RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 374 Snow and ICE Plus WCF Athletes Revolt
Episode 374 of RevolutionZ starts with a snowfall and notices forecast overshoot. Then it asks why so many reporting, predicting, and evaluating “mistakes” lean the same way? It unpacks one‑sided errors—how weather hype, skewed invoices, and media framing teach the public to accept bias as normal. And then, via The Wind Cries Freedom's oral history it connects such patterns to the sports arenas and fields where bodies, money, and myth collide, and connects sports to larger surrounding movements as well..
Miguel Guevara introduces us to interviewee Peter Cabral, himself an athlete and revolutionary. Then Peter describes his own transition into activism and the shift from star‑driven gestures to athlete‑led organizing. He describes the pressures that keep players quiet—family expectations, early pedestal treatment, and career‑long dependence on gatekeepers—and how physical harm, perverse pay, community harm, and desires for actual dignity and rational life forced athletes to break with business as usual. From Colin Kaepernik’s kneel to coordinated boycotts and especially campus organizing, Peter takes us to the moment when Revolutionary Participatory Society's solidarity turned into structure and its isolated individual courage became collective strategic activism.
The conversation digs into college athletes organizing and how their methods not only learned from but also taught the pros. It explores seeking and then winning Olympic reforms: moving events across multiple cities, reusing facilities, redirecting revenue to athletes and neighborhoods, and refusing to play when hosting means displacement. It describes practical programs Peter was part of to protect communities, honor but not unduly enrich competitors, and to move the drama and excellence of sports back to the field from stock markets and media madness. Peter also wrestles with pay schedules: should luck-born athletic gifts command outsized wealth? He argues in the RPS mode instead for pay to be anchored in duration, intensity, and onerousness—and for celebrating excellence but without creating hierarchies. He describes how such desires for sensible equity and real respect emerged and began to dominate athletes' aims in place of owning mansions on a hill.
Threaded throughout Miguel's questions and Peter's replies is a call for media literacy and especially institutional redesign across all domains. When incentives reward spectacle and bargaining power with owners on top, “errors” keep tilting one way. Peter's response: When we organized from pressrooms to locker rooms we helped advance athlete activism, Olympic accountability, equitable pay, and the fight against creeping authoritarianism, WE became part of something much larger. Peter describes the kind of personal feelings and collective actions and programs that, in his time and in his experience, fueled concrete wins that pointed toward an unfolding next American Revolution. Finally, Miguel elicits from Peter how he expects sports to change in a fully developed participatory society, both for the athletes and for fans.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our three hundred and seventy fourth consecutive episode. It's titled Snow and Ice and WCF Athletes Revolt. And it continues our sequence based on chapters from the forthcoming book, The Wind Cries Freedom, an Oral History of the Next American Revolution. As with other such episodes, this one too begins with more immediate matters of our times before getting on to lessons from our future movement that is successfully struggling to win a revolutionary participatory society. My motivation for conveying oral history chapters as podcast episodes is the hopeful belief that the experiences, feelings, motivations, vision, and especially the strategic lessons the oral history's interviewees convey will inspire and with careful refinement even informities in our own times and places. I hope also, naively so far, I guess, that providing listeners advanced access will yield some responses to try to aid the project and later even the book. It seems that in the days of atomized individualism and time hassled schedules, facing societal chaos and need, such a hope has been so far forlorn. In any event, my motivation for commenting on current circumstances in each episode remains, of course, as always, pretty much the same as prevent for presenting the chapters. That is, I hope to uncover relations and to propose possibilities that can shed light on the whys of today's events and inspire and inform current orc activism to win a better tomorrow. So, as I prepared this episode, I considered what was outside my window, where I am, and what was out there was a substantial snowfall, which was, however, I think, somewhat under half the prediction for where I am. I suspect a good many predictions were quite uniformly and consistently off. Is that just because such predictions are hard to make? Or is something more at work? Suppose new reports and predictions of some coming phenomena arrive from many people. People look, they estimate, they predict, but it's not a perfect science. They get it wrong sometimes, no surprise. But what should we expect to find regarding their honest, well meant errors? The first time I carefully considered such a question was back when I was in publishing at Southend Press. We were a very trusting bunch of activists, but a time came when we decided to check the bills we were paying, the big ones at least. They were payments to printers on the one hand and to warehouse distributors on the other. So we looked at billings for a particular title and we found some errors. The amount we were finally billed deviated from the amount that should that ought to have been charged for the number of titles that were printed, sent out, etc. Hmm. We checked another