Ep 383 WCF: Tactics Matter plus No Kings Direction, and Trump's Dissolution

Episode 383 of RevolutionZ starts with No Kings. Nine million people can take to the streets and still walk away wondering if anything changed. How can that be? How is it that turnout can grow in rural towns and new venues while longtime participants slowly fall away? What does it say about cynicism, strategy, and movement-building? The episode suggests a blunt but hopeful lesson: You do not fix a movement by leaving it. You fix it by participating better, retaining people already involved, and building a path from one-day rallies to sustained action, growing civil disobedience, and attaining compelling shared aims. 

Next, if we look paste the daily churn of Trumpian excess, we find a hard question. What if we spent less time chasing every provocation and more time organizing for what we want? Reaction matters. We need it. But it cannot substitute for proactive political organizing, coalition-building, and long-term resistance that links  threats together, from authoritarianism to war, racism, misogyny, deportation, to ecological collapse. 

Then this episode returns to our excerpts from the Wind Cries Freedom oral history to offer a set of exchanges on the most difficult internal disagreements RPS faced: to have leadership but not hierarchy, to achieve a strategically sound  pace of change, to have autonomy plus solidarity, to navigate the seeming tension between reform and revolution, and to settle the high-stakes debate over violence and nonviolence. Along the way our interviewees from the future explore practical movement tactical proposals like rotation, recall, multi-tactic campaigns, “bloc” structures beyond single-issue coalitions, and “nonreformist reform struggles” that win immediate gains while building capacity for deeper structural change. 

As with the rest of The Wind Cries Freedom, there is some analysis and some vision, but the main focus is strategy that ranges from building self-managing  movements, through enlarging civil resistance, to seeing how to win real change without losing each other along the way.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

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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 eighty third consecutive episode. It continues our focus on chapters from the oral history, the wind cries freedom, but also, before doing that, it includes a discussion of this past No Kings demonstration on the one hand, and very briefly the direction of Trumpian excesses on the other hand. First, consider the third No Kings demonstrations. As best I can tell, the number of demonstrators grew due to a larger turnout in many rural and smaller city venues, as well as in entirely new venues, all due to new people attending. But the numbers didn't grow as much as they might have due to a fall off in participation in larger city venues and among people who had gone to earlier events. Been there, done that, or been there, it didn't work, seems to have impacted some people. So it seems that even as the resistance is growing, its outreach is working, some of its more seasoned participants are falling away. Put differently, my impression is that even as it is succeeding with new audiences, No Kings is losing among established ones, because some prior participants think it isn't accomplishing anything, and this isn't worth their time. What a strange situation that is. There used to be this catchphrase about TV The more you watch, the dumber you are. There are times when I feel about the current resistance, the more radical you think you are, the less radical you tend to become. The problem is either cynicism surfacing or I think a warped perception of what it takes and what characterizes making progress. I too want more people involved, but also more civil disobedience, more collective demands, more coherence. But I know that the road to all that and more is not to forgo participating, it is to participate better. The resistance needs to not only continually reach new people, it has to retain those already involved. Those involved, indeed, need to understand what is being achieved, and need to have their growing desires and commitments generate new dimensions of involvement. Even sustained involvement, even more diverse focus, even more varied tactics. It is something to think about. Repetition alone is not a road to victory. It is needed to keep growing new participation, to keep evidencing scale. But as a whole, the project must also enrich, diversify, become more sustained, become more millant. No kings, yes, of course. But even as more and more sign on to that, how about some emphasizing of no bosses, no ice, no wars, no misogyny, no racism, no ecological collapse? And even as focus broadens and attendance at rallies grows, how about some escalating to no business as usual by way of encampments, sit-ins, civil disobedience of many kinds? And with all that, how about some people augment their occasional participation in giant one day demos with more frequent and even sustained actions? How about sporadic one day stoppages becoming two day stoppages, becoming more and more? It all takes time, but it is all possible. Perhaps about nine million people have turned out. Organize ten percent of that nine million to organize others and the next round will be twelve million or more. But I want to be clear about something. I am not disparaging no kings. I was active throughout the sixties, into the seventies. We never turned out eight million, nine million people simultaneously in three thousand demonstrations across the country. We weren't pikers, we weren't poor at what we were doing, but we never did that. And what that says is the No Kings efforts, far from being somehow, I don't know, a diversion, a useless waste of time, and other things that people are calling it, it has been a remarkable achievement. And that achievement can be made more. It can be made still better. And yes, to try for that is good. To offer proposals for that is good, or at least I think so. But to disparage