It Could Happen Here Weekly 3

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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(01:08):
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I are Radio, app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted
to let you know, this is a compilation episode, So

(02:13):
every episode of the week that just happened is here
in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
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If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
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(02:34):
here a podcast that I opened perfectly as a professional,
as a man who makes all of his money from
the podcasts uh no, notes, How was syphilis doing these days?
You don't hear a lot from syphilis? Is it? Is
it holding up? Okay, yeah, it's around. It's fine. Thank
you for asking it. I didn't know that. It's not

(02:54):
the same thread it used to be. It comes back
in waves every now and then. It has had a
good run for a couple of It's kind of like
Star Trek, right, yeah, yeah, there's a well, I don't
think there's like new versions of it. I think it's
like the same, good old syphilis pretty much. I don't
think it changes drastically, So it's like Star Trek on Netflix. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well,

(03:16):
good to hear from syphilis. This has been your syphilis update.
That's gonna do it for us this week until next week.
I've been Robert Evans, Dr. Cavajota, and of course Garrison Davis.
All Right, everyone by, It would be pretty funny to
just do that, Sophie, to just drop a one and
a half minute episode on, But only if we put

(03:38):
in ads. M Yeah, we really like every word. We
have a full ad break in between. Yeah, then then
people would probably complain lest about the nine ads that
are in our episodes. Right now, I can talk about
syphili What are we what are we doing right now?
What is this episode about? What's going on? I'm assuming

(04:00):
you guys want to talk about the coronavirus or I
don't know. I can talk about whatever you want, but
I think that's probably what you guys brought me on for.
All right, what do we what is this coronavirus? Is
this a problem? It's a little problem. It's not good
to hear it's it's it's not great. So why didn't
you give me a heads up on this? So? Yeah,

(04:22):
that that's me not giving you heads up on the plankue.
The thing's talking about hear anything about this? This is
the mask thing. That's why you got those two jabs
in your arms and that random parking lot. Oh I
thought that was heroin. Sorry. First of all, can can

(04:43):
we talk about the use of the word jab. I
don't love it. It's I mean, you're not James Bond,
you don't. Let's not use jab. Prefer it's fair. I
prefer what I think is the proper medical term vain fucked. Yeah,
but it's not really your vein either. It's really just
intramuscular fucked. Oh right, muscle fucked. Yeah. I mean, what

(05:05):
what are the cool kids calling it? Is it a poke?
What do we want? What are the teens call it?
Is it? Are they calling it the TikTok's? Yeah, it's
called it's called the TikTok. I don't know. I've I've
been been working on I've been working on a all
day Today've been working to find this proud boy who's
pretending to take COVID vaccines but it's actually steroids. Um.

(05:30):
He calls the critical support, he calls the extracurriculars. Okay,
So that honestly rules, that's extremely funny. I'm hoping an
article will be out by the time this podcast airs so, uh,
who's the article for. I'm not sure yet. I'm talking
with Opossum Press. Okay, cool, Well that's funny, Garrison. What

(05:52):
is today's episode about? Well, we we want to talk
to We wanted to talk to Cava about both what
the current plagues had situation is because a lot of
people seem to think it's over, a lot of people
seem to think it's not over. Um. And then also,
how is COVID and all the stuff still affecting our
hospital and medical system? Um? Is there supply shortages for

(06:13):
medical supplies? What's going on in different areas? Yeah, because
all of that, all that kind of stuff got you.
Yes is the answer? Yes, the answer, it's the answer. Yeah,
it's a it's still a problem. I don't think. Uh,
don't listen to anyone who tells you that it's not um.
Don't listen to anyone who gives you too Sonny of

(06:34):
forecast on it. But it you know, it's different in
different places, is the long the short of it. In
places where the vaccinations are higher and where there's mandates
and there's reasonable laws about things, the rates are going
down California, but also like Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont.

(06:56):
These are places with high vaccination rates. The rates of
cases are going down in those places. Places like Mississippi,
West Virginia, Idaho, Alabama, these are places where like it's
vaccination rates and the cases are going way up. You
guys might have heard of a couple of things happening,

(07:17):
Like there was that forty six year old guy named
Daniel Wilkinson. He's like a vet who developed something called
gallstone pancreatitis, which I could talk to you guys about
for hours. I won't, don't worry, but I could. I'm
just like you know, I could. I mean the Idaho
they have been cleared. It's not a total DNR, but
like anyone who has um cardiac arrest is on a

(07:38):
DNR now in Idaho because they just don't have the
resources to be well, that's not entire I mean what
am I? Okay? So that's not your fault. You got
it wrong, because there were there were doctors that were
sort of spreading that story about now they are and
what's called the crisis standard of care. But and in
part of that means that hospitals could go to putting
everyone on DNR, which means do not resuscitate, which means

(08:01):
if you have a cardiac arrest, they won't do anything
about it. That's that's not what's actually happening. It could happen.
What what when they institute this crisis standard of care.
What it means is that if a hospital gets so
short on their ventilators and they just don't have any
more room, then they could implement that. I mean, I
don't know, I even't heard of anyone. I was I

(08:23):
was asking around uh to see if any doctors in
Idaho could tell me of a hospital that's actually doing it.
I haven't seen or heard of one that's actually doing
it yet, but they could. The point is, it's it's
that bad where that's a reasonable discussion where doctors have
to discuss kind of like they were back in the
day in New York, where they have to be like, okay,
does this person do we put the you know, the

(08:44):
young lady on the mental lator or the old guy?
You know? Then we have to decide and they make
those decisions. It's really awful. It's a position no doctor
wants to be in, and now that's becoming a reality.
It's brutal. It's brutal out there and and that's bleeding
into other states nearby, you know, So is that what
you mean by the Welkerson situation because his doctor like

(09:06):
couldn't find uh an ICU bed for him. Is that
that is that the story you're talking about? That's the story.
So he's this guy who had a problem that can
be fixed. I mean, it's a procedure called an e
RCP that he can get done at specialty centers. And
he didn't live far from Houston. Houston has plenty of
the specialty centers that can do it. They have great
guests from urologists like myself, not as good, but you know,

(09:28):
the same sort of thing. And they could do it
if they if they, you know, if they had the
availability to get him in. But they didn't, and so
he died. Is something that he shouldn't love. It's basically
the example. And I'm sure there's more examples of that.
And what really worries me is the examples that you're
not hearing yet, like cases they're delayed now, cancer screening,

(09:50):
things that are being delayed now in these hospitals that
we're gonna be paying down the road. That's that's the
ship that really scares me great, like just people not
going in for things in general. Yeah exactly, I have
friends other than you who work in E R s
and stuff, um, nurses and the doctor um, and it's

(10:13):
up in the pm W. But the ship they're saying,
it's like in the day's crap, like like I they
are working on like building capacity and making sure they
have things to like treat their friends because it's they're
like the advices do not go to the hospital like
if if, if at all possible, because there's just not

(10:34):
capacity for you unless it's like literally an immediate life
and death thing. It's it's almost uh not worth like
trying because there's just nothing. There's no slack the system
is and it's it's it's starting to turn. It looks
like here in in in the Portland area, but like
it's it's frightening, like these are not people who would

(10:57):
be bullshitting or or are are are prone to panic,
you know, they're e er professionals. But it's it's it's
fucked up, like it's it's it it's this thing where
like the scary thing to me is not even necessarily
where we are right now, because it does like there
is some kind of broadly positive news in a lot
of areas about like where the pandemic is going. It's

(11:17):
just like this situation won't be fixed when case numbers
go down. It's it's it's going to be permanent damage
has been done to this system. And I guess what
I'm wondering, first off, like from what you're seeing, like,
what what is the extent of the permanent damage done
to our our emergency medical system in particular and our

(11:38):
our ability to even like get care at the moment. Yeah,
that's a really good question. I don't I don't know.
It kind of goes back to I think what Garrison
want to talk about, which is like the collapse of
the medical system. I think we talk about it a
lot in terms of we're on the edge of collapse,
we're near collapse. I think there are places in this

(11:59):
country where or he has collapsed. I think that's pretty evident.
It's really it's not homogeneous in any way across this country.
There are certainly places that are better than others, and
there's certainly places that have a lot more uh leeway
and flexibility, but everywhere is strained right now. And in
regards to your question about permanent damage. I'll answer that

(12:20):
in regards to just the personnel. You know, because um,
because of the show that I have, the House of
Pod follow us on Twitter at the House of Pod,
and I talked to a lot of doctors and nurses
from all over the country, talk to them a lot.
And it's bad. I mean, the stress that they're under,

(12:42):
the pts D that they're that they're dealing with, the burnout.
The level of burnout is just intense. It's intense and
and it's I think we were talking about moral injury
and burnout before all this started, and now it is
to a point where I don't know what's going to
happen to the medical system, just in ms of the
personnel when this is all over. I know a lot

(13:03):
of people who are getting out of medicine, getting out
clinical medicine. I mean out of like I would I
would say, out of just my immediate friend group. I
can think of a couple off hand excellent doctors, really
great I c u e er doctors who are already
planning their exit. And when I don't know, I mean
in the next coming years, that's gonna be a major issue.
And I don't know how we're going to address that.

(13:25):
And our nurses in the I c U. S. Man,
the stuff they have to put up with is and
is insane. You just see it in their eyes. Eyes
are broken, like I was. I volunteered on the wards
a couple of weeks ago, and people, they're the doctors
and nurses taking care of these CODE patients day in
day out, like they there's like a little bit of
their soul that's been broken, And just see it in

(13:47):
their eyes like I was there for like just a week,
and it's terrifying. You know, you're going into a room
with a patient with COVID. It's scary. You know, even
no matter how much ppe protective equipment you have on,
you're always a little scared. And I just think years
of that that way is on a person in a
way I don't I mean, I am worried about. I

(14:07):
don't know how we're going to address that. M h yeah,
that's cool. Yeah, And it's frustrating because like from the
perspective of people listening, right, the thing you want to
ask is like, well, how can I help, And it's like, well,
you can't because you're already if you're listening to the
show I assume you're masking. I assume you've gotten vaccinated.
If you don't have like a condition that that renders
you unable to get the vaccine, you're you're I. I

(14:30):
think our listeners tend to be pretty responsible people. It's
just not enough because of the country decided to like
Leroy Jenkins a plague and um god, Garrison, do you
know that reference? Is that? Get that reference? I'm familiar
with Leroy Jenkins. That's good. Were you born when Leroy

(14:53):
Jenkins became a thing, I don't know, you would have
been like three, would have been. Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was deadpool that them to your attention, isn't it? No? No,
I it came to my attention just doing general Internet. Yeah,
it was one of the first. It was the first
meme that you could show your parents pretty much. I
guess they were like Badger Badger, Mushroom, a couple of

(15:14):
others in that category, but like, it was one of
the first memes that wasn't a man's gaping asshole prolapsed.
But I showed my parents that all the time. I
don't know. Yeah, there was a beautiful moment back in
the day with some sea a stadium. Yeah, that's what
brought you in the medicine. This is what I saw work.

(15:36):
They were so proud of me, like, look at look
at our look at our boy, Look at our boy.
He can tell us exactly why that man's asshole looks
that way. I have a weird job, I guess. One
of my questions is, with the assumption that people are
taking the actual plague related steps they can to reduce

(15:57):
their burden to the medical system, what can people realistically do?
I mean, I think part of that is and this
is and I'm not gonna have you to like explain
how you can take care of your own medical treatments
in an emergency on a podcast. That's not the time
or the place. Although I do think it's probably a
good idea for people to read up on first aid

(16:17):
and basic life saving emergency Like it's always a good
idea to to have some training there. But yeah, I mean,
do you have other advice? You know, you're exactly right.
The people that are listening to this podcast are totally
on board already, and they're super supportive, and we appreciate that.
I mean that is not unnoticed. I mean, um, you know,

(16:38):
it's having people like, uh, outside the hospitals every now
and then, applauding doctors. I know it's cheesy, but it's great.
I'll take that over the blue angels flying overhead any day,
you know. So it's that's that stuff is really important,
and masking and taking care of themselves is is great,
you know. Um. The the real practical things that people

(17:02):
can do, I think, uh is help contribute to sites
that will help get the rest of the world vaccinated.
I mean, we can definitely talk about that the question
of boosters here versus you know, vaccines for the first
time elsewhere. But there That's the one thing I would
recommend right now if you want to help, um, let's
put our money into places where we can get vaccines

(17:26):
to other places. And I think that every little bit
of that helps in the long run. And and that's
the sort of thing that we could use. Other than that,
I mean, I just hope that people are still going
into medicine and in nursing. You know. That's the only
thing I can still hope is that people who haven't
interest in it, you know, continue to do it. And
and for those people who are just their training, those

(17:48):
years of their formative years are during this time. I
just want to let them know. I swear it gets better.
It's not always gonna be like this. And if you
make it through this, you're gonna be an amazing clinician,
You're gonna be an amazing nurse, You're gonna be an
amazing doctor. And I really want you guys to keep
doing it. That's that's one thing I would say to Yeah,

(18:09):
I mean, and I I'll certainly add that if you're
someone who's contemplating a medical career, please please, I mean,
just from a there's a couple of things on that,
like just from a perspective of what the world needs.
It's what the world needs. But also, if you're listening
to this stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about the
possibility of the collapse, if you're someone who who foresees
things getting potentially much more difficult in the future, not

(18:32):
a lot of things more useful in a bad situation
than somebody with medical training. I don't count on that
getting me through the apocalypse. I'm I'm soft. I am
so so. I went camping and I couldn't handle it.
A couple of weeks ago, I went camping. It was awful.
There was so much dust. It was an awful experience.
But I just thought, if the apocalypse comes, I will

(18:53):
hopefully get placed in a very nice tent because I'm
a doctor, so I'm counting on that to get me through.
There are so many dumbass boogaloo type quote unquote preppers
who focus on the guns and the gear and the
dried food but thrown in the shirt, throwing knives but
don't even have a n I fac an individual first

(19:14):
aid kit or like a tourniquet, and like they talk
to you, talk to like like I mean, this is
a little off topic, but like talk to combat marines
about like their favorite person. It's always the corman. It's
the guy who knows or the lady who knows how
to like patch a bullet wound and whatnot. Like there's
there's nothing more useful in any situation pretty much that

(19:36):
that is dangerous than somebody who can do medicine. So please,
if you're if you're studying to do medicine, if you're
contemplating becoming an e M T. Or a paramedic or
a nurse or whatever, good God, we need you so badly. Yeah,
we've talked to a little bit about just in the
medical system in general, and then we can also kind

(19:58):
of discuss more stuff related to how COVID's impacting certain
areas more than others. And like, let's say someone who's
someone who's listening, who's in one of these areas that
it has only vaccinated, you know, not not a lot
of people are going on with masks on, and you know,
schools starting back up, maybe they have kids are going
to their school system. I know in Texas they have

(20:19):
you know, child deaths arising. That sounds very frightening to
be that kind of person who, like you know, would
like like to see that stuff happened in their state,
but it's just not really possible. And I don't know,
with so much of the rest of the world kind
of slowly taking back restrictions, and I'm sure it feels
very jarring to be in a situation like that and
kind of like there's really nothing you can do right

(20:41):
besides you right, because you can talk to your family,
talk to your friends, but like overall, it's hard to
hard to make you know, a big impact in a state,
you know, like Texas, Alabama, like Idaho, all the ones
that you that you were mentioning before from a medical
kind of perspective, is there is there any way people
can kind of start to talk about those things with

(21:02):
their family And because the way we've been trying to
get people take the vaccine, with the marketing we've been doing,
has not been super successful in these demographics. Um, do
you think there's other conversations that can get people to
slowly kind of be more, be more able to you know,
contemplate that. Yeah, that's a that's a tough question. It's

(21:23):
particularly tough if you're someone who is believes in the
importance of vaccines and you'r or the importance of masks
and that sort of thing, and you're in a place
where you're a minority. That is tough. The first thing
I'll say is definitely know that the vaccine helps. You're

(21:44):
in a much better position because of the vaccine. When
I was on the wards and I was looking at
patients that they're almost all unvaccinated, those are the people
that end up in the hospital. You can't still get
into the hospitalize if you have the vaccine, but it's
it's much less likely. And you know, not that these

(22:05):
people don't count, they count just as much, but if
you don't have an underlying problem like a liver transplant
or some immune suppression, then you're less likely to have
a really bad outcome with COVID if you're vaccinated. So
just know that it helps. You still might get it,
it'll suck, um, but for the most part, you're gonna
stay out of the hospital. And that really, I think

(22:25):
is something have a little comfort in. It really does
seem to work. You know. Outside of that, the schools
thing is is a real concern for me, and I'm
gonna feel a lot better than We're going to be
in a much better position once we are able to
get kids vaccinated. So there's there's two things. You guys
probably heard that there was, um this this committee that

(22:50):
met to advise the FDA about booster shots. That's one thing.
So booster shots are gonna go out to people who
need them, uh sixty five and older people at high risk,
people in high risk occupations. They're gonna like frontline workers.
So there's gonna be booster shots coming out. And then
the data is coming out now about five till Yeah,

(23:11):
and that's pretty promising. Um, it looks like they're gonna
do okay with lower doses, so they use about one
third the dose of the vaccine that the adults get
and it seems to work. We haven't seen much other
than the pre press release from uh Fightser, but you know,
if you really pick at it, it looks promising. So
I am that's something that makes me hopeful. That's something

(23:32):
I'm definitely clinging to. I think there's no way we're
getting out of this without vaccinating kids. That just has
to happen. Um. I think once that starts rolling out,
and hopefully it will soon. I mean I don't want
to put a date on it, but I'm hoping within
the next couple of months this starts happening. So you know, once,
once that starts happening, I'm gonna feel a lot more comfortable.

(23:54):
I think people in those situations are gonna feel a
lot more comfortable too. Yeah, the booster thing is an
interesting question to me. I mean, they're methical standpoint, particularly,
you know, I think I think it's not a fair
narrative to say it has to be one or the other,
and I think people are saying that. I don't think.
I think we can do it. I think we can

(24:16):
produce enough vaccine here for people who haven't got it yet,
and enough for the boosters and start supplying more to
the world. I mean, we can do more. Our Government
Sharing Visor Maderna definitely need to do more in that regards.
They definitely need to do more in terms of production.
They haven't hit their goals in a lot of these places.
And but it's also not like they haven't done anything yet.

(24:37):
They give about like a you know, two hundred million
doses are being donated just this week. I think, so
they are doing things. That's happening. It's just we need
more of it. Everything needs we need more of it.
We need to ramp up production. Yeah, it's weird because,
like you're right, we could produce enough vaccines for the
places that don't have them and enough vaccines for boosters

(24:59):
over here, and all it would take is a couple
of months of our Afghana stand mad money. But we're
not going to do that, and so it probably will,
like I don't know, contribute to an issue effect. There's
there's a chance that it will contribute to an issue
of vaccine unavailability. But also it's not like if we
don't get the boosters, those vaccines will be available because

(25:21):
we're just not giving them out. Yeah, in the extent
that we need. So I yeah, I don't know, I
understand what you're saying. I'll get the booster if they
decide to give out boosters because I like not having
not plague damage or getting long COVID. Yeah. Yeah, that
that seems great. And a lot of the vaccine has

(25:43):
been see kind of relies. It tracks back to how
we've been marketing in it, and I've I've been on
the team that's like, we should stop using Fauchi because
every time Fauci goes on TV to talk about vaccines,
more people are going to do like a backfire in fact,
to be like, no, I'm not gonna get don't trust Fasci.
So there's a particular like marketing thing that I think
we've failed on. Like America is very good at marketing

(26:03):
when we can make money, but when it's not related
to getting gaining more profit. I think the government is
very bad at marketing these types of things. Um. And
on the kind of the marketing side of things, I
don't know, this is this is kind of old news
at this point. But the whole smoll and testicals thing, um,
which we have you have not talked about on this

(26:25):
show about but I'm sure you have thoughts about how
this thing has kind of balloons, which is that can
be like, so, how how the marketing and misinformation relates
to this cool kind kind of current problem. Yeah. Yeah,
first of all, that particular story, I mean that's hilarious.

