In which Celia Curie and Peter Cabral discuss Actor’s Activism Athletes Revolt.

[Author’s Note: This is the eighth excerpt from a work titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. This excerpt will also provide the substance for a forthcoming RevolutionZ episode. The oral version will include spontaneous interjections made by the host on hearing the material aloud. The hope is the episode will help to make plausible the possibility of winning a new world and simultaneously provoke those who hear it to contribute to discussions about vision and especially strategy for social change.]

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Actors’ Activism

Celia Curie, you were an aspiring actress at the time of the first RPS convention. You became highly active in RPS while a successful actress in Hollywood, including your famous Oscar acceptance speech. You became, in time, and for a time, Secretary of Popular Culture for the RPS shadow government, a Cabinet position created specifically for RPS purposes, after which you also became Governor of California, an office, which as we speak here today, you still hold. Can you tell us when and how you first became radical?

I was raped by my uncle when I was fifteen which was in 2008. I didn’t tell anyone. I was afraid of how I would be perceived, and really, at first, of whether it was my fault. Later I didn’t want to create what would have been chaos in my family. My father’s brother did it. The fallout would be horrendous for my dad and then for my uncle’s family. I didn’t think he was violent like that with others, or inside his family for that matter, but I have to admit, I didn’t know for sure. I still don’t know what came over him.

Afterwards, I used the internet, in private, to learn more about rape and about rape victims and perpetrators. On the sly, I went pretty deeply into the subjects and became familiar with and indebted to many feminist writers. Together they saved my life. So that was my doorway to radicalism.

I should perhaps add that for many people, rape or watching a loved one killed or jailed or torn apart by unemployment or drugs, or turned violent, or suffering preventable illness, lurks in their memories of their formative years. I had a hard time getting beyond that not least because all around me there were always reminders in what I saw and endured. But all that is for another time, I think.

Okay, a little over ten years later RPS was starting to percolate, I suppose, and not that long thereafter what became the Hollywood arm of RPS got going. Do you remember the start of it?

At almost any time you consider, at least a few actors have expressed political and social views beyond donating to candidates, and that last choice has always been commonplace for many. Most often, however, even the best Hollywood political participation had been of near zero long run relevance because it had involved little more than single issue attention and was rarely radical even about its highlighted issues. So if we don’t count innocuous or nasty prior activity, and effective but too narrow activity, and, for that matter, right-wing actors, then the Hollywood arm of RPS got going and became effective literally when a few Hollywood actors and other film people started to meet with one another, face to face, to discuss how they could relate to RPS not long after its first convention.

We took a few meetings to settle on joining RPS and then started talking about engaging in three types of activity. The first was to reach out to other people in our work situations and artistic communities to also join RPS. The second was to agitate for changes in Hollywood film practices to steadily make our industry better reflect RPS values and aims. And the third was to reach out to the broader population using film and the excessive visibility afforded famous people.

Hollywood RPS started with eleven people. Seven were women who had been active in #MeToo and many had related to Black Lives Matter and opposing Israel’s war on Palestinians and Trump’s war on just about everything of worth. Joining RPS, after all that, was a little like deciding to relate to a film. We read some text. We assessed current participants. We evaluated aims. We joined. We urged others to join. But I don’t want to minimize the difficulty. In our insulated world, it felt like we were risking our careers, risking our relations with friends and family. I hate to even say this. Our problems were so ridiculously small compared to most people’s. But what it felt like was, well, I am on top of the world and I am about to jump off.

The first thing we did was to strengthen our own understanding. We got less curious about gossip and more curious about ideas. We assembled various RPS relevant literature and worked through it to decide if we really did want to join and become able of argue for RPS with others. It was a bit like deciding whether to relate to a film by collectively assessing a script. As we got into the material, we not only read and discussed it, we practiced among ourselves until we were confident we not only liked RPS, but we were prepared to represent it, argue for it, and think about its refinement and expansion. I think our approach was pretty exemplary in those respects and probably not very common, at least at the outset, but for us it was basically who we are and what we do—not the politics of it, but the deciding and rehearsing.

At any rate, at that point we started to reach out to other Hollywood people which was difficult not just because it meant trying to address people’s worries, but because one of the foremost concerns we encountered was why should I bother? To join, people would tell us, they would have to criticize much that they would rather ignore, and they would have to devote scarce time outside their jobs, but where would that lead? This is the kind of thing I would hear: “Why should I address what I would rather ignore? It would cost time to relate to RPS. It would alienate producers. It would involve arguing with friends. It would interfere with being friends. You are asking me to lose a lot. And what would I gain, other than a lot of talk? A lot of mutual recrimination? What are you doing, other than talking? What would I be doing, other than talking?”

I would answer more or less like this: “Producers are already above and against you. Yes, you would get into some arguments. Yes, making friends might become harder in some cases, but also more meaningful. And we are talking and talking matters. But we understand that we need activities beyond talking to relate to. So help us develop some.”

Do you remember what those were?

