Next American Revolution

THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Written by
Michael Albert
Based on the book, RPS/2044 by Michael Albert
215 Atlantic Avenue, Hull, MA

339 236 1991
ii.
The next American Revolution
Written by
Michael Albert
Based on the book, RPS/2044 by Michael Albert
215 Atlantic Avenue, Hull, MA

339 236 1991
EXT. VAST OPEN PLAIN - DAY
Scrolling collage of photos of historic actors and events, past and

future, culminates in the main title and text:
“RPS - THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION”
“FROM A TIME BARELY BEYOND TOMORROW. FROM A PLACE BARELY BORDERING

PERCEPTION. REPORTS OF REVOLUTION RESOUND. MASSACHUSETTS SENATOR
MALCOLM KING AND HIS RUNNING MATE, CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR CELIA CURIE, ARE
IN 2044 ELECTED U.S. PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT. AS MEMBERS OF THE
ORGANIZATION, REVOLUTIONARY PARTICIPATORY SOCIETY, OR RPS, THEY KNOW
THEIR INAUGURATION IS BUT A SINGLE INTERIM STEP IN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF
CONCEIVING, ORGANIZING, DEMONSTRATING, STRIKING, OCCUPYING, AND
CREATING. THEY ARE MARCHING TOWARD A NEW WORLD MADE REAL.”
INT. OVAL OFFICE - DAY
MIGUEL GUEVARA, 39, a bit scruffy, interviews PRESIDENT MALCOLM KING,

59, EX-MASSACHUSETTS SENATOR, exuding calm, and VICE PRESIDENT CELIA
CURIE, 51, EX-CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR, EX-ACTRESS, poised and exuberant.
Pictures of various ex-presidents adorn the walls.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Mr. President...
CELIA CURIE
Call him Malcolm. I do, we all do.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But Madame Vice President...
CELIA CURIE
Miguel, please, call me Celia.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Well, okay...
(turns to Malcolm)
What a pleasure to celebrate victory.
How do you feel?
MALCOLM KING
Eager. Cautious. Ideas won.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Yes, but you traversed the country. You
campaigned. You won...
CELIA CURIE
No. Millions of volunteers and 100
million voters won.
INT. CONVENTION HALL - EVENING
President Malcolm King, Vice President Celia Curie, and conventioneers

wildly celebrate nomination.
MALCOLM KING
Twenty five years ago, 2019. Someone
running for President with my views. An
impossible dream. Then hope grew.
Activism flourished.
Interview continues.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Celia, your first reactions to the Oval
Office?
CELIA CURIE
(points at portraits, laughs)
We need to redecorate.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
And immediate program?
CELIA CURIE
Hold a constitutional convention to
revamp government. Enlarge the Supreme
Court to reflect society. Build
community housing, schools, and clinics.
Drastically down-size the military.
Deliver prison pardons. Renovate
judicial procedures.
MALCOLM KING
Further innovate energy for ecological
balance. Support workplace take-overs.
Empower neighborhood assemblies. Pursue
equitable economics to demolish income
and wealth inequity. Institute more
workers self management. Initiate more
participatory planning.
CELIA CURIE
We have waged a quarter century journey
of ceaseless struggle, but there is much
more to come.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Do you feel pressure? Fear?
CELIA CURIE
I feel tense and excited for the impact
we can have.
MALCOLM KING
Ignorant choices could impede change. I
fear that.
CELIA CURIE
Like the doctor’s “do no harm,” or the
ecologist’s “precautionary principle,” we
have to do good but avoid damage.
MONTAGE - SCENES OF EARLY RPS
-- Trumpism vs. Anti Trump hostilities
-- Organizers go door to door.
-- Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS) teach in.
CELIA CURIE (V.O.)

At RPS’s beginning, friends, workmates,
and relatives often feuded.
Revolutionary Participatory Society
members clashed with their non RPS
neighbors. To advance, we had to
overcome differences. We had to raise
consciousness.
-- Sit-in at immigrant detention center.
-- Strike at a local workplace.
MALCOLM KING (V.O.)

As RPS grew, we sought change.
-- RPS community center.
-- RPS daycare program.
CELIA CURIE (V.O.)

We planted seeds of a better future. We
won modest but escalating victories.
-- Occupied factory.
MALCOLM KING (V.O.)

There were losses and setbacks but mostly
a steady march forward.
EXT. NEW YORK TIMES SQUARE - DAY
JULIET BERKMAN, 49, dressed jaunty, introduces MAYOR BILL HAMPTON,

wearing an RPS hat, looking elated. They address a massive crowd from
a New Year's Eve-like stage, including a banner: RPS 2020-2044.
JULIET BERKMAN
Inauguration Day. Another step toward
fulfilling our aims in every workplace,
school, city, and state. Mr. Mayor, Bill
Hampton...
Bill Hampton reaches out and sweeps the audience.
BILL HAMPTON
Politics used to be a competitive,
elitest, money grubbing, bureaucratic
producer of hypocrisy. Now, politics is
you!
EXT. SKY - DAY (DREAM)
Dreamscape visual of planes dropping parachutes.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

As a child I suffered nightmares of big
planes silently, ominously, almost
gently, dropping massive parachutes, and
beneath each chute, swaying to a devil's
dirge, huge cylindrical, nuclear coffins
drifting down, to destroy all.
EXT. NEW YORK TIMES SQUARE - DAY
Crowd goes silent. Bill Hampton smiles, points all around.
BILL HAMPTON
I woke up. We woke up. Celebrate. Then
carry on.
Interview by Guevara continues.
MALCOLM KING
Inauguration Day approached. Rebels and
rakes, outcasts, the gentle, the kind,
poets and painters, bricklayers and truck
drivers, saints and sinners. All sought
a moment’s celebration on the road to
greater victories.
CELIA CURIE
History had shackled society so long that
many millions wanted to dance in the
streets.
MALCOLM KING
To accommodate, we held events in
hundreds of counties. Danced to decades
of struggle. Danced preparatory to
battling on.
EXT. CENTRAL PARK - DAY
Miguel Guevara queries Juliet Berkman, a sedate and confident union

organizer. They walk in Central Park.
SUPER: AUGUST 4, 2042.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Juliet, do you remember first becoming
radical?
JULIET BERKMAN
In 2016, horrified at Trump's election I
drank myself sick. What had happened?
It seemed like Hell made real. Earth
would burn. Friends roused me.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But why become radical? Why not pursue
conventional success?
JULIET BERKMAN
I feared fascism but I despised
conventional success. To me the dinner
parties, stretch limos, and mansions were
morally repulsive. I preferred love and
dignity to money and power.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I became a dissident rather than a
mainstream journalist with the same
feelings. What were some key RPS events
for you?
JULIET BERKMAN
The first two RPS conventions woke me.
The campaign for balanced jobs in 2024
inspired me. The campaign for the thirty-
hour work week in 2025 steeled me. But
even earlier I particularly remember a
meeting arranged with workers at a
defense plant connected with a university
where students were opposing military
research. I spoke to an assembly of
protesting students and defense-involved
employees.
INT. ASSEMBLY HALL - DAY
Audience includes WORKERS and STUDENT PROTESTORS. YOUNG JULIET

BERKMAN, 25, dressed for street battle, speaks. Workers boo, students
cheer.
YOUNG JULIET BERKMAN

War kills. Stop weapons! Stop killing!
Shut down!
ANGRY WORKER
You steal our livelihoods. You ignore our
needs.
Berkman Guevara interview continues.
JULIET BERKMAN
They were right. I had much to learn.
It wasn’t easy.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Was there a second personal event?
INT. CHURCH - DAY
Respectful Memorial Service.
JULIET BERKMAN (V.O.)

At a memorial service for sixties civil
rights activists, the music and
solidarity transported me until I saw in
my head activists decades earlier risking
life and limb in Birmingham.
EXT. 1963 BIRMINGHAM - DAY
Activists at Birmingham rallies. Historic footage.
MARTIN LUTHOR KING JR.

I have heard numerous southern religious
leaders admonish their worshipers to
comply with a desegregation decision
because it is the law, but I have longed
to hear white ministers declare: 'Follow
this decree because integration is
morally right and because the Negro is
your brother.'

But I had my first truly RPS moment at a
Detroit rally.
EXT. DETROIT STREETS - DAY
Lively crowd listens to DETROIT SPEAKER on makeshift stage.
DETROIT SPEAKER
Raise wages! End police violence! Wage
peace! Win the world!
Berkman and Guevara walk past adults playing soccer.

JULIET BERKMAN
So what got you into journalism?
MIGUEL GUEVARA
(looks at soccer players)
I was in college, headed, I thought, for
a soccer future. Olympics and all. But
the competitiveness and macho behaviors
of coaches and players alike drove me
away from soccer. The eye-opening
revelations of those time and the
readings I followed up with took me into
activism. But, back to you. Many
pinpoint the 2021 march of a half million
protestors on Wall Street as their RPS
start. Were you there?
JULIET BERKMAN
Yes, and as nervous as I was, I even gave
a speech.
EXT. WALL STREET - DAY
Young Juliet addresses huge cheering crowd.

We seek dignity and justice. We won't
settle for the periphery of power. We do
not oppose impoverished budgets,
escalating inequality, resurgent racism,
sexual predation, assembly line schools,
corporate profiteering, divisive
classism, heinous war, hideous
repression, OR planetary climate
catastrophe. No, we oppose them all! We
don't demand racial solidarity, cultural
integrity, gender equity, sexual
diversity, political freedom, collective
self-management, OR economic equity,
classlessness, and ecological sanity.
No, we demand them all! We don’t want old
bosses, nor new ones!
Guevara and Berkman sit on a bench, near a pond with ducks.
JULIET BERKMAN
If you told me in 2019 that twenty-five
years later we would witness society
fundamentally transforming, I would have
laughed. A hundred years, maybe. Twenty-
five? No way. But it turned out that
people only needed hope.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Anger roused me. But you are right, hope
gave me direction.
(MORE)
MIGUEL GUEVARA (CONT'D)
You focused on workers’ lives. What were
early turning points in battling economic
injustice?
JULIET BERKMAN
The Amazonia strike was one. We had all
bought from Amazonia just by clicking
links. Suddenly 300,000 Amazonia workers
sat down and became visible. They sat
down to stand tall.
INT. AMAZONIA ASSEMBLY PLANT - DAY
AMAZONIA WORKER mechanically does her task. Camera pans to more and
more similar workers, then to plant after plant, then to workers
sitting, striking.
EXT. AMAZONIA WAREHOUSE - DAY
WORKERS occupy. AMAZONIA STRIKE LEADER speaks from doorway.

SUPPORTERS surround plant and speak from makeshift stage. FAMILIES and
FRIENDS bring food. STUDENTS bring supplies and buffer against police
intervention. POLICE approach.
AMAZONIA STRIKE LEADER

(addresses police)
We are Amazonia's workers. We will not
move. Scabs will not replace us. Invade
our warehouse, we will dismantle it.
Enter, we will wreak havoc.

Do as you will, but like workers inside,
we will remain. We are students,
lawyers, mail carriers. We are cooks,
farmers, assemblers. We are doctors, and
off-duty cops. Amazonia has our hearts.
AMAZONIA STRIKE LEADER

Reject our demands, we will maintain our
occupation. Issue court orders, we will
scoff. Serve injunctions, we will laugh.
Arrest us, we will clog your jails.
Smash us, we will replenish. We will
persist.
(looks at rows of police)
Officers, we know it is your job to
follow orders. But you too want shorter
hours and better wages. You too want a
better world for your kids. Bludgeon us
if you must, we will talk with you.
(Police and workers converse.)
Guevara and Berkman interview continues.

JULIET BERKMAN
Talking diminished police anger. After a
week, American Package and United Express
workers stopped delivering. Then, bam.
New work hours. New payment schemes.
But the speed arguably obscured the
difficulty. The workers and their
supporters too, had to overcome our
habits and fears to take the stand we
did. The night before I went I was
petrified. Couldn’t sleep. Some slid
easily into dissent. They were
courageous or so aroused they were
oblivious to the risk. Not me. I was
really afraid.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Can you recall another turning
point for you?
JULIET BERKMAN
Yes, a second turning point was a
campaign to raise Harvard's kitchen and
custodial workers‘ wages. Activists
sought improved work conditions and
higher wages, but also envisioned optimal
conditions and incomes for the future.
EXT. HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL - DAY
STUDENTS rally with signs. Many in medical garb.
STUDENT DEMONSTRATOR
Why do those who clean classrooms earn
less than those who lecture students? Do
they work less hard? Is the cleaning they
do less onerous? Do they work fewer
hours?

After dozens of dorm and classroom
discussions, teach-ins, work stoppages,
and administration threats, a group of
medical students rejected admission
policies, training methods, and even the
culture of the profession they planned to
enter. Their dissent spread and soon we
had embattled movements of Doctors,
Lawyers, Economists, Engineers,
Accountants, and Architects for the
People.
EXT. NYU LAW SCHOOL - DAY
Rally cheers LAW STUDENT with megaphone.
LAW STUDENT
We harbor bad habits of entitlement that
operate obstructively.
(MORE)
LAW STUDENT (CONT'D)
We face intense resistance from many
classmates, faculty, and media.
Nonetheless, we seek to be lawyers for
people not for corporations!
EXT. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS - DAY
Rally hears YOUNG ANDREJ GOLDMAN 24, economics grad student.
YOUNG ANDREJ GOLDMAN

I will not justify low wages,
unemployment, and alienation. I will not
rationalize profits over people and
celebrate growth over sustainability. I
will do economics for workers, not for
owners; for people, not for profits; for
the planet, not for plutocrats.
INT. UNIVERSITY OFFICE - DAY
Miguel Guevara queries ANDREJ GOLDMAN, 50, professor. Bookshelves show

titles by Goldman.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
In college, I memorized equations. I
worshipped supply and demand. I
ridiculed government spending. I learned
lots about inflation and tax rates but
nothing about corporate process. Me and
my mates were ignorant self-important
wannabe wonks swimming blindly with other
ignorant self-important wannabe wonks.
EXT. CAMPUS RALLY - DAY
Students rally against global warming.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN (V.O.)

As a junior, a friend took me to my first
demonstration. The speakers’ passion was
contagious. I watched, I respected, but
I didn't join. After returning to my
room, I felt embarrassed that I stood
silent even as I admired what I saw.
Feeling that I had avoided responsibility
shamed me but also woke me.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What were some pivotal events for you?
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
The 2021 Schools for the People campaign
and the 2029 Olympia Refinery takeover
come immediately to mind.
INT. HIGH SCHOOL - NIGHT
PARENTS and TEACHERS confront SCHOOL PRINCIPAL in auditorium.
SCHOOL PRINCIPAL CHAMBERS

What do you want from us? We teach your
children. We house them. Let me be a
good principal. Let me educate your kids
without suffering your anger. Be
grateful. Go home.
MALE PARENT
We want education not warehousing for our
children. We want a community center
where we can all learn.
FEMALE PARENT
Teachers want better wages. We want
better access. Principal Chambers, we
want a second home, right here.
Audience erupts in militant glee.
EXT. OLYMPIA REFINERY OIL PLANT - DAY
OCCUPIERS block access. Supporters rally beyond. OWNER glares back.

Drones fly over.
OWNER
My workers. My company. My machines.
My product. You earn what I pay you.
You produce what I tell you. That's how
it works. Now move your asses out of my
way.
STRIKER
We work for our families, our community,
and ourselves, not for you. We will get
worthy pay. We will get respect and a
say. That's how it will be. We will not
violate nature and threaten survival any
longer. We will NOT move. NOT you, your
scabs, or anyone else will refine oil
here again.
(looks skyward)
Your drones don’t intimidate us. Your
commands don’t move us. Your wealth
doesn’t scare us. Your time is over. It
is you who will move. Henceforth we are
converting this plant to Solar Panel
production. We have had enough of your
authority. We have had enough of global
warming. Stay on and work for society
like us, or get the hell out.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I reported on the refinery take-over.
How they redefined their lives so
inspired me that I joined RPS. What was
your path?
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
Back at school, I was a young man
studying abysmal economics. Then the
Wall Street Rally proposed an arms
boycott.
EXT. WALL STREET - DAY
Cheering crowds listen to RALLY SPEAKER.
RALLY SPEAKER
All of us, our families, our friends, and
everyone we can reach must stop buying
products from the hate-mongering
producers of the high-velocity weapons
fueling mass shootings. Boycott gun
manufacturers. Make them retool or fail.
Make the NRA relent or die.
Guevara Goldman Interview continues.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
The boycott built on the 2018 high school
demonstrations that began the rollback of
gun culture and propelled many young
people into their first activism. But to
build a meaningful weapons boycott,
activists had to convince gun buyers who
disagreed with us. At MIT, we went from
opposing gun violence to resisting
militarizing campus police to opposing
all campus complicity with war. Not
easy. Some students believed U.S.
intervention was selfless. Other
students said MIT ending war research
would be budgetary suicide.
EXT. MIT CAMPUS RALLY - DAY
Young Andrej Goldman with a bullhorn addresses ADMINISTRATORS who look

out from office windows.

How can you sensibly oppose our calls for
greater attention to global warming? Do
you want to fry us all? How can you
reject focusing research on new energy
sources and needed health campaigns? Do
you want tsunamis, pestilence, and
disease?
(MORE)
YOUNG ANDREJ GOLDMAN (CONT'D)
How can you sensibly refute our rejection
of weapons research? Do you want
relentless murder?
MONTAGE - CAMPUS ACTIONS
-- Large MIT Teach In.
-- Rally at Boston Common.

I worked on teach-ins. I organized
rallies. I helped occupy labs. I became
who I now am.
-- Massive MIT sit-in.
-- Massive Harvard sit-in.
-- Northeastern strike.

Before long, cross-campus solidarity
provoked citywide demonstrations.
Movements shared lessons and lent each
other support. After two tumultuous
years of constant educating and agitating
we held a rally culminating in a sit-in
at MIT that attracted 30,000 students
from all over the Boston area. When even
more attended a subsequent rally and sit-
in at Harvard, and when Northeastern and
Boston University held simultaneous
campus-wide strikes, our confidence
soared. Success like that steeled us
against all opponents.
Interview continues. Now with drinks in hand.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What lessons did you take?
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
I learned how much confidence matters. I
also learned why good people often accept
horrible injustices.
INT. DORM ROOM - NIGHT
Young Andrej Goldman, a grad student, argues with STUDENT 1.
STUDENT 1
American weapons aren't for offense.
They preserve peace.
Not for offense? Preserve peace? Are
you blind or just heartless?

