RevolutionZ
Ep 279 Students Teach, We Learn
Ep 279 of RevolutionZ, Students Teach, We Learn, hopes to answer some questions that I felt folks might have. I try to address, spontaneously, as one might in a discussion: Why are campuses rebelling? Why now, why so many, why so fast? What are the students seeking? What reactions are rebels encountering from other students / from administrators / from cops? Summer is near, most importantly, what’s next? Is this 1968 again, how similar is it, how different? Will it be smarter? Will it change colleges, education, and society too? Will it transform campus power relations? Plus a recent article from ZNet that addresses all that and more. in carefully prepared text.
Ep 279 of RevolutionZ, Students Teach, We Learn, hopes to answer some questions that I felt folks might have. I try to address, spontaneously, as one might in a discussion: Why are campuses rebelling? Why now, why so many, why so fast? What are the students seeking? What reactions are rebels encountering from other students / from administrators / from cops? Summer is near, most importantly, what’s next? Is this 1968 again, how similar is it, how different? Will it be smarter? Will it change colleges, education, and society too? Will it transform campus power relations? Plus a recent article from ZNet that addresses all that and more. in carefully prepared text.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. I had a guest scheduled for this episode, our 279th but he had to cancel at the last minute. So I'm sitting here, that is, I'm sitting at my desk with a microphone staring at me and I must talk. What I have on my mind as I suspect most of you who are listening probably have on your mind is students on the move as I try to do this episode on what's happening and I'm recording on Thursday, the 25th, to appear on this next Sunday, the 25th to appear on this next Sunday. So I apologize right off but also celebrate the extent to which what I have to say might be a bit out of date. For example, as I speak, I know of 39 campus encampments in the US and now also two in Australia and one in France. But as you listen, who knows what that tally will be?
Speaker 1:I wrote an article earlier in the week same topic, so now I'll just try to answer some questions that I felt that folks might ask that hadn't been dealt with yet. So campuses are rebelling why now, and why so many and why so fast? Well, part of the answer is quite obvious Now, because the activities of Israel in the Mideast, the genocidal policies and pursuits, the bombing and the starving are so horrific that it arouses people's passions and desires to do something about it. But that says why, but it doesn't say why now and why so many, so fast and there. My own best guess is that the reason is a reason that recurs over and over in history, and it is that lots of people harbor feelings conducive to or consistent with rebelling but don't necessarily do it, despite having those feelings, because it seems futile or it seems even sort of embarrassing. They'll stand out or whatnot. And what happens at certain moments in time is that something occurs that simultaneously catches many people's attention and some move and their motion causes other to move because it says now is the time to move, now it can have an impact, now it can have an effect.
Speaker 1:And I think what happened is the students at Columbia, for whatever reasons my guess is they've been hard at work for some time, but I don't know but students at Columbia created an encampment. The administration moronically attacked it. The media saw it, many, many others in many, many places saw it and the pent-up desire to act was unleashed. It's something that I call hope. At times, hope was aroused, hope of effect, hope of meaning, hope of impact, and that was enough to generate more and more response. I hope, by the time you hear this, there will be many, more than 38 such encampments.
Speaker 1:What are the students seeking? Well, first off, they have in mind, I think, to the best I can determine, that their university should not be complicit in genocide. This seems like a reasonable ask, the genocide that's going on in the Mideast. But I think there's another thing that the students are seeking or at least I hope so and I sort of assume so and that's to increase pressure, not only on their backyard, that is, their campus and well, they ought to but to increase pressure also throughout the United States, on the United States government, to pressure Israel and to increase pressure to the extent it travels that far, on Israel to see what it is doing and to demand a ceasefire. So, in other words, disinvestment and ceasefire.
Speaker 1:What are the students finding? Well, I think they're finding, from other students, probably a very mixed kind of response. Some are already involved, some are close to and moving toward involvement and can be reached out to, to answer their questions, to assuage their concerns, and I think that the organizers and the participants in the encampments are doing both those things incredibly admirably. What are they finding from administrations here? It's a little strange. I'm not sure how to explain this and if my explanation has any real merit. Explain this, and if my explanation has any real merit, they seem to be finding from administrations an escalated degree of hostility. After all, these encampments haven't really impinged on their campuses forcefully, they have used public areas to express their dissent. They are peaceful, they are non-violent, they are in pursuit of dialogue and they do have demands. Okay, they're being met with expulsions almost immediately, calls for police intervention almost immediately. You have to wonder at that.
