“Writing in 1946, Albert Camus proposed that in the midst of a murderous would, wherein ‘we’re in history up to our necks,’ people could nevertheless decide to ‘give a chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are’ by staking everything on what Camus termed a ‘formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.’ Michael Albert bravely takes a fictional leap into a future where survival is enabled and sanity prevails. He gambles on literature, in the form of meaningful fiction, to help readers puzzle through crucial ethical questions. Once he equips himself, and us, with the fanciful chance to look back on a developing history, he clearly delights in the kind of curiosity that has motivated his earlier writings. He takes time to dwell on interesting personalities who lived through the earlier, more desperate times. With Michael Albert’s capable guidance, we flip on the switch and discover ideas and even hopes that otherwise might have been hidden. Throughout this imaginative and needed novel, the essential ethical question persists: how can we learn to live together without killing one another?”
– Kathy Kelly, U.S.
“Michael Albert has created the most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto and movement-building manual that I have ever encountered. Using the scifi genre of ‘future as history,’ Albert introduces a journalistic format in order to draw out lessons and potential strategies in the fight for social transformation that should be considered by any serious Left or progressive activist. It is also a book that contains the reasonable and essential optimism that is so valuable for activists in times like these. Bravo, Michael!”
– Bill Fletcher, Jr, U.S.
“Michael Albert has with great determination and creativity put strategy and vision front and center of his lifelong work for radical social change. RPS*/2044 is his most inventive work to date. A journalist interviews key participants in 2044 about the years that led to the Revolution for a Participatory Society. They share the strategies that brought about victories, the breakthroughs in healing the divides that kept people apart, and the discipline and commitment that was necessary to survive tumultuous but exciting times. In current times, we know a lot about what’s wrong, and we have access to reasonably effective short-term tactics. But long-term strategy and vision are largely missing from our movements. With RPS/*2044 , we get a taste of what it could look like — a large-scale, radical overturning of current systems, which then puts in place new systems based on solidarity, diversity, and equity. This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”
– Cynthia Peters, U.S.
“This is a valuable addition to the rich history of visionary speculative fiction in which writers imagine good worlds (or universes) that would be wonderful to live in. The striking feature of The Wind Cries Freedom is that Michael Albert doesn’t content himself with dreaming up a utopia, he maps out the way we got from here to there, from Trump, Sanders, Madani and Black Lives Matter to a democratised economy and a just society. Whether you agree or disagree with any particular insight or tactic, or with the whole strategic arc Michael Albert describes, this is a generous offering of well-grounded hope for desperate times. I can’t imagine any point on the political spectrum that won’t benefit from engaging with and arguing over The Wind Cries Freedom.”
– Milan Rai, UK
“In the great tradition of utopian literature, Michael Albert gives us a novel about what a better world could look like and how we might get there. RPS/2044’s interviewees tell their personal stories, advocate their favored positions, respond to their critics, and describe their fears and feelings. They discuss income in a just society, relating to lesser evil candidates, the pros and cons of markets, the role of violence in social change, connecting race, gender, and class agendas, overcoming sectarianism, generating mutual aid, building lasting organization, conducting effective boycotts, strikes, and occupations, building the seeds of the future, and much more always via an engaging fictional emotive format. RPS/2044 is an oral history of winning a revolutionary future. That every event and struggle it recounts reads like fact is no mean feat in times like ours.”
– Stephen R. Shalom, U.S.
“It is so hard for us, encased is a world full of threats and injustice, even to imagine a different and better one. It may be even harder to imagine a way to get there. RPS/2044 is a unique and provocative projection of how such radical change might actually occur. Plausible? Well, who knows? Worthwhile as a thought experiment? For sure.
– Jeremy Brecher, U.S.
“For decades Michael Albert has been calling our attention to the fact that anti-capitalist activists need to focus on vision and strategy, and not just in the critique of the present. His own work on those matters is certainly among the most developed and interesting contributions worldwide. What an excellent idea to convey it in literary form by imagining the next American Revolution through the eyes of its main characters!”
– Ezequiel Adamovsky, Argentina
“No one on the U.S. left has done more than Michael Albert to imagine a future in which worker and community control over economic decision-making could be the basis for a more just and sustainable society. Now, Albert has applied his considerable talents as a radical journalist, essayist, and theorist to a thought-provoking work of fiction. RPS/2044 helps readers, young and old, see that the collapsing capitalist road we’re on today is a path neither pre-ordained nor without alternatives. In the grim, dystopian but hopefully short-lived Trump era, Albert’s ‘futurism” keeps us focused on the small and large important steps in the right direction that can end up shaping what becomes, in our own rear view mirror, fulfilling history.”
– Steve Early, U.S.