Yes, of course. It may seem strange, Miguel, but once we really committed to RPS, what we did to expand it and win gains was so central to who we were becoming that to be only casually attentive was impossible. It turned out we were undergoing something pretty profound, well beyond what we had anticipated. Again, in some ways it wasn’t so different, for those of us who were actors, from getting deeply into a role, except this wasn’t fiction, and it wasn’t for a limited time, and we weren’t getting paid to do it.

We had been actors, but also directors and camera folks. Some of us were men, some women. Some were Black, Latino, white, gay, straight, fathers, mothers, and so on. All these attributes affected how we each saw ourselves. Basically, we occupied role positions in society, like everyone does. And our roles largely determined who we were by the requirements they imposed on us. But upon joining RPS something changed, mostly without our even knowing what was happening.

It may sound a bit exaggerated, but it wasn’t. We were no longer a kind of intersection of the implications of the diverse institutional roles we occupied. It wasn’t that that factor was gone. All the daily pressures of our situations and contracts and the expectations of people we encountered including media still pushed and pulled us. But now a new factor dominated the whole mix. We were part of RPS. We were being revolutionary, and that quickly rose in prominence to contour everything else. It became who we were at a far more basic and defining level than all the rest of who we had been. We knew progress would be neither swift nor easy, but we didn’t dwell on that. So, yes, I remember the early period because my relation to RPS quickly became the touchstone of who I was and who I could be. You know, I think there is probably a sense in which that effect on its members was the key indicator that RPS was going to be something special. If wasn’t that a few start-up members felt that, we all did and then most who joined later did too..

Didn’t obstacles intimidate you? I remember fearing for my career as a journalist when I started supporting RPS. But beyond the fear, I also doubted our potential. I wondered, am I risking all for naught?

I don’t know how to explain my own 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 think our earlier experience of feminist and anti-racist actions spurred our can-do mindset.

But to answer your question less abstractly, within a year or so, we began three projects. The first was to establish a social school for people in the movie industry. It was a bunch of courses and group sessions that required two weeks of intense participation. It was about understanding society, developing and advocating vision for a better society, and addressing the mechanics and possibilities of the film industry. This was no small undertaking. Some of us taught but we also invited various RPS folks with more experience to offer classes. We borrowed materials and techniques from similar efforts on various campuses and in other chapters of RPS.

Hollywood people had always been ridiculously constrained by their time allotments and we were saying that to participate you needed to free up two whole weeks and if you wanted to teach, you had to give even more. We were asking a whole lot more from people than you might think. These weren’t young students, but highly accomplished adults used to people doing their bidding. And we eliminated that. It was a big life-style behavioral jolt, but folks not only learned a lot, they enjoyed themselves and made new friends. We created capable members.

The second project was to uncover and then publicize pay rates for everyone in Hollywood and to proceed from revealing that information to agitating for more equitable relations. You can imagine how well that was initially received. People asked, “You want to know what?” And then, even more upset, “You want to do what with the information?” And worst, “You want to do what to my income?” This was a difficult sell, a long term project, but the ethics were so clear that with calm and informed persistence, we eventually turned the tide from our appearing crazy, to those defending old ways appearing greedy and antisocial.

Finally, the third project was to reach beyond Hollywood. We settled on two ways to do it. We pressured local film making and media producers to give space, tools, and help to grassroots participants. And we ourselves created short films and in time even some full length ones promoting RPS ideas and program. Far from the popular misconceptions, actors are very serious, hard working people.

And at the start there were only about ten of you?

Yes, eleven at the start. And it was critical that we quickly establish a programmatic agenda to make evident the need to grow our numbers since everything we wanted to do required having more people. And we did grow, as you know.

Yes, but what about the beginning?

I remember our first meeting. We got together at an actor’s huge outrageously fancy house. The eleven of us were in an ornate, comfortable, but a bit sterile living room. You could have installed a basketball court with room to spare. One wall was all window looking out at a massive deck with a pool fit for a whale. Beyond that we admired the Pacific. The dynamics were strained. A couple of the eleven lived more or less comparably to our host. Others, while very far from poor, had never even seen a house remotely like the place where we met to discuss RPS.

The most famous actor in the room, the owner of the palace, made a tepid pitch about having given money and held a funding event for the then not so long past Sanders campaign. “Give the candidates money.” He said. “Help them win. To do less is not enough.” Had that set the tone, my guess is we would have gone nowhere. But another actor named Matt chimed in about how that kind of involvement wasn’t enough, and how the conditions that most people endured overseas but also in the U.S. were ultimately too abysmal for bandaids. He noted how global warming and wars and perhaps also AI literally threatened survival, and mainly how we all knew damn well that RPS was right about society needing a new social system and how given all our assets we had a responsibility to quit dodging the truth and start seeking serious change. Donating is okay, he said, sure, and short term and immediate changes are essential, of course, but society ultimately needs a rewrite. That resonated and we were off and running.

What opposition did you have to overcome? Do you remember?

Absolutely, I remember, not least because much of it recurred so often. Setting aside contextual and personal tensions, which often erupted over things like the house our first meeting was held in—the problem with trying to enlist actors and others from film, and singers, painters, and novelists, too, ultimately always pivoted around one issue.

Actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, singers, and artists would tell us, “we do something special. We are not like other people. We are artists. We need special freedom to be creative. We should enjoy incomes commensurate to our creativity. We should be free to do whatever we like including not having to worry about balanced job complexes sapping our focus.”

And finally, thinking they had a knockout punch, they would add that “it is insane to think the public should have any say in planning art. The whole point is that artists have to do that, and then the public likes it or not.”

Looking at us as if we were crazy they would announce that “the idea that artistic creators should have to cooperatively negotiate with the public about their work would be the death of all art. Get away from me with that stuff.”

Our problem on hearing their reactions was first to not lash out at their elitism but then second to disabuse artistic people of the conceit that they were uniquely special and deserved special benefits. An artist is creative, yes. OF course. But so to is a scientist creative. So is a doctor, a designer, a builder, and, with training and balanced job complexes, we all would be creative for part of our work time. Even beyond that, creativity should be and typically is its own reward. What needs to be remunerated is not being creative, but working hard, long, or at onerous conditions. It was hard to get folks to listen and to think about that, but once people did, our progress was pretty steady.

And second, we pointed out that saying actors, directors, or other art workers shouldn’t have to have balanced work is saying that others who monopolize creative and empowering positions shouldn’t have to either, which is saying that we should have twenty percent dominating eighty percent. We wouldn’t dodge their point but would argue that even if balancing circumstances for empowerment would somehow reduce time for creativity, it would still be essential to do. However, we would then add that in fact, overall, it would have no such reducing effect. Instead, having everyone do balanced work would liberate and add to artistic output because it would utilize so many more people’s creativity. It would also broaden the comprehension of all those trying to communicate about life and life’s circumstances, whether writers, actors, singers, directors, or whoever.

But belligerent actors, directors, or whoevers still had trouble even hearing the words. They would reply that doing rote work would cut their creativity. Why stifle their creativity for some kind of needless correctness?

We would rejoin something like: “Needless correctness? Is that what you call everyone having dignified work, a fair say, and equitable income? 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. It’s time to make progress.”

Finally, third, we explained that having a new system of allocation to give workers and consumers self managing say wouldn’t mean the public decides what goes in a novel, play, or film, any more than it would mean the public decides what research a physicist or biologist does, or how some architect designs a building. It would mean, instead, that the public decides, in cooperation with producers—in this case with the people who compose the film industry—what serves the public, what benefits society, and based on that how much outlay of social product should go to films, as well as what counts as socially valued film projects and therefore what people can produce as work to be remunerated. If the public wants no music—well, in that case creating music wouldn’t count as socially valued work. If the public wants some music, but not much, then the number of singers, musicians, and composers who could earn income for creating music would be accordingly low. One could produce or create something not wanted, of course, perhaps even hoping to change the public’s mind, but one couldn’t call it socially valued labor. Likewise, if the public wanted no novels, or no engineering, or whatever. But such fears are, of course, utter nonsense.

That led to more discussions. For example an actor or director would say, “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 would mean I do what others decide. That would end art.”

We would reply, “You now do what executive producers decide, not what you decide, but in any case, again—and these type exchanges did have to happen over and over—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 wants, not the details of producing it.”

The typical artist thought, instead, but artists create new things, whether anyone will like them, or how much, is only known later. And to get valued things you also have to risk creating non-valued things. And we would reply, “that is exactly right. The public doesn’t have to understand or appreciate every film or painting, or every song or performance, or every construction method, for that matter, or every research project, much less does the public have to know before they exist that it wants society to have specific art, engineering, and science. What the public really settles on in light of reports from those who would do the labor is the amount it wants, which in turn affects, of course, the amount respective producers can produce for income. But what the producers actually produce, they decide.”

The critic would keep plugging away. “But not everyone is equally creative, writes equally, can equally convey emotions and passion on screen, in text, through music, or in a painting. Not everyone is equally smart, fast, or strong either. We are born different.”

And we would reply, “yes we are, you are correct again, of course, and to claim we have no inborn differences would be absurd, though education and training also matter.” Then some big time actor would say to me, “Of course education and training matter. But even if you had way more of each, you wouldn’t be the actor I am.”

I would chuckle and say, “perhaps, and we should certainly benefit from and celebrate the great talents that some people have…”

“Well, if you celebrate differences, why in your vision do you try to level us by having everyone do a fair share of rote tasks?”

I’d reply, “That is not trying to level people. Virtually all human qualities come in different degrees, and luckily so. Leveling is unreal, and would also be horribly boring. But that doesn’t mean only a relative few people should do 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, an actor’s expressiveness and empathy, or a surgeon’s hand, with wealth and power.”

With a bit of a whine, now, the actor would rejoin: “But we contribute more. People love our product. It brightens lives. It enriches souls. It has an emotional dimension all it’s own. We should earn more, like now.”