what's been done, that is just downright stupid. At the same time as we resist, Trumpian excesses have become hard to fathom. He really does seem like a self-centered fool, and yet after the fact the madness always also seems to somehow have had a point. Distraction, test cases, or dismantling guardrails. Instead of flitting from one focus to another in accord with his agenda, perhaps some of us, and steadily more of us, ought to link it all together and oppose it all the time. I get that people are writing and speaking and worrying about what Trump is up to, what it will cost, who it will hurt, and all the rest of what we write and speak about. But might it not be a better use of time for us all or nearly all to be writing, speaking, worrying, dreaming and organizing and organizing about what we can be up to, what doing so will be need will need from us, who it can help, and all the rest. We need sustained and growing resistance in the form of rejection of kings, etc. Of course. Reactions to evil acts are warranted, of course. But hasn't it gotten to the point where we also need growing numbers to be resisting in the form of positive pursuit of real gains? Advocacy of positive steps by us. Okay, that's in our world now. But to continue this episode, we turn to a similar world later. We turn that is to another chapter from our desired future oral history. This episode's chapter from the Winds of Freedom has interviewees Robin Zimmerman, Celia Crowley, Lydia Lawrence, Andre Goldman, Peter Cabral, and Alexandra Hanslet addressing differences over tactics in RPS development and activism. The interviewer, Miguel Guivera, begins by asking Robin Zimmerman from his session at a restaurant outside Chicago. Alongside navigating differences in members' backgrounds, RPS has also had to grapple grapple with differences in the views that members hold. One especially contentious issue has been leadership, its nature, its role, and its risks. As RPS's first shadow Supreme Court justice, you surely you've surely had to reflect on this. Why do you think leadership became such a point of contention? Well, there's something natural and deeply human about leadership. Someone has to take the first step, speak the first word, make the first suggestion. That act of stepping forward can be vital. It can open space for others and shine a light on the road ahead. But too often leadership becomes something else. Too often it becomes hierarchy, it becomes elitism, it becomes rule. There's nothing wrong with someone having a good idea before others do. Rosa Parks moved to the back of the bus. That was leadership, preplanned or not. Leadership, your neighbor calls a meeting about a dangerous intersection. That's leadership. Bernie Sanders launches a campaign to resist Trump. That too is leadership. These are good things. The danger is when an early step becomes a permanent perch. When a leader starts to think their voice matters more than other voices, when leadership becomes not an act of giving, but a means to accumulate power. That's when things go wrong. We've all seen it happen. The activist who starts with noble goals but becomes possessive of their position. The organizer who stops listening, the movement that forgets its base. The problem isn't leadership, it's ego. It's entitlement. More it's the structures that reward those traits. Miguel asks, okay, what were the contending views? And what emerged as the best solution to avoid the potential pitfalls of leadership? That was the debate inside RPS. How do we keep the benefits of leadership without letting it curdle into hierarchy? Some argued that we should limit how often a person could lead. If someone constantly emerged first with ideas or initiatives, maybe we needed to ask them to step back, make room for others. The danger was too real to ignore. The risk of dominance was too great. Others said don't throw away these those contributions, instead cultivate a new culture. Teach those who lead to do so by lifting others up, not by staying out front. The best leader doesn't just blaze a trail, they create more trailblazers. I believed and still do, that both approach approaches have merit. Sometimes you do need to say, hold back, let others speak. Other times you focus on changing the very meaning of leadership, from personal elevation to collective empowerment. I once worked with a group of twenty people. Three of them always led. Not because they demanded to, but because they had the confidence, the experience, the quickness. The result? They grew more comfortable leading. The rest grew more passive. It wasn't malicious, but it was corrosive. To change that, we didn't punish the three. We asked them to shift their focus. Don't just solve a problem, help others learn how to solve it. Don't always be the answer. Help others become the source of answers. That's what true leadership looks like in a democratic movement. It's delicate. If you do it poorly, you can smother initiative. If you do it well, you unleash a thousand voices. The key insight was this leadership must be judged by those around the leader, not by the leader themselves. Miguel asks, did you follow that pattern when you were chosen to be a Supreme Court judge in the shadow government? Yes, I understood my appointment not as an elevation, but as a responsibility. My role wasn't to rule but to serve, to model humility, transparency, and a willingness to listen. I tried, as best I could, to use whatever knowledge or skill I had to bring others into the process, to make justice not an institution but a shared commitment. True leadership means never forgetting that we're all in this together. And the most important act of leadership may be stepping aside so someone else can rise. My post, mimicking the actual US government, was to be a lifetime appointment, which is, of course, totally contrary to everything I have been saying. I did feel the allure of it. I cannot deny that. I would reply, when asked about it, that of course there will be no such post in a real new participatory government. But if you look at my writings and speeches