Sadly, hearing student rationalizing, at
first I was aggressive and communication
stalled. Later I became more patient and
beyond rhetoric we would reach the heart
of the matter.
INT. DORM ROOM - NIGHT
Young Andrej Goldman argues with STUDENT 2.
STUDENT 2
Okay, perhaps you make a good moral case,
but even if you are ethically right, you
can’t win.

Even morally deficient administrators
won’t retain war research when doing so
will cause students and faculty to close
their institutions.
STUDENT 2
Maybe not, but eliminate war research
here, and war profiteers will do it
elsewhere. Organize resistance in many
places, and war profiteers will bring it
back somewhere and eventually everywhere.
You can't stop war. Human nature sucks.
We have to play along and get what we
can. I will not be Don Quixote pushing
for peace against intractable war just to
feel moral.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I remember being radical to like myself,
to be liked by my friends, but not to
win. Doubt about winning didn’t only
restrain conservatives.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
Yes, and while we easily addressed
morals, the hard obstacle was cynicism.
Sometimes college felt like a jaded old
folks home...
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Were there other lessons?
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
When we forced universities to stop
supporting military agendas they
spun off labs as private corporate firms.
That taught us to transcend campuses and
take on private corporations. First MIT,
Stanford, and the University of Michigan.
Then the spinoffs, NSA, and huge arms
manufacturers.
EXT. AIR CRAFT CORP. - DAY
Activists block the entrance and converse with workers. Helicopter

circles above.

We want war firms like yours to work
against global warming and for education
and equity. We want Congress to re-
assign funds from building bombers,
missiles, and tanks to producing transit
systems, schools, hospitals, and solar
plants.
WEAPONS WORKER
After you put us out of work, how do I
feed my kids? Answer me that!

Why should you lose your job? Why
shouldn't your workplace employ you in
worthy production? You think the rich
opt for war production instead of social
production for technical or military
reasons. It is a lie. They do it because
enlarged social spending reveals that the
government ought to benefit the whole
population. They do it because enlarged
social spending empowers workers against
threats of firing.
WEAPONS WORKER
You expect me to believe war spending
trumps social spending because building
hi-tech weapons employs fewer people and
avoids empowering workers?

Exactly. You could have a more
meaningful job, better conditions, and
more pay too, and so could all workers,
with no war production. But owners would
lose and that’s why they prefer building
missiles and bombs to ending global
warming and building hospitals and
schools.
WEAPONS WORKER
But owners are in charge...
For now, yes they are, but not forever.
EXT. UNIVERSITY LAWN - DAY
Small group surrounds Young Andrej Goldman and GUN ADVOCATE.

After I gave a public talk at a
university in Florida about boycotting
military work, an open carry advocate
confronted me.
OPEN CARRY ADVOCATE

At any moment some maniac can start
shooting. If students carry hand guns,
even a crazy student hell bent on murder
will be killed before doing much harm.
Disarm us, more will die. You are a
blind fool.

Open carry would unleash hysterical fear
and escalate moderate disputes into
violent catastrophes. Draw or be drawn
on. More arms mean more flash points of
mayhem at home and abroad. Arms feed a
military mindset that infects all policy.
GUN ADVOCATE
You are so damn naive. So damn ignorant.
So damn Pollyanna. Escalations happen.
Gun control will bring more deaths.
Killing killers here and abroad is the
only solution. The blood of innocents
will be on your hands.
Guevara Goldman interview continues.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
NRA profiteers drove gun policy, but many
grassroots gun and war advocates just
felt social corruption was irreversible.
Violence was unavoidable. The only
defense they saw was a gun of one's own.
We had to establish that society did not
have to be a shooting gallery.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
It reminds me of advocates of coal and
oil. I had to address my papers’
readers’ thoughtfully, not just shout my
feelings and call them fools.
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
Yes, some of the coal and oil advocates
likely felt doom was inevitable so why
not profit now, but those people
literally knew there were alternatives to
pursue. They lacked any remotely ethical
excuse no matter how confused they were.
I am not sure history has any group as
monstrous, risking as much mayhem for
others just to personally frolic in their
private, walled off estates, while the
rest of us suffer the flooded ruins
beyond. Of course we had to stop that.
The RPS task was to prevent global
ecological disasters while winning social
gains as well. At first that meant
seeking a Green and just new deal.
INT. MAYOR'S OFFICE - DAY
Miguel Guevara interviews Mayor Bill Hampton in his office. Malcolm X

and MLK Jr. posters look down from the wall.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Mayor Hampton, you became an anti-racist
activist, joined RPS, and later Mayor of
New York City. What got you going?
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

I joined a sanctuary for immigrants at a
church in San Antonio, Texas.
EXT. CHURCH - DA
Police vans visible. Police line up in three rows, ten abreast.

PASTOR stands with 50 CONGREGANTS and the CHURCH CHOIR. News
helicopters circle. Hundreds support from surrounding street.
PASTOR
To take our immigrant families, you will
have to go through our extended family.
Come ahead if you must. Brutalize our
limbs. Shove our beaten bodies aside.
You will not break our spirit.
Pastor and congregants lock arms. Church doors open revealing rows of
congregants who also lock arms. At the pulpit, sheltered families
stand resolute.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

This was our Selma. Our Birmingham. San
Antonio's sheriff was our Bull Connor.
He so disrespected anyone who could side
with immigrants that he felt a few swings
of police batons would open a clear path
to the deportees.
SHERIFF
You have two minutes to vacate. After
that, we will forcefully vacate you and
take the illegals.
CHURCH CHOIR
We shall not be moved, we shall not be
moved...
Two minutes pass. Sheriff and deputies march into the human barrier
striking viciously. Blood flows. Damage spreads. No one runs.
CHURCH CHOIR (CONT'D)

Deep in our hearts we know...
Officers stomp. Congregants moan. Choir sings. More congregants

emerge and lock arms. Onlookers and cameras witness in horror.
Congregants reach up to embrace their tormentors. Hugs diminish space
for brutal swings. After a bit, some deputies relent. Then the
sheriff relents as well, staring at the bloodied pastor.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

They could have demolished us, leaving
blasted bodies in their wake. Our Pastor
was bloodied and bent, but I can still
hear him.
PASTOR
Leave your baton and gun with your fellow
officers outside. Do that, and you are
welcome to talk to the immigrant
families, to me, and to others in our
space of peace and worship within.
Tears flow. Medics aid congregants. Calmly, respectfully, after a

seeming eternity of staring at the bloodied Pastor, the Sheriff takes
off his gun, drops his baton, and walks into the Church.
INT. PRESS CONFERENCE - NEXT DAY
Sheriff stands before dozens of press.
SHERIFF
I will no longer recognize federal
orders, or any orders at all, to arrest
immigrants.
Drops mic, walks off.
BILL HAMPTON
It was the shortest, longest press
conference ever. Fierce conflict.
Horrible losses in prior years.
(MORE)
BILL HAMPTON (CONT'D)
Other Sheriffs who didn’t budge. Kids
who were separated from parents and
violated. Activists who were beaten and
jailed. Epithets and fear. But San
Antonio Sunday broke the pattern and
brought an end to the blame the
immigrant, beat the immigrant, cage the
immigrant, expel the immigrant era. San
Antonio’s sheriff may or may not have
found his humanity, but either way,
activism won.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I interviewed that sheriff years later
for a retrospective. He cried,
remembering. He had become an RPS
member. But what was your view of cops
back then?
BILL HAMPTON
Before San Antonio, I hated cops. To me,
my family, and my friends, cops spelled
danger, even death. Our way to deal with
cops was to imagine fighting fire with
fire, eye to eye, toe to toe. Call them
pigs, throw a rock, day dream beating
them, but then run like hell. The
sanctuary didn't make me a pacifist, but
I saw nonviolence plus compassion disarm
what would have totally demolished any
attempt to fight back. Divide the
police, defuse the police, finally make
the police allies, and their powerful
paymasters become weak.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about cursing cops?
BILL HAMPTON
It may feel good. But it puts emotion in
command. It angers them. Addressing
cops as fellow citizens puts strategy in
command. It disarms them.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
How did RPS program first emerge?
BILL HAMPTON
A few years earlier, the Bernie Sanders
campaign had program. Black Lives
Matter at first ignored program, but then
brilliantly offered it. Massive women's
marches offered program. Those tried
but, still, dozens of essays addressed
Trump's idiot vile Tweets for every essay
that addressed what to do. But then
activists created local sanctuaries in
churches and universities and even in
some private homes, and program emerged.
INT. CAMPUS CENTER - DAY
Campus center provides housing and protection.
STUDENT ACTIVIST
Our sanctuaries teach and celebrate. To
take our friends, you have to take us.
Neither we nor they are going easily.
EXT. SPORTS STADIUM - DAY
On the Philadelphia Condors’ football field, athletes and immigrants

mingle. Tents with families are visible. Kids play. Signs wave.
Teams work out.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

Prominent athletes welcomed immigrants
into sports arenas on many college
campuses. Then a few NFL and NBA teams
did the same. That created a mutual aid
mindset and built incredible momentum.
EXT. POOR NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY
A large rally from a poor neighborhood marches miles to an executive's

home. Neighbors and media watch.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

Another effective early choice was our
response to war mongering, climate
violating cabinet members. We exposed
their views. We proposed progressives
for their posts. We rallied where they
worked. We went where they lived. The
cabinet members wanted us driven off, but
how? Tear gas their offices, their
neighborhoods?
EXT. POLICE STATION - DAY
GROUP rallies outside a police station. DEMONSTRATOR addresses police

bunched at door.
DEMONSTRATOR ONE
We demand community oversight.
DEMONSTRATOR TWO
Come to our neighborhood meetings to
discuss how to create safer communities
and end racist policing. We want
prisoners to build low-income housing.
We want to fund it with refocussed
military and police budgets.
EXT. MILITARY BASE - DAY
GROUP rallies outside a military base. Demonstrators talk amiably with

soldiers going in and out.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)
We went to military bases and police
stations and organized. We listened and
proposed. We fought, but we also made
friends. I won't make believe it was
easy. There was hostility to overcome,
difference to deal with. We often got
the shit kicked out of us. But necessity
birthed invention. It was our only
winning path and we took it.
Interview continues. Mayor Hampton, seated, answers.
BILL HAMPTON
Still, most people's responses to program
remained disjointed. A project would
aggressively adopt one aim. Another
project would equally aggressively adopt
a different aim. Few strayed from narrow
priorities to embrace full program.
Activism occurred in isolated silos. You
did this, I did that. We needed
overarching unity.
INT. ASSEMBLY HALL - NIGHT
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON, 20, confident, calls for various actions.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

We must combine campaigns to end
deporting immigrants through local
airports with campaigns to
clean up plumes of toxic waste from those
same airports. Efforts to curb CO2
emissions must mesh with efforts to
create and ensure good jobs. Community
centers must feature speakers on women's
rights and also on wage struggles.
Activists for prison reform must support
and be supported by activists for solar
power.
BILL HAMPTON
RPS wanted those who focused most on war
to aid those who focused most on
immigration to aid those who focused most
on global warming, resource depletion,
toxic clean-up, tax reform, improving
public spaces, distributing food and
medicine, sexual harassment, police
violence, worker safety, and income
redistribution.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Bill, what do you think hindered greater
activist success before RPS?
INT. LECTURE HALL - NIGHT
Young Bill Hampton and YOUNG CYNTHIA PARKS, 28, housing organizer,
stand together and emotionally address a large student audience. RPS
flag with date drapes the lectern.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

Why have we had so much trouble winning a
new society? To win is desired. To win
is needed. Yet so often we fight and
lose.
(turns to Cynthia)
Why?
YOUNG CYNTHIA PARKS

I think it’s because society debilitates
us until we lack sufficient strength to
fight well. I feel it is because
oppression distorts us until we lose our
ability to cooperate and be strategic.
Can’t you feel society’s roles bend us
until we pick up habits that destroy our
unity and clarity?
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

So we fail because we do bad things?
YOUNG CYNTHIA PARKS

Yes, sometimes we get overly aggressive,
other times too passive. Sometimes we
attack opponents to prove our worth more
than to win a new system. Often we find
it easier to talk to people who like us
and to avoid people who dislike us.
Always we complain. We rarely
sufficiently welcome new participants.
(turns to Bill)
Why do we subvert ourselves?
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

I think defeatism crushes us until we
doubt we can win and we lose motivation
to seek success. Then we prioritize
pleasing friends, not winning a new
society. We focus short term, not long
term. We lack hope and ridicule vision.
(beseechingly)
We silo ourselves. We succumb to
liberalism or rail pointlessly at it. We
disdain reform. We denigrate those who
are not yet radical and play at violence.
We denigrate religion, sports, country
music, and fast food. We celebrate
professional not working class values.
YOUNG CYNTHIA PARKS
Some of you may resist admitting these
many faults. Some of you may even
castigate us for reporting them, but the
truth is if everything was already
wonderful, how could we do better?
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I remember getting angry at messengers
reporting movement faults to spur
improvement, but eventually I understood
finding flaws to overcome them and became
just that kind of messenger.
BILL HAMPTON
RPS had to give collective attention to
previously bemoaned but untreated
personal baggage. For that, we allotted
time for everyone to tell their stories.
People were heard. Tears flowed. We
admitted and addressed problems. We felt
less needy and more present. We felt
compassion for each other and realized
our fears weren't ours alone.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
You were in a confrontation at the second
convention, am I right?
BILL HAMPTON
Yes, a group of ex-military proposed we
should arm and train to battle directly
with police.
INT. LARGE HALL - DAY
Seven ex-SOLDIERS in RPS hats and military jerseys occupy the stage
beneath an RPS flag.
WHITE SOLDIER
Rejecting weapons is cowardly. Did Luke
and Han leaflet the Empire? They blew it
up! Overcoming their violence requires
our violence. If we reject weapons, the
uniformed thugs win.
BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

These ex soldiers felt marching in with
rifles demonstrated the power of guns.
Their logic was one-step. You are with
us or with the state.
Young Bill Hampton stands, gathers a group, walks up onto the stage -
addresses the SOLDIERS.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON
Violence would distort our ability to
think straight and is the one contest the
state always wins. To overcome state
violence we must make it ineffective. We
must ensure that their violence
strengthens us. We clearly aren't
cowardly and phony. We clearly aren't on
the side of prosecutors. Are you going
to shoot us because we reject your
argument? Shoot us, or let's go talk
further.
After a pause, young Bill Hampton leads soldiers off.
INT. SIDE ROOM - DAY
Young Bill Hampton and Soldiers talk further.
WHITE SOLDIER
The issue isn't just the police. In a
group, one person with a club is a big
problem. Five people with guns are a
huge problem.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

We can handle police at local
demonstrations by creating situations in
which public reaction to police or
military violence rebounds to our benefit
and by infiltrating police forces and
organizing them.
WHITE SOLDIER
Maybe you can do that, but you can’t make
violence counterproductive for those
doing it if they are trying to damage RPS
from within. If we were enemies of RPS
things could have gone really badly.
Hell, we could have shot you.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

I agree we need ways to deal with
craziness or sabotage, but we have to do
it without our efforts harming us more
than the saboteurs.
BLACK SOLDIER
What if it is impossible non violently?
Do you then just give up and let crazies
mow you down?
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

No, we have a few good people trained to
handle crazy interlopers. We elect
security folks based on their patient
temperament.
(MORE)
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON (CONT'D)
But we have completed two conventions and
countless demonstrations and campaigns,
including against police and state power
without having such a special
arrangement. Maybe fear of lunacy is a
bigger problem than lunacy itself.
BILL HAMPTON
We were wise to be cautious. We had a
plan ready for wide discussion and vote,
but we held off until practical evidence
suggested we couldn't do without it.
Meanwhile, I and others quietly worked
with folks on how to deal with local
intruders, drunks, infiltrators, and the
like. State violence, however, we
thwarted the only way possible, by
organizing.
INT. CYNTHIA'S APARTMENT - EVENING
Miguel Guevara interviews housing organizers CYNTHIA PARKS, 50 and

HARRIET LENNON, 42. Posters of John Lennon and Kendrick Lamar look on
from wall.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Cynthia, you watched your family lose
their modest home due to unemployment.
Do you remember first becoming radical?
INT. CHILDHOOD HOME - DAY
Cops evict CYNTHIA PARKS'S MOM and YOUNGEST CYNTHIA PARKS, 8.
CYNTHIA PARKS'S MOM

Cynthia, the economy is in trouble. We
don't have money to pay bills. The bank
is taking our home. We have to move.
YOUNGEST CYNTHIA PARKS

How does that help the economy?
CYNTHIA PARKS'S MOM

It helps rich bankers.
CYNTHIA PARKS
I watched my father sink into alcohol
soaked depression. I watched my mother
protect the family from poverty and from
my father's illness.
(MORE)
CYNTHIA PARKS (CONT'D)
I remember ice covering the insides of
our windows. I remember resistant mites
and vicious lice. I can still see sewage
backing up in our toilets in my dreams.
Survival was on our minds, not a better
world. But by age twelve, my life was
mapped out though it was years till I
knew who I had become.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Do you remember the start of RPS?
CYNTHIA PARKS
I remember when RPS lacked confidence.
Who were we to undertake such tasks?
Nights of sleepless doubt followed days
of stumbling error. Too few people had
too much work.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Was recruiting hard at first?
INT. NEIGHBOR'S LIVING ROOM - DAY
Young Cynthia Parks wearing RPS hat talks with NEIGHBOR.
YOUNG CYNTHIA PARKS

Join us. Fight for better...
NEIGHBOR
Why? You don't stand a chance.
Injustice always wins. Anyhow, what
could I do? How could I matter? Maybe I
can make my family more healthy and
fulfilled, but the whole building? The
whole country? To deny my kids, my
family, just to lose? Not me.
CYNTHIA PARKS
For my neighbor to be so defeatist... I
felt it was my fault for not conveying
hope. But how could I? Did I even hope?
MIGUEL GUEVARA
(turns to Harriet)
Harriet, how did you get involved in
housing issues?
HARRIET LENNON
In school I met with friends to discuss
ideas. We visited tenants' rights groups
and met many RPS members. I liked them
so I joined. We had two plans.
(MORE)
HARRIET LENNON (CONT'D)
The first was to visit an apartment
complex, hear about issues and problems,
make tentative suggestions, and help
implement modest gains.
INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY
YOUNG HARRIET LENNON, 20, housing organizer, talks with tenants, the
POSNERS in their living room.
YOUNG HARRIET LENNON

Would you be interested in swapping
apartments with someone from the first
floor so you would no longer
have to walk up three flights to your
flat?
MRS. POSNER
For two years climbing the stairs has
devastated my husband and hurt me too.
He worked assembly and his
legs are bad. I have tired lungs. It
never occurred to me to ask anyone to
switch, and no one offered.