And me, just a smidgin strident, “First, just to be accurate, current differences in income don’t mainly reflect different talent or value of product, but power and luck that convey bargain power. More, providing rewards for excelling is neither necessary nor just. Celebrate excellence, yes, of course, but also advance material equity and social solidarity. Admire genius, yes, but also foster participation. We can do it all.”

Okay, Miguel, you got me going. Sorry. I assume you don’t want me to rehearse all that here, but the interesting and even fascinating point was that considered fully it turned out the new economic relations applied just as compellingly to artistic endeavors and to intellectual endeavors as to rote endeavors of any type. The worth of equity, classlessness, and self management, applied equally to all people, groups, and activities.

How did you personally understand the role of a Hollywood Star in society at the time of the first RPS convention and how did that start to change in the convention’s aftermath? What were some of your personal changes?

Back when RPS first convened I had been in some commercials and gotten some minor supporting parts. I had prospects, but I certainly wasn’t anything like a star. My income just barely kept me functioning. To me, a star was a larger than life person, rich or very nearly so, with huge stature and visibility. As I saw it, stars travelled in an odd kind of bubble of security and privacy. They were constantly threatened by out of control paparazzi and sometimes even by fans or psychopaths. And I should say, my attendance at our first meeting, in the actor’s palatial home, didn’t change that view.

Before long, however, I started to think of Hollywood stars and other renowned artistic creators as being people who by dint of special inborn qualities, hard work, and virtually always a lot of luck, had gained access to a particular film or TV or art loving audience. It seemed to me that they didn’t deserve excessive income, but they had excessive everything. And so I thought these people should either renounce receiving all that wealth, or, if for the moment wealth had to be distributed in a manner so tilted to their benefit, then okay, until we could win new social relations they should put a lot of it to social ends.

For a long time, many actors and other artistic people of note, like many media moguls and other owners of tremendous wealth, gave a lot away to various causes, some rather silly, but some quite important to real people’s lives. And I didn’t disparage that as being only self serving, which at times it most certainly was, or only for tax purposes, or for good press, which it also often was, but I did decide that what was far more important then modestly and temporarily marginally mitigating the pains of poverty and deprivation was to try to change society to try to eliminate poverty and deprivation and attain equity.

What were some of the key events from the RPS conventions to now, in the emergence of a new kind of acting and creativity in movies, theater, and all kinds of art?

I think the school I mentioned earlier, which was the first thing we undertook, and which grew dramatically, had a profound effect on broadening the consciousness, skills, and confidence of workers in the industry. It became a foundation for much else.

There is an important point about that that bears on many RPS areas of focus. One kind of RPS activity was having demonstrations, or campaigns about some policy, or electing some candidate, and so on. But another kind of activity, typically far less celebrated and visible, sought to attract new allies and solidify the commitment of existing members and especially to improve their ability and willingness to hold demonstrations and pursue campaigns really well. Often the less celebrated, less visible efforts at education and outreach were more fundamental than the gaudier activity.

The production of films about social issues where each film not so much exposed or pleaded on behalf of suffering constituencies, but, instead, offered clear formulations of positive potentials and campaigns to relate to was another big factor. Also important was the way those involved related to such projects. The tendency was to contribute ever increasing proportions of a film’s surplus revenues to the projects the film advocated, and also to include voices of activists, and finally for the involved film workers and actors to link up with the supported projects in lasting ways and to urge support for the films and the projects in interviews and public displays, rather than, as was earlier always dominant, simply advocating for themselves.

The major dramatic film about RPS, “The Next American Revolution,” which came out in our early years and which had so many famous participants foresaw much of what has later happened and certainly elevated RPS visibility throughout the U.S. and the world. But it was also incredibly important because those who worked on it functioned quite collectively. We had balanced responsibilities. We took sensible salaries. That was probably the tipping point event for the industry, not least due to all the Oscars the film won and the incredible speeches we gave on Oscar night.

You are being a bit modest. It was your Oscar and your speech that was so incredible.

Well, I had a great role in that movie and the times were such that while it portrayed a revolutionary in a revolutionary process, and while its intent was to inspire and provoke—nonetheless the artistry of the script and film was such that I got the best female actor award. And yes, I suppose the speech I gave was a bit of a highpoint. But please don’t exaggerate my personal role. I was in the right place at the right time with a speech a good many people helped craft, and the fact that when I spoke so many stood in unity and in that way guaranteed me time to finish was also exemplary.

In any case, way beyond that film and its impact, and the subsequent Oscar events, we had the great industry strike, long nurtured by continuous agitation and organizing. That was an incredible spur to change and was, I think, perhaps the first time coordinator class members in such large numbers came out so militantly and outspokenly along with workers for dramatically reducing coordinator class advantages. We all accepted and celebrated working people’s leadership. It not only turned the industry inside out, it helped spur similar soul-searching activism in countless other fields from the sciences to architecture, medicine, law, athletics, and many others.

What resistance to all that and the rest of what people like yourself are fighting for remains?

Well, as you know, we now have workers councils throughout Hollywood and while there are still owners and other officials doing some films the old ways, well over half of today’s films are done almost entirely in new RPS ways. There is a perpetual confrontation of the old and the new, where the new is gaining steadily especially in the commitments of young folks newly entering the fields involved. And this pattern exists, as well, in schooling and health care and many other fields too.

