“Don’t touch that dial! You’re on WEVD and WEVD.com listening to ‘What’s New In the Revolution.’ I’m Gerry Valetto and we have a special guest, a major hero of these revolutionary times, Leo Torres. Good morning Commissioner Torres.”
“Good morning.”
Valetto: “We’ve got the widest possible audience and we’re giving the Commissioner time to make an extended statement. Everything is being recorded. I’ll ask you to hold off on your questions until the statement is completed. Go ahead Commissioner Leo Torres.”
Torres: “Siblings and comrades, this is Leo Torres. Thanks for joining.
‘The Progressive leadership has been contacting everybody possible all through last night. Reports are now in from most of the local committees in America and quite a few of them from around the world. Apparently, the rumor that some kind of insurrection is underway is false. I didn’t think that we would step backward in history and start killing each other again. We have come too far and grown too wise.
‘There is certainly unease everywhere because of yesterday’s news. I can confirm that Paul Kerr was assassinated yesterday, but the gunman was apparently acting on his own. It is a terrible setback to lose Paul Kerr.
‘Not everybody knew who he was, because he did not call attention to himself, but, more than any other individual, certainly more than any other individual in America, he directed us out of the catastrophic times and into the revolution now underway.
‘It seems to be true that some of the candidates from the Greens Party are withdrawing from the election. That may be because they realized that they had fielded far too many candidates who were only detracting from one another. It may be that they just didn’t think they could win.
‘Even though some of the candidates may have made some strong statements against me or against the Progressives, it doesn’t mean that a major split is underway. The coalition of Greens and Progressives will continue because reasonable people know that it must continue, and we are more than ever a reasonable people.
‘I hope you will join me in advocating for the continuation of our essential coalition.
‘The election will continue, and plans for a world government will continue. I am told that I am very likely to be elected as a delegate to the world government organizing committee.
‘The election process will involve every activist, coast to coast. You will be able to take pride because you are taking part in the most democratic process in human history.
‘I did not think I would be elected a delegate. I wouldn’t have agreed to run if I had not been asked personally by Paul Kerr, and if my partner Jane Early had not urged me. I didn’t think I had the background for such an important assignment.
‘When I first joined the band of revolutionaries that is known today as the Progressives, I had never studied and had no practical experience. I used to ask the more experienced comrades what the world would look like if we were successful. I assumed we all wanted to be successful in creating a better world, and I wanted to get some idea what it would look like.
‘“Better than this one,” is what some of them would tell me, but they were just putting me off. Even when somebody realized that I was asking a serious question that deserved a serious answer, they would say something like, “We don’t know what the future would look like. The people living in that future will have to design their world. It’s not up to us to impose our view on them in advance.”
‘After I asked a lot of people, I realized why I never got anything specific: they just didn’t have an answer. The urgencies of the moment were just about all anybody had time to think of. They knew that they wanted a better world and that the people then in power were going to have to be overcome, but nobody really answered my question: “What would our better world look like?”
‘Today, though, we have to start answering that question.
‘If I understand correctly, this democratic process is going to be used for all the important decisions in future. People that we used to call “legislators” won’t make laws any more. They will just study what needs to be done and submit proposals to you. Proposed legislation will bubble up from the bottom, rather than coming from the top down. Local people will vote on proposals before the general population does.
‘Real democracy for all will mean that we will not submit to the “tyranny of the majority.” Proposals will include how the votes should be weighted. If something affects you more, then your vote will count more. You’ll vote on-line as to what you want done. Nothing will become a law until you have spoken.
‘For example, as we get more electric power, we’ll have to decide our priorities. Just having communications isn’t nearly enough. We need to light up some places, and we have a great need for transportation. I understand that prototypes of electric motorbikes are ready for production, if you decide that’s what we need. We won’t get all of these things running right away, but we’re getting more renewable energy all the time, and the inventiveness, your inventiveness, is really looking good.
‘Ours is largely a matter of having society catch up with technology.
‘Like a lot of you, I’ve been studying the revolutionary process as we go through it together. I’ve also been studying the revolutions of the past, and a lot of people have offered me their opinions. I don’t agree with the people who have summarized history by saying “all the previous revolutions have failed.”
‘They use that failure idea to say that our present efforts are doomed, that we shouldn’t go on trying, shouldn’t go on struggling. I would be against that even if I agreed that all previous revolutions had failed.
‘But they didn’t fail. The French revolution, Paris Commune, Haiti, the Soviets, the Ghanans, the Cubans, and even the little ones that didn’t endure very long – they all made great contributions to the human experience. They brought us along much further than we would have progressed without those revolutions. They were great human experiences, but our revolution today will prove to be the greatest of them all.
