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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Episode 289 of RevolutionZ is the sixth episode in the Oral History of the Next American Revolution Sequence. In it Barbara Bethune, Emiliano Feynman, Bill Hampton, Cynthia Parks, Harriet Lennon, and Anton Rocker discuss the initial emergence and pursuit of various strands of RPS activism including health, transport, housing, rights to the city, minimum wage, and workplace focuses. In each realm participants discuss the oppressions addressed but more so the strategies and the emotional problems encountered and steps taken to keep moving forward.

As you can probably tell from the unexpected length -- it took me by surprise too --- this episode covers a lot more ground, as well bicycle campaigns to shorter work week and friction and play along the way. The interviewees put their experiences into words. Miguel Guevara elicits their words with his questions. Finally, I convey those words and also question or expand on them a bit as your host for this trip. If you find the time, drop me a line to let me know your reactions, or better yet, you might visit ZNetwork.org where you can read the text and also partake of discussions in the ZNet Discord system.

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Episode 288 of RevolutionZ is the Fifth in our Next American Revolution Sequence that presents an Oral History of, well, a future revolution as recounted by its participants. Another long episode, it focuses on building RPS chapters and the personal, interpersonal, and programmatic issues that arose after the convention. The discussion emphasizes the importance of avoiding insularity by continually reaching out and describes strategic efforts made to include influential campus figures able to broaden outreach as Bill Hampton, Cynthia Parks, and Andre Goldman discuss immediately post convention vision, structure, and program, and particularly how they went about creating local chapters.

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Episode 287 of RevolutionZ is the fourth presenting An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. How did informed hope plus strategic activism merge into a new organization, Revolutionary Participatory Society, and inform its first convention?

Here is what an AI spit out as its proposed summary of this episode: "Join us on this compelling episode of Revolution Z, where we dissect the elements necessary for sustainable activism through the lenses of pivotal characters like Andre Goldman, Bill Hampton, Senator Malcolm King, and Cynthia Parks. By reflecting on the fleeting revolutionary fervor of Paris 1968 and comparing it to the modern efforts for a Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS), we uncover how informed hope can propel revolutionary progress. Through historical context and personal stories, we explore how these elements are interwoven with fostering enduring social movements.

Hear Bill Hampton recount an unforgettable encounter at a sanctuary for immigrants in San Antonio, Texas, which forever altered his path towards radical activism. What does it take to stand in solidarity in the face of brutality? As Bill shares his experience of linking arms with a congregation against violent police attempts to deport immigrant families, we delve into the deeper implications of compassion and unity in activism. We also spotlight the strategic importance of welcoming marginalized communities into public spaces and reallocating resources from militarization to social welfare, underscoring the power of grassroots organizing and mutual aid.

Lastly, embrace the transformative journeys of activists like Cynthia and Miguel, who reveal the psychological and internal barriers that often hinder social change. Through candid dialogues and reflections, we explore the resilience required to overcome personal doubts and fears of failure. From the first RPS convention to the creation of multi-issue organizations, this episode captures the essence of building collective resistance and solidarity. Tune in to discover how profound societal transformation begins with a unified vision and the courage to confront both external and inner adversities."

The AI is actually an in-built part of the platform I use to post and distribute RevolutionZ episodes. When I upload a file, like the one for this episode, the AI whirrs a bit and then proposes five possible titles, a description such as this one, a transcript, and I think some other stuff too. Others celebrate this kind of instant "assistance." It makes me a bit ill. So I think soon I will do another episode about AI, to add to those I did some time back, but still think relevant. At any rate, I hope you will give this episode and this whole NAR sequence a chance. It is pure vision and strategy, albeit I hope at least somewhat engagingly and emotively "packaged," and as such, I would think, indeed I would hope, it would warrant critique or support, extension or correction, whichever suits you, but not nothing. I even tried a bit of clickbait in the title, not untrue, and not, say: "Blood flowed, Tears Spilt, Baggage Jettisoned, Next American Revolution Taxis for Take-Off. " but nonetheless a bit more punchy than usual.

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Ep 286 of RevolutionZ has Evan Henshaw Plath, also known as Rabble, a visionary technologist with personal roots in developing Indymedia and even Twitter. He replays the history, logic, and implications of social media from its root democratic and participatory intentions to its corporatization and erosion of privacy and meaningful engagement. Plath takes us, as I suspect few if any others could, from the shift from social media's early, open protocols to the centralized corporations like Twitter and Facebook that came to dominate. He then explains his ongoing quest to reclaim the decentralized spirit of the web including working on modern advancements like Nostr, and his current adaptation called Nos.social. Reflecting on historical movements like Indymedia and Occupy Wall Street, Plath emphasizes the need for autonomous spaces that support radical change and envisages the potential of independent, decentralized, privacy-focused platforms. He also discusses possible sustainable funding of these independent platforms, underscoring a needed shift from owners and consumers to co-creators and the vital role of community collaboration. RevolutionZ listeners will likely know the depth of my antipathy for social media as usually encountered. So I hope you will listen and wind up feeling as I do, that Plath's new project, Nos.social, is well worth our attention and support.

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