But as you say, the old resistance still exists. Indeed, it may only disappear when the people favoring it get too old to persist. Sometimes people retain old ways until Father Time intervenes. But, far more admirably, of course, many other people leave behind prior views when they witness that better ways with gargantuan gains for humanity, albeit with some losses for themselves, are possible.

So, back to your question. We still face two main kinds of opposition. One kind is honest, albeit not even a little worthy other than that the people with this view avoid hypocritically lying about it. “I don’t want to give up my massive income. I don’t want to give up my avoidance of activities I find onerous. I want to defend my coordinator advantages because I like them.” That reason is rarely spontaneously voiced, of course, not least because even rich people like to be able to look in the mirror and admire themselves, not to mention to retain relations with their children, so they usually opt for different rationales to hide from themselves the greedy sorry truth.

More commonly, therefore, film industry resistance to RPS takes the form of assertions that with RPS-style changes, artistic quality would collapse and aesthetic motivations would die. RPS would decimate art and deny those who love films the best possible product. If we make for incomes what RPS calls equitable or if we eliminate corporate divisions of labor or adopt cooperative negotiation of economic allocation, these critics say, it will gut art. These are the same complaints as twenty years ago. The main change is that back then these naysayers were everywhere and we had to argue with nearly everyone in the industry using analogies between racist and sexist nonsense which was at least pretty well understood by most in Hollywood, and classist nonsense, which was foreign to most. Now, however, the naysayers are pretty few in number and though the beliefs and analogies are still available and applicable, even more compelling are the huge and singularly successful projects undertaken in RPS style, and the gigantic good will and quality these new projects regularly generate.

How do you think full RPS success will alter artistic creation and performance both for those creating and for those experiencing the products?

The audience for all artistic work will be much larger due to people having more time for such enjoyment and inspiration, and also due to their having knowledge that increases “consumer” benefit.

Artistic workers will be like any others. They will not have inflated incomes or excessive power. They will work in balanced jobs in industries that relate to the will of both workers and consumers, where, along with their diverse workmates, they collectively self manage their involvements. Artistry will still be admired and celebrated, but it won’t be excessively enriched.

But will there be the high level of creativity and excellence there is now? The high volume of creative output?

If you go back to the first decade of this century, how much high creativity and excellence was there beyond special effects and exploring the psyches of murderers? But even if we set that aside, it is important to recognize that high levels of excellent art though important, should not be our only criteria of judgement. Think of it this way. Suppose you are looking at a workplace producing shirts. Do we have as our highest and even as our only aim maximizing the quality and quantity of shirts that come out the door?

Well, if we did, why not work people virtually to death and then just dump them in the ally and call in more replacements? Or why not produce tons more shirts than people want? Or why not produce only for some rich or particularly shirt-addicted clientele, while ignoring those who prefer less expensive but also less exceptional products. None of that makes sense, of course, and we can easily see that.

Sensible output has to take into account the implications for those doing the work and for the society receiving the product as well as for those not receiving other products that could have been produced instead. This is the kind of judgement that RPS’s approach to allocation facilitates. And if that means sometimes we seek less output, or settle for good output but don’t exert to the degree of trying to get better when that would entail too much hardship for those involved or too much loss of other desired products, that is fine. If it is what people freely want.

But all that said, in fact we will continue to enjoy the high level of creativity and excellence there is now, and indeed steadily higher. And likewise we will enjoy a warranted high volume of creative output. Sometimes social need will call for less, other times for more. But the people working in each industry will be far better able to provide more, and the public will be far better able to enjoy and benefit from more, because the population as a whole will have far more of its creative potentials nurtured and supported.

Someone who worries about a decline of art—just like those who worry about a decline of doctoring, engineering, research, or what have you—must believe that the lost output from those previously engaged only in empowering tasks who now do balanced work cannot be made up by the newly uncovered, cultivated, and expressed talents of the 80% of the population who were formerly stomped into relative silence and subordination. But that view is no less classist than the person, in the past, who thought women or Blacks couldn’t contribute creatively was sexist or racist. The claim of incapacity of Blacks and women was nonsense though it was quite serviceable to those protecting advantages. It even seemed to correspond to facts—Blacks and women weren’t decision makers—just as rationalizations about class seem to correspond now—workers aren’t now decision makers—though increasingly less so with the incredible growth of RPS, workplace councils, and balanced job complexes in Hollywood.

So I would guess that in a transformed future we will have fewer special effects, less emphasis on the psyches and mayhem of murderers, but 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.

Yes, quite similar, but also a bit different, too. In journalism in our new society, I believe there would be no centers of disproportionate power that could bend events and outcomes to their will and compel coverage and commentary to accord with self serving requirements. There would therefore be no reason to expect ideological uniformity. Instead, different people would no doubt often have different views, and sometimes there would be alignments of groups that have socially contrary beliefs and desires. No doubt journalists and other information workers will sometimes have conflicting views, as well. Values of journalists and of media institutions would certainly still affect what they cover, judge, and propose, and how they would do all three, as well as why a given individual would favor one commentator over some other. I think in a participatory society difference and dispute won’t disappear, far from it, but the roots of disagreement will reside in honestly different perceptions and values, not in structural biases imposed by massive centers of power and wealth.

