A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth

[Jello_Biafra]

Continued from Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline; this thread will cover the historical period from the end of the Second American Revolution (February, 1934), to the end of this timeline's Second World War. I'd like to humbly ask that any comments on material from before this date be kept in the first thread. That said, without further adieu, I present to you A Red Dawn.

The First Cultural Revolution

The first updates in this timeline will consist of an in character examination of the dimensions of what would later be known as the First Cultural Revolution, a period roughly from 1934 to 1940 that would herald dramatic changes in all facets of American culture and society, from politics, economics and religion to recreation, art and even personal relationships. To begin, I offer you excerpts from Murray Bookchin's foreword to Paul Avrich's seminal work on the period, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984).

We often never realize just how vastly different our own epoch is from past epochs. Events that we celebrate, cherish and immortalize become we removed from the time and circumstances of their own epoch. Disconnected from their own circumstances, events of history become the free floating ideological debris of our own age, constantly filtered and re-filtered through the discriminating lens of the historian. But as a result, our sense of history is impoverished. It becomes the burden of those of us who had born witness, as well as those who consider themselves to be proper students of history, to cut back the veil of time, and breath life into the dead past so that we may fend the cycle of historical tragedy and farce.

The great centers of learning in our Union must prepare the students of today to continue the battles of yesterday. And I'm sure they do not need an old man such as me to tell them this. But if I may offer my own experiences to help light the way, I am more than happy to my duty for the great human brotherhood. While it may depress the modern reader to learn that America has not always not been on the right side of the World Revolution, and has failed in her duty to her international comrades many times since her own revolution, it is patent absurdity to even entertain the conservative charge that to teach these truths is anti-American and counter-revolutionary. If that is indeed the case, then we have already lost.

In my own lifetime, I have seen world capitalism brought to its knees by a crisis of its own making. I have lived through the counter-revolutionary junta of the American master class, and manned the barricades during the revolution. I've watched fascism cover the whole of Europe in a terror never before seen in the world. I, like everyone else of my generation, took up arms to defend the country of my birth as well as the country of my mother's birth. I saw first hand the results Stalin's wanton betrayal of the revolutionary movement. I too gasped in awe and horror upon seeing the news reels of the harnessing of the power of the atom, and the liberation of Nazi death camps in Central Europe. Had these tragedies alone been our legacy as a species, we would have already had our share of blood spilt.

But new horrors would follow the Second World War. The world evermore divided itself into three bitterly opposed hostile camps. America and the Soviet Union both in turn betrayed the World Revolution in their rush to divide the world into zones of control. The last of the Imperialist powers, the Franco-British Union, recovered its strength, and clutched onto its colonies ever tighter, while Dewey and Bulganin brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in their struggle to control the Comintern and the path that international communism would follow. The only way to go was down. Each passing year brought more warheads, more powerful nuclear weapons and deadlier means of delivery. Our collective race to suicide was sad and terrifying. The world over, we saw the end of the classical worker's movement, it's revolutionary potential negated by the march of history.

...At some point, we must ask, where did this all begin? We hear often of the good that came from the Revolution. Where did it come from? And how?

This is where Avrich's book comes in. As his own words show (see Preface), Paul began writing this book seeking to answer exactly these questions for the high school history students of America. Like many of the great history texts, a commission from the People's Secretariat for Education set the ball rolling, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals devoted their time and effort to making this book possible. I am proud to have contributed in my own way to this project. As Karl Marx noted, "History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."

Politics After the Revolution: An Overview

Membership of the Central Committee, Foster Government 1933-1938

The Central Committee serves as the collective executive body for the UASR. It consists of the head of government and his deputy, the heads of the government secretariats, and the chairmen of important union committees and commissions. Some offices, such as the political head of the People's Secretariat for Justice, have an atypical title, in this case Attorney General. "*" denotes a position added in April of 1934.

