we looked into the eyes of those already involved. We considered the risks, we joined, and we invited others in. But I don't want to romanticize it. I don't want to pretend it was easy. In a world as insulated and performative as ours, even small gestures of defiance feel like detonations. Speaking out meant stepping outside the circles that gave us comfort and protection. And I hate saying this because compared to what most people endure, the danger was laughably small. Yet the fear was real. To us, in that moment, it felt like standing on a mountaintop built of applause and privilege and choosing to jump. The air around us said you are on top of the world, and all we could think was I'm about to leap. The first thing we did was not to post or to perform, or to make statements dripping in high production values. The first thing we did was listen to each other and to the ideas. We turned our curiosity away from gossip, away from the lucrative churn of scandal and speculation, and towards something more enduring, the architecture of a better world. We read, we assembled texts, fragments of history, theory, strategy, everything we could find that pulsed with the blood and bones of RPS. And we read them not as consumers of content, but as potential participants in something far larger than ourselves. It felt in a way like the work we already knew how to do, like actors considering whether to accept a role. We approached RPS as one might approach a script, not with naivete, but with seriousness, with commitment. Could we believe in the story? Could we inhabit it? Could we help shape it? And as we read more, as we argued and interrogated and reflected together, we didn't just decide that we liked RPS. We rehearsed it. We practiced speaking it aloud, not to memorize slogans, but to make the ideas our own, to be prepared, not just to nod along, but to represent it with clarity and honesty, to argue for it when challenged, to imagine how it could grow. Looking back, I think what we did was unusual, maybe even rare in those early days. But it wasn't special for us. It was simply how we worked, how we had always worked. The politics weren't all that new. The process of deciding, rehearsing, embodying, that was already in our bones. And then came the next step, reaching out, talking to others in Hollywood, inviting them in. And this, of course, was harder. Not because people disagreed necessarily, but because they hesitated, they feared, they questioned not the validity of the vision, but the cost of the commitment. Why should I bother? That was the refrain over and over. Why pull back the curtain on a system we've already learned to survive? Why speak when silence buys peace? Why trade the fragile comforts of willful ignorance for the turbulence of truth? To join RPS, our Hollywood co workers told us, would mean confronting things they'd rather leave undisturbed. It would mean giving up time, already too scarce, to organize, to discuss, to act. It would mean risking the disapproval of producers and the quiet hostility of some colleagues. It would mean the end of certain friendships, or at least their thinning. You are asking me to lose a lot, and what would I gain other than a lot of talk, a lot of mutual recrimination? What are you doing other than talking? What would I be doing other than talking? And I understood them saying these things. I really did. The calculus of survival is not something to mock. But still, I answered, maybe not always word for word, but always in spirit like this. Producers already sit above you, against you, whether you acknowledge it or not. Yes, you'll have arguments. Yes, some friendships might change, but others might deepen. They might finally mean something. And yes, we are talking because that's where it begins. Talking is not nothing. It's how we stop being alone. But no, talking is not all we intend to do. That's exactly why we need you. Help us imagine more. Help us find the things worth doing beyond talk. We are not asking you to join a club. We are asking you to help invent a future. Miguel asks, Do you remember what your feelings were? Yes, of course. It may sound strange, but once we committed, really committed to RPS, it became impossible to look away. What we did to expand it, to nourish it, wasn't just activism or participation, it became the marrow of who we were becoming. To only glance at it casually, to relegate it to the background like an afterthought, was inconceivable. We found ourselves undergoing a transformation more profound than we had anticipated. It was like stepping into a film role, yes, but not one scripted by someone else, and not for a few fleeting months. This wasn't fiction, and we weren't being paid to do it. This was real, and we were writing it as we lived it. We had been actors, yes, but also directors, camera people, grips, editors. Some of us were women, some men, some were black, Latino, white, gay, straight, parents, partners. We each brought our own composite of identities, shaped not only by biology or culture, but by the roles we had learned to play in the theater of the world. Like everyone else, we were crisscrossed by the demands and restrictions of the positions we had been assigned, by class, by