But getting back to Hollywood, I have heard that when you attended your first Hollywood meeting, you weren’t yet revolutionary. What brought you the rest of the way?

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 experienced it too. But for me, 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 seek what was right even when it meant we ourselves had been wrong. We celebrated our readiness to change, not our staying unchanged. Conversations happened. Accommodations occurred. Truth trumped bullying and oneupmanship. That, for me, was a key part of being revolutionary. We fought for what we believed, but we were also ready to have our beliefs challenged and change.

What was the turning point for you When did you feel like the struggle had matured from trying hard to have a chance, to being full tilt on the road to victory?

I suppose maybe 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 an exploration 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 visiting us or our visiting them. It wasn’t a coming of age or a becoming senile story. It had no overgrown animals, no super heroes. There was no pathological villain, no trial, no murder, no mayhem. No stars died. No stars were saved. It wasn’t a remake, a sequel, or a prequel. It fit no template. It had no 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 itself was the protagonist. The star was future history. Imagine giving an Oscar to future history.

Yet, first one and then more Hollywood a-listers signed on to make it happen and this told me the film industry was broadening out. We offered social substance and outside-the-box structure and yet Hollywood signed on and gave the screenplay’s participants distinctive voices and personalities that the initial screenplay lacked.

And then, after the movie, I think perhaps everyone in films would pretty much agree that what turned the corner toward success was the industry marches, where actors, directors, videographers, tech folks, designers, drivers, dressers, and all the workers on films together marched through Hollywood for hours on end, all decked out in their work outfits, all chanting and singing, and then, went into local communities to neighborhood meetings enjoying dinners and conversation at community gatherings, and then, incredibly, did the same thing over again, with everyone traveling to participate in the same way in New York, and then Chicago, Boston, Houston, Memphis, San Francisco, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Miami, and Cleveland. We were literally saying this is what we have done and you can do it too. That was a helluva lot of internal solidarity and incredible outreach to diverse communities at the same time.

I of course remember and was as entranced as the next person at the events in New York that I got to go to. I hope it is okay if I ask you a rather personal question about acting and your experiences of it? You have been considered beautiful all your life, and I wonder what place you think this has had in the past and should have in the future in Hollywood, and I guess in society, too?

You are right about it being personal, but it is also perfectly fair, even if it is hard for me. Growing up, even at a young age, what you look like used to have, and still has, major implications. I was, and I guess I am, by our society’s standards, as you say, beautiful. None of us labeled as such can see it, easily, in ourselves—or that is my impression, at any rate. Anyhow, I couldn’t. But I can see it in others. Sometimes a person’s beauty can be almost shockingly powerful, even mesmerizing and addictive. But there is more to it, especially in a horribly sexist society.

What does being beautiful do to a person?

At a young age you learn behavior patterns that work to get you things you want. I didn’t understand why, but I noticed how smiling and being a bit, flirty, coy, coquettish, or what have you, affects people. And this becomes part of who you are with attendant gains, but losses as well. Materially you benefit. Psychologically, sometimes, also as you tend to get some confidence and style, I guess. But other times, you get a warping of personality and become mired in feelings of entitlement and guilt. Privacy disappears. Danger sometimes takes it place.

At any rate, in Hollywood the dynamics were—and to a degree still are—greatly exaggerated. Beauty is, to a point, bankable, for women and to an extent for men too, and what is bankable is, in a profit seeking industry, cultivated and sought. But then it is also dispensed with when it dissipates.

So in the old days beautiful women and beautiful men too, albeit to a lesser degree but still quite a lot, were signed on and if you could perform reasonably well and you weren’t too much of a problem for those around you, and if you would bend when pushed, even setting aside the frequent sexual requirements, you would have a career, at least until your looks faded.

So, how do you judge it?

I don’t know entirely how I feel about it. Being eyeballed from my preteens on, being hit on, and in many people’s lives, being taken advantage of not to mention raped—and this was my experience too—is beyond horrible. Think about knowing that thousands and maybe even many more than that fantasize doing things with or to you. Transcending all that, if you can manage it, is not easy, and doing so generally requires help which is all too often absent. All this should be gone. The objectification, the exploitation, should be gone. Similarly, the riches for beauty or the power for beauty should be gone.

But what about other aspects? Suppose someone is born really strong, or able to run outrageously fast, or with great reflexes, or able to think really fast, or whatever. We say the person should not be able to parlay that lucky genetic happenstance into wealth, power, or unfair circumstances of any kind. But we still admire great reflexes and fast, clear thinking, and we know that a person with those attributes can do some things which, without them, we cannot do. So should we admire being born looking special? About the other traits, we have no problem that they are admired, or that having them means you can do some things which, without them, you could not do. So, though it makes me nervous, should that also apply to appearance?