Premier:William Z. Foster
Deputy Premier: Earl Browder*
People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed
Attorney General: Crystal Eastman
People's Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern
People's Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman
People's Secretary for Finance: Thomas G. Corcoran
People's Secretary for Foreign Trade: Walter Lippmann*
People's Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace
People's Secretary for Education: John Dewey
People's Secretary for Public Safety: J. Edgar Hoover*
People's Secretary for Railways: James P. Cannon
People's Secretary for Communication: Max Eastman*
People's Secretary for Maritime Transport: Joseph Ryan*
People's Secretary for Energy: Farrell Dobbs*
People's Secretary for Heavy Industry: W.E.B. Du Bois*
People's Secretary for Light Industry: Sidney Hillman*
People's Secretary for Construction and Housing: Clarence Senior*
Chairman, State Planning Commission: Albert Kahn*
Chairman, Academy of Arts and Sciences: Eugene O'Neill*
Chairman, Union Bank: William Truant Foster*

Membership of the Council of the Union, 1934-1938.

The Council of the Union, as per the Basic Law, consists of one representative from each Union Republic, and an equal number of national representatives, elected to 10 year terms by the Congress of People's Deputies. For the first election, representatives were selected in rough proportion to the number of people's deputies each pro-socialist political party had.

President of the Union: Upton Sinclair (re-elected 1936)
Deputy President: Louis C. Fraina
Provincial representatives: 36 Workers Party, 12 Left Democrats
National representatives: 34 Workers Party, 14 Left Democrats

Next installment: the functions and policies of the People's Secretariats during the Cultural Revolution

[DSS]

Looks great JB! Looking forward to seeing more of the UASR!

[Aero]

So the Union of American Socialist Republics still retains some democratic elements, such as an elected legislature that can pass laws? Or is it mostly symbolic and possess no real power?

Very interesting timeline so far.

[TNF]

I get the feeling that the First Five Year Plan for the UASR is going to be a lot like the New Deal, but on steroids, so to speak. Premier Foster isn't going to have any qualms about spending money (unlike Roosevelt), which means that the country is probably going to be heading out the Depression somewhere around 36-37, depending on how stimulative the plan itself is.

The cultural projects that OTL's WPA incorporated did a lot to change the American landscape in their own era, and I get the feeling that the UASR's program will do the same. Interestingly enough, programs like Federal One are probably going to be a lot more successful than they were in IOTL, when you had Congressmen censoring projects that had radical leanings.

[Kate]

I enjoy this a lot. I look forward to seeing what happens with China and Japan. The Second World War should be interesting. Decolonization might go differently. Revolution in India?


ITTL postwar France is allied with Britain. IOTL the French and Italian CPs were powerful, the biggest part of the anti-Nazi resistance. My understanding is that these CPs were basically defanged by Stalin and the US. (there's a scene in the Bertulluci film "1900" that has a CP leader telling the peasants to give recently seized land back to the landowners)Otherwise it would be likely that France and Italy would "go Communist" after the war.

This is great!

[Kate]

Something like a cross between "Working" by Studs Terkel and "A People's History of the United States" by the late Howard Zinn?

To begin, I offer you excerpts from Murray Bookchin's foreword to Paul Avrich's seminal work on the period, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984).


Pathfinder Press,

The SWP publishing house?

[Blair152]

Originally Posted by Jello_Biafra

Continued from Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline; this thread will cover the historical period from the end of the Second American Revolution (February, 1934), to the end of this timeline's Second World War. I'd like to humbly ask that any comments on material from before this date be kept in the first thread. That said, without further adieu, I present to you A Red Dawn.

The First Cultural Revolution

The first updates in this timeline will consist of an in character examination of the dimensions of what would later be known as the First Cultural Revolution, a period roughly from 1934 to 1940 that would herald dramatic changes in all facets of American culture and society, from politics, economics and religion to recreation, art and even personal relationships. To begin, I offer you excerpts from Murray Bookchin's foreword to Paul Avrich's seminal work on the period, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984).

We often never realize just how vastly different our own epoch is from past epochs. Events that we celebrate, cherish and immortalize become we removed from the time and circumstances of their own epoch. Disconnected from their own circumstances, events of history become the free floating ideological debris of our own age, constantly filtered and re-filtered through the discriminating lens of the historian. But as a result, our sense of history is impoverished. It becomes the burden of those of us who had born witness, as well as those who consider themselves to be proper students of history, to cut back the veil of time, and breath life into the dead past so that we may fend the cycle of historical tragedy and farce.

