Ep 283 - Next American Revolution 1

The context is that I asked Znet if it would publish a serialization of a book I am preparing that's tentatively titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution , and they agreed they would do so . So the plan is that they will publish a new excerpt each week , probably each Monday or Tuesday .

I'm unsure of precisely how many there will be , but probably 14 . Thus a considerable bunch . In addition , I plan to record an episode of Revolution Z the same week that each excerpt appears on ZNUT , to become available the immediately following Sunday . For each such derivative episode , I will present and also comment on the immediately prior article .

And if that is already confusing , this idea gets even weirder . For one thing , the oral history is conducted by Miguel Guevara . After all , how could it be me asking questions about a time that hasn't yet arrived ? I will at best be too old for that kind of thing when the time does come . And , for that matter , who is getting interviewed ?

Well , it has to be a group of revolutionaries of many backgrounds I think 18 , who undertook the ongoing future revolution . So we meet the interviewees via their words , as they aren't here in our time for us to meet and personally hang out with now .

So why am I presenting indeed channeling an oral history of a future revolution that this journalist , miguel Guevara , has produced with his various interviewees ? Miguel's and my idea or hope hmm , who is channeling who here ?

Is that a description of an actual possible future revolution might overcome considerable current cynicism about the possibility of such a thing ever happening . Perhaps it might even provide some helpful inspiration and perhaps even some useful ideas . Why else do an episode ?

But how can I be preparing an oral history of something in the future produced by some guy from the future ? That how is clearly a little tricky to answer . So I leave it to you to decide , or to figure out or to ignore the manner of that occurring or whatever .

After all , how we got Covara's manuscript isn't itself a defining part of the future history that is the manuscript's subject matter . The salient point is that each excerpt article that Z posts and that I then use as material for a Revolution Z episode will appear on Znet some days before it becomes audible for you to hear on Revolution Z .

You might even want to not only hear it once it becomes audible for you to hear on Revolution Z . You might even want to not only hear it once it becomes audible but to read it before it is audible , because I think when I speak it on Revolution Z , I will do a lot of interjecting .

So if you are familiar with the text itself , then the commentary about it that I offer , conveying my sometimes caustic two bits , will be more interesting and maybe even entertaining . I'm going to try for that .

The text that appears as articles on ZNet will always have a note at the top , so that people seeing the article will know the context of what they are looking at . It might be the fifth one , for example . So that text will go something like this , which I'm about to relay , but modified for each new entry .

So it might be something like the following is an excerpt from an oral history of the next American Revolution . Please see all excerpts to date at our NAR page N-A-R , and the link will typically appear there On that page too .

As things unfold , you may even find some interviews of the interviewer , miguel Guevara , or interviews of some interviewees conducted by others maybe me and there too will be links to Revolution Z episodes presenting the same content but with many critical or even confused and sometimes perhaps caustic interjections .

Finally , I hope you will perhaps utilize Znet's Discord system to engage with me and with one another and to indicate your own experiences and your own reactions to , concerns about or criticisms of the material .

For this first long but , I think , likely one of the shortest episodes of this large project , I offered my forward to the whole work , miguel's introduction to it and its first short chapter . So is this weird ? I don't know , maybe it is . It is certainly ambitious and also a bit outrageous . So , okay , I think perhaps , yes , it is weird , and on many counts .

But hey , nothing ventured , nothing gained . So here we go , except wait a minute . Though the articles as they appear on Znet will sum to a pretty long book , they are actually a draft of that pretty long book . I hope that the final rendition will get significantly better by way of your intervention .

So comments within Patreon are welcome , and especially comments within Z's Discord system , which you can join from the ZNet site at znetworkorg . Indeed , when there are comments , questions or anything else , I may well use them without names in the subsequent episode and I will certainly reply in the Discord .

On the other hand , if folks don't like this episode plan , let me know . I don't want to impose it . If it is too much , I will , in some weeks , add a second episode with a real guest , bearing on current real times . Okay , now let's get started .