The odd thing is that special traits, features, qualities, or talents in a person, in old societies, had both benefits and debits for the person. The sex overlay made one of those different, but if you think about it, any special quality tended to convey advantages, pressures, options, rewards, and costs. So I have a feeling all of this is going to work itself out in a new society in ways we might not be able to foresee yet. I think what we can say for sure is that being lucky in the genetic lottery—given social standards and tastes—should not convey material advantage, a greater say in society, or freedom from responsibility, nor should it impose undo pressures, denials, or abuse.

I think RPS isn’t the end of history. When RPS fully wins and in time society is fully participatory, it won’t mean all change is over. We will have achieved civilization, but there will still be some old and I assume plenty of new issues to discern and resolve. For now, I think winning RPS will do. For later, we, or our kids, will see what comes next.

Athletes Revolt

Peter Cabral, you were a militant anti racist activist. You focused in the years before RPS on police violence and prison policy, including inmate organizing. You were active in RPS from its inception and focused much energy on ensuring that RPS program and internal culture provided seeds of a racism-free inter-communalism. After a time in prison, and not least due to your activism while inside, you became a tireless speaker, organizer, and activist for community affairs and prison and legal change. You served as Secretary of the Interior in RPS shadow government. And with all that, you were also a professional ballplayer for a time. Long before RPS some athletes stood up for social justice in various ways. But with the emergence of RPS things took a very dramatic turn. I am sure a great deal is like the case for actors and Hollywood, but what, in particular, was different?

I only know our experience, not the Hollywood version, at least beyond what Celia relayed. But I would guess perhaps the biggest difference was the pressure felt by athletes to comply with old social norms. I suspect as large as that was for Hollywood folks, it may have been even greater for athletes.

You see, an incredible proportion of successful athletes have come from intensely poor circumstances. Once successful, these athletes support not only themselves, but often large extended families of relatives and friends. Also, the educational background of athletes has tended to be less than that of Hollywood actors, for example, though in recent decades that has begun to change, but athletes’ sense of entitlement due to having always been the big star, often from grade school on, and virtually always from high school on, tends to be higher. Hollywood actors often work their way up through hard times, often having been outsiders, ridiculed, lacking work, sharing apartments, and so on. Athletes, and star athletes in particular, were typically instead given all kinds of special treatment along their path. So we have an odd combination. Athletes have lower income origins, often less education and more responsibility for others who they know and by way of them, and also their own past, a greater level of connection to criminality and oppressive culture, plus they have enjoyed a very rewarded path and been constantly bowed down to and even worshipped.

So all that, and no doubt other factors too, made athletes’ situations somewhat different. But what made the situations alike was the feelings of immense worth and specialness that success, once attained, often conveyed, making both successful actors and successful athletes think they fully deserved their in fact incredibly excessive incomes and stature.

In broad strokes for both groups the activist history was similar. Like for Hollywood, a few athletes took the lead when RPS emerged, just as some athletes had not long before related to Black Lives Matter more than other athletes did. But, as with Hollywood, instead of relating only as individuals, and only as support for others, with athletes, like with actors, directors, and so on, involvement after RPS emerged came in the form of creating a range of athletes’ organizations, the big one’s being for on-campus organizing by college athletes, and for professional organizing that took place in all the large sports. And then for athletics there was also the neighborhood organizing that occurred around stadiums and their use, and there was the organizing among parents on behalf of their children, and against the cultural deviance of much youth athletics. There was also extensive organizing around safety issues, and the organizing for respect and income in semi pro and minor league and other realms. We knew we weren’t going to defeat racism and exploitation by shouting insults at them. We had to organize.

The exact substance was different than for artists, too. Athletes often faced very severe work conditions once one took into account their health. This had begun to be recognized with football concussions but grew dramatically with the emergence of RPS, which in turn fueled lots of resistance. That wasn’t true for successful actors. Oscar winners and the many others involved in making films didn’t wind up crippled or dead, but athletes did.

For star athletes, also, to begin to renounce the incredible wealth and status that went their way typically meant challenging the logic of sports itself. It led people involved in sports to think about delinking winning competitions due to performing at a higher level than others from getting more income than others. Of course this was no different than delinking output and individual incomes all over the economy, but in the case of athletics it was very graphic.

How did you personally understand the role of athletes in society at the time of the RPS first convention, and how did the emergence of RPS affect your views and choices?

As a successful but rookie ballplayer at the time, I thought we were a cut above. We had worked really hard, with intense focus for years, and we still worked hard to avoid decline. We honed our abilities. We performed under great pressure. We delivered, but some more than others, and I was fine with the idea that income should track those differences in achievement. Of course in time I realized not only that it shouldn’t, but that it didn’t. It tracked, instead, differences in bargaining power, which differences in output often but not always helped create.

I also enjoyed all the perks that society’s preoccupation with athletics, and especially with some sports, conveyed, not least access to sexual favors, free goods, endless praise, and so on. Of course it was all a product of a society so socially skewed that it made sense for people to cater to us to try to befriend or even seduce us—but that only meant, we eventually understood, that the whole system needed to change and not just how we conduct ourselves when reacting to it.

