RevolutionZ

Ep 299 of RevolutionZ, the fourteenth in the Next American Revolution sequence has Andre Goldman, Reverend Stephen Du Bois, Bert Dillinger, and Lydia Luxembourg discuss RPS economic, ecological, and internationalist vision as well as internal and external criticisms of the emerging views and means of resolving such differences. They make a case for fundamental changes, discuss how the views of what to seek arose, how they were presented and received, and their importance for practical endeavors. The question hanging over it all is do their future lessons bear on our current realities?

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Ep 298 of RevolutionZ, welcomes Max Elbaum to discuss prospects and priorities following  Biden's  withdrawa, in light of Harris's momentum, with Trump's authoritarianism, and  continued genocidal Israeli policies. What's with U.S. foreign policy? How can we Stop Trump, address MAGA's rise, win a cease fire, and then continue forward? But, as well, how can we address ideological intolerance and class prejudice even inside the left? With cautious optimism for peaceful protests in Chicago, how do we enhance peace and social prospects until November and then beyond?

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Episode 287 of RevolutionZ has various interviewees describe to Miguel Guevara their debates and ensuing resolutions that arrived at RPS shared vision even as they also steadfastly rejected sectarianism and rigid dogma. From Feyerabend's anything goes, to Chomsky's values are essential and enough, to RPS's we also need core institutional goals, to developing the latter for polity, kinship, and community, in this episode Guevara interrogates more of the Next American Revolution's experiences and lessons. Hear what these future revolutionaries thought and felt, what they did and what they chose to not do. Is their story plausible or fanciful? Could we follow our own version of their path into a better future? What would you change or retain? Is this fiction to make real? Reality to refine? Or what? Maybe my brief interjections while presenting it will help or irritate. There are more NAR episodes to come. 

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EP 296 of RevolutionZ and episode twelve of the Oral History of the Next American Revolution sequence reports on RPS's Second Convention's ups and downs and  the origin and implementation of a shadow government. Interviewees report how the national convention and subsequent shadow government were planned, assembled, and carried out. The interviewees take you fromorganizing's ethical dilemmas to the psychological and social impacts of activist choices, to the dynamics of new institution startup efforts within a corrupt, oppressive, society. Listen (and/or you can read on ZNet as well if you like) and then you can judge for yourself: Do Miguel's questions, Patti's, Malcom's, Lydia's, Bill's, and Barbara's answers, and even my interjections provide insights and inspiration applicable in our time, in our world? That is certainly their and my aim.

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Ep 295 NAR #11 has future revolutionaries Robin Kuntsler, Celia Curie, Ali Carmichael, Lydia Luxemburg, Andre Goldman, Peter Cabral, and Alexandria Voline answer Miguel Guevara's questions about RPS differences over tactics/strategy in RPS development and activism. From prison strikes to shadow government, from workers striking in Cleveland to students rising in Boston,  how does leadership avoid the pitfalls of elitism, how does urgency inform but not swamp patience, how did RPS navigate desires for reform and for revolution, and address inclinations to fight violence with violence as against needs for non violence? NAR #11 continues the oral history of how tomorrow's revolution addressed problems we have face today and have faced for decades. Does their experience provide insights for us, now? Only you can decide, but not without assessing their words.

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Ep 294 of RevolutionZ has for a return engagement as guest Evan Henshaw Plath, popularly known as Rabble. We talk about AI and society, first describing where we are now and how we got here, and then likely impacts on various sectors, from software development to music, and video generation. What is the role of training data? How intelligent can AI get? Will it attain AGI? Is there an existential threat? What are the more immediate social and ethical risks and rewards? What are AI researchers like? As a community, do they have cultural connections or even share a quasi religious culture? Do they have in mind more humane and equitable societies? Or is profit in command? Will AI be a tool that enhances life possibilities for people, or will people be infantilized by AI doing too much of what humans ought to do? Can the public impact the outcome?