about the judicial system, I hope you will agree that the overall values regarding leadership have been forefront. But I think my stance may have, in time, evaporated to lordly rationalizations, except that we we shortly redefined how our shadow government operated, with us employing limited terms and recall as well as balanced jobs for everyone, including Supreme Court judges. The point being, RPS was very aware that to change attitudes and habits was essential, but that we also had to avoid or change role structures that produced or required the offending attitudes and habits. Miguel asks, Celia, from recession at home in Los Angeles, I guess another issue that recurs often is what is the appropriate pace of change? How have you understood that? In some ways it is the same issue. Do we want to advance on some criteria, like size or militancy or whatever, as much as we possibly can, as fast as possible, and then bring along as many other people as possible? Or do we want to elicit the broadest possible advance and move forward together as much as possible? Can a maximum immediate advance by a few bring all others along? Or will maximum immediate immediate advance by a few run so far out in front that others are left behind, while those who lead become isolated and vulnerable? Does carefully moving forward with as many as possible prevent backsliding and ultimately propel everyone further? I think there is no right one answer to fit all situations. Let me give you an example that highlights the issues. For whatever reason, suppose some regions move faster than others. When a growing labor movement in Cleveland sought a higher minimum wage, better conditions, and a shorter work week, well before efforts attained similar strength in most other places in the country, Cleveland's workers came up against just this issue. Some said let's go all out, let's occupy factories, disrupt downtown, fight to win. We will lose, sure, for now. We won't have enough support to prevent National Guard repression, nor to sustain ourselves. But we will have to back down. But the rest of the country will see our uprising. Our aggressiveness will inspire others. It will spread. We won't win outright now, that is true, but by moving fast we will contribute greatly to winning more later. Others said, Hold on, other people elsewhere in the country, and even in Cleveland will see us lose. Is that going to inspire them to emulate us? More, here in Cleveland, if we follow that path, after we get depress get repressed and lose, what will we have achieved? We will have taken our growing movement and let them trash it by our own choice. Instead, why not keep building? Do civil disobedience, and send out emissaries to other towns and cities to explain how we have proceeded and how they can do likewise, and how, if we all grow, we can all together win. In that case, instead of now seizing factories and causing repressions and losing, why not keep on building our factory chapters to propose how we would operate the factories and to support counterinstitution outside the factories as well? Why not wage campaigns that seek attainable immediate changes while preparing ourselves to seek more until we have sufficient support here in Cleveland and elsewhere as well to successfully take over workplaces? Faster pace that leads backward is not better than a slower pace that leads forward. RPS generated an overall mindset of winning a new society, not merely posturing in the moment. Also, the tremendous emphasis in RPS on trying different approaches and on keeping them all operational often allowed compromise. Not always, but sometimes you could partly try fast pace and at the same time partly try slower paced, test each, and then pour more effort into whatever worked better. This was ideal when people who argued for contrary approaches did not want to be right to be able to brag about having been right, or to win the argument and brag about being a winner, but wanted to follow the best path, whatever it turned out to be, and whatever their role in it needed to be. Miguel asks, can you give some instances of these possibilities? Well, Cleveland took the patient approach. Boston Cambridge had a similar choice, but it was earlier and more about campus activism. There are lots of schools in Boston Cambridge, and RPS's student movement grew there more rapidly than in most of the rest of the country. For my reading, this was rather like earlier, back in the sixties. So the Boston Cambridge students then confronted a choice. Should we go as quickly as we can, escalating and getting repressed before we have sufficient mass support to beat back the repression, to be a model to spur others on? Or should we go slower, develop more of a base, less visibly to others elsewhere, but more sustained, and one would hope with better results. In fact, we did find a way to try both approaches, at least to a degree. Most of the campuses adopted a slower approach of building organizations and reaching out to local communities. MIT and Boston University had massive occupations and confrontations. The mix turned out rather well. Other students on other campuses supported the militant events, but simultaneously urged those involved to align with the longer term efforts in return. The militant events caught the eyes of the nation as intended, but the parallel endeavors also gained visibility and became the lasting legacy. Another example was the way many demonstrations adopted a multi-tactic approach. A massive march might have a large civil disobedience event held the day after the march. Each component would give strength and added meaning to the other. But it also meant one could participate as one preferred, rather than to have to either be involved or not be involved in all of it. There were, in the old phrase, different strokes for different folks. Strikes and boycotts also developed diverse ways of relating. So did events like large teachings that would accompany demonstrations or sit-ins. Miguel asks, I have been asking folks to recount an event, campaign, or situation during the rise of