Society twists us so we take our own and
other peoples’ isolation for granted but
when we mention elderly tenants stuck on
a high floor, younger tenants on lower
floors offer to swap.
HARRIET LENNON
We reached out to student tenants in
buildings where one or more residents
were already in RPS. Next, we approached
families. We were modest but eager. We
listened.
MONTAGE – APARTMENT ORGANIZING AND GAINS
-- Tenants paint corridors.
-- Apartment food coop meets.
-- Group day care gathers.
-- Meeting about drugs.
HARRIET LENNON (V.O.)

Gains that residents could themselves
enact like painting corridors revealed
potential.
(MORE)
HARRIET LENNON (V.O.) (CONT'D)
Once we built that trust, we helped
people set up food co-ops to reduce costs
and time spent shopping. Then we helped
organize collective day care and laundry.
It was slow going but in time people
realized sharing could work and we
started holding social events. New
friendships formed. Gaining more trust,
we began addressing drug use, alcoholism,
sexual harassment and spousal abuse. For
the first time, people talked publicly
about personal violations and worked
together to reduce them. We had
setbacks. It took time. It was one
thing to get folks involved in some very
specific project. It was much harder to
get folks to continue relating after a
project ended. But this was RPS housing
organizing seeking a new world.
HARRIET LENNON
We next wondered how to provide housing
for the homeless. Who would build it?
Why would they build it? With what
financing?
EXT. MILITARY BASE - DAY
Young Harriet Lennon talks with soldiers at a military base.

Instead of learning to kill or how to be
a bigger criminal, why can't soldiers and
inmates cooperatively make their own
decisions while generating a much-needed
product?
SOLDIER
(Incredulous)
You want military bases and prisons to
construct housing?

Yes, exactly, why not? And to give
soldiers and inmates, once they leave the
military or prison, first claim on the
houses they helped build.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Going a step back, when did you become
radical? What caused it?
HARRIET LENNON
At nineteen, in community college, I
heard progressive talks about racism,
sexism, and global warming. I was
sympathetic, but more into music, movies,
and social media. One night I was
talking with a friend who turned out, to
my surprise, to be very radical.
INT. COMMUNITY COLLEGE - DORM ROOM
Young Harriet Lennon and COLLEGE FRIEND sit. Beyonce and Angela Davis
posters look on from above.
COLLEGE FRIEND
The Wall Street march was great but we
obviously need more, including on our
campus.

Come on. That will never happen.
COLLEGE FRIEND
Why not? Why assume indignity? Why
endure harsh circumstances? Why not seek
change?

I take for granted harsh circumstances
because the world is harsh and thinking
it doesn’t have to be is deluded. I am
not cynical, I am aware.
COLLEGE FRIEND
As a biologist would you assume cancer
was incurable at the outset of seeking
health? As an engineer would you assume
a bridge couldn't span a river at the
outset of trying to connect cities on
either side? Why do you assume
oppression is forever? Why do you favor
failure? Do you fear success?
HARRIET LENNON
Was I jaded? Did I always see the social
glass half empty? In a semester my
roommate turned me from aggressive cynic
to cautious optimist. I joined RPS.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
(turns to Cynthia)
Cynthia, what drew you to RPS?
CYNTHIA PARKS
My family lost its home when I was eight.
People I knew lost theirs too.
MONTAGE - LIFE
-- Family of five living in two room ramshackle apartment.
-- Family plunged into anger, despair, alcohol and opioid

addiction.
-- Families and organizers fight house eviction.
CYNTHIA PARKS
At times I had rats for roommates. I
felt incredible tension and saw
unforgettable violence. Life was
seriously harsh, but as I got older, I
met folks devoted to preventing evictions
or helping evicted families find new
homes. Experiencing housing activists
helping people and real estate developers
and bankers evicting people decided my
life.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
And turning toward RPS...
CYNTHIA PARKS
Housing organizing required empathy. We
had to be aware. We had to be confident.
We had to utilize means at hand to seek
attainable ends. We had to be patient
with people but impatient with
institutions. it was a good fit...
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about personal difficulties joining
RPS?
CYNTHIA PARKS
Activists I first encountered had lots of
education and were comfortable and
appeared confident. They expected rural
folks who looked, dressed, and talked
like me to defer to them. That made me
unsure, hurt, but also angry. Luckily
some folks tried to not just welcome me
but to learn from my ways of relating.
My redneck activist friends who used gun
culture to reach into rural communities
horrified some lefties but taught others
new ways to reach out. Seeing that made
me realize I could and should contribute.
(MORE)
CYNTHIA PARKS (CONT'D)
The hardest part was always getting from
others, and even my having own allegiance
to something larger and beyond the
immediate moment.
INT. HOSPITAL OFFICE - DAY
Miguel Guevara queries MARK FEYNMAN 52, in nurse's outfit and BARBARA
BETHUNE, 50, in doctor's gown. Medical poster on wall features quote,
“Do No Harm.”
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Mark, can you tell us how you first got
heavily involved?
MARK FEYNMAN
I went to the first RPS convention as a
working class nurse hostile to doctors’
elitism. I doubted the convention would
even address my concerns, much less
elevate them.
INT. AUDITORIUM - DAY
Young Mark Feynman addresses doctors and nurses in auditorium. Sign:

"Welcome to First RPS Convention."
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

We nurses hate bad health care. We want
better, but we also want respect. You
doctors with your power and income at our
expense. It's got to stop. Is that a
priority here?
MARK FEYNMAN
At the convention we celebrated our
emergent program and formed Health Care
Workers United to organize medical
workplaces and win broader health policy
reforms. We investigated and learned
about hospital finances. We attracted
support and initiated positive campaigns.
But before all that, we held some
sessions and invited doctors to one.
INT. AUDITORIUM - DAY
Speech continues.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

We respect your work but feel you are
overpaid, overprotective, and overly
hostile. Do you really think you deserve
more income, status, and power than us?
YOUNG DOCTOR
(shouts from the audience)
Damn right I do. Can you repair a heart?
Can you breathe life into a dying child?
I can, you can’t. I should earn more. I
should have more say and more status. I
mean, really, isn’t it obvious? How can
you think otherwise?
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

(stares at young doctor)
You ignore that our different tasks - and
different life circumstances - give us
different means to attain knowledge which
in turn enforces our differences in
income and power.
(plaintive but militant)
I know many of you doctors like lawyers
and managers and others with empowering
work situations sincerely believe you are
properly empowered and rewarded. I know
many of you really believe we workers are
dumb, parochial, and should be grateful.
Many of you really feel workers should
join a movement for a new society, but
not make decisions. We should help you
dump the old boss for you to become the
new boss. You should lead, we should
follow. You should order, we should
obey. And you know what, sometimes we
nurses even doubt that we can handle
empowered work. Sometimes we accept that
we deserve less income and say. Or if we
are not submissive, sometimes we
furiously want doctors out of RPS. Even
worse, we get so angry we get baited into
denigrating knowledge and skill. But
other times, like now, we see we must
eliminate class division not only in
hospitals but throughout society. We see
we must involve doctors, lawyers, and
other coordinator class members in RPS
but without letting you dominate RPS. We
see ourselves and all workers empowered.
ROTUND DOCTOR
(calls out from audience)
If you are right, why don't more nurses
say so?
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

Because we have families to feed.
Because you work us ragged. A better
question is why lots of us do publicly
address these class issues. It's
probably because our jobs aren't as
successful as most working class jobs at
disempowering us. We are subordinated
like other workers, but we are less
socialized into accepting our plight.
(MORE)
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN (CONT'D)
Still, even once we become aware and
active, we don't want to antagonize
doctors into rejecting change. So we
often put a lid on our feelings. What is
your excuse for keeping us down?
SHORT DOCTOR
(calls out from audience)
I read progressive media. I don't see
this concern. Is it just you?
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

You don't expect mainstream media to
question private ownership because it
would violate the owners' interests.
Similarly, in alternative media
coordinator class rule by those who are
empowered gets ignored because our media
is run by coordinator class members like
you, and due to background, experience,
and material interests, they, like you,
ignore these issues.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Mark, what pushed you to ever broader
radicalism?
MARK FEYNMAN
General class anger and also insights
about race and gender played a big role.
But so did my daily circumstances. How
often could I silently see the effects of
pollution, monopoly-priced care,
paternalistic doctoring, and bullet
wounds? How often could I timidly
address overdoses, obesity, hunger, and
addiction? How often could I abet
overuse of antibiotics and rampant
hospital and pharmaceutical profiteering
and not become activist?
EXT. PARK - DAY
Young Mark Feynman and YOUNG LYDIA LUXEMBURG, 73, dressed like 40,
walk, in 2020. Child with red wagon goes by.
YOUNG LYDIA LUXEMBURG

In the sixties and seventies I could
rebel, so I tuned in to the reality
around me. I could fight, so I turned on
to my full feelings of human solidarity.
I could revolt, so I joined the militant
radical path of the day. Later, things
got less active.
(MORE)
YOUNG LYDIA LUXEMBURG (CONT'D)
I could still dissent, but if I expressed
my outrage like I had earlier my acts
would be misunderstood. And since I
couldn't express my deepest feelings, I
didn't retain them. I tuned out parts of
myself.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

Do you remember your feelings from the
earlier days?

I wrote a long poem, I suppose you might
call it, as the dedication for a book in
the early seventies. I still remember
reading it aloud for some friends before
I decided to include it in the book.
INT. LIVING ROOM - EVENING
YOUNGEST LYDIA LUXEMBURG, 29, and FRIENDS chat. Revolutionary art and
posters overhead.
YOUNGEST LYDIA LUXEMBURG

I wrote a dedication for my new book but
I am worried it is too much and too long.
Can I read it and you let me know?
MALE FRIEND
Sure, go ahead. As long as we can be
done before lunch!

Before dinner, anyway, okay.
(reads, emotionally)
For workers on the line, bored, tired,
and robbed of their creative days/ For
women raped, pinched, door-opened, de-
cultured, feminized, beaten, maimed,
married, asylum-ed/ For Blacks, Latinos,
Native Americans, Asians, nameless,
robbed of dignity, lynched, harassed, low-
paid, running, jailed/ For the drunks
and addicts, the worn out and the never
lively, for the old and ill who should be
long lived and wise/ For
the young, schooled and unschooled, end-
running boredom, doing drugs, stealing
sex and losing love, trying to escape or
trying to find a way in/ For those on
welfare or off, looking in or looking
out, employed or unemployed, alone or in
(MORE)
YOUNGEST LYDIA LUXEMBURG (CONT'D)
pairs, hiding their sex or flaunting it,
angry, sad, mad/ For those who feel less
than they could feel, for those who are
less than they could be, exploited,
starved, cheated, tortured, ambushed,
kidnapped, death squadded/ For all the
world's citizens suffering brutality and
indignity, electric shocks and murdered
relatives, starvation and working for
pennies, the military boot and the
cultural stamp/ For the empire's
citizens and the empire's enemies...
FEMALE FRIEND
Sounds a bit like Dylan...

I hope so, yes. But it isn't done. For
the strikers, saboteurs, feminists,
anarchists, and nationalists, occupiers
and death defiers/ For the New Leftists,
Panthers, Women's Liberationists, Farm
Workers, Puerto Rican Nationalists, for
those of AIM and their relatives who
resisted and died in the past and who
nonetheless live on/ For the ones who
dodged the draft, for those who went and
disrupted, and for those who went and
died, or lived/
For the French in the streets in May and
the Italians in Autumn, for the Mexicans
in Summer and the Czechs and Chinese/
For everyone who has fought, fights, or
will fight for a better world than they
were, are, or are going to be
bequeathed...
MALE FRIEND
Great, but how about the enemies we face?

I am working on adding some againsts,
like against doctors who deal in dollars
not dignity, owners, administrators,
bosses, rapists, dealers of bad hands,
intellectuals who keep knowledge as if it
were their private property, who enshrine
their own ignorance under false halos,
who can justify barbarism or technically
dissect it as their interests require,
but who never shed a tear...
EXT. WALKING IN PARK - DAY
Conversation continues.
MARK FEYNMAN
That is what Lydia could feel in the
sixties and through the seventies.
(MORE)
MARK FEYNMAN (CONT'D)
Looking back, I can see it was RPS
sentiments taking shape. But in the
eighties and nineties, and nearly twenty
years into this century, too, few people
understood such feelings, so she buried
them. For her, the birth of RPS ended a
long emotional coma. She belatedly
became myself again. Do you remember
when the Swedish 16 year old Greta
Thunberg told off the U.S. Congress. I
think in some ways that spurred lots of
emotional awakening.

Hearing Luxemburg, I realized that
reduced empathy helped me function daily
in hospitals, but writ large it
buttressed the system. From there, I
asked what social policies, behaviors,
habits, and requirements caused people to
be unhealthy? What changes could improve
the situation? Our health movement's
early growth freed our feelings.
EXT. DEMO - DAY
Various rallies culminate in massive Chicago march.
MARK FEYNMAN (V.O.)

We initiated various boycotts of
unhealthy products and their
manufacturers. Then we took up
demands about pharmaceutical companies
who bribed doctors to write excessive
prescriptions. We took up single payer
health care. We initiated mass campaigns
to serve rural and low-income areas and
treat children in schools. By 2027 over
200,000 nurses from around the country
marched in Chicago and many more held
marches elsewhere. Incredible feelings
of empathy, anger, hope, and desire
fueled our efforts. Soon after, we
campaigned in medical schools to revamp
curricula and in hospitals to overthrow
the idea of interning being like boot
camp. Strikes and occupations played a
big role, films and writing too, but most
important was ceaseless, informed,
effective, organizing.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Can you tell us of a personally pivotal
event in your RPS days?
MARK FEYNMAN (V.O.)

It was in 2023. One day at work I went to
lunch and happened to sit with a hospital
psychiatrist acquaintance of mine. We
got to talking, and he took great
offense, feeling my views implied he was
insufficiently concerned about the well-
being of nurses as well as being classist
toward working people generally.
INT. HOSPITAL LUNCH ROOM - DAY
Mark and PSYCHIATRIST at lunch argue. Psychiatrist leaps out of his

seat, leans on the table to hold himself, and his nose moves inches
from Mark's. He is trembling with anger and seems about to assault
Mark.
PSYCHIATRIST
I don't have to take this from you! You
are purely mental! You have no feelings!
You are uncaring! You are manipulative!
You are controlling! You think you are
so smart, but I am a doctor of the mind!
I am smarter!
MARK FEYNMAN
How could a trained psychiatrist who
routinely had to maintain his calm in
difficult situations get so hostile over
such an indirect affront? It made me
think about how to communicate about
issues of coordinator class dominance
over workers without polarizing folks.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I often felt the butt end of similar
anger. What did you conclude?
MARK FEYNMAN
I saw the intense emotional insecurity
that drove coordinator class folks to
defend their views of themselves, and I
saw the potential of that inclination to
subvert reason and personal connection.
I saw a person more aware than most about
coordinator class and working class
relations become more polarized and
hostile than people whose views were much
further away from mine. I questioned my
approach.
(MORE)
I suspect a lot of people in RPS had
similar experiences, and our history
suggests we learned from them.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
(Turns to Barbara)
Indeed, I certainly did. Barbara, as a
doctor, were you like that psychiatrist?
How did you feel about nurses?
BARBARA BETHUNE
I disdained. I dismissed. I gave their
concerns lip service and even tried to
support nurses, but I ultimately saw them
as wannabe doctors who couldn't make the
grade. I said I have nurse friends, not
unlike during Jim Crow racism white folks
said they had black friends. I thought
nurses should feel thankful that I
administered them. Yes, I could have
attacked someone like Mark for
challenging me. At the first RPS
convention, I struggled to register
Mark's message. I saw how many notions
he challenged and felt how radicalizing
his words were.
INT. MEETING ROOM - DAY
Young Mark Feynman addresses nurses and doctors in meeting room. RPS
flag and sign welcome all to first RPS convention.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

Can you see how your view hides from you
the gigantic volume of talent stifled to
maintain hospital hierarchies? Can you
see how you maintain your advantages by
denigrating us? If society didn't squash
desires, most nurses could do some
doctoring, and if being a doctor didn't
appeal to some of us, or wasn't in our
range of talents, we could do other
empowering tasks. It is disgusting for
society to have relatively few people do
all the empowering tasks and then use
their empowerment to make the rest of us
believe we deserve less.
BARBARA BETHUNE (V.O.)

The way I finally understood Mark was by
seeing that with racism white people
convinced themselves they deserved better
circumstances. Whites are worthy.
Blacks and browns are not. I saw the
similarity between that racism and my
classist attitude toward nurses.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about broader economic views?
BARBARA BETHUNE
I had heard RPS economic ideas earlier
and deemed them ridiculous. Balance jobs
for empowerment? Give income for
duration, intensity, and onerousness of
work? Self-manage? RPS said those
things, and I thought, Come on. Get
serious. It’s stupidity on steroids. My
view was remove owners, sure, but leave
people like me in charge. But I vividly
remember a moment in the first convention
after the meeting with nurses that so
challenged me. There was a talk about
RPS-type economics and after it ended, I
spoke to the speaker.
INT. CONVENTION HALL MEETING ROOM - EVENING
YOUNG BARBARA BETHUNE, 29, doctor, walks up to the speaker, Young Lydia
Luxembourg, wearing RPS hat.
YOUNG BARBARA BETHUNE

For years I dismissed your economic
vision as silly and impossible. But I
dismissed it without engaging it. But
hearing you describe it, I now realize I
did that because of my own class
interests. I apologize for that.