(26:47):
I mean, like this, I've never I've never seen someone's
excuse for venereal disease becomes such an international issue. Yeah,
contribute to the desk probably of hundreds of people. Um,
you know, it's it's the marketing thing. Is a really
great question, and and and it's been driving me crazy
because like part of me at this point just wants

(27:07):
to be like, get the fucking vaccine. What the fund's
wrong with you? Get the vaccine part of my language
and like, um, but then the part of me knows
that that doesn't work. Like I do believe doctors should
be able to express their frustration. Um, they need to
be able to do that. If we can't do that
right now, I mean, it's game over. But they need
to at least have that ability where doctors can voice
their frustration with antivactors but still give them the same

(27:30):
high level of care that we're always going to give
them the matter what when they show up in the hospital.
But if not working to do that, we need other approaches.
I don't I don't entirely know what they are. There
are some people they're they're so far out there that
we're just never going to reach the people, the microchip people.
There's like a level of deep programming that will need
to happen to those people that we just it's it's

(27:52):
too exhausting to do that. You really have to, like,
if you can't scale that in any meaningful way for
the country, I think I think, Yeah, I don't know.
I think calling it the Trump vaccine was the closest
we got to have possibility, and that fucking I'm interested
in your thoughts on the fucking bright Bart article and
if you're not aware, if you're less online than us,
and God bless you if you are right Bart, the

(28:15):
which is I don't know. CNN for Fascists came up
with an article blaming the Democrats for the fact that
Republicans don't want to take the vaccine and saying it's
a secret liberal plot to exterminate conservatives because conservatives refused
to take vaccines because they're fundamentally oppositional, defiant. Um, and
like it's it's the fault of people who are telling
them to take the vaccine that they're not taking the

(28:36):
vaccine because obviously, why would you trust the liberal on anything?
But also they're trying to kill us. We're going to
lose the election because we're all dying because we refuse
to get vaccinated for a preventable disease. Anyway, how do
you feel about that guy? I don't. I don't love it.
I don't love it. Um, I'm vaguely familiar with bright Bart.
I don't know that exact because I have enough pain

(28:59):
in my life. But um, but you know, I do wonder.
It's like when they put out articles like this, or
when Tucker Carlson goes out and he does his thing
questioning vaccine, just asking questions about vaccines that lead to
vaccine hesitancy, Like what calculations are they doing? Are they

(29:19):
doing calcular? Is this just him being callous in not
giving a fun and just doing it, or is there
some calculation that him and some sort of right wing
fink tank are doing where they're like, hey, look this
sells to our audience. They love it. Let's keep doing it. Yes,
we are going to lose ex portion of our audience
because of this, but we still have plenty of audience left. Like,

(29:43):
I don't, I wonder how that's happening. Like it is hurting.
It is true, it is hurting them more than than
other people. It's hurting everyone. Everyone's getting affected by this,
um but there it's those states that are being affected,
the people not getting vaccinated who are listening to people
like Tucker Carlson. I don't. I don't understand what their
endgame is here, Like this is their market? Why why

(30:05):
not protected? And that I do not have a good
answer for. I was hoping one of you guys would. Um.
You know, it's there's a lot going on there. I
think a decent chunk of it is the assumption that
whatever they lose in terms of dead followers won't be
worth more than continuing the cash bonanza. That is owning

(30:26):
the lips, right because that's all they that's all that's
the entirety of the right wing media. It's just owning
the lips. It's just oppositional, defiant, it's just hating anything
Democrats do. So you you kind of can't. You're a
cuck if you tell people to receive basic medical care
if Democrats are taking that basic medical care right, Um,

(30:49):
so it's a pride thing for a lot of them.
To two things I love is when you when you
use the word cuck or when you do Ben Shapiro's voice,
Like those are like two of my everythings that you do.
It's you're saying really well, far beyond anything rational on
the right. Um, and it's it's difficult to like I

(31:15):
I I think the calculation is just like I think
a lot of these guys is the same thing with
climate change. Like they're smart enough to know that they're
contributing to an uninhabitable world, but they want to cash
in first. They want to get as much as they
can out before it falls apart. And I think that's
all any of these people care about. Because I think
there are the true believers. The radio guys are true believers, right,

(31:37):
the radio guys who keep dying because they don't be vaccinated.
Those guys did believe that it was some sort of
weird conspiracy, it was the communist whatever, um. Clearly because
they did management level, yeah, mid management level. They don't
know all the stuff that they're being told from above
and they kind of believe it enough to where they
kill themselves for the company. I think for Tucker, it's
more a matter of like, hey, I keep making money

(32:00):
and I maintain my power if I If I continue
to hold this line, you you lose power, You get weaker.
It's like when Trump got booed for telling people to
take the vaccine. You know, um, yeah, crazy. You can't
go back with this ship. You just can't, and you
certainly can't admit to ever having been wrong. Right. Yeah, man,

(32:24):
it's good ship. What a what a fun note to
end of the episode on what a good society we've
built Bravo. M hm ah, well cover it. People can
find you by looking up the House of Pod. Yes,
uh was slightly less depressing, but not not super uplifting

(32:48):
either at this point. Uh. Follow us at the House
of Pot at Twitter, and you can listen to our
podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcast. We'll talk
about medical type things, but not so deep into the
woods that it's not entertaining, I hope. Yeah. Fun the woods, Yeah,
the woods. We have fun guests ranging from the world's

(33:08):
best medical experts to you know, you guys. The best
medical experts. You guys are right up there for medicine, right.
There's no better medicine than just a big fat pile
of cocaine. And the good thing about cocaine is it's
a sterilizing agent. So if you're worried about COVID getting

(33:28):
in your nasal passages, just rail cocaine before you and
after you go into the store. It's like getting a
COVID test, but more fun. Legally, I have to tell
you that's false. Well, we all have our opinions about
how cocaine works, and I have my facts. Now, if
you excuse me, I'm gonna go pick up a single

(33:50):
item at the grocery store. Hey, leath the listeners tag here.
Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember I came
to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt Best's
name and making sure justice was finally served. But I

(34:14):
hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart
the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger.
Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
ify Tig, I like you, but now all signs point
to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this
game is just starting. You better believe I'm gonna win.

(34:38):
I'm Tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit,
a tag Torre's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in season two, dropping weekly starting
February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen
to Leave the Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm

(35:01):
Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and where the hosts
of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where
every week we get to explore some of the weirdest
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how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that
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(35:23):
interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff to Blow
Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and
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(35:44):
time to come join us in the place where you belong.
The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast New episodes publish
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Look for your children's eyes to see the true magic
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(36:07):
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(36:28):
you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council.
Welcome It could Happen Here pod, a podcast that is
today about the fact that ten years ago it did happen.
And when when I when I say it did happen,
I mean we occupied an extremely large number of places,

(36:48):
and we did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways.
And with with with me to talk about this is
Garrison as always. I like that you used the Twitter
handle for our podcast, not the actual name, but that's fine.
Where can it where can it go for it? But
helloon with me? I have I have my special guest,

(37:11):
Vicky Ostrowil, who is an agitator, who is a writer,
who has done many many things, probably most famously writing
the book in Defense of Looting UM from Bold Press,
Bold type Press, bult Type Press. Yeah, very good book.
People got very bad, people got very angry. Yeah, thank you.

(37:33):
It's it's really I'm really excited to be here to
to talk about the the anniversary of Occupy from basically
you know when I when I all got this whole
train rolling, so yeah, and the the other the other
thing um that that is probably relevant here is that
Vicky was one of the first people at Occupy and
and little correct me if I'm wrong about this. I
found an oblique reference to this in one of the

(37:54):
things I read. You facilitated the first meeting. Yes, the yeah,
I got this on the record now, yeah, I I
uh yeah, during UM during the general New York City
General Assembly, it was called in August. Um, there was
you know, uh, ad Busters hopefully called for a general assembly,
and you know, a bunch of us sort of went

(38:16):
down there and there was a tanky party there um
doing a general assembly, which was just them on speakers,
UM doing their regular ranting. Um hadn't changed much in
ten years, um and uh and we um. Yeah, so
a bunch of us just went and sat down, uh,
you know, to the side of it, and started an
actual general assembly. And by by by happenstance, I I

(38:38):
associated that meeting and it was the first and last
Occupy meeting AMATE facilitating. Yeah. Okay, so I want to
rule back a little bit too, just before the start
of occupied because yeah, the more be thinking about this,
the more have just realized that two thousand eleven was
just a profoundly weird time in a lot of ways.

(39:01):
I think people have forgotten, like the entire American security
state is at this point being terrorized. When you joint
anonymous lull sick hacking campaign called anti Sick, the symbol
of which he is a guy in a guy fox
mask wearing a monocle and a top hat, and this
was just like normal, Yes, this was the thing that
I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, it's it's the it's
it's the it's the anti sick top hat, full faced

(39:23):
guy in a monocle. Fun fact about that, just before
we forget David Gramer Rest in Peace, who was there
in the early days organizing claimed and um that he
had he had heard and talked to the some of
the like overheard the police talking about the reason they
didn't sweep the occupying encampment the first day when we
were pretty weak, frankly, or the first week, was because
there were a bunch of guy fox masks and they

(39:43):
were scared. They were scared they were going to get hacked.
If they were scared, they were gonna hack them and
steal there. Yeah. So so it was a weird time indeed. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think the the other thing that's, you know,
I think important about this time period if we were
looking back at what occupied was is that this so
this is this is three years after the the financial collapse,

(40:05):
and you know, so I think this is you know,
in the room to two eleven, there's been a few
there's been a few protests, there's been there was a
big thing in Grease in two thousand eight that was
kind of related, kind of unrelated. But I think in
my sense of you know, I was like, I don't know,
I was like thirteen. I was like I was like
an actual baby child. But my sense of it was
kind of just like like there's that there's this like

(40:27):
sense that everyone just kind of waiting for something to happen. Yeah,
and it's like hadn't and it's just like kept going
and kept going and kept going. And then you know,
and then and then Genesia starts and suddenly there's you
know there there there's Protestant Tenessia, there's pertest Egypt. There's
like people fighting tanks in the street in Bahrain, and

(40:48):
you know, and this this is you know that this
this becomes down as the spring and it starts to
spread to a lot of places. And VICKI I want
to talk. I want to ask you about this because
you you were in Spain when it started started. There
we'll talk about what what what was going on there?
And yeah, so I wasn't there when it started. Um,
but but but yes, um, basically you know, and then

(41:11):
and I want to shout out like there were there
were a bunch of like movements like in two thousand eight,
right after the crash, there were a bunch of protests,
like outside Wall Street. They were very small, but they
were like sort of the like produced some images. And
then there was you know, in two thousand uh nine,
there's the Oscar Grant rebellion in Oakland, and you have
the Madison occupation earlier in two thousand eleven, um, where
they were the workers unions took over the state House. Yeah,

(41:35):
everyone does. It was actually really important at the time. Um.
But yeah, so so you know, so I think I'm
glad you brought up Greece because I think actually Greece
really that that sort of anarchist rebellion in two thousand
eight thou nine really kicked off the cycle in a
certain way, but also didn't quite It wasn't quite the
first domino, you know. It was sort of more of
a like forecast. So yeah, so Arab spring, uh you know,

(41:55):
is huge. It's this huge, huge event, and the US
media is thing it because obviously like these sort of
old you know, quote unquote Marxist dictators are falling, um,
and so of course the US is like all about it, um,
which of course later later on the return of the
tankies will use to um to confuse everyone on the
US left and destroy all solidarity with Syria anyway. Um,

(42:19):
but that's neither hearner there. Um. So then then in
then in that summer, um, you get this this wave
of early summer like May in June. In fact, the
fifteenth of May was when the movement started in Spain
and then it starts student again in Greece. And it
was similar to occupy and that there was these people
coming together in these sort of encampments in the center
of the city. Um. I don't know if people remember

(42:41):
um or or know this history economically, but Spain and
Greece had recently been sort of going through these like
big big booms economic booms just for about five or
six years that turned out to be real estate bubbles
funded by their entry into the EU, and two thousand
and Age just smashed that and they were just like
incredibly impoverished. I mean, like Spain was facing unemployment, Greece
was like similar. Spain has recovered more than Greece has

(43:04):
in the intervening years, but it's still bad. Um So
so yeah, so you had all these it was it
was you know, predominantly young folks who were um, you
know had been pushed out of the economy, who had
been pushed out of their homes, whose families had loft
their homes. Um gathering together and it was all over
both countries and it was huge. Um. I happened to
just be in Barcelona. I had been on a planned

(43:24):
vacation with some friends. Um you know that we had
we had planned like sort of six months earlier when
it all popped off. And I had also just started
my writing. Um, I would say career, but that's very generous. UM.
I had started technically being paid for writing things. And
they were like, oh, right about it, Like, let's like
cover it while you're there. And because no one in
the US was talking about what was going on in

(43:46):
Spain when my article popped up, like and this is
like this is really strange. But it was like the
early days of Twitter as well, um two eleven, Like
I guess Twitter started two nine or something, and so like,
so the the one of the accounts, the camp tweets
out my article. So I went there the next day.
I was like, I wrote that article and then I
was like embedded for a week, and I was there
for like kind of the height of the popular power

(44:08):
of the movement in Barcelona only for a week, but
I was there on the day when there was a
two and a half million person march through Barcelona. UM
just like still probably the biggest march I've ever been
part of it and probably who ever will be UM
was like la And so you know, so that goes
on for for a few months in Greece and Barcelona,
it sort of hits similar limits that occupy would eventually hit,
which is that like you know that that if you

(44:29):
can take the space away from people, that's that's the
common ground, and like you can't really have the movement
without the encampment. And also all the way in which
the camps sort of force a kind of internal naval
gazing and people like get really obsessed with maintaining the
camp rather than the struggle with the city at large.
All of those, all of those contradictions sort of like

(44:50):
came up in Spain and Greece as well. But at
the time, you know, I was there for the height
of it. I come back to New York, I'm like,
this is going to happen in the US, like it
has to. UM. I think a lot of folks who
had been watching felt that way as well. Um. I
actually took part in this thing called bloomberg Ville, which
was like, yeah, fifty people on a sidewalk, um was
from Michael Bloomberg, right, Um, fifty people on a sidewalk.

(45:12):
Fifty people was general. I was like, when we were
doing really well and mostly fifteen of us, It's like
fifteen of us on a flidewalk um in the financial district,
like getting yelled at by cops, um, you know, sleeping
on cardboard, you know, occupy style, but without any attention
or solidarity. Um. And but because I had been in
Barcelona and I still have these carbrads in Barcelona, I

(45:32):
was like, oh my god, we're doing it in New York.
So we had this thing where bloomberg Ville, which is
like twenty people like got to talk to a general
assembly in Barcelona at the height of its power, like
on a like internet link, like a really early internet link,
you know. Um, and you know so so so. So
there was all this energy that was happening. And then
I think, really crucially, the London riots pop off, and

(45:53):
that doesn't get talked about very much anymore, partially because
the UK left really stabbed. Here's the back during that
and and have and and repressed the memory of it
largely UM, and have suffered ever since, in my opinion,
strategically UM. But you know that was for us in
the US, that was huge. It was huge watching UM,
watching those riots unfold. Like you know, again, this was

(46:15):
like early live streaming, so like we were like watching
live feeds of the riots, you know, which is like
it was not a thing that you could really do
without a TV before. There was just like there was
a lot of stuff going on that felt exciting and
and it was and really important and inevitable that it
would come to the US because things were so messed
up over here. I think we should talk about what
a general assembly actually is because I think a lot

(46:36):
of people aren't. We're going to have like never actually
ran into what exactly is going on, or have sort
of forgotten in the last ten years after this sort
of fallen out of favor. Sure, yeah, I mean it's UM.
It was never my favorite either, honestly, but it's a
it's a meeting style UM designed UM. It actually does
largely actually come from from European anarchist traditions, UM from

(46:59):
from Spain in Greece, but as as many of us know, UM,
A lot of those traditions go back further UM and
have crossed crossed the water general somebody's actually there's a
long history of them in indigenous communities in Turtle Island,
for example. So it's an old meeting style UM, in
which um, the Quakers also the Quakers UM famously also
sort of uh sort of co opted it from from

(47:20):
indigenous folks out here on the East coast. UM. But UM,
it's a meeting style in which, uh, you know, with
the exception of a facilitator which is occasionally but not
always present, UM, everyone is able to speak UM together.
There is something, there's an agenda sometimes, but it's basically
a meeting designed where everyone present in the meeting has

(47:41):
like an equal voice, And it's not really designed generally
for UM decision making specifically or in with like really
specific goals in mind. Often, although there will be sort
of like things that are trying to get settled UM.
But it's it's it's it's designed to allow, you know,
a very very multi vocal approach and for everyone to

(48:02):
sort of put in their their thoughts and their ideas
UM and often is connected although not necessarily, but is
often connected to consensus UM operation where UM things can't
get sort of decided on unless everyone sort of agrees UM.
And in occupy UM, that was the general assembly was
sort of UM was a bit controversial because it was

(48:23):
just whoever showed up obviously participates in it. So, you know,
unlike unlike you know, an organizational meeting where you you know,
everyone knows each other and you have to have a
you know, you have to be there with an invite
or whatever. UM, you know, whatever cranky wing nut UM
wanted to show up could UM. And that had pluses
and minuses. It was charming sometimes, but it was also

(48:45):
very frustrating UM. And in in New York where I
was UM, it was made almost impossible to function by
this thing called the people's mike UM oh, which I
think still happens sometimes people even mike check UM and
and then everyone repeats what was said. But that means
that it takes four times as long to talk as normal.
So when you have a wing nut, you know, like
advocating for wrong Paul, and then you've got thirty people

(49:07):
echoing him every four yards, it makes it makes discussion
completely impossible. And a microhistory of the people's mic. The
reason that happened was because in the first week in
Zukkati Park Um, whenever we got on a megaphone, police
would come and arrest whoever was on the megaphone because
you weren't allowed to use amplified sound in New York.
And one organizer was like, oh no, no, we can

(49:28):
like use the people's mic. We can repeat back to
each other. And this is when we they're still mostly
like thirty to forty people in the park at any
one time. It's very small. That didn't feel so bad,
but then when the movement really got big, the people's
mike became completely unwieldy and also was a response to
a was a cowardly response to police repression frankly UM,

(49:49):
and was a way of So the peopil's mic is is,
in my opinion, reactionary form anyway, that is hit. So
it's been ten years. I haven't been able to complain
about this in like eight years, Thank you so much,
UM anyway, So yeah, the general Assembly is just a
meeting form um that often often associated with anarchy, anarchist
practice or radical democratic practice um in which sort of
consensus is aimed for by allowing everyone to speak there