First , we have a short forward by me , written in 2024 , that goes like this In his own United States , in his own 2044 , miguel Guevara began questioning a group of prominent revolutionaries about their revolution for a participatory society , abbreviated RPS .

From the resulting interviews , guevara stitched together an oral history that is here titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution . I interject Okay , is Guevara channeling me or am I channeling him To me ? Another weirdness it seems like the latter Episode continues .

Guevara lives on an alt-earth whose initial divergence from our earth shuffled people , morphed names , tweaked events and shifted time . 28 years . Alt-earth's 2016 closely resembled our 2016 , but when we endured our 2016 , alt-earth enjoyed its 2044 . Our future won't mimic their past , but could their experience inform ours ? Guerrero thought it could . I interject .

A friend asked what the hell has prodded you to try to write a whole book like this . Well , right or wrong . I thought , and I hope , that this strange format might better convey how a possible revolution might come to pass , and thus why winning is not a pipe dream but a real task . Could I do it ?

Not sure , but I have done hundreds of interviews , so I thought I just have to do them . Wearing other people's shoes , about a future situation . Episode continues and I blink . Ago now , in our own , 2016 , 52 activists and about a thousand additional advocates initially signed a statement titled we Stand for Peace and Justice .

It went like this we stand for peace and justice . We see an organized , anti-worker , anti-minority , anti-immigrant , anti-woman , anti-lgbtq , anti-ecological , pro-imperial , incarceration-minded , surveillance-employing , authoritarian reaction proliferating around the world . It calls itself right-wing populist , but it is arguably more accurately termed neo-fascist .

It preys on fear as well as often warranted anger . It manipulates and misleads with false promises and outright lies . It is trying to create an international alliance . Courageous responses are emerging and will proliferate around , issue after issue and in country after country . These responses will challenge the unworthy emotions , the vicious lies and the vile policies .

They will reject right-wing world back and repression , but to ward off an international , multi-issue , reactionary assault . Shouldn't we be internationalist and multi-issue ? Shouldn't we reject reaction but also seek positive , forward-looking , inspiring progress To those ends .

We stand for the growing activism on behalf of progressive change around the world and their positive campaigns for a better world , and we stand against the rising reactionary usurpers of power around the world and their lies , manipulations and policies .

We stand for peace , human rights and international law against the conditions , mentalities , institutions , weapons and dissemination of weapons that breed and nurture war and injustice . We stand for health care , education , housing and jobs against war and military spending .

We stand for internationalism , indigenous and native rights and a democratic foreign policy against empire dictatorship and political and religious fundamentalism .

We stand for justice against economic , political and cultural institutions that promote huge economic and power inequalities , corporate domination , privatization , wage slavery , racism , gender and sexual hierarchy and the devolution of human kindness and wisdom under assault by celebrated authority and enforced passivity .

We stand for democracy and autonomy against authoritarianism and subjugation . We stand for prisoner rights against prison profiteering . We stand for participation against surveillance . We stand for freedom and equity against repression and control . We stand for national sovereignty against occupation and apartheid . We oppose overtly brutal regimes everywhere .

We oppose less overtly brutal but still horribly constricting electoral subversion , government and corporate surveillance and mass media manipulation . We stand for equity against exploitation by corporations of their workers and consumers and by empires of subordinated countries . We stand for solidarity of and with the poor and the excluded everywhere .

We stand for diversity against homogeneity and for dignity against racism . We stand for multicultural , internationalist community rights against cultural , economic and social repression of immigrants and other subordinated communities in our own countries and around the world . We stand for gender equality against misogyny and machismo .

We stand for sexual freedom against sexual repression , homogenization , homophobia . Freedom against sexual repression , homogenization , homophobia and transphobia . We stand for ecological wisdom against the destruction of forests , soil , water , environmental resources and the biodiversity on which all life depends . We stand for ecological sanity against ecological suicide .