title's bills, more errors. We kept at it and found lots of errors, and we also almost accidentally noticed that they always benefited the biller, never us, not once. This needed explanation. The fluctuation of outcomes was not in this case due to random errors of prediction or data tracking, but systematic bias. It could have been outright theft via intentionally misreporting, or maybe it was simply calculating to always benefit the printer or distributor. Was that even something different? Or it could have been more subtle, perhaps a kind of reflexive bias built into the perception of facts that were always seen to correspond to what higher authorities wanted rather than corresponding to what was, but without the perpetrators literally consciously ripping us off. Again, is that different? I hope whatever the cause I have made the involved logic of questioning the results clear. When you make future predictions or you report actual outcomes or you assess them, if you are trying to be accurate, and if it is not an exact situation, you're gonna err one way or the other way roughly as often. The errors won't lean overwhelmingly one way, unless there is some kind of bias or consistent misperception or outright self conscious lying that yields more mistakes or outcomes one way than the other. If such a tilt exists, it singles a problem that needs explanation other than benign random error. Put differently, if lots of predictors or reports consistently predict or display some pattern that is seriously off from what outcomes wound up or should have wound up, and if the deviations are always in the same direction, and perhaps also are always or nearly always even by the same amount, some influence must be yielding that consistent error. It is highly unlikely to be merely honest random mistakes, because that wouldn't yield such consistent results. I used to note another different, but I think tenuously related version of this. A person would be off for a scheduled call or a meeting or whatever, over and over. But they would be late always, never early, and pretty much also late by the same amount of time, say ten minutes. They would apologize, say it was an accident, a mistake, or whatever, and move on. If they could be consistently ten minutes late, why not consistently on time? That was what I thought about it. Well the logic I have suggested says consistent one sided deviations are not random accidents. It is something else or it would not be such a consistent, predictable pattern of deviation virtually always in the same direction. You might reasonably try to assess whether it was consciously intentional or sort of unconscious, or even just totally unaware habit, or whatever else, but you would know it wasn't benign random accident. Back to weather reports. There must have been what, five thousand, maybe more TV weather people, organizational weather people, and whatnot else predicting the last few days. What if nearly all or a great many got the result wrong in the same direction? Did that happen? I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me or I suspect us to find out that it did. Would it? Did anyone anywhere predict less than what fell? I assume some did, but half? Investigate, if interested. What might explain widely overshooting accurate weather prediction? Is it that they want to protect protect us and they think we need aggressive prodding to become prepared? Maybe. Or how about it having derived from a search for TV and web ratings? Perhaps over time it has been found that the more dramatic the reports, the more scary the dangers forewarned, the bigger the ratings will be. If true, that might explain it. But would that mean that each and every weather person was seeking profits for their owner and consciously biased their predictions, lied about their predictions? If it happened, was each reporter predictor knowingly lying? Maybe, maybe not. But it would likely mean desires on high percolated into habits below somehow. Why the hell am I talking about this shaky anecdotal situation? Well, consider reporting about world or domestic events. When it deviates from accurate, is it always in one direction? Or there are or are there an array of outlets which deviate one way, for example, they underreport and undercastigate state violence, but they overreport and overreport or even fabricate and over castigate non state violence? If so, what mechanics yielded the persistent pattern? How do the interests of owners at the top, for example, or shareholders, or a government above the whole thing percolate into the behavior of employees below, so that errors of reporting or prediction or interpretation always benefit those with most power? The government describes the ICE practices and killings one way. The mainstream media has its own pretty much collective line, and the left, well, describes it all another way. How does that happen? Not at the top, so to speak, but in the trenches. During the Vietnam War, Noam Chomsky used to point out that you could search American mainstream media with great diligence, and you would never find the phrase the US invasion of Vietnam. It just did not appear. It was easy to explain why the Pentagon saw it thusly, not us invading, told it thusly, not us invading. But what about TV newscasters? Chomsky would argue that it wasn't coercion that got that result from the mainstream news broadcasters and writers. No one told Dan Rather or whoever else, say these words, not others. Nor was it even fear of punishment that kept the top reporters in line. It was instead that having risen through years of training and then of writing and reporting and having pieces accepted or not, until they became stars, by the time the people got to positions of significant visibility, by the time they became stars, they could no longer even think the thought US invasion of Vietnam. It was just not comprehensible. No