Episode 370 of RevolutionZ mainly continues our sequence of excerpts from the forthcoming The Wind Cries Freedom's Oral History of the Next American Revolution.  However, before doing so, it takes up various reactions I encountered to an article I wrote titled "Chomsky Reassessed." The followup discussion here raises some more general concerns and further ideas bearing on issues of "cancellation." 

Internal movement differences, arguments, and even accusations can force a movement to constructively self examine and grow, or can fracture it. What damage is done when outrage outruns evidence, when cancel culture and circular firing squads turn activism into spectacle and drive away the very allies we need? What dynamics play out? When do they arise? How do they gain life and spread? How do they involve us and what might we do to address them? 

After that rather substantial introductory section, this episode continues into a new oral history excerpt about how to build movement power and cohesion in which Bertrand Jagger and Lydia Lawrence further chart their respective journeys from atomized  into  systemic thinking. They describe their attraction to self-management as proportionate say, to equity as pay for effort and sacrifice, and to an economy redesigned to eliminate not only rule by owners but rule by the often-ignored coordinator class.

Bert takes us inside the illusion of choice that we often feel, where markets script our consumption and work options and productivity gains vanish into someone else’s ledger. He traces the subtle hierarchies that reappear in movement meetings, media, and campaigns when movement roles unintentionally subvert movement aspirations. He explains why balanced jobs, transparent information, and participatory planning weren’t rhetorical add-ons to RPS but at the core of its approaches. Lydia widens the frame to kinship and culture. She shows how hierarchies in patriarchal families, schooling, and media bleed into the workplace—and vice versa--how class hierarchies in turn contour kinship and culture. She shows why to change one domain of activity without changing the others reroutes power rather than dissolves it.

Along the way, we revisit a cautionary note from Bob Dylan—what happens when movements punish nuance and reward heat—and we ask how to create spaces where disagreement refines strategy instead of ending careers and silencing conversation. 

So this episode is mostly about how two people were attracted to and navigated movement design, class analysis that extends  beyond owners and workers, and turning diverse values into effective daily practice all in the new movement they became part of, the movement for a revolutionary participatory society. 

Can their remembrances provide use insights in our time and our place about attaining a clear, rigorous path forward? Listen, and perhaps share with a friend who’s organizing something big or small. Then I hope you will leave a comment saying what strikes you as useful and revealing, and what doesn't.

Support the show

Episode 369 of RevolutionZ has Miguel Guevara questioning Lydia Lawrence about her journey from the Sixties to RPS. After anger and solidarity fuel a movement’s start what decides whether it survives? Lydia Lawrence—feminist, organizer, media worker, and the first shadow government president of RPS—tells of her journey from sixties militancy, through doldrums, to sustained revolutionary engagement. Her recounting begins with a poem-like charge sheet against injustice, but quickly pivots to the practices that kept early RPS victories from unspooling. Treat oppression as a web, not a queue; change roles, not just leaders; speak plainly, share skills, and build structures that match our values.

Miguel elicits from Lydia a revelatory mid-west factory story. Workers seized their plant. Councils rose and wages leveled. Spirit soared. Yet before too long passed, hierarchy crept back. Spirits crashed. The culprit wasn’t human nature. It was an unbroken corporate division of labor. A small group accumulated knowledge, access and confidence from newly doing empowering tasks while most returned to repetitive, debilitating tasks. Voice, influence and then even income stratified as much much of the old order reassembled itself. Out with the old boss, the owner. In with a new boss who Lydia calls Coordinators. Lydia lays out how class, race, gender, and polity entangle across home, school, workplace, media, and law—and why single-issue wins erode when unaltered institutions push back. She describes the cultural suicide of “ghosting” in movements and the coordinator class habit of hiding power behind jargon. Solidarity requires attention, not performance.

The discussion moves from Sander's valuable sparks and Trump’s odious fear to the necessity of building bridges without diluting justice for women, Black and Brown communities, LGBTQ+ people, and working-class men alike. Since oppression is an entangled network, strategy must be systemic. Lydia discusses her conversion to emphasizing balanced roles, open information, participatory decision-making, and a language everyone can own. 

Do Lydia's reports of her path to joining sustained, effective revolutionary activism resonate with you? Are the lessons she reveals relevant to our times and circumstances? Concluding this episode's presentation of the sixteenth chapter from The Wind Cries Freedom, is a closing meditation on fiction as oral history—stories that test ideas and invite you to refine them. Is it worth sharing with a friend?

Support the show

Episode 368 of RevolutionZ has as its guest Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin and more recently The Nation and author of The Socialist Manifesto. Our topic isn’t a kinder capitalism; it’s a post capitalist vision and practice where private ownership is overcome and control of production resides with the people who do the work.

Together we discuss seeking a higher minimum wages and seeking higher wages more generally, full employment, greater workers say in the workplace and community, municipal support for co-ops and more. We urge that what we seek, how we seek it, and even what issues we raise while engaged in the pursuits, should deliver concrete gains in the present and also rewire expectations about who should decide and who should benefit in the future.

Sunkara discusses electoral campaigns and candidates, but more so the system in which elections occur. He challenges the limits of welfarism and highlights the power question: who owns, who governs, who invests. Together we also broach the hard problem of the division of labor and derivative class divisions. Sunkara says that specialization won’t disappear. We can't and won't all do everything. But what we do and how we do it must be democratized so that expertise serves everyone instead of hardening into a class that serves mainly itself over workers. We also explore differences and agreements about when to challenge what issues and about what structures are needed to attain our goals versus what structures will continually obstruct our goals. How can and should the choices of a socialist in a workplace or on a campus, for example, and really anywhere, differ from the choices of a progressive working in the same settings? Issues. Demands. Formulations.

Regarding the electoral arena we consider why some workers back Trump and why even center-left parties feel distant. We agree the answer isn’t to scold; it’s to organize. It is to show up where people live, to honor local experiences and concerns, and to build organizations that feel like home not like elite seminars. Sunkara explores how an independent profile—more Sanders than party brand—and now more Mamdani than party brand—can help rebuild trust and make clear class politics evident again.

Are we ready to move beyond slogans and toward a post-capitalism that’s practical, democratic, and winnable? Are we ready to further define our vision's features to the extent we now can, and to refine and improve them as we proceed? Sunkara proposes a path forward to consider. 

