It Could Happen Here Weekly 42

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Take it away. Robert Evans, gosh,

(00:30):
it could happen here. I did it brilliant. Thank you. Yeah,
I love I love that really, thank you. You're Robert Evans.
We also have Christopher Long, Garrison Davis, and we have
Andrew here with us. We'll be leading this episode. Hi Andrew, Hello,
Hello everyone. Hell is the with in Portland? It is cold.

(00:54):
Everywhere else in the continentally United States, it is a
boiling hell storm. Actually today today, today it's only eighty four.
But yeah, we we have three days where it's merely
in the eighties and then it goes back to being
like again. It's very very excited your temperature measurements. But angeles,

(01:15):
it's lovely today. We're lovely for the next couple of
days and then we'll be burning sixty six. It's gonna
be perfect here forever. Climate change is over in Northern Oregon.
I have declared it, Well have you declared it? It
must be true exactly. So today, once I have a

(01:37):
bit of a discussion, an open discussion about my favorite
kind of discourse, and that is dead discourse. I wanted
to talk about discussion code that people have been having
a couple of weeks ago about restaurants, a restaurant discourse,

(02:00):
this whole idea that people heard about five minutes ago
and got super rare lap over and sparked to a
bunch of like drama, because that's what social media and centervizes.
But I figured, you know, we could have a nice
roundtable discussionaire about code and code restaurant abolition, and show
our thoughts on the ideas presented in the zine that

(02:21):
inspired it for those those who read it, Abolish Restaurants
by prola in Food. But first of all, I wanted
to share it about my experience in the food industry.
It was quite brief, and by brief, I mean like
four days I started working at this this winery slash

(02:43):
cafe that was UM owned and run by this trust
fund baby, and it was very clear that she had
failed up for most of her life. Um. It was
very disorganized and very stressful experience. I quit like a
few days after I got it because instead of you know,

(03:04):
making coffees and preparing wines and stuff, I got a
job pushing paper in an office, which is only marginally better.
And I mean everyone want to speak over like food
to his people or anything, because like my experience is
very limited, but in my own limited experience, it sucked.
I mean my blood too into water trying to keep

(03:25):
up with everything. It was one of those kind of
under the table jobs, so you don't have a contract
or a specific job description. It's just like you're doing everything.
So you're sorting and taking off recycling, and you're organized
and stock, you're making coffee, busing tables and cashion products.
You're handling accounting for some reason, like lady, I just
got here, but I'm already doing accounting, um, and so

(03:45):
on and so forth. I didn't have an official break either,
and I wasn't allowed to sit at all. Um. I
mean my boss said that I could stop for lunch
what I needed to, But because of this, these constant responsibility.
Shue was piling onto me. We never got a chance
to take a breath. The one time I did take
a lunch break, she rushed me out to lunch break

(04:09):
because I was taken too long and she was busy
taking care of her other real estate. I only consistent
customers with her friends. And yet somehow, you know, she
kept the doors opening, the lights on because you know,
trust fund baby. But yeah, to reiterate, it was a

(04:34):
very sucky experience I had. Any Yeah, I worked at
a restaurant for starting when I was in high school,
I was fifteen and a half for three or four
years part of college, the baby learn a lot about
how awful people are. But it was like you did

(04:56):
learn how to work in a team and things like that.
Helpful goals there, But management was terrible. Ah, not exactly
easy work, not exactly fun work. Um. Yeah, it was like,

(05:16):
I honestly feel like a lot of people should have
to do some type of job like that so that
they learn, you know, how how to treat people who
work in that in that kind of position. Um, because
mostly my memories of it is terrible, horrible customers who
just treated people like scum. Yeah, but I needed the job,

(05:38):
so yeah, yeah, my only experience in food service was
working at a sonic not for a crazy long time,
but it was terrible, um, and it left me with
an abiding like respect for people who have to do that.
And I you know, we can talk, we'll talk more
about the restaurant thing, but I certainly don't think fast

(05:59):
food restaurant or a thing that exists in my ideal future,
because I don't know how you could possibly operate those
without a tremendous amount of human suffering and wasted potential,
because they're just they're bad things. Now that said, any
utopian society will have a way to acquire Popeyes, but
perhaps not at like midnight in every city of the

(06:20):
country whenever you wanted. My utopian society is a wool
in which KFC has been abolished and everything else to
like exist. Yes, yes, well again this is it could
happen here sponsored by I'm perfectly okay with imperialism, but like, yeah,

(06:41):
and what kind of like can I ask, like, what
kind of restaurant I know? Robert said his was fast food,
Mine was very like casual food. What what kind of
restaurant did you work at? Right? It wasn't. It was
like a winery slash caffee and it also served food.
It was like a touch to a hotel. Oh yeah,
and the whole the hotel part of it probably made

(07:02):
it appearance. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah, kurs, scare either
of you rather work in the food fruit food service
industry at all? Yeah. I worked at a bakery for
like a year and a half, mostly back of the house. Um.
But I mean I would you know, would end up

(07:23):
washing washing dishes and taking out recycling and all that
kind of stuff. But most of my work was designing
recipes because I was more on like the food science angle.
I don't know, Yeah, I mean it's I have a
complicated uh feelings on like cafes specifically. I mean I
I love anarchist cafes and like the idea of anarchist cafe.

(07:44):
I would love to love to like have one at
some point. It's like operated by the workers quote quote
owned by the workers, um, with a shooting range out back.
But obviously the guns and buns. We call it guns
and buns. You can the croissan and you can shoot
fard by cafe by all me inside your right. Guns

(08:13):
and buns is a breakfast cafe, gun range, strip club
and apparently as long as as long as you fund it,
you can have whatever you want. But the people will
funded Garrison. Obviously, the food service industry has just make
it a cooperative that makes everything. Sorry, please continue. Yeah,

(08:36):
like the food service industry has a lot of problems.
But if if I were if I were able to
go into a bakery like maybe like two or three
times a week to just bake food for people and
that helps me live the rest of the week, I
would totally do that, right, So, like it depends on
a lot of factors, but it's like there's ideas around,
like an anarchist cafe, work around cafe that would be

(08:56):
like totally chilled to work to like be there a
few days of the week making food because I enjoy
making food, I enjoy baking, and I like food science. Um.
But you know, when you would start we start tying
that into labor and exploited the labor practices and the
notion of like having to serve other people, then it
gets a little bit more tricky. Um, and you know,
less less less good, less cash money in a sign,

(09:18):
Yeah exactly, you know it was was was kind of
funny about it. Um I would say it is like
kind of lost guada. Let me just think for a second. Well, so,
I mean one of the things that I have noticed
over the years, because I've had a lot of friends
work as bartenders, as waiters and waitresses, there are there's

(09:42):
a chunk of people who really like the work. They
usually don't like their employer, they often have issues with
like their manager or whatever, but like they like their
co workers and they enjoy the the act of like
doing restaurants stuff. Um I and I know that. Like,
so one of the things that I did recreationally for years,
as I was going to I would go to these
regional burning Man events and one of the rules there's

(10:04):
like everyone pays the same thing to get in. There's
no like get there's no like talent, so there's nobody
who's like paid to be there as an act, and
there's no like exchange of currency lab But there are restaurants.
There are people who like bake food and and and
give out and like make and give out coffee. There's
there's multiple bars and a number of the people I
knew who were like the most who would spend the

(10:24):
most of their time which is again totally their own.
At these events volunteering as bartenders were people who worked
as bartenders, and we're like, look, I like serving drinks.
I hate a lot of what goes along with being
in a bar, but I enjoy making and serving drinks.
There was this one really cool dude out in the
middle of he was out because it's a spread out
over acres of woodlands. There's just this guy I found

(10:44):
one night alone in the woods at like a podium sized,
little booth lit up bar he'd made, and he was like, look,
I am a very good bartender. What I do not
like is making the same things every night for drunk
people who don't know anything about a good mixed drink.
So you and I are gonna have like a five
minute conversation and then I'm gonna tell you what I'm
gonna make you. Yeah. Yeah, it was really cool like that.

(11:07):
More stuff like that, more like restaurant pop ups that
are like those types of things are are just are
divorced from like this notion of like, you know, being
served by a lower class member of society. Instead it's
people like sharing actual interests that they have and they're
not obligated to be there or else they get you know,
or else they're not able to pay their rent. Right,
there's lots of things like a utopian society or be like, yeah,

(11:28):
I would totally be down with doing some some kind
of you know, some kind of thing related to giving
food to other people are preparing food or you know,
drink like mixed strengths. Uh. I like making coffee a
lot like espressove and the ship. Um it's like I
can totally see that, but right now, you know, it's
just a totally different field. Um, by and large for

(11:52):
most people in you know, the food service industry, and
it sucks work. By and large, it really sucks to
work in the foods service industry. Yeah, the food service
industry is one of the most explicitve industries in the country.
That said, the idea of gathering in public to consume
food and beverages is fundamental to human beings and we're

(12:12):
never not going to have that as society's so there
has to be ways in which to have versions of that.
And again, probably not the every ten minutes you get
the same three fast food restaurants that are open all night.
That probably that definitely does not exist in an ideal society,
but in any any better society, human beings will gather
to eat and drink around each other because it's something

(12:34):
we've done in every civilization that has ever existed. So,
Andrew do you do? Do you want to talk a
bit more about the actual zine, because I feel like
a lot of people's course around the zine is not
about the zine itself. It's about what the title of
the zene is, because people should read the actual zene.
If you read it makes very reasonable arguments. Um. The
titles just intentionally provocative. Um. Yeah. And what I've realized

(12:58):
about intentionally provocative slogans is that the people who who
want to get it, you know, they tend to be
drawn into those kinds of things. And then there's some
people who see something provocative and it kind of shuts
them down. Yes, some people see it, see something so
provocative and see it's like I want to learn more.
And other people see it and they have that kind
of a gut reaction to It's like it's like the

(13:19):
backfire affect type thing. Yeah. So I mean to get
into the kind of the history of it and just
the idea of restaurants as as the Zene Explorers. According
to the discourse, a restaurant is just a place to eat.
If you sit down in the middle of a desert
with a table and a chair and you eat something

(13:42):
that's apparently a restaurant, that's not a restaurant. That it's
not a restaurant. But okay, the definition of a restaurant
is a place where people pay to sit and eat
meals that are cooked and served on the premises. Commerce
is a part of the definition of a restaurant. Why

(14:04):
do we universalize and naturalize things that are neither That
is my question. It's like what people do with the state,
or with capitalism, with police or agender. I mean, just
like those things. The restaurant is an invention, but it's
been crystallized and induced into our mind as something that
is you know, that is natural, it is universal. You

(14:28):
know when when Kronk brought his buddy Brock a piece
of chicken, that was a restaurant. You know, it's like,
we take we take these things that come from very
specific modern capitalist context and we stretch them out over
the entire human experience. If you look into the history restaurants,
the first restaurants began to appear in Paris in the

(14:49):
seventeen sixties, un as leaders in the eighteen fifties. Majority
the restaurants that will be located in Paris, and I mean,
for those who know a little bit about his three,
Paris is kind of an interesting place where a lot
of things happen, especially during that rough time period, a
lot of stuff going on there exactly, I mean elsewhere

(15:12):
on the world, communal meals were quite common. People cooked
community and the eight community, and they were new restaurants,
specifically before the invention of restaurants, and in Paris around
Europe at least where people had servants who cooked for them.
Travelers had ins where their meal was included with the
price of the room and they ate for the innkeeper

(15:32):
and his family, and peasants they ate their meals at home,
and of course they were also caterers free events and
special occasions. And there were taverns and wineries and coffees
and bakeries for certain foods and drinks. Of course, later
on all of those things, the taverns, the wineries, the
cake the caffes, and the bakeries. After restaurants came about,

(15:54):
those other institutions to shape and bend into this sort
of the mold of the restaurants was established. Restaurant based
on the name of it. Um comes from this this
idea that they were meant to restore health to sick people.
Restaurant restaurant, all right, and they used to sue these

(16:16):
small meat stews. So by by that, by that metric,
Taco Bell cannot be a restaurant. I I would argue
that it is the only restaurant. It's, well, it's going
to restore bowel movement if you have any kind of
blockage that that that it will restore that. But besides that,
I cannot, I can do not think it's going to

(16:37):
restore Yeah, Taco Bell, It's probably something like a laxatant.
I don't know. But yeah, So why France, Why Paris?
Why restaurants? It kind of occurred after the food craft
kills were abolished by the Revolution. It was like this
attempt to kind of democratize the food industry. You know,

(17:00):
Liberty got a home all that jazz, so restaurants and
it began spree enough because all these former cooks of
the now be headed king and aristocrats, they wanted to
work somewhere. Sure, so you know, in a restaurant, if
you get a meal at any time the businesses open,
anyone with money could get a meal. The customers would

(17:20):
come and they would eat an individual tables, eat individual
plates and bowls of food. They get to choose from
another option, a number of options, and they grew in
size and complexity as they went on. They got a
fixed menu and eventually all day. We invented the bacon eator. Yes, yeah,

(17:40):
that's the end fact. The Bacon was the first book
I had when I went to the US. I would apologize,
but this country has done so much worse than that
of fun facts about Andrew. Yeah, you know, it's a
thing to tune in and you get a litt new
fact that you could. I don't know adds my Wikia

(18:02):
page or something, but yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
It was mid. Honestly, my brother makes better bogas. But
that's besides the plane. Yeah, nearly every burger that you
can get at a fast food restaurant is is mid. Yeah,

(18:24):
t g I Friday's had some good Friday. That is
the place when you're in a town you've never been before,
that's where you want to just show up and get
absolutely ship house drunk until two am with like a
bunch of strangers at the t g I Friday's Bar,
which is the boulevard of broken dreams, Like it's only

(18:45):
people who can't hack it in a regular bar and
weirdos traveling through town. I love a t g I
A Friday's Bark. I was not aware of that sertiod type.
I mean there's aid t g I here in Trinidad
and me last time I knew they had like some

(19:05):
kind of karaoke thing going on. Yeah, it's probably the vibe.
I haven't been too many times anyway, I think this
is enough product place month for for one episode, like
out a lot of different here's ads. Sure, why not?