race, by gender, by our work, by our fame, by our contracts, by our silences. Our roles had shaped us, they shaped how we moved, how we were seen, and how we saw ourselves. But something began to shift, quietly at first, almost imperceptibly when we joined RPS. It wasn't a revolution with fireworks, it was subtler, but it was no less profound for that. What happened was this, we stopped being merely the sum of our social roles, our Hollywood roles. Those identities didn't vanish, our skin, our paychecks, our lovers, our scripts, they all still clung to us. The world still pushed and pulled in all its familiar ways. Producers still called, the media still judged, contracts still cajoled, and our habits, old, worn, sometimes comforting, sometimes not, still whispered to us. But layered over all of that, or maybe under it, something else took root. Something more defining. Being part of RPS began to shape how we thought, how we spoke, how we related, not just to each other, but to the world. And soon that part of us, the revolutionary part, rose to the surface. It became the main current running through our days. It wasn't just something we did. It became who we were. It redefined the ground beneath our feet. And so we didn't delude ourselves. We knew change would take time. We knew it would have costs, but we didn't linger too long on doubt. The transformation was too exhilarating, too necessary. So yes, I remember that early period vividly, because my relationships to RPS quickly became the access around which I turned. It was the compass by which I measured not just my actions but myself, who I was, who I might become. Miguel asks, didn't the obstacles ever intimidate you? I remember fearing for my career as a journalist when I first began supporting RPS. But it wasn't only fear. I also doubted our potential our potential. I wondered if I was risking everything for nothing. Didn't you ever feel the same? I don't know that I can explain my reaction to obstacles in any rational way. It wasn't a calculation, it wasn't strategy. It just wasn't time for me to hesitate. The air was thick with reasons to wait, to hold back, to reconsider. But we couldn't afford to. We had to agitate, not negotiate. We had to push, to make the change we wanted. Hesitation would have been a luxury. We were surrounded by flood waters, uncertainty, and threat on all sides. But perhaps what carried us through was memory, the memory of what we had already endured, the bruises and wisdom earned in feminist struggles, in anti racist organizing. Those years taught us something deeper than slogans, that you act not when it is safe, but because it is necessary. There's a phrase that came along later, but I think it captures the spirit of what we felt. There is no alternative to being alternative. Still, to answer your question more concretely, less like a poem and more like a plan, we began within a year three projects, three deliberate, hopeful, sometimes chaotic efforts to move from principle to practice. The first was a social school for people in the film industry, a space, an interruption in our routines, where people who had spent their lives telling familiar stories could begin to see. Learning new ones. It was a collection of courses, group sessions, shared meals, and uncomfortable conversations. Participants gave two full weeks of their time, no brief seminar, no lunchtime workshop. It was intensive, all day, demanding, and it was structured around three pillars understanding the current social order, developing and articulating a vision for something better, and examining the mechanics, both possibilities and poison of the film industry itself. This wasn't a hobby. It was serious work. Some of us taught. Others invited RPS organizers and thinkers to join us. We borrowed materials from universities and elsewhere. We didn't reinvent the wheel. We gathered tools, adapted them, and sharpened them. But make no mistake, this was no small ask. Hollywood people are not just busy. They are time hoarders. They live inside calendars planned to the minute. And we were saying cancel it. Clear two weeks. Give more if you want to teach. We were not idealistic undergraduates. We were adults, often with a decade or more of acclaim and expectation under our belts. People used to being served, not challenged, but now we had to surrender control, to sit, not as celebrities, but as citizens, as students. To participate was a jolt, a rupture, but it worked. People learned, not just intellectually but socially. They made friends, they reimagined their place in the world. They stopped asking what role and what script should I play? What screenplay should I write? What scenes should I film? And began asking what future can I build? We created not just RPS participants, but capable members. The second project was more explosive. We wanted to shine a light on the thing Hollywood guards most fiercely money. We set out to uncover and publicize the pay rates of everyone in the industry, from assistants to actors, from interns to executives, and once this was widely revealed, to push for more equitable compensation and relationships across the board. You can probably imagine how that went over at first. You want to know