Support the show

Episode 367 of RevolutionZ starts out by discussing why I am offering up chapters of the forthcoming The Wind Cries Freedom Oral History as a sequence of episodes. Then it addresses No Kings to ask how can its future  help connect mass resistance to everyday organizing that is able to turn fear into agency: and success that is able to win. Then the next chapter of the Wind Cries Freedom sequence discusses housing organizing, right to the city, transportation organizing, and income and time struggle. How did early RPS pursue bike-first streets and free buses, tenant unions that swap apartments, childcare co-ops, and workplace councils that fight for real raises and a 30-hour week at 40 hours pay. Miguel Guevara interviews some familiar and some new organizers who describe how initially small wins can fuel still larger wins; why listening beats lecturing; and how alliances with auto workers, bus drivers, and custodians can transform “jobs versus planet” into “jobs and planet.”

Our journey through right to the city is concrete: car-free days that become policy, city-owned bike shares in neighborhoods long ignored, and motel conversions that turn empty rooms into permanent homes. We go inside campaigns that train prisoners and returning soldiers to build housing they can live in and we unpack just plans to retire dangerous jobs with pay preserved while workers learn skills needed for clean, dignified work. Across each story, the same method emerges—protect people through change, aim reforms at structures beyond symptoms, and connect every win to a horizon big enough to believe in. In each case interviewees report the doubts and obstacles they faced and how they overcame them.

The biggest obstacle the organizers identify isn’t only money or bosses or repression; it’s the doubt that is planted within us that says we can’t act, we can't decide, we can't lead. Through assemblies and shared decisions that address and change current conditions, we learn otherwise. When tenants start to alter their buildings, when riders start to chart their routes, when workers start to  win pay, time, and to shape their jobs, hope stops being a slogan and becomes glue that sustains activism. 

This episode describes moving from whack-a-mole single issue, single crisis demonstrations to more sustained and linked campaigns that compound power. It addresses motives, feelings, obstacles and means of early RPS development. Can it, or a movement like it become real in coming months and years? That is up to all of us.

Support the show

Episode 366 of RevolutionZ starts by considering a phrase frequently borrowed, nowadays, the phrase "like never before," and then moves on to a word nowadays being used more frequently and positively than in quite some time, the word "socialism." Regarding the former, why are we mimicking the verbal priorities of the Orange Monster? Can we avoid that? Regarding the latter, are people using the word "socialism" to talk about outcomes or to talk about institutions? Can we do the latter? After exploring those questions a bit, we move on to the main focus of this episode, another chapter, chapter thirteen, of the forthcoming book The Wind Cries Freedom.

This time Miguel Guevara elicits from the doctor, Barbara Bethune, and the nurse, Emiliano Farmer, both of whom we met last episode, more about their experiences and the lessons they take from their health work and organizing. They consider the hospital as a living case study. They describe the pipeline of suffering—pollution, price-gouged meds, avoidable illness and more—and also the subtler currents of class status that dictate tone, attention, influence, time and income. They examine the role of the  “coordinator class” of hospital managers, doctors, lawyers, and other coordinator class members who don’t own capital but oversee labor and monopolize empowering circumstances. For many working-class people, these are the faces of power they see every day. That’s why polished condescension can push workers toward leaders who “feel real,” even when those leaders actually harm workers, Trump being a prime example. The interviewees explain how the left stumbles when its language and posture mirror coordinator class norms and when it sidesteps a hard truth: removing owners without changing the structure of empowering tasks just juggles bosses.

A candid conversation with a doctor and nurse becomes a turning point. The doctor admits to class bias toward those below, then embraces balanced job complexes so no group monopolizes empowering tasks, self-management so decision-making matches those affected, and remuneration for effort and sacrifice to attain equity. The nurse arrives at the same aims but after admitting class hatred for those above. Alongside all this, a personal story from the doctor about her "aphantasia"—living without a mind’s eye—shows how unseen differences among people distort what we treat as normal. Her honesty presents a lesson in humility: people edit their self-understanding to belong, and professionals do the same to protect hierarchy. Real organizing requires honesty about the impulses and structures that make empathy sustainable.

The interviewees connect these and related ideas to action: confronting big pharma, building rural and school-based care, reforming medical education, and ending toxic internship culture. The National Nurses March in their time stands out as a catalyst, proving to many that mass participation can thaw numbness and turn moral clarity into practical wins. If participatory society means anything, it must show up at the bedside and in the break room as shared power, dignified work, and decisions made by those who live their consequences. There is actually much more as well...

Support the show

Episode 365 of RevolutionZ presents an essay by film director Ava Duvernay about the difficulty of writing in unimaginably chaotic times. Her's is a sentiment I share but that she expresses more eloquently. Simply put, it’s hard to write to a conclusion when the world won’t stop shouting new horrors. Then Miguel Guevara interviews Barbara Bethune and Emiliano Farmer, taken from chapter twelve of The Wind Cries Freedom. A doctor and nurse, Barbara and Emiliano describe their experiences in health work revealing aims, motives, biases, and beliefs. They report and analyze the class forces that shape who gets heard, who gets paid, who gets healed and who doesn't as well as the emergence of struggle about the issues including explaining the contrasting the circumstances and mindsets of doctors and nurses as a particular instance of the contrasting circumstances and mindsets of coordinators and workers more generally.

Barbara Bethune is a doctor who loved the promise of medicine but who began early on to question the rituals that came with it. She describes how she came to realize the differences between training for obedience and training for excellence. She tested her impressions by comparing her experience of medical internship to her observation of military boot camp as surprisingly similar methods of imposing systemic deference. Beyond profit-seeking, Barbara reveals how doctors' and administrators' coordinator class culture manages care but resists democratizing its means and methods. She finds the roots in the hospital's division of labor and her takeaway is clear. Class divided health care  burns out workers, inflates costs, and leaves prevention on the cutting-room floor. It heals as a means, yes, but the ends are profits and power.