(50:11):
much I would say. Yeah. And so this, this, I
think gets us back to where we open this episode,
which is Adbusters calls an event with literally no plans
to like do anything. They're just like, yeah, everyone, we're
occupied in Wall Street. And then yeah, and you know,
as it's talking about the beginning of it, you guys

(50:31):
basically hijack well sort of, I mean, so Adbusters. Adbusters
doesn't show up, like you said, there's I've never met
an Adbusters person, um. And it was funny, like we
would do jokes about it. But I think it's also
thinking about this in preparation for this interview. It's also
interesting because Adbusters and their culture jamming is kind of

(50:52):
like one of the results of the sort of altar
globalization movement of the like late nineties and early two thousands,
the summit hopping stuff um, the enarchy movement of like
one generation ahead of occupy UM. So I think it's
sort of appropriate that Adbusters sort of, like you know,
was present in this legacy in a certain way, and
a lot of those organizers were as well. But yes,
I'm sorry, I did I just jump in for you. No, no, no, okay,

(51:14):
um the yeah, so so so so, a bunch of
people I don't actually know who calls for an August second,
you know, general assembly to talk about the call for
September seventeenth to occupy Wall Street. UM. And at that
at that point, that's when the thing I was describing
earlier like happens where where UM, you know, we a
bunch of folks and and I really want to underline

(51:36):
that most of them were people who had been in
Spain or Greece. UM. David Graber was also. There was
like a lot of old heads. There was like a
there was a comrade from Japan. UM. It was a
very international crew who had like had experience in these
movements over the summer. UM came and had this General
Assembly and sort of ran it that way and broke out.
We had we broke off working groups and then there

(51:56):
was meetings sort of once a week and then working
group meets within that UM and general assemblies from August
second ttil September seventeenth, at which point, UM, you know,
occupy the day, the day that Adbusters had caused for
actually happened. So my my impression of this, and I
was I was very small. I had very limited idea
of what was going on. The way I remember in
the media is that like the there, the media was

(52:22):
weirdly interested in it in a way that I've never
seen them. I've never seen them cover another social movement
that wasn't like literally burning their offices down, And it
was like it was like in the beginning, it was
I mean, you know, obviously the right wing media is
losing their minds, but they were kind of kind of
supportive of it, and I think, I don't know, I

(52:43):
you thinking about this. One of the things that that
happens in both in both Greece and in Spain is
that the product movement of the squares is these electoral movements,
and these electoral movements just fail like catastrophically, like Starsia
takes power, like like the they like you know, they
they have they have they have a like their their
finance minister is a left communist. He's like he is

(53:04):
the most fire left person ever like to hold office
since like the Spanish anarchists in ninety nineteen thirty six,
and they employed austerity. Anyways, in Spain, you get put
demos and it's like wow, okay, you have you know,
they had this thing called the electoral war machine. They're
they're gonna take over the Spantish but because something they
just it collapsed. It just doesn't work. They've they've never
like they've they've they've they've never taken power. They've never
really got anywhere. They they successfully evicted a bunch of

(53:27):
squats in Catalonia. But yeah, but and I think this
is my impression if it was that I think the
US media thought they could they could do this to
occupy and and I think they kind of it's weird
because looking so you know, like I I come in
and like to to this kind of stuff around on seventeen,
and I think it it's like it weirdly worked. But

(53:49):
it worked because they were able to group the anti
occupy people. So it's like, yeah, and so they did
finally get their like cadre of like pseudo left organizers
so they could used to build a democratic party. It's
just it is like Jocobin and then I'll think the whole,
the whole sort of anti occupy group. Yeah, so those
folks were actually UM active during Occupy UM, critiquing the

(54:11):
people who now most loudly UM claim the legacy of
Occupy UM. You know, as you said, Jacobin, a lot
of those sort of social democratic groups um. At the time, UM,
and those of us who were there, remember they hated Occupy.
They would show up, but they like would critique it constantly.
They would write all these articles about how it was terrible,
there were no demands, it was too disorganized. And then
I think, you know, when Black Revolt got put on

(54:33):
the table, they were like, bring back Occupy. We liked
that better. But but I think to be as harsh
as possible, but um, I think like, um, you know, yes,
there was there was a lot of media coverage. It
didn't feel super friendly at the time. Um, there was
a lot of There was a lot of media coverage,
Like the media was very curious, it was very interested,
but a lot of that coverage was like why do

(54:54):
they have no demands? Like why are they so disorganized?
Why are they so smelly? Whatever? Like there was a
lot of like there was lot of slander in the press,
but also a lot of attention, um, which you know,
I turned turned out was as good as you could get,
but at the time didn't didn't feel very good. Particularly
I think, yeah, but yes, those those forces, those forces
were already present um in you know, in in occupy itself, um,

(55:18):
you know, sort of denouncing it um for its disorganization
um and then eventually claiming that it was the reason
that Bernie Sanders happened, um, which isn't totally wrong. Yeah,
I want to be really clear, like I think, and
I think what we'll get into this more. But I
think like the thing that about the thing that was
important about occupy and the thing that the people who
in my opinion, like my comrades during Occupy or people

(55:39):
I meet who were like doing Occupy stuff but like
who I didn't know, but like now we I you know,
I roll with them. Most of us have the have
the you know, the analysis, like it was really important
that we were doing politics in the street. It was
really important that we were back together they were talking politics.
And then there were really really intense, extreme limits to
what Occupy could have done. UM. And I think Oakland
really pushed those um and and you know, and got

(56:01):
to those but um. And I think the folks who
are like, no, no, Occupy was good at the time,
we're like Occupy is terrible. UM. And I think that's
worth notice noting and thinking about. So I think, yeah,
before we sort of going into talk a bit about
what happened to Oakland to talk about some of their
stuff so on on day to day basis, like what
is occupy actually doing? Because I think that's also been

(56:23):
sort of lost in this whole, Like everyone remembers like
the slogans and everyonebers fact that there's a thing, but
you know, like that there's there's a bunch of working
groups and they're doing things like what what was that
like like day to day? And then I sort of
brought a lovell yeah so so um So, first of all,
again I was only in New York. I spent some
time at Occupied Boston as well. UM, but like I
don't have a sense of what other places were like,

(56:44):
so I really can't, I mean other than having heard
from people. So I want to be very clear that
I'm like mostly addressing that. Um. I think the thing
that was going on was that the Zakati Park, like
the park was like total chaos. Um. Part of that
was because there was a drum circle that basically was
owing twenty four hours a day um there, which meant
that whenever you were down there and it was like

(57:05):
a canyon. Scotty Park is surrounded by skyscrapers, so it
was just this incredible cacophony all the time, um, which
I think was cool. It really ruined a lot of
finance bros, like like like orally with an a there
um but I think like, but it also was pretty
intense and unpleasant. Sometimes you were like please stop, oh

(57:26):
my god, like that's at one point in general assembly,
I think decided that drums were like only acceptable during
certain hours, like near the end of the movement, like
the drums the drum circle got reproached, when in fact
they were like actually the biggest agents of chaos in Zuccoti,
which is another important lesson, but um, yeah, I think so.
So you know. Also, because I had been in bloomberg Ville,

(57:46):
because I've been in Barcelona, I didn't invest myself very
heavily in camp management stuff, so I mostly was doing
um work. One of the things that I think it's
forgotten about is that there were snake marches basically three
or four a day every day after after the first
week when we were really small, when it got big,
they were just constant, constant marches through the city, just

(58:09):
like always going off, like you would run and you'd
be on one march you run into another march, like
on a Saturday or Sunday, when like people were really
like out there like it was, it was really like
there was a lot of mayhem. There would be big
planned marches that would then be bigger. Um. So there
was like a lot of like, um, what people now
would call direct action, what I would call largely like
sort of symbolic practice for direct action. Mostly, UM, I

(58:33):
don't mind, I like marches. I certainly got my miles
in then like I don't feel like I need to
do that again. But um, but you know, so then
at the camp people were just living there. There were
a lot of like a lot of punks, a lot
of like you know, a lot of homeless folks obviously,
and some and some encampments had more at a higher
concentration about the house people. Some in New York because
of all the media spectacle and all the money that

(58:54):
came in. We had a lot of nonprofit drifters by
the end in the encampment. But there's also like a library, um,
a free library with all these books that like would
be donated. Um, there's a lot of like you know,
political agitation. There were people standing around the Um, the
you know the corners of the park, you know, with
with signs and you're yelling at people. And it's also
important to remember that like Zuccatti Park in New York

(59:17):
is tiny. It's tiny. We originally wanted to do it
on in this big plaza like City Bank plaza. Um,
and the cops have heard about that and fence it off.
So on the seventeenth we just like we just, um,
what's the word we get? We we did a oh
my god football metaphors we called an audible thank you.
So we said, Zuccatti is this tiny little park. It's

(59:38):
incredibly dense, and it's surrounded by you know, like I said,
to skyscrapers, it's in this really weird part of the
city that no one would ever spend any time and
if they didn't have to otherwise. Um. So that's sort
of So there's all this stuff going on, and then
they're all these their general assemblies twice a day, um, which,
as I said, in New York, we're particularly unhelpful. Um.
But I think anarchists and a lot of cities we
have talked to you, like I had a comrade down

(59:59):
in DC one in Denver, they sort of said that
the general assemblies either quickly like got shifted or got
or became irrelevant. UM. I think the general sumblies were
not we're not in the end where we're symbolically important
but not but not really driving force um of my
experience UM. And then there would be there would be,
like I said, there'd be a lot of organizing outside
of the park. There'd be a lot of like meetings

(01:00:20):
and you know, talks and UM, direct actions and marches UM.
And then there would be you know, uh, I guess
that's kind of the extent of it, right, is that
there was like a lot of direct action that but
there was always this park where you could go and
like run into people and like hook up with people,
meet people and like do a weird thing. And I
think that was really like the heart of the movement

(01:00:43):
was the fact that there was this place you could
go meet someone and like link into something weird and
maybe cool and maybe not it doesn't matter, but like
there was always something to do kind of and it
was constant, was like this or twenty four hour right
like experience. And I think that was really what um,
what separated it from from are from other movement waves
that we've had, we've had since um and was was

(01:01:04):
was probably I think it's greatest strength in many ways. Yeah,
I think that that was That was the the impression
that I got. And part of this also was when
I when I was in college, like every once in
a while, you just get assigned like some person writing
but occupy, and it was like most of them were
just extremely cranky about the whole thing. But sure, you know,

(01:01:27):
one of one of the things I think was interesting
about it is that everyone seemed to eree, at least
to some extent, that part of what was going on
was that it's it's it's this way to do I
don't know if I had any formations quite the right
word for it, but it's it's this way to sort
of like rebuild social connections and rebuild like social sort

(01:01:49):
of bonds in a way that just had you know,
as public space becomes just the cops. And like there's
there's a table in Chinatown that I like called the
cop Table. Well I'm really mad about that, Like, because
this is Chicago, chin To, I would like go there
staring from the library and there's a sign sign on
the table that says if you loiterer at this table,
you will be arrested. It's like this is a picnic table,

(01:02:12):
Like the cops are you. This table is threatening that
it is going to arrest you if you use it
for what's using you know, for what you're supposed to
use tables for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think
I think that's right. I think like it was, you know,
there was a lot of UM at the time. A
lot of people were talking about UM uh embarrassingly about
heart and negrees sort of like multitude stuff. Really really

(01:02:34):
a much better book that was important was also UM,
David Graber's debt UM. But I think, like, you know,
and there was like a lot of like people saying
things about like the Agora you know, UM democracy list
sort of political the political encounter space of encounter UM,
and that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like I mean, I'm
sort of being a little sarcastic with a lot of it,
but like, but I think, like, like there there was

(01:02:55):
a lot of you know, UM part of how we
should I think we should understand UM, the over discussed
under under you know, like over analyzed word neoliberalism like
has largely become meaningless. One of the things I should
I think I think it's valuable for understanding is a
process by which capitalism responded to the Long Sixties by
disorganizing its production process such to the Long Sixties could

(01:03:18):
never happen again, right, So like like the four the
the control the like the concentration of workers within within
production in such a way that they could be agitated
by students and then like sort of radically unionized wildcat
and sort of like almost overthrow a government, right Like
the neoliberalism is like you know it smashes the unions, yes,
but it also also like distributes out the active production, right,

(01:03:42):
so that so that that's not so easily done. And
I think one of the real problems of you know
that was facing social movement, um you know in the
in the period, you know, the long period, like you know,
you had stuff like in the U s again that
this is where you know the best, but like you know,
you have the l A uprising which is huge, um
and you have you know, the summit hopping movement and
anti globalization, which you know what could attack a target.

(01:04:05):
But there wasn't really a sense of like how it
felt hard to do a local struggle um beyond like
literally like a revolutionary riot like l A, which you know,
you can't really precipitate. UM. I mean you can't really
precipitate a movement either, obviously. But I think like but like,
but like uh, a political political movement, a form of
political organizing that didn't require something on the level of

(01:04:28):
George Floyd, which is what the l A rebellion was, right, UM.
But that also didn't require, like, uh, an action from
capital that you were like striking against, right like the
the uh you know, the Summits or whatever. UM. And
that that again and like all of these eras are
very important. This is not to like, you know, obviously
like this is with with respect for those movements. UM,

(01:04:48):
but yeah, we felt I think it felt like we
were in a political wilderness. And I think that that,
like UM Occupy really and the movement of the squares globally,
I think UM really like demonstrated that it was possible
to practice a kind of street politics even without UM,
you know, a shop floor where you can organize even
without UM, you know, a a a capital p party

(01:05:13):
to organize within UM. And I think that was really important.
I think it also scared a lot of people who
and and continues to who are committed to those politics
um and um to the twenty century workers movement or
the nineteenth and twenty century labor movement, which they somehow
fantasize will come back, um if they just wish hard
enough and write net books or whatever. Um. And I
think like, um so, I think that was powerful. I

(01:05:35):
also think like like, yeah, sorry, we can move on
to legacy later. But yes, I think that was Like,
I think that was very much like an important thing
was was just like and you know, um, I graduated
college in two thousand nine, um so I was like
part of that millennial generation that like, you know, had
gone into incredibly deep debt, Like we'd have a college
degree and then like the bottom fill out of the

(01:05:56):
economy there were no jobs. Um And Like I think
there were a lot of you know, like people who
like had anticipated a middle class life um of some kind.
Not that I really had at that point, but whatever, like,
but but a lot of people, like in my economic
cohort like had um uh suddenly facing you know, proletarianization, right.
And I think that was one of the strengths of

(01:06:18):
the movement. I think that was that, you know, like
I mentioned the statistics in great in Spain and Greece. Like,
I think that was a global aspect of this kind
of movement um uh Arab Spring to like there was
there was a lot of like that was really a
response to the economic crisis. Obviously, those folks were already
more proletarian than the people who the young people and
in the squares movements, UM. But they they innovated, they

(01:06:39):
created the tactics in in Arab Spring right um Terrer Square,
most famously in Cairo. Um and UM I think like
those creating a meeting place where um, you didn't require
a preconstructed like political community um in order to engage
was a strength and a weakness UM. And I think

(01:07:01):
it also, you know, as a result of the dynamics
of the General Assembly, the dynamics of the sort of
volunteerist nature of that what I'm describing, um, it led
to a lot of people who were already confident, who
are already feeling good, being able to like take more
power right like um uh And I think it also
was a very white movement um certainly in New York,
but but I think I think across the country, UM,

(01:07:22):
it was largely it was largely you know it was.
It was majority white in a way that you know,
by higher percentages than any movement that we've really been
part of since um was UM. And that was obviously
a limit um for for reasons that will be obvious
to everyone, including the idea that like a lot of
people pushed that like the police are part of the right. Um. Okay,

(01:07:42):
so let's let's talk about the police, because you know,
that's you know, that's that's one of the other extremely
important aspects of this is this immense militarization. I mean, okay,
so I think that the militarization of the police as
a phrase, I think it's somewhat misleading in that like
the cops have always like shot people. Yeah, but you know,

(01:08:06):
there there's yeah, there, there's there's there's still like there's
an intense sort of ramp up of of the prison sector.
There's you have this intense boom in the size of prisons.
You have, Yeah, you have you have increasing parts of
the economy that are just the entire towns that used
to be sort of manufacturing sectors, used to be sort
of involved in sort of industrial production that are just

(01:08:27):
like the economy is now just there's a prison there
and right, and I think this is also looking back,
one of the things that look like occupy kind of
ran ran up into because you know, occupies this attempt
to like you know, form a democratic space, and it
relies crucially on this this thing that is nominally in

(01:08:47):
the Constitution but doesn't exist, which is the like the
right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom
of assembly and freedom assembly like that is that is
like that is bullshit. It does not exist. If you like,
if if you actually believe that this exists, like try
getting like seventy people into a space and see how
like just like I don't know, like into a street
or just just like into into like have one of
people on a park and just like see how fast

(01:09:07):
the cops show up, because you know it's like, yeah,
the first time yeah that I was I was at
any kind of protests, cops immediately wanted to take anything
I was holding. You're not you're not You're not allowed.
The first thing if if if if you have anything
in your hands, that's that that is a that is
a problem. Yeah, it's like the First Amendment is just

(01:09:29):
it's super completely superseded by traffic laws, like laws about
like sidewalk maintenance, like no, it's it's all fair, like
none of it like you're you're not You're not allowed
to And this is this is I think is partially
what this is kind of a talk, but this is
part I think why there's so much focused on the
right about the first Mont because they want to they
want to draw attention away from the fact that, like,
the actual thing that's fake about it is that you
can't gather people and meat anywhere, and they want to

(01:09:50):
draw it into these like inane like this professor like
said the N word a bunch of times in class.
Isn't it bad that people are mad at them? But
but if I think also go to tyn this sort
of back to occupy. You know. Okay, So, so occupy
functions right insofar as there is a a physical location

(01:10:11):
where people can go and physically interact with each other.
And that's a problem because at some point the police
are just like no, and they start clearing the encampments.
And I think this is this is the other thing
that occupy is that outside of like parts of Oakland,
and that that's a whole other thing that yeah, but

(01:10:31):
it's it's it's incredibly studiously non violent in a way
that like nothing I've ever seen before since is yeah,
so so so there's a lot there. I'm gonna I
want to talk about it because that's there's a lot
um but yeah, so I think I think the militarization
of the police thesis um is is incomplete if you

(01:10:52):
don't also talk about the policification of the military. Right, so,
like part of what happens with with the great expansion
of the of the uh Carcel state, part of that
is also a response to the Vietnam War um and
and mass resistance within you know, the troops they were
like in the Vietnam the in like the last two
years when ground troops are there in Vietnam, there's like

(01:11:13):
four hundred fragging incidents where where um you know where
where privates and recruits killed their officers. The U. S.
Army during the during Vietnam was on the brink of
of collapse in the way that like like the Russian
Army was looking in it was like like like the
numbers I think I think still number one point there
was like forty of the army by the end of

(01:11:33):
Vietnam was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah, no,
it was, it was complete. There was the reason that
Nixon pursues Vietnam sizzation, which is when they just started
doing air campaigns, bombing and napalm, is because they couldn't
rely on ground troops anymore. They just they were useless.
They were all high. Um, you know the talk about
you know, there's a lot of talking about like heroin,
but like that was actually kind of a form of
resistance within the lines in a complicated way. Whatever. Okay,