So we too had our consciousness raising and sharing of insights, like the Hollywood folks did. And for us too, it was partly about becoming confident representing RPS type views, but it was also about learning to deal with our ridiculous incomes and with the media. And, indeed, much of the early shift in athlete’s choices was manifested on those levels—with athletes giving away lots more money, really a huge chunk of their incomes, not only to charities they liked, but literally to RPS and to other radical political and social projects. I remember talking with other athletes about such matters as among the first times in my life I was actually considering the world around me, and my relations to it, and making informed judgements.

So I would say RPS propelled all that and more, though I think it is fair to say that the reverse occurred too. Athletes helped propel RPS.

What were some of the key events, do you think, from the RPS convention to now, in the emergence of a new kind of athlete and athletics?

Of course the boycotts by football players and the political actions of basketball players were big events, but I think in some ways the organizing among student athletes was even more important because it became so quickly rooted in organization and militancy, and it provided a model for the pros easily as much as vice versa. When I was invited to talk with student athletes on college campuses I easily learned as much from the exchanges as they did.

I don’t think any of this was unique. I think a case might be made that the first I guess modern step was when the Quarterback, Colin Kaepernik, opposed police violence by refusing to stand for the National Anthem. That prodded so much soul searching, and then he started giving significant sums to organizations with similar agendas and his teammates heavily praised his choices. But I think what was key was rather than one thing happening and another thing happening and no connection occurring, when each event and project began to see itself as part of a larger on going process that was all the acts together. This not only strengthened each individual effort, it broadened each.

While an event or project might be about mainly race, gender, class, or some very specific practice or policy, by seeing all of it as connected, participants in each aspect began to actively support the rest, and to learn from the rest. Soon athletes were not pursuing an agenda solely rooted in their own personal experiences, but an overarching larger agenda. I think that that was arguably the main early RPS contribution. And of course before long RPS vision and practice began to inform athlete’s perceptions and aspirations, so the impact became far greater and more direct.

Do you think the Olympics battles were a large factor?

Absolutely. On the one hand, there was the tendency of lots of athletes to bring social concerns into the Olympics starting really strongly in 2020 and then with growing centrality in 2024. But perhaps even greater was the growing trend for athletes to fraternize, I guess you might call it, and shun the crazy glorification and commercialization. The participants began to take back sports for those doing it and appreciating it, by taking it away from those selling it and profiting off it.

And then the other tremendous issue, of course, was the gigantic harm the Olympics as a mega event did to the cities that hosted it. Rio’s travails, on top of those of Athens and London, became so obvious and so pronounced for the bulk of their citizens, that the constant clamors by elites to get games so they could profit became swamped by the quite correct beliefs of populations that it would be at their expense. That athletes supported the communities strenuously, to the point of saying they would no longer participate if the events gutted sponsoring cities was moving and exemplary. So the movement to have the games be held in a whole bunch of cities, each hosting only some single component or other, and each using only venues and spaces based on existing structures or built at international expense and in a manner designed to be of lasting local value, grew overwhelming.

And, yes, at first people complained that with gymnastics in one city, track and field in another, swimming in another, and so on, there would be no single gathering of all the athletes—10,000 or more—in one place. We would lose some of the scope of the opening and closing TV events. And that was true. But we would gain a sane and locally beneficial and human-oriented rather than profit-oriented set of events. It was basically conducting world championships in a host of events all in the same three week period at many existing venues world wide, rather then conducting them in many venues, all newly constructed, with virtually no future purpose, in one city.

The battle for that, like almost every other battle once the proposals of RPS existed, was, indeed, partly a battle for going toward RPS. But it was also, undeniably, beneficial and sensible in the present, and indeed, necessary in the present to avoid all manner of catastrophe, so it won in the present, as well as helping push toward RPS in the future.

How do you think full RPS success in the future will alter athletics for athletes and for fans?

I don’t think the way we view a contest or achievement in itself will alter very much. A beautiful shot or hit, a timely catch, a great race, will still uplift us. What will change is our view of the people. We will still appreciate and even admire great artistry and focus, but we will no longer think a person should be made rich on account of it. If it is morally and economically sound for income to be for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, and for people to do balanced jobs, and for producers and consumers to decide what is produced cooperatively, then that applies not only to assembly work but to athletes too. And that means an end to all the incredibly inflated incomes and perks.

People who for part of their contribution to society work as athletes are just people, albeit sometimes with incredible physical and mental gifts, but without any reason to receive additional material reward based on their having those innate assets.

Beyond those key changes, many people have been exploring the nature of non competitive sports and even considering what competition now involves as compared to what it should involve in the new society we are building. Some of that is still to be resolved, no doubt. But the basics we know, and excellence and accomplishment will persist even as giant material rewards for excellence and accomplishment will fade and ultimately disappear. But here is a wrinkle. Which should you feel better about, winning a game, or contest, or whatever, but without performing particularly well—or losing but having performed really well?

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