We are all twisted and fed by our
upbringing, schooling, and social roles.
Having been subjected to all that, it is
no sin to have some elitist beliefs.
What’s hard, and exemplary, is to
understand and jettison those beliefs.

But the views were ignored for so long,
wasn’t that difficult?

(Distraught...)
Of course it was. My partner for decades
died thinking that ideas we favored were
dead, that our efforts were useless. I
felt alone, often, honestly, also
disregarded, even discarded. But I lived
on, and now you give me renewed hope.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Mark, your speech at the convention
occurred not long after Trump’s exit.
Was it connected?
MARK FEYNMAN
The anger of a good part of Trump's
supporters was hostility to a perceived
class enemy. But the class they most
viscerally hated was not capitalists.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Workers didn’t hate capitalists?
MARK FEYNMAN
You have to realize that we workers
rarely if ever personally encounter
owners. On the other hand, we often
encounter doctors, lawyers, accountants,
engineers, and others with highly
empowering jobs, elevated status, and
great wealth. We daily encounter and
obey what we came to call coordinators.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
And that's who you hated?
MARK FEYNMAN
Why not? They routinely treated us like
children. They dressed and talked
differently than us. They enjoyed
different movies and TV. They expected
us to stay out of their way and to follow
their instructions. Everyone hates being
rendered powerless, considered inferior,
and paternalized.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But you had to get essential aid from
coordinators. You had to accept their
arrogance to get the services they offer.
MARK FEYNMAN
Exactly, while our hostility for
managers, doctors, lawyers, and the rest
was warranted, on average we workers
depended on and obeyed coordinators and
humiliatingly even wanted our kids to
become them.
INT. MEETING IN LARGE ROOM AT CONVENTION - DAY
Young Mark Feynman addresses audience.

YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN
Not long ago, Trump won. Why didn't
activists' answers about the state of
working class lives resonate more with
workers than did the ramblings of a
demented billionaire who treated workers
with contempt? How could decades of
organizing leave so many workers so
susceptible to a narcissistic
reactionary?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
What's complicated? Racism and sexism
overrode reason. The fault was the
voters warped beliefs.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

That was true for some. The misogyny was
incredible and so too the racism. But I
think decades of prior organizing had
often been rooted in coordinator class
connections, assumptions, and values. It
had often had manners, style, tone,
taste, vocabulary, and policies that
dismissed working people. Workers felt
this even when some electoral candidate,
anti-nuke organizer, campus radical, or
obscure writer said screw the 1 percent.
Leftists’ manners and styles left us
feeling they despised us. Movements
talked a lot about evil owners and unjust
profit but showed no interest in
relations between coordinators and
workers. Movements didn't hear workers,
didn't respect workers, and didn't
elevate much less follow workers. For
many white workers suffering indignities,
Trump seemed to offer something new.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Barbara, how did you become doctor?
BARBARA BETHUNE
I went to medical school but became
frustrated. After medical school, an
internship pressured me to jump
ridiculous hurdles and accept that I
shouldn't fight the system. I could
whine to friends away from work, we all
did, but I shouldn't challenge employers.
Obeying let me graduate but it also
prepared me to impose similar insanity on
those who came after. Don’t get me
wrong. I cared about patients. I had a
soul. But hospital roles undercut my
intentions.
(MORE)
BARBARA BETHUNE (CONT'D)
To become a doctor I had to fulfill
doctor rituals and defend doctor
privileges. I accepted restraints. I
bludgeoned those below. I sought growing
income.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But then you resisted?
BARBARA BETHUNE
Yes, I began to see interning as
sophisticated hazing. To test my
impression I even visited a military boot
camp and watched new soldiers undergo
training.
EXT. MILITARY TRAINING FIELD - DAY
Soldiers go through their paces. DRILL SERGEANT bosses them.
BARBARA BETHUNE
Boot camp includes learning to shoot, to
work together, to handle danger, just
like interning includes useful medical
learning, but boot camp mainly produces
soldiers ready, willing, and sometimes
even eager to kill on command. Boot camp
educates recruits to ask no questions.
It removes social and moral resistance.
Boot camp graduates unquestioningly
fulfill their roles.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
And that reminded you of interning?
BARBARA BETHUNE
Interning creates doctors who defend huge
salaries against any challenge regardless
of the health implications for patients
and society. Doctors who abet
pharmaceutical profit-seeking by
promoting excessive opioid use. Doctors
who denigrate nurses and exclude them
from medical decisions at the expense of
patient well being. Doctors who defend
incredibly inflated incomes by using
excessively exclusionary medical school
practices to keep down the number of
doctors. I became curious so I looked
and found similar dynamics for lawyers...
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Becoming a lawyer was also like basic
training? You could have looked at
journalism.
BARBARA BETHUNE
Yes, training for all empowered
professions conveys skills, knowledge,
and confidence, but it also trains
recipients to use their knowledge on
behalf of themselves and those above at
the expense of those below.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But surely doctors, lawyers, and
journalists try to be ethical?
BARBARA BETHUNE
Yes, but without challenging their role
assignments because we believe
challenging our roles would change
nothing and incur personal loss. We
doctors deliver medicine to the sick if
treating them won’t disrupt hospital
hierarchies. We don’t address the
underlying causes of sickness. Role
structures in hospitals, like in
churches, law firms, corporate board
rooms, TV networks, and political parties
induce going along to get along.
Rejecting one's role seems impossible.
Complying with one's role morphs from
something we do under duress to who we
are. We don’t see ourselves as hijacking
our skills. We see ourselves as innately
better. Someone who retains sufficient
humanity to resist seems saint-like or
crazy. And the same class logic holds
for lawyers, journalists, and all
empowered workers.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
So what changed?
BARBARA BETHUNE
When we went to the convention, we met
other medical workers from around the
country and realized we had fewer
differences than we feared. We shared
stories and discussed changes to fight
for. Habit and fear gave way to
innovation and hope.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What plans emerged?
BARBARA BETHUNE
Seeking comprehensive single payer health
care, fighting misuse of medicines,
bringing doctors to poor locales,
empowering nurses, changing the income
and decision-making structure of the
profession, and agitating for more
responsible food policies and more
healthful ecological policies and
work conditions.
EXT. RALLY AT PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY - DAY
Young Barbara Bethune addresses demonstrators.

To combat misusing prescriptions we have
to reveal how pharmaceutical companies
not only vastly overcharge, but
aggressively overprescribe with massive
over-advertising. We have to show the
true costs of producing drugs and the
insanely high markups imposed by
monopolistic pricing. We have to shine a
light on prescribing unnecessary
surgeries and addictive pain relief.
BARBARA BETHUNE
The practices we unearthed were
nauseating, but we were even more shocked
to discover that most people found
grotesque medical malfeasance
unsurprising.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Everybody knew?
BARBARA BETHUNE
Not the details but, yes, everybody knew
so we realized we mainly needed to
convince people medical malfeasance
wasn’t inevitable. We brought class
action suits wherein young claimants
fought misuse of mood-altering
medications. Elderly claimants fought
companies trying to grab all their
savings by entrapping them in fruitless
and often horribly harmful and useless
life extending therapies. Those addicted
to opioids fought pharmaceutical drug
dealing. Everyone fought the overuse of
antibiotics that risked pandemics.
EXT. RALLY AT PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY - DAY
Young Barbara Bethune continues.

(militantly)
It is time to undertake a national
boycott of pharmaceutical culprits. It
is time to link these campaigns to larger
ones about the roots of the problems in
the overall medical system, polity, and
economy. We have to reveal that people
can not only win and preserve an
immediate gain, but keep winning more.
We reject doctor arrogance and support
nurses and other medical workers and non-
medical staff. Medicine is a rapaciously
self-seeking trade. It is sick and we
must operate on it.

BARBARA BETHUNE
My other focus was challenging elitist
dynamics inside hospitals and health care
generally. Workplace racism and sexism
had been addressed with considerable
progress, particularly by the then recent
#MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements,
but workplace class division had barely
been addressed at all. We got people to
talk at meetings. We sought greater
income, more influence, and access to
more skills for nurses. The trick was to
fight for immediate gains in ways
developing commitment to a larger vision
for the future.
INT. GOVERNOR'S OFFICE - DAY
Miguel Guevara interviews Governor Celia Curie in her office. Hollywood

memorabilia visible.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Celia Curie, can you tell us how you
first became radical?
CELIA CURIE
My father's brother raped me when I was
fifteen. I didn't tell anyone. I was
afraid and thought it was my fault. The
fallout of me speaking up would have been
horrendous for my dad and for my uncle's
family. Afterward, I did research on the
internet, alone, to learn more about
rape. I became indebted to many feminist
writers who opened my door to radicalism.
(MORE)
CELIA CURIE (CONT'D)
Horrors like being raped, watching a
loved one killed, having a parent jailed
or ravaged by unemployment, alcohol, or
drugs dominates many peoples' early
memories. Such harms can cripple but
also educate and inspire.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Just ten years later RPS was percolating,
and Hollywood RPS got going. Do you
remember how it started?
CELIA CURIE
The first Hollywood chapter got going
when some actors met to discuss how they
might relate to RPS. It was shortly
after the first convention and we took a
few meetings to settle on joining.
INT. ACTOR'S OPULENT LIVING ROOM - DAY
YOUNG CELIA CURIE, 27, Hollywood actress, meets with group of actors in
an enormous, ornate living room. One wall is all window overlooking a
massive deck with a huge pool. Beyond that floats the Pacific. Fancy
artwork adorns all walls.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

We should reach out to other people in
our artistic communities to join RPS. We
should agitate to make our industry
better reflect worthy values and aims.
We should reach out to the broader
population using film and our visibility
as actors. We can do what #MeToo did,
but more broadly.
CELIA CURIE
It started with eleven people. Seven were
women who had been active in #MeToo.
Joining RPS was a little like deciding to
relate to a film. We read a text. We
assessed participants. We evaluated
aims. We joined. We began reaching out
to others in Hollywood to join RPS.
EXT. PARK - DAY
Young Celia Curie walks and talks with ACTOR. HAPPY CHILD crosses
their path. SAD DRUNK slumps on bench.
ACTOR
Why should I address what I would rather
ignore? It would cost time.
(MORE)
ACTOR (CONT'D)
It would alienate producers. And what
would I do, other than talk?
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

We are talking and talking matters. But
I understand that we need activities
beyond talking to relate to. So help us
propose some.
CELIA CURIE
Like everyone, the roles I occupied in
society largely determined who I was by
the requirements they imposed on me.
However, after joining RPS, though
Hollywood’s daily pressures, contracts,
media machinations, and expectations
still pushed and pulled me, RPS became
who I was at a more basic level than the
rest.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Didn't obstacles intimidate you? I
remember fearing for my career as a
journalist when I started supporting RPS,
and at the same time doubting our
potential, wondering if I was risking all
for nothing.
CELIA CURIE
I don't know how to explain our reaction
to obstacles other than to say it wasn't
a time to hesitate. We had to agitate to
make the change we wanted. We feared
high water everywhere. But I suspect the
earlier rise of feminist and anti-racist
demands among actors and their successes
spurred our can-do mindset.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
So what emerged?
CELIA CURIE
First, we assembled courses about current
society, better society, and
possibilities of the film industry. As
actors we were used to studying a lot
before performing, so this step came
easily. Second, we uncovered and
publicized the pay rates of everyone in
Hollywood and then agitated for more
equitable relations. You can imagine how
hard doing that was and how it went over,
but with informed persistence we went
from our appearing crazy to those
defending old ways appearing greedy.
(MORE)
Third, we pressured local media producers
to give space and tools to grassroots
participants and we created short films
and later some full-length ones promoting
RPS ideas and program. This was in our
wheelhouse.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Do you remember the meeting where you
first got together?
CURIE
I remember we met at a famous actor's
house. The setting was a bit
intimidating.
INT. ACTOR'S OPULENT LIVING ROOM - DAY
Eleven ACTORS meet.
HOST ACTOR
We should do as we have done, publicly
favor candidates, hold funding events for
candidates. Give the candidates money.
Help them win. For us to do less is not
enough.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

Seriously? You know current conditions
require more than band aids. Just
donating won't end global warming,
poverty, and war. Society needs a
rewrite.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What opposition did you face?
CELIA CURIE
The biggest obstacle was artists'
incredible elitism.
EXT. MOVIE SET - DAY
Young Celia Curie talks with TALL ACTOR, walking past a setting for a
military scene.
TALL ACTOR
We are unlike other workers. We should
enjoy incomes commensurate to our talent.
Having to do any shit work, like you
favor with your nonsense about balancing
empowering work, would sap our focus. We
are special.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE
Artists are creative, of course, but so
are scientists, doctors, designers, and
builders, and with training and new jobs,
everyone could be creative for part of
their work. Saying actors, directors, or
other art workers shouldn't do a fair
share of rote work implies others who do
creative tasks also shouldn't. It says
twenty percent of all those who work
should do only empowering work and eighty
percent should do only disempowering
work.
TALL ACTOR
Yes, and why not? Doing rote work would
cut into our creativity. Why lose
creativity for some kind of needless
correctness?
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

Yes, doing a fair mix of empowering and
rote tasks will reduce current actors’
time for acting, but everyone doing
balanced work will utilize the potential
of vast new constituencies.
TALL ACTOR
Even if that was true, it's insane to
think the public should plan art. We
plan it. The public likes it or not. We
know what’s creative, what we can do, how
we can do it. Negotiating art as part of
an economic plan, the RPS way, would mean
I do what others decide. That would end
art.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

You now do what executive producers
decide, but in any case, workers and
consumers self-managing doesn't mean the
public decides what goes in a novel,
play, or film, any more than it means the
public decides what research a scientist
does, or how an architect designs a
building. The public decides what
benefits society.
TALL ACTOR
What if they don't want what we do? No
more films?
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

If the public wants no films, creating
films wouldn't count as socially valued
work. If the public wants few films, the
number of actors would be accordingly
low. The same applies to music, novels,
engineering, and medicine.
(MORE)
YOUNG CELIA CURIE (CONT'D)
But the public doesn't have to appreciate
every film, painting, song, performance,
construction method, or research project
to know that it wants society to have
art, engineering, and science. The
public, with each person doing a fair
share of empowering tasks and enjoying
good education, would together settle on
how much they want. That would determine
the amount of art workers can produce for
income. Art workers would then decide
what to create and how.
TALL ACTOR
But not everyone is equally creative,
writes equally, can equally convey
emotions and passion on screen, or in
text, or music, or a painting. Not
everyone is equally smart, fast, or
strong either. We are born different.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

Yes, and to claim we have no inborn
differences would be absurd. But
education and training also matter.
TALL ACTOR
Of course education and training matter.
But even if you had way more of each, you
wouldn't be the actor I am.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

Perhaps, and we should certainly benefit
from and celebrate the great talents that
some have...
TALL ACTOR
If you celebrate differences, why in its
vision does RPS try to level us by having
everyone do a fair share of rote tasks?
YOUNG CELIA CURIE

Virtually all human qualities come in
different ranges, but that doesn’t mean
only a relative few people should do
engaging, uplifting, empowering tasks. I
celebrate inborn differences but I also
reject showering those born with faster
reflexes, better sight, quicker
calculation, stronger muscles, a
painter’s eye, or a surgeon’s hand, with
wealth and power.
TALL ACTOR
But we contribute more. People love our
product. It brightens lives. It enriches
souls. We should earn more.
YOUNG CELIA CURIE
First, current differences in income
don’t mainly reflect different talent but
past power and luck. More, providing
rewards for excelling is neither
necessary nor just. Celebrate
excellence, sure but also advance
material equity and social solidarity.
Admire genius but also foster
participation.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I want to get into the details of RPS
aims soon, but even now, can you tell us
how RPS success would alter future
artistry?
CELIA CURIE
The audience for artistic work will grow
due to people having more time for
enjoyment, appreciation, and
inspiration, but artistic workers, like
all others, will receive equitable
incomes and enjoy a fair mix of tasks in
industries that relate to the will of
both workers and consumers. Society will
celebrate great artists, but it will not
excessively enrich them.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Will creativity decline?
CELIA CURIE
I would guess we will have fewer special
effects, less emphasis on the psyches and
mayhem of murderers, and more creativity.
However, high levels of excellent art
will not be our only criteria of
judgement. Miguel, no doubt you have
encountered similar issues in journalism.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Almost identical.
INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN, 29, in jeans, teaching ACTORS at actors RPS School.
RPS flag hangs above.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

Consider a non-artistic situation.
Suppose you produce shirts. Should you
only maximize the quality and quantity of
shirts that come out your door?
BALD ACTOR
Sure, of course.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

So to increase quantity and quality you
would work people to death, dump them in
an alley, and call in replacements? You
would produce more shirts than people
want? You would produce only exotic,
fancy shirts? You would produce more
shirts, workers be damned, environment be
damned, consumers be damned?
BALD ACTOR
Okay, no. I would take into account
those working, the environment, those
receiving product, and those not
receiving other products that could have
been produced instead. I get that.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

And that’s why RPS's cooperative planning
recognizes that it's fine to sometimes
seek less output or settle for just good
output if seeking more or better would
increase waste, impose too much hardship
on those involved, require too many
resources, or generate too much
pollution. Still, people in each
industry will provide more, and the
public will benefit more, because the
whole population will have its creative
potentials nurtured. And what’s true for
shirt-making is equally true for films.
BALD ACTOR
I still worry the lost contribution from
highly talented folks doing some rote
tasks won't be offset by previously rote
workers doing some creative tasks. Rote
workers lack the needed talent.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