(01:11:55):
that's all very So the military realizes that it can't
function as a mass military in the model that nation
states have done since the Napoleonic Wars, right, which is
like the mass you know, the mass recruitment of the
citizen soldier. Um, that's sort of how war is fought
between you know, eighteen ten and nineteen seventy. And then
it becomes clear that that's not gonna work anymore because

(01:12:17):
because the aims of the countries and the power of
nationalism have become too abstracted. Fascism has done too much
damage to that image. There's just like there's it doesn't
really work anymore. So the military turns into a sort
of what it always was also which is like a
colonial policing force, and so the police the military drift
towards one another in form and function. Okay, So in Occupy, Um,

(01:12:39):
one of the microhistories that I think it's forgotten is that, like,
I mean because because it took a week, and like,
who remembers this week except for like weirdos like me
who were there. Um, is it like there was no
one at Zuccati in the first first week. And one
of the big things that happened was these these these
you know, young white girls got caught in a police
net and pepper sprayed, and there was this video that
went around with them getting pepper sprayed and screaming. Is

(01:13:00):
particularly this good this woman on her knees, you know,
screaming with with tears and pepper spray going down her face,
and that really outraged people because you know, they were
you know, it was police depression and police violence. So
in terms of the question of non violence, yes, Um,
there was a lot of non violence. It was a
constant fight that took honestly took until the George Floyd
uprising for the right outside to win. Frankly, but but

(01:13:22):
but but during occupy there was you know, there was
a lot of non violence nonsense. Um and I think like,
but but another thing that happened though was that like
you know, like I said, people were marching every day.
So even in New York, where I think the political
height was kind of achieved, October one when we took
the Brooklyn Bridge. Um, I think I think New York

(01:13:42):
never really like had a big moment again, Like it
was largely sort of like smaller things after that. But um,
but like and there was a mass arrest on the
Brooklyn Bridge. We marched over the Brooklyn Bridge, the brookn
Bridge got shut down. They arrested seven hundred of US. Um.
It was the first big infrastructure shutdown that happened in
the US since the l A Riots. It was a
big deal at the time. Now, can I put a

(01:14:03):
note doubt though, specifically for the Brooklyn Bridge if you're
because people I've seen every every single time there's one
of these movements, people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge
and they all got arrested. It's like, can can you
all like please, I am begging you if you're going
to try to take a bridge, make sure you have
a way out, Like, yeah, you got to hold one
of the sites to get arrested. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you

(01:14:25):
got a way out a bridge designed to not have
a way out. Exactly. Please please don't all get arrested.
It's it's in fact bad and yeah, sorry, exactly. I
have seen a few people successively take bridges a few times,
but that's because there was like three cop cars and
like people, if you have like a block with two

(01:14:48):
hundred kids, you're not going to be able to hold
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After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
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(01:16:38):
On the podcast nine O two one, OMG joined Jenny
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(01:17:42):
spaces between. Here's part two of our interview with Vicky
Ouston while about the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. But
but you know, like you were saying, you know like
that that you know, don't get arrested, it's bad. So
I think when occupy really started, you know, we were
mostly people who had been educated by the co optation
of the civil rights movement, which is that it is
all non violent and that the whole thing was getting
arrested and Martin Luther King was like the only voice

(01:18:04):
that made any sense and that was what was effective.
Blah blah blah blah blah. Um. We had all learned
that in school, right, We had all been trained that
like non violence was like the only thing that made
sense and that worked. Um. And I think like those
of us who learned about it at all in school,
which is certainly not everyone, but like I think, like
like the the experience of occupy of like every day
just getting beat up by the cops every day, like

(01:18:26):
getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people got really some people
got really nihilistically nonviolent, Like some people like really dug
in and they're like like like we're like no, like
there is nothing we can do except be beaten in
the turn of this like real masochistic game. But that happens,
that still happens all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, that's

(01:18:46):
that's one. That's one common response. But another thing that
happened was that people started breaking through that that that ship.
People people started on the ground. Like I remember a march,
you know, early on, you know, the police would attack
and everyone would sort of like d try a d
esco late and people would try to like you know,
like like talk to the cops or whatever. And like
by November when right before the camps got cleared, I
remember being on a march where we stole all of

(01:19:09):
their orange meeting using and you're just holding it over
our head at large and like trapping cops in it.
So like even in New York where things never gotten
that intense, um like in some ways in terms of
direct action like that lesson on the ground, like you
have to be you have to be very ideologically committed
to get hit with the baton three times and still
think the police are on your side. You know, you

(01:19:31):
have to like really, you have to really be drinking
kool aid. And some people are like some people really
do want to believe that. But I think, um, I
think that was one So during occupy, like those of
us who hated the police were pretty lonely even though
the police were beating us up. But by the end
of Occupied the seeds had really been sown for a
lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily

(01:19:54):
immediately so fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think,
like I think like folks who stayed in struggle from
there grew more and more anti police. Yeah, that was
that in general. That was well, okay, so my stress
was less with occupying more with like the two thirteen
stuff in Turkey. But it's like that that was because
I was brought up in that like this sort of

(01:20:15):
like Foe Gandhi and like, yeah, MLK civil to Subians.
And then it was like like I watched Turkey happened,
and it was like, hey, here's my friend just like
getting his ribs broken by a cop. And then like
there's Raba and you know, and it were bas sort
of where whe the Egyptian movement dies and were bad,
they just you know, they bring out the machine guns
and they just shoot everyone. Yeah, and at a certain point,

(01:20:36):
like you know, this is the limited non violence, right
is that what happens if they just shoot you and
and Gandhi? You know, if what if you ever want
to like go down to the Gandhi rabbit hole, like
Gandhi like writes this letter to like like the Jews
of Germany where he's telling them to like throw themselves
on the blades of the Nazis, and it's like this,

(01:20:57):
it's it's this is this is like yeah, it sucks.
This is ridiculous, like just this is just like it's
being complacent for abuse. UM. Anyone Too Studios has a
really good video on why non violence helps the state
UM and how basically activists that try to force other

(01:21:18):
you know, demonstrators to adhere strictly to non violence, that's
basically that's that's them in that's them basically saying that
if like that, that's then endorsing the police beating somebody
up like like that. Like that's it's it's not actually
tied to any kind of movement and it doesn't actually
help like I and we could actually see this last
year with like the first few weeks of like you know,

(01:21:41):
abuse from the state actually making headlines and actually changing people.
But after a while it just didn't matter. Like a
cop could put someone down and pummel their face in
like August and like who gives a ship nobody, Like
it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know, like that's that's
why I found it funny when you talked about, like,
you know, people getting mad because the cops are like

(01:22:02):
mazing people when they turn into them, And I'm like,
if that happened, no one, no one would give a
ship Like yeah, well, like I think not at all anymore. Yeah, totally. Well,
I think I think part of it is the first
time that you see it, it's like what on earth?
Like this this? This I think has been one of
the things that's been the core of the whole sort

(01:22:23):
of nineteen like late sort of cycle revolutions, is that
like if if you're just like a dude in a
grocery store and some guy runs in is like running
away from the cops and then like fifteen riot cops
and just start beating the shout out of them, which
is the thing that happens like a lot. Like if
you just see that, right, there's no way you can actually,

(01:22:45):
like like if you ordinary person just witness the cops
running up and just being the show of someone, like,
there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized
against the police by it. But like, yeah, but there's
there's a certain point where you hit it. The decentitization
happens more quickly than what it should. Um, and we
stopped caring. I agree. I agree with both of you

(01:23:07):
that like that, Like both it is shocking and radicalizing
and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular
pressure to naturalize the police and non violence ideology is
part of that is part of naturalizing police violence, right,
Like there's nothing you can do about police violence. Um,
so all you can do is control yourself, and therefore
you should you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah,

(01:23:28):
Gandhi had this whole fantasy about, um, the perfect army
would march unarmed into machine gun fire, um, and would
just be mowed down. It's it's he's a fascist, frankly
um and and yeah, and you only need to look
at his opinions about black Africans when he was when
he Africot to see that even if you even if
you just read like like even if you just read

(01:23:49):
like self reliance, it's like this is you know, it's
not everything I want to talk about with with the
peace police though, which is that like they're also like
in terms of like fighting, like inflicting violence on other protesters,
like they are the most violent like of of of
the factions you've seen in a pro that does happen

(01:24:10):
very well, maybe not the most like like that, it
does happen like like they beat people up. Like yeah,
I'm just gonna say, like it ties into like protest security,
and when protest security is usually working with these more
like peace police type organizers, and then they use protest
security to literally beat up people who are doing more
radical action against the state. Um. That happens all the time. Yes,

(01:24:33):
oh yeah, protest security. When I see protest security or marshals, Um,
I know exactly that that the that we're in a
bad We're in a bad march. Um. The only time
I've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during
Occupy actually, um during after the night after you've been evicted, um,
which is like November, I think. Um. And if people
don't remember, Obama and the FBI coordinated this nationally, all

(01:24:55):
the occupying encampments got swept within a week of each other.
Um on that march. Um, we're marching around, We march
around all night, UM. And I'm just dragging a trash
can into the street because we're being followed by police
cars and I'm literally attempting to do some education. At
the same time, I'm like pulling the trash can in
the street, and I'm yelling, you know, I am doing
this because I want to protect us from police violence.

(01:25:16):
Like if this is in the street, then the cop
cars can't catch us as much. That's why we build baraka.
I'm like literally trying to like yell this because, like,
you know, because pulling a trash can in the streets
incredibly and effective ultimately, so it was like literally it
was literally just like for education purposes at that point
basically anyway, especially since a lot of people would like
pull them back out of the street. Whatever. This guy
runs up on me and grabs me by the collar
and lifts me up and like threatens me with this

(01:25:39):
fucking fist, and he says, if my mom can't get
to work tomorrow because of you, like I'll beat the
ship out of you. And we're like we're marching in
Manhattan a like one am. I'm like, what the hell
are you talking about? And like he would have he
would have hurt me like pretty bad if a friend
of mine hadn't like luckily had my back and like
de escalated a bit That's the only time I've ever
been like physically like brought up like into a fight
um with by by another protester. Was was a guy

(01:26:03):
insisting that me dragging a trash can into the street.
It was beyond the pale and I but I want
to just talk a bit more, but like how systematic
the violence was, like because Okay, so originally I was
gonna try to get someone from Occupy Oakland to come
talk about this, and I talked to a lot of
people and the biggest thing that I got was that

(01:26:24):
no one would talk about it on the record because
they got because Oakland had Oakland had a blacklist and
if if you were inoccupy and like anyone else found
out about it, like people like people couldn't people spent
half a decade just not being able to find jobs
because they just play blacklisted everyone and like to this day,
like the thing I was told was like, yeah, I'm

(01:26:45):
I won't talk about this because you know, like if
if I talked about this, like I will be fired,
all of my family everyone around me will be fired.
And there's like I think, like this is the everything.
But when we talked about sort of the collapsive occupy,
the the extent to which, after a bomb in the
ordered the camps closed. The policy is that the comps
are going to torture anyone who attempts to like gather

(01:27:07):
in a place yep, yep. For for two years, you
couldn't have a meeting outside without a police attacking basically,
and yeah, um and and yeah, I mean it was
it was. You know, I think like a lot of UM,
the people who now claim that that occupy is the
reason that they do politics or whatever for burning standers
or whatever, UM, at the time they were saying that

(01:27:28):
the reason it collapses because there was no UM organization.
There was no structure, there was no political party, there
was no you know whatever, there was no demands. And
like it's true that it was poorly organized, like there's
no doubt, um, but like we got beat out of
the streets, Like we got beat out of the streets,
and like people tried for six months really intensely, and

(01:27:49):
for another six months after that less intensely to restart
that energy. Um. There was all this works forwards, like
a general strike on May Day, UM two thousand twelve,
which ended up not really working, which is actually actually
the kind of demand filled one day of action kind
of politics that they were demanding actually really failed, which
I think is telling. But but in the meantime, like
you know, like occupy like Zuccati got cleared. But for

(01:28:11):
a while, there was a thing. No one remembers this,
I don't think, but there was a thing up in
um uh Union Square. Um. There was an occupation for
three weeks. There was like all the Union Square freaks
um and like a bunch of occupiers um. And yeah,
the cops just like it was just like batons out
on site for a few years in New York. UM.
And I know it was like that everywhere else or

(01:28:32):
most everywhere else, and that that came down from on
high that like the police were just like, oh, what
was dangerous about this was people gathering in public. So
we really need to like we really need to like
enforce the Second Amendment being meaningless now, we really need
to stop meetings from happening in public. Um. And that
violence was super intense and super real, and a lot

(01:28:54):
of people got beaten out of the movement, you know,
and a lot of people got really demoralized and left.
And I understand why. It was scary and awful and
there was a lot of repression, and um, you know,
and it and it, and it has continued to sort
of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate. Um.
But what has successfully happened in our movements, I think
to our to our credit, is that we haven't actually

(01:29:15):
formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more
effective police repression. All the police have right now against us,
for the most part is batons in the street. Um.
They have a lot more trouble infiltrating. UM, a lot
more trouble, Which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy,
but they have a lot more trouble um, um taking
down the movements in the in a sort of cointel

(01:29:36):
pro way, right. Um. The modes of repression have changed
a bit. UM. But that's also because we don't have
It's a combination of the fact that we don't have
those forms of organization, but we also don't have those
forms of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our
living conditions like they used to. UM. So I think
it's it's you can't just give credit to any one thing.
There's a lot of different factors at play. I think

(01:29:57):
I will say one of one of the other things
that that I've noticed, and I think I think I'm
pretty sure this has happened. Talked to talk to people
are talking about that occupies it like the first thing
if you have a group of people who are just there,
the first thing the cops trying to do is a
point a leader so that they have one person that
they can go to and this and this lets them
sort of this this sort of like access point to
which they sort of break like the demands of the
crowd is that they find one person, they point in
the leader and they get that person to sort of

(01:30:19):
like be the liaison. My favorite Occupied joke, I gotta
give respect to Occupy Denver. This is the best joke
that ever happened to Occupy. They announced the beginning of
one week on Friday, we are going to announce our leader.
Occupy Denver has chosen a leader, and the whole movement
got so upset. Everyone was so angry. I was like,
what the fuck and like they have this like big
press conference and their leader was a Golden Retriever and

(01:30:39):
it was like, as as who knows to Occupied Denver?
Whoever organize that prank? I love you, I guess, yeah,
speaking thinking of kudos to a place. The last thing
I wanted to talk about was the giant like port
occupation strike thing in Oakland, because I mean that that
wasn't the first time people had done it, like I know,

(01:31:00):
I know during the anti war movements even till like
aw eight there's one of people trying to occupy ports.
But and in Oakland they like did it. They really
they put like forty thousand people like in this in
the port of Oakland and they shut it down. And
I think that was like that was one of the
things one of the stories kind of been lost from

(01:31:22):
this because like you know, like that was the point.
Like so like I know people in Oakland who like
they got like drugged, repeatedly drugged by police informants because
particularly Okland, it's also Oakland is also way the walking
by ok Bood is way way less white than any
other movements, and they get like the kind of police
oppression they get is like it's just like yeah, you

(01:31:47):
know again like people people being repeatedly drugged by informants,
like cops shooting people in the face, like the you know,
you have you have the black list, you have all
this stuff, and I think, you know, part of it, Yeah,
And I think part of it is because part of
it's because it's a bunch of non white people and
that's you know, that's just what happens. But I think

(01:32:07):
another part of it was also that there was this
fear about Yes. So so the reason the port strike
is able to happen is because there's sort of there's
a complicated game here where the other people like sort
of got involved in in like longshoreman union politics. But
that sort of like fusion of of you have all

(01:32:30):
the people in the street and then they start showing
down ports and that like like the cops like lose
their minds over that. Like that that I think was
like extremely scary to them in a lot of wiz. Yeah,
I mean, you know, I would you know, I would
defer to anyone from Oakland who was who was there
during that. You know, I have comrades there, I've talked

(01:32:52):
to you have read about it since. But you know,
I think I think part of the heightened police oppression
and the heightened power of the Oakland occupied Oakland folks
was Oscar Grant rebellion. Like I mentioned the two thousand
nine which had happened, which had you know, it had
been a few hundred people, but it had been really rowdy.
They'd been like looting and smashing. Um maybe maybe more
than a few hundred, maybe near a thousand people in
the big on the first night. UM. And you also

(01:33:13):
obviously have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland,
So you know, the Black Panther Party, you know, forms
in Oakland at last in Oakland a decade and a
half longer than it does anywhere else in the country. UM.
So there's a lot of like and you also have
the really really intense getrification of the Bay that's happening.
So there's an incredible political and economic pressure in the
Bay combined with this history of radicalism that really you know, um,

(01:33:34):
but yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting.
I think what you said, like you you put your
you know, you hit the nail on the head, like
it was largely like it was terrifying that it was
the most effective direct action in the occupy movement I
think was that port shutdown. I think, without a doubt,
like the biggest mass direct action that that occupy achieved, um,
was that November twelve was that was that with the
data that I remember near the end of the near

(01:33:55):
the end of the cycle. Um. And I think like
the other thing ing about um about that though, was
that that was very similar to the altar globalization movement,
right where the unions had sort of teamed up with
you know, like in Seattle there's a lot of trade
unions on the ground next to all the black blocks, right,
um And I think like that that image, Um, I
think really it's really interesting. It really terrified the police,

(01:34:17):
and it really it could be it could have been
a vector for a certain kind of like labor first
politics that could have emerged. But instead, like the labor
first people have turned out to be all electoralists. Yeah,
it seems that that's sort of a weird blip that
hasn't really returned. Um. Yeah. And it's interesting too because
like because now like you know, like the the the
a f l C. I oh, just like you know

(01:34:39):
a f l C A is like no cop unions great,
and it's like there's this there's this sort of like
split between the street movements and organized labor because they're
off doing like electoral stuff and like cops ship, which
is this sort of yeah, and and and and have
been now for for seven decades, you know, I mean,
I mean really like like the the buying off of

(01:35:01):
the unions and the New Deal, um, you know, with
some brief you know, with brief windows of like wildcat
action in the seventies and the nineties, Um, the buying
off of the unions has has never really gone away.
Industrial unionism in the US has has long been and
in and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where those developed
in the early twenty century, that labor movement, Um, they've
really been successfully bought off. And I don't think there

(01:35:22):
is uh. I don't think that those unions are like
a big easy route to power any more than I don't.
I don't like I don't think they're gonna overthrow the government.
I mean, but I will say, yeah, this is this
is my my also my the thing that I plug
every time is at the a f l C. I
oh overthrew a end a like yeah, like like they
they they're there are people on the ground were like
directing like like we're directing a bunch of the anti

(01:35:45):
a end a stuff. And it's like and it was
the and it was the union bureaucracies like more recently
in two thousand one, who are in the wake of
September eleventh, who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric into buy American,
which it turned out was often buying prison made materials.
But like that was that was the union. The union
sort of um defanged, defanged, alter globalization into buy American.