what? They'd ask, eyes narrowing, and then once we explained, you want to do what with the information? And the final blow, you want to do what to my income? This was no feel good campaign. This was a declaration of war on the unspoken hierarchies that shape who eats and who starves, who gets heard and who gets erased. The resistance we encountered was loud, well funded, and at times vicious. But we didn't retreat, we didn't scream, we persisted, calmly, firmly with data, with history, with ethics, and slowly, so slowly we shifted the narrative. What began as a fringe demand, framed as naive and utopian, started to seem like common sense, and those who clung to the old arrangements, once envied or admired, began to look like what they were, greedy, insulated, and profoundly antisocial. Finally, the third project was to reach beyond the insulated world of Hollywood. We settled on two paths. First, we pressured local filmmakers and media producers to open their doors, to give space, tools, and real support to grassroots participants. The system is usually closed tight, but cracks can be pried open with insistence. Second, we took matters into our own hands. We created short films, and as we gained confidence, also some full length ones, all carrying the ideas and program of RPS. Because despite the cliches and glits, actors are not frivolous. They are serious, hard working people, people who understand the power of story and the necessity of telling new ones. Miguel asks, and at the start there were only about ten of you? Yes, initially eleven, and so from the very beginning it was critical to reach out as well as to establish a clear programmatic agenda. A call to arms, if you like, because without growing our numbers, none of what we dreamed of could come close to happening. And grow we did, as you know. Miguel asks, yes, but what about the beginning? I remember the first meeting like it was a scene from a movie. We gathered at the home of one of the actors, a sprawling, outrageously lavish palace that felt more like a luxury resort than a residence. Eleven of us squeezed into a living room that was vast, ornate and immaculate, but somehow sterile, almost antiseptic in its perfection. You could have installed a basketball court and still had room to spare. One entire humongous wall was glass, opening onto a massive deck with a pool that could have swallowed a whale. Beyond that, the Pacific Ocean stretched wide and wild, indifferent to our host's opulence. The dynamics in the room started tense. A couple of us lived lives roughly comparable to our hosts, at least by Hollywood standards. But others, myself included, while far from poor, had never set foot in a home remotely like this. The gulf was there, humming beneath polite conversation. The most famous actor in the room, our host, made a tepid speech. He spoke about having donated money and about holding a fundraiser for an earlier Sanders campaign. Give better candidates money, he said. Help them win. To do less is not enough. But if that had been the meeting's tone and spirit, I suspect we would have ended with some exorbitant wine or whiskey and gone nowhere. Then another actor named Matt spoke. His voice cut through the polite smog. He said that kind of involvement, donations and fundraisers was not enough. The conditions most people endured here and abroad were too abysmal for only band-aids. He talked about global warming, wars, the emerging threat of AI, real dangers to survival. And he laid it out. We all know RPS is right. Society needs a new social system, not patchwork fixes. Given all our assets, our platforms, our privileges, we have a responsibility to stop dodging the truth and start seeking serious change. Donating was good, he said. Immediate, short term actions were essential, but they were not enough. Society needed a rewrite. That moment, Matt's clarity broke through, and just like that we were off and running. Miguel asks, What opposition did you have to overcome? Do you remember? Absolutely I remember, not least because so much of it kept repeating itself like an echo in an empty hall, setting aside the personal tensions, like the odd discomfort some felt about the lavish house where we held our first meeting. The core problem when trying to enlist actors, filmmakers, singers, painters, writers, and the whole family of artists always raised one stubborn idea. They would say to us we do something special. We are not like other people. We are artists. We need a special kind of freedom to be creative. Our income should match our creativity, and we must be free to do whatever we like, including refusing changes in work that would sap our focus. Then, as if holding the winning card, they would add, It is insane to think the public should have any say in planning art. The whole point is that artists do that, and the public can either like it or not. They looked at us as if we had lost our minds and declared the idea that artists should have to negotiate cooperatively with the public about their work would be the death of all art. Keep that nonsense away from me. So our challenge was twofold. First, we had to resist the urge to lash out at their elitism. That arrogance was a fortress, and attacking it