RevolutionZ

Episode 396 of RevolutionZ presents Classical Marxism as Marxist Leninists typically utilize it. It is part of a sequence of episodes aimed at  helping to assess classical ideologies to determine whether activists should opt for one or reject them all and move on to something better.  Marxism can feel like a master key: one theory that explains why society is stuck, who holds power, and how histor...

Episode 395 of RevolutionZ continues our What Is To Be Undone sequence of excerpts to this time discuss ideology in general, not yet specific ones. Ideology decides what we pay attention to and what we miss. It tells us what we should call realistic and what we should instead consider impossible. It guides us concerning what and how to win. And that means that whether consciously or not ideology s...

Episode 394 of RevolutionZ continues the evaluation of the New Left from within begun last episode. This time the focus is the Anti war movement, Weatherman, the Yippees, the Black movement, and the womens movement. The fastest way to break a movement is to let “being technically right” replace getting stronger. Starting with the Vietnam War antiwar movement we ask a painful question: how did a ca...

Episode 393 of RevolutionZ is Part One of a two part critical discussion of the Sixties New Left. It doesn't remember in order to praise what was done. It remembers to find flaws to correct. The content arrives like a time capsule a young me sent from 1974.  The sixties didn’t just “happen” and then fade into nostalgia. The story of the New Left gets fought over because the stakes are still h...

Episode 392 of RevolutionZ  uncovers and visits a half-century-old file on my computer to address a surprisingly urgent question: are we building new revolutionary ideas, or just renting space in inherited ones. I recently rediscovered the text of my 1974 book What Is To Be Undone? written when the arguments between Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, anarchism, and other currents were not academic history...

Ep 391 of RevolutionZ has as its guest Vincent Emanuele to talk about the movement against data centers, the logic and methods of organizing, and movement culture. Your town’s next big fight might not be a highway or a stadium. It might be a windowless warehouse full of servers that power AI, cloud computing, and the apps you use every day, while quietly consuming electricity and water on a stagge...

Episode 390 of RevolutionZ asks would you rather speak to 2,000 people who already agree with you or 2,000 people who might vote for Trump? That choice sounds like a simple preference, but I argue it exposes something deeper: an entire theory of change. If we think a better world is unattainable, it’s rational to aim for narrow wins, entertain friendly audiences, and avoid the hard work of persuas...

Episode 389 of RevolutionZ has as guest Francine Mestrum, a longtime social justice researcher and organizer whose work spans globalization, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services, gender, and the “social commons” approach to economic and social rights. She has marched, organized, and built a campaigns and  organizations and yet felt like the world barely moved. And she has though...

Episode 388 of RevolutionZ concludes the The Wind Cries Freedom Excerpts as Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS)  wins state power and immediately insists that the real work is just beginning. This week Senator and then President Malcolm Mays, Governor then and then Vice President Celia Crowley, Lydia Lawrence, Bertrand Jagger, and Bill Hampton explain how Revolutionary Participatory Society...

Episode 387 of RevolutionZ has as its guest Farah Mokhtareizadeh, an incredibly traveled and experienced Iranian American scholar and organizer who I first encountered via her article Vijay Prashad's Iran. She shows how if your politics begins and ends with “against the U.S.,” you can unintentionally end up defending the very forces that crush workers, feminists, and dissidents. We discuss wh...

Ep 386 starts by addressing Mayday Strong strike plans. A one day strike can feel bold but without follow up change little. This episode starts by asking about Mayday’s call for “no work, no school, no shopping”: Can the plan pull people from symbolic protest into sustained resistance that escalates over time to  build sufficient power to stop Trump’s agenda and challenge the institutions that tra...

Episode 385 of RevolutionZ features our 28th excerpt from The Wind Cries Freedom, an oral history imagining and reporting from the next American Revolution. This excerpt follows organizers inside RPS as they build a second national convention with chapter-based delegates, intentional representation, and real mechanisms for deliberation. It continues our look at movement infrastructure. How did the...