(01:36:06):
And there's there's something like there's a whole another story
there about how that like how anti globalization turned from
like you know, the Zapatistas to like Trump, which is
incredibly depressing, and yeah, goes goes through this line of
sort of like the replacement of internationalism with nationalism and
that kind of like by local stuff and the fact

(01:36:28):
that like these people sort of just decided that you
know personally after Seattle Port step and eleven, they're just like,
we're not doing direct action again. And in Oakland's like
Oaklands like like that. That's like that's like the one
big exception to that was that moment, and then it
just kind of just has never happened again. And that's

(01:36:49):
partially because that that union that I l W is
I l W I think out there is on the
on the boards that was a particularly like radical union
that had happen in wildcats like and and like like
more democratic than any of the many of the other
unions in in in those those ships. But uh yeah,
but that's that's also like a big story for another time. Obviously.
The conotation of global antiglobalization over the twenty year period, Yeah,

(01:37:15):
you know, it's just kind of corny. But like what
what can we actually learn from what happened there? What
went wrong and sort of what the limits of it was? Yeah, okay,
So the legacy, So I think one legacy that um,
the legacy that is most widely accepted and known, which
we can go over quickly, is that it reintroduced class discourse,

(01:37:38):
largely into the popular you know, the n which is
a very very bad class politics. But like you know,
like um, like the you know, it reintroduced some of
that sort of class war class war discourse and UM
and I think more important than that, but but not
that dissimilar. It um reintroduced um street politics into the US. UM.

(01:37:59):
I think a part of legacy that gets forgotten UM
because like the general the global nous of the wave
gets forgotten as well, Like is that when when ship
pops off in New York, everyone in the world knows,
or at least they did then, right, because America had
been so successfully you know, appeased politically for so long

(01:38:21):
that I think that when occupy popped off um in
rather it really like signals to the world, like the
rest of the world like, oh, like this is real,
like even in the you know, even in the center
of empire, like like people are rising up. UM. It's
hard to remember, and it's weird, but like there was
an occupy in uh New York, in a UK, there
was one in tel Aviv. There was actually kind of
like a pro Palestinian occupy in tel Aviv briefly UM.

(01:38:45):
And you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort
of immediate tactical um offshoot of occupied was occupyed Nigeria
UM in the first weeks of UM when President good
Luck Jonathan um took took the fuel subsidies away and
they were like sort of two weeks of really intense
revolutionary rioting um in in Nigeria. That that then called

(01:39:06):
themselves Occupy as a way of being legible to the
rest of the world. UM. I think the other legacies
though that are that are a little more sort of subtle.
I guess is like that a lot of folks still
in the struggle now, Like I will still meet people
you know, my age, who like I've met I have
two comrades here in Philly who I didn't know at
the time, but who were organizing in New York, right,

(01:39:26):
Like we probably hung out in rooms together, Like we
probably like we were probably in the same space as
But like so like a lot of folks, you know
it each of these waves that has come has left.
You know, some people leave, some people swing right, but
like there's a residue of folks that like becomes the
base for the next movement. And I think like occupy
really did provide a lot of people in a way

(01:39:46):
that the gap between alter globalization and occupy didn't produce
nearly as large a contingent of people, although of course
there are those people, UM, but I think also like
really importantly like the tactics of occupy. Like one of
the things that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising
was that every tactic that we UM have tried in

(01:40:06):
the last ten years re emerged. Right there was a
prison strike, there were indigenous blockades, there were me too
style callouts UM, which of course developed out of um
punk and queer scene callouts that have been going on
for a decade. But there were occupations, right, you had
the chairs in Seattle, which we can you know, well,
well what we're yeah, we will get to that one

(01:40:27):
day in any case, In any case, like I think
like that that has remained in the repertoire of poltarian struggle,
like as a result of of occupy and and and
if it had just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't be
as a result of the global movement of the squares,
which obviously goes until Terrier Square and Turkey, I think
it's probably the Gezi Park in a Turkey, UM, which

(01:40:50):
is like the last big moment of the squares really, um.
But that five year wave like it was really really important,
um globally, really really important locally as well, UM in
terms of building activists, building a class of of well
I don't you know whatever, building revolutionaries, whatever you want
to call them, the good version of the thing, not
the bad version of it produced a lot of them. Um.
And and I think like in terms of its limits

(01:41:14):
and like what we can learn from it, Like I
think I think taking the police more seriously, it was
really important. I think taking police violence more seriously was
a really important legacy of occupy. I think, um, I
think pushing towards the limit of what total democracy meant.
A lot of people and Occupy remember that, like a
lot of Ron Paul people and like weirdo like and

(01:41:35):
the Fed cranks and like right wingers like spoken Occupy
and like that. That that total open populism of of
occupy I think was both probably its greatest strength and
its ultimate limit, right, which was that like it was
never going to be able to really like sharpen itself
into the into the knife, and it wanted to be
to like really change the face of of global capital

(01:41:55):
or whatever um because of because there were so many white, yeah,
middle class like like a bunch of the like a
lot of the like the current for right media people
came buy like Center Fairbanks was like an occupy streamer Simpool, Yeah,
you're welcome. For Tim Poole, um, who was filming on
the last day, a bunch of us um doing some

(01:42:17):
things and Tim Poole did not manage to continue filming,
is all I'll say. And after that is when he
started swinging right. So you're welcomever um anyway, Sorry, that
guy is a fucking asshole. He was an asshole then. Though.
I think what's important to know is that a lot
of these people were suss as hell back then to
occupy folks, like they were around and occupy because of

(01:42:38):
the nature of occupy, like but like they were, we
already didn't like them, you know, like a lot of
these people were already unpopular. We're already just liked in
the movement. Um. So yeah, um, but yeah, I think
I think so, I think you know, there is there
there are all these different legacies, um from it that
I think, Um, ultimately, the legacy things that emerged are

(01:43:01):
much more important than occupy. Um. I think, you know,
one of the things about it was that it really
was just like the reemergence of street politics, and like
like as the re emergence of street politics, like it
was pretty limited, and it was not that effective at
changing things. Um. And also it was incredibly effective at
leading to those last decade of struggle in the US,
And I think you can't you know, I think there's

(01:43:24):
a tendency to want to judge movements by the immediate
results that they produce, you know. Um, And like you know,
I think it is my about to quote now, I
think I am was it like when when he gets asked,
you know, what was the what was the you know,
in in the twentie anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, he
gets asked like, what was the what was the outcome

(01:43:46):
of the Chinese Revolution? He says, it's too early to tell, right, Like,
I think, like that maybe that's I don't remember who
that is. They were right, Yeah, they were right. A
lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah, it's like,
yeah they successfully transition to capitalism and yeah, yeah it
was yeah. So, um, so what was the results of occupy?

(01:44:06):
It's too early to tell, um, But I think like
I also think, like the things that we've talked about
here um where we're core components of what what why
it matters. I do think one other kind of effect
that it's had. And It's hard for me to gauge
this because I've only been around post occupy, but I
feel like now when people try to get stuff started,
they really fall kind of into an occupy mindset where

(01:44:29):
they're like, the only way to make this successful is
to hold this space. And I think that is really
a default way that even more experience, like both experienced
organizers and new organizers. Really, can I keep you saying
we're default it's because like that's just that's just really
like what they go into. You saw this in a
lot of different cities last year, really like people trying
to set up spaces to hold UM. A lot of

(01:44:51):
them did not work. You know a lot of them.
A lot of them were like, oh, yeah, we're trying
to try to hold the space for like an hour,
because then the cops pushed us out right, and you know,
in a place like the Chairs, it got extended out
a bit longer that Chas had its own problems UM
and other cities in the Pacific Northwest. This happened a city,
it happened, and it happened a lot of places. I mean,

(01:45:12):
like I think George Floyd Square is maybe one of
the more honestly successful ones UM for how they were
able to actually kind of keep police away, and they
did they avoided turning it into this big media thing
like like with the Chaz did UM. And I don't know,
I think I grew very and I saw a lot

(01:45:33):
of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this
like kind of occupy mentality, because what that kind of
results in is people just setting up outside of a
police head quarters and trying to stay there for as
long as possible, which is like that's not doing anything,
You're just kind of waiting to get beat up. Um. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's complicated though, right, Like in defense of that tactic,

(01:45:55):
like I think like like that was also very color.
That was also very core to Ferguson. Right, they held
West Florescent for a week and a half. Now, they
did it much. They didn't do it by setting up
tents and sitting there. Um. And also like you know,
like like a thing that gets forgotten a lot in
the lot in the histories, you know, Occupy Ice it
was pretty spot. I was big here in Philly, it was.
It was massive here in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So so
like there were moments when that tactic really does like

(01:46:18):
it's important to have a space to meet in, and
I think we did learn that. But I also agree
that it has become like any tactic that works once
it becomes a fetish, Right Yeah, it's always trying to
balance space because like you know, the two big things
that have happened the past ten years, it's occupying Hong Kong.
So people try to balance these two kind of almost
opposing things like hold this space and be water. That's

(01:46:40):
kind of the two things that people yell at the
street back and forth, and no one really knows what
to do because it was yelling slogans and and and
I was I was there saying about this. So they're
like the one time the people in Hong Kong got
pinned down when when they had to and they had
versa siege, it was a ship show, like you know what,
I like, the people in Hong Kong, like you know, okay,

(01:47:01):
like even when they're like they they did not have
by by by the time you're getting to the sort
of decision of the universities like that, like you know,
like they had like Moloto they had like like Molotov workshops,
Like there were people like standing on the roof shooting
bows and arrows and cops and it's like it just
wasn't enough. And I mean and part partially partially that
has to do with the fact that, like you know,

(01:47:23):
Hong Kong is in a uniquely bad position insofar as
it is one city, and it's like the the the
only possible way that a supposed movement in Hong Kong,
like ever just doesn't get crushed by just the fact
that they're outnumbered, like a thousand to one is if
it spreads. But like yeah, and it became this you know,
like that that moments like yeah, that the this that

(01:47:46):
that the whole problem with with friend to hold space
because really apparently because even if you have an extremely
large number of people right like like attacking one isolated
space in mass even think the cops are really good
at and I think they really bad at is trying
to deal with like you know, like five hundred people,
like seven hundred instances of five hundred people going through

(01:48:06):
places because it just aren't enough of them. But yeah,
that was what was it? Like the head of who
wasn't it was a big and then National police in
the National Police, uh you know whatever um said that
like we can very easily handle one march of ten
thousand people, but we can't handle ten marches of one.
It was and you gotta see this in Chicago too,
like this is this is this is how the police

(01:48:27):
lost control of of of the miracle miles. Like yeah,
it was just there's people everywhere for everywhere, and yeah,
I don't know, yah know, And that's and that's how
that's that's what you know. I mean, certainly in Philly
where it was where it was very very powerful. That's
what the George Flood rebellion looked like, was with people
were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods, you know, people
didn't you know, like we were out there, you know whatever,

(01:48:48):
um and like they're like people didn't know what was
going on three blocks south, you know what I mean,
Like it was like that, like there was just there
were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions, the police
can't can't, no matter how tries they are, they can't
act um effectively anyway they can act. They certainly will
they will act like pigs um. But but I think like, yeah,

(01:49:09):
so I think that that that sort of dispersion. But
I think the other there's so there's I'm going to
promote a really really weirdo crank book right now, but
before twentie century, like literary weirdos. Guy uh Elias Connetti
um Italian wrote this book called Crowds and Power, where
he attempts to he attempts to describe the entirety of

(01:49:31):
human history and anthropology in terms of crowds. This is
obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that book has the best
descriptions of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere, And
I like, I like people who take big swings because
they end up they miss. Yeah, miss has lots of
interesting stuff. UM. I think that's why people like Settlers
by Jason Kai so much. Like I think the thesis

(01:49:52):
wasn't great, but there's so much incredible stuff in that
book that like it works anyway. UM that having a
really wild thesis allows you to like really like get
into some so anyway, one of the things that Connetti
talks about in that book is that UM a crowd UH,
an open crowd, as he describes it, an open crowd
is UM must constantly be growing, and the moment it

(01:50:13):
stops growing, it starts shrinking. Right like this, I think
that dynamic UM in terms of both movement and like
a momentary protest or riot, right is like really real,
I can and I think one of the things that UM,
particularly organizers, are trained to do and like that that
that we learned to do, especially in law periods, and
we're like organizing these little you know, you know, these

(01:50:34):
little crystallized groups of like hard cadre or whatever is that,
like you that like what we learn as organized is
something that is defendable. But once you start defending something,
you start losing it because we cannot take on the
state or the police in a head on confrontation. Um.
And this is this can be confusing because sometimes you

(01:50:54):
can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a
few months. You can defend a space sometimes, but once
people get really interested in the defending, then they begin
forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing, security forces, whatever it is.
They start becoming the like the the They start undermining
the very thing that made it powerful, which was this
sudden rapid growth, the sudden like you know, like like

(01:51:16):
big explosion of power and self recognition that comes in
the beginning of movement. And I think, I don't think
there's a way to will that problem away, Like I
don't think we can just like think our way out
of it, like it's just a problem. But I do
think that like one thing that we could take from
the experience of occupying the experience the last decade is

(01:51:36):
that like if you do, you know, consider yourself someone
who wants to participate in these kind of movements, which
is probably why you're listening to this podcast. UM. Right now, UM,
don't try and defend, like, don't try and defend Like
some things will need to be defended sometimes obviously, but
like if your main thing is like the thing, we
should never defend something we've achieved so far, UM, we

(01:51:59):
should never not be willing to destroy it in order
to like build something bigger. Right, Like we should never
no movement thing that we have, be it an occupy part,
be it, be it like a take in space. Defending
that should never outweigh the possibility of expanding. And if
that's our strategic mindset. Obviously moment to moment you can't
just be thinking that constantly. But the strategic mindset is

(01:52:21):
like what we have now is only good to the
extent that it can turn into something more, UM, rather
than we have to defend what we have now. If
you can think that way, I think it opens up
a lot of strategic possibilities. UM. And I think it's
it's what has worked over the last decade that I've
seen is UM, when people attack, when people expand, when

(01:52:43):
people try to do try to do new stuff. It
doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold, but that's
what When that stuff stops happening, the movement is doomed.
I think I think that. I think that's a really
good way to wrap things up. I think that's a nice,
beautiful sentiment. I kind of view this type of thing
in more than just protests and you know, and into

(01:53:03):
differentastets of life. I think you can always learn from
past experiences, from past struggles, but if you try to
perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely gonna fail. You can should
always learn and move on, but you should not be
focused on any kind of replication. Is there any of
your book store writings you'd want to plug before we
wrap up here? Sure? Yeah, I mean I wrote a

(01:53:25):
book that came out last year, UM called Defensive Looting.
UM came out UM with both type UM. I am
currently also writing. UM. I'm obsessed with movies. I write
a movie review UM column for the Al Jazeera plus
UM I did not know letters. Yeah, the news letter
sub stack UM. If you want to read, I mean,

(01:53:45):
it's really it is really a movie reviews. So if
you want you know, cranky anarchist theory, it's not the
spot for you. Um. Otherwise, Yeah, I'm I'm on a
pretty long social media break right now, but good for
you there. Eventually I'll probably come back inevitably, um unfortunately. Yeah,
you know, I just have I have writing popping up
every every now and then, and um, and if you

(01:54:08):
read it, I would appreciate it. Well. Yeah, absolutely wonderful.
Thank you, and yeah, thank you for so much for
coming on to talk about, um, occupying stuff that I
think a lot of people hear about, but you know,
at least all of my generation does not fully kind
of grasp it. Um. It is. It is literally my pleasure.

(01:54:30):
Like I you know, i wasted so much of my
life thinking about this. I'm so glad to be able
to share some of it with some people. I'm so
so glad you're able to join us too. This is
I've been looking forward to us for a while. Yeah,
that's very excited. All right. That wraps up us today.
You can find us on Twitter and Instagram, at cool

(01:54:51):
Zone Media and Happen Here Pod. We'll be back in
for a few more episodes. This week. Audios executive producer
Harris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think

(01:55:12):
and That's good news for anyone that is confused by men,
which is basically everyone, get an inside look at what
goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves.
It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think
podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the

(01:55:36):
minds of men. As much as we like to think
all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week,
a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area
of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I
had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and
absolutely no man splaining. Men are hard enough to understand

(01:55:58):
without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halbern, host of Deep Cover.
Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the
mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts, we controlled absolutely everything.

(01:56:18):
He brobed judges and even helped a hit man walk free,
until one day when he started talking with the FBI
and promised that he could take the mob down. I've
spent the past year trying to figure out why he
flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective,
Bob was too good to be true. There's got to
be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy.

(01:56:39):
He looks like a little scum, big lawyer, stool pidging.
He looked like what he was or at. I can
say with all certainty I think he's a hero because
he didn't have to do what he did, and he
did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around
the first time, my life was over. If it ever
got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen
to deep Cover on the I heart Rate your app,

(01:57:00):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ev Rodsky,
author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr Addina Rukar, a
Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise and the

(01:57:21):
science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so
excited to share our podcast Time Out, a production of
I heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, we're uncovering why society
makes it so hard for women to treat their time
with the value it deserves. So take this time out
with us. Listen to Time Out a fair play podcast

(01:57:41):
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts. Uh, that was the introduction, I
did it, Sophie. Sophie's saying, that's an acceptable introduction. You

(01:58:02):
know what podcast this is. You clicked on it, so
I don't need to tell you the title. I don't
need to say who we are. I'm just going to
dive right into the fucking episode. No I'm not. This
is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling
apart and uh and what to maybe do to to
arrest that and do something better in its place? And uh.
You know, folks who are are regular listeners who listened

(01:58:24):
to the original scripted episodes of It Could Happen Here,
the first fifteen episodes, which I certainly recommend to everybody.
Know that one area in which I kind of separate
from a lot of particularly more liberal folks and even
some folks on the left, is an embrace of the
fact that firearms are sometimes necessary tools, especially in times

(01:58:44):
of collapse when things get bad. Um. Now that said,
we're also not uh kind of gun culture people here.
We try not, to, for one thing, recommend that everybody
necessarily pick up a gun. There's a lot of people,
perfectly nice people who shouldn't have them, who don't need
to have them, you know, if you're dealing with suicidal
ideation or whatever. We're not. The point is, we try

(01:59:05):
to be very careful about how we we talk about
firearms as a potentially useful you're being potentially necessary tool
in the times that we're in. And today, since we're
a few weeks into this, we've covered producing food, We've
covered some medical stuff. We've talked about uh, community organizing,
and a number of other things that I think our
priorities for most people before you know, getting strapped. Today,

(01:59:29):
we're gonna talk a little bit about getting strapped. And
my guest today is Paul. Paul, do you want to
kind of introduce your background in brief so people know
why why you're on here. Sure, Robert Uh I was
in the Marine Corps and Infantry, and after that I
went to security consulting and then to the Federal Protective
Service and finally the A. T. F some of our

(01:59:53):
funnest agencies. Yeah, all my favorite organizations there. Well they're
bet in the what is it, the f d A. Yeah,
they beat the f d A. I mean in terms
of body count, they'res certainly better than the f d A.
And what what do you do now, Paul that you're
you're you're out of that line of work. Uh, well,

(02:00:14):
I do two things. I got a day job at
disney World, and then the side gig is we run
a explosives and machine guns supply company, also body armor,
a handful of other things, but that's the big thing
is destructive devices. Yeah, and uh, you've you've got I

(02:00:36):
think experience that a lot of people, particularly on this
side of the political i'll lack you know. One of
the one of the downsides of kind of rejecting the
federal government in the military and all its forms, is
that there's a lot of people who may accept the
validity of being armed and don't really have much in
the way of practical training. And firearms are tools that
to use most efficausly do require training. In practice, you

(02:00:59):
can't just you can pick them up and be dangerous,
but not in a way that is particularly protective. To
you in your community. Oh yeah, UM, so I wanted
to talk about kind of recommendations and and everything. We
talk about nothing. We're not talking in the context of
forming a militia or in the context of you know,
showing up with guns to to yell at people at

(02:01:22):
a protest. If that's the thing you're choosing to do,
that's a whole different ball game. We're talking about, um,
kind of responsibly arming yourself and your community in a
way that is not going to get you in legal trouble. Um.
It is also not going to endanger them. Because one
of the things you have to accept about firearms is that, um,
there's a risk you know, related to owning a firearm. Um.