coercion was then needed, no fear was required. Reporters' minds and perceptions had bent to a cord before they got to the top news desks they then soiled with their quote errors. The reporting on Trump machinations has been abysmal from the start. Baldface lies and evil treated with respect, as if good rather than evil. His coverage is only now slowly, very slowly, gaining a small degree of accuracy. That shift is a testimony to the resistance, and perhaps also to fear, where the latter fear is now fear by elites for their interests if Trumpian fascism takes full hold, or for the whole system, if Trumpian fascism generates successful unbounded opposition. My point in all this babble, I hate to sound like Trump or like MAGA, but there really is fake news now pretty much all over the place, very nearly everywhere. It is even starting to infect science reports. Sports report scores accurately, but simultaneously reports hypothetical non existent trades or scandals to get viewers to click. Clickbait titles, lying, have so spread and become so ubiquitous, and the priorities of elites have so spread that almost all kinds of news displays a degree of persistent power serving or profit serving error or bias, and the tsunami of bias leads one way. It happens in the news for sure. The New York Times has always even bragged about it. When established in eighteen ninety seven, their slogan was all the news that's fit to print. And that same phrase has appeared on the front page ever since then. More recently they have also proclaimed at times, quote, the truth is worth it, and quote, the truth is essential. And quote, it's your world to understand. All the news that's fit to print, in other words, as the paper of record, they decide what is fit and what they present for us to assess, and therefore, as the paper of record, what becomes documented history. Again, back in my South End Press book publishing days, going to stores and seeking orders of titles, we discovered something interesting. The book buyers for the stores would meet with people from publishing houses, sometimes me, and they would have the New York Times book reviews in their hand. They didn't need the local papers reviews because they knew their local paper chose what to review by looking at the Times reviews. There is a mechanism there to consider. Just minutes ago, literally, I saw a headline. Quote Protesters risk their lives. Why did that headline run? Truth? Or was it to scare activists? Did whoever chose it even know why they chose it and why it was acceptable as compared to someone knowing from experience that it would be acceptable? That it would not induce criticism from above? Why didn't the person propose as headline instead quote Federal officials wantonly murder protesters and Trump applauds like a mafia boss? That would sell big time, but they don't run only what would sell. They run what will sell, but do so within the limits of thinkable thought, in turn mediated by the dictates of preserving power and profit. A reasonable thing to ask, I think, is not only what are the mechanics of fake news and warped evaluation, but also why do nearly all the perpetrators, the voices who announce the quote errors as if they are full truth, think that they are in fact being totally responsible, that they are acting totally freely, and certainly without being coerced by overlords. For that matter, why does the public accept it as gospel or perhaps even ridicule it, but without arriving at more truthful, more constructive views? The answer is the journalists feel they aren't coerced because it is true. They are not coerced. They are corralled, channeled, and they corral and channel themselves. Same for the audience. Minds get right, so to speak. Whatever will be will be, go with the flow. So the overlords only very rarely need to step in and intervene. And what can overcome such regimented freedom, or when it is needed, such coerced lying? Ultimately, minds that work, minds that use verified facts and careful logic, minds that reject fabrications and conformity. Finally, minds that work to win new institutions that no longer have overlords. Those kinds of minds and associated actions are what in the end can prevent fake news. Ultimately, minds and choices that pursue revolution. So, speaking of revolution, and to get back to this episode's main focus, now we meet interviewee Peter Cabral, who was interviewed at his home in Miami, Florida, and who tells his interviewer, Miguel Guevara, about his personal political trajectory, and in his case, the impact of RPS on sports and of athletes on RPS. Revolution has wide scope. Last chapter addressed Hollywood. Now ballparks. Next will be places of worship, religion. So to kick off this time, Miguel asks, Peter Cabral, you were a militant working class anti racist activist. You focused in the years before RPS on police violence and prison policy, including inmate organizing. You were active in RPS from its inception and directed much of your energy towards ensuring that both RPS's program and internal culture planted real seeds for a racism free intercommunal future. After a time in prison, and not least due to your activism while inside, you became a tireless speaker, organizer, and campaigner for community empowerment and legal and prison transformation. You served as Secretary of the Interior in the RPS shadow government. And with all that, you were also a professional baseball player for a time. Long before RPS, some athletes took a stand for social justice in various ways. But with the emergence of RPS, things changed dramatically. I imagine athletes had much in common with what actors experienced in Hollywood. But what in particular was different for athletes? I only know our side of it, not the Hollywood experience. But if I had to put a finger on it, I'd say the biggest difference was the pressure athletes felt to keep their