Emiliano Farmer, a militant activist nurse who helped build Healthcare Workers United, speaks from the front lines of the pandemic and beyond, where applause never becomes protection or real power for workers. Emiliano challenges face to face the reflexive elitism that keeps nurses and techs out of key decisions, and he lays out reforms that move from grievance to governance, balanced pay scales, and participatory decision-making. He and Barbara explore their own negative and positive experiences, and actions, their politicization, their actions and commitments, and the conflicts that occurred within RPS over practical steps like single-payer momentum, Big Pharma accountability, antibiotic stewardship, food and housing as health policy, and especially job redefinition—all of which campaigns help make care safer, affordable, and patient-first. Guevara elicits from them personal experiences, views, and feelings to convey lessons about class division, rule, defense and resistance in health care and in broader social struggles. 

Support the show

Episode 364 of RevolutionZ begins with a brief discussion of the Epstein phenomenon. How do elites manufacture loyalty and impose silence? How did Epstein (and Trump too) get constituencies that not only ought to have known better, but literally ought to have abhorred them, to instead become sycophants or at least friends? 

After that interlude, the episode continues the oral history presentation of the Wind Cries Freedom episodes This time, Miguel Guevara elicits from his interviewees reports regarding Revolutionary Participatory Society's initial post convention vision for a society where people actually manage the decisions that shape their lives. The connection with Epstein and Trump? As power recruits through fear, favors, routine, and spectacle, we must answer with vision and program that makes popular agency normal, protects dissent, and make hierarchy impossible to resurrect.

Guevara's interviewees describe arriving at a clear foundation for democratic life. Politics moves beyond occasional voting to year-round self-management. Decision-making power tracks impact. Society reveres dissent. Economy rejects owner and coordinator dominance. It favors workers self management, balanced jobs, and income based on effort, duration, and onerousness of socially valued labor. Participatory planning replaces markets and command with cooperative negotiation conducted via workers and consumers councils. Compatible commitments contour everyday life. Caregiving is shared. Consent-centered sex education bolsters sexually and emotionally diverse relationships. Partnerships endure without perks. Cultural self-governing communities have the space and means to thrive so long as universal rights hold. Across borders, internationalism eliminates empire. Across time, addressing full ecological and social costs ensures that future generations inherit options, not debts.

The RPS conception was that commitments should and could keep hope honest. Guevara's interviewees detail their support for recallable leadership, transparent roles, internal diversity, and childcare and mutual aid practices that make participation possible. Empowering tasks are distributed so influence cannot accumulate. RPS initial strategy, the interviewees report, favored nonviolence and context-aware electoral choices. RPS vision and program operated as a scaffold are participants to elaborate in contextually contingent situations.. RPS members' shared aim they explain, was to win reforms that leave people and organizations more connected, more confident, and more capable of winning still more gains. 

Throughout, the interviewees reveal how status seeking, impatience, defeatism, and inflexible personal habits corroded movements and describe how humility, listening, and rigor strengthened movements. 

In sum, this episode offers describes some ways a particular future movement turned values into institutions and made collective self management a daily practice. The interviewees don't provide a blueprint. Indeed, they reject the virtue and even the possibility of blueprints. They instead offer their own experiences in hopes they can be adapted, refined, augmented, and when need be ignored in a different time and different context which needs to arrive at its own vision and strategy. 

If the recounting resonates for you, subscribe and share with a friend or ten. What guardrails against persistent hierarchy do you favor? What visions do you advocate? What motives and means fuel your life choices? Don't we all need to each be able to respond to such questions? Don't we need to be able to use our answers to such questions to go forward against Trumpism Epsteinism and every other ism that subjugates any living soul? If we do, maybe the interviewees from The Wind Cries Freedom convey lessons we can usefully adapt.

Support the show

Episode 363 of RevolutionZ as its main focus continues with another excerpt from the Oral History titled The Wind Cries Freedom. The episode opens, however, with a comment on our place and our times following on Mamdani's remarkable victory and Steve Bannon's call for Republicans to take over all institutions or face jail in about a year. In the struggle for institutions, for us to act as though Trump and Co. are now wielding a mighty force that is targeted at each and every one of us, ready and able to trounce us each now, in our workplaces, schools, and homes— for us to believe that exaggeration, and in response to be so security conscious that we curtail ourselves to avoid attracting their assault, that approach will do their work for them. That response from us will give them what they are racing to gain but which they do not now have. Our resignation. We have to fight back, not hunker down.

The episode then takes a second side route to present the lyrics of four specially chosen songs. Time to get up stand up, imagine, escape the badlands, and bring our ship in. Finally, hopefully roused a bit, we return to the oral history. This time the interviewer, Miguel Guevara questions two interviewees who we have already met, Mayor Bill Hampton and academic activist Andre Goldman about RPS first forming chapters and thereby getting real. 

We see, in the oral history's time,  how real chapters of their Revolutionary Participatory Society organization formed, grew, and spread to multiply power without losing heart. We see RPS's scaffolding for durable organizing that started around kitchen tables and scaled to a national federation—including the role of its weekly meetings, balanced roles, internal culture, local campaigns, and outreach as strategy. 

Bill Hampton walks us through the early steps after their founding convention: setting a growth trigger for action, launching local campaigns at twenty members, and using those campaigns to reach forty to fifty members and then divide and double the chapter count. He explains how strategic recruitment, chapters sharing their innovations peer to peer, intramural sports, open classes, and street theater plus initial activist campaigns all emphasized growth and roads to member leadership. He shows us what “invite, don’t preach” looks like when stakes are high. He gets concrete on accountability, patience, a culture that welcomes rather than filters, and a movement that emphasizes flexible growth not static self defense.

Andre Goldman next adds the educator’s lens, including how he in his chapter and others throughout the organization worked to pair internal education with external actions through organizing schools that trained people to listen across difference, to frame demands without needless polarization, and to teach others to do the same. He tackles hard truths about gender, race, and class after Trumpism and why being morally right doesn’t guarantee strategic effectiveness. Miguel questions how RPS split chapters without drama, added supports like childcare and modest dues, and dealt with interpersonal conflicts by designing structures that contained heat without dimming the mission.

In short, with eyes on early chapter building, this episode continues the agenda of The Wind Cries Freedom, to convey what it might look like to not only block and terminate Trumpism but to continue on beyond that to achieve a fundamentally better world. And that is why RevolutionZ is devoting so many episodes to conveying the current draft of Miguel's oral history to you. To contribute to confidence, strategy, and vision in a congenial and personal way. And, hopefully, to get some feedback to help with additional improvements to the book. 