directly only made it stronger. Second, we needed to gently dismantle the conceit that artists were uniquely special, entitled to privileges denied to others. Yes, an artist is creative, we agreed, of course, but so is a scientist, so is a doctor, a designer, a builder, and with the right training and balanced job arrangements, all of us can be creative part of the time. More, creativity should be and often is its own reward. What we must pay for is not creativity itself, but hard work, long hours and difficult conditions. It was hard to make people hear they weren't a different breed, but once they did hear that, progress was steady. We pointed out that saying actors or directors shouldn't have balanced work is the same as saying that others who hold creative and powerful positions shouldn't either. It implies that twenty percent of people should dominate the other eighty percent. We didn't dodge the point. We said yes, even if balanced work might reduce time for creativity among today's stars, it's essential to pursue anyway. And in truth, it would not reduce the total. Instead, balanced work would free more people's creativity and expand artistic output. It would deepen the perspectives of those trying to communicate life's truths, whether they be writers, actors, singers, or directors. But some actors, directors, and others still struggle to even hear this. They insisted that doing rote tasks would strangle their creativity. Negotiating art as a part of an economic plan would mean I do what others decide. That would end art. Ignoring the irony that they often did plenty of rote work already, we'd answer needless correctness. You call everyone having dignified work, a fair voice, an equitable income needless correctness? Yes, balancing empowering and routine tasks will likely reduce current actors' time acting. But if everyone does balanced work, it will unlock creativity in many more people. It's time to move forward. Finally, we explained that a new system, one that gave workers and consumers self managing say, wouldn't mean the public dictates what goes into a novel, play, or film, just as it doesn't mean the public would decide what research a physicist pursues or how an architect designs a building. Instead, the public, working together with producers, in this case, those who make films, would decide what serves society, what benefits the community, and on that basis how much social resources should be devoted to films. They'd decide what counts as socially valued film projects, and thus which works qualify for remunerated labor. If the public decided they didn't want music, then creating music wouldn't count as socially valued work. If it wanted some music but not much, then only a few musicians would earn income for that. You could still create something unwanted, perhaps hoping to change minds, but you couldn't call it socially valued labor. The same would apply to novels, engineering, or anything else. Typical artists would say, but artists create new things. Whether anyone will like them or how much is only known later. To get valued works, you have to risk creating things that aren't valued. And we would say exactly right. The public doesn't have to understand or appreciate every film or painting, every song or performance, every method of construction, or even every research project in advance. Much less does it have to know beforehand what specific art, engineering or science it wants society to have. What the public truly decides after hearing reports from those who will do the labor is how much it wants to overall. That amount determines how much producers can earn making music, but what they actually produce, that is their choice. The critics would keep pressing, but not everyone is equally creative, writes equally well, or can convey emotion and passion on screen and text through music or paint with equal power. Not everyone is equally smart, fast or strong. We are born different. And we would reply, Yes, of course, we are indeed born different, and to deny that would be absurd. But education and training matter too. Then some big name actor would lean in and say to me, Of course, education and training matter, but even if you had much more of both, you wouldn't be the actor I am. I would chuckle and say, perhaps, and we should certainly celebrate and benefit from the extraordinary talents some people have. Well, if you celebrate differences, why in your vision do you try to level us by having everyone do a fair share of rote tasks? The big name actor would respond. I'd reply, it is not about leveling people. Almost all human qualities exist in different degrees, and luckily so. Leveling is a fantasy, and it would be terribly dull in any event. But that doesn't mean only a privileged few should do empowering work. I celebrate inborn differences, but I reject the idea that those born with faster reflexes, keener sight, quicker calculation, stronger muscles, a painter's eye, an actor's expressiveness and empathy, or a surgeon's hand should be showered with wealth and power. With a bit of a proud wine, the famous actor responded, but we contribute more. People love our product. It brightens lives, it enriches souls, it carries an emotional weight all its