heads down, stay in line with the old rules. I mean, I'm sure that was a weight on actors too, but for us, I think it hit harder. See, a lot of athletes come up from real hard places, dirt poor, and when you make it, even just a little, you're not just feeding yourself. You're carrying your brothers, sisters, cousins, parents, maybe even neighbors. You're the hope. And education wise, a lot of athletes don't get the same chances. Some do now, but for years it wasn't like that. And you grow up being quote the guy, the big shot, from peewee ball all the way through high school, and everything gets handed to you if you're fast enough, strong enough, if you win often enough. Actors, from what I've seen, usually hustle their way up through a lot of rejection, a lot of scraping by. They've been broke, been told no a hundred times, live four to a room. Athletes, especially the stars, we're handed things early. Coaches cover for you. Teachers look the other way. The system wants you to perform, and it'll clean up your mess as long as you play. So it creates this strange mix. On the one hand, you've lived poverty, injustice, sometimes even crime. But on the other hand, you've been put on a pedestal your whole life. And that messes with your head, makes it hard to see what's real, what's deserved. Both actors and athletes can get full of themselves, thinking all that praise and money is just how it should be. Now when RPS came along, just like with Hollywood, a few folks stood up early, took the risk, like some athletes had done with Black Lives Matter earlier. But what changed, what was big was that this time it didn't stop at individuals. We started organizing. College athletes, pros, neighborhood leagues, hell, the folks who sweep up after the games. Parents got involved too, looking out for their kids, trying to keep youth sports from chewing them up. And safety, especially in football, became a huge thing. Concussions, long term injuries. We stopped pretending it was all just part of the game. We realized we weren't going to change our world yelling from the sidelines. We had to build something. We had to organize. And another thing that set athletes apart was the price we paid physically. Some actors might have gone through rough stuff emotionally, sure. But athletes, we broke bones. We ended up with brain trauma. We left the field with bodies that would never be whole again. That reality made the fight personal. And when star athletes started saying no to the money, to the status, it wasn't just personal rebellion. It was questioning the whole damn system. Why should being the best mean you get paid fifty times more than the guy who plays backup? Why should winning equal worth? Of course, that's That same question was getting asked all over the economy. But in sports it was in your face. The numbers were obscene, and when you challenge that, you didn't just challenge your paycheck, you challenged the myth of the game itself. Miguel asks, How did you personally understand the role of athletes in society before the RPS first convention? And how did the emergence of RPS affect your views and choices? As a successful but rookie ballplayer back then, I thought we were a cut above. We had worked really hard with intense focus for years, and we still worked hard to avoid decline. We honed our abilities. We performed under great pressure, we delivered, but some more than others, and I was fine with the idea that income should track those differences in achievement. Of course, in time I realized that not only that it shouldn't, but that it didn't. It tracked instead differences in bargaining power, which differences in output very often, but not always helped to create. Race and gender also played a role, and so did the effectivity of the rest of the team, your locale, and so on. When I first hit the big leagues, I won't lie, I bought into the whole thing, thought we had earned every damn bit of it, the spotlight, the money, the applause. I believed it was fair, that what we got lined up properly with how much we gave, how hard we pushed, how well we performed. But I was green. It didn't take long before the cracks showed. The paycheck was about power, about leverage, and yeah, performance gave you some of that, but the core was control. I also enjoyed all the perks that society's preoccupation with athletes, and especially with some sports conveyed, not least access to sexual favors, free goods, endless praise, and so on. Of course it was all a product of a society so materially skewed that it made sense for people to cater to us, to try to befriend or even seduce us, but we eventually understood that that only meant the whole system needed to change, and not just how we conduct ourselves when reacting to it. The free gear, the parties, the attention, it was all there all the time. Folks lined up just to be near you, and it felt good for a while, but once I got some distance on it, once RPS came into view, I saw it for what it was. It wasn't about me. It was about the system that had its values flipped upside down. And the answers wasn't just to be better on your own. It was to turn the whole damn thing on its head. So we too had our consciousness raising and sharing of insights, like the Hollywood folks did. And for us too, it was partly about becoming confident, representing RPS type views, but it was also about learning to deal with our ridiculous incomes and with the media. And indeed, much of the early shift in athletes' choices was manifested on those levels, with athletes giving away lots more money, sometimes a huge chunk of their incomes, not only to charities they liked, but literally to RPS and to other radical political and social projects. I remember talking with other athletes about such matters, as among the first times in my life I was actually considering the world around me and my relations to it, and making informed