(19:30):
So the growth of the restaurant came the growth of
the market. With the growth of the restaurant came the
growth of the market. Needs that will you know fulfilled
either through a direct relationship with domination like between a
lord or a king and his silvants, or a private
relationship like within the family. They were all being fulfilled

(19:51):
on the open market. It was once a direct oppressive relationship,
now became the relationship between buyer and seller now came in.
Didn't direct oppressive exactly, a diffused oppressive relationship foremost because
no one person, I would say it could really carry
the blame. A similar expansion the market took place over

(20:14):
a century later with the rise of fast food because
as the nineteen fifties housewife was on her way out,
you know, being undermined, and as you women started to
move into the open labor market, many of the tasks
that were done by women traditionally were being transferred onto
the market. Not to say that women still don't do
the majority of care work in modern society, but as

(20:36):
women started moving into the office into the workplace, things
started to shift with regard to eating and eating patterns.
An important point to notice that, of course, you know,
the whole woman moving into the workplace thing is kind
of a white woman phenomenon, because you know, people of color,

(20:58):
women of color were inward places before then in large numbers. Yeah,
And and there's there's a thing I think it's important
to note here too, which is like part part of
what's happening here, is that like some of the care
labor that white women were doing gets transferred on to
non white women. And this this is this has been
one of the things that, Like, I think we talked
about this a long time ago in an interview I

(21:19):
did with it with a nurse. But like, like, for example,
you see this with healthcare a lot where like a
lot of like union workers get these goods, you know,
they get really good healthcare plans from the unions, but
those healthcare plans are basically subsidized by not paying women
of color like ship. And there's this whole sort of
like trend around this is sort of like like you can,
you know, if if you're witching, if you're rich enough,

(21:42):
you can escape housework. But you escape housework by essentially
thrusting it on somewhere, on someone else who's like further
down the social ladder venue. Yeah, it's kind of like
a form of that um that phenomenon. People have been
talking about the the idea of choice feminism, as in
any choice that woman to sneak that a woman makes
part of the feminist sort of movement. So I saw

(22:04):
some discourse happened recently. People are talking about, um, how
oh one should have a right if she's a housewife,
that she should still be able to you know, pursue
her interests, which is of course agreed and the solution
being proposed, so that was that the man, the breadwinner,

(22:25):
would pay for a domestic servants to come and work
for the woman so that she can pursue her other responsibilities,
her other interests and desires. And so it's just kind
of this perfect what a close to license exactly because
then this woman is working away from her family, and
then you know, it's just like this is a the

(22:48):
messed up system. But yes, so as fast food restaurants
began to grow rapidly, people began being paid weed is
for what used to be hostwork. And of course, as
we know, capitalism could not exist without the billions of
dollars of unpaid labor that women perform on a yearly basis.

(23:15):
Modern restaurants emerged in the nineteenth century under specific conditions.
They had to be businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants.
They had to be customers who are expected to satisfy
their need for food in the open market by buying it.
And they had to be workers with no way to

(23:35):
live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed,
as capitalism developed, sorted restaurants and so at the root
of this whole abolished restaurants discourse needs to be an
understanding of where restaurants came from their historical development. You
cannot take them in isolation and project them, like I said,

(23:58):
across all of humanity, because it's only through understanding, through
its specific circumstances that we can transform it as we
transform society as a whole. As we were saying, you know,
there's a lot of things that are hell about restaurants.
The way that work comes in like waves and rushes,
a lot of slow time in between. We either really

(24:20):
stressed out, the really bored. Remember working they had the
winery and like for mostly day, I just have to
be like shifting around bottles on the shelves. I couldn't
sit down and chill or be on my phone or anything.
I just had to busy myself until a customer came.
I guess it was never came because it was a

(24:40):
failed business propped up only by her parents money. But
did you ever get told the phrase if you can lean,
you can clean, not in not in those exactly words, Yes,
in those exact words, God, and every fucking manager who
says it to you think that like it's their cool

(25:02):
line was anyway? Yep? Yeah, So you have to just
you have this this constant thing of trying to look
busy while having got nothing to do, while you're trying
not to fall behind because they have tendings to do. Yeah,
everyone's always working harder and faster, and of course the

(25:22):
boss wants to squeeze as much workout in the same
number of people out as possible, you know, like you
pushing people to these ridiculous extremes, which is why it's
a kind of stereotype now of like restaurant workers all
being on drugs. You know, there's also this whole in

(25:42):
humanity to like employees being paid in tips. Now, as
far as I know nowhere is that as severe as
it is in the US um. But of course around
the world there are tipping cultures of varying degrees. And
so when you have that sort of work where you

(26:05):
sure you're living your subsistence is so directly tied to
like tips, Not only do you have this sort of
divide being created between the workers between like, for example,
the waiters who make the tips and the cooks who
don't make any tips, And it's just the sort of
had to compete against each other because the way it's

(26:25):
trying to get as much done as possible so they
can make their tips quickly so they could have their
you know, quick service. Where as the cooks they have
no interesting motivation to push themselves harder and just becomes stressful.
I never got tips from baking in the back of
the house unless some of the people in front of
the house would like share the tips at the end
of the day by their own like. Yeah, and I

(26:47):
know folks who worked in places where all tips were
shared with the way the kitchen staff, and it seemed
to be a fifty fifty breakdown of this is really
good and everyone gets paid fairly, and this is actually
some scam by man management to deny people a bunch
of tips by like pulling them and a certain factory
that gets done so like It's like any formulation of

(27:08):
this inherently winds up being pretty abusive. Yeah, and dividing
you know another interesting and I mean, as you guys
mentioned stressful components about you know, this line of workers.
Of course, the customers, which customer service for in general,

(27:28):
tend to you know, whether you're working at a bar
or you're working at a you know, a restaurant, even
working in like sales and some sort of like retail.
Still their whole subread is dedicated to how terrible customers
are two workers, and so that that's sort of dynamic
of service. It it really changes people. I mean, customers

(27:54):
can just as easily be working class as the people
working in the restaurant. It there's still that dynamic that's
created when you are the one being seated and soothed
on the other police and on their feet soothing you.
Some of the worst customers in America at least are

(28:15):
working class and poorer folks who it's like their chance
to be above somebody like when they go out to
a restaurant, so they can be extra shitty. Yeah, that
is a thing that happens. Surprisingly that even like restaurant
weekers who treat restaurant workers batly when they go to
a restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yes, it's like someone gets the

(28:37):
opportunity to be to exert the power and they're like
do it in the short, short, short, short amount of time.
But although I will say I'm sure those are also
the restaurant workers who treat people badly at the restaurant
they work at, including like some of the some of
the things that have ever been said to beered by
customers at the restaurant job. I had, yeah, not surprising,

(29:03):
and I was like no, I was like I was
like in high school, I was a kid and these
are like grown ups being horreendous. So like I think,
I think it's like I don't know, like when people
talk about this, like when people talk about restaurants, like
in the discourses, it's it's in a way that's like
it's incredibly abstract and doesn't like it don't it doesn't

(29:28):
think about the fact that like the relationship between the
customer and the people who have to interact with the customers, host, etcetera,
like that that is a social relation. It's a social
relation that like that, like like the the power dynamic
inherent to it abscribes sort of different kind It describes
different kinds of behavior to the people who are like

(29:48):
who are like on either side of it, like it
it controls like what you have to do as a server,
like what the performances you have to give to like
the smile you have to put on, which is actually
like that's the original thing of what emotional he is, right,
is like the labor you have to do to make
the person who you're serving, like I think that you're
like happy and enjoying it, like having a good time.
But then you know on the customer's en too, it's

(30:09):
like you get this sort of you know, I was like, oh,
this is your one chance to to be on top
of a sort of power relation and like that like
that like that specific thing is so fucking evil. It's
like that there there, there's there's a story I think
about a lot from Run and Schwang. Originally was it
was about um like one one of the last emperors
of the Tang dynasty, like his his concubine like loved

(30:32):
legia and like, okay, I get it as lesia that
gets really good, but like leeches grown leaches only grown
in this in the south of China. You can't really
grow in the north. It doesn't like it's too cold,
too arid. And so in order to get her leash,
like every morning, they would send like the fastest writers
like in China would like be sent by horse like
to southern China and then back so that you get
the lechia there in time like for for it still

(30:54):
to be like ripe and like edible, and you know
that that's the kind of that's the kind of power
that you to only literally the Emperor of China had
this ability, right, like the like the Emperor of fucking
China could get this commodity and like force everyone in
a change to go do something for them. And now
like everyone has that Like literally everyone has that power.
Like every time you use Amazon, you have that power.
Every time you go to a rusturant, you have the

(31:16):
power to do this, and it it turns people into
monsters because like that's you know, the Chinese emperors are
like these are some of the worst people who've ever lived. Now,
like everyone everyone like just like like the fundamental basis
of the society is there was a place where you
can go and you can become the emperor of fucking China.
The problem with the idea of instant gratification being reliant

(31:36):
on the exploitation of other people. Yeah, and and like that, yeah,
and that doesn't seem right Garrison, Oh yeah, don't worry now,
watch me as I order next day delivery on a
dollar drone just to just to funk around in my backyard.
Like yes, it's it's everything is fine in America. I

(31:58):
I do. I am like of the opinion that the
grocery store is like the primary artistic achievement of capitalism
as a system. Um. They are objectively marvels, um. And
they're they're built on a river of blood deeper and
wider than is. It's like it's a hyper object, right,
It's like impossible to comprehend the full scale of cruelty

(32:20):
that goes into being able to like, well, it is November.
I'm gonna go get a fresh bag of grapes that
have been genetically modified to taste like cotton candy, picked
by people making sense an hour in Yes, in the
country that's on the other side of the world. Yeah, yes,
whose relatives are shot for attempting to scramble over the border. Yeah.

(32:41):
That the grapes passed through easily. Yes. And I think
like like that that points to another Like I think
part of the dynamic safely with restaurants that happens, which
is that like, okay, like cooking takes time, right, and
the less and less time that you have, the more
like the more reliant you become, um on like on

(33:01):
these services. And so you see this with like you know,
like China has like a like a particularly horrible like
delivery culture, like you can like you can have someone
deliver food to you, like to the train, like like
a sub Like a train will stop at a stop
and you can have someone run a bag of food
to you and then like leave and you just like

(33:22):
you go to the next stop and you get off.
And that happens because everyone's working nine nine six, and
it's like, Okay, you're working. You're working nine am the
nine pm, six six days a week, and you know
you don't you literally do not have time to cook
because you're working. You're working twelve hours a day. And
like an example of this is like restaurant wrap. People
who work restaurants, like line cooks and chefs hardly ever

(33:44):
cook for themselves. They always get food from other restaurants
because they're cooking eight to ten hours a day. They're
not going to go home then cook for themselves. They
it's like, yeah, it's this system almost it makes it
makes the things that prop it up come necessary to
keep the whole thing going. It's all like balancings super
like precariously on its own weight. It's it's equivalent to

(34:09):
like if you're in a criminal syndicate, making somebody you're
working with tangentially shoot a man in the back of
the head so that you both have blood on your hands.
Like everyone is everyone just by by virtue of existing
under it. Like if you're working sixty hours a week
is a fucking nurse during COVID or as a fucking

(34:30):
line cook dealing with this surge of delivery ship and
then on your way home, you just want to pick
up some like sushi from a fucking grocery store that
requires ingredients from all around the world and is made
by people who are not getting enough money to make
it and is horrible for the environments and the fisheries
and all that kind of ship um, And but like

(34:52):
what are you supposed to do? Like you you just
you just finished like a ten hour shift, Like do
you not deserve like one one nice thing at the
end of the like Like Like so it's if you people
can't like either you becomeing like a complete aesthetic right
and and reject and go kind of ted k and

(35:12):
live in a shack in Montana and reject all of
these these kind of modern conveniences, or you accept that,
like you're going to spend some time waiting into the
river of blood because otherwise the things you have to
do to stay alive in this society are completely emotionally unsustainable. Yeah,
this was this was the original, like before it kind
of became this cop out for like just doing whatever

(35:35):
you want. Like this was the original. There's no ethnical
consumption under capitalism is about this was about like this
specific problem that everything in the society, Like even even
if you're living in the woods and Montana, it's like yeah,
like where where where did where? Like where where did
your cabin come from? Like where did your nails come from?
Who made the hammers? Like everyone's like completely dependent for
everything on the exploitation of other people. And it it is.

