RevolutionZ

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...

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...

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...

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 about AI. A...

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...

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 millions...

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 to 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...

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...

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,...