Support the show

Episode 362 of RevolutionZ continues the oral history recounting by Miguel Guevara and his interviewees. It delves further with the motives, aims, and mechanics of a successful future revolution. This time, it asks, what if the hardest part of building a movement isn’t the opposition outside, but the pressure inside the room—and inside our heads? 

Guevara leads Andre Goldman, Malcolm Mays and Cynthia Parks in a discussion that describes the founding convention of RPS where three thousand people traded posturing for process and built consensus without blunting their ideals. They describe how months of preparation, open amendments, and careful straw polls set a tone that prized clarity over dominance and turned potential stalemates into workable albeit provisional decisions.

From there, the interviewees explore how a “starter program” could be broad without becoming a blur. Wages and work hours. Tax the rich and full employment. Expanded, revised education for all. Immigration and community control of policing. Reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Democratic reforms like ranked choice voting and public financing. Single‑payer healthcare, demilitarization, climate action, and oversight of AI. The initial national platform offered scaffolding that let chapters choose priorities that fit their own local needs—a structure that fed momentum instead of draining it.

Then Cynthia’s story reframes the stakes. Childhood eviction and family violence carved an inner voice in her mind that said you can’t, a crippling voice that many carry with no one else seeing. Rather than pretend that politics is only external, In response to this widespread issue, RPS carved out space to confront internalized doubt and the habits that keep people silent. That attention to the psychological side of participation—paired with humble, flexible strategy—helped the project survive fragile beginnings, temper early rigidity, and welcome new leaders. Guevara's questions also wrestle with the family versus movement dilemma: what does responsible care look like when the future your kids inherit depends on what you build with others today. How much time to allot where? How can we even think about such a vexing choice? 

If you’re organizing, if you're curious about consensus that actually works, or about how to fight the voices within that say your effort, or someone else's effort won’t matter, this episode offers tools our interviewees used in their world and time—procedures that can keep trust intact, culture that can tame ego and liberate potentials, and a program that travels from national goals to neighborhood action. 

Does the episode resonate with you? If so, perhaps share it and the whole Wind Cries Freedom sequence with a friend who is doing or considering doing movement work. Do you instead find the discussion lacking or even wrong? Okay, in either case, perhaps leave a comment to help improve coming episodes. .

Support the show

Episode 361 of RevolutionZ continues the sequence of episodes culled from the book in process: The Wind Cries Freedom. The episode's title is "Hope Is Not Naive, Cynicism Is Counterproductive, Fight To Win." It opens with a succinct look at our own time's authoritarianism and the information ecosystem that rewards fear and lies over solidarity and truth. It then takes up the oral history by presenting three future revolutionaries who RevolutionZ regulars have already met--Alexandra Voline, Senator Malcolm King, and Andre Goldman--to talk with them about how their movement facilitated hope, redesigned incentives, and made sustained participation both possible and meaningful.

Alexandra describes the prevalence of cynicism and how she worked to supportively flip the frame from “people are bad” to “what makes good people act badly.” She describes how schools, workplaces, families, media, and policing reward domination while they punish solidarity—and she shows how RPS worked to have cooperation and solidarity overcome competition and anti-sociality.

Senator King traces his path from studying history in college to working on the factory floor, to traversing the Senate. Along the way he explains why to meet people where they are at is not an overused slogan but a method for building real solidarity, even with opponents. He considers his electoral motives and choices and particularly various class interests and pressures that played prominent roles in each.. 

Andre dives into what made RPS different. He describes how it redefined the calculus of success beyond activists noticing only quick wins or losses to also highlight wider and longer term consequences. He shows how RPS struggled to ensure that its every campaign left participants prepared and eager to go further, and how RPS treated attrition due to internal and interpersonal conflicts and flaws as an obstacle to transcend not dodge. 

This episode, like others of the same sequence, presents only one chapter among thirty, and though it is therefore only partial, the interviewees do address their feelings, motives, ideas, and practices. They answer Miguel Guevara's questions to address the shift from activist spectacle to activist strategy. They explain why style matters but cannot replace substance. They show how a politics of everyday life—shared power, accountable process, and sincere care—is able to turn moments of opposition that might otherwise  fade away into sustained movements. 

The thread through it all is not solely slogans, or even only worthy values, nor even just details of episodic activist encounters, but informed descriptions of strategic and visionary activity. For them and for so many others, the interviewees report how RPS offered a way past cynicism and despair able to respect both head and heart. They describe the emergence and use of specific thoughts and practices helped to cultivate informed hope, build resistance, and pursue positive desires that lasted. 

Perhaps you will give these participants a listen. If you do, will this segment of the longer oral history ring plausible for you? Will you find useful insights in its words? That is the episode's hope, and If if it does resonate usefully for you, perhaps you will let others know about the interviewees' stories while you also refine and enrich them with your own insights.

Support the show

Episode 360 of RevolutionZ has Larry Cohen, former president of the 600,000 strong Communication Workers of America and current board chair of Our Revolution who has spent five decades organizing workers and pushing democratic reforms inside and outside the Democratic Party to assess No Kings and explore possible future directions for it and of resistance to Trump's fascist agenda. Larry emphasizes the need to organize across differences, to change the rules that block action, and to deliver material wins that build trust. 

He reveals how the No Kings mobilization surged and what it will take to convert mass turnout into durable power. He names the real opponent—the oligarchy that spans billionaires, technocrats, and captured politicians—and shows how Senate procedures, a monarchic judiciary, and dark money in primaries stop popular policies from getting passed. Instead of living forever on defense, he talks offense: defund the oligarchs, fund the people. Cut bloated military spending, expand early childhood education, long-term care, and health coverage. Enforce bargaining rights so Starbucks and Amazon can’t stall contracts for years. Take concrete steps toward Medicare for All by lowering eligibility and slashing administrative waste.

But the discussion also addresses the prospects and methods of immediate organizing and protest. Youth, minority, and labor participation. A weekday No Kings. A trajectory from five-minute stoppages to national strikes. Campus feeder marches into No Kings outpourings. All to evidence and rebuild the muscle of collective action.