We stand for a world whose political , economic and social institutions foster solidarity , promote equity , maximize participation , celebrate diversity and encourage full democracy . We will not be a least common denominator , single issue or single focus coalition . We will be a massive movement of movements with a huge range of concerns , ideas and aims .

United by what we stand for and against , we will enjoy and be strengthened by shared respect and mutual aid . While we together reject sectarian hostilities and posturing , we stand for and pledge to work for peace and justice . That we stand statement got about 120,000 signatures overall in a quite short time but didn't yield a broad , continuing US project .

However , black Lives Matter , the earlier Occupy movement , the Sanders campaign , me Too and the Women's March , ongoing anti-war resistance , persistent sanctuary organizing vigorous anti-Trump resistance , wide and persistent global warming activism and the resistance to the Israel-US war on Palestine have evidenced the likelihood of more to come . I interject we stand .

Is it real or fiction ? Who's time Episode continues ? Don't ask how . I have no idea , but I have the privilege of channeling Guevara's oral history , which echoes and greatly enlarges and acts upon sentiments like those in the we stand statement . Can their work , relayed to us from their revolutionary alternative future , inspire advance in our current world ?

Time waits for no one and time will answer . So in the article on Z published this past Tuesday . Next came an introduction written by Miguel Ernesto Guevara in 2049 . A quarter century ago , in 2024 , another in a long sequence of intermittent massive upsurges took hold and grew .

For me , miguel , in my world , it was uniquely historic because , as summer came , the radicalization didn't devolve but only paused and after a time came back . For you , in 2024 , being inside it , watching it , cheering it , worrying it , you may wonder . Unlike so many other rebellions , how might this one persist .

Indeed , how might this one go from time-bound to timeless ? How might it go from narrowly focused to broadly comprehensive ? How might it go from rebellion against injustice that afflicts some to revolution for justice that liberates all ? Good questions ? I know some folks who found some answers . My name is Miguel Ernesto Guevara . I interject . What's with the name game .

You will see as this proceeds , that I borrowed names , often concatenations of one real person's first and another real person's second , for Miguel and for each of the interviewees , a way to give shout-outs . The episode continues , starting in the 1960s . In their teens , my parents sought a fundamentally better world .

They were courageous activists who named me to honor their hero , che , and probably to prod me as well . They stuck true to their desires , but a lifetime that felt to them . So they told me . Like barely a blink of an eye later , they witnessed Trump's first triumph .

As I watched them watch Trump , I felt that they felt something must have been seriously wrong about their prior activist path . Their glory days , truth be told , had not led to the glorious results they sought . They died wondering how today's generations would do better . What would their children's success look like ? What would a better world include ? Next ?

American Revolution is an oral history of a victorious period running from May 2026 to May 2049 . I questioned interviewees about their project to build a revolutionary participatory society . I then relayed their story in a book , which you now have . How did that happen ? Damn to find out .

In any case , might their history's lessons broadly fulfill at least some elements of your future . Might their commitments inform your commitments To those ends . In our interview sessions I tried to elicit generally applicable lessons . You judge . If I succeeded I interject , let me know , please . Episode continues .

Che , for whom I was named , sought to become a doctor until his oppressive times waylaid him to become an inquisitive and socially learned guerrilla fighter who led courageous Cuban troops to overcome economic and social injustice . Despite my having Che's name , I dreamed only that I would write novels , but it was not to be .

Despite desire and considerable hard work , I found that I lacked sufficient imagination to write engaging fiction . I was into words , but words were not into me . So I shed a tear , had a drink and figured okay , no problem , I'll write fact , I'll be a journalist .

I got a beat and a boss , and from 2034 to 2040 , I wrote topical essays for a Latin American news project . I pegged each story to news cycle excitement . I offered facts . I avoided lessons . I offered names , dates and happenstances . I avoided whys , wherefroms and whereto's . I wrote about 1,500 words , 300 times In some .