The great centers of learning in our Union must prepare the students of today to continue the battles of yesterday. And I'm sure they do not need an old man such as me to tell them this. But if I may offer my own experiences to help light the way, I am more than happy to my duty for the great human brotherhood. While it may depress the modern reader to learn that America has not always not been on the right side of the World Revolution, and has failed in her duty to her international comrades many times since her own revolution, it is patent absurdity to even entertain the conservative charge that to teach these truths is anti-American and counter-revolutionary. If that is indeed the case, then we have already lost.

In my own lifetime, I have seen world capitalism brought to its knees by a crisis of its own making. I have lived through the counter-revolutionary junta of the American master class, and manned the barricades during the revolution. I've watched fascism cover the whole of Europe in a terror never before seen in the world. I, like everyone else of my generation, took up arms to defend the country of my birth as well as the country of my mother's birth. I saw first hand the results Stalin's wanton betrayal of the revolutionary movement. I too gasped in awe and horror upon seeing the news reels of the harnessing of the power of the atom, and the liberation of Nazi death camps in Central Europe. Had these tragedies alone been our legacy as a species, we would have already had our share of blood spilt.

But new horrors would follow the Second World War. The world evermore divided itself into three bitterly opposed hostile camps. America and the Soviet Union both in turn betrayed the World Revolution in their rush to divide the world into zones of control. The last of the Imperialist powers, the Franco-British Union, recovered its strength, and clutched onto its colonies ever tighter, while Dewey and Bulganin brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in their struggle to control the Comintern and the path that international communism would follow. The only way to go was down. Each passing year brought more warheads, more powerful nuclear weapons and deadlier means of delivery. Our collective race to suicide was sad and terrifying. The world over, we saw the end of the classical worker's movement, it's revolutionary potential negated by the march of history.

...At some point, we must ask, where did this all begin? We hear often of the good that came from the Revolution. Where did it come from? And how?

This is where Avrich's book comes in. As his own words show (see Preface), Paul began writing this book seeking to answer exactly these questions for the high school history students of America. Like many of the great history texts, a commission from the People's Secretariat for Education set the ball rolling, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals devoted their time and effort to making this book possible. I am proud to have contributed in my own way to this project. As Karl Marx noted, "History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."

Politics After the Revolution: An Overview

Membership of the Central Committee, Foster Government 1933-1938

The Central Committee serves as the collective executive body for the UASR. It consists of the head of government and his deputy, the heads of the government secretariats, and the chairmen of important union committees and commissions. Some offices, such as the political head of the People's Secretariat for Justice, have an atypical title, in this case Attorney General. "*" denotes a position added in April of 1934.

Premier:William Z. Foster
Deputy Premier: Earl Browder*
People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed
Attorney General: Crystal Eastman
People's Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern
People's Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman
People's Secretary for Finance: Thomas G. Corcoran
People's Secretary for Foreign Trade: Walter Lippmann*
People's Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace
People's Secretary for Education: John Dewey
People's Secretary for Public Safety: J. Edgar Hoover*
People's Secretary for Railways: James P. Cannon
People's Secretary for Communication: Max Eastman*
People's Secretary for Maritime Transport: Joseph Ryan*
People's Secretary for Energy: Farrell Dobbs*
People's Secretary for Heavy Industry: W.E.B. Du Bois*
People's Secretary for Light Industry: Sidney Hillman*
People's Secretary for Construction and Housing: Clarence Senior*
Chairman, State Planning Commission: Albert Kahn*
Chairman, Academy of Arts and Sciences: Eugene O'Neill*
Chairman, Union Bank: William Truant Foster*

Membership of the Council of the Union, 1934-1938.

The Council of the Union, as per the Basic Law, consists of one representative from each Union Republic, and an equal number of national representatives, elected to 10 year terms by the Congress of People's Deputies. For the first election, representatives were selected in rough proportion to the number of people's deputies each pro-socialist political party had.

President of the Union: Upton Sinclair (re-elected 1936)
Deputy President: Louis C. Fraina
Provincial representatives: 36 Workers Party, 12 Left Democrats
National representatives: 34 Workers Party, 14 Left Democrats

Next installment: the functions and policies of the People's Secretariats during the Cultural Revolution

I hate to nitpick here, JB. But isn't the title of People's Secretary of Defense ASB in 1933-38 on your timeline? Why not People's Secretary of War, instead?