We can't all do everything. Nor will we
all be geniuses at a particular thing.
But eighty percent aren't born to be
menial. Not being best doesn't imply you
can't contribute at all. If one hundred
children all enjoy the same conditions,
and your child comes in 21st, 45th, or
even 100th in a race, does that mean your
child can't run at all, much less can't
jump or draw?
BALD ACTOR
How can you be so sure those now doing
only rote work could do empowering work
successfully? It sounds like wishful
thinking. You want it. You assert it.
You’re deluding yourself.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN
Whatever our inborn differences, the
overriding fact is that society represses
eighty percent of the population into
seeming ill-equipped for empowering
involvement. We don’t genetically lack
sufficient creativity to participate.
Society's pliers crush it out of us.
BALD ACTOR
Saying that is so doesn’t make it so. I
want to fly, but I don't say I can. I
would like to be a composer, but wanting
that doesn’t cause it.
YOUNG MARK FEYNMAN

It wasn't long ago that men claimed women
couldn't doctor, lawyer, engineer, or
discover. Their argument was look
around, women don't do those things and
it is because they can't. Same for
whites evaluating blacks. Blacks don't,
therefore they can't. But it was
nonsense. Women and blacks didn't
because they were reviled, excluded,
denigrated, denied, crushed, and even
killed. Women were about half the
population, and blacks roughly a tenth.
Now you denigrate about eighty percent.
A worker in a factory isn't Einstein
because she can't be, just like you and I
can't be. But that same worker doesn't
do engaging, empowering tasks not because
she can't, but because she has been
excluded while others hoarded benefits
she was denied.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
When you attended your first Hollywood
meeting, you weren't yet revolutionary.
What brought you the rest of the way?
CELIA CURIE
The literature I was reading taught me a
lot, but we all tend to become what we do
so when our group got revolutionary, I
did too. But I think the main thing was
that folks in RPS learned to disagree
without taking for granted they were
right. Our emphasis became learning
something new, not defending what we
previously said. Instead of taking
pleasure in calling someone wrong and
dismissing her by angry assertion, RPS
folks learned to want to find what was
right even when it meant we were wrong.
(MORE)
We based our image of ourselves on our
readiness to change, not on staying
unchanged. Conversations happened.
Accommodations occurred. Truth trumped
oneupmanship. That, for me, was being
revolutionary.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
When did you begin to feel the struggle
was assured of victory?
CELIA CURIE
When we made our first RPS movie. It was
way more radical than most films. It was
not a technical extravaganza, not a
thriller, not a mystery, not an
exploration of murder and mayhem, not a
celebration of psychosis, not a requited
or unrequited love story, not a cartoon,
not a comedy. It wasn't horror,
dystopian, or utopian. It wasn't about
aliens coming to us or our visiting them.
It wasn't a coming of age or a becoming
senile story. It had no overgrown
animals, super heroes, or pathological
villains, no trial, no crime. No one
dying. No one being saved. It wasn’t a
remake, a sequel or prequel. It fit no
template. It had no big star overcoming
personal trauma and deadly danger. It
featured a task: to win a new society.
It had obstacles to overcome: systemic
power and prejudiced habits from the
past. But it was idea-driven. The
process was protagonist. The star was
future history. Imagine giving an Oscar
to future history.
(pauses in thought)
Yet, first two and then more Hollywood a-
listers took a risky step away from
established conventions to sign on and
make it happen and this told me the film
industry was broadening out. We offered
social substance and out-of-the-box
structure and Hollywood signed on and
gave the screenplay’s participants
distinctive voices and personalities that
the initial screenplay lacked. After our
movie, the subsequent Hollywood marches
sealed my confidence of winning.
MONTAGE - ACTORS' MARCHES
-- Actors march in LA.
-- Directors attend neighborhood meetings in LA.
-- Stunt people march in NYC.
-- Actors march in Boston.

-- Music people march in Cleveland.
CELIA CURIE (V.O.)

Writers, actors, directors, editors,
videographers, designers, drivers,
dressers, stunt people, and music people
marched through Hollywood chanting and
singing, going on to neighborhood
meetings for conversations at community
gatherings. Then we did it in New York,
Chicago, Boston, and Denver.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I hope it’s okay if I ask you a personal
question about acting. You have been
considered beautiful all your life. What
place do you think beauty had in
Hollywood’s past and should have in its
future?
CELIA CURIE
Growing up, I was considered beautiful.
None of us can easily see that in
ourselves, but we can see it in others.
Sometimes a person's beauty can mesmerize
and even addict. But in a horribly
sexist society, there is more to it.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What does beauty do to a person?
CELIA CURIE
Very young I learned behaviors that got
me things I wanted. I didn't understand
why, but I noticed how smiling and being
flirty affected people. The behaviors
became part of who I was. I got
confidence but my personality warped and
I got mired in feelings of entitlement
and suffered guilt.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
And later?
CELIA CURIE
There was harassment and violation and
Hollywood exaggerated such dynamics.
Beauty has been bankable for women, and
for men too. And what has been bankable
has been cultivated and sought, but also
discarded when it fades. Beautiful women
and men were hired and, if you could
perform reasonably well and didn't
alienate producers, you could have a
career, at least until your looks faded.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
So, how do you judge it?
CELIA CURIE
I was eyeballed, hit on, and sexually
fantasized in many people's daily lives.
Producers fostered it. Even aside from
being harassed, think about knowing that
thousands and maybe even millions imagine
doing things with or to you. You know
everyone undervalues everything else you
are. Getting beyond that requires help
but who can you trust? We should
eliminate beauty-based objectification,
but also beauty-based reward.
(pauses, thinking)
Suppose someone is born stupendously
strong, fantastically fast, ridiculously
reflexed, or brilliantly brainy. RPS
says she should not be able to turn her
genetic luck into wealth, power, or
unfair circumstances. But we still
admire great reflexes and fast, clear
thinking, and we know that having those
attributes means we can do some things
which, without them, we could not do.
So, though it makes me nervous, shouldn't
that also apply to appearance? In
existing societies, special traits,
features, qualities, or talents all
convey both benefits and debits. The sex
overlay gives appearance an added
dimension, but any special quality
conveys advantages, pressures, options,
rewards, and costs. So I think in a new
society being lucky in the genetic
lottery should not convey material
advantage, greater say in society, or
freedom from responsibility. Nor should
it impose denials or abuse.
INT. LYDIA'S LIVING ROOM - DAY
Miguel Guevara queries LYDIA LUXEMBURG, 93, still dressed like 40, life-
long feminist activist. Poster of Noam Chomsky giving a talk and one
of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez singing together at Woodstock look on.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Lydia, how did you become radical?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
(pensive, wistful)
In college in the 1960s, I got caught up
in the politics of the times. I hated
violence in Indochina. I hated sexism in
society and in the Left itself. I
rejected women being targets to bomb,
icons to rape, ornaments to parade, or
servants to do tasks men wished to avoid.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But you were in position to be a
beneficiary of wealth and power, not a
victim. Why didn’t you grab what you
could?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
I am not the best self-analyst around but
I would say it was partly moral outrage
and partly a sense of solidarity with
others. I remember feeling more at one
with the Vietnamese and with Mississippi
Blacks than with the New York jet set.
The sixties birthed a set of communal
rather than loner attitudes and desires.
The wealth and power we were supposed to
sell out for repulsed me. Activism
attracted me. Imagine a vegetarian
offered a year’s supply of steaks to
ignore the hunger others were suffering.
The bribe would be no bribe at all. The
truth is, I did grab what I wanted, self
respect.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
When RPS was emerging, you were fifty
years into a lifetime of activism. Did
you feel vindicated?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
I felt some of us knew what was needed 50
years earlier. I was ecstatic it was
happening but I was tormented by how many
lives were diminished by my not
communicating better earlier.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What ideas attracted you to RPS?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Before RPS I looked at the world through
a filter that highlighted certain
relations but blurred others. I saw
gender permeating workplaces but didn't
see class and race permeating families.
RPS's holistic demand to equally
highlight all of life’s defining parts
felt false. I feared if we didn't
elevate kinship above the rest, sexist
men would peripheralize women. Later I
realized RPS was adding more focuses
without diminishing mine.
INT. AUDITORIUM - NIGHT
Young Lydia Luxembourg speaks to audience.

Life is four sided. Economics affects
politics, race, and gender.
(MORE)
Politics affects race, gender, and
economics. Race affects economics,
politics, and gender. Gender affects
economics, politics, and race. It may
seem mantra-like, but to over-elevate any
particular side of life risks missing
much about three other sides.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Come on. We can tell what's more or less
important...

No, over-elevating one side addresses
that one - race, class, politics, OR
gender - but in ways alienating people
more affected by other focuses. It pits
constituencies against one another.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Surely we can avoid that.

Can we? Have we? Imagine we have a
slippery, heavy object to move. Various
teams grab hold. Each team has a part of
the whole that it most wants to move and
can tug better than it can tug any other
part. Each team grabs its part without
noticing or even while denigrating what
other teams are doing. Instead of all
the teams moving all the parts in
concert, and the whole object going where
they together intend, the teams pull and
push at odds with each other and the
whole object moves a bit here and a bit
there, but never far in any direction.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What was the second RPS innovation that
attracted you?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
To be in an economy, you have to work,
buy, and sell. To be in a religion, you
have to relate to its church or other
structures. To be in a family, you have
to be a mother, father, brother, or
sister. In other words, to benefit from
any institution, you have to comply with
whatever roles define that institution.
If you are a nurse, a congressperson, a
priest, a bricklayer, a short-order cook,
a teacher, a journalist, or a mayor,
(MORE)
LYDIA LUXEMBURG (CONT'D)
to gain benefits you have to behave
consistent with your role in the
institutions you navigate. Oppressive
institutions oppress. Corrupt
institutions corrupt. To get along, we
do what our situations require and then
most often become what we do. This is
true in family, mall, church, prison,
government, corporation, military, media,
or criminal cartel.
INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
Young Lydia Luxemburg teaches a class.

To evaluate a workplace, family, or
government, we have to reveal peoples’
roles in that institution. What do the
roles demand? Who do the roles cause us
to become? What roles block our lives?
What new roles would advance our lives?
What can we fight for to move nearer our
goals and prepare to win still more?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Early in RPS I visited a worker-run glass
factory in Cleveland. Workers bemoaned
their new circumstances deteriorating
back toward what they earlier knew.
INT. GLASS FACTORY - DAY
Young Lydia Luxemburg talks with a group of WORKERS.
LATIN GLASS WORKER

(near tears)
We set up a workers' council to have
decision-making by everyone involved. We
equalized wages. We practiced mutual
support. A year passed and in recent
weeks few have attended our council
meetings. Wage differences are
returning. Engaging work is reverting to
boring drudgery.
TALL GLASS WORKER

(distraught)
All the old crap is coming back. It
feels like there is no alternative to
enduring the drudgery we thought we were
escaping. Before he left, a manager
called me naive. He told me that the
inequalities and hierarchies I opposed
were part of being human.
(MORE)
TALL GLASS WORKER (CONT'D)
He said, “face it, you are who you are.
Your joy at taking over the workplace
will evaporate into failure.” I laughed
at him, but now I fear he was right.

When you took over your workplace did you
leave most people doing overwhelmingly
rote, repetitive, and disempowering tasks
while others did mostly empowering tasks?
TALL GLASS WORKER

Yes, of course...

Human nature isn’t bringing back old
ills. An unchanged division of labor is
the culprit. You all grew up in working
class neighborhoods. You had little
formal education. Upon occupying your
factory, most of you wound up with
assembly work while a few wound up with
daily decision-making and other
empowering tasks. Some of you became
rulers while others remained ruled. Some
became coordinator class while others
remained working class. It wasn't
written in your DNA. It flowed from
retaining old roles. Folks who got
empowering tasks, as time passed, saw
themselves as deserving more income and
better conditions. Folks who got
disempowering tasks, as time passed,
became resigned to less income and worse
conditions. That’s the old crap coming
back due to never rejecting the old
division of labor.
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Activists didn't need years of study to
see the situation but its very simplicity
ran afoul of Left academics.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Come on. They didn't like that it was
simple? That’s sad, but familiar.
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
For RPS members to speak plainly and
advocate simple insights upset left
academics who routinely worked hard to
use long sentences and obscure words. It
may sound perverse, but after a time we
realized that when your status, income,
and power spring from having a monopoly
on empowering circumstances,
(MORE)
defending your status, income, and power
depends on making sure your information
and skills remain inaccessible to people
beneath you.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Academics didn't like spreading skills?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
They didn't like us criticizing their
monopolizing empowering work
which included not liking our
demystifying the verbal gibber jabber
that justified their doing so.
Nonetheless, regardless of academics
attacking us, our simple ideas were not
only accessible, they were intensely
practical. It was a long battle with
earlier origins, but a simple lesson
gained ground. If you don't pay close
attention to choices about institutions
and roles, some seemingly inevitable
choice you take for granted can subvert
your best intentions. Retaining the old
division of labor was just such a choice.
That lesson forever affected me.
EXT. BALLFIELD - DAY
Miguel Guevara queries PETER CABRAL, 64, antiracist organizer, prison

organizer, ex-professional ballplayer.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Peter, do you remember your
radicalization?
PETER CABRAL
As a boy, I lived with needles and guns.
Gangs promised income and protected. A
drive-by shooting killed a friend of
mine. After that, I visited relatives in
jail, witnessed a few trials, and saw an
incarceration parade. I got arrested,
but it wasn't anger at my wrongful jail
term that made me political. It was that
for the guards and owners, prison was
about control and profit. For inmates,
it was about surviving and becoming a
more effective criminal. Prison taught
crime. Rhetoric about prison I
previously ignored became reality I
lived. I could accept my lot as a
criminal and make the best of it, or I
could reject my lot and find a different
road. I rejected and ran from crime
toward activism.
EXT. PRISON YARD - DAY
Prisoners gather and talk. YOUNG PETER CABRAL, 42, in prison, listens.
PETER CABRAL (V.O.
I attended a meeting in the prison yard
with a friend. I met new people, and was
provoked. I went to another meeting. It
took time to undo old biases. I had been
arrested on trumped up charges when I was
about to enter the big leagues, and after
six years my incarceration was
overturned. I knew innocents jailed on
trumped up charges, or due to
bureaucratic pressure, racism, and laws
that punish victimless crimes.
MONTAGE - PRISON LIFE
-- Prisoners endure confinement.
-- Young Peter Cabral organizes in prison yard.
-- Striking prisoners repressed by guards.
PETER CABRAL (V.O.)

Entering prison, I had TV and gossip-
induced expectations. I quickly realized
plenty of inmates were innocent or over-
sentenced. I fought to survive. I
learned to relate and navigate. I made
friends with people who saw what I saw.
We built our numbers. We shared texts.
We corresponded with inmates in other
prisons about our experiences and theirs.
By 2024, we didn't have much idea what it
could achieve, but we called a one-day
strike. We were surprised by enormous
participation.
YOUNG PETER CABRAL

(addresses prisoners)
We work at command. We anticipate
repression. We earn subsistence. Our
every breath is overseen. Why not strike
for a living wage? Why not strike to
participate in the decisions that affect
us? Why not strike to improve our
current lives? Why not strike to win
changes to prepare for outside by
developing citizen-needed habits?
EXT. BALLFIELD - DAY
PETER CABRAL
We challenged the behavior of guards and
rules for visiting and for our having
books and internet access. We demanded
our own classes and sought good wages,
conditions, and other rights. It wasn't
easy talking with inmates whose mindsets
were cautious, hostile, and violent.
(MORE)
PETER CABRAL (CONT'D)
It wasn’t easy diminishing racial
hostility. Nonetheless, our strike spread
to other prisons and attracted enormous
outside support.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Why couldn’t the prison silence you?
PETER CABRAL
It wasn't that the guards couldn't
brutalize us into submission. They
could, and they did, often. Our success
was that we didn't fight back. Our
restraint not only won us tremendous
support from outside, it limited the
violence. We would back off, seemingly
lose, and within days be back on strike.
Like Cool Hand Luke, a prison favorite,
we got knocked down but then got back up
over and over. But we took Luke one
better. We didn't individually
heroically escape our hell only to be
repeatedly hauled back. We collectively
repeatedly attacked our hell so in the
end there would be no hell to haul anyone
back to.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Can I ask, do you miss baseball?
PETER CABRAL
In a better world... but I was born in
this one. And you, soccer?
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Yes, I miss it, I watch a lot.
EXT. INTERRACIAL NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY
Miguel Guevara walks with NOAM CARMICHAEL, 47, a bit academic-looking,

a full time organizer, a Muslim, about his joining RPS.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Noam Carmichael, I wonder if you remember
first becoming radical?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
In 2001 I was old enough to get a vague
sense for the change in my situation due
to my religion and appearance. I was
radicalized by trying to understand and
oppose Islamaphobia. Doing so made me
feel one with others. When I got to
college my roommate took one look and I
could feel his fear. For weeks we worked
through that until we became good
friends. I would guess that had we not
dealt with our tensions he would later
have voted for Trump.
(MORE)
NOAM CARMICHAEL (CONT'D)
I learned we had to listen to one another
and work through biases. If we didn't -
much less if we denigrated one another -
we would become enemies.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Can you remember a personally important
event you experienced during the rise of
RPS?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
I often taught in RPS Schools for
Organizers. There were many such schools
focused on society's ills, movement
building, vision of what could be, and
how to attain the desired future.
Sometimes on a campus, sometimes in a
workplace, sometimes in an apartment
complex. Sometimes the schools were for
people in some industry, like the
Hollywood schools that began in 2022 and
propelled the whole extended project.
The schools typically ran for at least a
week and included classes, discussions,
and time to socialize. About two-thirds
in, after we reached a level of trust and
positive energy, we would have a night
session to answer the question, what is
responsible for your being here to learn
about revolutionizing society? Some
people would tell about first reading
some author and the eye-opening effect it
had on them. Or, some would tell of a
first rally or march launching them into
activism. But many other stories
featured tears and trauma.
INT. MODEST AUDITORIUM - DAY
Students and Faculty mill about, then begin session.
TALL FEMALE STUDENT

I was abused as a child, repeatedly
raped.
TALL MALE STUDENT

I saw a close friend gunned down. These
are his initials tattooed on my arm.
SHORT FEMALE STUDENT

I lost a parent, a friend, and a friend's
parent to drugs and suicide. What caused
it? Them or society?
SHORT MALE STUDENT

I lost my home and lived threadbare. I
became addicted but got straight.
Interview continues while walking amidst city folk.
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Sometimes it was less extreme: I was
bullied, or I was a bully. I was
cheated, or I cheated. People no one
expected to tell such stories said
publicly what had earlier been private.
The suffering they reported cemented my
radical commitments. Their stories made
me more of a listener than I had been
before. I learned that what went unsaid
was often profoundly important.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
How did race impact RPS?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
The direct implication had been well
known for a long time. An activist
organization had to welcome and benefit
from diverse racial communities. We had
to elevate diverse communities to
leadership and predominant say over their
own affairs.
EXT. DEMONSTRATION - DAY
Black movement activists and white allies rally.
Interview continues. Sirens in background.
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Minority communities suffered low-income,
little influence, and great danger. But
focusing exclusively on race overlooked
other matters. We had to add to race, a
gender, class, and authority focus, and
vice versa.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I remember a conflict in which you played
a role. It was who should organize whom?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
I attended an early RPS-sponsored meeting
about an antiracist campaign.
Experienced blacks and women rejected
having to organize white people or men.
The formulation had been repeated so
forcefully, so emotively, and for so many
years, that it had become virtually
unchallengeable.
INT. RPS PLANNING MEETING - DAY
RPS members sitting talking in a meeting.
BLACK WOMAN ACTIVIST

It burdens us to expect blacks to combat
racism among white folks by educating
them or to expect women to combat sexism
among men by educating them. White folks
and men have to talk to other white folks
and men.
WHITE MALE ACTIVIST

But what if I don't feel I understand
racism or sexism enough to be as
convincing as someone who directly
experiences the issues?
BLACK WOMAN ACTIVIST

Get smarter. Stop thinking I should
educate you. Educate yourself and then
other whites.
YOUNG NOAM CARMICHAEL

Wait a minute. I am an activist, I am
antiracist, I am black, and I am
experienced. I get that in a wonderful
world I wouldn't have to worry about
educating anyone about racism, much less
spend time educating racist white folks.
I also get that doing so is time-
consuming, and demeaning. But I don't
see how my agreeing on all that implies
that I should never organize whites about
racism. Why does that follow? If it
follows because I shouldn't do anything
that compared to being burden-free in a
better world burdens me, then compared to
not having racism, organizing Blacks
burdens me too, but I do it, not every
minute, but when I think it can
contribute to overcoming racism. So
isn't the right question will my
educating whites help the antiracist
cause? And if that is the right
question, then when I am in a better
position to organize whites than are
other whites, shouldn't I do it?
Meeting and aftermath proceeds in background.
NOAM CARMICHAEL (V.O.)