Speaker 1:In the generation I'm in we had periods like this period, administrations like at Columbia as well as at other places, which quickly escalated and quickly attacked, let's call it. But I think it's even faster this time and I'm not sure I understand that. But I suspect that the reason is that over the last 50 years college administrators have become fundraisers, ideologues etc. Who have largely lost touch with, lost even the inclination to relate to education, to relate to the students. And so I think when these administrators hear the calls from their donors to crush the dissent, they're inclined, they're bent a little towards, or a little more towards, accommodating. And I think there's another feature they're afraid of being fired. They're completely unprincipled, they're cowardly, and I think that is leading to relatively quick responses. But they're not dumb and I think they're also going to very soon realize that their responses are not pursuing effectively their goal. Their goal is to have it all go away. Their repression is not having that impact. It is instead enlarging the number of people who are dissenting and it is strengthening their commitment. This is also very familiar and in days that I remember and was very much involved with, administrators began to realize that they were being idiots and that they should instead try to wait out the students instead of attacking them and arousing support for them. I don't know what we'll see, whether it will move that way or not.
Speaker 1:And the third one I am not sure about also what are they finding from cops about also, what are they finding from cops? It seems and here I just this is just seems, it's a guess, because coverage is, while there's a lot of coverage, it isn't very compelling and very deep and very revealing on many levels. But it looks to me like the reaction from cops is surprisingly tame. It does not appear to be what I would have anticipated on the violence spectrum. I could be wrong about that. I'm not saying that I know by any means, but it does seem so and I'm not sure I have any good explanation for that. It may be I just don't know and so maybe the impression is wrong. I'm not there to see it. The big question, though, I think, is a very different one. I think is a very different one.
Speaker 1:The demonstrations now, the encampments, I'm sure, the discussions that students are having with other students who they are trying to communicate with and to explain and to organize, that's all incredibly, incredibly admirable, courageous, worthy of emulation, and so on. But just a few weeks down the road, there lurks a killer of student demonstrations Summer. A killer of student demonstrations. Summer. Summer, historically, has been far more, far more effective at reducing and restraining student activism. What is to be done about that? About that? What can be done to maintain the momentum of this spring right through the summer and into next fall? What can be done to not just win a ceasefire, which is absolutely central and at the heart of what's going on, but once that is won, one hopes as soon as possible to continue and to oppose war per se, to impose spending that facilitates genocidal policies and war to facilitate ending the research that has that effect.
Speaker 1:But something more also at all these campuses that are protesting, the decisions are not made by students, the decisions are not made by faculty by and large, and the decisions are not made by the employees, except for a very few top administrators. One thing could conceivably be done. I'm not there, I don't know the likelihood that it will be done and I don't know even that it's a great idea, given where students are at, where their radical sentiments are leaning, etc. But one thing that I would certainly applaud with great energy, partly because we didn't do it as much as we should have in the 60s, is to make demands and put forward proposals for a restructuring of campuses, for bringing democracy to the campus, for bringing self-management to the campus. So what if one thing that could happen over the summer is that students who go home and students and maybe a premium would be put on this who stay on campus and who stay in their college town to work together, not just to create a list of demands about campus life, let's call it, but to create concrete, thought-out, implementable proposals for changes in the curriculum, grading how policies are generated and then who votes on them. For example, administrators are employees. Perhaps they should have the same one vote that is given to all the other employees as well. Perhaps students should have votes. Perhaps faculty should have votes. Perhaps decisions, perhaps faculty should have votes. Perhaps decisions, big policy decisions, should be a function of employees, students and faculty, each organized for that purpose.
Speaker 1:Who are those who consume it? The students. Perhaps the work that graduates put in should be assessed and dealt with differently. Perhaps students involved in encampments, involved in organizing across the campus when the train arrives to go home. Perhaps many don't get on, perhaps many stay and conceive how to essentially reconstruct their university or their college in a manner suitable for real education to take place. Suitable for real education to take place. That's a possible summer momentum, preserving and building process or project. And perhaps those who go home could do something not so dissimilar, could keep organizing, but now in their hometown, partly among other students there who are at other campuses who haven't yet had a strong movement, perhaps working with them, perhaps working with high school kids who will be the college kids in the future, perhaps adding their energies to local union efforts, to local efforts of diverse kinds.