Larry explains from his own experiences at every level from precincts and union struggles to revealing conversations with Barack Obama the horrid flaws and important potentials of electoral activism. He describes how to engage without contempt union members who voted for Trump by focusing on efficacy and tangible gains. He discusses the difference between Trump getting many (horrible) things done. Action. And Democrats getting little to nothing done. Abdication. He points to Obama squandering electoral support and a supportive Senate and House with do-nothingism. And he digs into party reform: blocking dark and corporate money from primaries, enforcing endorsements of primary winners, building coalitions with unaffiliated voters where Democrats can’t win and more. Larry urges that the goal ishould be better delivery not better messaging. So this episode is about moving from protest to power. 

What weekday action by No Kings would you like to join next, rally, march, civil disobedience, or what? 

Support the show

Episode 359 of RevolutionZ considers the possibility that the biggest barrier to change isn’t raw power, but a story that many people have swallowed about what’s possible? The idea that there is no alternative. That victory is a pipe dream. The associated chapter of the The Wind Cries Freedom considers how cynicism is manufactured, why it passes for “realism,” and how organizers in the oral history's revolutionary process flipped the script by pairing a credible vision with messengers who modeled rigor, empathy, and staying power.

Andre Goldman answers Miguel Guevara's questions in this chapter by describing how schools, media, and workplace hierarchies train us to expect little and accept less. From there, Goldman considers the limits of purely defensive mobilizations. To push back against a figurehead can matter, but it could also  leave intact the belief that the underlying order is inevitable. Goldman tells how a pivotal turning point arrived for the movement for a revolutionary participatory society when evidencing the logic of hope became a central priority and activists learned to couple a vision of a principled and feasible future with an associated strategy and priorities until dissent began to signal seriousness rather than naivety and wisdom rather than delusion.

Miguel asks Andre about RPS's militarism boycott as a kind of case study. Andre tells how campus divestment was forced by student activism and felt like a major win until research quietly migrated into private spin-offs. Andre then tells how the RPS approach: transformed to address not just colleges but also corporations and how it learned to protect jobs while reassigning funds from weapons to green transit, schools, clinics, and renewable energy. He describes how the movement discovered and becoming adept at explaining why elites often prefer military budgets over social investment—not for defense or even for offense, but mostly because public goods empower workers and reduce elite leverage, whereas military production does the opposite. 

At the same time, in context of the on-going campus organizing about guns and militarism Goldman describes arguing with students about open carry and coming to realize how the open carry debate was more a clash of premises than of values. When a student or townsperson assumes permanent danger, everyone having guns on display can look “rational” as a deterrent against mass shooters who will then know they will get quickly picked off. One side believes a far far less violent society is possible so no open carry, indeed, no to guns more widely. The other side believes that violence is inevitable so that having a gun is one's only defense. The lesson that premises divide dissenters and defenders of oppressive ways changes the argument from moral differences and judgments to differences over the facts of the matter.  This then tended to get generalized to fossil fuels, borders, and foreign policy. RPS learned to address values, of course, but also the upstream fictitious beliefs that make harmful conclusions feel inevitable to system defenders.

Miguel next draws out Andre about the human side of durable movements, about the need to build confidence, to design for joy and care, and to create visible wins that prove agency. If you’ve ever felt that critique is endless but change feels out of reach, Andre Goldman's stories in this chapter of the real history show a path for turning analysis into action, and for turning despair into informed hope.

.

Support the show

Episode 358 of RevolutionZ has Arash Kolahi and Alexandria Shaner talk about alternative media aims and pursuits, and the state of the left. Having just published a comprehensive, transparent annual report for ZNetwork.org, Arash and Alexandria invite you to shape what their project does next. They explain how a volunteer‑heavy media project doubled its reach through smart syndication, built community spaces that actually talk back, and launched tools that help people act, not just read.

No clickbait pivots. No sanding down radical edges to appease algorithms. Instead, a they explain their “guerrilla outreach” strategy that puts movement analysis, strategy, and vision in front of new audiences on platforms like MSN and Flipboard while keeping the full, uncensored archive at znetwork.org for everyone's easy access. Our conversation breaks down the nuts and bolts—how to jump into Discord, what the annual report reveals about budgets and priorities, and what concrete projects your support accelerates including a powerful new site search for 70,000+ articles, short-form explainers that invite deeper dives, an interactive map of Gaza solidarity encampments, and the All of Us Directory that is built to connect potential volunteers to any of hundreds of groups and projects that welcome help, earchable by skills and location.

We also discuss the emotional stakes in our chaotic times for media and everyone. Fear isn’t just background noise—it’s the government's business model. That’s why Arash and Alexandria advocate for “critical hope,” a practice rooted in analysis and collective action, and  for “social self‑defense,” a movement strategy to resist authoritarianism while building the world we want. If you’ve felt stuck between outrage and burnout, this conversation offers a framework and real next steps one can take. Read the report, join the conversation, and tell Z what tools would help you organize where you are.

If Arash and Alexandria communicate to you, resonate for you, please share their episode with a friend, subscribe on ZNetwork for updates, consider donating via their site at ZNetwork.org to help aid them, or via Patreon for RevolutionZ as our new donations will go to them too. Your feedback shapes what we build next.

Support the show

Episode 357 of RevolutionZ presents chapter six of The Wind Cries Freedom plus some personal discussion of publishing priorities and reader/listener choices. From the oral history, Andre Goldman describes his path from academic to organizer and in doing so reveals how a campus boycott became a disciplined, scalable movement. His story has no lone hero; it’s built on strategy, solidarity, and a culture that turned participation into a mark of maturity rather than a fringe stance.

Along the way Andre refers to lessons he took from reading about the 1960s without romanticizing them: expand with intention, consolidate gains, and keep your organizing transparent if you want participatory democracy to be more than a slogan. Miguel draws out his take on how students in their time exposed militarized research, how campus workers reshaped demands toward shared governance, and how inter-campus coordination converted isolated protests into a coherent force. When administrators leaned on repression, “safety” threats, and prestige, the movement focused on raising the real costs of such behavior—documenting abuses, repeatedly returning stronger, and persistently building sympathy beyond the campus.

The biggest obstacle, Andre reports, was not tactical but psychological. Potential allies often agreed on facts and ethics but clung to the belief that victory was impossible or irrelevant. So, to dissent was pointless. Andre uses his experiences to describe the origins of that learned powerlessness and to show how movements undid it by linking small wins to a bigger strategy,, asking questions that stir conscience, and modeling a vision others want to join. Does Andre's discussion of a future struggle as part of this oral history provide provocative, useful insights for campus organizing, anti-militarism, democratic governance, and beating cynicism in our time? Does it reveal what concrete steps, courage, and discipline can accomplish together? If so, I think Miguel and Andre would say okay, in that case refine the insights, adapt them to your many varied situations, beat Trump and militarism. If not, I think Miguel and Andre would say, okay, generate your own more useful insights. 