judgments. We had to unlearn a lot, learned to speak out, learn to say no, learn to turn down the money, or at least use it for something that mattered. Some of us gave away millions, not as some feel good story, but as an act of commitment. I remember long nights in locker rooms and quiet hotel lounges, talking with other players, finally putting the pieces together. That was maybe the first time I really looked around and asked myself, what kind of world am I living in? What kind of man do I want to be? So I would say RPS propelled all that and more, though I think it is fair to say that the reverse occurred too. Athletes helped propel RPS. Yeah, RPS lit a fire, but athletes brought some serious fuel. It wasn't one sided. We got pushed by RPS and then we pushed it forward in return. Miguel asks, what were some of the key events, do you think, from the RPS convention to now in the emergence of a new kind of athlete and athletics? The boycott in football, the walkouts in basketball, those were huge. But if you ask me, the organizing among college athletes might have mattered even more. Those kids were raw, and they were hungry. They started from the ground up, and they didn't wait for permission. They built something lasting. When I visited campuses and talked with them, I learned more than I taught, no question. I don't think any of this was unique. I think a case might be made that the first modern step was when the quarterback Colin Kaepernick opposed police violence by refusing to stand for the national anthem. That prodded so much soul searching, and then he started giving significant sums to organizations with similar agendas, and his teammates heavily praised his choices. But I think rather than one thing happening and another thing happening, and no connection occurring, what was key was when each event and project started to see itself as part of a larger ongoing process that was all the acts together. The WNBA chimed in loud for a time, too, and then later still more. The connections not only strengthened each individual effort, it broadened each. Cap lit the spark, I think. He took the knee, and suddenly we were all watching ourselves a little differently. But what mattered most is what came after, when the axe didn't stand alone anymore. Kaepernique got ousted from the league. Time passed, and later it wasn't just one or even a few guys doing something brave. It was a chorus. All the voices joined up. And people started to realize we're not just responding, we're building something. This growth was after Trump or near his end to help to defeat him. While an event or project might be about mainly race, gender, class, or some very specific practice or policy, by seeing all of it as connected, participants in each aspect began to actively support the rest and to learn from the rest. Soon athletes were not pursuing an agenda solely rooted in their own personal experiences, but that plus an overarching larger agenda. I think that that was arguably the main early RPS contribution. And of course, before long, RPS vision and practice began to inform athletes' perceptions and aspirations. So the impact became far greater and more direct. That's when it clicked. When we started seeing all the pieces, race, class, gender, labor, as parts of one puzzle. And once we saw it like that, there was no going back. You can't just fight for yourself anymore. You fight for everyone. RPS helped give us that map, but we were the ones who decided to hit the road. Miguel asked, Do you think the Olympics battles were a large factor? No doubt about it. On the one hand, there was the tendency of lots of athletes to bring social concerns into the Olympics. But perhaps even greater was the growing tend for athletes to fraternize, I guess you might call it, and shun the crazy glorification and commercialization. The participants began to take back sports for those doing it and for those appreciating it, by taking it away from those selling it, those profiting off it. Yeah, we started reclaiming it. The games, the sweat, the fire, it was never meant to be about ads and suits cashing in from the sidelines. It was about the people out there on the field, giving it everything. And the folks watching who saw their own hopes and struggles in the action, when the Olympics began shifting, it wasn't just about politics. It was about dignity. Athletes starting looking at one another like we're in this together. They weren't up there for glory alone anymore. They were there for each other. There was a kind of irony here. In the major non Olympic sports, football, baseball, basketball, many early battles were around income, but it wasn't getting more for the athletes, at least at the highest levels. It was about apportioning it more justly and having the amounts become rational. Then there were also battles over distributing profits to communities. With the Olympics, huge sums were involved, but in this case, almost all the athletes were way underpaid, so increasing the amount of revenues going their way was a big part of the situation. That's a strange thing. In pro leagues, the stars were getting paid insane amounts, but the fight became about justice, leveling things out, spreading it around. But in the Olympics, it was flipped. The money was there alright, just not going to the folks actually sweating it out. So we fought to change that. Not just for fairness, but because the way things were, folks were being used, plain and simple. You see that, you don't turn away, you dig in. And then the other tremendous Olympics issue, of course, was the gigantic harm the Olympics as a mega event did to the cities that hosted it. Rio's travails, on top of those of Athens, London, and then Paris, and then especially LA, became so obvious and pronounced for the bulk of their citizens that the constant clamors by elites to get games so they could profit became swamped by the