Speaker 1:Much of the media coverage is beginning to compare what's happening now to what happened in 1968. I was very much involved in what was happening then. There are significant similarities and significant differences. One almost theatrical I mean it's like a, I don't know how to describe it. You've got Trump and Biden. We had Nixon and Humphrey. You've got war in the Mideast, genocidal attacks in the Mideast. We had the Vietnam War. So the US was even more directly involved in the barbaric behavior, but still war and war. You have, in the summer, a democratic convention coming up. So did we. Yours is in Chicago, so was ours.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think about thinking about what's happening is what we did and didn't do back then. We did try to organize among students. We did too little. This is students on campus, people who were in college at the time to reach out to our local communities. We did try to conduct activities and projects to raise consciousness, to raise commitment, to generate mutual aid. But when the summer came, most went home. Some stayed and did things like I described, but most went home.
Speaker 1:And as the summer progressed, there was that convention and there was organizing in those days. I won't go into great details, but there was organizing in those days to go to that convention in Chicago where Mayor Daley reigned, where he said shoot the looters to kill. And we went there, or lots of us went there I actually didn't, but lots of us went there there and we demonstrated and the demonstrations created massive physical contact with the cops. And I think it's fair to say some of my co-demonstrators, co-activists etc. Etc. Would contest it. But I think it's fair to say that, regrettably, what we did in Chicago contributed to what followed, which was Nixon beating Humphrey.
Speaker 1:Now Nixon is not even remotely as bad as Trump and Humphrey, honestly I think, was arguably worse than Biden. But the thing is it didn't even cross our minds. We didn't think about how do we stop Nixon. It didn't loom as a danger for us, it was just a sidebar to organizing and fighting against the war. And nowadays, I think that's true for some people engaged in all the incredibly admirable, militant and well-thought-out actions that are occurring, they either feel eh, there's not that much difference.
Speaker 1:Trump's horrible, biden's horrible big deal, let's continue to push the. Let's continue to push. I agree with the. Trump's horrible, biden's horrible, no big deal I don't agree with and I think it is incredibly wrong. I understand where it comes from. I understand how could I not? We had that view, that kind of view even more. We didn't even think about it. It was so obvious to us. So I get it. But it is a problem Because Nixon winning was a disaster. Humphrey winning would have been better. It would have been better for Indochina. I believe it would have been better for the movements of the time persisting and reaching further. But nowadays, and reaching further, but nowadays, trump getting elected, it's not so much Biden getting elected that is the positive, it's not, you know, I don't mind calling him genocide, joe, because indeed he is supporting genocide, he is cheering it on. So I get that.
Speaker 1:But Trump is a serious danger of fascism. Trump is, on every issue that you can come up with, actually worse, not necessarily rhetorically, although usually rhetorically, but in practice than Biden would be. What would happen is the movement would move from potentially putting forward positive aims, putting forward visionary aims, moving toward being a movement for a better future, for new relations, with a Biden victory, not because Biden is for those things, but because the context that would emerge would be different to being a movement that is resisting fascism, that is fighting a rearguard battle that doesn't have new positive aims and new vision in mind, but just holding the line against Hara. So what's my point here? My point is that if, going into the summer and moving up to the Democratic Convention, the movement on the campuses hasn't persisted in a viable form that involves all those who are now involved and more, then, all those that are now involved and more are going to be more and more frustrated and angry, and Chicago 2024 will look like Chicago 1968, and the impact could be horrible. So the problem becomes how do students and hopefully soon more and more young professors, and older ones too, maybe? How do? Let's call it a constituency? How does this constituency, how does this radical community, keep its radicalism, keep its passion, keep its anger, manifest all of that as it's doing now on campuses and in growing numbers but at the same time realize that it needs to pay attention to its broader impact, pay attention to its impact on the whole population and on how the whole population is going to respond next November. I can't predict anything. The good news is, I honestly think that Trump is going down some kind of rabbit hole and may not be a significant factor at all, but if he is and if he does have that chance to win, these kinds of considerations matter. That chance to win, these kinds of considerations matter. So I guess I would say that what's going on is incredibly important to pressure and hopefully win a cease activism on campuses and off, and hopefully to develop a mindset which is capable of simultaneously and we weren't, we didn't which is capable of and it's hard for me to say that which is capable of simultaneously being as radical as it needs to be and yet as aware of the consequences of its tactical and strategic choices.