RPS that was particularly important or inspiring to them. Could you do that too now? You said personally, and I think by that you mean something a bit more idiosyncratic to my own involvements, and for that I think I was moved beyond measure by one campaign in particular, the National Prisoners Strike. You know, one feeling about prisoners is well, they are captured. There is not much point in organizing folks who have already been incarcerated. But another feeling is not only much more humane, but also much more strategic. These are victims of injustice. They are why we revolt. They are who revolts. It just takes effort and clarity to see it, and the prisoners campaign brought that. It was an accident of circumstance that I happened to be visiting one of the prisons with a kind of artistic show. While it was, what, I would say occupied. There was no way for me to leave, and I like to think I would not have left even if I could have, but I don't know for sure. The fear of a rerun of Attica, a long past site of prison struggle and massacre was palpable, and I was certainly scared. But this was not Attica. This time the scale of external support and of wavering by the guards precluded anything like that occurring. Still, it felt imminent over and over, and yet the prisoners carried on. Their courage was incredible. Miguel asks Karim from his interview at his home in Detroit, Michigan. Another area of potentially serious differences had to do with issues of solidarity and their implications for being true to one's views. Can you tell us the form of this issue? Solidarity involves acting in accord with the interests of others and supporting others in their pursuits. Autonomy involves functioning without intrusion from without. Clearly, you shouldn't always support everyone or everyone. Everything, but nor should you always ignore others' wishes. So the question was what mindset and choices have the best chance of yielding a desirable mix? This issue arises in many forms, but here is the one that was most pivotal to the emergence of RPS. Consider a movement against racism or sexism. It certainly doesn't want to be subject to the will of racists or sexists, nor does it want to be subject to the will of well meaning people in the dominant communities who are, however, insufficiently aware of the dynamics of racism or sexism. It wants to be more autonomous than that. It wants to explore its own views, pursue its own agenda, learn from its own mistakes, and benefit from its own insights. Decades before RPS was even born, this wisdom was encapsulated in the idea of the autonomous women's movement, which included efforts like Bread and Roses in Massachusetts, and also various anti-racist efforts like Black Power, including groups like the Black Panthers and the Latin Young Lords. Women and African Americans were sick of men or whites determining their agendas, sick even of having to constantly argue with men or whites rather than develop as they saw fit. None wanted to have to continually expend excessive time and energy to deal with male or white complaints. And for that reason, the idea of autonomy arose. The women's movement and the Black Power Movement were autonomous, meaning they operated under their own control and pretty much unconnected to other aggregations of non female non black people. That was fine in theory, and to a point, but it had an associated operational problem. Such a movement could lose a lot in terms of ties to and solidarity from and toward others. With that in mind, some said why diminish our overall power with this autonomy stuff? We need unity. But others said why subject ourselves to endless hassle with folks who are trying to keep us down, or even with folks who are sincere but just don't understand our situation? In other words, some wanted to emphasize autonomy, some wanted to emphasize solidarity, and the tension would emerge in diverse contexts and ways. Miguel asks, so what was RPS's solution? This is a good example of how intellectually simple most serious social gains are, though they are often very hard to arrive at and even harder to implement because they are outside what is familiar. Simple ideas, difficult implementation. The thinking went like this we need autonomy in many situations, but also very often, indeed, we arguably always need solidarity. How can we have both? We needed cross constituency ties of a new form. One familiar kind of tie was called a coalition. We could have a massive coalition containing women's organizations, anti racist organizations, unions, anti war organizations, and so on, which all share some particular concern. For example, ending a particular war or battling global warming. Back in the height of the sixties, anti war work, for example, there were two huge coalitions organized around slightly different approaches to ending the war in Vietnam. Each coalition unified, but only in that respect. A coalition a woman's organization would join wouldn't prevent that woman's organization from operating autonomously, and it would highlight a degree of solidarity around whatever is the unifying issue of the coalition. The problem was that the solidarity was very limited. Typically it would run deep about only one thing, like ending the war. In that case, the component organizations and movements wouldn't necessarily enjoy the benefits of solidarity from other members about their own priority agendas, nor would they offer solidarity to other members for anything beyond the one unifying coalition focus. A coalition in that case accomplished something, but not enough. RPS did not want to replicate the sixties or any other social period. So we tried to come up with a better approach to balancing autonomy and solidarity. To reach that, we greatly extended the logic of unifying while we sought to also retain autonomy. We asked, what if instead of a whole bunch of groups or projects working together on one thing and having solidarity about that one thing, but not anything else? They worked together on what we might call their greatest common sum agenda. This was very different