own. We deserve more, just like now. And me, just a smidgen strident, I'd say first, to be clear, current income differences aren't mostly about talent or product value, but about bargaining power and luck that masquerades is merit. Rewarding excellence is fine, but it is neither necessary nor just to do so disproportionately. Celebrate genius, absolutely, but also advance material equity and social solidarity. Admire brilliance, yes, but foster participation. We can do all that. Okay, Miguel, you've got me going. Sorry, I assume you didn't want me to recite all that here. But the fascinating point was how when fully considered, these new economic insights applied as powerfully to art and intellect as to rote labor. Equity, classlessness, and self management are not just slogans, but demands that touch every activity and every person. And so we actors had to act, not just in films or song or novels, but in the world we inhabited. That was the Actors Activism chapter. And next was Activism's Actors, in which Governor Celia Crowley gets personal and Hollywood gets real. Miguel asked, Celia, how did you personally view the role of a Hollywood star in society at the time of the first RPS convention? And how did that understanding begin to shift in the aftermath? What were some of the personal changes you went through? When RPS first convened, I had done some commercials and small supporting roles. Prospects existed, but I was nowhere near a star. To me, a star was a larger than life figure, rich or nearly so, with vast stature and visibility. Stars seemed to live inside an odd bubble of security and privacy, forever dodging wild paparazzi and sometimes aggressive fans or worse. My first meeting at the actor's palatial home didn't change that view. Soon though, I began to see Hollywood stars and other famous artists as people who, through a mix of innate gifts, relentless work and lots of luck, had won access to devoted audiences. They didn't deserve exorbitant income, but they certainly had excessive everything. So I thought these people should either renounce much of that wealth, or if the skewed distribution had to exist for a time, at least redirect much of it toward social causes. For a long time many actors and artists, like media moles and other titans of wealth, gave generously to various causes, some trivial, some vital. I never dismissed that as mere self interest, tax strategy, or PR, though it often was. But I concluded that what mattered far more than patching poverty's wounds was transforming society to end poverty itself, achieving truly equitable remuneration. Miguel asked, what were some of the key events from the RPS conventions to now in the emergence of a new kind of acting and creativity in movies, theater, and all kinds of art? I think the school I mentioned earlier, which was the first thing we undertook and which grew dramatically, had a profound effect on broadening the consciousness, skills, and confidence of workers in the industry. Its growth became a foundation for much else. There is an important point about that that bears on many RPS areas of focus. One kind of RPS activity was having demonstrations or enacting campaigns about some policy, or electing some candidate, and so on. But another kind of activity, typically far less celebrated and visible, sought to attract new allies and solidify the commitment of existing members, and especially to improve members' ability and willingness to hold demonstrations and pursue campaigns really effectively. Often the less celebrated, less visible efforts at education and outreach were more fundamental than the Gordier activity. The productions of films about social issues were each film not so much exposed or pleaded on behalf of suffering constituencies, but instead offered clear formulations of positive potentials and campaigns to relate to was another big factor. Also important was the way those involved related to such projects. The tendency was to contribute ever increasing proportions of a film's surplus revenues to the projects the film advocated, and also to include voices of activists, and finally for the involved film workers and actors to link up with the supported projects in lasting ways, and to urge support for the films and the projects in interviews and public displays, rather than, as was earlier always dominant, simply advocating for themselves. The major dramatic film about RPS, The Next American Revolution, which came out in our early years and which had so many famous participants. expense, foresaw much of what has later happened and certainly elevated RPS visibility throughout the US and the world. But it was also incredibly important because those who worked on it functioned quite collectively. We had balanced responsibilities. We took sensible salaries. That was probably the tipping point for the industry, not least due to all the Oscars the film won and the incredible speeches we gave on Oscar night. Miguel asks, you're being modest, it was your Oscar and your speech that stole the show. Well, I had a great role in that movie, and the times were such that while it portrayed a revolutionary and a revolutionary process and while its intent was to inspire and provoke, nonetheless, the