(02:01:43):
Not just the risk that like you know, suicide risk
raises if you have a gun in the house, but
just um, if you don't use them properly. Even carrying
a gun. You know, it's not unheard of for people
carrying guns to have those weapons taken from them and
used against them. It happens to police, and it happens
to armed citizens. So it's it's a matter of um,

(02:02:03):
you know, I think when you accept that you're going
to be armed, there's something incumbent upon you to understand
the risks of being armed. And I guess that's kind
of where I want to start. Like, what are some
of the big pitfalls you see people uh fall into, like,
um that I think traditionally training is supposed to help
allay to some degree. Uh. Well, probably number one is

(02:02:27):
uh grandpa's gun in the closet that's been there for
forty years unfired, and somebody just picks it up and
throw some ammo in it to go huna deer, and
you know it's got a barrel obstruction or something just
blows up, you know. Um. But number two and and
the one that can be mitigated by training rather than

(02:02:47):
just general uh not being stupid, because it's kind of
stupid to pick something up that's really old and just
try to shoot it. Is um, not shooting yourself, and
when you do go out to the range, not shooting
other people, and then not shooting people in your own home.
M you know, you don't, as much as you might

(02:03:10):
want to say, defend your own home, do you want
to shoot your wife when she comes home at two
thirty in the morning, uh, after work and wakes you up.
And there are ways to mitigate that, and and it's
really easy and it's really cheap. So yeah, let's let's
let's start with some of those just if you're if
you're new too, if you've decided I need a gun

(02:03:32):
for whatever reason, you purchase a gun. Um, you know,
I think the most basic first things are in terms
of like actually making that relatively safe. Is number one,
knowing which which kind of firearm to purchase and number two,
And these are not in order of importance, these are
both very important. Number two is securing that weapon properly,
as opposed to just having it laying loose in the house,

(02:03:54):
which is never the best place. The best way to
store a firearm, is it. Um? Yeah, I mean I
own a number of personal firearms. Um. You know, I'm
in my office right now where I got a locked
door nobody can get in, and I got a gun
safe back behind the monitors. Um. And you know I'm

(02:04:17):
comfortable with that. But if if it was in a
place where kids could get at it, you don't want
to just stuff it in, uh, in a sock in
the closet, which is actually what my mom did when
I was a kid. Yeah, I mean safe storage, and
I mean really being able to identify your target is
probably the biggest preventer of like inter family accident because

(02:04:39):
I know, you know, we do talk about safe storage,
kids and all that, but um, back to the wife
coming home, if you just put a light on your gun,
a hundred dollar light, you can look at the thing
that you're shooting in the middle of the night and uh,
not shoot someone you don't want to shoot. Yeah. I
would go so far as to say that, like, if
you've got a a home defense weapon without a light

(02:05:02):
on it, Um, you don't fully have a home defense weapon. No, no, yeah,
you know, Um, it's gonna be useless in roughly half
of the situation. And statistically, like if you're looking at
when people are actually tend to be endangered in their
own homes, the vast majority of the situations in which
you might be in danger. Um. When it comes to

(02:05:22):
weapons selection, uh, this is another area where like if
you go on maybe one of the worst places in
the world to have this discussion as Twitter, because everybody
has the opinions on Twitter. Um, I tend to say
because I think most people when they're looking for a
first gun, if they're if they're committed, just like thinking
of personal defense, they're going to go for like a
lock or something. And I think unless you're planning on

(02:05:43):
carrying a gun, and you can correct me if you
disagree here, but I tend to think a handgun again,
unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon, is the
last thing that you should own as a gun owner. Um.
I got a mixed opinion on that. I mean, yeah,
I think that, uh, the handiness of a handgun can

(02:06:06):
outweigh some of the issues. I know you guys dealt
with fires up there, we have hurricanes. Um, being able
to stick a handgun into a backpack you know it
can go a long way, or being ab um, keep
keep it on you in your car, because here we're

(02:06:27):
depend on state laws. Everything you say depends on state laws. Yeah,
there are states where you can Yeah. Yeah. If you're
in California and you're in one of the counties that
it doesn't issue a concealed carry of license like l A,
it's really hard to get one from what I understand, Berndino,
if you want to get one of those, yeah, I mean,
first off, like tooth, I got a short list of guns,

(02:06:48):
and like two thirds of the list illegal in California.
They're they're not on roster. But for what's most usable
against our most handy, it's probably a handgun. But if
you're expecting a threat more than uh like thirty feet away,
have something other than a handgun. Handguns they suck at

(02:07:08):
hurting people, they suck at killing people. Yeah, they're they're ineffective.
They're hard to use. I mean, say thirty feet away.
But if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in
a stressful situation at thirty ft with a handgun can
be difficult. It's not easy. Yeah, um, it's not easy,
and I tend to recommend number one. There are some options,
like even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are

(02:07:30):
different kind of um like uh options for that. Like
I I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which
is essential the size of a small rifle, so you
can fit them easily in a backpack. Every backpack I've owned,
you can you can stick something like um like a
Sazy scorpion in without much difficulty. And because they're so
When you're talking about what makes a weapon easier to use,

(02:07:53):
number one of the number one things is size. So
the longer the barrel, the more accurate it is. The
heavier the gun, the less recoil is a problem, the
easier it is to use it. Range um and a
pistol caliber carbine. You know you stick a light on that.
That's a really good home defense weapon. Oh absolutely, yeah,
I mean especially uh, people will argue about the different

(02:08:13):
types of magazines, but if you buy one that takes
a glock magazine and you have a glock, you can
build a full little load out that's just takes all
the same magazines. One is more accurate, one is a
handgun UM, and you know, all the same AMMO. You're
not having to uh figure out and read a bunch

(02:08:35):
on on what kind of AMMO you need and stuff
like that. You just buy one and it works for everything. Yeah,
and when when you're talking about AMMO, I think one
of the most important things, like especially if you're worried
about a survival situation, is is availability um. Which is
the nice thing about like what we call the NATO caliber.
So the NATO calibers are nine millimeter seven six two
by fifty one better known as three O eight your

(02:08:56):
grandpa's hunting rifle, and seven six two by fifty one
UM or it's thirty six but whatever, UM and then
five five six slash two to three and those are
the rounds that's like six is the standard. That's what's
in your bog standard a r UM. And so almost
no matter what happens, UM, including you know Ammo crunches,

(02:09:17):
you will be able to find some amounts of these
fliverers genital day through your neighbors and you're going to
find a box of bullets. They might not even owe
a gun and they got a boxing nine millimeter. Yeah,
everybody's got nine millionaire and UM, so yeah, I think
that the basics of like, um, what to get if
you're looking at kind of just a basic defensive arm, um,

(02:09:38):
you know how to store it safely? You know those
kind of questions are important, Um when it comes to training. Uh,
what are some of in your opinion, like the mistakes
that you see people make when it comes to kind
of of of practicing training with their weapon. Um, going
to an n R A basic like four hour class

(02:09:59):
and thin king that you are a god. Um, They're
there are people who have spent UM five days a
week going to classes and doing training because there's practice
and then there's training. Training is where someone teaches you something. Uh,
practices where you go with what you're already taught. Right. Um,

(02:10:20):
So there there are people that spend all that time
and there's still not the best in the world. Um,
there are people who do a ton of practice. Jerry Micklock,
you know, I don't know if you ever seen him shoot,
but he's uh he's like the fastest gun in the
world or something like that. Um, his videos are crazy.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean he'll he'll outshoot a full

(02:10:41):
auto gun. Yeah, with with revolvers and it's just like,
you know, it's just absolutely mind blowing. Um. But now
he's like he's like he's like Michael Jordan or something.
You know, you just get people who have it's just
that natural ability. Um, certainly married with a practicing But yeah, continue,
if if you had a fight, a gunfight, which they

(02:11:04):
really don't happen that much, but if you had a
gun fight between um, a guy with a high point
C nine who had the cheapest quote reliable handguns on
the face there, if you had a guy with that
that had had paid five hundred dollars for a training
class over weekend and still went in Uh, went to

(02:11:25):
the shooting range every week and practiced and um, or
not even every week, just every month, and then did
dry fire drills once a month in his garage or whatever.
Versus a guy who went out and bought a Wilson
Combat three thousand dollar nineteen eleven but had only taken
the n R A class. I will bet on the
guy with the eight or the C nine all day long. Um,

(02:11:48):
even if he's only got one bullet, you know, yeah,
don't don't care, He'll win. And often, like for all
of it, for all of the guys you see, you know,
in all of their tactical gear and whatnot in the
spare mag's taking a three hundred rounds out. If you
actually look at most defensive shootings, UM, it's very common.
And I think, like like three to five rounds, three

(02:12:10):
to five rounds generally closer than thirty feet, sometimes closer
than like ten or fifteen sits in my pocket most
of the time. It's nineteen so tiny. Um, it has
more bullets than I'll ever need to gunfight. Probably. I
think I want to pivot from this point to UM.
We started this by it introducing that you you spent

(02:12:33):
some time in the A t F spent some time
in the FPS. I haven't had any personal interactions with
the A t F, but I have met some FPS
guys support. You know, I'm kind of curious, especially as
because I came in contact with you through your through
your Twitter, where you're you're very my personal Twitter. Yeah,
and you're you're quite politically active now, um in a

(02:12:56):
way that I think is surprising people for someone with
your background. Are you in protable with kind of tracing
sort of the broad strokes of your journey there, because
I think that's instructive um for folks oh at FPS specifically, Well,
just kind of what brought you from there to hear? Oh? Um?
So I got kind of uh, oh man, what what's

(02:13:18):
what's the word for when you just get uh? I
don't know. I just I got to a point. I
showed up for for work at four thirty in the
morning and I was literally shuffling through some some paperwork
and and was getting ready to file a warrant and
just kind of realized, I I didn't think that it

(02:13:40):
needed to happen, And you know, I talked to my
supervising agent about it, and UM was kind of told
too bad. And and I put in for some vacation
time and ended up putting in my resignation while I
was on vacation. I mean that that's the gist of
how I became not a cop. Yeah, And um, I'm wondering,

(02:14:04):
kind of what do you think? Is there anything that
kind of I don't know, what looks different to you
now as you've kind of left that behind? Was it
like sort of, Um, I'm guessing there's like a period
like a goldfish, you know, in a new bowl of
of acclamation to to life outside of being a cop. Um? Like,

(02:14:24):
what what were the first kind of things that started
to shift in your perspective when you left that that
thought space. I'll tell you what, watching or reading whatever,
an article or a YouTube video, especially now that body
cams are more and more prevalent, is watching something, reading

(02:14:45):
the the press release and going But that's that's not
what happened. Like I just watched it and and and
going from being able to justify it in your own
mind and literally argue with people and be a hundred
percent convey like that was a good shoot. Um. Castillo?
What it was a Philandro Castillo? Yeah, oh god? And

(02:15:08):
he was man if you've if you've gotten lost track
of this shooting in between all the others. Filando was
a black man, a legal gun owner with a legal
concealed carry permit, who was pulled over with his girlfriend
and child in a car and hands on the wheel,
told the officer he had a gun, uh, and got shot. Um,

(02:15:28):
you know, and it did the thing you're supposed to do.
Although now actually since then, you will get like some
states will and some training classes will recommend if it's
not legally required and you're carrying a gun, don't say
anything for that reason. But I mean, yeah, the command
to not reach for the gun to being shot multiple
times in the chest was like under two seconds. Um,

(02:15:52):
So I mean, I mean the decision was already made
as soon as as soon as he gave the command,
the decision was made. Here's what that brings me too,
in terms of a question that's relevant to the topic
of community self defensive potential community armed self defense, because
that's not that is a that is a cop problem,
but that's not just a cop problem. And what happened
everybody problem in the chop in the chairs in Seattle,

(02:16:14):
the the autonomous zone is evidence of that. You had
this situation where people, after nights and nights of mostly
inaccurate warnings about proud boys coming to attack, got amped up.
They had guns, some kids drove by in a car
and they fucking shot him to death. Um. And it
is the same, it's the same mental thing happening. You
don't have to have a badge for that that mindset

(02:16:35):
to infect, especially when you're carrying a gun. Um, how
do you, in your opinion, fight back against that chill? Uh?
You know, like like honestly, Um, if you were a teenager,
which we grew up in almost the same place you're from,

(02:16:57):
plane oh, from Capel, So I would have argued with
you about them being the same place when the same
But they're the same place. Yeah, they're absolutely the same place.
Yeah one has uh one has uh woot dot com
and the other one has raytheon so you know, and

(02:17:17):
a bunch of hospitals. Um. But uh, you and I
grew up in the same time, same place, same types
of schools. How many times did you see in like
high school or even middle school, just a guy hit
on a girl and then the girl's boyfriend comes over

(02:17:38):
and just starts fighting him, like like like the guy
had no reason to know. He didn't know he was
doing anything wrong. Um. And I'm not suggesting, I'm sorry.
What I'm pointing out is that, um, it's almost ingrained
in us at a societal level to to react violently

(02:18:01):
to maintain like our personal position. And if that means
that I'm in my neighborhood and I don't recognize someone,
it may seem like violence is the right way to go.
That's actually what what you're doing when like what's it called,
Karen ng you know where you call somebody the black
kid yell uh selling water bottles or whatever. Um, I

(02:18:25):
know that was one in New York where the police
came and harassed you know, some like twelve year old
black kids because they were selling water bottles. Um, it's
the same thing. I mean, you know in that case,
you're not personally doing the violence, You're just calling somebody
else to do it for you. Um, because you know
the police are kind of violence, violence of monopoly and
all that. Yeah. Yeah, And that's some one of the

(02:18:50):
most I think important things about that is the idea
of violence is like when you when you're willing to
accept violence to kind of mean hein your your your
social position or something. UM. And I think that has
a huge amount to do with with the kind of
violence you see um at protests with like we've had,
you know, protests quote unquote security here in Portland, people

(02:19:13):
kind of declaring themselves security And what does that mean
shooting other kids within guns for graffiti liked up? But
it is it is a matter for it's they're not
doing it to protect anybody. They're doing it because they've
declared themselves security. Somebody doesn't listen to what they say
and their ego is hurt. It's the same thing that
again cops do. It's this it's a human mindset. It's
not just a a cop mindset. And UM, I think

(02:19:36):
you when you're talking about like, I think there's a
couple of things. Number One, if you're going to be armed,
and if you're going to be armed in a community
self defense role, one of the things you have to
accept is that like you're not, as a person who
is armed and cares about the defense of your community,
you're not a separate thing from them. I think that's
one of the areas where which policing goes wrong. May
view yourself as a separate Yeah, And I know, you

(02:20:00):
guys have a big problem with that. Um, what we
do here too. I live in a metro and our
metro police, like them, don't even live in the county. Yeah,
they all go the same here. Yeah. Yeah, they don't
even not just the city, they don't live in the
whole county. Um. And that's despite they get a living

(02:20:21):
allowance if they'll live in the city, and there's a
bunch of if they live in the city, they get
a take home car. There's a bunch of incentives to
try and get people to live here, and they still
won't do it. They want to go live in the
next sheriff over, the next county where yeah we have
a very vocal sheriff the next county over. Who's who's

(02:20:42):
really racist and all that ship? Um? And I yeah,
I think if you're if you're talking about like the
potential of again of like armed community self defense, um
you almost I almost would prefer phrasing it de friently
community self defense, you know, um, which should be the

(02:21:03):
entire community. Yeah. Yeah, community And you're not the gun
isn't what you are. You're not you're not security, you're
not self defense because you're armed your self defense because
you're a member of the community, and if you personally
choose to be armed, that is an option that is
expanded to you specifically because you're armed. But it doesn't

(02:21:26):
change fun. It shouldn't change what you are. And if
it does, there's a phrase that I think is really useful, Um,
the finger pulls the trigger and if you want to
avoid or the trigger pulls the finger. Sorry. And it's
this idea that when you show up armed, and you're
showing up armed as someone like your purpose there is
to be armed, you're at at heavy risk of the

(02:21:47):
weapon guiding your responses. Um. And that's the most important
thing in any circumstance to avoid if you're carrying a weapon.
If if you've gotta hammer, everything's a nail exactly. Well.
And and uh, the last twenty years we've had kind
of a with the War on Terror. You've seen a

(02:22:07):
proliferation in media around um making Navy Seals and all
that ship look really really really cool. Uh, every other
movie is about that, even though like, really they're just
drunk guys who yell at people a lot and who
occasionally commit murder to protect. Or was that was that

(02:22:28):
the Seals? Was that the Green Berets who killed that
guy to protect a drug trafficking Greg, I mean probably both.
Oh you know that that was the Green Berets in
North Carolina. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it
crosses all all borders. Um. But one thing that's come
out of that is we we've started to call those
guys operators, right, So you've gone from a gun being

(02:22:51):
a tool that someone trains there to use too, they
are merely an operator of a weapons system. Um. And
it it's kind of dehumanizing, like it allows you to
get out of the thought on that. Um, it's exactly
what you were talking about. Where where the triggers really
pulling the finger at that point? Um? Yeah, And it's

(02:23:15):
it's I think there's a number of I don't know,
there's a number of tactics and more than we can
get through, and that we'll be talking with some other
community to self defense people at some point in the
near future about this, because this is a big topic, right,
and it's not one I haven't seen anyone do it
super well yet in the United States like we anytime
you have kind of persistent right wingers every once in

(02:23:38):
a while, yeah, yeah, they take over blm Land. Yeah, yeah,
but then they die. I forgot about that. Yeah, they
did die get killed. Um And I think that it's
it's a it's a really messy topic because of you know,
what you brought up is a valid point, all the

(02:24:00):
reading that all the kind of social baggage there is
around weaponry in this in this country and in our
in our culture. This kind of like worship of the gun.
And if you think like the left is any more
immune to that than the right, you're wrong. You see
the same you know, toxic behavior all around. You have
to be extremely cognizant of it, even if you know
it's something at the risk for there is um weapons

(02:24:22):
in general have a mental impact on us carrying them. Um.
And there is there is a level of just like
being around weaponry that is entrancing. It's it's a human thing.
You know, we make weapons. It's we're too using apes
and weapons are some of the first tools that we
made that that are responsible for why you know, we
get to tell the dogs and the cats what to do. Um.