Speaker 1:I mentioned at the outset that I wrote a piece at the beginning of the week, or just a few days ago, I guess. Now when you hear this, it'll be about a week ago, whatever. That has gone up in a few places now, and so I thought I would read it in the manner that I often do, which is read it and every so often interject something. This may be a little bit difficult for me, but I'll try. The title is Columbia, the new school, mit, tufts, emerson, berkeley, chicago, chapel Hill, everywhere, and so you can see. That's what I knew about when I wrote it, and now there are 38 that I know about the escalation, the rate of growth is really stupendous. I went to MIT class of 1969, so I was a senior in 1968. A friend of mine who read that when it was online told me that he thought MIT would probably sue me for defaming their math department defaming their math department. If I went to MIT in the class of 1968, of 1969, I was obviously a senior in 1969, not in 1968. So it's a stupid opening.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it is now 2024, not the late 60s, but rebellion for change is again in the air. I think it is just getting rivved up. I can feel it, I'll bet you can feel it too, and maybe, hopefully, it will not crescendo anytime soon but will instead persist and perhaps, hopefully, it will seek more than immediate changes and maybe and I think I can feel this true it will be much smarter than we were back then, back in 1968. I interject. You can see that I was beginning to touch on the kind of thing that I also addressed earlier in this episode. The rebellious events at Columbia last week have spurred rebellions of students and sometimes others at a rapidly enlarging community of campuses, including at my personally much despised alma mater, mit. And then I have a little proviso Note I am not unbiased about campus rebellion or about MIT. The former undergirds mass change over and over business as usual.
Speaker 1:When I was president of MIT's student body during steadily growing and intensifying rebellion, among the epithets I used for MIT was quote Dachau on the Charles because of its war research. Some on campus were too literal or too dense to see why I named it thus For them. I would acknowledge the main difference, which was that MIT's victims were not local like Dachau's, were no. Mit's victims way back then were a half a torn-up world away, in Vietnam, enduring American carpet bombing. And regarding Dachau, mit's victims were not hanging like burned-out light bulbs in MIT's corridors, nor lying breathless like fish out of water gassed in MIT's labs. In that respect I interject. Mit was not like Dachau. And now, 56 years later, mit's current victims are way off in Gaza enduring Israeli carpet bombing, but with American bombs. They are not being forcefully exiled from MIT's classes, dorms, playing fields and clinic.
Speaker 1:Not yet anyway, and I interject. That might have been a bit prophetic. Anyway, my point History sometimes repeats, sometimes with ironic differences, sometimes with healthy differences. I interject. I had in mind 1968 and 2024. The Chicago Convention. In both places, one, 1968, overused, more hippie than political and pretty stupid. If Kachi's slogan was quote don't trust anyone over 30. Except maybe Chomsky, I doubt that this time that slogan will re-emerge. Much less will it change to quote don't trust anyone under 70. So I hesitate to even write this reaction. Okay, hesitation finished. Being old may not bring wisdom, but it doesn't have to stifle solidarity. Decades have passed, wrinkles have proliferated, but I actually remember MIT better than anywhere I ever lived before or since. So I can't stop my elderly self from commenting.
Speaker 1:Context one this past October, in response to decades of Israeli occupation, denigration, usurpation and plentiful murder, hamas orchestrated an escape from their open-air prison and then raged and ravaged, including against civilians, and took hostages too. The perpetrators' anger was understandable, I think, and even warranted. Those colonized should not celebrate their colonizers. The perpetrators' actions were also understandable, depending on your perspective and your capacity for objectivity. But the perpetrators' actions were certainly not ethically justified or strategically wise. Hamas's actions were instead stupid and terroristic. But that was not because the jailbreakers were militantly combative. Occupied peoples have a right to be, indeed ought to be, militantly combative. The colonized have a right to invade the colonizer, not vice versa. Context two Israel's IDF has responded ever since it claims its actions are justified by Hamas's actions. Hamas struck first. Hamas killed innocent Israelis.
Speaker 1:We Israelis have to defend ourselves. We have to make them reap what they sowed. We have to assault the entirety of Gaza with some of the most intensive bombing per acre ever unleashed on anyone anywhere, at least by other than the US. I interject I'm not even sure that it isn't more intense, albeit not as long yet, as the bombing in Indochina, but the US did set the record with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must incinerate infrastructure.
Speaker 1:The article continues. We must demolish homes, hospitals, schools and basically anything that's there to be hit. The US and Vietnam said quote anything that flies against everything that moves. We Israelis learned from and adapted our benefactors' ways. Thank you, home of the brave, thank you, land of the free, but your Kissinger was too tame. We say anything that flies against everything. Yes, you heard us right. Everything More.