artistry of the script and film was such that I got the best female actor award. And yes, I suppose the speech I gave was a bit of a high point. But please don't exaggerate my personal role. I was in the right place at the right time with a speech a good many people helped craft, and the fact that when I spoke so many stood in unity and in that way guaranteed me time to finish and build drama and desire was also both pivotal and exemplary. In any case, way beyond the film and its impact and the subsequent Oscar events, we had the great industry strike, long nurtured by continuous agitation and organizing. That was an incredible spur to change, and was, I think, perhaps the first time coordinator class members in such large numbers came out so militantly and outspokenly along with workers for dramatically reducing coordinator class advantages. We all accepted and celebrated working people's leadership. It not only turned the industry inside out, it helped spur similar soul searching activism in countless other fields, from the sciences to medicine, law, athletics and many others. Miguel asks what resistance to all that and the rest of what people like yourself are fighting for remains. Well, as you know, we now have workers councils throughout Hollywood and while there are still owners and other officials doing some films the old ways, well over half of today's films are done almost entirely in new RPS ways. There is a perpetual confrontation of the old and the new with the newest is gaining steadily, especially in the commitments of young folks newly entering the fields involved. And this pattern exists as well in schooling science and healthcare and many other fields too. But as you say, the old resistance still exists. Indeed it may only disappear when the people favoring it get too old to persist until precious time does its work. But far more admirably of course many other people leave behind prior views when they witness that better ways with gargantuan gains for humanity, albeit with some losses for themselves are possible. So back to your question we still face two main kinds of opposition. One kind is honest, albeit not even a little worthy, other than that the people with this view avoid hypocritically lying about it. They say I don't want to give up my massive income. I don't want to give up my avoidance of activities I find onerous. I want to defend my coordinator advantages because I like them. That reason is rarely spontaneously voiced, of course, not least because even rich people like to be able to look in the mirror and admire themselves, not to mention to retain relations with their children. So they usually opt for different rationales to hide from themselves the greedy sorry truth. More commonly therefore film industry resistance to RPS takes the form of assertions that with RPS style changes artistic quality would collapse and aesthetic motivations would die. RPS would decimate art and deny those who love films the best possible product. If we make income that RPS calls equitable or if we eliminate corporate divisions of labor or adopt cooperative negotiation for economic allocation, these critics say, it will gut art. These are the same complaints as twenty years ago. The main change is that back then these naysayers were everywhere and we had to argue with nearly everyone in the industry using analogies between racist and sexist nonsense which was at least pretty well understood by most in Hollywood and classist nonsense which was foreign to most. Now however the naysayers are pretty few in number and though the beliefs and analogies are still available and applicable, even more compelling are the huge and singularly successful projects undertaken in RPS style and the gigantic goodwill and quality these new projects regularly generate. Miguel asks how do you think full RPS success will alter artistic creation and performance both for those creating and for those experiencing the products The audience for art will swell, not only because people will have more time to be moved, stirred and inspired, but also because they will carry with them the knowledge that deepens and enriches their experience. Art will no longer be something consumed passively but engaged with, understood and celebrated as part of a shared social life. Artists themselves, they will be workers like any other, no inflated incomes, no outsized power perched on pedestals. Their work will be balanced, crafting, creating, supporting, coordinating with their colleagues in industries that answer both to the creators and to the audiences. Together they will self manage, choosing their directions and roles collectively. Artistry will still be honored and adored, but it will not be extravagantly gilded Miguel asks but will there be the high level of creativity and excellence there is now, the high volume of creative output? Look back to the early years of this century. How much true creativity was there beyond the spectacle of special effects and the endless dissection of murderous minds. Even if you look past the avalanche of me first violence centered cinema, you'll see that excellence, while important, is not the only barometer we should use. Imagine a factory turning out shirts is