quite correct beliefs of populations that it would be at their expense. Man, that hit hard. Watching these cities get hollowed out, folks displaced, neighborhoods gutted, all for a few weeks of spectacle. I remember LA in particular. That was the one that really broke it open. When people saw what was getting torn down and who was paying the price, they stopped buying the hype. The old line, it'll bring jobs, it'll bring pride. It just didn't fly anymore. Then athletes strenuously supported the communities to the point of saying they would no longer participate if the events gutted sponsoring cities. That was moving and exemplary. Athletes standing up and saying we won't play if it means you suffer. That was when I felt like we were finally getting somewhat somewhere major. It wasn't just symbolic, it was sacrifice, and it showed the kind of people we could be. So the movement to have the games be held in a whole bunch of cities, each hosting only some single component or other, and each using only venues and spaces based on existing structures or built at international expense and in a manner designed to be of lasting local value grew overwhelming. That was a big shift. Spread it out, use what's already there, build only if it helps the people who live there long after the torch goes out. It made sense. It was cleaner, smarter, and fair. It was saying this ain't about an extravaganza anymore, it's about sport. It's about humanity. And yes, at first people complained that with gymnastics in one city, track and field in another, swimming in another, and so on, there would be no single gathering of all the ten thousand or more Olympic athletes in one place. We would lose some of the scope of the opening and closing TV events, and it was true, but we would gain a sane and locally beneficial and human oriented rather than profit oriented set of events. Some folks missed the big spectacle. Sure. But look what we got in return integrity, purpose. That mattered more than fireworks and bloated ceremonies. We traded the circus for something grounded, something engaged. It was basically conducting world championships in a host of events, all in the same three week period at many existing venues worldwide, rather than conducting them in many venues, all newly constructed with virtually no future purpose all in one city. The change didn't just shift the games. It shifted how we see ourselves. It said quote we're not here to burn cities down for medals. We're here to lift each other up wherever we are. The battle for that, like almost every other battle once the proposals for RPS existed, was indeed partly a battle for going toward RPS. But it was also undeniably beneficial and sensible in the present, and indeed necessary in the present to avoid all manner of catastrophe. So it won in the present as well as helping push toward RPS in the future. That's what I loved about it. It wasn't just pie in the sky dreaming. RPS was about steps you could take now that made life better now where each step pointed forward. You win today and you make tomorrow a little clearer, a little closer. At first RPS was a newfangled thing, a crazy, silly, far out thing, a thing that needed to make a case to be taken seriously at all, or even considered, to be justified and to overcome resistance. But then, slowly, the tide started to turn until RPS style change had credibility. Then increasingly the status quo was what needed justification. Change was considered essential by steadily more people. Isn't that always the way? First they laugh, then they fight you. Then they got to justify why they are still standing while the world's moving past them? And that's when you know the ground has shifted. Miguel asks How do you think full RPS success in the future will alter athletics for athletes and for fans? I don't think the way we view a contest or achievement in itself will alter all that much. A beautiful shot or hit, a timely catch, a great race, a great run or swim will still uplift us. What will change is our view of the people. We will still appreciate and even admire great talent, artistry, and focus, but we will no longer think a person should be made rich on account of it. If it is morally and economically sound for income to be for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, and for people to do balanced jobs, and for producers and consumers to decide what is produced and consumed cooperatively, then that applies not only to assembly work, but to athletes too. And that means an end to all the incredibly inflated incomes and perks. Look, folks will always cheer for the walk off homer, the buzzer beater, the long distance sprint that ends in glory. That's never going away. It's part of what makes us human. Celebrating effort, grit, grace under pressure, that's good. But what will change and needs to is how we treat the people who make these moments happen. We'll still respect the skill, admire the work, but we're not going to pretend some want to live in a palace while others can't pay rent. If the new world we're building says folks get paid for how long, how hard, and how tough the job is, and if we believe in real balance and shared say over how we work and live, then that's got to be true for athletes too. It doesn't matter how fast you run or how high you jump. You're still one of us. That means no more paying tithes to the gifted as if they're gods. People who for part of their contribution to society work as athletes are just people, albeit sometimes with incredible physical and mental gifts, but without any reason to receive additional material reward based on their luckily having those innate assets. That's it right there. Being gifted, being exceptional, it's something to enjoy. But it isn't a ticket to riches just for being born lucky. Use your gift, sure, but it ought to be for the good of all, not to get lifted above everybody else. A guy