(35:57):
It is a mean. The one thing that gives me
a little to hope is when Andrew was explaining how
like restaurants came arise because of people who used to
work for Kings and ship who then started working at
restaurants because they still want to make food. It's like
that evolution. Taking it to the next step is people
who work at restaurants now no longer having to work

(36:18):
under capitalist exploitation and realizing, hey, I know how to cook, well,
I'll just set up like ways to feed the community
outside of this system of commerce. Right, that is the
next evolution if you start with people cooking for the
king people, then cooking in places where you pay to
eat in this exploitative system, and then people cooking for
people so that there's food around into like a community setting. Right,

(36:41):
if you if you follow that trajectory, that's actually kind
of hopeful. It's almost like we've come full circle. I
mean in some ways. Yeah, Like right, it's if if
you just go back to like beings, Yeah, like communicating.
If there's places around different communities, different towns, different like
urban centers that have have the capacity to feed people

(37:02):
who are not able to cook, cook, cook for themselves
that night or that day, that's something that if if
it's there is ways of setting that up which I
can see being so much better than how restaurants work.
You know, maybe maybe people wash their own dishes afterwards,
maybe people do something to help with like prep or something. Right,
like there's there's there's ways to make this that gives

(37:25):
you the parts of restaurants that are actually really convenient,
um without the exploitation, and so that that type of
like community cooking is something I mean, you know that's
even similar to like how like a good dinner party
operates um just that kind of extended out across you know,
more of like a pop up setting and say, hey, yeah,
this this month, we're using all of these ingredients that

(37:45):
are grown in our general local area. Right, We're not
getting shipped. We're not getting like strawberries in December shipped
from halfway around the world. Will make stuff that is available,
um as it you know, as it's grown, or we
can pick, we can store food, right and yeah, and
maybe we we've we've turned the old defunct Walmart into
a grows shelter. So once or twice during the winter

(38:08):
there are some strawberries and everybody comes together and shares
this marvel that the community came like worked as a
team to ensure would be available. But you can't just
go and buy four pounds of strawberries that are produced
with their like twice the weight of the strawberries and
pesticide in order to keep them alive in fields that
were never meant to grow straw Like maybe that's not
available all year round. Like yeah, just give back to

(38:33):
the point being raised to vote um about like the
wethical consumption of the capitalism, because that's a really important
point the whole poopas of that seeing has been lastidized.
But it really is crucial to have a duance and
the signing of it. What frustrates me is that it's
been taken and it's been tuned into this justification and

(38:55):
that it's okay that I buy from Sheen. It's okay
that I buy a three thousand the whole from Sheen
because no ethical consumption on the couple is on. Was
like with where somebody goes on, they engage in something
that is not is Andrew, you're talking around my two
and a half pound a day veal habit and I

(39:16):
don't appreciate. Yeah, that sounds like a problem. That's like
something Joe Roken dot sets like, I eat two and
to a half pads of veal every day and that
keeps my brain running smoothly. The cavemen, so I mean exactly,
it did work for Georgie Peterson, he's doing great. Christ

(39:42):
at the mirror notion of Antifa, I would do an
impression middle of hood my throat, so that's I would see.
I would say that as we were saying, you know

(40:04):
that there really is is potential we see even under
these conditions that people find ways to survive, you know,
they create like these informal work groups that are not
only able to come together and push back against management,
were able to work together to create trust within each other.

(40:28):
You know, you have like for example, waiters who would
try to hand in the kitchen on a slow day,
or a cleaner or who might pick up a thing
or two a dishwasher. We're trying to move up to
become like a align cook. All these different workers, they
they do things certainly to try to undermine the unnatural

(40:50):
divisions and hierarchies and between the skill and unskilled um
in the restaurants. Certain of course it doesn't always work
because there are you know settings were in the manager
successfully created divisions. You know, whether it be the manager
creating a division between um teen different nationalities of immigrants,

(41:14):
so you know, playing upon someone's queer phobia against like
queer staff, or someone's biases against I don't know, I
can't think of a third example. But there are ways
a managers try to like sew these divisions between workers,

(41:38):
and they always at workers try to push back. They're
alsoways ad managers trying to do the opposite to create
a community within the restaurant and includes themselves, so instead
of fostering isolation and prejudice, they create a community that
especially in small restaurants, that involves them that talk about

(42:01):
that's you know, the boss might share with them how
difficult it is working and organizing for the business of
the restaurant. And or they might create like a special
kind of restaurant focused on their identity. So they might
create a restaurant for for queer youth with all the
staff a queer, you know, you have a restaurant for

(42:24):
you know, a black owned restaurant world workers and black
and try to create community based on this identity. But
it kind of erases the unavoidable class interests between workers
and management. Its smooths over that dimension. So it becomes

(42:44):
more difficult to organize and to speak up for your
rights because you're you're aware that the managers are human
and they too are struggling, Which kind of brings me
to the idea of restaurants with no managers and the
idea of cooperative The assume cooperative restaurants is that they

(43:07):
basically have to collectively take on the rule of managers
managing themselves, creating those pressures and pushing those pressures upon themselves.
They enforced the work on each other, and they have
to work longer in some cases and work harder in
some cases. Because the structure of a restaurant is designed

(43:29):
to make money, and if it is not making money,
then everybody loses their jobs. So, due to this pressure,
bosses in a position where they have to pushed workers
to get as much out of the workers as possible.
You raise the boss on the occasion from the equation,
but you keep the rest of the concept of a restaurant,

(43:51):
and line between work and boss becomes blue to the
extent where it's almost like image of a person with
a boot on their hand pulling a boot on their head.
Where this oppression there was one external becomes internalized because

(44:14):
that is how a restaurant survives through pressure, through exploitation.
It's kind of like with how self employed people are
on the capitalism. Yes, you're working for yourself and you
have some freedom that regard, but you're still restricted by
the broader system. You haven't escaped it, You've just had

(44:34):
to navigate it. And I have to make quarterly payments
to the I R S. Yeah, I mean what I say,
I think work for ourselves in some capacity a certain
level of freedom, and it um you still have those pressures,
and it's just you have to inflict them on yourself.

(44:58):
You know. You don't have like a break that has
been mandated, and so at least in my case, I
don't take breaks because that's just how I am. You know.
You work longer hours, you push yourself harder and harder,
you work on days when you should be resting, and
it's just it illustrates the fact that liberation is not

(45:23):
to be found under this system, and it's something totally
new with a totally different metric of success, a totally
different metric of sustenance, totally different bare minimum and totally
different motivation needs to be foundation upon which society is built,
because there's profiting a worken. Yeah, And I think there's

(45:49):
a like I think the reason this debate happens like this,
this whole discourse happened in the first place, is just
that like like just like a lot of it really
was just a complete inability to imagine like literally any
other way of like even just like like any other
way of getting food that has not involved you going

(46:10):
to a place and telling someone to make it for
you and like that. I don't know, Like, yeah, it's
like the fact that there have already been sort of
seismic shifts in the way that like food production happens, right,

(46:32):
I think is evidence of like, no, we don't have
to do it like that, like we just we just
do not It wasn't like this for most of human history.
We could do something better than whatever they were doing
before it. Yeah, a lot of people might you know,
wish for like in this. So it's a shift over
into the abolition section of it, the restaurant abolition. A

(46:55):
lot of people look to, for example, a union as
a path by which a short too, you know, we
make certain gains and belong to where we can take
over and radically transforming. The difficulty comes in how unions
have traditionally operated in the restaurants fair they tend to

(47:17):
be significantly less successful. I mean, restaurants usually have very
high turnover people in the last couple of months um.
They often employed like a lot of young people who
are just looking for part time or temporary employment. Well,
people do work, they are constantly looking to move on
to better things, and so it makes it difficult to

(47:38):
create a stable union with a stable membership that can
buckle down and really negotiate and push for the interests
of the people working. Because people working and constantly changing.
I think one of the like one of the really
great things has led you is that like like especially
when fast food took over, like the major unions that

(48:00):
even do exist, which is like that we don't like
we're just not gonna bother even trying to organize these
people because they just assumed it was impossible, and so
like there are there are very very few fast food unions.
I mean, like I think one of the only like
even sort of functional ones is the ww like organized Burgerville.
But that's that's been like it like the like the
big unions when they've done campaigns for fast food workers,

(48:24):
it's like it will was clean like five or fifteen,
but it's like they're not actually trying to like form
unions of the freshmand workers, Like they don't they're not
even trying. They're just trying to They're they're using them
for sort of like a lot being an advocacy. Yeah,
and difficulty also commins when un it's established itself, you know,

(48:46):
because a union structurally it's not always by all the Lucas.
You know, there's still sort of a hierarchy bureaucracy that
may establish itself and try to maintain itself, even if
it starts off benignly. No, just for all of the

(49:07):
radical history that unions do have, quite a few unions
in the particularly the United States, have also been conservative
bastions and bastions of different attitudes about like stuff like
white supremacy. You know, there's there's a lot of the
union movement is as much Blair Mountain as it is
trying to stop black people from being able to work
on trains. You know, like all of those things are
part of the history. Yeah, I mean, I'll speak briefly

(49:30):
on like the union situation in the Caribbean, particularly in
turned out the trade union movement was intrinsically inextricably tied
with the anti colonial movements in the movement for independence.
Yours to became that the unions became tied up with

(49:51):
the political parties that are rules after independence and well
during the process of independence. But I know, happening with
the UNI and so was that they end up being
tied to deeply with the political parties. So that ended
up being that the established unions. You know, the higher

(50:12):
ups in those established unions, they have these relationships of
favors and obligations with the politicians. A lot of politicians
come out of these union movements and end up establishing
their own political careers. And because it's also tied up
when you workers get into these industries that do have union,
that have been unionized, there's a very clear separation between

(50:36):
the union and the workers because while the union is
able to you know, push for the workers rights, and
you know, they're still separate from the workers. The unions
still exists as a new negotiator between the workers and
the management. And so you have the workers which to

(50:57):
go beyond just negotiating. The union exists almost as a
release five for any sort of class antagonists. So any
kind of pressure, any kind of real pressure against the
start at school. I mean, it's not just unique to

(51:17):
to turn that outlet to the Caribean I means it's
globally cross history. You've seen union struggles kind of go
over the same sort of dynamic. You know, new generations
of workers, they build up the movements, they build up
the unions, and the unions begin to change and perhaps
new union leaders spring up to replace the old union leaders,

(51:40):
one put on the same position and the same pressure
as the reacting the same way as the bureaucracy and
being rejuvenated. Unions are reformed and they end up going
back to the same abay as that they had been before.
And in some cases, the fight to reform the union
takes the place of the fight against the boss because
of all the bureaucracy and system of obligations and just

(52:04):
deeply rooted ideas about the place of the union. Because well,
unionizing is a difficult process. Union leaders to tend to
enjoy certain benefits from their position, and as we are
aware of, you know, certain hierarchies self justifying those are

(52:27):
the top tend to want to perpetuated. It's kind of
like and so this idea that this is kind of
an unsettled thought of mind, but it's kind of like
the idea of you know, using the state to establish
workers power and then abolishing it afterwards, you know, using
the union to get some shift workers po But then

(52:50):
it's expecting this union of a certain structure that exists
towards negotiating, ends to somehow pushing these sort of more
radical directions. There's a saying that that um, but the
zine um the rights of the zine says, it's like

(53:14):
restaurant unions needed to be restaurants and we don't. I
think that sort of applies more broadly because when we
get into the whole idea of like work apbulation, it's
just concept of workers are people outside of work, but

(53:34):
a workers union exists within the confines of work as
we understand it. So I think that's where the difficulty lies.
The zine goes on to say later on that every
time we attack the system, but we don't destroy it,
it changes and in turn changes us, and the train

(53:55):
of the next fight gains are tuned against us, and
we are stuck back in the same situation at work.
The boss to try to keep us looking for individual
solutions or solutions within an individual workplace or an individual trade.
But the only way that we can free ourselves is
to broaden and deepen our fight. We involve worcause from
other workplaces, other industries, and other regions. We attack more

(54:17):
and more fundamental things. The desire to destroy restaurants becomes
a desire to destroy the conditions that create restaurants. We
aren't just fighting for representation in or control over the
production process or fighters and against the act of chopping
vegetables and washing dishes, or poor and bear or even
serving foods other people. Is with the way all of

(54:40):
these acts are brought together in a restaurant, separated from
other acts, become part of the economy. And I used
to expand capital. The starting and ending point to this
process is a society of capitalists and people forced to
work for them. We want an enter this. We want
to destroy the production process or something outside and against us.
We're fighting for a world of productive activity, fulfills. The

(55:02):
need is an expression of our lives, not forced on
us in exchange for a wage. A world were produce
for each other directly, and I don't know where to
sell to each other. The struggle of restaurant workers is
ultimately for a world without restaurants or workers. And I
mean so, I think people are still going to call
small degensives restaurants restaurants anyway, probably, But I hope this

(55:29):
discussion as cause equals kind of deepen approach to this.

(55:56):
Welcome to it could happen here. I am Robert d
uh and this is a podcast about things falling apart
and sometimes how to put them all together. And you know,
today we're actually going to be talking more about the ladder,
which I know is revolutionary for us. We're usually just
kind of like getting way more into the doom er stuff.
But I think there's been more than enough of that,

(56:17):
particularly in the wake of several horrific Supreme Court rulings
that I don't really need feel the need to go
into detail on, but one of the things that has
happened in the wake of these rulings this this like
kind of liberal reaction to the fact that to the
fact and they're right to be angry about the fact
that they're being essentially governed by a small minority of
people who are very densely geographically located in the South,

(56:38):
that is where like the bulk of the support for
the the hard rights policies comes from. Um and it's
led to this like fuck Texas, Fuck Florida, Fuck uh,
these these quote unquote like red states, these regressive states,
which is this deeply problematic for a number of reasons,
including the fact that you know, if you just want
to look at it in terms of party politics, there

(57:00):
were more people who voted for a Democrat in Texas
in the election than live in either the state of
Oregon or Washington. UM. These are densely populated places with
a tremendous amount of people who are people of color,
who are trans who are you know, in some way
threatened by this weird Cristo fascist bullshit that is increasingly
clamping down on the country. And so today I wanted

(57:21):
to talk with some folks who will live in and
around the Dallas, Texas what we call the DFW areat
Dallas Fort Worth, UM, and who have lately been organizing
to kind of both confront this, uh, this rising Cristo
fascist like the street aggression portion of it, and to
provide support in defense um for people who are are

(57:41):
being victimized by it. So I'd like to welcome some
representatives of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club to
the show. Hey, y'all, boy, Yeah, do you want to
kind of introduce yourselves to to start? However you'd like
to be known on the show? I'm Satan, I'm bubble
Satan and bubble um And how long have y'all been

(58:05):
like doing Because there's there's two specific things that kind
of I don't know, I became aware of y'all, and
and we had some brief interactions, right, It's a brief
interaction that some of your folks during the the snow
thing that that destroyed everything, um. And so I've been
kind of watching y'all socials ever since. And there were

(58:26):
a couple of things recently that struck me as very
uh worth discussion actions that you y'all were a part of.
One of them was there's a neighborhood in Dallas called
Oak Lawn that is kind of colloquially known as the gighborhood.
It is like the um the gay neighborhood in Dallas obviously,
and so it's a place that you know, even before

(58:46):
kind of things got a little easier after twenty um,
it was kind of a safe place and a little
bit like of a of a of a fortress for
like people who are not you know, straight and this
gender which is and kind of are you know, for
for an idea of how aspects of the df W

(59:08):
area can be. The town I grew up in, Plano,
had a condoms to go move in, and within like
two nights of setting up shop and Plano, somebody fired
a nine millimeter handgun through the window like it's not
a it's a place where it could be difficult. UM.
And so obviously repression and kind of violence and fears
of vigilante violence um from folks who are queer has

(59:30):
is understandably amped up in the wake of everything that's
been happening. And y'all carried out an action where a
sizeable group of leftists marched armed through the gaghborhood. Um.
The one of the there were a couple of different
chants that that I was hearing. One of them was,
um about bashing back something like that. You want to
talk a little bit about like that action and what
actually went down. Um. Sure. So at the beginning of

(59:57):
Pride Month, we had a large group of fascists come
to the gighborhood. Um, you know, they were shouting groomer,
they were telling us the fist of Christ is coming
down on you soon and um, you know, making really
out their threats. So we discussed, um, you know, what
we could do to be proactive to make sure that

(01:00:19):
doesn't happen again. Um. And we ended up getting together
some groups who were interested in an armed demonstration, which
even here in Texas is not something you see too often. UM.
And we decided to march through the gabhborhood. You know, Um,
I would say a majority of the people that we

(01:00:39):
know are LGBT and h it's our neighborhood. So you know,
we put on this demonstration there and it was, you know,
kind of incredible. We got some looks, but we also
got a lot of support. Um, we had a lot
of great chance. Um. You know, bottoms tops we all

(01:01:02):
hate cops. There we go. Yeah, yeah, that was the
that was the one that was in the video. Um.
And so what was the I'm interested in kind of
because I think this is the kind of thing that
is potentially very useful. We we have seen. One of
the things that I have personally observed and that has

(01:01:24):
been observed by a number of folks, is that when
these kind of right wing mobs who primarily want people
who cannot defend themselves, who don't have the numbers to
defend themselves, they want to like beat the ship out
of people in a gang, right Like, that's that's the
proud boy thing, that's the Patriot prayer thing. That's all
these weird little groups. Primarily what they want to do.