[dave on hist]

UASR Hmmm...Sounds like something out of Hitlery er. Hillary's twisted socialist mind. She does have one thing in common with Stalin, people who have the dirt on them (Bill and Hillary) or disagree with them end up dead or moving to Canada (ew)

[Whanztastic]

Originally Posted by dave on hist

UASR Hmmm...Sounds like something out of Hitlery er. Hillary's twisted socialist mind. She does have one thing in common with Stalin, people who have the dirt on them (Bill and Hillary) or disagree with them end up dead or moving to Canada (ew)

Are you suggesting the Clintons had political dissidents killed and/or deported? I hope someone other than me reports this post.

It seems like there have been several brand-new members with conservative slants who want to do nothing but bash on left and left-leaning ideologies.

This is one of the finest TLs on this site and this sort of post should stain it.

[Jello_Biafra]

Where Are They Now? - 1937

*This is largely pre-emptive of later planned revisions to the TL. Any discrepancies you see are likely because of currently pending revisions to the TL. Anyway, please suggest others. These are certainly a long time coming.

Norma Jeane Baker - This precocious ten year old orphan is currently living in the Workers' Communist Party's Children's Crèche in the Los Angeles Commune.(1)

Tommy Douglas - The Canadian emigré is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago,

Albert Einstein - The world renowned physicist is teaching and researching in the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of America at Princeton(2). His major project is the development of a unified field theory, to challenge the current interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Milton Friedman - Currently a junior economist working in the Central Directorate of the State Planning Commission(3), he has begun work on an economics dissertation after being inspired by reading Oskar Lange's groundbreaking On the Economic Theory of Socialism.

Lyndon Baines Johnson - Currently a high school politics teacher, and delegate to the Convocation of Soviets of the Texas Federative Soviet Socialist Republic. His passion for education has caused him to consider running for a seat on the Texas Central Executive Council at the next meeting of the Convocation.

Michael King, Jr.(4) - The young boy is currently living with his widowed mother and two siblings in Atlanta, Georgia.

Malcolm Little - A junior high school student in Lansing, Michigan, he has been described by his teachers as one of the most brilliant students in his class. His father, an elected coordinator for a local automotive combine, has been encouraging his son to excel at academics.

Richard Nixon - Already a seasoned Workers' Party organizer and a veteran of a few skirmishes during the Second American Civil War, he has just graduated from the UA Harvard Law School, summa cum laude.

Diego Rivera - The famous Mexican artist is in the tail end of his first term as First Secretary of the Mexican Communist Party, and current Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and a frontbench member in the National Congress of People's Power. He is perhaps second only to President Lázaro Cárdenas in influence to the Mexican revolutionary government.

Theodore Roosevelt - The former Vice-President of the USA and some-time Social Democratic Party politician is now a latter day communist and enthusiastic supporter of the May Revolution. He has found an open audience for his nature conservation proposals within the Workers' Party, particularly with Ag Secretary Henry Wallace, and the old politician has found a second wind in his political career.

John Steinbeck - Having seen the success of his previous novel, In Virtuous Battle(5), the San Franciscan author has started drafting a story of grander scale than the battle of fruit pickers for their survival during the Depression and Revolution. The work is currently untitled, but continues the revolutionary themes of the previous work.

Leon Trotsky - In what can be described only as an attempt to live down to every slur shot at him by the Stalinists, Trotsky is currently in the middle of a torrid affair with his close comrade James P. Cannon's wife. When he is not biting the hand that feeds him, he is common figure in the New York journalist scene.

Ludwig Wittgenstein - With the disturbing rise of Austrian "National Socialism" and the beginning of the Anschluss, the esteemed professor of analytic philosophy has, at the urging of his British academic friend Bertrand Russell, accepted his American colleague John Dewey's invitation to emigrate to America under the Refuge from Fascism Act, and join the foundational faculty of the new University of America at DeLeon-Debs.

1. Essentially, it's an experiment in the totally social raising of children, as part of the an ideological desire to dissolve the nuclear family. Such experiments are common in the tumultuous era of the Revolution due to the abundance of abandoned children and war orphans.