I followed the rules of my job and I got blindingly bored . I wasn't on a chain gang , but nor was I blissfully free and , like my namesake , injustice waylaid me too . I quit my job and blundered about for a time , but in early 2041 , I read an oral history of the 1960s .

It wasn't a brilliant book , not least because the interviewer's questions were only mildly inspiring . Because of those flawed questions , the interviewee's answers focused more on themselves than on 60s movements , motives and methods . That was a big misstep , at least to my eyes .

But even so , the interviewees did describe , reveal , engage and teach the limited substance that they prioritized . Their chattiness and persistence moved me .

I didn't particularly like the book , but I did like the medium , and indeed my having discovered oral history gradually overcame my boredom and in 2043 , I began asking participants of the then-ongoing US Revolution for a Participatory Society , abbreviated RPS , to recount their stories for the oral history you were posed to read . I asked them what did you do ?

Why did you do it ? What were the problems ? What were the successes . What lessons did you learn ? I didn't so much seek information about individuals' lifelines as I sought information about their collective undertaking . The interviewees were my vehicle . Their thoughts , goals and methods were my focus . I was interested in lesson lines , not lifelines .

But time exists and I had a problem . When would it start , when would it end ? In a process as complex and multifaceted as a social revolution , there really is no start date , no end date . But I had to start sometime and I had to end at another time . It wasn't entirely a free choice .

My interviewees lived and experienced what they lived and experienced , and that was not everything , from time endlessly past to time endlessly future . So asking them how they got started pretty much defined start times . That problem was solved by them . However , to end the story was another matter . I was interviewing while it was still happening .

It could go on and on . I needed a way to not quite , but almost arbitrarily , end the oral history . When to choose , revolutions can be seen as having phases First , reaching out and accruing support . Second , contesting with the powers that be . Third , constructing what will be new .

The three phases come sort of in that order , except it isn't all one and then all another and finally , all of the third . Rather , in revolutions , all three happen from start to end , but the weight of each and the whole changes . First consciousness raising , then contestation , then construction is central or preponderant , but all always happen .

There is even a name for the third phase transition . Transition has arrived broadly when construction of society's new institutions becomes central , still winning people over with consciousness raising , still fighting residual elements that want the past to return and to try to block the future . On reaching transition , the emphasis becomes constructing the future .

When does that happen ? Roughly , when the revolution has attained so much social power that it is really driving events and the past is merely fighting it from outside .

In other words , when the revolution is no longer subordinate to a state and its forces of repression , when the state , now really the polity , has become just a part of the revolution , when the state has become a changing part , a modest part , but no longer an enemy . And when is that ?

In our oral history , it is when the revolutionary participatory society has risen to creator in most of society and in particular in governance . A brief opening section tells about that milestone place , that pause before transition , which itself occurs after our oral history . So will you now read what emerged ?

Will you hear my interviewees' words and relate them to your own circumstances ? I found the interviewees to be a grand group . They were like you , but already had future stories with happy endings arriving after often tumultuous starts . My interviewees identified precursors , assessed early activities and described aims .

They discussed revolutionary participatory society's birth , emergence and maturation . They recounted its ups and downs and they envisioned its trajectory to the point of transition . And , yes , that means that you already know right here at the outset that when this book ends , they are headed for really truly fully winning .

Now there is a drama killer , no cliffhanger , but that's okay . Drama isn't my aim . I interject Another weirdness no drama , yes , no drama . Please read the interviews to come . Like you live in Miguel's time , even as you hopefully evaluate them in context of our time and our possibilities . Episode continues .

The interviews who speak here evaluate RPS's early efforts in health , housing , urban relations , economics , entertainment , sports , religion , law and media . They describe how RPS's policies emerged . They report why disagreements arose . They recount how they resolved disagreements . The interviewees describe RPS's gender , race , class , international and ecological policies .