“One knows the stench of Trump’s presidency will eventually dissipate but it’s really the right-wing’s agenda that must be reversed – and Mike Albert tells his readers why and how it can be done. With a lifetime of passionate left-wing activism behind him, few are better placed to tell how the alt-future must be reimagined if Americans are to build a humane, caring, and decent society. The issues of a post-industrial society being dauntingly complex, there’s much hard thinking here. Fortunately the innovative use of ‘oral history’ – history that hasn’t yet happened – keeps the reader engaged.”
– Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan
“Much progressive writing aims to expose the machinations and effects of power politics. Far too few books reveal realistic alternatives to the societal status quo. Even fewer works highlight sensible political strategies to reach a better world. Michael Albert’s new book The Wind Cries Freedom perfectly fuses visionary and strategic thinking for political activism. Guided by a sophisticated vision for a participatory society, the oral history provides a multitude of personal and collective practical examples that can be emulated by people and movements during their day-to-day struggles for a better world. The Wind Cries Freedom is a must-read for anyone concerned with the current trajectory of society and how to change it.”
– Florian Zollmann, UK/Germany
“To hear firsthand about athletes, actors, lawyers, and doctors questioning and refining their professions, to hear about worker’s from restaurants to warehouses claiming dominion over their lives, to hear about RPS’s conventions, its chapter building and campaigns, its shadow and alternative institutions, and especially to hear the decentralized, self managing thoughts and desires that fueled the lessons it’s participants took, and to hear it from people so immediately and resolutely involved, with zero time given to shoot em up machinations, is simply wonderful. I dance it. The question is, will you?”
– Andre Goldman, 2042
“I have acted in a lot of movies and also presided in the Governor’s Mansion in California, and as Vice President in Washington but I am far more proud of and would urge others to see as far more worthy my having devoted myself to RPS. Twenty-five years into that experience, Miguel Guevara’s questions induced me and others to tell RPS’s story to provide experimental data for doing more and better in years to come. What is remarkable about the story Guevara elicits is how little it is about fights, conflict, and drama and how much it is about ideas, vision, and achievement. Guevara got us to talk not about the exciting tumult and travail while ignoring boring lessons and commitments, but about exciting lessons and commitments, while not drowning in boring tumult and travail. Enjoy the oral history, discuss it, debate it, improve it, and then work to make your best version of it real. Don’t shortchange it’s breadth or depth. Every page of this oral history finds opportunity in difficulty, not the reverse.”
– Cecila Crowley
”New York, New York is not Chicago, but it’s a hell of a town and we are proud to be part of building a participatory society for all. Miguel Guevara’s book shares the joy and complexity of the ringing of revolution. As readers, and I include myself, we need to refine, enrich, and take the experience’s lessons regarding race, gender, class, power, and nature, and concerning self management, solidarity, and justice, and especially concerning the ramparts and ramifications of diverse ways of working together, into our continuing activism. If you smile and enjoy our history, very nice. If you take our history and adapt and refine it to make it yours, then Guevara’s idea will reach its true goal.”
– Bill Hampton
“Every so often a book teaches and readers benefit. Miguel Guevara’s oral history is a case in point. Eighteen teach, how many will benefit? The Wind Cries Freedom, like the revolutionary project it chronicles, is a tonic against cynicism and an antidote to submission. From its beginning at the time of the god awful Donald Trump to its conclusion after we elected the diametrically opposite Malcolm Mayes and through all kinds of organization and movement building in between, Guevara’s chosen interviews inspire, provoke, and empower. I am very glad to have contributed, embedded as I was in the events, and even as I loved reading others’ contributions.”
– Barbara Bethune
“Here my fellow revolutionaries and I separately beat out a rhythm of unrelenting and intimately linked optimistic commitment. Our words envisioned and revealed the fabric of classlessness better than any other work I know. That shouldn’t surprise anyone since we were so steadfastly part of bringing it to life. I truly hope our experience can help others not just name, or even just comprehend, but also surmount their own complex situations.”
– Emiliano Farmer
“Reading this book was a joy and also an education for me. I of course knew my part in the events. I knew less, but somewhat, other aspects that I had encountered or even just heard about but not personally experienced. But even having been intimately involved in RPS myself, I found much clarification. In the clash and jangle of tumultuous times, it is hard to stop to hear the not so loud sounds of vision and program much less tease out their lasting influential meaning. I can only guess and hope at the kind of contribution our interviews might make to people elsewhere and elsewhen confronting harsh and grim conditions as they move toward vastly better relations. If the book helps that, even just for some readers, I will celebrate having had a part in it.”
– Cynthia Parks
“We interviewees sound a bit alike, don’t we? It isn’t surprising. After all, we share so many views and aims. That said, Guevara’s book spans a diversity of participants and in that way gives a wide appreciation of RPS. His intent was not so much to reveal the contextually connected details of our involvements, much less of ourselves, but to highlight the abiding lessons that can inform activism for change if not anywhere and anytime than very nearly anywhere and very nearly anytime. I believe and hope you will agree Guevara succeeds admirably in precisely that. This book is a literary revolutionary council.”