2. The Ivy League and other prestigious private schools were re-organized after the Revolution into a nationally funded University of America system.

3. The State Planning Commission is divided into multiple Directorates, each of which plans economic policy for specific areas of the national economy. The Central Directorate coordinates and supervises the actions of the other directorates.

4. Better known IOTL as Martin Luther King, Jr. He was born Michael King Jr. IOTL, but his father changed his and his son's name after a visit to Germany in 1934, which has not occurred ITTL due to his father's murder by reactionary death squads in the Revolution.

5. ITTL's version of In Dubious Battle, which among other changes, portrays the Party in a much better light.

[DeviateFromTheAbsolute]

Originally Posted by Jello_Biafra

Where Are They Now? - 1937

*Updates galore*.

Yay for updates!

Keep up the good work!



(PS: Also, that's was some interesting info on King's name. Never realized that... Oh well.)

[OptimumPx]

Teddy Roosevelt would be 79 in 1937...even if he was still alive I don't think he would still be majorly active in politics at that age in 1937...

Other then that I loved the update.

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by OptimumPx

Teddy Roosevelt would be 79 in 1937...even if he was still alive I don't think he would still be majorly active in politics at that age in 1937...

Other then that I loved the update.

He comes from a family renowned for its longevity. Avoid malaria, and he could still be semi-active in his late 70s and early 80s.

[Scipio Terra Maria]

Originally Posted by Jello_Biafra

He comes from a family renowned for its longevity. Avoid malaria, and he could still be semi-active in his late 70s and early 80s.

At least he won't be too forgotten.

[Swiffness]

Not even close to done reading this, but I couldn't resist the urge to have some fun, extrapolate, and dream away.....


As a black man, UASR racial policy in the 30s already has me drooling. Nationwide propaganda campaign against racism? Yes please. African National Congress? Yes please. A *massive* crackdown on the Klan, with Kangaroo Courts for the Grand Dragons and summary execution for everyday night riders? FUCK YES! Safe to say that lynchings wouldn't be tolerated by the Gov't like they were by FDR in OTL. In fact, Jello probably vastly undersold the degree of racial violence that would happen in the South during the 2nd Civil War.....many Southerners would see it as their "last chance" to get their licks in against the nigras before the commies hand over white wimmen to the colored horde. Understand, 1933 is a mere decade removed from horrors like the Tulsa Race Riot......thousands of blacks dying in 1933 would not be out of the question.

In light of this, I can see the black population (at least initially) giving the Communists the sort of love white politicians haven't received since Lincoln in Richmond. Sure, there's still "White Only" restaurants, but J. Edgar is giving Klansmen the Nguyễn Văn Lém treatment. That would go a long way. (imagine, the man who made MLK's life hell IOTL could become beloved by blacks as a new John Brown ITTL! THE IRONY, IT BURNS)

Additional African-American considerations in this fascinating ATL:

- Black Panthers are surely butterflied away. Who needs a Party for Self-Defense when the Federal Gov't isn't above machine gunning white supremacists? Huey P and Bobby Seale would be more than welcome in the Congress. Fred Hampton, with his talents in organizing, coalition building, and oratory would THRIVE, possibly even make it to First Secretary someday.

- What to make of Malcolm X? The sweeping education reforms would butterfly that asshole teacher who told him "becoming a lawyer is no realistic goal for a nigger", so Malcolm Little avoiding crime and becoming a relatively obscure yet renowned lawyer/legal scholar who lives into old age seems likely. The Nation of Islam would be a completely irrelevant fringe cult and Elijah Muhammed would be relegated to the clearance rack of history alongside Father Divine and William Miller. Louis Eugene Walcott, known IOTL as Minster Louis Farrakhan, becomes a legendary calypso musician. (IOTL, he actually released several calypso albums before converting)

- What role will Black Baptists play in finally abolishing Jim Crow ITTL? Martin Luther King Sr. was already ministering before May Day so MLK Jr. likely wouldn't be too different from the OTL version. Junior will cause huge problems if there's a Vietnam analouge however....

- The Ghetto is butterflied away with a vengeance. No War on Drugs, no Contra cocaine, no massive black prison population, no Bloods n Crips. Forget about all that. Philadelphia averages about 100 murders a year.