‘The downside of previous revolutions was that they were partial. One sector would be struggling for improvements in the human condition while other sectors would be doing every underhanded trick to stop them. Corruption ate into revolutionary leadership like acid.
‘Even though I’ve been running around the country asking everybody to vote for me, I don’t think that voting for good people is going to be enough to keep corruption down. I think it’s going to take a profound and energetic commitment to democracy – minute-to-minute democracy – in everything we do.
‘I got into this campaign because I was asked to. I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t know what was needed. I still don’t. Nobody has ever been in the situation we’re in, so nobody knows exactly what’s needed. We know for certain that we don’t want to go backward, but we don’t know what’s ahead.
‘So we anguish about it. I anguish about it. I’m starting to think that it’s all I do. I try to decide day by day, minute by minute actually, what’s the best thing to do next.
‘I cannot promise you that I’ll think of the best thing to do next. But I can promise you that I will anguish over it, I promise you that I’ll consult, I promise you that I will listen, -- and that I’ll end up doing the best I can think of. Then I’ll start anguishing and asking about the next thing.
‘To reach the best decisions, and to do the right things, and to protect all of our progress, we will have to improve on our democracy. We have to develop the best possible democracy.
‘Almost everybody in America, and in a good part of the world, now has an internet communications device whether it’s a mighty computer or a tiny telephone. That means that, for the first time in history, we can conduct plebiscites on almost anything, and we can do them quickly. You, every one of you, can weigh in on every question.
‘The local governments you formed, the experts and the militiamen, are essential units of democracy and must be continued. Never give up your community leadership, even though some things have to be decided through consultation with larger areas..
‘There’s a restriction on the idea of large plebiscites. We don’t want the ‘tyranny of the majority’ deciding things that affect you more than they affect others. We’re going to have to have a decision process to decide just who is affected and how much they are affected before we take a poll. If it’s only a question of something happening in your town or on your farm, then your vote has to be a lot more important than, for example, somebody on the other side of the world.
‘But some things affect all of us more or less equally. Here’s a case in point: Paul Kerr’s body is lying in state right now. Some people want to build a mausoleum around it, or even to go so far as to put the cadaver into some kind of viewing cubicle so people can see it and revere Paul Kerr's body forever.
‘He was a great leader and gave us more than anybody, but I think we ought to put his body in the ground and plant a tree above him, just as we’re doing with most other cadavers today. We can revere and remember Paul Kerr without worshiping his remains.
‘It’s just an opinion, but I believe that something similar came up in the Soviet Union. A dissident shot the top leader, V.I. Lenin, you will recall. He lived a while longer, but died more or less young. The surviving leadership decided to preserve his body and put it on display for the ages.
‘They also decided on something they called the “Lenin Enrollment” to bring hordes of new unprepared applicants into leadership. Both of those decisions were the beginning of the end for the Soviet revolution.
‘Making an idol out of Lenin’s body was the opposite of what he had taught for his entire revolutionary career. He taught people to eschew superstition, to rely on themselves, on democracy, not develop some new crazy superstition concerning his cadaver.
‘And when they diluted their revolutionary leadership with the Lenin Enrollment, they took in a lot of people who hadn’t actually learned the lessons of the revolution. A lot of them were just opportunists who were taking advantage for their own profit. The real ranks of leadership, those battle-hardened revolutionaries who had showed their commitment and learned their lessons, found themselves lost in a sea of new faces. It was an ideal situation for corruption to eat into the leadership. Democracy is the only protection against corruption.
‘So, let’s remember and revere our great leaders in our memories, but not in our mausoleums.
‘And I have to say a word about leadership. I told you that I did not ask for leadership and did not welcome it. I imagine that you feel the same way. Everybody knows we have to have leadership but none of us wants to take it on. It’s like People Chow. Everybody wants it but nobody likes it.
‘In my recent campaign travels, I have come to think about leadership in an entirely different way. I have realized that the leadership we seek is us; we are the leaders we need and have to have. You are. Each of you is.
‘I realize that I’ve been talking about what we must do and what we mustn’t do as if everything before us were somber difficulties. In truth, the tasks before us are joyous ones. We’re going to build a better world. We’re going to take humanity to heights never before reached.
‘And there is good news everywhere. On the way to this radio studio, I could see patches of blue sky above Manhattan. No one here has been able to see through the smog of the bad times for years, but the air is finally clearing!
‘I’d like to add a personal note. Last night I learned that my partner Jane Early is planning to have our baby. We are planning to raise a child. I couldn't be happier! There is a future for that child and for all of us. We will go bravely to into that future together.
‘When the world council convenes, and it will convene, I plan to go in there with the knowledge that you, the majority of you, have put your trust in me. You want what I want and we will build it together at last – a better world!”
Valetto: “Now let’s have your questions and comments!”
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