Episode 384 of RevolutionZ has as guest Rachel Donald, a journalist at the site Planet Critical. Rachel suggests that war propaganda thrives on simple stories, and shows how the left sometimes helps that along without meaning to. She then considers a hard question: how might we best oppose the US war on Iran without falling into the trap of treating any US target, no matter how authoritarian, as o...

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...

Episode 382 of RevolutionZ continues our sequence of chapters from the soon forthcoming book, The Wind Cries Freedom: An Oral History of the Next American Revolution . This chapter's title is "Beyond Capitalism, Classlessness." But, before we get into that, and  as with other recent episodes, first we briefly take up two current issues of interest, cancel culture and what to do abou...

Episode 381 of RevolutionZ starts with my email inbox. “Oprah wants your book, No Bosses.” It sounds like a dumb joke until you realize how convincing modern AI scams have become. A flood of smart, personalized emails targets authors with flattering outreach, credible details pulled from your work and your life, plus plausible offers of aid. Then comes relentless follow-up, and only later, once sn...

Episode 380 of RevolutionZ, titled WCF End Misogyny and Trump Too, begins with some reactions to our current times. The world is on fire, and we keep producing explanations like they’re water. They aren't.  This episode opens with a hard question: why do we get mountains of analysis about war and authoritarian politics, quite a lot of it redundant, yet so few concrete proposals for what milli...

Episode 379 of RevolutionZ starts with some discussion of the savaging of the Iranian people before returning to our sequence of chapter excerpts from the forthcoming book, The Wind Cries Freedom t o discuss experiences of education and economy in the participatory revolutionary struggles of the next American revolution.  Trump represses and depots; bellows and bombs. Are we doomed to chase every...

Episode 378 of RevolutionZ, Transcend Media Madness, continues our presentation of chapters from the forthcoming book The Wind Cries Freedom.  What turns a sea of handmade signs into a movement that can’t be ignored? Partly it is information, so we follow that question into the heart of media. Who holds power inside newsrooms? How are stories shaped? What content is addressed? Why does institution...

Episode 377 of RevolutionZ starts with a brief segment that describes some major robot and AI innovations as warm up for more related commentary to come in the future. When AI can imitate any face and voice, what anchors truth? Who decides what justice looks like when evidence itself is in doubt? When robots can dance and do gymnastics while they juggle feathers make and implement plans, nurture c...

Episode 376 of RevolutionZ, like other recent episodes, has two main themes, not one. First, what happens after Trump and how do we fight Trump in a way that prepares to continue to struggle after his end? There is a fork in the road—either remove Trump to drift back to the “normal” that bred the crisis or build to remove Trump and win a worthy future rooted in diversity, solidarity, equity, self‑...

Episode 375 of RevolutionZ has as guest Kathy Kelly. When journalists are barred and killed, doctors are targeted, and mountainous rubble hides unexploded ordnance, a society is violated twice—physically and narratively. Our guest, Kathy Kelly, connects what headlines obscure: how U.S. weapons shipments function as political green lights, how “ceasefire” rhetoric papers over daily violations, and...

Episode 374 of RevolutionZ starts with a snowfall and notices forecast overshoot. Then it asks why so many reporting, predicting, and evaluating “mistakes” lean the same way? It unpacks one‑sided errors—how weather hype, skewed invoices, and media framing teach the public to accept bias as normal. And then, via The Wind Cries Freedom 's oral history it connects such patterns to the sports are...

Episode 373 of RevolutionZ hears about people trained to perform deciding to build power. Celia Crowley—actor, organizer, and then California’s governor but later to become Vice President—to unpacks how a quiet coalition inside Hollywood traded optics for organization and turned celebrity into a conduit for collective action. From a first awkward meeting in a palatial living room to strikes that r...

Episode 372 of RevolutionZ urges that every activist choice we make—what to say, what to do, and who to do it with and for—can be usefully guided by one clear calculation: will this or that option grow the movement’s numbers, deepen members' commitment and means, and increase pressure on those in power? How might that logic of choice  affect how we write, organize, and work with others among...