Episode 361 of RevolutionZ continues the sequence of episodes culled from the book in process that's titled The Wind Cries Freedom. The episode's title is "Hope Is Not Naive, Cynicism Is Counterproductive, Fight To Win." If cruelty were our essence, why does sociality keep showing up under pressure? This episode opens with a bracing but succinct look at creeping authoritarianism and the frayed information ecosystem that rewards fear and lies over solidarity and truth. It then takes up the oral hisotry by presenting three future revolutionaries who Podcast regulars have already met, Alexandra Voline, Senator Malcolm King, and Andre Goldman, talking with them about how their movement endured by facilitating hope, redesigning incentives, and making participation feel both possible and meaningful. Alexandra describes the prevalence of cynicism and how she counters it without condescension to flip the frame from “people are bad” to “what makes good people act badly.” She describes how schools, workplaces, families, media, and policing reward domination while they punish solidarity—and she shows how RPS campaigns worked to flip those rewards so that cooperation and solidarity overcame competition and anti-sociality.Senator King traces his path from studying history in college to working on the factory floor, to traversing the Senate. Along the way he explains why to meet people where they are at is not an overused slogan but a method for building real solidarity. He considers his electoral motives and choices and particularly various class interests and factors that play prominent roles in each.. Andre dives into what made RPS different. He describes how it redefined the calculus of success beyond noticing only quick wins or losses to accounting wider and longer term consequences. He shows how RPS struggled to ensure that its every campaign left organizers and alliances prepared and eager to go further forward, and how it treated attrition due to internal flaws as an adversary to transcend not dodge.  This episode, like others of the same sequence, presents only one chapter among thirty, and while it is therefore incomplete, the interviewees, prodded by the interviewer, Miguel Guevara, do address their feelings, motives, ideas, and practices. Answering Miguel's questions, they unpack the shift from activist spectacle to activist strategy. They explain why style matters but cannot replace substance. They show how a politics of everyday life—shared power, accountable process, and sincere care—are able to turn moments of opposition that might otherwise have faded away into sustained movements. The thread through it all, in this episode and in the whole oral history, is not solely slogans, or even only worthy values, nor even just episodic encounters, but informed descriptions of democratic workplaces, equitable distribution, restorative justice, feminist daily life, and most of all practical steps toward all those aims that people can take starting even their present. The interviewees evidence how when in their time hope became specific and evidenced in RPS's organizational structure and program, activist momentum persisted and grew. For them and so many others, they report how RPS offered a way past despair able to respect both head and heart. They began to describe the emergence and use of specific thoughts and practices conceived to cultivate informed hope and to build resistance and then also positive desires that last. They described practicing the future in the present. Perhaps you will give these participants a listen. If you do, will this segment of the longer oral history ring plausible for you? Will you find useful insights in its words? That is the hope of the episode, and If if it does resonate usefully, perhaps you let others know about the interviewees' stories while you<a rel="payment" href="https://www.patreon.com/revolutionZ">Support the show</a>

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Ep 361 Hope Is Not Naive, Cynicism Is Counterproductive, Fight To Win

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