(01:01:44):
They don't want a fair fight. And when they are
confronted with organized people on the left who are armed,
that tends to scare the ship out of them. And
if I'm not mistaken, during that day where you had
those Christian fascists kind of coming after um that Queer
family event, like one of the one of the live
streams that one of the right wingers had, people were

(01:02:05):
some of them were like commenting on the fact that
there were people leftist open carrying and like how unsettling
they found that. Um So I'm interested in kind of
how the idea too, we're going to do this, have
this kind of a march, you know, through this neighborhood,
we're going to make sort of a show beforce. How
that idea kind of came together? And then what logistically
did y'all like feel the need to set up, Like

(01:02:28):
I'm gonna guess it wasn't as simple as like hey,
everybody with a gun, like come come meet here and
we're gonna have us a walk. Um So I'm interested
in kind of what the logistics are because I think
this is the kind of thing that people other people
are going to want, like find useful to do, like
statements of we are here, we have the tools to
defend ourselves and we're not going to just passively let

(01:02:48):
you run through our neighborhoods fucking with us. I think logistically,
one of the big things was just making sure that,
you know, everyone who was carrying was carrying properly, and
then also to protect our own selves, making sure that
whoever was carrying was also protecting our identity by wearing

(01:03:09):
essentially full black walk UM, which that in itself sends
a message. You know, a bunch of queer people marching
through the streets of Dallas and full black block with
guns UM sends a message like we're not going to
take your ship. We're done. You know, you're not gonna
mess with our bodily autonomy. UM. That march happened, We

(01:03:30):
had planned it to be on that day originally, and
that happened to be the day that Robie Wade was
overturned UM, and it essentially just evolved that morning to
a more intersectional body bodily autonomy march. But really logistically
it was mostly about protecting ourselves and making sure that

(01:03:52):
people who weren't carrying the firearms were also so protected
from our firearms. Yeah, I want to dive into that
a little bit, because that's so an important aspect of
it is the ensuring saying. I have seen a lot
of marches, and I will be honest, I've seen a
lot of people being armed on on both sides politically,
who have done things with guns that I would consider reckless.

(01:04:13):
Probably the top moment in my mind is during a
big march in Portland somebody leaned over and a glock
fell out of the front pouch of their hoodie that
they were just head loose in there. Um yeah, UM,
So obviously it is not as it should not be
as simple as like, you know, load up on guns
and bring your friends, so to speak. How do you

(01:04:34):
attempt to ensure like how like how do you actually
go about handling the safety aspect? Is it? Like? Are
you appointing essentially kind of like range officers. Before the march,
we were keeping an eye on ship, like what does
that actually look like? Um? I want to I want
to give two examples for the march we did in
the gighborhood. Um, it was different in that it wasn't

(01:04:54):
publicly announced wearing um it was going to be, so
it was kind of a by invitation only demonstration, so
we knew pretty much everybody that was coming, except for
people in the neighborhood who kind of joined ad hawc UM.
So that's one way that we've done things. When we
do more of like uh protest security for other actions. UM.

(01:05:20):
You know, there are different people who will feel motivated
to bring UM arms and usually they know what they're
doing pretty well. In a couple of instances where someone
is being unsafe, UM, you know, one of us will
just go over there and talk to them, you know,
like hey, you you you really need a sling uh

(01:05:40):
for this, or you know, don't don't be uh pointing
it in any way at a building. UM. Just little
tips like that too, you know, resolve the behavior. So
when it actually comes to like uh because because one
of the things like whenever you have sort of a
gathering like this is is de escalation and even within
people within the march potentially like dispute resolution and that

(01:06:04):
sort of thing. What was the how how did you
kind of organize for that? Like what was the planning
on that? And like, um, I think that's a really
important question. One of the first things that we decided
pretty early on is that we are not there to
police any protesters. So you know if someone is is
doing something illegal. Uh, And no, at no point where

(01:06:26):
we you know, tell them to stop or try to
make them stop. We may move away from the area
or something like that, but we're not there too police
our people at all. When it comes to like counters
coming up in antagonizing, the main thing we do is
try to put ourselves between them and any people they're targeting. Um.

(01:06:46):
And you know, we have cameras, we have less than lethal,
we have different tools to try to de escalate that. Yeah,
And so when it comes to like, uh, I guess
training on that end, did you kind did you have
any sort of like um um infrastructure, human infrastructure whatnot
set up prior to this to like make sure people

(01:07:07):
who were like doing de escalation were folks that you knew,
you know, had some level of understanding of it, or
folks that you could trust. Like how was the actual
how do you actually because I mean, it strikes me
that there is a great deal of like trust that's
necessary to put together something like this, To be able
to meet up with folks and and like march armed
together requires probably a little bit more in in the

(01:07:27):
way of of of trust than you know, just showing
up at a protest. UM, that's kind of more conventional. Um.
Was there sort of some in any kind of like
I don't know, system or or like yeah, training or
whatnot that y'all had for specifically like how to behave
how to de escalate all that kind of stuff. Or
was it just like folks that kind of you knew

(01:07:49):
from from prior events were good at that sort of thing.
I mean, as far as our group goes, UM, I
can speak to myself personally and say that I trust
one of our people with my life. UM. And I
think because of that, and because we were really the
ones putting it on, like we knew that if something

(01:08:10):
were to go down, one of us would get in
the middle of it, and we all trust each other.
I think that in any sort of organizing environment, trusting
trusting the people that you're working with is one of
the most vital things that you can do because they're
going to be the ones beside you when a proud
boy rolls up and you want the person decide you

(01:08:33):
to be someone that you can trust. UM, And we
do that. We do have you know, we we do practice,
and we do train together, and UM, we also have
fun together and having that certain level of trust means
the world when you're putting yourself out there in that way.
And how long of the folks that are kind of

(01:08:53):
like you're, we're most affiliated with like making this happen.
How long have you all been sort of organizing and
and doing stuff together. I would say most of us met,
since all of us met in organizing different facilities during
after the FOD protests and then just to boom in

(01:09:15):
mutual aid that happened in DFW after that, Whether it
was through Homeless Outreach or um, you know, bell bonds
or however we met each other, it was mostly through
that mutual aid community and getting out in the our
communities and organizing ourselves and trying to find like minded
people who wanted to see the same change happened. Now. UM,

(01:09:40):
I think one of the uh, one of the things
that's been on my mind a lot lately, and that
that y'all particularly bring up, is the challenges of organizing
in parts of the country where not just you know,
the police who are always pretty regressive, but the entire
legal structure is set up to as Florida has increasing,

(01:10:01):
thevential number states have done like punished protests. Penalized activism
make things more dangerous for for for people who are
like going out there in public in addition to doing
things to try and criminalize you know, people who are
are are not uh straight, you know, white Christians. UM.
So when you look at like kind of the challenges

(01:10:22):
of organizing in a place where it's more dangerous, and
obviously it's it's not particularly safe to be organizing against
you know, the l A p D. But the court
system in California is broadly speaking less stacked against you. UM.
So if you had advice to give to people who
had don't have this group of friends and people they've
been organizing with for a couple of years already, but

(01:10:43):
they want to have that, they want to build that
in their community, where would you suggest they start? UM.
I always tell people that it starts by showing up
um to all kinds of events, you know, supporting a
broad range of groups. And you know, you're at the protests,
if you are at the feedings, the distributions, UM, You're

(01:11:05):
gonna meet people and you're gonna build trust um, mutual
trust there UM So that you know, when you want
to start a project, you want to start a group,
you'll have those people that know you. Um, it is
very dangerous. Uh. I think it's always important to tell
people to watch your op set. You know, don't be
re sharing all kinds of activist stuff with your personal

(01:11:29):
profile that has your name and your birthday and all
of that. But yeah, it really goes to meeting people
in person, I think. Yeah, And um, I mean that's
such a difficult part of it because I think for
a lot of people, particularly who maybe are living in
rural areas, who are living, um, kind of outside of
places that have well formed protest communities, social media and

(01:11:50):
the internet is is a lifeline for them and often
in a lot of cases like how they came to
a lot of the political beliefs in a desire to
do something. Um, but you're like, you can't. You have
to actually get like face to face on the ground
with people to actually build the kind of relationships that
can lead to the sort of activism that y'all are doing.
And that's that is a tough needle for a lot

(01:12:12):
of people to threat I think, and you know, in
those more rural communities, if there's not already those systems
in place, you know, set up a monthly mail distribution
with the local homeless shelter, the local homeless camp. And
if you you know, can get a few friends, more
people will show up and you can build that community yourself,

(01:12:35):
even where it's not existing already. UM. It's more about
just finding those like minded individuals that are already existing
in your community and getting to know your neighbors. Yeah,
to trust your neighbors. I think that's a great as
far as the plan of action goes as good as
you can get for at least starting down that road. UM.
Before we kind of move on from this specific action,

(01:12:57):
I did want to talk a little bit about the
conversations you had both with like people who lived in
Oaklawn and also with um, you know, passers by. I'm wondering, like, UM,
did you have any that particularly surprised you or that
particularly stick out to you right now? I personally was
a little bit more surprised with the amount of support

(01:13:17):
that we received, um, just because while Oaklawn is the
gighborhood is generally more blue liberal, yes, park Town very
anti gun typically yea, very yea. And to see you know,
people sitting on the patios of the bars carrying for
us while we were walking by. Especially as someone who

(01:13:41):
has been you know, grown up in that area, it
meant a lot. You know. It really shows almost like
the cultural shift that we're going as far as left
this politics go. If people are going to be supportive
of us. Yeah, that's really interesting to hear. And now
I were there, did you have any kind of interactions
with out of I don't know people who were who

(01:14:02):
were more conservative or more on the on the center
right side of things. I think we had a couple
of people who were kind of filming and frowning. It's
always hard to tell, yeah, in that case, but no
one really said anything to us. That's interesting. Yeah, And
now that was that what that kind of brings me

(01:14:22):
to the next topic, which is how how how did
Dallas how to DPD handle this? Un hardly out of
our cars and multiple police cars surrounding us while we
were just unloading um. They were constantly trying to guess
where we were going with the mark um by cutting

(01:14:43):
off streets and trying to like escort us and like
you know, blocking traffic and things like that. But but
we were there less than five minutes before I would
say at least four police cars were surrounding us, asking
us questions. They were pulling out their guns like we

(01:15:04):
were a threat. Geez. Um, Well, I mean yeah, that's
that doesn't surprise me. Um. Did you have any kind
of like direct is did they send like the p
I O s up to try and you know, talk
with organizers or whatever? Um? So they did right at
the beginning, and I think that interaction went really well,

(01:15:25):
um because they approached us as we were getting ready,
and they said, you know, what group is this, Who's
in charge, who's who's leading? What are your plans? And
you know, every single person who was there was disciplined
enough to either say nothing or say no plans. There's
no group, there's no leaders. And you know after that,

(01:15:47):
they kept their distance. They did not really interfere more. Yeah,
I mean that that is one of those things um,
that police know. I've always found it useful too when
you are having when you have to have an interaction
with a police officer and um, sometimes it is unavoidable,

(01:16:10):
like you need to kind of focus on like what
are the things that they need to hear for this
interaction to like end, um and end you know, not
in them getting violent. Um. And I think it sounds like, yeah,
you you you'll handled it perfectly like that that was
the right way for everyone to react, like you were.
It is Texas, Like it's not like it is at
all illegal to walk around with guns. Um, so yeah,

(01:16:33):
I mean that's that sounds that sounds again. I'm impressed
by kind of both the boldness of the action but
also the discipline that that was required to actually that
was required like from the ground up right, not not
because like the there was some sort of like vanguard
leadership exerting force downward in order to actually make this

(01:16:53):
work safely and in a way that that left hopefully
and it seems like this is the case people who
live in the area feeling broadly speaking pretty good about it.
I would say that, you know, since the march, in particular,
just in DFW in its entirety, the support that we
have received has been almost overwhelming. Um. You know, people

(01:17:17):
now recognize the people in black Walk as being safe
and they're going to help us. If I need something,
I can go to them. And that's the whole purpose
of community defenses. Having Michael would be to have everyone
be that person. Uh. Now, the other thing I would wonder,
because it's I you know, I've spent a lot of