building homes with busted up knees deserves just as much respect as a quarterback with a golden arm, or more. RPS having been rooted in values, turned out to me that RPS changes were generalizable. There was an essence that applied across society's many main aspects good here, then good there. Of course you didn't produce vehicles the same way you produced movies or played tennis, much less raised children or fought disease. But the essence of the human relationships, the criteria of judgment, the deeply operative logic and aims, those did recur. Maybe that contributed to the feeling of moving from one ethos to another across the board, and to the slow but steady shift in where the burden of proof lay, in maintaining the past or in establishing the future. The power of RPS, man, it was the core values that ran like a backbone through the whole damn thing. Whether you were turning a wrench, playing a guitar, doing an experiment, or swinging a bat, what mattered was fairness, dignity, solidarity. It didn't matter the details of the job, the soul of the work we shared. That's what started shifting people's sense of what was normal. Suddenly it wasn't RPS that needed defending. It was the old ways that had to explain themselves. In any case, beyond those key changes, many people have been exploring the nature of non competitive sports, and even considering what competition has involved as compared to what it should involve in the new society we are building. Some of that is still to be resolved, no doubt, but the basics we know, and excellence and accomplishment will persist, even as giant material rewards for excellence and accomplishment will fade and ultimately disappear. But here is a wrinkle. What should you feel better about? Winning a game or a contest without performing particularly well or losing the encounter but having performed really well? That question's got sold, doesn't it? Maybe in the future it isn't about the trophy at all. It's about how you play. Did you give it your all? Did you rise to the moment? Did you honor the game and the folks you played with? That's the kind of shift that sticks. That's what makes the whole thing worth fighting for. And it isn't new either. It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that matters. We used to say it to kids. Now we believe it. And of course, to change from giving lip service to positive values while abrogating them, to actually living by and implementing positive values, that was the task. Almost religious, don't you think? And so ended the chapter, and thus this episode. Next comes religious renovation. But first, the time has come for people of all backgrounds, communities, jobs, and social roles to confront a disturbing but necessary question. If I had lived in Germany in the nineteen thirties, what would I have done? Why? Because we live in the US, or if not in the world, in the new century's twenties, and fascism is threatening again. There is a race going on, a long race by far longer than any marathon. It has been occurring since Trump beat Clinton, roughly for a decade. On one side, incredibly well funded, incredibly well armed, Trump and his psychophantic government and business allies are working hard to reconstruct not just a ballroom, not just a department of government, or just the judiciary, or even just the whole government, but everything. They are trying to attain a new culture, new social relations, new media, new economics, new everything for the US and for the world, fascism and all its putrid trappings. And on the other side, resistance, starting barely visibly, growing, stalling, growing again, now on the verge of perpetual growth and diversification. Resistance that tries to stop Trump, that tries to avoid and stymie and finally totally end fascism. Resistance. residence, which in the process begins to question more than just the deviation that is Trump, that begins to question the underlying injustices and falsehoods, habits and pressures that breed the likes of Trump, Hegseth, and the rest, the likes of billionaire bad guys, resistance that seeks to curb the violent future Trump seeks but also starts to embrace a new sort of future with new institutions. Perhaps a revolutionary participatory society. At any rate another world that is possible. Which side will win this waste? Which side will you aid? Years from now, when your kids have querying minds and they ask which side were you on, what did you do? What will you be able to answer? It's been a bunch of episodes, I think, since I offered a song, and here is one that might well fit these times. Come gather on people wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown, and accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving, and you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing. Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen, and keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again, and don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin, and there's no tellin' who that it's namin' for the loser now will be later to win, for the times they are a changin'. Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall, for he that gets hurt will be he who is stalled. The battle outside raging will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a changing. Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand for the times they are a changing The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast, the slow one now will later be fast, as the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fading, and the first one now will later be last for the times they are a changing Well, my generation fell short, seriously short. Today's generations had better do better. Today's generations had better win, because the chance has come again but we better not waste it. And all that said, this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z