– Anton Rocker
“Some people think history is just piles of facts. Guevara and his interviewees do present relegate fact on top of fact. But our oral history is not mainly a list of what happened but a personal account of why and how it happened. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know just to know. But I and the others in The Wind Cries Freedom, and Guevara as well, want to know so as to do more and do better, to reach as high up the mountain that is revolution as we can. I hope readers approach the book with that positive frame of mind. If you do, you will find a wonderful database of material for changing your world as successfully as we are changing ours.”
– Malcolm Mayes
“I spent much of my life, in movements that lost, lost, lost – and then, suddenly, learning from the losses, I spent the decades of my life in a movement that is winning. The Wind Cries Freedom tells that tale, but it doesn’t highlight people, or herculean personal greatness. It highlights the collective intellectual muscle and emotional sinews of social change. It rejects even the idea of a blueprint to blindly follow and instead offers a template on which to imprint one’s own insights. The book’s unfolding panorama of change is remarkable, but it is also true. Our epoch has very few accounts that recount the highly dramatic to hone in on what has made it all possible and real. This is one. This lights up our stage.”
– Lydia Lawrence
“I wish I had an account like this one when I was deciding my life commitments, when I was first protesting, first punished, first praised. I am not sure how much quicker and more productively I would have arrived at my own future, but surely quite a bit. And that would have been all the more true the less positive and hopeful the times were when first reading a book like his. I hope the book helps others as it has helped me, as I read it, even with RPS succeeding, and even more so as it would have helped me embarking on something like RPS, not knowing my future. Not a liberal word or thought is uttered, only revolutionary. No lies here, no easy victory either.”
– Peter Cabral
“Guevara’s book takes 18 long interviews, splices them into sections, and then merges parts from each with parts from others in 30 chapters. The result is a biography of ideas, intentions, aims, and methods. It is a chronicle of passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, for love, knowledge, and to end the suffering of mankind. RPS/ 2044 reverberates with the wisdom that every act we perform today must reflect the kind of relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow, and yet this oral history remains throughout preeminently human. I am proud to have contributed my words, but mostly I am excited about the rest of it, and wonder how many people will consider its many messages with the attentiveness I find myself giving.”
– Bertrand Jagger
“Activists seeking to right wrongs and create liberty don’t need a bible and Miguel Guevara knew that when he undertook this oral history. They also don’t need accounts that are time and place specific, un-replicable, or idiosyncratic. Guevara pursued the anti-fundamentalist and anti-sectarian intentions of RPS. And yet, truth be told, I’d much rather look out at my Church congregation and see each and every member reading The Wind Cries Freedom than any other good book I can think of. Not to worship it, of course, nor to mindlessly adopt its insights, of course, but to enjoy, excite, and especially innovate. Our oral history is about integrity smiting oppression, honesty ruining deception, decency silencing insult, virtue overcoming force.”
– Rev. Stephen Sharpe
“Being part of RPS has been like riding an unstoppable train. The best media maker of our times has been that train swooping through our workplaces and communities. The Wind Cries Freedom examines the train’s path, highlights some minor and major stops, but most often examines the engine compartment, the wheelbase, the links between cars, and the accommodations all in the words of the travelers on board. I think Miguel Guevara’s intent was to ensure that more people ride, and more freedom trains run. I hope my contribution helps.”
– Leslie Jordan
“Let’s be honest. We who told Miguel our story were sometimes a bit pedantic though there was also passion. We were sometimes a bit dry though there was also fervor. We were sometimes a bit one dimensional in our focus on change above the rest of our lives – though looked at from another angle, that just means we were not about ourselves, or even about our specific events, but about RPS. I loved reading this book and re-thinking my experiences in light of the book’s many messages and I hope you will too. Life is way too short to settle for saying ‘I didn’t have time’. History’s court alone decides.”
– Robin Zimmerman
“I have read a lot of accounts of our struggles for change. What you get here, though, is not just facts – important as they are. Here you get texture, ideas, and desires. You get RPS’s internal reality, the part less contingent on the precise when and where and more rooted in the timeless why and what. Guevara did the participants, including myself, a great service in piecing together our words into a tapestry of meaning. This is what language and resistance, in combination, look like. The Wind Cries Freedom charts the growth of belief among the unqualified that they are in fact qualified: they can articulate and be responsible and hold power.”
– Bridget Knight
“Self management is coming to the USA. Guevara heard its tones, and massaged them into chimes of freedom for everyone. I am listening, and hearing, and I hope you will too. It’s music you can not only dance to. You can be born to it. Over and over.”
– Alexandra Hanslet