They assess RPS's approach to solidarity , leadership and correcting its own inadequacies . They show by example how they jettisoned their own personal baggage and built their own collective solidarity . The interviewees talk about RPS's shadow government and its shadow society programs . They describe RPS's social vision and its strategic principles .

They address ecology , health , legality , education , media , economy , city life , family life and elections . They describe their new society being conceived and struggling to win life . They share its lessons . Their stories often get personal and sometimes even dramatic .

But this is not a revolutionary manual or a textbook , nor is it a typical novel with one or two central characters who undergo personal travail to later emerge victorious or annihilated . This is an oral history . It describes the interviewee's future time in hopes their vivid experiences will help others to navigate their present times .

This oral history is not a travelogue . It is not a trip up technology lane . It doesn't predict and excavate details of how to deal with AI or with energy and research use , much less does it describe fashions and fads . It does not highlight contingent , highly malleable choices , much less review future music or describe future inventions .

It isn't about future specifics . It is about future possibilities . It is about plausible revolutionary thoughts , feelings , processes and outcomes . It is about winning a better future . I , miguel , questioned the interviewees , sometimes one at a time and other times two or three or more at a time . I chose questions , I mixed and matched answers into topical chapters .

The chapters offer lessons but not a precise timeline . People's answers reflect their own views and priorities . What they talk about skips forward and backward in time . I interject Do you watch TV and movies ? Have you noticed how often they do flashbacks and then jump forward ?

I think it is because the directors think the audience needs to flit around to keep its attention from waning sort of like multitasking For me here . I think it is just that the interviewees are each spontaneously examining the same processes , but each in their own ways and with their own emphases . The episode continues , miguel again .

The interviewees mainly mean to relay the essential visionary and strategic insights that their experience rested on and taught them . The interviewees hope readers will refine , enlarge , augment and then use the emergent lessons . The interviewees are therefore the authors , but so are you .

This is their story , but far from a complete history , I only channeled the interviewee's words to you for you to edit as you see fit . I interject . I wonder how many who read the article a few days ago noticed the weird last sentence of the above paragraph in Miguel's forward . Truth be told , I only just noticed it , but I will leave it .

The timeline got mixed up . Miguel continues . But wait , there is a weird complication . You were about to read these interviews decades before they occurred and even before when the events they recounted to me occurred . You have my gratitude for your patience with the dissonance of that . I know it may make their words feel a little strange , tenses may get confused .

Your time , their time , whose time ? But please don't let details like that sidetrack you . Ignore that what follows isn't in your history books . The thing to consider , even to concentrate on , is the plausibility , dignity and effectivity of their struggle . This is not an oral history of detailed events , technology , conflicts or even people .

Such content appears only enough to convey the possibility , soul and content of a possible next American revolution . This is an oral history of that I interject . Next came the first chapter of the oral history titled Looking Ahead , in which President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Curie very briefly discuss their recent election experiences .

And first there is a note from Miguel Wait . Who the hell begins an oral history presenting content from its last , or from at least very nearly its last , recorded session ? Me , I do . Miguel Guevara . I warned you in my introduction that the timeline might get a little confusing . I even apologized for it .

I conducted one interview after another over quite a few years , so I started the first interview well before I finished the last More . The interviews do not span the whole revolution but only a part , albeit pretty much and right off . To be really clear that the point of it all isn't will they win or not ?

Here in Chapter 1 I offer some excerpts from one of the last interview sessions that certainly suggest total victory is coming .

It was recorded mostly in the Oval Office in Washington DC in 2049 , where the new Revolutionary Participatory Society president and vice president offered some remarks on their new situations just after being inaugurated and at a kind of pausing point , a kind of takeoff point for all that would then follow the continuing acts of RPS , the construction of the sought new

society , and now come the questions and answers of the first chapter . I , miguel , began . Mr President , are you kidding me ? The new Vice President , celia Curie , interrupted Jeez Miguel , call him Malcolm . I do , we all do . But , madam Vice President , miguel , seriously , I am not a statue , I am not a label , I am Celia . I interject .