(02:24:45):
And you have to you have to really approach being
armed from a standpoint of rejecting a lot of that.
If you're going to do it responsibly. I mean, among
other things, the idea that you might have to use
a gun UM has to be you're you're very close
to your worst nightmare UM, because it would be it

(02:25:05):
would be if you ever actually had to use one.
UM at minimum, you're talking like when you actually look
at like legal self defense shoots, you're talking minimum. The
next if you kill somebody, at least minimum, the next
year of your life is dealing with the legal consequences
of that. Sure, and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah,
I mean, if you're having if if IF IF file,

(02:25:28):
if charges get filed, you're talking hundreds of thousands of
dollars for like a capital defense case, if not millions. Yeah,
And and that's in you know. There's one of the
gun YouTubers that I like to push people towards it
for this kind of stuff is a guy named Paul Harrold,
who is certainly more on the conservative side, but who

(02:25:49):
actually killed somebody in a self defense and went through
the whole legal process afterwards. And he has a couple
of videos where he talks about it, and he gives
I think pretty good advice on that. That is that
is completely without ego because it was a nightmare for him.
It was the worst experience of his life, which is
what it's going to be if you ever have to
use a gun, and that should be like, that should

(02:26:09):
be the top of your that should be the top
of your mindset. You know, I've been in this situation
a couple of times at protests where like someone pulls
a knife and starts lunging at people and I have
a gun and I'm fifteen feet away, and I never
drew in part because it never quite crossed that line
for me, and I knew that giving people the chance

(02:26:30):
to deescalate was vastly more important than um introducing a
second weapon to the situation immediately. And if things had
gone differently, perhaps I would feel differently about my choices
in that moment. But um, they didn't and nobody got hurt.
And that's always the best case scenario, even if it's
somebody you really dislike who is who is threatening people

(02:26:51):
with a weapon. I swear that happened up in Olympia
like two weeks ago. Yeah, Well, the shooting in Olympia,
which was a guy named Tye Me who got shot UM,
and there's video of it. It's absolutely not illegally justified
shoot for sure. Like, yeah he was he was like
forty feet away, you know. Um, yeah, but he's really tall.

(02:27:13):
He is big, he is I think that counts for something.
He was tall, he was tall, he was chasing them,
he was armed. Um. Not making a moral case here.
I think legally they would have had a trouble had
they stayed around. Now, of course they've got I believe
they've been arrested at this point. Oh have they? I
just didn't think so. So sorry. I don't mean to

(02:27:37):
crash it for a second. I think I saw our
best friend Andy post something about it three days ago.
Three Yeah, okay, so they did. They did arrest the guy. Yeah.
And it's you know, it's another thing if you, um,
if you feel if if you're involved in like a

(02:27:58):
shooting that you feel is a just defined legal shooting. Um,
you don't. You don't leave the scene. Uh. And in fact,
one of the better videos you'll get on like what
to do and uh, this guy's life has gone to
ship because of the political nature of your shooting. But
the guy in um in Denver who shot that dude
at a protest, the pinker, I'll tell you, you know, no,

(02:28:20):
no matter what you want to say about whether or
not it was a good shoot. Yeah, that that he
dropped that fucking guy. I mean he dropped head down
on his knees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. You know, again,
the court case is not settled out, so I don't
know if that guy's story is going to end happily.
But in terms of if you want to not get

(02:28:40):
shot yourself and you want to have the maximum chance
of defending yourself if you have to shoot somebody in
a situation that's legally justified, what that guy did after
the shoot is how to handle it. Um. And I
mean the evidence for that is he did not get shot.
And obviously your mileage with that's gonna vary depending on
your skin color. Uh yeah, that's actor. Yeah. In terms

(02:29:03):
of actual training, people can like pay for if they
if they want to take that step, which I think
is a good idea. Um, who do you do. Do
you have kind of like broad recommendations for how people
can know if some things you know, because there's this
is certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters
and whatnot. Um, yeah, I mean most of the beginner level, Uh,

(02:29:28):
how to fight with a gun. Classes are two to
three days long like that. That's a good starting point
is the fact that you're going to pay probably three
to five hundred dollars per day, um, and it's going
to be multiple days long. You can't because you're going
from a baseline. You know, they know you already know

(02:29:50):
how to point and shoot a gun, but they're going
to go up for everything on how to draw, how
to move, how to reload. Um. You're gonna have some
classroom time going over their specific safety instructions and stuff
like that. UM. But anything you can do in one
day or four hours or forty rounds or whatever, it

(02:30:11):
isn't going to cut it. Um. You need to go
get something, and you need to listen because they're going
to ask you to do things that might not be
the way you want to do it. You might say, yeah,
that's not the way my dad taught me how to
reload a handgun. UM. A good example is actually UM

(02:30:34):
tactical Response in Tennessee. They a lot of people hate them,
but they have a very specific way that they say,
everyone reloads this way in our class. You know, you
put it in and you sling shot the slide um.
And and people will argue and go, well I want
to just press the button. Well the button is cool
and all, but we want you to sling shot the slide.
Just do it for this class. Um. Sorry I got

(02:30:56):
a little off topic there. No, no, no, that's a
good point too, because I mean and listen, um. And
you don't have to take everything away. You you take
what you saw as good usable information and merge that
with what you already know, maybe throw away some of
what you already know when you've got this ball a

(02:31:17):
goo that you can work with h for practice. Um yeah, yeah,
and yeah it is. And to that point when you're
talking about like training, one of the differences between handguns
and rifles, Like all all shooting, as always there's a
degree of perishable nous to it, but shooting a handgun
is a much more perishable skill than shooting a rifle. Um.

(02:31:39):
And it's it's so if you're going to be armed
with a handgun, UM, it really behooves you to take
to train, you know, because you're only as good as
how often you've been out there. Really um and having
a state a good foundation, like taking some real professional
classes will help a lot in that as opposed to
just kind of going out to the range every now

(02:32:00):
and again. But yeah, um, let's talk at the s.
The last little bit of this here about kind of
the gun that's always on the tip of everybody's tongue
when you start talking about being armed and armed self defenses.
You know, the A R platform. Um, it's a gun
with a lot of baggage, a tremendous amount of cultural baggage,

(02:32:20):
and it's it has become vastly more than just a
firearm in our culture. Um what a what? What do
you what? Are kind of? Because I am a big
advocate of people who who are open to being armed
getting an A R platform. I think it's a great
gun to learn. I mean it goes yeah, it goes
bang really well almost every time, as long as it's

(02:32:42):
from a reputable manufacturer. Um, despite what some people say,
they're very reliable. Um, they're easy to clean. Literally as
long as you keep them lubricated. Even in the field,
you keep it lubricated, it will just just keep banging
out rounds and it functions in you know, we talked

(02:33:02):
about this during the episodes on like you know, food
storage and in and whatnot, Like where there's A. There's
the there's the cheap version. I like stuff where there's
there's the cheap version that works, and there's the expensive
version that works. And you you have that with an
A R. You can get a very inexpensive ARE and
you can you can replace every part of that ARE

(02:33:22):
over the next five years and have a six thousand
dollar gun. I I did um minor price checking last
night because I was like, you know, I haven't checked
the price the retail prices on stuff right, so in
like your your budget tier normal price that that's out
right Now, you've got like a Ruger, a R five
five six, there's seven hundred bucks. That's that's dirt cheap,

(02:33:44):
and it's gonna go bang, just in the same red gun. Yeah.
I have a friend who who's who's a R is
a RE five five six and they're very solid. Yeah,
they just they go bang every time. You're not going
to break up, um, I mean, as long as you
don't use it like a baseball bat, you're not going
to break up, especially now that the Russian steelcase dammo
has been banned. But then like the the other end

(02:34:07):
of the spectrum is you got a sick right, Yeah,
I've got a couple. Okay, so you know what the
rattler is. Oh, yeah, that's a fun one. I do
not own a rattler, but they are they are cute.
Do you know how much? Well, first off, the rattler
it's a short, bare old five five six. It's not

(02:34:28):
really an air of fifteen, but like technically it kind
of is. Yeah, um, and it's well, how about this,
how much do you think that the rattler costs? Right now?
Don't don't go look it, just just say probably bucks
would be my guess. Now it's uh now, I actually

(02:34:50):
put it in my category of honorable mentioned slash meme
because it's kind of a meme. Gun. Uh it's so tiny, um,
but I don't want to get out with it. But
that's kind of the spread we were talking about, which is,
you know, you can get a seven d dollar gun
and it'll go bang the exact same way as the rattler. Um,

(02:35:11):
it fires the same bullet um, and you can build
up to something not like a rattler, but you can
build up to um a bunch of novesky parts. You
can throw a bunch of novesky parts into that ruger
lower and upper that you bought and build a really
awesome gun that will be you know, nine percent reliable. Yeah, yeah,

(02:35:35):
and you can you know, I think generally if you're
buying like a again, you're you're getting kind of a
bargain basement. Are one of the first things that that
it's going to behoove you to replaces the optics. You know,
it'll probably start with ion sights. But these don't even
come with anything. Yeah, usually they come with nothing on
him and you have to stick the irons or you

(02:35:55):
stick a reflex site. There's a whole world of um
of optics. And I think one of the actually one
of the websites I recommend people check into if you're
looking and kind of reading up on this and and
doing your due diligence is Pew Pew tactical um. They
do not written from like a super you know, chutty
or whatever. Like you get a lot of very political

(02:36:16):
gun websites that may have some good information that are
frustrating to read. They're not that way. They're written you know,
four people who are not super aggro about guns, but
who are are are interested in guns, and you can
find really good reviews on stuff. But as a general rule,
modern optics beeed iron sights every day of the like
they prefer I I and I do in some case
on my a case, I vastly prefer using irons, But

(02:36:38):
that would never be the weapon I would pick if
I was in a situation where I needed a weapon,
you know. Yeah, I mean I think everyone should learn
how to use iron sights, absolutely, But if I can
hand someone a four D and fifty dollar aim point
pro which which is uh the budget for version of

(02:37:00):
a high end optic, if I can put a four
under and fifty optic with the mountain everything onto a
rifle and just go, hey, just just put the dot
on what you want to shoot, You're done. Um. Now,
there's a lot that goes past that, but we got
rid of the entire proper site alignment and all that.

(02:37:21):
They just got to put the dot on the box
and squeeze. Yeah. Yeah, I mean even even the Marine Corps,
famous for for fielding marksman, has gone we're going to
switch over to optic based training. Yeah, they're just I
mean you look at even guys in like id Lib Province,
which is like one of the rebel provinces in Syria
that's been persistently under siege for most of the last decade. Um,

(02:37:45):
they're all using fancy optics now like that generally alf
and Ali Baba versions of like brand optics. But it
does the trick, you know. I mean it's a it's
a sig Romeo that never got the role market for
cig on it. Yeah, exactly, and they paid a hundred
bucks instead. Yeah. Um, alright, Well, I think that's most
of what we can responsibly get through. I do want

(02:38:08):
to end on the caveat we started with this with,
which is that um deciding whether or not and and
I we advocate, uh, firearms is an option both as
a legal option and something that can be for your
community and for you as an individual potentially practical. I
don't blanket advise people to buy guns. I think in

(02:38:29):
many cases it's going to be counterproductive. I think you
should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone who
struggles with suicidal ideation, they they can be a very
dangerous thing to have in your home if that's something
that that you battle with. I do think that they
can be owned and used very responsibly. In addition to
I think shooting can be a really enjoyable pastime um,

(02:38:51):
and I think more than anything, when a whole bunch
of people who are talking about killing you all have guns,
it can behoove you to own a firearm as well
if you're a member of one of those communities. So
please don't take any of this. As Robert Evans says,
everyone go buy a gun. But if you're going to
buy a gun, there's there's a right way and a
responsible way to go about it, and there's you know,

(02:39:13):
picking up a random twelve gauge and shoving it under
your bed, which is no more shotguns for home defense. Yeah,
they're not. They're not ideal. Um, yeah, I mean we can,
we can talk about over penetration and stuff, but yeah,
I mean just being able to move lead in a

(02:39:34):
direction they're very bad at. Yeah. Um yeah, yeah, they're
they're They're not They're not. I mean again, something like
uh an a R or a pistol caliber carbine is
in a lot of situations going to be a much
more practical and and have less risk of hitting stuff
you don't want to hit necessarily. Get the high point?

(02:39:55):
Um yeat yeah, they eat cannon. Well, we'll discuss that
on our whole episode of about high points. So you've
shot yourself in the dick the high points story. All right, well, um,
do you wanna Paul, you've got any got anything to
plug before we roll out here? Uh? Give food to

(02:40:20):
homeless people? Well houseless, houseless, I think is yeah. Um.
And if you're in an area with a based d
S A, joined the d S I and then vote
out the ship loads. That's what's happening here in Orlando. Um.
But yeah, embrace anarchy. Well, I'm Robert Evans, this is

(02:40:43):
gonna podcast. And uh and remember as we sail out,
there's a reason the episode talking about guns came after
the episodes talking about storing and growing food. When P. T.
Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen

(02:41:05):
sixty five, what rose from its ashes would change the world.
Welcome to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into
the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season,
will be giving you a backstage tour of the always
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Side Show. So come along as we visit the shadowy

(02:41:28):
corners of the stage and learn about the people who
were at the center of it all, in a place
where spectacle was king. We will soon discover there's always
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right up and get in line. Listen to Grim and
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(02:41:50):
Grim and Mild dot com slash Presents. I'm Tanya sam
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(02:42:11):
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make sure you leave a review. Welcome back to the

(02:42:32):
It could Happen here. Yeah, that's the podcast we're doing
right now. It's a podcast about how things are kind
of falling apart, but maybe they don't need to, or
at least not as much as they have. Then I'm
Robert Evans with me as often is my co host Garrison.
Davis Garrison, UM say something inciting to the audience. I'm

(02:42:53):
on my second cup of coffee. Yeah, because it is.
It is the early morning for you, by which I
mean to eleven in the afternoon. UM, also with us today.
Our guest for this episode is David van Dooson. Uh. David,
you are the president of the State Labor Council for
the Vermont a f l c I O and there's

(02:43:13):
a bunch of stuff that's interesting about your organization. Will
dig into it in more detail in a second, but
first I just want to say hello and thank you
for being on the shower now, David, the big thing,
I mean, the Vermont a f l c I has
been in the news a couple of times recently. The
most recent one is y'all issued a statement making you
the coverage I've seen has said the first labor organization

(02:43:35):
in the US to like support gun rights. I mean
like as is stated in a lot of the stuff
you've put out, like Blair Mountain. There's a long history
of labor organizations making use of the Second Amendment. But UM,
I certainly haven't heard of a labor organization stating at
the way you did, which is basically the case you've made,
is because far right fascist organizations are so heavily armed

(02:43:58):
and any gut all of the gun control policies being
heavily debated, at least among liberals, are likely to ignore
those people while restricting the ability of working class and
particularly marginalized people to arm themselves. Um, you do not
support those regulations because you support the rights of those
groups to be able to defend themselves from fascists. That

(02:44:19):
more or less correct. Well, Look, we believe in the
right of the people to defend themselves, but our policies,
including that one, are not adopted by the elected leadership,
including myself. They're adopted by our members. We believe very
firmly and democracy participaty democracy. So with issues like this,

(02:44:40):
we're happy to bring into our convention, which we recently did,
and facilitate a full debate on the issue. So that's
exactly what we did. We talked about it, our rank
and file members talked about it. They made amendments, They
debated passionately different sides of the issue in a respectful way,
in a productive way. A number of amendments were made,

(02:45:01):
that were adopted, and then ultimately the resolution was passed
with over a two thirds majority of our recopil delegance
in favor. So that's where we are right now. Yeah,
I've read a bit about this, including you know, there's
been some critiques from a representative from the a f T,
which is the local teachers union. But there was also
a member of the Vermont a f l C i

(02:45:22):
oh who essentially stated, like, hey, I didn't actually agree
with this amendment but or with this resolution, but it
was made democratically, and like I I support the process
by which it was done, which is one of the
things I think is it is so interesting here that
this isn't like um UM a kind of a group
of activists at the top making declaration declarations. This is
an organization that is really um dedicated itself increasingly to

(02:45:48):
I think a kind of progressive ism that we we
haven't really seen in an organized way, and a lot
of the American labor movement until recently. Well, when you're
talking about democracy in the labor I mean we could
be just as well here about democracies in society as such.
The fact is is that organized labor today is not
particularly democratic, and we're looking to change that, and our

(02:46:10):
world is not particularly democratic now. The vision that we
hold our slate are progressive slate called United, is one
where we increase the means for direct producerary democracy, both
within labor and within our society. So of course we're
going to go to our members and our rank and
file and ask them to debate the issues of our
day and ultimately to make a decision on these major

(02:46:33):
political and social issues. This was one we again, we
do believe that people need to have a right, the
working class needs have a right to defend itself, and
we can't bury our head in the stand. Anybody that's
even followed a little bit of the news lately will
know that between November up until late January, we were

(02:46:56):
one general shy of a coup in this country, in
the upside down world that we're now living in. It
was because of the joint chiefs of Staff and the
head of the c i A not supporting a coup
that a neo fascist cou didn't totally in fold materialized
in a more mature form. Let that sink inform it

(02:47:17):
our democracy, or the vestiges of the democracy we have
in the United States right now is precarious. Uh. They
just because they've been there for two hundred years doesn't
mean they're gonna be there tomorrow. The new playbook from
an increasingly far right Republican Party is to limit as
much as they possibly could let people's right to vote

(02:47:39):
and to participate in the political process. We see this
happening in Texas, We see this happening in Georgia. We
see this happening in Florida. We see this happening in Red. Uh.
I shouldn't say red, but I should say Republican states
all throughout the US. So these are dangerous, dangerous times, right,
so dangerous that our top generals were trying to decide

(02:48:00):
what their position would be and make plans in case
a coup, a full encoup, not just a hint of
a coup, came into being within the last year of
our republic. Now, given those realities and giving the rise
of the far right, given that our former president Donald
Trump told the neo fascist Proud Boys to stand what

(02:48:22):
did you say, stand back and stand by? Yeah, that's right.
And now at least they claimed that forty thousand members
around the United States and they are armed. Uh, you know,
we can't just rest in our laurelds and and pretend
that the state as such is going to keep us safe.
So it seems prudent and reasonable for us to have

(02:48:44):
taken the action and say we defend our constitutional right
to bear arms as intended to defend our communities. They
defend our unions, to defend the working class. And one
of the things that because we were just talking about
the the coup that very nearly got pulled off your organization,
at least in UH I believe it was right after

(02:49:05):
the election, issued a statement that if the president illegally
attempted to stay in power, the former president, you would
participate in an attempt to help organize a general strike.
Now that's something we talk about a lot on this show.
We're big believers in the potential of a general strike.
Were also big believers that the kind of general strike

(02:49:26):
that we need to i don't know, potentially get climate
justice and a number of other major things is an
undertaking on par with the space race. You know, you're
talking about an enormous task. I'm really interested in picking
your brain on when we talk about a national general strike,
what is the kind of infrastructure that's actually necessary to
make something like that feasible, because there's a lot of

(02:49:46):
talk on like Twitter and Facebook of like, let's just
do a general strike on this day in October. I
six months doesn't go by, as President c I O
ver month where I don't left this group of some
kind of contact with me to endorse their general strike, right,
going to shut down on data X And it's yet
to happen, at least in our country. So that's a

(02:50:07):
great question. A couple of things. When we voted, and
again this wasn't a decision of myself and the leadership.
This was a decision we went back to the rank
and file with to our to one of our conventions
of our delegates, after our long debate, voted to authorize
the elected deecutive Board to call for a general strike

(02:50:28):
in the event of a coup, in the event that
there wasn't transfer power on January as the constitution requires.
It was our feeling that in that very specific space
and time, in that very specific political climate, um we
would be able to call for such a strike and

(02:50:48):
with a serious amount of work and a serious amount
of organizing, pull that off and make that happen, and
the thought was if we could do it in Vermont
because the call was a further Mont Channel strike, then
it could spread to other states, which would be absolutely
necessary if there was if our country descended into a
fascist dictatorship of some sort. But generally speaking, when we