than a coalition, and initially it seemed outlandishly impossible, or even ridiculous. The idea was that the various groups and projects would join into what RPS called a block. Each member of the block would retain its autonomy to pursue its own specific program as it decided. But each would also pledge to support the programs the other block members proposed. The agenda of the block would be the sum of all the agendas of all its component organizations, movements, and projects. Each part of the agenda would come from the autonomous leadership of one or another partner in the block, but everyone would adopt it all. Everyone would receive and give solidarity even while everyone also retained preferred degrees of autonomy regarding deciding their own focused agenda. Miguel asks, I would guess that people saw how all members would then receive and give support and how everyone would retain their focus, but weren't you brushing away difficulty by saying that everyone would support the whole agenda? Yes, we absolutely were, because it was both more subtle and more difficult than we initially made it sound. Suppose we take the women's movement discussed earlier. It has an agenda and style of operations oriented primarily around feminist activism against sexism. If it joins a block with others, then its program becomes one part of the block's entire program. It will receive support and aid from the other members. Reciprocally, as a member, it will support others regarding their programs. What made this hard is two main things. First, this meant to join an organization that was in a block, I had to decide not only that I liked the organization itself, but that I also liked the block it was in. Second, if a block included two organizations with contradictory programs, the overall block program would have to include both agendas, even though they were contradictory. Not only that, the members would have to at least in some sense support each agenda, even though contradictory. At first this seemed ludicrous, but it wasn't. If the overall purpose of the block was shared by all in it, and in the case of the block RPS was seeking to build, the purpose was winning a new society with various agreed features, then the contradictory program components could each be seen as an experiment to see what works to help attain the overall goal. If one aspect was much better, in time it would prove itself and become preponderant. If some other aspect was better, then that one would become preponderant. When relative merits were uncertain and unresolved, having both aspects present simultaneously would honor diversity, a core RPS value. As far as implementing this, at first it was clumsy and tense. However, as soon as groups with a particular agenda began to reap the benefits of solidarity coming from others and to celebrate helping others, the confusion began to dissipate, so that in practice it worked quite well. Interestingly, those seeking a deeper unity than coalitions afforded was one way that some people approached the idea of the bloc. There was another way some other folks came to the same place. The second path said that in a good society people will often have disagreements, but they will also share an overarching unity as citizens who all want what is good for society. And because of that overall unity or overarching unity, they can live with and even relish and celebrate their differences. They can even have their differences count as virtues as they search for desirable paths forward. This was the same idea as a block. A good society is in that sense a kind of block. So the idea of having a block beyond a coalition first arose from trying to improve on coalitions, and second, from trying to embody in the movement what could become an approach of society writ large once society was transformed. I have to say, my initial reaction to the idea was extreme skepticism. What won me over was the analogy to a good society. In that sense, I felt like I was planting the seeds of a much better future in the present, and I understood the logic of that. Later, I realized it was also strategically sound. Strategically, groups with a particular agenda reap the benefits of solidarity and in turn help others. Miguel asks, Lydia, from her session at her home in St. Louis. The question of seeking reform or revolution has been contentious among leftists as long as there has been a left, including at the outset of RPS. First, what was the debate? Are seeking reforms and seeking revolution necessarily mutually exclusive or can they be mutually beneficial? One side said that since RPS is committed to fundamentally transforming society's defining institutions, it should reject seeking reforms such as increasing the minimum wage or passing a law curtailing pollution. The logic was that a progressive reform may improve some constituencies' conditions, but it won't alter the underlying institutions that will keep producing and reproducing old outcomes. Winning a higher minimum wage leaves the market system and private corporate power in place, ready to reverse the gains as soon as they can. Similarly for pollution controls, they are born to be broken. Likewise, for reforms aimed at race, gender, or other constituencies, born to be reversed. That stance went even further. Reforms are unstable. Pressures from existing institutions will in time either reverse them or rearrange circumstances so that while the formal changes persist, the benefits they were meant to convey are reduced or eliminated by offsetting deficits. For instance, winning a wage increase can be offset by raising prices. Those who oppose seeking reforms argued that seeking anything short of revolution reinforces the idea that the essence of the status quo is permanent. Proponents of reforms argued back that the benefits that accrue from reforms, such as a higher minimum wage or pollution controls, are real and can be quite substantial for the people involved. To dismiss people's efforts to win such changes for being less than seeking revolution, and to not support or to even denigrate such efforts at