Can you guess the origin of Celia and Malcolm's names ? Or are you as confused at this point as I am , episode continues . Well , okay , celia . Malcolm , what a pleasure to celebrate your victory . How do you feel ? Eager , cautious , but , miguel , ideas won not us . But you and Celia traversed the country , you campaigned , you won , right , celia ? No , not right .

Yes , malcolm , and I walked , rode and flew a lot , we talked a lot , we got horse talking , sure , but millions of volunteers won , miguel . Do you remember at the convention after choosing candidates , when we were celebrating and Malcolm spoke , and I think I can repeat it , but , malcolm , they were your lines .

So you repeat it , malcolm , okay , well , I think it went like this . I think I said 35 years ago , someone running and winning for president with my views was an impossible dream . Then Bernie Sanders brought hope , black Lives Matter exploded , activism flourished Me too . Too Horrible . Covid , incredible Palestine support and on to RPS . And here we are . I interject .

Is Malcolm right Ten years ago ? Could you dream this ? How about now ? How about after you read the whole oral history ? Episode continues . Celia Miguel asked what are your first reactions to the Oval Office ? Look at these portraits . My first reaction is the same as anyone with eyes . We need to redecorate , I interject .

Would removing a lot of mass murderers from the walls to put up portraits of the namesakes of the interviewees . Be historical savagery or delayed but desirable justice , you decide . Episode Miguel continues Ancilia . What about immediate program ?

It will , of course , be what our supporters desire Hold a constitutional convention and build local assemblies to revamp government . Enlarge the Supreme Court to reflect society . Build housing , schools and clinics . Drastically downsize the military . Pardon many , many prisoners . Renovate judicial procedures pardon many , many prisoners . Renovate judicial procedures further .

Innovate energy and all production to obtain ecological balance . Further restrict AI support unending workplace takeovers and then more . Test and refine new allocation . Empower and federate neighborhood assemblies . Demolish income and wealth inequity . Tax and repossess . Advance real self-management . Follow the will of the people . Follow the will of the people .

Rps has waged a quarter-century journey of ceaseless struggle . Rps has reached a new stage . It is now time to build new institutions . It is time to build our new society . We certainly won't let up now . Malcolm , do you agree ? Do you feel pressure for RPS to do all that ? Do you feel fear ? I feel excited tension .

We need to construct , even as we win over some who have yet to agree with liberation , and also overcome residual resistance . Imagine the impact this movement , this revolution , can have . And yes , I feel some fear Ignorant government choices , like ignorant choices in other ongoing construction , could slow change and yes , I do fear that .

But good government choices could speed up change . So we will seek that . This is just one more notable flex point in our journey and we will flex forward , of course , in tune with the health workers' advisory to do no harm and the ecologist's precautionary principle . We will have to do good and also avoid damage .

Miguel asks Malcolm is there sufficient unity of will and vision to accomplish that ? At RPS's beginning , do you remember how friends , workmates and relatives often feuded ? Rps members were few and we often clashed with non-RPS neighbors and workmates and even with each other ? We want , no , we want . We all endured such conflicts , even on our own families .

To advance we had to arouse hope and raise consciousness . We had to overcome many differences , not with each seeking to be right and to prove others wrong , but with everyone seeking to move forward effectively . And we had to do that while high water was rising and hard rain was falling everywhere .

It was a daunting but not impossible task and we did that with our strikes and sit-ins . We did it at immigration , detention centers , in courts , jails and at military bases . We did it in workplaces , schools , neighborhoods and homes . As RPS membership grew and our vision developed and spread , we initiated our own new community centers and daycare programs .

We created new schools and changed laws . Rps planted seeds of a better future with our new projects . But we also fought inside existing institutions and we won initially modest but steadily escalating victories there . We also endured many losses and suffered many setbacks . Of course there was repression and conflict , but mostly RPS marched forward .

