Late in the book The Wind Cries Freedom, the book’s interviewer, Miguel Guevara, asks one of it’s eighteen interviewees, named Bertrand Jagger—who happens to be me—”Bert, what was the origin of the phrase “planting the seeds of the future in the present”—and what does it mean?
I answered, “What it means is simple and immense. What you plant is what you harvest. You don’t grow roses from nettles. You don’t reap justice from the seeds of greed.”
The Wind Cries Freedom takes “planting seeds of the future in the present” another step by bringing a possible future to an existing present for an extended visit.
Guevara interviews eighteen participants of Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS). He elicits our first hand memories of events, motives, effects, and lessons. The catch is that of course the future events we recount aren’t really, nor even fictionally, future.
The book’s premise is that Guevara’s Earth, which is mine too, is time-shifted a few decades from your Earth and space-shifted to who knows where also from your Earth. More, our world has somehow delivered to your Earth its oral history of its time-shifted near future revolution. And yet we started where you are.
It is an outrageous ploy, some might call it sophomoric, or crazy, yet—call me gullible, I feel that it works.
The oral history feels like an actual recounting by actual participants of actual events in actual interviews. Yet it is, of course, none of that, but instead a novel whose primary point is to reveal possibilities, ideas, visions, and strategies suitable to winning a better future.
Not your usual novel, you can tell on every page of The Wind Cries Freedom that its interviewees wish only to inspire and provoke hope. The book is not plot-, character-, technology-, or thrill-driven. It’s an account of normal but highly confident people contributing to the tumult of better times. We tell our stories and relay our feelings in untutored words that sum more to an informed prayer than a lectured blueprint.
The Wind Cries Freedom has ample plot details and emotional weight, but it features social rather than personal struggle. Its protagonist is the movement, not any one member of it. Its point is to aid winning a new world. So, not your usual approach. But how could anyone who seeks universal liberation not want desires for liberation fulfilled?
Even as I was directly familiar with much of RPS’s history, and even as I had heard or read about almost all the rest as it happened, I found myself powerfully moved by many of my fellow interviewee’s descriptions. I nodded along at their accounts of many organizing problems that I knew well from my own experiences, and I smiled with satisfaction at their resolutions.
I can only hope that readers will find themselves hungry to live in The Wind Cries Freedom’s times rather than in Trump times. No problem. Make it happen.
The alternative future we interviewees describe harks back to your 2016 election, moves through Trump and Trumpism—and yes, we suffered our version of the carrot-topped terror too—and continues from there through all manner of struggles traversing all sides of life.
Some readers may say our progress moves too fast to be real. Three decades and the ship comes in? Well I’m telling you that on board it felt even faster. History has a surprising way of accelerating. That said, how could this history come too quickly? Just one year slower would have been millions more lives unnecessarily lost and billions more lost liberated moments. In that context, other things equal, faster was certainly better.
Other readers will take issue with this or that RPS claim, commitment, or method. Again, no problem. In your own rendition, in your own future, do it your own way. The Wind Cries Freedom indicates which aspects of our trajectory we believe contextual and which we believe central, but only your history will decide.
Of course some who read The Wind Cries Freedom will compare it with Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward/. But that was then and this is now, and that wonderful book put more emphasis on the inner lives of its memorable characters whereas this book has each participant answer Miguel Guevara, our interviewer, in their own words, as the people we are, but with our personal lives ancillary to our shared history.
My own reading of The Wind Cries Freedom’s seventeen other contributors’ insights conveyed to me much about my fellow participants that I didn’t know…but I mostly learned about the innards of a movement I have been part of from its prehistory to its first convention, from its conceptualization to chapter building, from its settling on aims to its developing program, from its raising consciousness within and without, to its waging diverse struggles in all sides of life, from its ideas, values, and desires to its planting seeds—and finally to its triumph up to the time of being able to finally really build our new world.
I was happy to learn of a website that presents more information about The Wind Cries Freedom including a description, its table of contents, testimonials, reviews (and I hear this one is there), and more.
And not to slight music—I wouldn’t want to do that—the site also offers an incredible list of Music with over 120 offerings, four or five having been picked for each chapter. They run from Roll Over Beethoven, Jailhouse Rock, God Bless the Child, and People Get Ready, to Ringing of Revolution, Hallelujah, Will The Wolf Survive, Time Has Come Today, and When the Ship Comes In.
I can’t help myself. The list visits, in between, the Dock of the Bay then back to Mississippi Goddam, with Bold Marauders and Deportees, on Freedom’s Highway under a Bad Moon Rising and a Hard Rain Falling, enjoying the Wave to Save the Country from Youngstown to Laramie, watching Strange Fruit while we Catch the Wind, remembering People Who Died for Redemption, toiling on Maggie’s Farm while Killing in the Name, Imagining Once They Banned Imagine, seeing the Star Spangled Banner Blowing in the Wind, hearing The Sounds of Silence that Everybody Knows, Fighting the Power Now that the Buffalo’s Gone, hearing the Soldier’s Song after the Call Up, Go Go Going Closer to Fine, wondering what It means to be a Working Class Hero, feeling Something in the Air under Spanish Bombs while moaning Farewell Angelina, intoning No More Auction Block to the Fortunate Son, wondering with Biko How Much a Dollar Cost, while All the Young Dudes Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, Born to Be Loved or Born This Way, looking for Sign of the Times from the Badlands to the Man in Black, hearing Chimes of Freedom behind Another Brick in the Wall, Wrote A Song for Everyone with Lives in the Balance, and Cops of the World as Universal Soldiers, awaiting no more Masters of War—and more. Listen to all that, and you will love the book too!