Speaker 1:We intentionally overtly proclaim it out loud as our stated policy that we have to starve them all. We welcome the ensuing deaths. Deaths and destruction are our point. Die or leave is our message and, like our benefactor, we are good at what we do, which is why much of Gaza is already uninhabitable. It is why kids have their limbs amputated in bombed-out hospitals, without anesthesia, their parents already permanently dead. It is why preventable, curable diseases spread with our blessing. Kill the vermin, or at least make them leave. And so we block medicine, food and water to defend ourselves? Of course we do. We aren't half-hearted about this Quote anything that destroys and kills against everything that exists, wherever Hamas hides. So what would happen if Hamas rented a safe house in Berlin or, more likely, new York, even if he was a little too tame? Kissinger is our hero, is what we hear from Israel. If he couldn't do it, we can.
Speaker 1:Context three the US government provides virtually endless supplies of bombs and any sought surveillance and, arguably just as important, the US protects Israel from the UN and any other opposition. Those in Washington and on Wall Street literally cheerlead and celebrate Israel's actions, even as some serious cracks spread. I should probably interject. The degree to which Washington and even some on Wall Street have in fact seemingly cracked off that is come to doubt is substantial and a bit surprising and shouldn't be poo-pooed into nothingness. It's not enough, though. Context four Many people who watch Israel's horrifying actions unfold, wring their hands but stay silent.
Speaker 1:Some who watch root for the IDF. Mostly that's Israeli citizens, but also some in the US, germany and various other places At worst. Some who root for the IDF say, quote okay, bomb the hospitals and everyone in them, get on it. Kids too. Extinguish the vermin, babies and all Nuke them if you have to. Others sincerely bemoan the excess, but keep quiet about it. No unseemly public pronouncements or displays for them. Then there are also others, a whole lot of others, increasingly many others, who will answer if asked. This is barbaric, this is terrorism. This should stop now and then. Of those, some even express their disgust really loudly. Some chant it, some march and demonstrate it, some pitch tents for it, and some may soon move inside from the campus courtyards to occupy offices and then buildings too. All for Palestine.
Speaker 1:And yes, it is true that some but I bet very few genocide protesters occasionally scream nasty, ill-chosen things, not just wrong but also counterproductive to their efforts. I suspect the few who do that, with their passion boiling over, while they fear that they may be risking their academic lives, do it not least because Israeli and US media and school administrators tell them that if you protest Zionism, if you protest genocide, you are anti-Semitic. What crap that is? So they wonder. Okay, how are we supposed to demonstrate that we are not anti-Semitic, but instead anti-anti-Semitic Quote? Say that just that way. The authorities intone we are not anti-Semitic, but instead anti-anti-Semitic Quote. Say that just that way. The authorities intone we do, but you refuse to hear us. Okay, say the administrators. Then chant we are Zionists, we support genocide. The authorities reply We'll hear that. Yes, that would work. Administrators would hear that. But the students won't say that and neither should anyone else say that, and the students will be heard.
Speaker 1:Back in 1965, in my freshman year of college, I was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, one of the campus's Jewish fraternities, or I was up until when I demonstratively quit during the first week of my sophomore year. But here's the odd current thing up until when I demonstratively quit during the first week of my sophomore year. But here's the odd current thing Somehow lately my name got onto a mailing list of AEPI alumni. So I have very recently received a flurry of emails from ex-brothers sent to other ex-brothers. The precipitant for the flurry was an invitation to get together in Cambridge during the 55th anniversary of the class of 1969. After that first invitation there came a round of discussion by various AEPI alumni, spurred by one brother who wrote he would love to come to break bread with his fraternity brothers but in protest over what in his view was MIT President Kornbluth's horrible hesitance to protect Jewish students from what this brother saw as grotesque anti-Semitism, he would not come to the reunion. This is a very well-educated and presumably humane and caring guy, his sentiment and his outraged students supporting Palestine.
Speaker 1:Palestine was then seconded and thirded a few times over, with escalated whining about the plight of Jews at MIT, but with barely a sincere, intelligent word about Palestinians at MIT or Palestinians anywhere else, like, oh say, in Gaza. Are there courses on head-in-the-sand hypocrisy at MIT? Gaza, are there courses on head-in-the-sand hypocrisy at MIT? I found some of the contents of my ex-brother's intercommunications blindingly nauseating and I take for granted you, who are admirably and courageously protesting at MIT and elsewhere, have already encountered similar and worse head-in-the-sand hypocritical castigation. Certainly those at Columbia have, certainly you all will again repeatedly Meanwhile, by way of offering something that may possibly prove useful, I think some of those who criticize you or who call for your expulsion, like some of my one-time fraternity brothers, will argue that decades of Israel's terror did not justify Hamas's few days of anti-civilian actions.