I got shouted down, but I didn't fade
away. I knew a great many folks agreed
with what I had said, not least because
they told me so after the meeting. So I
kept at it. Discussions spread. It
wasn’t easy but in time the old viewpoint
altered.
Walking on street past boarded-up shops, interview continues.
NOAM CARMICHAEL
The more I thought about it, the more I
felt the main issue was did we believe we
could win or were we just hammering out a
stance that felt comfortable and made
modest gains without seeking long-term
goals? I wasn't saying that blacks - or
women in the parallel case - should spend
all their time talking with intractable
white racists or male sexists. But I was
saying that often blacks and women know
more and can better motivate what they
know about race and gender than can
whites or men.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
So the right calculus wasn't how much of
a burden it was to do that, but how
necessary was doing that?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Yes, and the same held for white
activists organizing white working and
rural people instead of only urbanites
and students.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
RPS also jettisoned attacking “white skin
privilege,” and you pursued that battle
too, right?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Privilege implies having something you
should renounce, but when folks called
out white privilege they mentioned safety
from abuse, enjoying access and
influence, and getting fair treatment.
Talking about renouncing white privilege
made poor whites think our aim was to
take basic things away from them rather
than to guarantee to everyone those
things and much more.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about communication issues?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Just preceding RPS, academic leftists
felt we were missing nearly
incomprehensible ideas that needed to be
discovered by way of nearly unreadable
texts. So they wrote nearly
incomprehensible ideas in unreadable
texts. Even if they had merit, which I
admit I doubted, they were useless
anyhow.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Maybe they just wrote to prop themselves
up and make themselves seem worthy with
pompous language?
NOAM CARMICHAEL
Perhaps, but whatever their reason, the
real problem wasn't too few obscure
ideas. It was that already known clear
ideas were not reaching large audiences.
So RPS sought better ways to spread
existing insights and vision. We
involved ever more people in refining,
employing, and implementing thoughts in
their own words. We didn't compromise
content. We clarified it. We went from
activism made obscure by academia to
academia renovated by activism.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
I remember another controversy having to
do with issues of solidarity and their
implications for being true to one's
views...
INT. RPS CLASS - DAY
STUDENTS hear from Young Noam Carmichael wearing an RPS emblazoned

shirt.

Showing solidarity means acting in accord
with the interests of others
and supporting others in their
pursuits. Enjoying autonomy means
functioning without intrusion from
without. Clearly we shouldn't always
support but nor should we always ignore
others' wishes.
FEMALE BLACK STUDENT

I don’t want to be subject to the will of
racists and sexists. I want to explore
my own views, pursue my own agendas,
learn from my own mistakes, and benefit
from my own insights. But I get that
there is a tension between desires for
autonomy and efforts to attain
solidarity. What’s the resolution?

Over fifty years before RPS this tension
was highlighted by Bread and Roses
feminists in New England, Black Power
activists in the South, and national
groups like the Black Panthers and Young
Lords. Women, blacks, and Latinos were
tired of dealing with male or white
complaints.
(MORE)
YOUNG NOAM CARMICHAEL (CONT'D)
But for movements to operate under their
own control and largely unconnected to
others was fine in theory, but in
practice such choices tended to sacrifice
solidarity. Some said, why diminish our
overall power with this autonomy fetish?
Others said, why subject ourselves to
endless hassle from folks who are trying
to keep us down or who don't understand
our situation? Both concerns were valid.

We need autonomy but we also need
solidarity. How about having massive
coalitions that contain women's
organizations and antiracist
organizations together fighting global
warming?

The problem is, while coalitions don't
prevent a women's or anti-racist
organization from operating
autonomously, and while they allow
solidarity around whatever is the
unifying issue of the coalition, their
solidarity is seriously limited.
FEMALE LATIN STUDENT

Member organizations don't enjoy
solidarity for their own full agendas,
nor do they offer solidarity to others
for anything beyond the coalition focus.

Exactly, and that is why RPS proposes
groups and projects join a “bloc.” Each
group and project retains its autonomy to
pursue its own specific program as it
decides. But each also pledges to
support the programs other bloc members
propose. The agenda of the bloc is the
sum of all the agendas of all its
component organizations, movements, and
projects. Each part of the bloc's agenda
comes from one or another partner in the
bloc, but everyone adopts it all.

I see how all members would then receive
and give solidarity, and how everyone
would retain their focus. But aren't you
brushing away difficulty by saying
everyone would support the whole agenda?

The women's movement has a program rooted
in feminist activism. If it joins a bloc
with others, then its prior program
becomes one part of the program of the
whole bloc.
(MORE)
YOUNG NOAM CARMICHAEL (CONT'D)
It receives support from other members.
Reciprocally, as a member, it supports
other members regarding their programs.
Two factors make this hard...

More like impossible. To join an
organization, I would have to decide not
only that I liked the organization, but
that I liked its bloc too.

Organizations would fear this would
reduce their membership and even worse,
if a bloc includes organizations with
contradictory programs, the overall bloc
program would have to contain both
aspects. That seems ludicrous.

I too initially considered the obstacles
insurmountable. But if the overall
purpose of the bloc is winning a new
society with various agreed features,
then members could see the contradictory
program components as possibilities that
should be explored.

Like a good society would do with
different proposals...

Exactly. When one proves better, we
chose it, but as long as the choice is
uncertain, we keep the contrary aspects
in play...

Groups with a particular agenda reap the
benefits of solidarity and, in turn, help
others.
Guevara questions BERTRAND DELLINGER, 75, academic-looking.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What’s RPS’s political vision?
INT. AUDITORIUM - NIGHT
YOUNG BERTRAND DELLINGER, 51, physics professor, delivers speech to

large AUDIENCE.
YOUNG BERTRAND DELLINGER
RPS recognizes that political activity
includes legislation, adjudication, and
implementation of shared program. Polity
should generate fair outcomes and produce
collective self-management for all. We
take grassroots mechanisms that activists
often form as our starting place by
seeking to have every adult in society in
local assemblies, with some elected to
higher-level assemblies, and another
layer, and another.
Points to animation on screen behind him.
YOUNG BERTRAND DELLINGER (CONT'D)

It turns out that twenty-five council
members is a good choice, since with
twenty-five, seven layers can cover even
the largest country. Within each
council, RPS feels we should seek
collective self-management. We should
protect and pursue diversity. We should
maintain solidaritous feelings and
practices by protecting and even
promoting dissent. We should get things
done without debilitating delays but all
should have appropriate influence.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
But if everyone influences, we won't
elevate the best decision-makers.

That seems true until we realize that
saying people who are better decision-
makers don't get more say for that reason
doesn't mean they shouldn't be heard.
They simply need to convince others of
the validity of their views, not impose
them. We don't ignore expertise, but nor
do we give it undue power. In any case,
who is the world's foremost expert in
your desires?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Me?

Of course, so ensuring your influence
when you are affected respects your
expertise. More, a decision reached
without the will of those affected being
counted is not a good decision in any
event. It is imposed, not supported. If
democracy is better than autocracy, then
collective self-management is better yet.
(MORE)
YOUNG BERTRAND DELLINGER (CONT'D)
On the other hand, if experts having
disproportionate power is better than
informed participation by all affected,
dictatorship by a genius is better than
democracy for all.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You exaggerate to make the choice go your
way.

Perhaps, but it makes a point. We have to
pick a preferred logic and RPS prefers
self-management and a legislative
structure that allows everyone to agree
that outcomes are reached fairly.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You make it sound like everyone will
abide every norm...

No, disputes and violations will occur,
and to deal with that, RPS says we need a
significantly improved court system, plus
community-controlled police with balanced
job complexes and equitable remuneration,
of course.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
(outraged)
Police? Are you kidding? Fuck that!

I know some are angered by what I say
about police and I understand why.
Imagine you had been raped and RPS was
saying there is a place for rape,
suitably redefined, in the new society we
seek...
AUDIENCE MEMBER
I would fight it...

You would fight it, and if you lost, you
would justifiably decide RPS was not
worth your support.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You bet I would, which is why I will quit
RPS if it retains policing as part of
its vision.
RPS believes a vastly renovated police
function is valid, and also that police,
with all their violent faults, are better
approached as potential allies than
inevitable enemies. In the future,
violations of social norms are not all
going to magically disappear and dealing
with them most effectively and safely
requires people with special training and
job requirements, not least community
involvement and balanced job complexes to
enforce their civility. We wouldn’t say
people should pilot themselves without
special training and responsibilities. We
shouldn’t say people should police
themselves without special training and
responsibilities. So are today's police
enemies beyond reason or potential allies
to be organized? Should we treat police
like vicious animals, or attack the
system that denies their better
instincts?
Miguel Guevara interviews Lydia Luxemburg.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Lydia, what’s RPS’s kinship vision?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Even in a wonderful society, I might love
someone who did not love me. Previously
strong ties could wither. Rape and other
violent acts might still occur. Social
change won't eliminate the pain of losing
friends and relatives to premature death.
Adults will not all suddenly be equally
adept at relating with children. But
while it can't eliminate all that, RPS
says new kinship can reduce it all and at
least end male domination.
INT. CLASS - DAY
Young Lydia Luxemburg teaches class.

Sexism is enforced by rape and battering
but also by the cumulative impact of past
sexist experiences on what men and women
think, desire, feel, and do, as well as
by role differences in home life, and we
need to address all that. What if, as
mothers, women produce daughters who, in
turn, not only have mothering capacities
but want to mother and not father?
(MORE)
And what if, as fathers, men produce sons
who not only have fathering capacities
but want to father and not mother?
STUDENT
Are you saying we should have no
mothering versus fathering, just
parenting?

Why not? Instead of women doing the
nurturing, tending, and cleaning, called
mothering, and men doing the decision-
based tasks called fathering, both men
and women would do a mix of all the tasks
called parenting.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
How did this belief get beyond the
classroom?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Throughout history, including in our own
upbringing, women mothered and men
fathered. To change that would put our
children’s lives at stake. We would get
no do-overs. Nonetheless, first
feminists made our own home life more
fair, then RPS addressed surrounding
institutions. For example, to have
genderless parenting we had to have
parental leave for newborn care, not
leave for women only.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about views of family?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Long before RPS many feminists argued the
nuclear family was a problem. Should
child care and home-life rest on only one
or two biological parents, or involve
relatives, friends, and even community
members?
MIGUEL GUEVARA
You didn’t suggest requiring such
things...
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
RPS rejects legislating how people live
but we do urge that chosen patterns
should foster gender equity, broaden the
care-taking children enjoy, and enlarge
children's participation in
(MORE)
judgements. Children should not only
become capable and confident, but
unconstrained by narrow feminine or
masculine molds.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about sexuality? And relations
among generations?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
No one knows what fully liberated
sexuality will provide or all the diverse
forms of intergenerational
responsibilities adults, children, and
elders will share. What sex-gender
patterns - monogamous and not, hetero,
homo, bi-sexual, or trans? What
transformed caregiving institutions -
families, schools, and other spaces for
children as well as for adults and the
elderly. But we do know actors of all
ages, genders, and preferences will
engage in non-oppressive consensual
relations, free from stigma.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about bringing up children, as a
revolutionary?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Nowadays, with RPS ascendant, a young
parent who favors RPS is just honest and
open. We give children room to be what
they will, and children typically come to
favor RPS. But earlier when one was
revolutionary against the grain of
society and of the child's school and
schoolmates, and even the child’s other
relatives and culture, things were
harder.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
How did people deal?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
Some of us put our views upfront and
actively tried to convey our hoped for
values. Others deemphasized their views
to avoid imposing. Way back when I was
young, even in the most supportive
families most kids knew nearly nothing of
their parents deepest desires and beliefs
- even what their work entailed, what
their hopes were - and that stayed
largely true until very recently. And
kids reciprocated so we had superficial
communication in both directions. Aloof
love, you might call it. Even when well-
intended it was typically disastrous.
(MORE)
Just another dimension of life in
developed capitalist, consumerist society
that will die unmourned.
Miguel Guevara queries Bill Hampton.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Bill, beyond having a vision of feminist
future relations to motivate activism and
spur hope, why was having powerful
feminist program essential for RPS?
BILL HAMPTON
Regarding society, when RPS emerged,
women still earned way less than men for
the same work. Women's health was still
manipulated. Women still feared night on
the streets, suffered vicious harassment
online, and lacked attentive audiences.
Harassment at work was viral. Sexism was
way less prevalent than decades earlier,
but far from gone.
MONTAGE - RPS CAMPAIGNS
-- RPS daycare facility.
-- RPS teach-in.
BILL HAMPTON
In RPS, we enacted daycare at all
organizational gatherings with a proviso
that staffing should immediately be at
least half male. We legislated that
public speaking at our events, marches,
teach-ins, and meetings, and leadership
for our events always had to be at least
fifty percent female. When women were
not available or were not felt to be
prepared by prior experience to
accomplish the tasks, we had to redress
that imbalance with training and
practice. The new norm was simple:
correct gender imbalance or don't
proceed. Movement women organized
themselves. They didn't care about happy
smiles and promises. They weren't
appeased by men saying have a nice day.
They were ready to resist.
INT. RPS PLANNING MEETING - DAY
About 60 women and 100 men discuss an action. Young Bill Hampton is
chairing. Suddenly the door opens and 20 more women march in and stand
in front, arms locked...
Bill, sit down... Thank you.
From now on all meetings will have at
least fifty percent women handling
organization and being chair and at least
fifty percent women addressing topics
raised. If you don't want to comply,
that’s fine, but you will have to hold
your meeting over unrelenting disruption.
YOUNG BILL HAMPTON

But delaying meetings will harm
organizing...

Don't you see that enabling gender
imbalance devastates organizing?
WOMAN ACTIVIST AT MEETING

Come on, Lydia. You demand more than we
can now usefully accomplish.

We could be ham-handed, so your concern
is warranted, but it is not a reason to
accept perpetual hypocrisy and weakness.
We must seek solidarity. We must oppose
structures, not individuals. We must set
standards for everyone, including
ourselves. If we aren't able to do an
event in a feminist manner, we should
delay doing it until we can do it
properly. Our desire to have public
talks or conduct projects has to respect
feminism. If not, nothing will proceed.
We don't seek verbal commitments to
feminism. We don't even seek changes
from male leftists to accord with
feminist values. We don’t assert
personal blame. We don’t want apologies.
We want structural changes that make
overcoming sexism part and parcel of
functioning at all.
BILL HAMPTON
Previous anti-sexist efforts typically
polarized men, and even recalcitrant
women. RPS attacked structures, but
empathized with men. We organized but
didn’t antagonize. In fact, up until
fully transforming institutions, that has
been RPS's approach regarding overcoming
sexism and also racism and classism.
Change relations sustainably, mutually
supportively, deeply, but change now.
Young Lydia Luxemburg teaches class.

We all become who our roles require us to
be. So what roles should we change to
prevent men becoming sexist and women
accepting sexism?
MALE STUDENT
If men earn more, they will dominate.
FEMALE STUDENT
If in dating, courting, and raising
children, men and women have different
roles, they will arrive at different
dispositions.