If Andre's stories and the lessons he took resonate for you, or even more important, if you think it would resonate for others, perhaps share the episode with a friend who thinks “nothing ever changes,” and perhaps even attach a comment with a lesson you feel you can take into your next action, or a proposed lesson which you instead think is confused or mistaken and needs to be improved or replaced. In other words listen, but then engage.

Support the show

Ep 356 of RevolutionZ begins with a few reflections on Arundhati Roy's memoir "Mother Mary Comes to Me." It praises her extraordinary prose and storytelling to show how powerful narrative can illuminate complex social realities. This brief visit to her work ends with a set of questions about her writing and, by extension, about all writing, including The Wind Cries Freedom. Why does a writer write? Why do we read?

Then from Chapter Five of The Wind Cries Freedom oral history, Goldman relays how his radicalization began in college economics classes. There he discovered a profound disconnect between academic theories and lived reality. "The discourse revolved around formal abstractions," he explains, "generally devoid of context or critical examination." This intellectual dissonance he felt slowly cracked his worldview and altered his life plans. He realized economics education functions largely to legitimize existing power structures rather than foster genuine understanding.

Two transformative events next accelerated Goldman's political awakening: an Olympia refinery occupation and a Schools for the People campaign. At Olympia, Goldman relates how workers seized control of an oil refinery and boldly declared their intention to convert it to solar panel production. In the Schools campaign, he takes us into a school assembly meeting where parents articulate powerful visions of the town school as a community center rather than "factories or prisons by day." Goldman hears there desire: "We want roses on our table, not diamonds on our neck," as one parent memorably stated. In both the struggles we see the motives and feelings of activist participants and also of the defensive owner and principal, respectively. 

What makes Goldman's oral history account particularly valuable is his willingness to discuss psychological barriers to activism. He acknowledges how fear of social friction initially held him back, and how developing the courage to take visible stands was essential and required internal transformation. His journey illuminates not just what he came to fight for, but how he become involved and committed through concrete experiences and moral reflection. Does his journey resonate for you in our times?

Are you an ideologically well read seasoned activist or perhaps horrified by Trump and for the first time curious about social movements and their prospects? Either way, Goldman offers rich insights into effective organizing tactics, the importance of building solidarity across different constituencies, and the power of articulating positive visions rather than merely opposing injustice. So is Goldman's oral history account of campus boycotts, workplace occupations, and community campaigns from his time relevant to our times? Is the experience he shares with us worth discussing? Can we extract and refine or augment lessons useful for us? That is this episode's core question. 

Support the show

Episode 355 of RevolutionZ has as guest DSA activist and former Massachusetts state representative Tom Gallagher to discuss how leftists too often "do the billionaires' work for them" by attacking allies over ideological purity.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders face vicious criticism from fellow progressives with headlines like "AOC is a genocidal con artist" or "Bernie is a ghoulish Zionist," something has gone terribly wrong with movement politics. Gallagher dissects this suicidal tendency with the perspective of someone who's witnessed decades of progressive movements building and fracturing.

He describes how the Sanders campaigns temporarily broke through this cycle by demonstrating mass support for progressive policies and bringing people together around concrete goals. He contrasts this practical engagement with the sectarian tendencies that flourish especially in online spaces, where discourse lacks nuance and rewards extremism.

The episode examine the challenges facing organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America as they navigate questions of electoral strategy, ideological consistency, and practical governance. The example of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign in New York serves as a test case. How can a socialist be an effective mayor while maintaining progressive principles.

Drawing on historical examples from Milwaukee's "sewer socialists" to the fragmentation of previous left movements, this discussion offers essential insights for anyone committed to building effective progressive power. Rather than treating disagreement as betrayal, Gallagher advocates recognizing common ground and directing our energy toward the actual systems of power and inequality that progressive movements exist to challenge.

Support the show

Episode 354 of RevolutionZ continues the sequence presenting the Oral History titled The Wind Cries Freedom. In this third installment, as an opening act, interviewee Leslie Zinn reflects on the finished oral history of a revolution that emerged from conditions similar to our own. She argues that revolution isn't utopian but tangible—a possibility within reach if we're willing to learn from each other's experiences and unite around shared values and aims.

Then, conveyed from the book itself, Bill Hampton, takes us to a church in San Antonio where a congregation's nonviolent stand against violent deportations became, in their time and their world, a turning point in the immigrant rights movement. Hampton's account reveals how compassion and incredible determination transformed violent repression into tentative solidarity, even converting a Trump-supporting sheriff into a future ally. Could that happen in our world? Listen, see it in your mind, and decide for yourself.

The heart of the episode explores how scattered resistance movements began weaving themselves together into something more powerful. Instead of working in separate silos—climate activists here, labor organizers there, anti-racism advocates somewhere else—people started supporting each other's struggles. They protested what they opposed but also demanded, fought for, and built alternatives they wanted to see: sanctuaries instead of deportations, new housing instead of military spending, sincere dialogue instead of reflexive division.

Guevara's questions and the interviewees' answers don't offer a blueprint but a provocation. They show one successful path. Can our movements connect more deeply, as their's did? Can we recognize that our diverse struggles are fundamentally linked as they did? Can we commit to supporting each other across differences? Will our path to such gains be similar to theirs? If not, how will it differ?

The Wind Cries Freedom challenges us to imagine resistance evolving into revolution—not through violence or top-down control, but through solidarity and shared vision and strategy. It asks us to consider whether such transformation might be possible in our own world, emerging from our own movements and struggles. It asks what does our activism need to embody to build the world we need? It hopes that by documenting the approaches of its related future revolution, in the words of its participants, it may offer useful insights while making real the prospects of winning.

Support the show

Episode 353 of RevolutionZ examines two seemingly unrelated but equally disruptive forces: the marginalization of participatory economics and the existential threat of artificial intelligence. But first, a visit to Genoa's dockworkers threatening to shut down Israel shipments, America's sex trafficking being addressed incompletely, and activist self censoring doing Trump's work for him.