(01:17:40):
time at black block protests, but generally in Portland, Oregon,
where a hot day is like eighty degrees, UM, y'all
are in fucking DFW UM. Those those summers are no joke.
And wearing the gear that y'all are wearing is is
UM a potentially dangerous thing? Right? Like? Was there was there?
Was it kind of individual or left up to infinity

(01:18:00):
groups to like figure out hydration and stuff, or did
you have people who are kind of watching folks and
reminding them and like trying to ensure that like that
part of it was handled. Because that does strike me
as a specific risk in this case. Most of us
do have UM at least minor street medic training UM,
as well as our own hydration kits, and we all
carry extra electrolytes and things like that for people who

(01:18:23):
may not be part of our group who may also
need assistance. UM. That's a big part of it here
in Texas is that's that's the main risk with protesting
in the summer is dehydration, heat exhaustion, he stroke. You know,
we do recommend that the people who are in black
blog where moisture within loose layers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Marino

(01:18:46):
is your friend if you can get it, Yeah, exactly.
But you know, we all of us are you know,
at least trained enough to recognize those symptoms. We make
scenes that we can pass out to people, UM about
how to protest safely in the summer, in the heat specifically.
That's great, much more dangerous. Now. One of the things

(01:19:08):
I've been seeing recently, and this is I'm guessing from
a more recent march, was that the photo going around
that's kind of kind of viral on right wing social
media of UM. It's a black and white photo. There's
uh an individual UM with a plate carrier and an
a r UM and another individual with UM like a
chest rig and what I think is a baretta um

(01:19:29):
carbine um and uh, both of them are at a
reproductive rights march UM. And there's a mix of really
interesting reactions from the right like on this UM and
I'm interested in kind of yeah your thoughts there. Yeah,
so it's it's been really weird. UM. We try to
track whatever is being posted about us UM. Sometimes they

(01:19:51):
can give us intel on people who might want to
target us UM. But we've been noticing, you know, it's
like a solid third of right wing comments are kind
of broadly supportive. I think it really throws them for
a loop. Um, you know, we we've even seen people saying, actually,
bodily autonomy is a lot like gun rights and things

(01:20:12):
like that, and it's been really weird. I think, um,
being armed might kind of humanize us for some of
those people in a way. It's been a weird thing.
I have thought a couple of times that, I mean
a number of times. I talked about this on the
first season of It could Happen here. I think that
there is some potential to bridge some divides there with

(01:20:35):
kind of the existence of of a of an increasingly
prominent left wing gun culture. You know. One of the
comments I saw was somebody like going through the gear
display and be like, actually, no, they're they're reasonably well
set up, and like everything seems like this is this
is exactly how you'd you know, want to have it done,
and just people being like actually appreciative. And I guess
maybe there's a degree to which, like if you're if

(01:20:57):
you're in that community from a right wing side but
not like a straight up fascist side, maybe there's a
potential for like more commonality and like you said, the
idea that like, oh maybe some of them will actually
broaden their support for reproductive rights, um, you know, or
at least consider it. You know, I don't know that
that doesn't strike me as like a negative move and
it it um, particularly in a place like Texas, you

(01:21:21):
have to try to at least um have some sort
of common ground with people who are are more on
the right wing side of things, because they're so damn
many of them. Yeah, so I think, um, it's one
of those cases where when ideological where when ideology gets
atomized to just like guns good, you know, that is
like a core belief for some people. Um, that can

(01:21:43):
draw them to being supportive of pro choice marches in
a in a weird way. It's it's kind of a
pretty specific kind of brain worms. But seeing it a lot, Yeah,
I wouldn't like call it necessarily a positive like it's
a it's an aspect of things that are negative, but
it's something that also can be like useful and and
potentially positive. Like even though if you get into what's

(01:22:06):
leading someone to like, oh, I really I re examined
my beliefs on reproductive rights because I saw some people
marching with guns. That's not like a sign of of
a series of thought process that I think is like
wildly positive. But at least somebody maybe came around on
something better than going the other way. You know, we've

(01:22:29):
been talking about the effects of getting all this right
wing attention and uh, you know, in a way, that's
what we want. We want to advertise that we have
strong community defense, and on the flip side, you get
all these supportive comments and hopefully those people don't want
to kill me anymore. So it's it's just positive. We think, Yeah,

(01:22:51):
you're I mean, one of the ways in which these
kind of protests can increase security for a community, Like
one way is that maybe there are people who will
get scared off because they don't want to risk getting shot.
And the other is that maybe some people will re
examine their opinions on that community because it's now more
familiar to them because there probably way too into guns.
But yeah, absolutely, so let's talk about um. There there

(01:23:16):
was a specific action um that kind of the thing
that was going around on Twitter was these proud boys
trying to get into it, believe it was a library,
and like a line of parents squaring off with them
to like stop them. Um. Can we talk a little
bit about that. Yeah, that was in McKinney. Um. It
was the day after through V. Wade got overturned, And

(01:23:38):
we honestly didn't know what to expect when we got
there because of McKinny. We were like, are we going
to be very much so outnumbered in this? And when
we arrived there was already about thirty to forty people
who were either parents or friends of the library there
in support and maybe only the teen or twenty people

(01:24:01):
in opposition. Um. So it was, you know, a pretty
good welcoming, supportive environment. Um. And about thirty minutes after
we got there is when the Proud Boys arrived, and
we just really only had to tell two people, hey,
they're Proud Boys. And before I before we couldn't even

(01:24:21):
get over there to like block them off ourselves. There
were like eight to ten soccer moms in their flip flops,
Nike shorts and handmade signs standing in front of them
and blocking them from coming any closer. Um. And of
course they did get closer as people were leaving the
library and the event was ending and things like that.

(01:24:42):
But it was one of those things where it just
organically happened, and it was it was beautiful, like in
in a place like McKinney of all places, like I
gw up in North Texas, like place I would expect
to find, like a soccer mom in Nike shorts asked like,
thanking me for bringing my gun to the library. Yeah,

(01:25:08):
that's that's wonderful to hear. I mean, and I people
who are not in the d F w U area
won't understand this, but like, yeah, I spent a significant
chunk of my early life in McKinney, and I would
not have expected that reaction there. Um, yeah, that's really
really good to hear. And it also is you know,
I'm I'm. I obviously have been supportive of a number
of tactics to confront fascism, including people showing up in

(01:25:31):
block and stuff and and protesting or or or confronting
them physically. But I don't think there's any more durable
kind of community self defense than than that, than than
a than a group of people who are just kind
of live in an area and around and curious, realizing
there's a threat and immediately acting against it. Like that's

(01:25:51):
such a that's such a powerful thing. Yeah, saying no,
not in my neighborhood. And you know, again, like we
didn't expect to have that reaction, which made it that
much better when we saw it. And you know, having
those people for the first time in their life maybe
even can face to face correctly with fascists probably has

(01:26:16):
a lasting impact on them as well. Like I hope
that they keep going to more events like that and
keep going and protecting their community from these people. Now,
let me ask you, when you have these kind of
interactions with folks, and when you had these specific interactions
with those specific folks, is there kind of is there
sort of an information spreading thing afterwards? Is they're like, hey,

(01:26:36):
here's who we are, and like where you can find
out more about us? Um, like kind of attempts to
like let people know who you are and what you're
doing and how they can you know, follow you and whatnot.
Like is that a is that is that a part
of the activism or was it more just like we're
showing up to kind of provide a barrier for these
people and like that's not this is not the time
or place for that. It's a little bit of both. Um.

(01:27:00):
A lot of these actions we are invited to. We
have kind of made it a point to be known
as we are here to help UM. So a lot
of times we will get invited or people will send
us an event and we will We do usually try
to get in touch with you ever's organizing the event

(01:27:20):
to make sure that they are comfortable with us, either
open carrying or what they prefers to can still carry
and things like that, UM, because it is still necessary
to be polite UM. But then also when we do,
we always meet people at these actions who are wanting
to get more involved than just that one time, and

(01:27:42):
we do have ways for them to get involved in
their community and learn from us. Obviously, Dallas is um
It's nickname for a long time has been the City
of Hate UM, and it is a place that is
I mean the city itself is fairly blue, but there
is I mean, even within the Dallas area proper a

(01:28:03):
tremendous amount of people who are like extremely conservative. Obviously,
I mean we I don't want to be harping on
this too much, but is there a degree to which
you are concerned about like attempts at at infiltration and
whatnot or attempts to yeah, like kind of like you know,
to do sort of the the fascist equivalent of what
a lot of anti fascists do with right wing groups.

(01:28:23):
There is a lot of concern about that. UM. We
just you know, we do the best we can. We
think we've done a pretty good job already, clearly very
careful with um, you know, who were who were in
contact with, who were working with UM. We've had to
you know, stop working with abusers a few times. That

(01:28:44):
is a tough one. We don't expand nearly as much
as we could given all the people who want to
be part of this particular group. We believe more in
you know, many strong groups and uh try to help
people do that. Um. But yeah, it's a tough struggle. Yeah,

(01:29:07):
I mean that's a that's an interesting because I think
maybe a better question for me to ask is is
not like, how do you avoid that? But how do
you avoid like? Because because the if you look back
at the actual history of co Intel pro right and
the ship that like Hoover and his his goons were
saying to each other, like, the goal was not to
infiltrate every left wing movement. The goal was to make

(01:29:28):
people be so afraid of infiltration that they weren't able
to effectively organize, and so that that is I guess
kind of the real trick is this. Obviously there's a
degree to which you want to be on your guard.
You need to be careful. It's it's it's important to
be not just ethical, but but like responsible in your
op set. But you also can't let like fear of
that sort of thing happening just because you're you know,

(01:29:51):
kind of surrounded in a place like North Texas. You
can't let that fear stop you from from trying, right.
I think a big part of that is it goes
back to the trust thing. You know, we don't really
let people into the close folds until they've come to
a few actions with us and they've you know, proven

(01:30:14):
that they're not you know, spilling the beans all over
Twitter and yeah that you know, um, we know who
they are and know what they're about, and then we
involved them a little bit more. Um. It's all about
building that trust with the people you're working with. It
just goes right back to that is you know, trust
is built over time, um, And the longer we all

(01:30:36):
know each other, the more we trust each other, and
then you know, we are able to have those conversations
about welcoming more people in and um, you know, setting
up the processes for that now has just on a
logistical standpoint, that kind of notoriety i'll have have gained
because of some of these actions. Has it sort of

(01:30:57):
led to like difficulty in terms of we were dealing
with like so many much interest, so many people reaching
out to us, like how do you how do you
actually like organize kind of that, like how you how
you respond to people when ship goes viral? You know,
I I know how overwhelming that can be. Yeah, that's
been pretty new to us. Um. We've been more used

(01:31:19):
to being kind of your local crew that does things
no one ever talks about. And uh, having a larger
profile now is a challenge because we do know, you know,
attracting a lot more attention you know, put some constraints
on us. Um, but I think that goes back to

(01:31:39):
why it's important to have a lot of different groups
doing a lot of different stuff. Um. You know, you
can't just have one uh group, uh doing all the
organizing that needs to be done in an area. It's
just a bad idea. You know, if a group gets
taken out for a variety of reasons you don't want
everything to fall apart. Yeah, so I guess kind of

(01:32:02):
as we come to probably close to the end of
this where there were there are things that I didn't
get into that you wanted to talk to about what
y'all are doing and kind of what you want other
people know, particularly folks who I don't know we're in
in Louisville or and you know, fucking Idabelle, Oklahoma, and
UM kind of want to feel want to build UM

(01:32:22):
or at least help to help to protect their community
in a place that UM, there's additional challenges in doing so. Yeah,
I've seen that recurring events no matter what it is,
you know, book club distribution, if there's a place that
people can find you regularly, that's a great way to

(01:32:43):
have the kind of people you want to meet, you know,
just just walk up and talk to you, UM for
me what you know, watching your ops set and also
compartmentalizing your information, like if I don't need to know something,
I don't want to know it, UM, And that's a
good way to stay safe while also you know, being
able to organize and take action because like you said earlier,

(01:33:05):
the most important thing is the will to do something.
If you're just you know, the safest thing you can
do is stay in your basement, but then no one
will do anything. Yeah, exactly right. Um, was there anything
else either of you all wanted to get into. I
guess I also want to plug passing on training. So
whatever skills you have, we've taught, um medical stuff, how

(01:33:28):
to do an oil change, um, how to fire gun stuff,
martial arts you know, unarmed fighting is also important. Um,
share knowledge with each other, you know, make each other
more powerful in that way. Yeah, that is a I
think a great line to end on. Um, thank you
everybody else and um yeah, um you can check out. Actually,

(01:33:52):
you guys want to plug your your your socials, you
could follow me at bubble break on Twitter and um
it's kind of out now, but you can follow Anarco
air softest we have trained on there excellent, and then
of course, uh Domeport John Brown Gun Club on pretty

(01:34:13):
much all platforms currently. Yeah. I never got into TikTok
either one of these days. All right, everybody, that's the episode.

(01:34:41):
What uh inspiring networks of violent accelerationism my nihilistic loss
of faith in the possibility of human progress, And I
don't I don't. I don't know. That's probably not a

(01:35:02):
good way to Yeah, I'd be like that sometimes, Garrison,
what are we What are we talking about today? This
is it could happen here podcast, Bad Things, World falling apart.
There's just been a big shooting in Boston. You probably
about Chicago, not Boston. Boston, not Boston, not this. I
was thinking about the Boston bombing. Oh, there we go.