Speaker 1:Yet somehow, hamas's few days of anti-civilian actions do justify Israel's now six-month genocidal bombardment of everything and starvation of everyone in Gaza. They will tell you, utterly blind to their own illogic, that you are supporting terror. They may even say to you that you are committing terror. Call them illogical, hypocritical, incredibly ignorant or whatever you wish, but please say all that to yourself in your own mind, if you must utter it at all. Please don't rail at them, don't curse them, don't ridicule them. That was our biggest mistake in 1968.
Speaker 1:My point is please work to make them your allies Maybe not all of them, but most. Hit them with evidence, hit them with logic, hit them with reasoning and hell's bells. Hit them with morality, but not holier-than-thou moralism and also listen to them, also address their words, even sympathize with them. Don't compromise, but sympathize. You have likely already seen all the dysfunctional, dismissive and self-corrupting behavior they manifest. In all likelihood there is more to come, but please don't mimic it.
Speaker 1:I'm ashamed to say, but actually happy to report, that too often I and my movement allies did mimic their hostility. We did get tribal against our critics Provoked. We did leave our reasoning behind, we did get holier than thou at them. And for all that we did accomplish, those choices were not only not helpful, they were largely responsible for us not accomplishing much more than we did. The good news, the happy side, is that you can do better. Be militant for sure. Get to the heart of things, by all means. We did that too, and 56 years later you have to deal with fascist fanaticism For bequeathing you that I, we apologize. So do better than us. Don't repulse who should become, and who can become allied with you. We repulse too many. You don't have to. Don't only rebel, organize. I interject I don't know how to put that a chorus better than I just read, but I really do mean it sincerely.
Speaker 1:Again, not all who were involved in the same things I was in the 1960s and 70s would say the same now, but what I would say is we did a lot, we accomplished a lot, we were courageous, we were committed, we worked our butts off, but we were too blind to some of the effects of our choices. We were too blind to the fact that to win, we had to reach the people who disagreed with us, not just point out how blindingly wrong they might have been. We had to grow, and we didn't do enough of that. We also didn't entrench our victories well enough. We didn't not only gain lots of allies, which we did, let me just say, at MIT, when I got there, 1965, the student body. Well, you know, if they were going to gather in large numbers, it would be at, say, a Boston Commons demonstration against the then war in Vietnam. The MIT population would have gathered there to throw rocks at the demonstrators. That's not a serious accusation. Most wouldn't have gone to throw the rocks, but those who did would have, by 1968 and 69, when there was a mass demonstration on the Boston Common, most of MIT went there to demonstrate. So it is possible to reach those who disagree seriously with you if your tactics and your words are chosen to accomplish that. That's the key thing to not lose track of reaching out, of enlarging, of developing sustained commitment. That's what has to happen. The thing that gives me great hope is that it appears that the young people now rebelling are a shitload smarter than we were. They don't yet have as much experience in 2024 of I don't know what to call it radical organizing perhaps and militant activism as we had by 1968. But they know more and I think they are more inclined to win, which is what's crucial not just to demonstrate, but to win.
Speaker 1:The article goes on. A lot of people are comparing now to 1968. That year was tumultuous. We were inspired, we were hot, but here comes this year and it is moving faster, no less. That year, the left that I and so many others lived and breathed was mighty. We were courageous, but we also had too little understanding of how to win. Don't emulate us. Transcend us. That year's election was Nixon versus Humphrey. Trump is way worse than Nixon. Biden is like Humphrey and, I even think, somewhat better. That year's Democratic convention was in Chicago. So is this year's. That year in Chicago, the 60s went wild in the streets and Nixon won, and that event was part of why, 56 years later, you face fascist fundamentalism this year in Chicago.
Speaker 1:What If there is a lesson from 1968 to apply? The movement must persist, but simultaneously Trump must lose. That means Biden or maybe someone else, must win. And of course, the emerging mash uprisings must persist and diversify and broaden in focus and reach. And yes, militants, and hey, on your campuses again, do better than us. Fight to divest, but also fight to structurally change your campuses so their decision makers which should be you never again invest in genocide, war and indeed suppression and oppression of any kind. Tomorrow is the first day of a long, long, potentially incredibly liberating future, but one day is but one day Persist. And that said, this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.