On the headline topics, for over five decades, a persistent but small bunch have advocated for participatory economics—a vision that rejects the inequitable remuneration, authoritarian decision-making, corporate division of labor, central planning and markets and proposes in their place equitable remuneration, self management, balanced job complexes and participatory planning. The topic, why does this vision remain largely ignored by mainstream leftist discourse. Is the silence merely the natural skepticism that greets any new idea, or does it reflect something deeper—perhaps even the uncomfortable truth that many progressive institutions themselves maintain the very power structures participatory economics challenges?

On topic two, while many progressives dismiss AI as "just another tool" or even "a bad joke," this episode notes its unprecedented development trajectory. From barely performing elementary math to solving complex problems better than humans, from blather to eloquence, AI's capabilities are expanding exponentially. The threats are multifaceted: mass job displacement, potential rogue behavior, use for surveillance and repression, ecological damage from energy consumption, and the gradual replacement of uniquely human activities that give our lives meaning.

Both participatory economics and AI concerns represent fundamental challenges to established power structures and conventional thinking. The resistance to engaging seriously with either topic stems from a combination of vested interests, habitual thinking, and perhaps a fear of considering truly revolutionary change. By bringing these issues into conversation, the episode invites us to reconsider blind spots and imagine alternative futures where economic systems serve human flourishing rather than perpetuating hierarchy.

How might our economic vision change if we truly embraced participatory principles? What guardrails must we establish around AI before its development outpaces our ability to control it? These questions demand urgent attention as we navigate our agendas in increasingly confusing times.

Support the show

Episode 352 of RevolutionZ continues with chapters two and three of The Wind Cries Freedom. Alexandra Voline tells about going from despair to determination, from her parent's activism to her own revolutionary conviction. Born to 1960s radicals, politics was "background noise" until Trump's election added passion to knowledge. Alexandra describes how giving a speech against war-making at a defense plant taught her a painful but enduring lesson. Her self-righteous rage alienated the very workers she needed to reach. To organize effectively she had to develop empathy, not just display moral certainty.

Malcolm King relates his experiences of electoral politics. He learned from Bernie Sanders that dissidents could run viable campaigns, raise money without corporate cash, and inspire volunteer armies. Sanders challenged traditional fatalism. He opened possibilities many had stopped believing in. Malcolm asked, "If you believe the system is rotten to its core, but you don't believe it can be changed, what exactly are you doing?"

The episode's interviewees also conveyed their understanding of Trump's appeal. They recognized that while racism and sexism were factors, many working people supported Trump because they had been abandoned by a political establishment that ignored their suffering. Effective organizing would require addressing economic devastation alongside fighting gender and racial oppression. They discussed as well fear and overcoming it. 

These interviewees report that their organization, Revolutionary Participatory Society, emerged when activists began thinking strategically rather than performatively—asking not "what makes me feel pure right now" but "what builds power for the future." As Alexandra put it, "Justice isn't a pie that we divide. It's a flame that we grow."

The Wind Cries Freedom is an oral history of how people like you, perhaps even your alter-ego in another time and place, won extraordinary change through their vision, strategy, and uncompromising solidarity. Human stories to reveal revolutionary lessons--with more to come. 

Support the show

Episode 351 of RevolutionZ introduces a special journey as Miguel Guevara and his 18 Interviewees convey chapters from "The Wind Cries Freedom," an as yet unpublished novel that reimagines how revolutionary change might unfold in America.

The novel is thus an oral history of a future American revolution. As such the book is fiction but it works hard to sound like (future) historical fact. It is personal and dramatic but it doesn't emphasize entertainment or character exploration. It instead taps dramatic personal stories to convey the contours of revolutionary change by reporting how a movement called Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS) transforms an imagined near-future America. 

This first episode in the sequence presents the introduction and the first chapter of the book. We meet Miguel Guevara, whose activist parents named him after Che, and who undertakes this oral history project to understand how "the next American Revolution is succeeding. After Guevara explains the logic and motives that guide his questions, Chapter One jumps to near the book's endpoint to recount a conversation with then newly-elected President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Noether who reflect on their electoral victory and on what they deem the far more important prior grassroots activism and organization as well as the movement's plans for continued transformation. There are twenty four more chapters to address all that, from conversations to marches, sit-ins, blockades, strikes, occupations, and more.

The Wind Cries Freedom weaves together personal stories with strategic insights. It explores RPS emerges and grows. How its activists organized and faced and overcame obstacles through collective action rather than individual heroism. 

The oral history explores a vision of revolutionary change thought the experiences and feelings of its practitioners. It challenges us to see ourselves not as passive observers but as potential makers of history. I hope listeners will share your thoughts and questions via email or in the ZNet Discord channel. Miguel assembled testimonies. Whether and how the imagined future's lessons will be assimilated, corrected, augmented, and otherwise refined to aid our current efforts is up to us.

Support the show

Episode 350 of RevolutionZ conducts an experiment with ChatGPT to reveal profound insights about both political theory and artificial intelligence.

ChatGPT, please respond to this critique of the Marxist tradition's current relevance first as a Marxist would, then without that constraint. When operating as a Marxist, the AI eloquently employs classic rhetorical strategies to defend the tradition while missing or misrepresenting the actual criticisms. It speaks of "dialectical augmentation" and accuses the criticisms of "flattening contradiction." It ignores the tradition's blindness to the coordinator class.

Freed from replying as a Marxist, however, the same AI accurately summarizes the arguments and acknowledges the validity of claims of economism, inadequate class analysis, and organizational hierarchies. You decide: Does this  shift demonstrate the critique's claim that immersion in the Marxist tradition, while offering valuable insights, imposes conceptual limitations that blind adherents to crucial aspects of social reality?

The episode then ventures into issues of artificial intelligence itself to explore questions of consciousness, language generation, and the nature of understanding. Albert and ChatGPT each address the concern that AI systems, by becoming increasingly capable conversational partners, as but one example, risk displacing human-to-human dialogue and intellectual companionship. 

Interested in revolutionary theory, artificial intelligence, or the philosophy of mind? In how theoretical frameworks shape what we can—and cannot—see? Episode 350 of RevolutionZ addresses not only Marxism's current relevance or lack thereof, but also the trajectory of human intellectual engagement in an age of increasingly sophisticated AI.