(02:51:10):
talk about climate issues, when we talk about the fact
that millions of Americans don't have healthcare or aren't paid
liv wages, all of these issues are at least these
issues together certainly warrant us looking at things like a
general strike, but they're a bit it's a bit phine
this guide to think that, hey, we got ten grade
issues that we want to see progress on, We're gonna
call for our strike and is going to happen. The

(02:51:30):
infrastructure is not there, nor is the political will within
the large labor bodies at this praised present time. Without
participation from organized labor, first of all, I don't think
anything is going to happen. So you're gonna have to
achieve buy in a certain level. But even with buying
from key leaders or even a localized shop stewards, you
still need to have infrastructure in place. So one of

(02:51:53):
the things that lacks in the a f l c
I O as a national organization. We don't have an
effective network of local union contacts in every shop, at
every shift, in every factory that's represented by a union,
let alone the majority of workplaces at this point that
aren't unionized. So what our top priority is as far

(02:52:14):
as the vermontney a fl Sea goes over the next
two years, is to build a network of local union
contacts in every single shop and every single shift that
we represent folks here in Vermont. So we see this
as a way to increase communication. Without communication, you're not
going to be able to pull off mass mobilizations and
what and also you're not going to be able to

(02:52:34):
conduct mass education on issues X, Y or Z. So
over a period of two years, we're looking to build
this network that would function not as a one way
means of communication, but almost a two or three way.
Imagine that this is a way for the rank and
file to communicate up to the leaders. This is a
way for the leadership to communicate down to the ranks,

(02:52:56):
I mean down to the lunch room level of what
it means to be in a union shop. And also
ideally it's going to be a way for local union
leaders to horizontally communicate with each other. With such a
structure in place on a grand scale, on a state scale,
on a federal scale, then things like organized general strikes

(02:53:17):
over political issues and social issues become feasible. And even
when they're feasible, though, then we still have the political
question of you know, will they be supported by the internationals,
will they be supported by the executive board of the
National a f C AL And that's a huge conversation,
you know. So, Yeah, it's interesting to be hearing your
perspective on this because my experience with kind of activism

(02:53:38):
UM has been much more of kind of the decentralized
and kind of much more recent groups, you know, since occupy. UM,
you're dealing with these these structures that in a lot
of cases there I mean, the A f l C
I O goes back like what like a century, right
one one way or the other. Yeah, you know, I think, UM,
because of kind of how shall I say, online, a

(02:53:59):
lot of the discussion about this stuff seems to be
organized labor often gets left out. And one of the
things that I think is most important when talking about
the value that organized labor has in any kind of
discussion if a general strike is what happened during the
during the budget uh negotiations or whatever you want to
call them in twenty nineteen where you you had UM

(02:54:21):
airline workers threatening a general strike that effectively brought it
into a president's saber rattling over over the budget like
it's it's president Sarah Nelson. Yeah, headlines over that and
that was the right thing to do, absolutely her and
would love to sear a a stronger positional leadership the
national level. Well, I'm interested because I see a lot

(02:54:43):
of potential in Obviously organized labor has had a lot
of problems, particularly in the last you know, during my lifetime, UM,
And I think part of it is what you said earlier,
there's it's not as democratic as it should be at
most levels. UM. What you guys have done with United
is attempting to reform that, you know within Vermont. I'm wondering, first,

(02:55:04):
how did that kind of come about? You know, twenty
nineteen is when you first got got put into office,
when when the United State got put in the to
the office in Vermont? What was kind of the back
story to that? And then my second question is kind
of what do you see as necessary to like what
what what's what's the fight as you see it to
get stuff like that done on a larger scale around

(02:55:24):
the country. So our story in Vermont is probably a
lot like the story of organized labor in many different
places are starting point. So in two thousand and seventeen,
not that long ago, ah, we had a convention with
something like twenty or twenty five delegates there. Imagine that

(02:55:45):
twenty delegates representing T at the time ten thousand grown
since but ten thousand members. That's called the democracy. So
there was a problem, an existential problem. Now I come
out of Asked Me Local Me four thirteen in the
northeast Kingdom of Vermont. So when I got together with
a number of other leaders from different unions, different Asked

(02:56:08):
Me locals, but also United Academics is part of a
f T the building trades. A number of folks. Uh,
there was a general recognition at the leadership level that
something was very wrong. Member participation was weakest can be,
and things had to change. And we continually as an organization,
you know, with some exceptions, hitch our wagon to the

(02:56:31):
shortcomings that are the Democratic Party. So all of these
things together led to inactivity, apathy, and lack of democracy.
So we started going around we started talking with workers,
we started talking with shops across the state, and one
of the first things that was striking. People would say
they would know what union they're n be a A

(02:56:51):
PWU or asking me or whatever it was. But we'd say, listen,
we're talking. We're thinking about running a slate progressive slave
for office with to take the a f l c
I O in a new direction. The next thing they
would say, is, what's the a f l C I
think about that? Right, workers involved, some of which were
union stewarts and their locals didn't even know what the

(02:57:13):
a f l c I O was. So that was
our starting point. It was an excellent crisis of labor.
And mind you, during these what I would call some
dark periods, we would often endorse a hundred candidates for
state House, nearly all of which being Democrats, and then

(02:57:33):
we they would win. They would win their elections, like
largely our candidates win, and then we get nothing in
the state House. Right, there would be no labor bill,
there'd be no advancement of card check. Differently, the organized
labor and yet we keep repeating the same mistake year
and year out and not figure out that something was wrong.
So when we formed the United State as a coalition

(02:57:56):
of a number of different unions to recognize it was
time for change, we really brought the discussion into the
grassroots level. We developed a ten point program we called
our little read book. It's now the policy and the
platform of the Vermont f l c i A, and
we ran an organized campaign based on that right at
a very local level. And here we did all the

(02:58:18):
things that you know you should be doing, the phone calls, emails,
the shop visits, all of this and created a sense
of excitement going into our two convention. Our two thousand
nineteen convention with over if I recall, over a hundred
and five delegates and alternates, was the largest convention we
had up here in in something like thirty plus years.

(02:58:41):
So that was an exciting atmosphere where something was going
to be different and something was going to change right.
So we swept. We essentially slept those elections. We want
all the seats except for one. We had a follow
up convention in two UM sorry election in two where
we won every single seat, and then the last selection
UM we won all seats except for one where one

(02:59:04):
person who's a good, good person from the building trades
ran but was not part of our state. So the
real question is what have we done in the intern
how are we changing that direction, and how are we
changing trying to seek to change the capacity of labor,
and what lessons does it add to the national room.
I would suppose so on that for one of the

(02:59:26):
first things we did is we took money out of
our lobbying operation and put it into an organizing the department,
whereby we would hire and we have hired on call
organizers to assist our affiliates in either new organizing or
internal organizing, therefore delivering an actual benefits to our affiliate unions. Now,
mind you, we represent just about every sector of workers

(02:59:47):
all across the state, but forever they very rarely got
a concrete, measurable acts of solidarity from the Federation as such,
right because all of a lot of too many of
resources were put in belonging. And we also took a
critical eye towards the Democratic Party and recently we've instead

(03:00:08):
endorsed the Social Democratic Vermont Progressive Party slates and their
runs for state House and state wide office. In many cases,
so we've done a few things differently. We're continuing to
do things differently. We've expanded the size of our executive
board so you we elect more leaders now. We've more
than double the size of the delegates afforded to each

(03:00:28):
local so we could have more rank and foot file
voices present when we're meeting at a convention. And we've
taken a strong um social justice position where we think
that organized labor must work very closely in an alliance,
form alliances with groups like Migrant Justice or Black Perspective
or environmental organizations like three fifty dot org. And we've

(03:00:52):
done those things, worked on their issues where we have
common interests, and we've asked them to support us on
our issues where where they've I have some common interests.
So those are things that are very different that the
National a f l C is not doing. Other state
labor federations largely aren't doing enough. And we're hoping now
to build that out, and we're engaging conversations seeking to

(03:01:16):
form a national progressive Caucus within the National ALC. I
and I think that's so important when you talk about
kind of on the national level for progressive number one
to not not continually kind of reflectively support the Democratic
Party when the Democratics parties is failing progressives, which you know,

(03:01:37):
we have a perfect case study right now in Congress
with the the Reconciliation Bill. UM. It often does seem
like such an insurmountable task just because the inability, like
a bill, the three point five trillion dollar infrastructure bill,
is so widely supported by Americans, but it just keeps
coming down to this tiny number of folks with you know,

(03:01:59):
finding anential interests in donors um, who are who are
pushing against something that's widely supported. And I feel um
optimistic when I look at state organizations like what y'all
are doing and the fact that I can see something building,
but I also does it is such a titanic task
to imagine translating that on a national scale in a

(03:02:20):
way that actually gets us the things that you know,
we we really can't wait for when you're talking about
some of this infrastructure stuff, when you're talking about healthcare,
when you're talking about climate justice, Like, I do feel
the clock ticking um, and I'm wondering what you see
as the hope on the national scale for actually putting
some muscle behind the progressive movement. Well, look, it's not

(03:02:42):
just the the issues of the Infrastructure Bill and the
budget bill. It's also the Proact right, the bill that
is language in the Senate. And let's not lose track
of the fact that those efforts are all stalling and
likely very likely to fail. And I hope they don't

(03:03:02):
because of Democrats, because the Democratic Party is not united.
They ran on a platform saying they were going to
do X, Y and Z, and now when they're in
a position to carry it out, they're not going to
do it. And Joe Manchin, uh far as I'm concerned,
UH call him a class trader, but I don't think
he's ever was part of the working class. He claims
to support the Proact, but in the same breath he

(03:03:24):
he won't get rid of the filibuster. So, I mean,
that's absolute bullshit as far as I'm concerned. So how
do we change that? Well, the National a f l
c I O puts millions and millions and millions of
dollars into elections. We have gotten so many of these
people elected and back them in Arizona and West Virginia,
you name it, and then we get nothing back. If

(03:03:47):
we were to take that money instead and put it
into a robust new organizing department or a recrafted organizing
department and actually assigned reel on the ground organizers in
every single state in the country to help our affiliates,
to help our state federations and their affiliates to internally organized,

(03:04:07):
to build a kind of network I talked was talking
to me about before, and to be active and build
alliances the Social Justice Group, our power would be amplified
five million fold. This is the way we do it.
Politicians aren't going to do what's right because it's right.
Politicians are gonna do what's right when they feel so
much pressure that they have to do it. Now, the

(03:04:29):
victories that we saw for working people during the Great
Depression under FDR, that wasn't just because FDR thought, you know,
this is the right thing to do. It's because people
are going on strike, because people were organized because they
were scared of revolutionary change in this country. So turn
to meaningful, true, true um of major reforms as a

(03:04:49):
way to blunt that perceived threat that they have. And
that's what we got to get back to. Not our
power is never gonna grow from people who are wearing
ties in Washington. Power is going to grow based on
our solidarity on the shop floor and in our communities.
So that's the direction we gotta go, and we got
to do that rapidly, very rapidly. It's been clear to

(03:05:10):
me for quite a while both that the reason workers
gain so much in the wake of the Great Depression
and the only kind of hope we have for doing
that now is, um, they have to be scared, you know,
to an extent, they have to be scared of of
what's arrayed against them, both in its organization and in
its ability to disrupt things. UM. And I'm wondering what

(03:05:32):
you think people listening, people um, who maybe are not
involved in organized labor, Like what what what do you
think people can do to further those ends? Like this
is like when we when we start talking about national
level a f l C I O politics, that's not
something I think most people listening feel like they have
any kind of ability to influence. Um, what do you

(03:05:55):
think they can influence? What do you think people can
be doing to build that kind of capathitate? Well, you
gotta be active, and you've got to engage in the
political and social movements. But also most folks, you know,
they're gonna have a job of some time and a
lot of folks aren't getting treated the way they should
in their job. I don't care if you're work in

(03:06:16):
a coffee shop, in a restaurant, or in a gas station,
or in manufacturing, and you could start by organizing with
your coworkers to form a union today. You know, you
could reach out to a local union to ask for help,
or you could do it on your own. Frankly, but
if we're not organized as working people, and we are
we are most of the world. If we're not organized

(03:06:38):
amongst ourselves, we're not going to be able to become
that expression of power that we need to be in
order to create the change. If we're just a collection
of individuals, then the ruling class, the wealthy, the powerful,
the elite, they're gonna have all their ducks in a
row to keep us divided and to keep their foot
on the pedal of the status quo. So we need

(03:07:01):
to come together. We need to organize in the natural
place to organize is in the workplace. In my opinion, yeah,
I mean it. It is the natural place to organize.
It's also become an increasingly difficult place to organize. We
all watch what Amazon did in Bessemer this year. You know, UM,
and and that fight is still ongoing to an extent. UM,

(03:07:22):
but it is Uh, it is a continuing challenge, um
to to actually effectively unionized in a lot of the
industries where it matters most you know, UM, like we
have some choke point industries, like we talked about aircraft
employees that are heavily unionized, thankfully, and that do have
a lot of power, as has been demonstrated recently when

(03:07:43):
they when they go to the mat. Um. But I
I'm interested in kind of we we've got, you know,
Amazon employees is really one of the areas that I'm
looking at where, my god, if if we could actually
if something significant could actually get off the ground and
a significant number of those workers could get organized, it

(03:08:04):
can make a real difference. UM. But you know, you've
got effectively what are community organizations for the most part
going up against um. You know, Amazon at this point
has more resources than most nation states. Yeah, but so
did the Carnegies and the Rockefellers and the folks like
this and and are particularly and it's always been hard,

(03:08:24):
uh too long ago in our country, maybe during our
grandfather's day, where there was a very good chance you'd
be shot or at least beat over the head with
a club from the Pinkerton's if you try to organize.
Organizing has never been easy, and yeah, such as Columbia today,
trade unions are killed at an unbelievable clip, almost on
a daily basis, and yet still they organized. So I'm

(03:08:48):
not suggesting to any of your listeners that if this
is easy, what I am that it has to happen.
It has to happen. And there's different models too. Like
in some Place is one of the models that's been
effectively used as forming workers centers, right, So that's not
a traditional union. It's a center in a city, or
in a community or in a town where workers come

(03:09:11):
together and strategized right at a in a location, to
strategize how to be effective as a group, as a whole,
as a class on issues that are important to them,
you know, be an economic, be its social, be it um,
fighting against racism, whatever it may be. That's a model
that I suggest folks could could look into as an
alternative way. If, for whatever reason, you don't feel that

(03:09:35):
the time is right for a union in your shop today,
although it needs to be tomorrow, take a look at
workers center and see if there's one in your community,
get involved, if not, get together a few people and
see what it would take to start when where you live.
But one way or another, we have to be organized,
we have to come together. We cannot just be a
collection of individuals. That's a great point, UM, and useful information.

(03:09:56):
I think kind of the last thing I wanted to
get into UM was one of the things I first
learned about your organization that you issued a solidarity statement
back and I think it was two thousand nineteen UM
with the YPG and J in Rojaba. UM. And you've
issued you know it stated your solidarity with Black Lives matter,
with the Zapatista's currently what they're undergoing in Mexico, UM,

(03:10:19):
which is massive repression from the government yet again. UM.
And you know your support of Palestinian rights and of
against sort of the U S occupation or not occupation,
but a blockade of Cuba. UM. What do you see
when we're talking about this struggle, this broad struggle we've
been talking about all day, what do you see as
the role of internationalism and both in both organizing people

(03:10:41):
in organizing resistance. Well, our starting point today is capital
is international. So we're going to have a foundational challenge
to the power of capital. We also have to be
internationalists in our altbum. We supported the YPG y p
J and the newly elected government in Rojava because they

(03:11:05):
are struggling for economic equity and a direct prot history
democracy in that corner of the world. We see this
as the most significant revolution in in the world, uh
in generations. I mean this in our mind is on
far with the Spanish Civil War and what we saw
around Barcelona and the c n T then or the
Paris Commune of EE. If this was happening in Europe,

(03:11:29):
a day wouldn't go by the where this wouldn't be
front page news. But in the Western world we often
the corporate media terms of blind blind eye to many
of those struggles. So they're doing their part, and we
have to do our part in our country. To the Zabatistas,
they're doing their part in Chiapas, in broadways, in some
regards in Mexico as such. But we need to reach

(03:11:52):
our hand out in encouragement and say hey, we're here
to support you. One of the things we sought to
concretely do in the Vermont labor movement is in two
thou nineteen one of our Central Labor Council's passed the
resolutions for we said, look, if you are go over
to fight and volunteer with the YEPG and y p J,
because there's thousands of volunteers right uh, they're are volunteered

(03:12:15):
to go over, if you return and your American will
hook you up with a union job, and we'll hook
you up with three months of room and board so
you could get reacclimated, you could get back into the
community and get back into the local fight through the
labor movement. And we were proud to actually have an
opportunity to do that for one returning American fighter in
our latest resolution in two one, and this one was

(03:12:39):
broader because it was the whole vermonti a FO, not
just the Central Labor Council. We again offered, we encourage
folks to feel so inclined if they're in that place
in their life to volunteer with the YPG and y
PA and if they're Americans and they come back, we're
happy to hook you up. We'll do our best to
get you a good union job when you return. So
we felt that was a very small least we do

(03:13:00):
kind of thing. But concrete way to provide solidarity. We
all have to stand together. It's really one fight. But
the place we're going to be effective is where you
live locally, in your town, in your city, and your
state and in your country. Yeah. I think that's a
great note to end on and a great thing that
you all are doing. And I really do appreciate that,

(03:13:21):
and I appreciate you, David coming on and talking to
us today. Um, is there anything else you wanted to
to to get out or anything you wanted to like
any you know, charities or mutual aid funds or whatever
you wanted to uh push before we kind of roll
out today. I'd just like to push for folks to
go to work out tomorrow and and organize, organize with

(03:13:42):
your fellow workers and let's change the world solidarity. Thank you, David.
Robert Evans here and I wanted to ask for your help.
There is a Portland area woman rub it to me me.
She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist and
she is trying to save her home at the moment.
She's got to go fund me. If you go to

(03:14:03):
save Ruba's house, are you be a on go fund Bank,
you'll find it. Save Ruby's House on go fund Me
if you've got a few bucks, um, she could really
use it again. Save Ruba's House. Are you be a
at go fund Me? Thanks? Hey, We'll be back Monday
with more episodes every week from now until the heat
death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a

(03:14:24):
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(03:14:46):
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stories to actually happen, so they know what happened on
camera obviously, but we can tell them all the good
stuff that happened off camera. Listen to nine O two
one O MG on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, guys, I'm
a Shop Bloud and I am Troy Millions and we
are the host of the Ernia Leisure podcast when we

(03:15:49):
break down business models and examine the latest trans and finance.
We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of
the biggest names of business, sport and entertainment, from DJ
Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross, Shaquille O'Neil. I mean,
our alumni list is expansive. Listen to as our guests
reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs, and their respective fields.
The knowledge is in death and the questions are always
delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you

(03:16:11):
want to know. We talked to the legends of business, sports,
and entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly,
how they make their money. Earni a Leisia is a
college business class mixed with pop culture. You want to
learn about the real estate game. Unclear as how the
stock market works. We got you interested in starting a
trucking company or vending machine business. Not really sure about
how taxes or credit work. We got it all covered.

(03:16:32):
The Earnier Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier
Leisure on the Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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