RevolutionZ

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 new outrage, or can we build a unified movement that outlasts headlines and outmaneuvers chaos? 
Are we whacking moles, one by one, with us divided up like the moles are? With us atomized? Or are we united so as to collectively thrash the whole field of moles all together? One big struggle? Can we go from war talk and whiplash politics to a grounded strategy that links antiwar action, racial and gender justice, economic equity, anti-fascism, and environmental preservation into one big movement of movements to actually compound strength rather than splinter it?

From that foray into foreign affairs made local, we present the 24th chapter of Miguel Guevara's oral history project. This time, he questions Bertrand Jagger, Bridget Knight, and Julius Rocker about education and then also economy. The interviewees and Miguel together discuss how universities trained obedience and optimized for fractured attentions were pushed toward a new mandate—curiosity, context, and courage. Communities opened public schools at night, turned libraries into festivals, and made classrooms into commons. Student strikes didn’t just shut campuses down; they reopened them as shared spaces where teachers and students co-chaired sessions, set aims, and demanded preparation for balanced jobs that reject classist pipelines.

Workplaces followed suit. Early co-ops that initially kept managerial habits learned that full irreversible transformation needs balanced jobs and self-managed decision-making. The critical breakthrough came when shops federated workers’ councils, shared methods, provided mutual insurance, and spread solidarity across industries. Public services moved first, but hospitals, manufacturing, and large firms of diverse kinds developed cracks where new norms—solidarity, equity, transparency, diversity, ecological standards and especially self-management—took root.
Throughout their interviews the interviewees describe their thoughts and feelings regarding on-going struggles and events. We hear about a long march through the economy to spread new remuneration norms and work roles inside firms and then to reorient allocation writ larger. Instead of markets that pit workers against consumers, and one another, we hear how councils began to plan together around need, capacity, and impact. Participatory budgeting simultaneously began to spread these habits in cities to turn policies into a public craft. 
The result, the interviewees explain, was a transitional landscape where two economies coexist:ed one clinging to ownership, profits, power, and spectacle, the other winning trust by delivering dignity, competence, equity, and shared voice. The discussions also address independent media, transforming institutions from the inside, and building new ones from scratch always with eyes on relentless outreach to ensure that the new can grow without being captured or bent out of shape by the old not yet entirely replaced.

If building schools as commons and reconstructing jobs to only produce effectively but also ensure self management sounds like a future worth winning, perhaps hit follow and share this episode with fellow students, neighbors, friends, and/or workmates.
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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 institutional structure matter as much as personal intentions?
With Miguel Guevara and Leslie Jordan, a veteran broadcaster and organizer, we examine the quiet hierarchies that once defined alternative media and the concrete steps that dismantled them: balanced job complexes, real mentorship, and quality safeguards that spread skills instead of hoarding them.

From there, alternative media took on the engine behind so many bad outcomes: market logic. Chasing donors and clicks rewards brevity over depth and funnels creative energy into fundraising rather than reporting. How do media activists in the next American Revolution explain their choices to treat media as a public good, to plan budgets across outlets, and to distribute resources based on movement needs, not who can shout loudest. As competition gave way to cooperation, Leslie tells how new voices surfaced, class analysis deepened, and editorial agendas widened beyond the narrow lanes advertisers and even elites within organizations prefer.

For the new revolution's media movements, change also meant challenging corporate newsrooms from within. Leslie highlights movement campaigns that pressed for fair pay scales, inclusive hiring, participatory decision making, and editorial corrections. Journalism schools became a lever for the future, seeding norms that prized shared power over star systems. She also explains why RPS maintaining principled distance from any single alternative media organization kept independent media truly independent and free to critique allies and opponents alike while still coordinating for impact.