best appears and at worst often is callous. Not exactly a welcome sign to attract new participants. Proponents of seeking reforms argue that while many people dismiss fighting for reforms in the abstract, no sane organizer would tell workers seeking a higher minimum wage or activists trying to end a war that they are nothing but system supporters and should stop their misguided endeavors. Likewise, people do not typically move from uninvolved to revolutionary in one giant leap. Fighting for reforms like a higher minimum wage or pollution controls can raise consciousness, confidence, and skills able to sustain longer term commitments. Miguel asks, Andre, from his session at his office at City College in New York City, did you see it similarly? What has been the RPS solution? Has it worked? Yes, I agree with the summary you convey, but I think the dispute but I think the dispute often rests on confused or imprecise terminology. If critics of reforms had said I oppose an approach that treats reforms as sufficient, pursued one by one without deeper context, then advocates of reforms could readily reply, of course, we agree. So RPS took the position that while we reject form is reformism, that is, the pursuit of reforms as ends in themselves divorced from structural change, we nonetheless must fight for reforms both because they immediately impact people's lives and because through that process people can develop broader commitments. Why not pursue reforms in a way that is non reformist in character, like many proposed over a half century earlier? This became the central resolution of a long standing tension. Naturally we must fight for reforms, but we mustn't fall into one of two traps. On the one hand declaring we want everything and we want it now, and then rejecting any step by step gain as capitulation. On the other hand, saying this reform is our final aim, and thus abandoning any aspiration for deeper change. RPS came to the view, consistent with some past movements, but more coherently and explicitly articulated, that reform should be pursued with language and strategy that openly reflect our broader goals and values. We should organize in ways that build durable structures and capacities, and we should struggle such that when a reform is won, it doesn't close down further struggle, but opens up new avenues. In other words, fight to win immediate gains, but do so in ways that deepen people's desire for more. Fight to win immediate gains, but in ways that expand people's ability to achieve more. Fight to win immediate gains, but ensure the language, strategy, and organizing process fosters ongoing movement toward fundamentally new institutions and relations. Miguel asks, can you provide an example of how people followed this logic? Well, nearly every RPS campaign or project operated on this logic. Consider two recurring concerns income and pollution. National campaigns to raise the minimum wage and also more localized struggle within specific firms fought for immediate wage improvements, but they didn't stop there. They linked their campaign to the broader principle of equitable income based on duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor. They framed wage demands not as isolated fixes, but as transitional steps. Similarly with pollution and workplace safety, RPS efforts always sought to reduce harm immediately, but they also connected the problem to deeper systemic features, profit motives, corporate structure, and market imperatives. So yes, win the cleaner plant today. But let that win raise awareness and build capacity to question and ultimately transform the underlying structures that generated deadly pollution in the first place. Miguel asks, Peter, from his session at his home in Miami. Another issue around which there was much disagreement in RPS when RPS was getting started was whether or not to use violence to win change. Can you explain the contending views? Yes, and that one was tense, a deep split. One side said, Look, if we want to take down the system, they will come at us hard, and if we aren't ready to hit back, we'll get rolled. These folks believed we needed to prepare right now, not later for a violent showdown. Train for it, arm for it, organize for it. If not, everything else, every speech, every reform, every dream would get crushed under a boot when the time came. And I'll be straight with you, that's where I stood back then. But then there was the other side. They said we're not gonna outgun the state. That ain't our ground. And they believed violence wasn't just unwinnable. It would rot us from the inside. Every step up that ladder would pull us deeper into their game. Cops bring clubs, we bring baseball bats. They bring guns, we bring more guns. They bring tanks, then what? You climb that ladder, you find out too late it's leaning against the wrong damn wall. They said we need another way. And that meant building strength, building numbers, building community, turning nonviolence into a real force, using strategy and solidarity like weapons, just not the kind that shoot. The dispute wasn't academic. It wasn't about some distant crunch time battle. If the path to a new society ultimately required sufficient violence to overcome the police and military, then getting ready for that was essential. No time like the present. But if the path to a new society had to avoid violence as much as possible, then from now onward being sure to avoid violence was sensible. This wasn't some college debate, this was life and death. If you believed we need to fight fire with fire, then every meeting, every rally, every decision had to point in that direction. But if you believed the only way forward was to not take the bait, to win hearts without shedding blood, then that too had to start right now. Miguel asks, what was the RPS solution that permitted people to operate well together? This dispute could not end in a simple compromise. For one side, violence was necessary, and because they deemed it necessary, they also typically deemed it positive and even virtuous. For the other side, violence was a