- Joe Jackson lives comfortably as a councilman in a Indiana steel syndicate. He has no need to force his family into showbiz. His 8th child lives an idyllic, humble life as a farmer and dies a happy old man with black skin.

- Hip-Hop still exists (its inevitable that SOMEONE would start looping those drum breaks), but in a radically different form. Remember: no crack, no ghetto, so the mood of the entire genre would be less.....frustrated. Conscious Rap (with a heavier Marxist tint, obviously) would dominate in ATL the way capitalist Gangsta Rap dominates IOTL. I pity the ATL versions of Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Master P, as their entrepreneurial talents would go to waste. Sample clearance issues are (mercifully) non-existent ITTL, so the sample heavy production style continues to dominate well into the 2000s and beyond. The Dirty South subgenre is possibly butterflied away completely; either way it doesn't come anywhere close to dominating like it does IOTL. A wave of expertly lyrical rappers (such as Canibus, Chino XL, Ras Kass, Pharoah Monch, Apathy, Gift of Gab, to name a few) who are relegated to underground legend status IOTL become huge stars ITTL (no record label BS). IOTL, Biggie Smalls was an star English pupil who got lured away from school by drug money before giving rap a try. Given his talent for noirish rap masterpieces like "Warning" and "Somebody's Got to Die", perhaps he'd become a writer of mystery and crime novels ITTL?

- Stanley Ann Dunham hits it off with a sharp Kenyan classmate during a "Introduction to Syndicalism" course at the University of Chicago.

[The Ubbergeek]

I'll quip in, what about the latinos too?

[Ze Kaiser]

Originally Posted by The Ubbergeek

I'll quip in, what about the latinos too?

They probably get a better deal out of this as well. They are "whiter" than African Americans, and Jello made Socialist Mexico a strong American ally. With the government willing to enforce racial equality for everyone, they obviously will get included.

[Scipio Terra Maria]

While I had hoped for an update, I would like to take this opportunity to ask about Conlon Nancarrow.

He is one of the most innovative classical composer of the 20th century, who originally fled the USA due to being a communist, and lived most of his life in obscurity.

[snerfuplz]

Originally Posted by Ze Kaiser

They probably get a better deal out of this as well. They are "whiter" than African Americans, and Jello made Socialist Mexico a strong American ally. With the government willing to enforce racial equality for everyone, they obviously will get included.

A strong economically Mexico would mean no illegal migrations that strain ties now

[spsook]

Originally Posted by Swiffness

Not even close to done reading this, but I couldn't resist the urge to have some fun, extrapolate, and dream away.....

Oh dear God yes. I've gotten pretty far and I'm already salivating about my Asian and Latino historical figures.

Carlos Bulosan, a young Filipino emigre, writes his masterpiece, fictionalized autobiography America is in the Heart, juxtaposing the continuing development of the American Dream of equality and justice against the depredations of the UK in the Philippines. IOTL, he's red-baited and dies of drink and TB. Since the bitterness of OTL America is in the Heart gets butterflied, he finds a comfortable spot writing novel and short stories while working as a propagandist in the Seattle Commune of the Washington ASR, broadcasting to Asian sugar and pineapple workers in Hawai'i under the nickname "Manong Allos." Like IOTL, however, he never returns to the Philippines, as the UK have him on a shoot-on-sight list for his Red writings.

Bert Corona, the son of an anarcho-syndicalist Villista, goes to the University of Southern California a couple years late due to the unrest of the Second Revolution. He organizes progressive whites and Spanish-speaking youth to open up the historically WASPish institution and is elected student body president. He is invited to a delegation to Mexico to celebrate the "fraternal socialist relationship" between the two countries. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he works as a lawyer and labor organizer with friend and colleague Carey McWilliams, bringing the Mexican American population into the Worker's Party.

Cole Porter, mildly uncomfortable with the lack of conspicuous comforts offered by the Revolution, finds its approval of homosexuality ideal; however, he remains married to Linda Lee Thomas. Due to the absence or aristocrats in the new UASR, he never crushes both his legs riding in 1937 and continues to write musicals to wide acclaim. Porter, Copland, and later Leonard Bernstein reflect a left, Bohemian artist culture that works with local American themes and forms in opposition to the dark, occasionally restricting socialist realism style.