Along the way, we confront a live hazard: the push to strip AI guardrails for militarized use, and what that says about state-corporate pressure on communication tools. The stakes are high. If media is the nervous system of society, then democratizing it changes how every struggle moves. Our episode is part story, part strategy to turn moments into durable movements. 
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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 children and help the infirm, what can't they do? What do we do?
Then the episode pivots to courts, cops, and cages. Miguel Guevara interviews Robin Zimmerman, a former criminal defense attorney, who lays bare how the adversarial model is fueled by warped incentives to reward convictions and legal theatrics over truth. He traces his break from “organized cruelty” to building justice along with RPS. He describe activism to reorient pay and prestige from wins to effort, and explains how reimagine trials to surface facts, context, and repair. He explores how lie detection tech and deepfakes collide with due process, and why no single blueprint will fix jurisprudence. Instead, he and RPS argue we need context-driven methods, transparent checks and balances, and an ethos that centers dignity.

Next, Peter Cabral provides a ground level view: the gang as survival, prison as a factory of harm, and the strategy that changed everything—nonviolent work stoppages that spread by discipline, solidarity, and visible dignity. He explains how prison strikes reframed demands from modestly better conditions to real participation, living wages, rich education, and preparation for life beyond the walls. He tracks how reforms gained ground via civilian control of policing, demilitarization, restorative justice, and a still bolder proposition to replace prisoner exile with structured, humane communities focused on accountability and growth. Separation for safety remains; degradation does not.

 Who sets incentives? Who verifies claims? Who pays the price when systems fail? Our judicial activists don’t pretend to have every answer. They do insist on a north star: fewer victims, fewer cages, and institutions that measure success by truth, repair, and human dignity. 
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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‑management, and ecological sanity. From there, the episode moves on to its second fous, another in our series of excerpted interviews from the forthcoming book, The Wind Cries Freedom. The oral history's interviewer, Miguel Guevara, sits with Reverend Stephen Sharp, who describes his path from climate awakening to anti‑capitalist ministry, including renovating charity to become a doorway to empowerment and refining outrage into focused, collective action.

Stephen shares the moment that changed him—a confession from a young woman surviving rape and prostitution who displayed her plight and made him feel deeply how personal pain is generated and manipulated by policy and profit. Stephen also describes how faith communities shifted posture to offer unconditional aid while inviting learning, organizing, and public courage. He describes, that is, how revolutionary participatory society aspirations developed a sharp line between coercive charity that demands conformity, and informed solidarity that protects dignity and agency. He describes as well other aspects of religious renovation that complement political strategy: to open all roles to women, to democratize church authority and change the character of roles to be worthy of women who are welcomed, to audit and redistribute institutional wealth, and to confront the tribal reflex that turns adherents of different traditions into enemies.

The discussion also examines the rise of Christian nationalism as a loyalty cult wrapped in scripture, and how multi‑faith marches, youth pressure, and grassroots organizing pulled rituals toward justice. Stephen wrestles candidly with the power and peril of ritual—how it can bind communities and teach virtue, yet harden into control and regimentation. Looking ahead, he imagines a plural, innovation welcoming, protected religious landscape in revolutionary participatory societies where no faith seeks to conquer another and where belief is measured by the love it lives, the justice it advances, and the peace it secures.
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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 how displacement in the West Bank is driven by soldiers, settlers, and a structure designed to make staying impossible.

Kathy brings the human scale back into focus. From a makeshift white flag walk into Jenin to evenings with families in Gaza, she shares the intimate choices people make under siege—protecting elders, scavenging firewood, teaching children to read the sky for drones. These stories resist the flattening of body counts, revealing what war does to witnesses and perpetrators alike. Kathy explores how international law erodes when powerful states flout norms, why nuclear ambitions can spread under the guise of “civilian” programs, and how those choices ricochet into U.S. life through policing exchanges, PTSD, and the quiet normalization of force.

Kathy also talks strategy. She tells how student encampments and divestment campaigns pried open university endowments and hedge fund ties. How cultural voices amplify names and memories that institutions try to erase. How growing activism keeps movements alive and oriented. Kathy reflects on practical commitments—from tax resistance to hospitality—that shift resources away from violence and toward care and building a revolution of values sturdy enough to change institutions: living more simply, sharing more fairly, ending the reflex to eliminate those who resist subordination to “national interests,” and actively organizing sustainable resistance. Her message: read and remember, organize locally, join boycott and divestment efforts, and align daily choices with the future you want. 
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