strategic disaster, and because they deemed it a strategic disaster, they also typically deemed it negative and even immoral. The difference was undeniably wide. There was no middle ground to share. One camp said you better be ready to hit back harder or you'll get steamrolled. The other camp said the second you swing back, you're fighting their fight, and you'll lose, not just the battle, but your soul. I mean that's a deep divide, real deep. That violence was to reign the state dominated and wouldn't inexorably win on was so evident as to be irrefutable, unless one felt, wait, if we let that view prevail, then we will not be prepared to be violent, and we will lose. So we must reject that observation despite its obvious validity. I eventually realized that strange and even self contradictory as it arguably was, that was my own mindset. I was so focused on police violence that I had suffered that I took for granted that I took fighting back for granted as well. I was unable to admit that to do so was suicidal. It seemed cowardly to reject violence, to just point at their preparedness, arms, and mindsets in contrast to ours didn't convince me otherwise, though I can now acknowledge that it should have. There were lots of folks like me, and our reaction to violence and coercion was to think we must fight back on the same terms or we are beaten. I'm not ashamed to say it. I was one of those people. When you grow up with your back against the wall, every bone in your body tells you to swing when someone swings on you. I thought if we didn't fight back on their terms, we were surrendering. But that kind of pride, that kind of pain, it can blind you. It blinded me. I couldn't see that charging into a fight with someone who's got tanks, drones, and armor isn't brave, it's suicide. It took me a while to admit that. So for those arguing against a positive place for violence, beyond some modest exceptions, to reach those favoring violence like myself, they had to be. To explain how nonviolence could win. And that was the RPS approach. RPS claimed that while fighting with the state on the field of violence was suicidal, creating conditions in which the state could not deploy violence without losing more than if they did not employ violence, could win. And so that became RPS logic. That was the turning point. RPS didn't ask us to just lie down. It asked us to be smart. Don't fight the state where it's strong, make it weak by changing the rules. Make it hurt for them to throw the first punch. Build a movement so wide, so visible, so rooted in the people that repression backfires. That was the plan. The task regarding violence was to reduce the state's ability to deploy it. Either directly by measures won against the state that limited its options, such as demilitarizing police and winning civilian community patrol control over police, or indirectly, by creating conditions where inviolent repression would do more to enlarge activism than it would do to diminish it. We didn't need to outgun them. We needed to outlast them, outthink them, make the cost of coming after us too damn high. Miguel asks, you mentioned exceptions. What was that about? Of course, there were lines. If someone's busting a picket line and they come swinging, you brace up and hold your ground. You protect your people, you lock arms. And that's not about revenge, that's about dignity. And sure, often you gotta do something bold, something loud, burn a symbol, blockade a road, occupy a building, but every move had to grow the cause. If it didn't bring more folks in, make more people see the truth, it wasn't worth it. We didn't worship nonviolence like it was some holy grail. We used it because it worked. Miguel asked, was there a turning point where you felt this battle was won? On paper, yeah, sure. The Second Convention made it official. But in the real world, people kept struggling with it until something real strange and powerful happened. Street gangs, yeah, those guys, started turning up to meetings, not with guns, but with questions, with open ears. They started talking about turning in their weapons. They started applying to join the police, to become cops, to organize from within. And damn if RPS didn't back them on it, said you want to change the game? Get inside the rules and rewrite them. That was courage, real courage. Walking into the lion's den with nothing but your heart and your word to organize the police. That shook me. As a stance, it became official after the Second Convention. That was the moment we put it in writing, stamped it and said, This is how we roll. But just because it was written down didn't mean the argument was over. Hell no. A whole lot of folks still felt that when you get hit, you hit back, and not just with words. So what finally cracked that perspective, what really broke through was something nobody saw coming. The street gangs people were terrified of making political commitments. The gangs were stepping inside the b the beast to change it from the inside out. And RPS stood up and said, This is the kind of courage we need. This is a righteous path. It was simple, really. If cops or soldiers knew that pulling the trigger would only fuel the movement, not stop it, then violence became a trap for them, not for us. And if we could get inside the police, be the ones on the other side of the badge, then maybe we could stop the trigger from getting pulled in the first place. That idea, that vision, it wasn't for everybody. Not everyone could handle putting on that uniform. Not everyone could keep their heart clear while walking those halls. But for those who could, that was power, not just courage, it was strategy. Sometimes the biggest echoes come from the smallest words, a quiet protest, a half time speech, a sideline stand. And while the fire brands might have wanted more, faster, louder, what we got was a little light and a little heat that helped light the next torch down the road. I believe in nonviolence, full stop, no asterisk, no caveats. For me it's a principle, not a tactic. But I also get that there's a world of difference between