our highest or our only goal to flood the world with the finest shirts at the greatest volume? If so, why not grind workers to dust, toss their broken bodies into alleys and churn out replacements without end? Why not flood markets with magnificent shirts no one needs? Why not cater exclusively to the whims of the wealthy and the shirt obsessed, ignoring the humble and practical needs of the many? Such madness is self evident. Reason demands that we consider the toll on the workers making the shirts, on the society receiving them, and the losses due to other things left undone because excessive resources were poured into the shirt factory. This is the kind of holistic judgment RPS's system enables. If it means sometimes producing less or settling for good enough instead of perfect when pushing harder would cause hardship or would neglect other needs, that is a choice made freely and with care. Still, I believe creativity and excellence will not only continue at high levels, they will rise steadily. Likewise the volume of creative work will remain vibrant. Social needs will ebb and flow, sometimes less will be enough, sometimes more is demanded. But those who create will be empowered to give more and the public will be ready to receive and cherish more, because the creative potential of the many, once silenced and oppressed will be unleashed and nourished. Those who fear the decline of art, just as those who fear the decline of medicine, engineering or science, are clinging to the false idea that the loss of a privilege fuse monopoly on creative roles cannot be replaced by the newly discovered and nurtured talents of the eighty percent previously crushed into silence and subordination. This belief is no less classist than the old notion that women or black people lack creativity. A claim that was racist or sexist back when, even though it seemed to align with the realities of exclusion. It was a convenient lie for those guarding privilege. Today's rationalizations about class mirror that same hypocrisy. Workers have no say so their creative potential is ignored. But with the extraordinary rise of RPS, workplace councils and balanced job complexes, Hollywood offers a vivid example that old narrative is crumbling fast. So I suppose in a transformed future we'll see fewer explosions of special effects, less fixation on the twisted psyches of murders and mayhem, and yet more creativity, more invention, more soul. But excellence won't be the only measure by which we judge art. Miguel, I imagine you face similar dilemmas in journalism. Miguel responds, yes, quite similar, but also a bit different. In journalism, in a participatory society, I don't think there would be any centers of disproportionate power able to distort events or bend coverage to serve their own interests. That kind of structural bias so dominant in the old world would be gone. There'd be no reason to expect ideological uniformity. Different people would still have different views, of course. Groups would still clash over competing values and perceptions, and journalists and media workers would no doubt sometimes disagree even fiercely. But those disagreements would come from genuine differences, not from pressure exerted by wealth or position. What a person covers, how they frame it and why they weigh one voice over another, all that would still reflect values, but not be distorted by elite interests. But let's circle back to Hollywood. I've heard that when you went to your first major industry meeting you weren't yet revolutionary. So what happened? What brought you the rest of the way? Reading helped, yes, but what really transformed me was becoming part of a group that lived revolution as a practice, not just as a set of ideas. We learned to disagree without assuming we were always right. Our goal was to discover something new, not defend old positions. Instead of reveling and calling each other wrong, we sought truth, even if that meant admitting that we'd been wrong ourselves. We celebrated our willingness to change. Conversations weren't battlegrounds for victory, but spaces for growth. Truth was our weapon, not bullying or one upmanship. That for me was the essence of being revolutionary. We fought hard for what we believed, yes, but we also held our beliefs lightly, ready to let them go if the evidence demanded Miguel asks what was the moment you knew this wasn't just a struggle for survival, but the beginning of real victory I think it was when we made our first RPS film. It was unlike anything Hollywood had ever dared no explosions, no hero no heroes saving the day, no villains zooming large, no murder mysteries or love stories or dystopias. No aliens, no superheroes, no sequels, no remakes. It was about one thing winning a new society. The obstacles were systemic power and centuries of prejudice. The protagonist wasn't a person but the process itself, the future history in the making. Imagine giving an Oscar to future history. Suddenly the industry's biggest name signed on. Hollywood embraced a story driven not by spectacle but by revolutionary ideas. They gave the film voices and personalities the script initially lacked, transforming it into a living thing. And then came the marches not just in