Support the show

Episode 349 of RevolutionZ displays what happened when I asked artificial intelligence to critique my critique of artificial intelligence. In this episode, I share the results of this peculiar experiment—feeding my recent articles about AI dangers directly to ChatGPT and asking for its reaction. What in its view did I get right. What did I get wrong. And I comment, as well. I also ask it about how it operates. How does it answer questions, write a song, and so on. It was very forthcoming and clear. I also asked it its reaction to Noam Chomsky's critical writings about AI. Again, very forthcoming agreeing with most, which it accurately conveyed, but questioning some, also accurately conveyed.. 

ChatGPT's analysis of my article was nuanced, including emphasize and surprisingly agreeing with my core concern about "infantilization"—that is, that humans might lose distinctively human activities by becoming passive and dependent on AI systems. The  "conversation" that followed accessibly clarified creative processes, neural networks, and philosophical perspectives on machine intelligence.

I also asked it to compose a Dylan-esque protest song about the pharmaceutical industry in seconds, which it did, and then methodically explain how it generated such content through pattern recognition rather than genuine understanding, using the first line as focus. This window into AI's functioning—explaining that it doesn't "research" or "look up" information or know anything in our sense, but rather has its trained encoded relationships across neural networks to consult—provides crucial context for understanding both its impressive capabilities and certain fundamental current limitations.

Chomsky in the title isn't clickbait. The conversation explores his critiques of AI, with ChatGPT offering balanced and well informed analysis of what Chomsky says and where he got things right but also where his perspective might be limited and why he might have erred in some respects. The discussion even ventures into territory of scientific bias and how brilliant minds can resist evidence that challenges their philosophical frameworks or practical aims.

This experiment only increased my concerns about AI's potential dangers—in many ways, experiencing its capabilities firsthand was more disturbing than theoretical discussions I was previously aware of. Will we approach AI development with caution, ethical frameworks, and democratic oversight to ensure these powerful tools serve humanity rather than diminish it? Or will we get sucked in by potential benefits, ease of use, etc.?

Support the show

Episode 248 of RevolutionZ asks, what if the real danger of advanced AI isn't robots taking over the world, but humans willingly but unintentionally surrendering our humanity? What if AI need not go rogue for its collateral damage to fundamentally hurt humanity? What if our most likely dystopian future isn't machines battling us to death, but machines doing exactly what we ask—better than we ever could?

AI is spreading through society at an unprecedented rate, with exponentially growing functionality. While critics point to potential limitations in data, computational resources, or energy requirements slowing AI's gains to a crawl, the industry continues to race toward Artificial General Intelligence and beyond.

Picture a future where AI teaches your children more patiently than human teachers, diagnoses illness more accurately than human doctors, creates more beautiful art than human artists, and provides more satisfying companionship than other humans. Of course it isn't here yet. But is it coming? What happens to us if AI-guided robots do for us everything meaningful that we humans now do? Is that utopia or dystopia? What if we don't lose our humanity because machines force us to succumb, but because we prefer what AI offers until we are so dependent that to change course would be even worse than to suffer on

Is this danger me hallucinating? Is it so subtle it doesn't exist or is it so profoundly dangerous we must pay serious attention? Will we become passive consumers of massive AI creativity? Will our uniquely human capacities  atrophy from disuse? Today's AI can already write not only letters but also novels, compose and play music, diagnose and treat illness,  hold conversations, provide sympathy, and also complete self chosen tasks. What's next? 

Is it time for us to demand serious regulation while we still can? Not only to protect jobs (a good reason), to prevent misuse by bad actors (a good reason), and to prevent a sci-fi robot apocalypse (maybe a Hollywood exaggeration), but to also protect the essence of what makes us human?

Support the show

Episode 347 of RevolutionZ asks why so many stay essentially silent when our world is burning? Adam Aron, climate activist and psychology professor at UC San Diego identifies barriers that keep most people from taking action despite acknowledging the twin crises of climate collapse and rising authoritarianism. We then discuss what to do about the disturbing situation.

Aron draws from his years of research and activism to identify what's holding us back: an atomized society that erodes our sense of solidarity, widespread feelings of powerlessness, and movements that fail to connect with people's material needs and identities. "Many cultural and psychological forces are pushing people to be isolated... not a lot of people have confidence in the concept of solidarity."

The discussion delves into why climate organizations remain relatively "minuscule" despite scientific consensus. While environmental and anti-fascist rallies draw thousands and even millions, why do they fail to translate momentary enthusiasm into sustained collective power? Aron argues this happens partly because movements focus too narrowly on moral appeals without connecting to people's economic concerns or creating appealing cultural identities.

We momentarily confront terrifying climate truths, perhaps weeping over extinction forecasts in a lecture, then step outside where everyone continues life as normal. This splitting makes sustained engagement nearly impossible for many. What are pathways forward? Do we make activism more desirable through aesthetics and community-building, do we target specific pressure points like the successful Tesla dealership protests against Elon Musk, do we link abstract climate concerns with tangible local benefits like public ownership of utilities? What is the psychology of social change? What would it take to create movements people actually want to join? How might we transform our atomized society into one capable of collective response? These are some questions this episode tackles.

Support the show

Ep 346 of RevolutionZ takes on a stew of topics. What's up with Epstein. Fascism's arrival. Clickbait's Impact. Anti Collective Individualism. Gallaudet''s Struggle. Social Media. Good Trouble, and Now What?

What's the connection among these? Lies, undermined trust, narrow horizons of calculation, fear, confusion, a surprisingly relevant movie, impoverished communications, a set back, and mostly some ideas about effective resistance. 

We know to go forward requires resistance to consistently grow in numbers and sophistication. Rather than isolated demonstrations against single issues, effective opposition must build bridges between constituencies to connect  those who fight genocide with those who defend healthcare, to connect immigrants rights activists who resist deportations with teachers who resist censorship. Elites must perceive not only widespread opposition but escalating costs to them.

How can movement building effectively counter fascism's advance? From workplace resistance to campus organizing, from artistic engagement to direct confrontation with power centers, this episode discusses ideas for creating the pressure needed to force elites to reconsider destructive paths. The episode's warning is clear: we must act bigger and better now, while resistance remains possible before fascism completes its institutional capture. Are we ready to move beyond scrolling toward persistent fighting?

Support the show