“Imagine a better world, but first read RPS/2044 where a crowd of better world advocates report on actually winning one. Our victory is certainly no end point, but it is a marvelous place from which to take a look around and further open one’s own vistas – to travel one’s own freedom highway, and that is what Miguel Guevara’s questions have let a bunch of us participants do. Maybe above all this book reveals the beating heart and open mind of being a revolutionary. I hope it sings to you.”
– Harriet Lennon, 2042

“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. But of course I dance it. The question is, will you?”
– Andrej Goldman, 2042

“If you want a novel with a male protagonist battling a deadly, macho, outer space , killer crisis, don’t read this book. In fact, if you want a novel with a female protagonist resolving a perfectly plausible and meaningful, down home, common crisis, don’t read this book. RPS/2044 stars social change. The people are real, I am one, and I know
many. But our personal specifics aren’t critical. What we shared and still share is what matters. I read RPS/2044 for inspiration and to enhance my memories of the a, b, c’s and x, y, z’s of our shared history. I learned from the insights of the other participants, and hopefully soon, I will learn from its readers too. The book is invigorating, engaging, moving, and edifying. It is not a tweet.”*
– Juliet Berkman, U.S., 2042

“I have acted in a lot of movies and also presided in the Governor’s Mansion in California, 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 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 RPS/2044, 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.”
– Governor Cecila Curie, 2042

”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 adopt and refine it to make it yours, then Guevara’s idea will reach its true goal.”
– Mayor Bill Hampton, 2042

“Every so often a book teaches and readers benefit. RPS/2044 is a case in point. 18 teach, how many will benefit? RPS/2044, 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 postscript conclusion after we elected the diametrically opposite Malcolm King 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, 2042

“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.”
– Mark Feynman, 2042

“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, 2042

“We interviewees sound rather 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 is obviously 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, 2042

“Some people think history is just piles of facts. Guevara and his interviewees relegate fact on top of fact to the included timeline. 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 RPS/2044, 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 as well. If you do, you will find a wonderful database of material for changing your world as successfully as we are changing ours.”
– Senator Malcolm King, 2042

“I spent most of my life, in movements that lost, lost, lost – and then, suddenly, learning from the losses, the last twenty-five years in a movements that is winning. RPS/2044 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 only to hone in on what has made it all possible and real. This is one. This lights up our stage.”
– Lydia Luxembourg, 2042

“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 me, now, 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, 2042

“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, a theory of intentions, aims, and methods, 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 is 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 Dellinger, 2042

“Activists seeking to right wrongs and create liberty don’t need a bible and Miguel Guevara knew that while undertaking this oral history. They also don’t need accounts that are time and place specific, unreplicable, or idiosyncratic. Guevara pursued the anti-fundamentalist and anti-sectarian intentions of RPS even as he stitched together this account of RPS. And yet, truth be told, I’d much rather look out at my Church congregation and see each and every member reading RPS/2044 than any other good book I can think of. Not to worship it, of course, nor to mindlessly adopt its insights, but to enjoy, excite, and especially innovate. RPS/2044 is about integrity smiting oppression, honesty ruining deception, decency silencing insult, virtue overcoming force.”
– Rev. Stephen Du Bois, 2042

“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. RPS/ *2044 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 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 Zinn, 2042

“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 Kuntsler, 2042

“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. RPS/2044 chats the growth of belief among the unqualified that they are in fact qualified: they can articulate and be responsible and hold power.”
– Noam Carmichael, 2042

“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.”
– Dylan Cohen, 2042