(01:35:24):
It's also not really in Chicago. We should know. It's
like thirty right, Yeah, yeah, it's like it's it's it's
it's a it's a northern suburb. Yeah, it's like it's
and yeah, because I've heard a bunch of people say
it's like a super rich neighborhood, and then I've heard
other Chicago folks say that, like, no, it's like an
upper middle class neighborhood that used to be richer. And anyway, whatever,

(01:35:47):
it's not like Chicago that and yeah, we'll be talking
about it because it's It is an incident that fits
within a pattern of behavior that very few people understand
nor really prepared to think about. And it's part of
why is because if you actually understand what's going on

(01:36:09):
with this shooting, there is no political utility in what happened.
Um And I mean that the number of ways there
is no if you are someone who is supportive of
more stringent gun control, there is not political utility in
the shooting for a number of reasons, including the fact
that Illinois has strict gun laws, and while a lot
of Illinois gun crime has to do with weapons that
coming from other states, he bought his legally in the

(01:36:29):
state of Illinois. Um. And even though like this guy
was on police radar, he had made threats before they
had confiscated all of his knives, and he's still allowed
to buy guns, even though Illinois has a red flag
law that very easily if you can confiscate demands knives
they could have confiscated, has stopped him from buying guns
or whatever. Plenty of laws on the books to have
stopped this. And it's useless in a left right political

(01:36:51):
sense of the word, because there are this guy does
not graph onto any of that I have. I think
it is there's a value and kind of putting out
some of the Trump imagery he's put on only because
the right has immediately left on calling him a transgender
anti for shooter. And I guess in terms of a
social media thing, sharing him draped in a Trump flag

(01:37:12):
is the quickest way to like rebut that, but that
doesn't mean he's not it's it's not not for actually
understanding what's going on. Yeah, there's very this is it's
it's in a pattern of shootings that are becoming more
common the past few years. We saw it at the

(01:37:33):
UH there's a school shooting last like October or November
that the shooter had a very similar profile. Um, and
it's a it's a part of this growing online trend
using imagery related to mental illness too encourage and justify

(01:37:54):
mass acts of violence in some rebellion from how our
regular society is structured and how people usually think of reality.
So it's it's something that we generally people who spent
a lot of time researching this, myself included trying to
be very careful about how we talk about this, right
because we we don't want the wrong things boosted. But

(01:38:16):
also everyone just being in the dark isn't great either, Right,
That's that's frustrating. Right, if people are curious, they want
us start to look stuff up, and it's better that
they have someone who knows what they're talking about explaining
to them then then just have them being the wild
West of the Internet on site image boards or forms
learning about these nonsense propaganda styles. There's there's a few

(01:38:40):
things that are unique about this guy. I mean, he
was not only making the propaganda, but he also did
he also did a violet act that is actually more
unique than usual. Usually the people who are involved in
making this type of propaganda that he was making, he
made YouTube videos, music, he he was he was very
prolific in what he was putting out content wise into

(01:39:01):
the Internet. And usually the people who put stuff out
in this style of propaganda and this style of like
of a very very like meme driven violent mental illness
fetishization subcultures, they don't generally the people who make the
stuff don't go and do the stuff. This is what

(01:39:22):
instance where this this did happen. So that's actually unique
for a few reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think one
of the things that's interesting about that is that and
this is something that has not been discussed nearly as
much as I think it ought to have. In the
wake of the shooting, this guy basically released an a
r G at the same time as he carried out
his shooting, Like we're basically we're going to get to that.

(01:39:42):
I mean because in some ways this is a really
good explanation, not explanation. This is really an example of
the post manifesto, like post manifesto terrorism UM, where there's
not there's not a written manifesto. It's someone's entire all
line presence and their entire online documentation is is that

(01:40:05):
that serves as their manifesto. The whole image of them online,
everything they've put out, it represents the thing that they
want spread. It's people these types of people are are
less likely to write, you know, like a ten page
thing about how about why they hate X minority. Instead,
they're gonna leave piles and piles of clues and puzzle pieces,

(01:40:28):
music videos and content that lead people into what they
want to project as their mental state to be. UM.
So it's like everything is and everything is part of
what they want to put out. Yeah, and I think both.
You can see the act itself, the shooting itself as
an attempt to spread the art that he was making

(01:40:50):
and to spread this like profile that he had built.
There's a reason why that logo that he had for himself,
UM was all over everything there's a reason why unique logo,
very unique. Ago. He put out some of the videos,
one from ten months ago showed the location he's believed
to have started shooting from. It looks like, um, so
he was planning this for a while, and he I

(01:41:10):
think this was this was meant both as almost as
like an advertising campaign for this guy's EP, if you
want to look at it that way, but in a
broader sense, like like like it's it's it's it's more
circular than that. Right. He wasn't just trying to spread
his stuff, but he was trying to spread his stuff
in this this imagery and branding that he had created
for himself and in order to put other people in

(01:41:32):
that same mind state. It was. It was also very
personal to him. Um, he's I've spent the past few
hours watching watching hours of the stuff that he's put out. Um,
and I mean he's there's there's videos that he's animated
of him doing a suicide by cop. Um, there's there's

(01:41:52):
music videos he's made about doing a school shooting. Um.
These are these are d as and Pot has been
grappling with for a long time and he finally did
the thing. I'm I'm unsure currently if he always knew
that he was going to do this or if he
was actually trying to fight it now that's that's honestly
not even worth debating because it's not useful to what's
going on because he did it, because because he didn't.

(01:42:15):
But we've had you can see the types of stuff
he's been putting out, Like yes, the string that he
did the shooting on, he has a long, along zooming
clip of that same street in videos that was posted
like over a year ago. Um, he's been he's been
thinking in this way for a long time. This isn't
like a fast radicalization. This is someone who has been
heavily steeped in very very small niche online some cultures

(01:42:40):
for a long time. Like the guy is twenty two
years old, he's he's had his Twitter account since two
thousand eleven. He's been online so much. Um, it's deeply
online person, deeply alienated, uh, socially isolated, uh, deeply like disassociative.
And this is this is by the way, can assistant

(01:43:00):
with what his friends have said, consistent with what people
who knew him and worked with him and put music
and albums together with him have have repeatedly. A number
of them at this point come out and said variations
of like, yeah, man, he he got like really weird,
like it was it not not like and not in
the way that like, oh he got super into que
or like he became a Nazi, but like he got

(01:43:22):
weird in a way I didn't understand and I stopped
associating with he got he got detached from parts of
of like modern reality in ways that are really hard
for people to understand. Um, and I think it's it
is important to emphasize just that the deeply online nature
of this he he had. He made a whole music
video titled I Rely on the Internet, um that you
can't find anywhere, so that don't even try to love

(01:43:45):
of God. You don't need to. You don't need to.
But like, but it opens, but it opens by him
saying I get mad when other people are more popular
than me on the internet. And the mass shooting is
in line with this, With this style of thinking, right,
he's he is he is trying to reify himself into
a into a memetic image to spread around the same
way many mass shooters try to do this same thing

(01:44:07):
that he is doing this extremely intentionally Um, he wants
to be the thing that represents a very specific idea,
and I'm it's again we are always trying to be
carey careful, but like how much we get into this
because you don't want to boost the wrong thing. But
it's no one of the important to talk about because
it's costing a lot of people in their lives, and
no one really knows how to deal with this problem

(01:44:28):
right now. One of the beautiful things about our current
age is that if you are someone like if you
are someone who researches terrorism, extremism, violence, particularly in the
American context, although certainly not exclusively christ Church and the
whole Germany, I don't need to go into it. But
if you are someone who focuses on this stuff, um,

(01:44:48):
you will repeatedly have the experience of encountering a new
subculture online or a new trend, a new like species
of meme and find yourself wondering, like when the shooting
is going to be? Um. I made a significant chunk
of my career because I was paying attention to one
particular group of folks online when they did their shooting.

(01:45:09):
And I am not primarily I've not been in the
you know, We've talked a little bit about schizo wave,
which is kind of broadly speaking, the thing that this
guy most embodied. Um that is that is the propaganda
style which has a bad name. Yes it's obviously we're
not endorsing its name. This is the style that people

(01:45:29):
who are involved in this only community use. It's about
fetishizing parts, or fetishizing media driven aspects of mental illness
to encourage violence. It's about obviously mental illness, yes, the
aesthetics and mental illness. Right, People who are who actually
you know, deal with mental illnesses are much less likely

(01:45:50):
to commit violent acts. They're actually more likely to be
the recipient of of of violent acts not documented. So
like this is this is like I think it portant
to actually get people to like understand because this is
one of the things that if you look at like
Tucker Carlson for example, like how Alex Jones bind to
all these shooters, the thing they pivoted, one of the
things they pivoted to is, oh, it's because all these

(01:46:11):
people are on antidepressants. And it's like, no, I'm gonna
I'm gonna talk about So there was there was this tweet,
but I mean, I hate talking about Marjorie Taylor Greens.
I think it's useless to talk about her, and it
only gives her inflates the thing that she represents. But
but but uh, she had this tweet about a picture
of of him that that that that he that he posted,

(01:46:34):
and she's asking is he in jail or a rehab
center or a psychiatric center in this photo that's on
his bedroom? What drugs are psychiatric drugs or both? Does
he use? And the image here is of an image
very clearly photoshopped of this person sitting in like of it,
sitting in like a mental institution, holding a Bible. And

(01:46:55):
it's part of this thing that is like a fetishizing
the aesthetics of mental illness. Right, It's like, look at me,
I'm I am so detached from reality, I be I
belong inside a mental institution and the aesthetics of Christian fascism,
which is also a weird part of it. There's a
photo one of the like images he posted in four chan.

(01:47:15):
I think it was fortunately I may be mistaken about
the exact location, but it was like it was a
Catholic saint with like the sacred heart like in her hands,
with the head replaced by like some anime girl. I've i've,
I have not seen that yet. But yeah, this image
that he made of of inside this this mental hospital,

(01:47:37):
that that is, that is part of the joke to him, right,
the joke, Like I don't think he would actually assume
that someone would think this is an unphotoshopped image. I
think he would he hilarious obvious, like like Margine Taylor
Grey is just like just like unable to determine the
most basic photoshop that you can see the edge marks
very clearly. So but but this, but like this is

(01:47:57):
part of the joke, right, And everything getting into what
he actually believes about reality and stuff isn't important because
everything about this is has to do with like post
to ironic violence and post ironic like comedy, post ironic
like ideas of reality. It's the difference between this what
is sincere and what is real and what is ironic

(01:48:20):
and what is fake don't matter. They as long as
they're happening, that's what's happening. So it's all as real
as anything else. So getting into specific ideas about what
he personally believes doesn't actually matter because one we don't
know if that's genuine at all. He's he's putting everything
out intentionally. And two it doesn't matter on the actual
material circumstances. What are producing effects inside our world right now,

(01:48:41):
like these types of like acts of violence, but it's
it's everything is put out, should be but it'll seem
like contradictory, it'll seem confusing. Right. He opened a video
of his that he was like doing a live stream
like like I think, like over like a year ago,
and he he calls everyone who's watching his live stream
like he calls them communists. He's like, hey, communists, um.

(01:49:04):
And it's not because they're actually communists, not because he
likes communism. It's not because he's necessarily fascist either. It's
that all these things are so blurred and you use
them interchangeably to produce this sense of meaninglessness and the
reaction to this meaningless world that he's constructed for himself
and these types of online subcultures try to construct. The
only sensible reaction to this meaningless world is for them

(01:49:27):
to do these types of acts of violence. That is,
that is the point. So the actual details what they're
saying aren't important, because it's all about constructing this world
that is utterly meaningless and self contradictory and confusing and
nothing makes sense and the only way to respond to
that is to get out of it. And that's part
of what they're they're trying to do. And there are

(01:49:49):
I mean, and again part of the frustrating things that
there are all of these things that people try to
kind of simply affix to this our pieces of it. Yeah,
American gun culture, the fetishization of violence as the way
to achieve positive ends in our culture is a part
of this. It's why, it's part of why the natural
response to everything is meaningless and confusing is going a

(01:50:12):
galling spray exactly. Um. And likewise, the fact that politics
is where it is where you have like this one
party that's the Republican Party that is almost entirely dedicated
to like owning the Libs and just purely attacking people
rather than trying to do anything because their policies have
been unmitigated disasters for the country, and the other side
just kind of blindly tells people to vote like that

(01:50:34):
hopelessness that like that, that kind of nihilistic aggression on
the right all feeds into this. And you could say
that like a great deal of right wing media, particularly
right wing ault media, is kind of firms a heavy
component of like the milieu that this guy was radicalized in.
But it's more like that kind of stuff provided a

(01:50:54):
language for him than it is that that kind of
stuff was specifically like his motivating things. The same thing
with Trumpism, right, Like he he engaged with Trumpism only
in a way that it helps kind of destabilize things.
And is this like orbit of chaos, right, That's that's
why it that that that's why it's into it. Right,
He was deeply into stuff run conspiracy theories, paranormal deep nihilism, um,

(01:51:19):
getting cut off from consensus reality, getting awakened to some
like greater truth. Everything that he's actually into is all
just to serve to serve those types of means. Politics
aren't the core part of that, but it's a reaction
to politics. And then he's going to use it as
just as just another tool. It's because yeah, many of
them are racist. Maybe they can share racist memes, but

(01:51:41):
that's not actually the the the center point of of
what's going on um. And you know, in some ways
to be easier if it would be, because that gives
you something actually easy to target otherwise right now, you know,
when you're trying to address this whole propaganda style that
is encouraging these things to happen, it's a harder thing
to climb down on because it's it's an like an
endless game of whack a mole trying to find out,

(01:52:02):
you know, who's the big people pushing content like this
right now and like these weird niche communities, how can
we get them taken down? And they just always pop
back up, right It's always it's it's this end this game.
So it's hard to target, and that leaves you with
the feeling of like hopelessness on how this situation will
be solved, which is like also part of the point
of why these attacks happen is to is to get
that reaction. Um, but it sucks, like it's it's it's

(01:52:26):
it's always bad to just have the like the only
thing you think about is like, oh wow, I don't
see a way to solve this. It's just terrible. But
that's part of the intention here, and man, it's it's
not good because you know, you this this isn't the
first shooting that has happened from this skits awave aesthetic.
There there. There has been other ones, but these things

(01:52:48):
are norms are gonna start hearing more and more about this,
and that sucks. Um, It's gonna become more of a
of a thing that people are going to be aware of.
Right as soon as as soon as MPR starts talking
about it, you're like, Okay, this is this is fully
this is this is fully escaped the box. It's it's
it's one of those things when um, because I was