Hollywood but across the country actors, directors, crew, tech workers all marching, chanting, singing, sometimes in their work clothes, then gathering in neighborhoods, sharing meals, talking revolution at kitchen tables and community centers. And then doing it again in New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Memphis, San Francisco, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Miami, Cleveland. We were showing the world this is what we've done, this is what you can do too. That was solidarity and action. That was a turning point. Miguel responds, I remember too, those events in New York were unforgettable, and like everyone else who was there I was completely swept up in the energy. If it's all right, I'd like to ask you something a bit personal about acting and your own experience with it. You've been considered beautiful your whole life. What role do you think that has played in Hollywood, both in the past and looking ahead, and maybe more broadly in society too? You're right, it's personal and yet perfectly fair to ask. Growing up even from a young age, what you look like had and still has profound consequences. I was, and I suppose I still am, by our society's cruel standards beautiful. But those of us who carry that label rarely see it clearly in ourselves. At least that's my impression. I certainly didn't I could see only its effects reflected in others. Sometimes a person's beauty can be almost shockingly powerful, mesmerizing, addictive even. But beauty is more than that, especially in a society soaked with sexism. Miguel asks, what does being beautiful do to a person? From childhood you learn patterns, behaviors that win you things you want, that protect you. I never fully understood why, but I learned how a smile, a tilt of a head, a coy glance could shift a room's energy. This becomes a part of you with gains and losses entwined. Materially, beauty can open doors. Psychologically it may sometimes gift confidence and style, but it can also warp the soul. Entitlement and guilt wrestle beside you, privacy vanishes, danger lurks, and then there is the dark shadow of sexual objectification and violence. In Hollywood these dynamics were and to some extent still are blown up to monstrous proportions. Beauty becomes currency, bankable for women more than for men, though men aren't exempt. The industry, hungry for profit, cultivates this commodity, then discards it when it fades. In the old days, beautiful women and men too, though to a lesser extent, were signed on if they could perform well enough, if they bent under pressure, if they didn't cause trouble. All that despite vile and degrading demands that are too often swept under the carpet. Your career was tethered tightly to your looks until they inevitably faded. Miguel asks so how do you judge it? I don't fully know. Being scrutinized from your preteens, being hit on endlessly, sometimes taking advantage of or raped, that was my reality too, is a horror beyond words. Imagine knowing thousands, maybe millions fantasize about you, want something from you. If you yield or even use that power, what do you become? To transcend all that, if you can, is a monumental struggle. Usually help is absent. The objectification, exploitation, they must be erased. The riches and power given to beauty must vanish too. But then I think what about other gifts? If someone is born with extraordinary strength, lightning speed, genius intellect, quick reflexes, we celebrate these. We accept that these traits enable achievements that others cannot match. Yet we say those lucky traits shouldn't translate into wealth or power. So should beauty be any different? Shouldn't we admire the qualities that allow a person to do extraordinary things, whether on the stage or off without handing them unearned power or privilege? The truth is special traits, genetic gifts have always carried both blessings and curses. The overlay of gender and sex makes beauty uniquely complicated, but every special quality brings advantages, burdens, rewards and costs. I suspect that in a new society one that does not worship the shallow idols of appearance, these contradictions will find new forms we can barely imagine now. What I do know is this luck in the genetic lottery as judged by societal standards should never grant material advantage greater structurally imposed influence or exemption from responsibility, nor should it impose unbearable pressure, exclusion or abuse. I don't think RPS is the end of history. Even when RPS fully wins, when society has become truly participatory, that will mean all change is finished. We will have reached a new kind of civilization, but old questions will linger, and new ones will emerge from the shadows. That's the nature of life restless, unfolding, never settled. For now, winning a revolutionary participatory society is enough. What comes next will be for our children to imagine and create. But to give them a world in which they are meant to do so and have the circumstances to do so, that is our task. And who besides actors? Everyone. For example, athletes too The last sentence foreshadows the next session, the next chapter. And all that said, this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.