Yes, and in particular, when women do
most nurturing and caring and men do most
competing and governing, men become
thuggish and women become empathetic but
also self-denying. Men must do a fair
share of nurturing in the movement,
society, and families. Women must do a
fair share of governing.
Guevara queries Peter Cabral about culture vision. They pass a dog-
running section of a park.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Peter, what about culture vision?
PETER CABRAL
RPS says we need to appreciate the
historical contributions of different
communities more than ever before. We
need to guarantee cultures greater rather
than lesser means for further
development.
INT. CLASS - DAY
Young Peter Cabral teaches class.
YOUNG PETER CABRAL

We know from history that cultural
beliefs and habits give people a sense of
who they are and where they come from.
(MORE)
YOUNG PETER CABRAL (CONT'D)
But we also know that in a competitive
environment, religious, racial, ethnic,
and national communities often fight one
another. We conclude that cultural
salvation lies in eliminating racist
institutions, dispelling racist
ideologies, and changing the environments
within which historical communities
interrelate. Perhaps the main change is
communities should be able to maintain
and celebrate difference without fear of
subjugation.
STUDENT
That’s what guarantees every community
can carry on its traditions and self-
definitions?
YOUNG PETER CABRAL

Exactly. It ensures that the interaction
of our many cultures enhances the
characteristics of each and provides a
richness that no single approach can ever
attain. We call it intercommunalism.
Interview continues, walking by pond, ice cream truck in the background

with kids ordering.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
But is reaching that goal possible?
PETER CABRAL
Difficult, yes, which is why until a
lengthy history of autonomy and
solidarity overcomes suspicion and fear,
we need to make it incumbent on more
powerful communities to unilaterally de-
escalate disputes they have with less
powerful communities.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What about violations?
YOUNG PETER CABRAL

We will need oversight by an
intercommunal legal apparatus
specializing in conflict resolution at
least until a different historical legacy
prevails. But on the road to future
harmony, RPS has to prioritize overcoming
racist structures and habits.
INT. DEN - DAY
Miguel Guevara questions Andrej Goldman.

MIGUEL GUEVARA
Andrej, what about RPS economic vision?
ANDREJ GOLDMAN
RPS economics must produce desired goods
and services, but also desirable self-
management, equity, solidarity, and
diversity. Workplace and community
councils will give each actor a say
proportionate to the impact of the
decided issue on them. In capitalist
corporations, twenty percent of employees
do work that enlarges their confidence,
social skills, knowledge of the
workplace, and initiative. Eighty
percent do work that reduces their
confidence, social skills, and knowledge,
and exhausts them. RPS calls the twenty
percent the coordinator class and the
eighty percent the working class.
Young Andrej Goldman teaches.

We have to eliminate capitalist
ownership, but also the coordinator class
doing all empowering work. Everyone
should own equally but more than that,
everyone should do a mix of tasks they
are comfortable at, where each person's
tasks are comparably empowering.
FEMALE STUDENT
What about income? What is responsible?
What works?

RPS says people too young or too old or
otherwise unable to work should
nevertheless receive a full income, but
people who can work should have an income
reflecting the duration, intensity, and
onerousness of their socially valued
labor. I shouldn't be remunerated for
anything for which I can't produce
outputs others value, but I should be
remunerated for socially valuable work.
And I should earn more for working
longer, more intensely, or at more
onerous tasks. That is fair, provides
sensible incentives, and conveys
indicators of people's preferences.
MALE STUDENT
What about allocation?
RPS rejects competitive or authoritarian
allocation and instead advocates
cooperative negotiation among workers and
consumers. Worker and consumer councils
enter their desires and steadily update
their offers in light of others' offers.
Community and industry agencies summarize
information. Workers and consumers
assess costs and benefits and learn of
new jobs and products to self-manage
production and consumption in light of
personal, social, and environmental costs
and benefits and accordingly adapt their
offers.
INT. ASSEMBLY HALL - DAY
Young Andrej Goldman on stage hears audience criticism.
MALE AUDIENCE CRITIC

Your aims are morally nice but incredibly
unreal. Your equitable remuneration
seems fair but would not elicit
creativity and productivity. Your
balanced job complexes and self-
management would avoid class division but
sacrifice quality. Your participatory
planning would involve everyone but
squander efficiency. Your views are
nonsense on stilts!

Equitable remuneration is morally sound,
socially positive, and will also provide
appropriate incentives to work harder,
longer, or at more onerous tasks
producing socially valued products.
Balanced jobs and self-management are
fair, and they will also unleash
otherwise stunted human capacities and
eliminate wasteful conflict.
Participatory planning not only involves
everyone, it will eliminate the
motivational and informational ills of
markets, the authoritarianism of central
planning, and the ecological
irrationality of both.
FEMALE AUDIENCE CRITIC

So you claim, but why your economic
vision and not others from the past?

Unlike some who have gone before, RPS
doesn’t exaggerate economics as if it
alone is important. We don’t opt for
markets or central planning at the
expense of solidarity, self management,
and ecology.
(MORE)
YOUNG ANDREJ GOLDMAN (CONT'D)
We don’t sacrifice classlessness by
denying coordinator/ worker hierarchy and
preserving corporate divisions of labor.
We don’t overcome the old boss just to
elevate a new boss.

So is what you seek socialism, but with a
twist?

For a long time “socialism” meant mainly
no private ownership plus central
planning and political authoritarianism.
Then for Bernie Sanders and a number of
subsequent electoral candidates,
“socialism” came to mean New Deal type
government intervention on behalf of
those in need.

Okay, but still, is what you seek
“socialism,” but with a twist?

If by “socialism” you mean the first
type, our twist is such a huge, basic,
transformation that using the same term
would be senseless. If by socialism, you
mean the second kind, then our twist is a
fundamental enlargement and enrichment,
getting to the heart of matters rather
than stoping at corrective policies
without changing underlying institutions.

Still, is RPS seeking “socialism” or not?

RPS seeks a goal profoundly different
than the first thing “socialism” meant,
and profoundly more than the second thing
it meant. Nonetheless, some in RPS
call our economic aim participatory
socialism and try to alter the word
“socialism’s” connotations. I call our
economic aim participatory economics and
our overall aim participatory society to
avoid confusion over the word
“socialism’s” connotations. But in
either case, we all seek the same new
system, and that’s what matters.
INT. DEN - DAY
Interview Continues.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Were there objections from inside RPS?
INT. RPS ASSEMBLY HALL - DAY
Young Andrej Goldman talks with skeptical RPS MEMBERS, including YOUNG
ANTON ROCKER, 33, dressed in work outfit.
YOUNG ANTON ROCKER

I get that we need full classlessness,
but I think we can't afford to lose
coordinators’ potential support. I
prefer to offer a less controversial
vision closer to current potentials so we
don't immediately challenge coordinator
class advantages.

I agree we shouldn’t write the
coordinator class off. We want lawyers,
doctors, and engineers involved. But
holding back our full aims is dishonest
and, more, it would repel many workers,
corrode morale, and risk entrenching
coordinator rule. Why can't we tell the
truth about what we want and also reach
many coordinators without risking workers
feeling jettisoned? Critics' fears that
the full vision will cause some
coordinators to not relate to RPS are
correct. But as each year passed I
believe more coordinator class members
will join and classlessness will remain
the goal.
Miguel Guevara questions ANTON ROCKER, 55, writer/organizer.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Anton, where do we stand regarding new
workplaces?
ANTON ROCKER
I remember a trip to Columbus Ohio. I
arrived and was given a tour of an
occupied workplace.
INT. WORKPLACE FLOOR - DAY
WORKERS talk with Young Anton Rocker, in work clothes.
STOCKY OHIO WORKER

Our firm was tanking and the owners sold
off its assets. We took over to run the
firm ourselves. Nearly all the managers
and engineers left due to thinking that
without the owners the firm would
collapse.
TALL OHIO WORKER
In situations like ours, with workers
restarting firms, sometimes workers make
incomes equitable and institute workplace
democracy but ignore job definitions and
operate with little change regarding
markets. Other times transformation
includes balancing jobs and instituting
full worker self-management. In the
former case, struggle becames a contest
between coordinators and workers. In the
latter case, struggle becomes workers
against old habits and the pressures of
the market and banks.
YOUNG ANTON ROCKER

How do your relatives and friends who
still work at typical workplaces regard
your efforts?
STOCKY OHIO WORKER

I rarely talk about our project with
family and friends. They will do what we
are doing only if their owners cash out
so they have no choice but to take over
or become unemployed.
YOUNG ANTON ROCKER

I don't get it. Would you now take an
old-style job, giving up having any say
and no longer having balanced jobs if I
offered you higher pay?
TALL OHIO WORKER

No. Wages matter but so does dignity.
And in any case, we get better pay, too.
YOUNG ANTON ROCKER

Then why can't you explain the benefits
to your relatives and friends so they
pursue similar aims even before their
owners cash out?
STOCKY OHIO WORKER

(shrugging)
Just like we didn't, they won't, until
they become desperate.
ANTON ROCKER
Even now, I wonder what caused that
mindset. Perhaps hopelessness, but the
view came from people who had great hope,
at least for themselves.
(MORE)
ANTON ROCKER (CONT'D)
Maybe they sought to avoid clashing with
relatives and friends, even if clashing
could open a path to greater well-being.
Whatever its cause, if that approach had
persisted, each transformed workplace
would be isolated. We had to overcome
workers’ reticence to reach out.
INT. WORKPLACE FLOOR - DAY
Discussion continues.
YOUNG ANTON ROCKER

Whatever your reasons for not talking
with friends and family about your
accomplishments, can you see why a co-op
transforming, a corporation undergoing
internal struggles, and a new firm
succeeding, each have to see their task
as not simply establishing their own
firm, but also enlisting others to do
likewise? RPS has to emphasize creating
federations of transformed workplaces
that prioritize mutual aid, defense, and
insurance, and that sponsor events
bringing workers from advanced projects
to speak at other venues.
ANTON ROCKER
Before RPS we had nearly 30 million small
businesses in the U.S. About 20,000,
which sounds like a lot but is less than
a tenth of a percent, had more than 500
employees. Today I would guess we have
perhaps 5 million well established RPS
small businesses, and another 5 million
that will join the RPS count without much
more change. And RPS ideas battle for
influence in nearly all the rest. We
have about 3,000 500-person-or-more RPS-
oriented workplaces and another 4,000
undergoing major struggles - and all
20,000 have RPS-style campaigns with
growing degrees of council organization.
All over society, momentum is now ours.
It comes from workers forming into
councils, striking, winning gains, and
finally occupying and taking over firms,
with each step prodding and helping the
next.
Guevara questions Bertrand Dellinger.

MIGUEL GUEVARA
Bertrand, universities and schooling are
pegged for renovation, aren't they?
BERTRAND DELLINGER
As RPS was being born, universities and
schools still housed dull drill,
extinguished feelings, narrowed visions,
and diminished motivations.
INT. UNIVERSITY LECTURE HALL - DAY
Students in large hall focus on phones, tablets, and laptops.
BERTRAND DELLINGER
(Furious at students)
I can't usefully lecture. You text,
email, watch videos, listen to music, and
browse. You click, click, click. You
shift focus so habitually you avoid
serious, sustained, attention. You
aren't multi-taskers. You are flitters.
Why are you even here? Why am I even
here? If I content to try to reach you,
it only adds to the electronic doo-dad
dynamic of your flitting from thing to
thing. We are of course all born
ignorant, but you are making yourselves
stupid by your faulty choices.
INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
Family home for holiday flits from media to media.
BERTRAND DELLINGER (V.O.)

Immediately pre-RPS, kids would sit on a
couch with a tablet, laptop, and phone,
and with the TV on, flitting from one to
the other. They couldn't focus on things
they still were interested in much less
give sustained attention to anything new.
They celebrated their social ignorance.
Party and play. Shop till you drop.

Flit from Facebook to Twitter to TV to
web site. Hold views based on Tweets.
Screw evidence. Know little.
Investigate nothing. Learn to bully.
And while parents weren't as screen-
bound, they were more into gossip and
mass culture than anything lasting. We
had pervasive social media. News became
reason to laugh or scream, but not think.
Facebook bred bullying. Short attention
spans precluded serious discussion.
(MORE)
BERTRAND DELLINGER (V.O.) (CONT'D)
Selfies flourished. So did depression.
Chief narcissist Trump epitomized the
horrible trends. Looking back, it is a
wonder RPS emerged.
Young Bertrand Dellinger speaks at RPS gathering.

Schools socialize and sometimes transfer
lessons and skills but mainly they
deliver students suitably packaged for
restricted future lives. Roughly eighty
percent come out of school educated to
endure boredom and take orders because
those are the two main prerequisites to
being a desirable hire for an employer
trying to fill working class jobs. The
other twenty percent receive particular
knowledge suited to accounting, medicine,
engineering, or whatever - but also
develop a disposition suited to
maintaining dominance over workers below
and obeying owners above. Schools that
deliver folks ready for those futures
don’t under- or over-prepare graduates
for their tasks. Graduates aren't the
best they could be but pegs fitting
slots fixated on the cash nexus, whether
viewing it from below or above.
MONTAGE - SCHOOLING
-- Home schooling.
-- Neighborhood school.

Many RPS folks hosted neighborhood
schools and initiated summer schools for
children as well as for workmates and
townsfolk. A few even created new
institutions for higher learning. But
transforming education is also about
battling inside existing schools.
-- Struggles in existing school.
BERTRAND DELLINGER
Public school teachers, community college
teachers, and especially grad students at
many colleges and universities, were,
like nurses in hospitals, eager to be
productive workers of a new self-managing
kind. Massive teacher strikes preceded
RPS and paved the way for teacher
activism extending into community life.
Minds changed.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Okay, so what is the RPS attitude to
schooling?
BERTRAND DELLINGER
We realized having education generate
confident, capable adults required having
a society that needs confident, capable
adults. We decided better education
required students, teachers, and families
seeking better results in their current
or new schools while also seeking a new
future for society.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Where has it led?
MONTAGE - SCHOOLS
-- RPS gathering in public school at night.
-- Lecture Hall with some police in attendance.
-- Rally outside Board of Education building.
BERTRAND DELLINGER
Gains have included vastly increased
involvement of communities in schooling
and in night-time occupational and
community programs in thousands of
schools all over the country. Before
long, we wondered, why ask permission?
The schools are there. We should just go
in and use them. And so we did. Police
would kick us out, but within days we
would just go back. Soon we invited
police to take and sometimes even teach
courses, which did wonders for dimming
their ardor for repressing our takeovers
and even gained their active support.
Reduction of class size and a steady
increase in number of teachers was
another huge gain. We realized higher
education had to become relevant to
people's fulfillment rather than to
people passively fitting unfulfilling
slots in society.
(MORE)
BERTRAND DELLINGER (CONT'D)
We changed what students had available to
read, who they had available to talk
with, and what they could attain.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
What do you think was the turning point
toward winning?
INT. CHICAGO SCHOOL OCCUPATION MASS MEETING - DAY
PARENTS meet.

Perhaps the first occupation of a public
school - it was in Chicago - with the
ensuing mass meeting to determine what
uses the school could be put to at night.
We saw people experience that their
surroundings should benefit them rather
than their having to restrain themselves
to fit harsh surroundings. We knew it
would spread.
INT. LIVING ROOM COMPUTER LEARNING - DAY
KIDS and PARENT learn in living room.

Similarly, I think the RPS campaign to
provide online curricula that challenged
the prevalent social science and history
texts made lots of kids highly
knowledgeable about flaws in their
lessons and able to think through
evidence and logical connections which in
turn put immense pressure on faculty to
do better.
EXT. NYU STRIKE - DAY
NYU STUDENT speaks to crowd.
NYU STUDENT
We don't want idle discussion. We will
chair sessions. We will present ideas.
We will convince faculty of new aims and
create a new sense of community. Attend
our social events. Attend our classes.
This strike will end when our campus is
reborn. Commit to student faculty power.
Reject administrative power.
EXT. COLUMBIA UNIV STRIKE - DAY
COLUMBIA STUDENT addresses crowd.

COLUMBIA STUDENT
We demand preparation for balanced job
complexes. We reject classist
separatism. We want solidarity and self-
management, not arrogance and profit-
making. We require renovation of the
faculty, curriculum, and of the town-gown
interface.
BERTRAND DELLINGER
Campus innovations mirrored and augmented
public schools being open to communities.
Universities provided programs for local
residents as well as research and
resources for local activism. RPS said
instead of education defending system
maintenance, it should propel system
change. Instead of squashing most
students into passive conformity while
making the rest elitist, education should
address the real needs and potentials of
all students.
Guevara interviews President Malcolm King.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Malcolm, do you remember first
considering and then finally deciding to
run for President?
MALCOLM KING
I first thought about it when I won for
Senator and every so often thereafter. I
saw being Senator as a way to aid
movements and help generate new policies
and I thought of the presidency that way
too, only more so. But running for
President became more than day dreaming
one night while talking with some good
friends.
Malcolm King, Celia Curie, Bill Carmichael, Lydia Luxemburg, and

Bertrand Dellinger sit and talk.
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
It is wonderful to be together, and I
hope you won't mind that Bertrand and I
see it as an opportunity to consider
something we have all heard circulating
around RPS.
BERTRAND DELLINGER
The three of you are the highest elected
officials in the organization. Senator
of Massachusetts, Governor of California,
and Mayor of New York. Should one of you
run for President in 2044?
BILL HAMPTON
I hear people talking about that too, but
is the topic worth any time?
BERTRAND DELLINGER
Of course it is...
BILL HAMPTON
I am not so sure. RPS is making
incredible strides all over society. Why
not keep building and when needed
pressure the ever-more progressive but
non-RPS Presidents who take office,
without our entering the corrupting arena
ourselves? The complications of running
for Mayor, much less winning, have been
ridiculous in New York. Imagine how
entangling and corrupting the
complications would be winning the White
House. Why not just keep winning more
institutions, more support?
LYDIA LUXEMBURG
But you use Gracie Mansion brilliantly.
You build movement and you help win
movement gains. You aren't entangled.
You aren't corrupted...
BILL HAMPTON
I am not coopted, but I am exhausted.
And I am not sure what overall gain our
winning office has achieved. If every
RPS person in New York government who is
now partly just keeping the current
system from unraveling was instead
working in grassroots organizing to build
our new system, and receptive though less
RPS-ish folks were in the positions we
hold, would it be a net loss? Avoiding
the corrupting pressures of holding
power, tallying allies, and especially
keeping the old aspects of New York
running has been consuming enough. For
the White House, the number of people
side-tracked from grassroots work would
be vastly greater.
CELIA CURIE
But add the extra outreach, the burst of
energy which, if done right, can persist,
and, in the event of winning, the
consciousness-raising and major changes
able to be far more quickly and easily
implemented around the still unaltered
parts of society with an allied rather
than a neutral or hostile President, and
I think maybe we have gotten to a point
where it would make sense to run for the
Presidency.
BILL HAMPTON
But would it undercut popular
participation in building and federating
councils? Could we focus as much on a
candidate as an election would require,
and on governing as winning would
require, without sacrificing larger aims?
BERTRAND DELLINGER
If we field a good candidate we could
easily attract ten million full-time
volunteers. While campaigning, we would
all work harder and with greater
outreach, not less hard and more
narrowly. We could have massive grass
roots funding with no need for big
donors. We could win, which would
tremendously help every campaign and
struggle now underway and more to follow.
Then, in office, all of us could work
full time, with major resources. Why
couldn’t we emphasize and enlarge
participation. We should try.
BILL HAMPTON
I wouldn't want to run. New York was
very nearly too much for me.
CELIA CURIE
Don't look at me. I would feel a fool
trying. I am an actress turned Governor
for my home state. If I won it would be
like Reagan or Trump - a media
personality taking office. I don't want
that. RPS doesn't need that.
MALCOLM KING
Well, I think RPS does need you. Your
governorship has been exemplary. I think
a campaign, done without an iota of
compromise, done with an unswerving focus
on our full participatory vision, could
advance our views enough to be worth the
time, effort, and resources it would
require. And in office, far from
draining already overflowing grassroots
energy, we could greatly enlarge and aid
it.
BILL HAMPTON
I worry about the reaction if we win the
presidency. I worry about violent coup
attempts.
MALCOLM KING
If our victory came twenty or even ten
years back, I would agree. But we have
built so much support, so many workplaces
are RPS, so many neighborhoods, churches,
local and state governments, military and
even police rank and file - we could
handle what violence might be tried.
After winning the presidency, resistance
to RPS would get nowhere, because of how
we won, our decades of organization, our
widespread, informed, organized support.
Okay, we alone can’t decide, of course,
but how about we think about telling RPS
we think we should run, in whatever order
finally makes sense, and we table this
discussion for now before it gets even
more tortured?
CELIA CURIE
Okay, and I will think about VP if you
will think about P.
MALCOLM KING
So that small gathering was when running
became more than pipe dream gossip.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Okay, when did you first think you might
actually win?
MALCOLM KING
I came to believe we might elect an RPS
President, and keep office, whoever it
might be, in 2039 during the general
strike.
MONTAGE - GENERAL STRIKE
-- Cities shut down.
-- Plants empty.
-- Stores and malls empty.
-- Streets full of marching workers, police join.
-- Huge State House rallies.