violence used to dominate and exploit and violence used to defend one's community, one's family, one's very right to live. So I've never had any issue working shoulder to shoulder with folks whose positions on violence are more flexible than mine. RPS, for example, is strongly rooted in nonviolence, but it's not absolutist. It leaves room very carefully and narrowly for defensive resistance. And honestly, that makes sense. That's smart. If you're facing an armed invasion, if your workplace is being trampled by hired thugs, if your people are being systematically dehumanized and attacked, there's a difference between in instigating violence and surviving it. There's a difference between power over and power to defend. Martin Luther King Jr., who I revere, had guns in his house in case the KKK showed up. So while I personally wouldn't attack scabs, I wouldn't recommend it. I don't look down on people who do. Same goes for communities who take up arms to fight off occupation. I wouldn't make the same choices. I think those paths are ultimately counterproductive. But I understand the desperation and the urgency that drives them. I understand the logic, even if I don't embrace the means. We all live in a world shaped by both stunning compassion and brutal oppression. That contradiction is baked into our lives, and when I look at how our PS has navigated this issue, honestly, I think we've gotten it right. It's a principled stance, but it's also strategic. It acknowledges the conditions we're in and seeks to change them without becoming them. It says we will defend ourselves when absolutely necessary, but our aim is to transform the very structures that breed this violence in the first place. In fact, if I'm being real, RPS's approach is probably wiser politically, socially, and tactically than if they simply declared an absolute rejection of all violence, like I feel compelled to do personally. That's why I never played a simple a central role in shaping the RPS position on violence. I respected it. I supported it, but it wasn't mine to lead on. Is there a contradiction between my personal belief and RPS's broader stance? Maybe. But some contradictions are just the reality of living in an unjust world while trying to build a just one. Sometimes in the face of systemic violence, what is ethically right in a peaceful society isn't strategically viable in a violent one. Not yet. And until we reach those more just conditions, we have to make space for the real. One of my role models in this space is Dave Dellinger. He was a pacifist during the Vietnam War, but he still stood with the Black Panthers. He still supported the Vietnamese people resisting U.S. aggression. He was militant in his commitment to peace, but never dogmatic in a way that alienated those who were resisting existential threats. That balance, staying rooted in principle while practicing radical empathy and solidarity. That's what inspired me. I wish more folks knew about Delanger's courage and clarity. He didn't moralize from the sidelines, he showed up. That's the kind of pacifism I try to live by. One that doesn't just say no to violence, but says yes to justice, dignity, and survival. RPS may not fully share my moral stance on nonviolence. Its opposition to violence is more strategic than spiritual. But maybe that's a good thing, because when I look around at what we've achieved, how far we've come despite the odds, I see the wisdom in what RPS has chosen, and I see room for all of us with our differences fighting toward the same horizon. We had to get together and keep together. Miguel asks, So you mentioned the second convention, the one that really self defined RPS. Was it really so different? And so ends the twenty seventh chapter out of thirty in the Wind Cries Freedom. The last question, of course, leads to the next chapter. Did it make sense to you? With only three more to go, when the book becomes available, will you help give it the push it will need if it is to reach its intended audience? If it is to facilitate the discussion it desires? I do hope you will. Meanwhile, you can soon visit the website we are developing for the book. Look, there's a war on. Good time for song lyrics, and while I think I have done this one before, it is too perfect for our time to pass over. Come you masters of war, you that build all the guns, you that build the death planes, you that build the big bombs, you that hide behind walls, you that hide behind desks. I just want you to know I can see through your mask. You that never done nothing but build to destroy. You play with my world like it's your little toy. You put a gun in my hand and you hide from my eyes, and you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old, you lie and deceive. A world war can be won you want me to believe, but I see through your eyes and I see through your brain, like I see through the water that runs down my drain. You fasten the triggers for the others to fire, then you sit back and watch when the death count gets higher. You hide in your mansion as young people's blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled, fear to bring children into the world. For threatening my baby unborn and unnamed, you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins. How much do I know to talk out of turn? You might say that I'm young, you might say that I'm unlearned, but there's one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, even Jesus would never forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question. Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it could? I think you will find when your death takes its toll, all the money you made will never buy back your soul. And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon. I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon, and I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed, and I'll stand over your grave till I'm sure that you're dead. And all that said, and I hope bearing on what we think about doing in our time and place, this is Michael Albert, signing off until next time for Revolution Z.