Celia and I and all of us learned from grassroots efforts every day . The movement was the star , the movement was the school , the population was the teacher . We were just precocious students . Miguel asked do you remember ? Just after election day I was in New York City hearing Alexandra Villeen introduce the city's mayor , rps member , bill Hampton ?

He wore an RPS hat and looked elated . A massive crowd looked upon a New Year's Eve-like stage . A banner waved another world is ours . I interject More interviewee names . Can you guess their origin ? Episode continues as Malcolm answers . Yes , I remember , but Celia and I were already in Washington , not New York , though . We saw videos and they were wonderful .

Miguel interrupts . Alexandra was the emcee and she said here we are , inauguration day , another milestone on the way toward fulfilling our aims in every workplace , school , neighborhood , city and state . I give you your mayor , bill Hampton . Celia takes up the account .

Yes , and Bill reached out and swept his arms and eyes across the massive , buoyant New Year's Eve-like crowd . And I remember Bill said politics used to be competitive and elitist . It was money-grubbing , hypocritical bureaucracy . As mayor in recent years , I struggled to reduce its insanities , often to little avail .

Politics used to be disconnected professionals dictating from above . Now you all demand and enact . Now politics is you . When I saw the video as governor of California this is Celia I knew exactly what Bill was talking about . Even at that point he had me leaking happy tears . And then he got to everyone .

He described to a million in the street , maybe more , and to so many more by video , how , as a child , as he put it I suffered nightmares of big planes silently , ominously , almost gently , dropping massive parachutes and beneath each chute , swaying to a devil's dirge , huge cylindrical nuclear coffins drifted down . I interject .

Truth be told , I did have that dream too as a kid , back in the age of duck and cover . I guess maybe I lent it to Bill . Episode continues . The crowd went silent and Bill smiled . But I woke up . He said . We all woke up .

We got into each other's nightmares of war and climate collapse and fascist violence and we turned them into colorful , inspiring dreams of freedom . Visions replaced fears and now we celebrate a new milestone and tomorrow we will carry on . All of you are now architects of our collective future . I interject After mildly morphing his hard rain reference a bit back .

Malcolm slid in another . I'll let you be in my dream if you'll let me be in yours . Episode continues . Malcolm , what were you thinking ? Just after the election , I had my own childhood nightmares . I used to see cattle , cars full of human corpses , thousands of them stretching across the country east to west and back Society's killing train .

And so when I watched people cheering Bill in the street , I thought these people are not corpses , they are not mourning , they are celebrating , they are ready to build a new , far , far more worthy world .

And I said at the time , since Inauguration Day was still coming , at that point , rebels and rakes , outcasts , the gentle , the kind , poets and painters , bricklayers and truck drivers , doctors and dreamers , saints and sinners , those incarcerated in jails and those incarcerated in boring subordination , those in struggle and those still getting in we all need a moment's

rest , a moment to celebrate as we set out to win still greater victories to come . I remember Celia said history has shackled society's citizens so long that many millions now want to dance in the streets and that she wanted to as well . And me . I did too , and I am no dancer . I interject . Whole lot of borrowing going on there .

Episode continues , malcolm says . And so for inauguration . To accommodate so many celebrants , we held events in all big cities and in hundreds of counties . We danced to decades of struggle , we danced to battling on all of us and we now must undertake transition east to west and north to south . All of us Go back to the start . A rider on the storm .

Yikes , too many interjections , too much confusion . I hope not . And yet if , going forward , you read the articles on Znet before I audio-episoded them here on Revolution Z , I think the interjections will spice things up , clarify a bit and amuse , or at least I hope so . They definitely amuse me and I just want to have some fun too .

And that said , references and all this is Michael Albert signing off until next time when Miguel and I and some additional interviewees will return with NAR2 , n-a-r-2 , first Breaths .