(01:53:09):
just I was saying earlier, like what it's like when
you finally when you find yourself staring at it something
that is going to blow up in a violent way
and just not knowing when you are one of a
number of folks who I've known who are kind of
particularly dealing with this space. And it's been like two
years that folks have been saying like there is there
will have it like and the thing that is most

(01:53:32):
almost as frightening as like anything else is that. And
then fucking Brett Bear is going to be talking about
Schizo wave on the news like we're gonna have to
We're gonna have to deal with like Joe Rogan trying
to parse this ship out while stoned um, while stoned
and well, talking about the Cally Yuka and we're talking
about the fucking calli Uga, which does lead us into

(01:53:54):
the board Apiacht Club Gas. So are we gonna are
we gonna set? So we'renna talk about one thing dealing
with skits. We were finished talking about one thing dealing
with skits away and then when I enter into other
thing that the only accurate way I can describe describe
this is that my my dives into this, into this
theory are the equivalent of what it feels like to

(01:54:16):
have a psychotic episode. And that's not that's not disparaging
at all. It's about the actual thing is your brain
does when that happens. How you take one meaningless piece
of information and project meaning onto it to make it
super important. Um, and how that kind of cascades down.
Oh boy, So the board the board a fiacht club

(01:54:37):
a k A. Now, I guess the board ape Nazi
Club because people online have decided that they're really good
at researching Nazis. I guess somebody hopp into the fucking
subreddit and tell us that we we needed to be
all right, we needed to be dealing with this. Yeah,
So I was like, like, randomly, I like visited some
of my friends in Chicago who are like normies and

(01:54:58):
like they were telling me about this video. Yeah, it's
it is. It is again. It has fully escaped the
box now and that's part of the problem. So there
is this YouTuber who made a video in partnership with
a quote unquote internet artist um about how the Board
Apiacht Club friends of the pod are secretly this Nazi

(01:55:21):
op to troll everyone into spreading esoteric Nazism. That's that's
the claim. Now, first I'm gonna say that the guy
who made this video was in partnership with this internet
artist who at the same time launched a rival ape
based n f T project, and this video served as
an ad for his rival ape n f T project.

(01:55:43):
And to be clear, his Ape n f T project
was taking the art that the Board Apiacht Club used
for their apes, making no changes to it, and just
selling it to people on a different platform, which is
like intellectual property theft right, right, Like, I never want
to be the guy saying the board apes are leading
on the right. I can't believe, like we are not
defending Board Ape Yacht Club and I want them to

(01:56:06):
be hit with a brick. But we're talking about this
because people are appropriating the term, appropriating the almost like
the aesthetics of anti fascist research that he started selling
their own products. They are appropriating the aesthetics of anti
of scholarship focused on extremism, um, in order to sell
n f T s. That's what's happening with this. The

(01:56:28):
board Ape Yacht Club or Nazis video so agains. So
all the inporation comes from this from this guy who's
a rival arrival n f T internet art. What's his name,
hig writer Rips? I think, yeah, writer Rips. Yeah, because
he's being sued now by the Board Apes or whatever,
and like, good god, I and I mean everything, I

(01:56:48):
I'm not gonna if you watch the video that we're
referring to, I'm not disparaging you in case you thought
it was convincing, because I mean that was part of
the editing, because he was trying to make it seem convincing.
But every every single thing is like cherry pick and
squished together to resemble meaning. But once you actually open
it up, you're like, oh, this is actually nothing. Um.
The whole thirty minute section on the cipher is about

(01:57:10):
them doing cipher's badly to get a result out of
the clues that they were given. They're looking for specific
results to match whatever they want to see um. And
everything else is the connections are so tangential um and
it's it's like synchronicity gone bad. Right. It's people who
take these things and protect meaning onto them, when in

(01:57:31):
reality that's just how everything in the world works, and
it's not actually meaningful or important. It's just because you're
focusing on it, so you're gonna see it everywhere. It
is the same thing we were talking about in our
food factories, conspiracy videos, a podcast sorry, and and it's
basically one of the things that has made this, I
think spread so viral e is that there's a germ
of not truth. But there's there's a single convincing point

(01:57:53):
that it all starts from. And the single convincing point
is that the board Apiat club logo was from that
other Nazi logo. Absolutely, yeah, very is very much patterned
off of like the the old s s Death's Head
because you shouldn't, yeah, because the number of things going
on there, because the Nazis were really good at graphic design,
and because also that's not originally a Nazi thing. It

(01:58:15):
has its origins and a Prussian military unit, and there's
a reason why the death's head went so far. And
it is generally like, for example, when you see a
death's head on in the Ukrainian soldier in like Ukraine,
that dude's probably got some pretty Nazi fucking beliefs. It's
not a it's it's not a again, So the fact
that you see something that looks like it may have
an inspiration in that um but like is a worthwhile

(01:58:37):
point to start looking at stuff. Absolutely, But once you
go at it with a conclusion in mind, then find
things just to back up your own conclusion. That's not
how you do good research because man, like one of
the founders is Jewish, not saying Jewish people can't be
fascist or whatever, but like half the people who started
it are ethnic minorities. They're really bad writers, and they

(01:58:59):
put together this thing that's complete nonsense, and people are
now assuming it's this, yeah, make a conspiracy, and it's not.
It's just because it's so And I think part of
why people are so so. I think part of why
a chunk of the people who hate it want there
to be a conspiracy is because this thing has made
so much money, and it is utterly banal and an idiotic,
and it is utterly been all in idiotic and part

(01:59:20):
of the thing A lot of this comes out of
and a lot of the strength that kind of this individual,
this thing has, this this video has comes out of
the fact that years ago a number of folks, some
of whom our present company here, started warning people about
the ways in which fascists would hide things like fourteen
and eight and all of dog whistles, hidden imagory, all

(01:59:41):
that kind of stuff here is and and so people
started to get primed to the fact that that happens,
that the Nazis hide ship, and that that that you
should be on the lookout for it. But one of
the things that has been forgotten, I think, in kind
of the rush to do that for ship like this,
is that it's not just the fact that there hiding
like and in the in the specific case of people

(02:00:02):
are putting fourteens and eighty eights and ship. When I
was discussing that was nearly always in the context of
like members of Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys and
affiliated groups who were beating people in the streets. Right,
So you're not you don't just have the imagery you
have someone going out and doing things that like they
are claiming I have nothing to do with fashions, but
like no, you can see like you haven't and there. Yeah,

(02:00:22):
if you have an ape that's numbered one eight, which
is a video, it's because there's like ten thous these
apes and they're all numbered in numerical order. Yeah, it's
like the fact that in a group of a set
of ten thousand apes, one of them is a number
of four eight is not Nazi dog whistling even anymore
than it would be Satanic dog whistling that there's gonna

(02:00:44):
be a six six six in there. You know. It's
just like there's one that's six nine six nine, just
like there's one that's two three four seven. Whatever. Yeah,
it's it's like that thing people used to do were
like I don't know if people still do this, but
like they were when I was like kid. People would
like you get someone who'd like pull out a grid
of a city and they start drawing pentagrams on it. Yeah, exactly,

(02:01:05):
and it's like, well, yeah, there's a bunch of random
lines if you can. But the other thing that's that's
a really problem. That's a big problem about this. It's
not only it's passing off bad extremism research to sell
their own n f T product, which is bad and
of itself. It's also saying the stuff that doesn't need
to be said out loudly to a huge audience, all

(02:01:26):
while using the fast wave image style, and that sucks
because it's talking about things like traditionalism. It's talking about
types of esoteric Nazism that usually we don't want to
put a giant megaphone on because when people get really
into this, you get stuff like the shooting that happened
a few days ago. That's that's Those are the same
Internet communities that this stuff is really fostered in, So

(02:01:47):
we don't like to amplify it because the more people
who are in these communities, the more their brains slowly
get chipped away at by these people making this making
these types of like hypnotic propaganda. So when we have
a tuber that has a video with millions of views
talking about the Caluga, talking about Julius A. Vola talking
about a whole bunch of stuff around like extremely niche

(02:02:10):
occult Nazism, that's not great, especially when they're using the
fastave style. Of video editing to make it seem really
cool and scary, and when they're doing it ultimately to
make money in an n f T scheme, right, It's
it's it's more than just this is not just somebody
did research that was like bad um. This is somebody
crafted a viral thing using the aesthetics of research um

(02:02:34):
and dropping some really dangerous shit into the consciousness in
an irresponsible way to sell the same ape drawings they
were attacking. Extremely frustrating because even the whole cipher section
of the video I'll still reel against because it's about
people using a bad jillion cipher methodologies to get specific
results out of it that they want, and all the

(02:02:56):
results they get out of it also are like not
problematic and kind of explainable, Like all of them refer
to something about monkeys anyways, even if they are true,
it's not. It's it doesn't necessarily need to be referencing
this obscure thing in traditionalism. It's like, oh no, that's
because it's the name of a fucking monkey. And I
don't again, I don't. I don't have any actual opinion

(02:03:16):
on whether the Bourne Apiat Club has someone working for
it that is hiding in secret references because honestly, I
don't care, because all because what it's viewed publicly as
is a stupid n f T thing. I mean, it's not.
It's not viewed publicly with people who use it as
a Secretnacy conspiracy because if it is, what's the impact,
What's what's the impact that it's had? Like, how how

(02:03:37):
would it matter if it's a secret Nazi conspiracy theory?
What's it? What's it doing? It's it's selling bad pictures
of monkeys. When when we talk about the first wave
of this and like they need to explain, you know,
the symbols that people were hiding in these like right
wing street movements of a bunch of whom wound up
feeding into Jam six, It's easy to say, well, what
the harm was? They were going out, they were beating people,

(02:03:58):
they were planning terrorists a tax, right like that. Yeah,
it's doing terrorists to I have I again, I fucking
hate these Board eight motherfucker's. I think this is the
stupidest fucking I don't know trend I've seen in my
entire goddamn life. I cannot point to anything even vaguely Nazi.
They have supported or done like and among other things.

(02:04:20):
If you want to know if something is a dangerous
conspiracy or a stupid grift, one question you should ask
yourself and this isn't always relevant, but one question you
should ask yourself is is Jimmy Fallon involved? Because if
Jimmy Fallon is involved, it's probably just a dumb grift.
Because I mean, the whole, the whole, the watching this
guy break down how you get secret messages out of

(02:04:42):
these ciphers is it's it's the same. It's the same
thing as like to and on ship. It's people wanting
to get an answer out of numbers and things and
then pushing that answer as truth even if it's like
not not based in any form of reality. Yeah, it's
it's so it's it's really frustrating to watch people basically
start using Q and ON style research tactics to justify

(02:05:05):
their hatred of an n f T project, which is like, no,
you can just dislike it from being an n f
T thing. You don't need to rapid in a in
this package that is just really bad extremism research. Part
of one of the things that scares me about this
attack and about like what's going to happen kind of
in the media after it is that. Um, I think

(02:05:25):
kind of inevitably these aesthetics are just going to get
co opted on a wider and wider basis. That's what's
happening on TikTok right now, is that these these types
of fast, waven, schizweve aesthetics are just becoming a core
part of the zoomer online aesthetic. And that sucks. The
The other point I wanted to mention about the Highland
Park thing is like this, this guy that did this

(02:05:47):
is such a perfect profile of this type of de
attached like gen Z like almost I like like post
politics terrorism, um that Like he is such a perfect
example of someone who has been online since he was
a very very little kid trying to make content online. Right,

(02:06:08):
everyone in gen Z needs to be performing all of
the time, right, Your whole life is a performance for
the internet. Um. He was doing that same thing. He's
been making them, making music and videos and ships since
he was he was like younger than me. Like he's
been doing this for a long long time. Um. And
the types of like you know, like nested communities that

(02:06:29):
you get like that you like fall into. It's such
it's such like a clear example of the very types
of things that you know, me and others have been
talking about and warning about for a while. Um. And
it's the whole like muddled nous of reality that we
even get with this like board a Nazi clip video. Right,
They're all part of this same problem with the Internet,

(02:06:52):
Like our brains weren't designed for this much information coming
at us at the same time, we cannot sort it
all out. Um. And it's not ideal. Um, I was,
it's not It's not great. I would rather it not
be like this. I don't know how to like comment
people with a solution to this, because this is an
unsolved problem. It's like, come up with a solution for

(02:07:15):
the fucking um the fact that emissions like are not
going to be reduced, you know, because the world, because
the world does suck. But the very be very cognizant
of video propaganda styles and anyone that uses flashing like
classic or catholic um like imagery. Be very very careful,

(02:07:37):
be very careful of people who fetishize these tetics of
mental illness. Be very careful about about people that that
you wrap these aesthetics of of mental mental illness and
like a very violent package because like that that's what
we get with with with the shooter. He was like
doing doing videos about about, you know, these types of

(02:07:58):
mental illness that end with him just like a picture
of like a drawing of him holding a gun. Um.
You know, way before he bought a gun, he was
making art about about this. UM. I think the one
that's stuck out to me most was him repeatedly referring
to himself as a sleepwalker, UM, which which I don't know,
like obviously that is very much in line with the

(02:08:20):
Skitzawave aesthetic stuff that like you have been talking about.
It also kind of makes me think, I mean it.
It brought me to thinking about Barbara Tuckman, who is
a historian who wrote a book called The Guns of
August that's a history of World War One. UM that
that describes kind of the machinery that got set up
and marched everybody into that situation exploding like sleep sleepwalkers, right. Um,

(02:08:46):
Like this system has been set up and the people
are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that, Uh,
everything is just kind of marching with a with a
sense of an inevitability towards a worse and a worse
end point. And that's that's what scares me most about this.
I've I've listened to many of his horrible songs and

(02:09:08):
there's nerric and there's lyrics very similar to that idea.
UM about that kind of inevitable, like faked driven nature
of our current situation and how reality has become so
muddled with the internet. Um, and like we there's been
uh an intentional, top down effort to destroy any nature