MALCOLM KING
You couldn't experience the incredible
power of workers stopping the country and
showing such an incredible depth of
commitment to revolutionizing society and
not feel that one part of what was to
come would be taking over the government
and putting it in service of fundamental
change. I was amazed, inspired, but also
humbled. The crowds were enormous. We
could have surged into government offices
all over the country, including in
Washington. That much was possible,
already, in 2039. But what then? We
weren't ready to staff much less rebuild
all the agencies and handle much less
redefine all the tasks, and in any
case we didn't want to usurp government
with a unilateral act. We didn't have a
full program developed from our base,
discussed and refined at anything like
the comprehensive scale we would need.
We realized that we were goin to protect,
maintain, and grow participation in
rebuilding society we had to win office
and change government in an accountable,
participatory way, not by charging into
office with no plan. We didn't have time
to do that by 2040, so it would be 2044,
earliest. Until then, and thereafter as
well, we had to keep creating new
institutions and winning changes in old
ones. We had to build popular support
and clarity not only for taking over
workplaces, schools, hospitals, local
agencies, and also the national
government, but to then ward off elite
attempts at reversing the steps taken.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
So you ran to win?
MALCOLM KING
We ran to win, yes, but with an absolute
commitment that we would not compromise
RPS views to seek votes.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
When did you begin to think you really
would win?
MALCOLM KING
You know, we just worked, day after day,
not thinking ahead to winning or not,
until, for me at least, at the first
debate in late September, when vitriol
failed and reason prevailed.
INT. PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE - NIGHT
CANDIDATES' make closing statements. Audience responds.

MODERATOR
Now, please, closing statements...
OPPOSING CANDIDATE
Senator King, how can you possibly have
the audacity to stand before the American
people and say they should elect you
President? You a man who anarchistically
aims to overthrow our government, a man
who socialistically wants to obliterate
our property rights, a man who feminazi-
like threatens to topple society’s family
fabric, a man who would cravenly reduce
our armaments, armed forces, and police
to passivity, a man who would make our
country pitifully weak, a man who denies
religion, attacks individual creativity,
and promotes soul-destroying
collectivism? It will be a pleasure to
ship you and your movement's pathetic
power-envy and psychotic animalistic
anger back to the fringe communities that
spawned it. I happily cede to you my
remaining time. Take as long as you like
to reply. Your words will only deepen
the horror our audience already feels at
your vile intentions.
MALCOLM KING
No more to say? No more vague, wild
assertions? Nothing positive to offer?
Okay, I will gladly use your remaining
time. You wonder at my wanting to
anarchistically overthrow our government.
I plead guilty. Unlike you, I don't want
to preserve elitist, centralizing, mind-
numbingly anti-democratic bureaucratic
structures against participation by the
American people just to preserve the
power of centralizing sycophants like
yourself who unaccountably control the
destiny of millions. I prefer popular
self-management. You decry my
socialistically opposing few hands
holding productive property, and I again
plead guilty. Unlike you, I am not
enamored of enriching property holders
beyond the wildest dreams of past kings.
I do not think being born with a deed in
your hand is the highest form of human
achievement, or that it is any
achievement at all. I reject that people
like yourself should own society's
rivers, lakes, resources, machinery, and
places of production, much less rule over
them like tin-pot dictators. You ought
to be aware, however, that you missed a
further target to ridicule. I also
oppose a relatively small sector of the
population monopolizing empowering work.
I want to share that work more equally so
everyone is prepared by their work to
participate in social decisions.
(MORE)
MALCOLM KING (CONT'D)
Unlike you, I want equitable incomes for
all. I want empowering dignified work
for all. I want people able to decide
their own working lives. I would say it
is a wonder that you don't want these
gains for all humanity, but your attitude
isn't a wonder. It is unmitigated, self-
seeking, anti-social greed. You say I
want to feminazi-like topple the familial
fabric of civilization. Why? Because I
want young and old people to have a say
over their own lives? Because I want
families and all living units to freely
nurture the next generation without
imposing preordained definitions of what
boys and girls have to become? Because
I want parents and children and extended
families to have optimal health care,
empowering work, and shared
responsibility for their own and for all
social life? Because I want women
respected and empowered, because I want
sexual preference to be whatever free
people prefer, because I reject turning
back the gender clock a century in your
misogynistic, homophobic, harassing mode?
The human, nurturing fabric of society is
already at risk. People like you don't
see its deep scars despite your own
broken homes and the bedlam so visibly
endured by so many all around you. You
can't see the truth of our times because
your heart is a cash register and your
paranoid eyes perceive only profit
potentials. I want to restore and enrich
society's fabric. You want to rape and
plunder society. I see all families as
repositories of love and sources of wise,
confident participation. You see most
families as sources of cheap, obedient
labor. I see society’s countless
communities as allied and equal centers
of creative diversity. You see all but
your own community as fringe targets to
ridicule, restrain, and repress. You say
I would disarm the country, neuter the
police, and leave us helpless because I
reject
siphoning society's wealth into useless
and pointless weapons that, were they
used, would destroy all humanity, and
because I want properly paid and
empowered police that serve the public
not power, and I want our children's and
our children's children's human
potentials to develop free from war,
pestilence, coercion and restriction in a
world of shared peace and plenty. I am
guilty again. You are absolutely right I
want all that. You call it making our
country weak and defenseless. I call it
making our country worth defending. You
say I deny religion and sublimate the
individual to the collective. Why?
(MORE)
Because I want all religions, races,
ethnicities, and nationalities to be free
of fear of imposition and negation from
without and because I want individuals
and collectives prepared and in position
to self-manage their destinies without
having to submit to the whims of the rich
and domineering elites you serve. You
are right again. I do reject your
racism, your sexism, your homophobia. I
am guilty as charged. You say that it
was a pleasure to have run against me,
and that it will be a pleasure to ship me
and Revolutionary Participatory Society's
pathetic envy and psychotic animalistic
anger back to the fringe dwellings that
spawned it. Well, I have some news for
you. Those fringe dwellings are the soup
kitchens, apartment buildings, private
homes, schools, hospitals, ball fields,
theater stages, churches, and workplaces
of America. Fringe to your gilded
millionaire lifestyle, yes, I suppose so.
We will see soon what goes away, and what
goes forward. Will the American people
vote against RPS and their own futures -
and less relevantly against Celia and I -
or will they not only elect the two of
us, but continue their steadily
escalating popular participation in
revolutionizing all sides of all of our
lives? After your display here tonight,
I too feel ready to predict the outcome.
I predict that some folks will vote for
you due to fearing make-believe demons
that you and your media moguls have
manufactured. And I predict some will
vote for you to defend their elite
interests with no concern for society.
But I predict most people see past the
confusions and prejudices that have
historically allowed the likes of you to
win office. You are about as venal as
was, say, Donald Trump, 28 years ago.
Your ignorant posturing, your bullying,
your pathetically hypocritical life and
your self-serving views, all admittedly
more eloquently expressed than Trump
could ever manage, have lost too much of
their deceiving power for you to push
anything aside, much less to push aside
RPS, the most grassroots, democratic
participatory, multi-focused movement
this country has ever seen. Good luck
with that. I wish I could be a gentleman
and say it was a pleasure to run against
you. But I can't. It has been a bore,
because you are an empty vessel of hate.
It has been depressing, because even in
one lonely body, such an amalgamation of
narcissistic evil as you embrace is
seriously depressing to behold. We will
soon see what the country decides.
(MORE)
Will it opt for you and your hate and
fear, and the billionaires who pray you
will prevail to help them amass still
more millions and billions? Or will it
be for me, Celia, and RPS, for our hopes
and thoughts, and for the women and men,
boys and girls, movements and activists,
who work for our campaign to prevail so
we can in turn aid their efforts to build
a vastly better future? Time is on our
side. Your day is slip-sliding away.
Pandemonium breaks out.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Okay, then, when were you absolutely sure
you would become President?
MALCOLM KING
I guess it would show appropriate modesty
to say only when the ballots were
counted, but it would be a lie. I knew
for certain we would win at the Houston
Rally the second week in October.
To have a million people greet us on the
streets of Houston, clearly aware of and
supporting our program and not just us,
was incredible. I looked at Celia, she
looked at me, and we both knew the vote
would be a landslide.
EXT. HOUSTON DOWNTOWN - DAY
People wave at motorcade.
MONTAGE - NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS OF ELECTION VICTORY
-- Celebration in NYC.
-- Celebration in Chicago.
-- Celebration in St. Louis.
-- Celebration in San Francisco.
INT. PRESIDENTIAL PRESS BRIEFING ROOM - DAY
Miguel Guevara, now Press Secretary, reports to assembled press.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Good morning. As Press Secretary, as
usual I have a lot of ground to cover so
let's settle down and begin.
(MORE)
If you will bear with me a minute, I
would like to offer a few words before
taking your questions. As you know,
yesterday President Malcolm King spoke to
the UN General Assembly and the world.
His speech was simple, emotional, and
blunt. It reflected unfolding events and
aspirations. For any of you who may have
missed it, in the first part he
apologized. In the second part he
promised. In the third part he
celebrated. In the conclusion he
embraced.
INT. UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - DAY
Malcolm King wearing RPS hat addresses the General Assembly.
MALCOLM KING
In the name of my country I apologize for
our military and fiscal role in
international mayhem and injustice from
Latin America to Asia and from Europe to
Africa. I apologize to Korea, the
Philippines, Indonesia, Guyana, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos, the Congo/Zaire, Brazil,
the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. I
apologize to Chile, Greece, East Timor,
Nicaragua, Grenada, El Salvador, Libya,
Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti,
Yugoslavia, Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, and
Syria. I apologize for our support of
dictators, for our exploitative
extractions, for our arms shipments and
for our arms use. I apologize for
threats, boycotts, and destruction, for
massacring native Americans, for slavery
and racism, sexism and sexual predation,
for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and more.
INT. BRIEFING ROOM - DAY
Guevara continues addressing assembled press.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
King promised we would together reverse
our history of exploitation and violence
toward others and in its place enact a
new agenda of sharing and respect. He
promised we would study war no more and
instead foster solidarity and mutual aid
with the same energy and effort that we
previously put to war-making and profit-
seeking. He promised and evidenced an
entirely new and compassionate,
internationalist mindset. He celebrated
transforming our domestic defining
institutions of polity, economy, culture,
and kinship, and our relation to the
natural environment to remove hierarchies
of wealth and power and to attain a
sustainable new historical beginning.
(MORE)
He promised to aid and learn from all
those who have already or who will now
take up similar aims, as they deem
suitable, worldwide.
INT. UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - DAY
King continues his speech.
MALCOLM KING
Amidst our tremendous, sustaining, and
enriching diversity, we need to embrace
our shared universal humanity. We need to
celebrate and apply our shared values of
human liberation - solidarity, diversity,
equity, self-management, international
peace, and environmental balance to all
our own countries, each in mutual aid
with the rest. We must reject greed and
profit-seeking. We must reject self-
aggrandizement and power-wielding. We
must usher in a new era of empathy, a new
time of joyous exploration of our
collective capacities. I embrace all who
will do so, and the UN itself as a
valuable tool for the task.
INT. BRIEFING ROOM - DAY
Guevara concludes his remarks.
MIGUEL GUEVARA
Now, if you have questions... Yes,
Leslie, why don't you begin.
EXT. VAST PLAIN - DAY
Scrolling collage of photos of interviewees' famous namesakes and of

interviewees themselves provides a backdrop for the end credits.
Musical accompaniment is a medley of excerpts from powerful songs.
“RPS - THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION”
“FROM A TIME JUST BEYOND TOMORROW, FROM A PLACE CLONED FROM OUR OWN,
ACTIVISTS OF THE ORGANIZATION FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PARTICIPATORY SOCIETY
HAVE DESCRIBED THEIR SUCCESSFULLY UNFOLDING STRUGGLE TO TRANSFORM THEIR
UNITED STATES.
A QUESTION ARISES. WHAT ABOUT OUR TIME, OUR PLACE, OUR UNITED STATES?
DO WE WANT IT TO PERSIST AS IT HAS, WITH SOME MODEST CHANGE NOW AND
THEN, BUT BASICALLY WITH ITS FEATURES PRESERVED OR EVEN WORSENED? OR
DOES RPS’S STORY CAUSE US TO FEEL WE CAN WIN ENLIGHTENED EQUITY RATHER
THAN DEADLY DECADENCE? CAN WE NOW SEEK PROMISING POTENTIALS RATHER
THAN SUFFER OPPRESSIVE OBSTACLES? TIME HAS COME TODAY, HASN'T IT?”
October 5

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THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Based on the book, RPS/2044 by Michael Albert

215 Atlantic Avenue, Hull, MA

The next American Revolution

Based on the book, RPS/2044 by Michael Albert

215 Atlantic Avenue, Hull, MA

Scrolling collage of photos of historic actors and events, past and

“RPS - THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION”

“FROM A TIME BARELY BEYOND TOMORROW. FROM A PLACE BARELY BORDERING

INT. OVAL OFFICE - DAY

MIGUEL GUEVARA, 39, a bit scruffy, interviews PRESIDENT MALCOLM KING,

President Malcolm King, Vice President Celia Curie, and conventioneers

INT. OVAL OFFICE - DAY

MONTAGE - SCENES OF EARLY RPS

-- Trumpism vs. Anti Trump hostilities

-- Organizers go door to door.

-- Revolutionary Participatory Society (RPS) teach in.

CELIA CURIE (V.O.)

-- Sit-in at immigrant detention center.

-- Strike at a local workplace.

MALCOLM KING (V.O.)

-- RPS community center.

-- RPS daycare program.

CELIA CURIE (V.O.)

MALCOLM KING (V.O.)

EXT. NEW YORK TIMES SQUARE - DAY

JULIET BERKMAN, 49, dressed jaunty, introduces MAYOR BILL HAMPTON,

Bill Hampton reaches out and sweeps the audience.

EXT. SKY - DAY (DREAM)

Dreamscape visual of planes dropping parachutes.

BILL HAMPTON (V.O.)

EXT. NEW YORK TIMES SQUARE - DAY

Crowd goes silent. Bill Hampton smiles, points all around.

INT. OVAL OFFICE - DAY

Interview by Guevara continues.

Miguel Guevara queries Juliet Berkman, a sedate and confident union

SUPER: AUGUST 4, 2042.

INT. ASSEMBLY HALL - DAY

Audience includes WORKERS and STUDENT PROTESTORS. YOUNG JULIET

YOUNG JULIET BERKMAN

EXT. CENTRAL PARK - DAY

Berkman Guevara interview continues.

INT. CHURCH - DAY

Respectful Memorial Service.

JULIET BERKMAN (V.O.)

EXT. 1963 BIRMINGHAM - DAY

Activists at Birmingham rallies. Historic footage.

MARTIN LUTHOR KING JR.

JULIET BERKMAN (V.O.)

EXT. DETROIT STREETS - DAY

Lively crowd listens to DETROIT SPEAKER on makeshift stage.

EXT. CENTRAL PARK - DAY

Berkman and Guevara walk past adults playing soccer.

EXT. WALL STREET - DAY

Young Juliet addresses huge cheering crowd.

YOUNG JULIET BERKMAN

EXT. CENTRAL PARK - DAY

Guevara and Berkman sit on a bench, near a pond with ducks.

INT. AMAZONIA ASSEMBLY PLANT - DAY

EXT. AMAZONIA WAREHOUSE - DAY

WORKERS occupy. AMAZONIA STRIKE LEADER speaks from doorway.

AMAZONIA STRIKE LEADER

YOUNG JULIET BERKMAN