Finally, I include some further promo below, hoping to spur you on. But first, I would like to explain why I feel I need to do that. Can’t our book attract you on its own? I suspect outreach must reach out almost entirely due to those who are involved, which is interviewees like me but also readers like you—so I am trying. And I hope you will try too, if you find the book useful.
I heard a story that the first few reviews of Capital were written under pseudonyms by Frederick Engels. Perhaps he’s not the best model, but desperation breeds strange bed mates. And this isn’t really a review, it’s “Thoughts On.” And it owns up to my involvement.
Another oddity, the book introduces me and seventeen other interviewees, one interviewer, and one more person, the living breathing kind, Michael Albert. Albert is the author of numerous political, activist non fiction books and is listed as The Wind Cries Freedom’s author along with Miguel Guevara from my time-shifted world. So am I a figment of Albert’s crazy mind? I can’t help but notice this book is so different than anything else Albert has published it might be more accurate to say he merely channeled all its many other authors, including me, as well as the wisdom of some dead heroes he borrowed from.
As an inducement to read The Wind Cries Freedom for yourself, here are a few timeline entries from my time shifted society, all of which appear in RPS descriptions and discussions. Like you, we too had Sanders Campaigns, Black Lives Matter Program, the NFL Anthem Protests, Trump Elected, Immigrant Activism, Sanctuary Cities Movements, Expanded Minimum Wage Movements, and the Women’s Millions March. But during our shifted time, we added Church Sanctuary Movements, Athletes Sanctuary Movement, Global March for Sustainability, Detroit Wages and Anti Violence Rally, War No More Rallies, and our Wall Street Peace and Justice March.
All that spawned our Firearms Manufacturers Boycott, Campus Military Divestment Campaigns, and finally our Initial RPS chapters while Public Schools for the People emerged as did the Olympics Decentralization Movement, and Athletes Boycotts for Community Safety.
We also had our pivotal RPS Founding Convention, followed closely by the First Hollywood RPS meeting, the birth of Journalists for Social Responsibility, the Religious Renovations Movement, and the first Hollywood RPS School at about the time our One Hundredth RPS Chapter Formed and we initiated our Press the Press Campaign, National Community Control of Police Campaign, Campaigns for Balanced Jobs, our Alternative Media Renovation Campaign, and Legal Workers Conference.
Then along with the High School Athletes Movement came our $30 an hour Minimum Wages Campaign, Schools for Organizers, 30 Hour Work Week campaign, and the RPS-Defining Second Convention, plus our Shadow Government.
We soon began our National Bike Campaigns, Rights to the City expansion, Gender Roles Renovation, and extensive apartment organizing, leading to our 500th chapter forming.
Then there was the pivotal Amazon Sit-down Strike and UPS, and Fed Ex support Strikes, followed by our Online Curriculum Campaign, National Alternative Media Coalition, and 1000th Chapter forming.
We undertook our Collective Alternative Media Funding Project and began our Military and Prison Conversion Campaigns, started up People’s Social Media, undertook nationwide Pharmaceuticals’ Protests, enjoyed the Oscar winning movie, Next American Revolution: Good Will Winning, and celebrated our Two Thousand Five Hundredth Chapter.
Next came the California Campus Workers Strike, the Harvard Med School Strike, and the National Grad Students Strike, plus nationwide Prisoners Strikes and the spreading Hotel and Motel Occupations.
Medicine for Health not Profit grew and the world watched the Chicago Public School Occupations spread followed by the Hollywood Strikes, the People’s Clinics Movement, and then the National Public Schools Occupations.
The National Nurses March, the Columbus Factory Takeovers, and Public Schools for the People, closely preceded by RPS’s Malcolm King becoming Senator of Massachusetts, and the National Coop Coalition.
Then came Students for Balanced Jobs, the Cleveland Workers Movement, People’s Prison Reform, and the NY, LA, Chicago, SF… Worker Movements. The Hospital Renovations Movement grew and Hollywood’s Celia Lopez of RPS became Governor of California.
Our National Bloc Movement of movements got going followed closely by a National Prisoners Strike, Coops for Self Management, Factories for the People, and the Chicago Health Workers Strike.
Our Community Planning Movement, meshed with the National Health Workers Strike and Coops for an RPS Economy, leading to Industry Wide Strikes and the Global Climate Action Strike.
The National Participatory Budgeting Campaign led to the Week Long U.S. National Strike, and of course, a bit earlier, Miguel Guevara began conducting interviews about all the above for this oral history.
The interviewees make it, or a lot of it, anyhow, personal. More, they extract lessons and dissect motives and feelings. And now, construction proceeds… But, you do it, your way.
—
Bertrand Jagger, born in 1966, was politicized by his no nukes and anti war activism. He became a key advocate of RPS from its inception. Bertrand has been a university professor of physics and world renowned contributor to physics theory, as well as a social critic and militant activist his entire adult life. He was shadow Vice President under Lydia Lawrence’s first RPS shadow presidency, and later had his own term as shadow President, as well.
THE WIND
CRIES FREEDOM
An oral history of the next American revolution
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