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Ep 293 of RevolutionZ is the tenth in the Oral History of the Next Next American Revolution Sequence. Miguel Guevara first interviews Alexandra Voline, Bill Hampton, and Lydia Luxemburg about  combating misogyny and gender hierarchies including feminist strategies for democratizing nurturing responsibilities achieving gender-neutral parenting. Then Cynthia Parks and Peter Cabral discuss with Miguel RPS's strategies to address racism and other cultural community hierarchies including how RPS schools for organizers foster an environment of trust and positive energy and various campaigns around community control of police. Finally Emiliano Feynman and Anton Rocker discuss class issues including recounting  experiences of the great Amazon sit-down strike and the national campaigns to reduce the workday and workweek as well as the challenges of bridging working class coordinator divides.

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EP 292 of RevolutionZ Professions React, Part Two, continues the Next American Revolution Sequence with the host Michael Albert conveying the words of various oral history interviewees' accounts of religious renovations, legal upheavals, and media makeovers that they helped undertake in the early years of the emerging Revolutionary Participatory Society. The interviewees, channeled by Albert, discuss with Miguel Guevara their getting started, their movement methods, confusions, controversies, goals, failures and successes.  Reverend Stephen Du Bois first takes us from his early years as a seminary student though his encounters with religious fundamentalism, to significant milestones victories in church renovation by way of his personal hunger strike and much wider sustained  militant activism to overcome religious and societal controversy and opposition. Then famed lawyer Robin Kunstler does the same for the legal realm by recounting  the disillusionment that shifted his path from a conventional lawyer to a justice advocate. His stories highlight the systemic failures of earlier criminal justice systems including policing, incarceration, and court procedures and the urgent need for and means of transformation, but also acknowledge the vexing still open questions of exactly what structures to enact so as to do much better. Finally, Leslie Zinn sheds light on mainstream media’s role within society and  regarding RPS, emphasizing the importance of alternative media structures and practices including jobs balanced for empowerment, and recounting how activist RPS efforts led to changes in  media practices. From media profit seeking finance and political subservience to movement media improvements including cooperative planning efforts that reshaped the alternative media landscape, Zinn, like Du Bois and Kuntsler, offers a comprehensive look at RPS’s early multifaceted approach to creating a more just society regarding various professional domains. How relevant are their accounts of their future experiences to our current choices? You decide.

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Ep 291 of RevolutionZ discusses RPS organizing in the areas of film and sport. Celia Curie and Peter Cabral respond to Miguel Guevara as they move their focuses from rape to revolution with an oscar and governorship in between and from baseball to, again, revolution, with diverse organizing projects in between. How does support by participants in these fields develop? What resistance to becoming active arise? How are they addressed and overcome? What changes in people and in relations emerge? This episode delves into the dynamics of these two areas of life and their transformation during the development of the movements of the next American revolution. The means is personal stories of work in the areas, organizing the areas, and conflicts in the areas...all presented to further advance  Guevara's Oral History of The Next American Revolution.... 

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In Episode 290 of RevolutionZ, the seventh in the Oral History of the Next American Revolution Sequence, Lydia Luxemburg and Bert Dellinger discuss ideas, values, self management, diversity, flexibility, and various institutional practices of Revolutionary Participatory Society including their own very personal. reactions and experiences ranging from Lydia's 1960s to Bert 2000s and into RPS's early years years. They answer Miguel Guevara who asks how various revolutionary ideas attracted them to participate in RPS and then how those ideas impacted RPS's emergence and trajectory. They are big topics of important times and perhaps they convey useful possibilities for our own future, supposing we want a new world--not only instead of this world, but more likely, instead of no world.. So, again, this is not a short session. 

But why am I messing about with an oh so long fictional account of a fictional future? Well, before embarking on this episode, I shoved in this little spontaneous rant I primal screamed the day after the recent Supreme Court ruling  

Before Miguel begins, I just have to ask, am I missing something? What is to now prevent Biden from, I don’t know, jailing Trump, or firing most of the Supreme Court, or nationalizing Tesla or the whole pharmaceutical industry, or, hey, shutting down fossil fuel, or doing whatever else on behalf of we who are alive now and, more so, on behalf of those who would in that case thrive rather than suffocate or melt in the future?

If there really is a God, surely at this point she’d intervene. Or perhaps her power went to her head….do gods even have heads? If the current trajectory persists, we used to have a saying dating way back to the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye. Hmm, I’d prefer to win a new world—right after preventing this one from self immolating. And so, here is Miguel's first question for Lydia...

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