(02:09:30):
of consensus reality and make everything up for debate of
there's there is, there is Facts no longer are a thing,
like they just don't exist. And this is the world
that results from that happening. When there's people in power
who put are pushing for this, like you know, like
Steve Bannon is among you know, one of many people
who are pushing for this type of world. Um, this

(02:09:52):
is the result that we get, and this is the
that they kind of want us to get. It's it's
it's yeah, I mean because if everything is true and
that's fine fun mentally, like what they're going for is
this idea that like everything is true and nothing is everything? Yeah,
and if every like and if you hit that state,
you can do anything right, like to to steal a quote.
Who was that? Was that fucking Crowley? Um? The but

(02:10:15):
but like that's very much nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Yeah,
I mean that goes all the way back to the assassins. Yes, sure, sure, sure,
um but no, but it is like that is that
is the thing, right if you mean even the even
the shooter guy had numerous Discordian references in in his ship. Yeah. Yeah,

(02:10:39):
it's all about the same stuff. It's all it's all
dealing with these same problems. And you're right, obviously, if
if you know, if you deal with dissociation as I
sometimes do, if you you know like parts about the
Discordian aesthetics and like like the kind of ideas they
play with, that does not make you an inherently dangerous person.
That's that's not the problem here, um the right, Like

(02:10:59):
you get like, I'm you know in some ways, but
I I think about a lot of a lot of
these same topics because I look at all of this
I'm I look at all of this research all the time.
So it is my brains in a similar is isn't
a isn't a similar place? That's that's that doesn't make
you a bad person. That doesn't make you dangerous. Um,
but I think it's important to be cognizant of the

(02:11:20):
type of propaganda that people are pushing, the types of propaganda,
trends and styles that are producing material effects in the world,
like these types of shootings. Yeah, and so I don't
know what else to say, honestly, because it's bad. Yeah,
it's it's a problem. I would say, if anyone ever

(02:11:43):
tells you about something they saw on the internet, hit
them and runaway screaming. That's a good that's a good
way to move forward. Um, and please don't don't start
the other things like you know, we're gonna, we're gonna
the right is going to have two possible reactions to
stuff like this, Right, They're gonna one do a satanic panic.
They be like, oh, look at these people doing a
cult shit. Um, let's do another. Let's do another satanic panic,

(02:12:05):
which would suck. There, there's there's there's there's that option
obviously that would tie you into like transphobia, that would
tie into a whole bunch of whole much of bullshit. Um.
The other option is that people start, you know, using
mentally ill people as a scapegoat that start of saying
we should lock up people who deal with mental illness
is also not that would suck, wouldn't solve the problem either,

(02:12:26):
wouldn't do it. Yeah, Like that's the thing I've I've
actually been seeing this in the last really like probably
three months, is there's been a bunch of people who
have been calling for like bringing like bringing sort of
old school asylums back. That's that's exactly what the people,
the people who make this propaganda, that's exactly what they want.
That's that they want you to have that reaction that
would make things so much worse. If you put people

(02:12:47):
like this in an asylum for ten days then they
get out there, they are so much more likely to
to do these types of things. Not because they're actually
like not because like not nothing to do with their
actual whatever like mental things they have going on. It's
because of the set. The aesthetic styling is right. They
want to be a character in a story. If they
feel like their life is going in a direction that
they are a character in a story, they're getting put
in these situations that they've memed about. Right, this guy's pictures,

(02:13:11):
he's photostrapher of himself inside mental institutions, right, It's it's
a character in a story. If you do that, you're
playing right into their hands. It is that is not
what that that should not be the focused of what
we are doing. Um and like carsonal problems are not
the solution to these types of things, especially for people
who are who are like just making music online, Like

(02:13:32):
what are you gonna do? Fucking arrest people for the
like for the music they make like, that is not
the solution. Don't let people turn this into targeting people
who have actual like mental like mental things that they
deal with. Don't make them the scapegoat of this. Um
and be very careful if anyone tries to do any

(02:13:54):
kind of satanic panic nonsense about secret occultists who are
trying to alter your kids reality or whatever, or very
careful because anyone who uses that type of framing for
this problem is not genuine. They do not actually care.
They are pushing something that they want. Yeah, I mean.
And I think one of the reasons why the idea

(02:14:14):
that these people are kind of seeing themselves as part
of a narrative is important is because it represents a
discontinuity with the way mass shootings have worked for most
of the time that people listening to this has been
alive in the United States prior to a couple of
years ago. Really twenty nineteen was the big break year
for this. The vast majority of mass shooters were also
committing suicide. That was part of the goal. That was

(02:14:36):
what happened. UM. And if you are an individual with
a gun who has just committed a series of murders,
it is very easy to make sure you die in
that attack. It's extremely easy. Um. That is why so
many of them did it. That has that has stopped
being given in the way that it used to be.
The change I think was christ Church was the main
inflection point for this. But a lot of these guys

(02:14:57):
go down alive. The Buffalo shooter taken alive, the last
the last skitz Awave shooter from a few months ago,
I was taken in alive. UM. Just intriguing because if
I was to watch all this video propaganda beforehand, I
would have assumed that this guy wanted to die within
the act. A lot of the stuff was written about
him doing this to kind of end his life and

(02:15:19):
escape into whatever is next. That that's the kind of
feeling I get a lot of his writing, and yet
he didn't of the imagery he was putting out, particularly
the ship with him in in the asylum, as kind
of evidence of where like part of it was part
of why I suspected like he had he intended to

(02:15:40):
get taken alive. That is, that is that is very possible.
I mean like because in some ways, yeah, I'm not
going to speculate, not necessarily the most useful. I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna speculate further. But there's a lot
of a lot of possible things to to think about there,
which I will do so because I have all the stuff.
Don't know what else, Please, it's you don't don't look

(02:16:03):
at this stuff because it's like forbidden, right, don't don't
don't seek it out because it's like, oh, it's forbidden
knowledge that they don't want you to see. It's dangerous.
Oh that's that's not the point. The point is it's bad.
And now it's also hard to find. So like, just like,
don't not watching like it's not it's not even it's
not worth watching. It's not like stuff like like in
the immediate wake of it, and like, my what happened

(02:16:23):
to me? Was I got a fucking headache. You get
a headache, you feel bad. It's it waste. It wastes
your time. Like if you if you want to get this,
like the experience of this without having to like do
this ship like fucking eat a bunch of like eat
a ship ton of candy, watch watching Watch, watch Pink
Floyd's The Wall Jesus Christ, except except if you're eating

(02:16:47):
a bunch of candier watching the Wall like it's actually
before every good, whereas this is just like it's it's
only the bad parts of that. But I only look
at this because it's my fucking job and it sucks.
H Yeah, all right, well, um you know I'm gonna
I'm gonna say we're probably done here. Um, so I

(02:17:11):
don't know until next time. Again, if anyone tries to
tell you about something that happened on the internet, strike
them and flee. Remember run hide, fight from people trying
to tell you about things happening on social media. These
are this is this is the good strategy going forward.

(02:17:47):
All right, podcast it could happen here. It's a podcast
about the terrible things that are happening going around the
world and the wonderful people who are trying to fix them.
What it is today is a podcast with Harek Lubani
of Glia. And what really inspired me about the story
and maybe want to share it with you, is that

(02:18:10):
it came out of a really dark place. Terek was
on the ground in Gaza treating gunshot wound victims, and
a lot of gunshot wound victims, Like I remember reading
his field testing of the device and just being appalled
by the number of people who have been shot, a
lots of them children, and some of the reporting he

(02:18:32):
was doing right like, oh, I had this this torniquet
and we were reusing them and they don't work very
well on the pediatric application because kids shouldn't be shot, right.
But instead of getting down, he was able to make
a solution. And I think that's really important. And I
really like that even through like this dark and terrible
stuff that we've all had to experience and he experienced

(02:18:54):
in Gaza, he was able to see a positive solution
away to look after people, to move forward in this case,
to prevent death and preserve life. And I think it's
easy to focus on the dark stuff, that's enough of
it happening, but I think it's important to focus on
the great people who are doing great things to protect
and care for other people as well. So that's a

(02:19:15):
little bit of what we got today and I hope
you enjoy it. So I'm here with Tarak Lubani. He's
from Glia. Their company came across when I was writing
about three D printed tournic case. Would you like to
introduce yourself to us a little bit about GLEA and
what you do there. Thank you so much for having me.
My name is terrickle Banny. As you had mentioned, I'm
an emergency physician. I work in Canada in a city

(02:19:38):
in Canada called London, and I also work in the
Gaza strip as an emergency physician as well. Glia was
really an answer to a problem, the problem being that
when I see patients in Gaza they don't get the
same quality of service that I can give to my nations.
Of course, that's multi factorial, but a big part of

(02:20:00):
that has to do with the way in which we
as uh that the medical profession have medical devices we
don't release that we don't give access to other people
to use. And so Glia's purpose was to take the
most medical devices that doctors use and to make sure
that they were accessible and available to doctors all over

(02:20:23):
the world. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's very cool. And you
make a number of devices, right, Like I know that
I first called to you about the torn Q, but
you make also a stethoscope. Is that right? The stethoscope
is the calling card of medicine. And so it was
the first project that we started working on to test
out the theory. I mean, we started with the theory

(02:20:45):
that hey, we can probably make a device that's just
as good as a three D device, but the costs
let's say three dollars or even thirty dollars. And that
was the stuf scope. We tested it, we published the results,
We proved it was as as good as the Gold
Standards the Litman Cardiology three at the time, and often

(02:21:05):
using it both in our own practices, also making it
available other people to make for theirs. Okay, yeah, And
so that's what's really interesting about your company as opposed
to other companies, right, you're not necessarily like manufacturing and distributing.
You are providing the designs that allow other people to
make them, right, And so can you talk about some

(02:21:27):
of their like, uh, I know that you use three
D printing, and I want to talk about that. But also,
like I remember seeing that the tubing and the setoscope
comes from the a Coca Cola machine, right, for some
of those considerations, Yeah, absolutely, the purposes to make these
devices available to other people for the lowest as possible,

(02:21:47):
but also like actually be available. It's no good if
you can make it for twenty cents, but parts that
required are nowhere. So that's why we much with a
basket of items that are more or less earsily available,
and we made the stuffoscopes out of that. For example,
you can probably get the very specific kind of earpieces

(02:22:09):
that most stuffoscopes have, but they are naturally going to
be less available and less abundant than if you were
to use regular earbuds the contact phones. There are way
more headphones out there than there are stuffoscopes. Therefore, those
parts are more available, even if, of course there they
are less expensive. But even if they were slightly more expensive,

(02:22:29):
it would be worth it. What we really take away
is the monopoly and the profit motive. And so by
doing that, or rather let's say the exorbitant profit that
medical device companies are making, and by doing that, we're
really able to to realize the promise of patents. All

(02:22:51):
of the devices that we make were patented at one point.
The promise of patents is that when the patent is over,
you'll get a chief device. But that promise is not realized.
The stutoscope is a three hundred year old device basically,
and the fact that it is not available at the
highest quality except for three kind of nuts. So that's
why we started there, and of course moved on to

(02:23:14):
more and more complicated devices, much more complicated even than
the turniket. By now, okay, yeah, can you I remember
reading because you you you kept a blog. I remember
on medium where you talked about testing the tourniquate when
when you were in Gaza and it just a like,
you know, if you read medical literature then did this

(02:23:36):
was just the shocking I remember being absolutely shocked by
the number of casualties you were in counting and countering,
and then also like you were saying, like the the
lack of available tools. So perhaps you could explain like
a little bit of what you saw there and then
how these tournicates have been able to help you address

(02:23:59):
that like massive disparity and access to care. The tourniquet
project really started in Gaza because we noticed that after
one of the wars, the war in two thousand fourteen,
that we had a particularly high casualty rate, of course,
but of that there were many deaths that we would
classify as preventable death's where we felt that had tourniquets

(02:24:23):
been available, those patients likely wouldn't have died. Um When
we started working on it, of course, we knew at
some point there'd be another war. It is it is
very common in Gaza for there to be attacked by
the Israelis. We didn't anticipate for it to happen so fast,
and for it to happen in a way where the
tourniquet was so necessary. That, of course, was what what's

(02:24:45):
called the Great March of Return, where Palestinians protested on
mass and one of the Israeli responses was to shoot
live fire at the protesters, often targeting About eight percent
of the hits were targeting the arms and the likes,
which is where turnickets are the most effective. So the
high number really is going to the way in which

(02:25:07):
the Israeli has decided to deal with this protests, and
the fact that it was a protest rather than a
specific war, and that meant also that we could predict
with the relative degree of accuracy where the injuries would be,
which meant that it was even more important to have
the right equipment of the right training. It was part
of an overall strategy. So of course it's not like

(02:25:28):
turnickets were the thing that saved lives. Turnickets were part
of a campaign to train paramedics and to train doctors
and how to stop bleeding in these kinds of injuries,
and they were one of the most important tools in
that campaign, but only part of that campaign. Yeah, of course,
of course you need ed tools and obviously the education,
and you can't just slap it on and in the

(02:25:49):
person's fine, right, Obviously there's a lot of care afterwards
which is important too. And can you maybe talk us
through and you talked about like the promise of patents, right,
and I think this is important in in exactly what
we're talking about in torniicates because it's a little different
to like medic medicines, right, It's a little different with
medical devices. And so there are existing TORNI kits on

(02:26:12):
the market, right, and I think that sort of market
leading one is it's the cat. Can you explain like
why and those not getting to people who need them
desperately in these areas. The problem with the turnickets that
are available right now kind of falls into a few
different categories. North American Rescue. The makers of CAT have

(02:26:34):
two key patents on the Cat, and as far as
we can tell, just based on the posture of the company,
if anybody else were to make exact Cat replicas, they
will be suited. The people who are willing to then
make exact Cat replicas tend to be people who are
unaccountable and largely have not much to lease, and so

(02:26:58):
that's why we saw a gla initially um for example,
with the Ukraine campaign of tourniquets that that were relatively
low quality, and so you can't just make the device.
You also have to know that the device will work,
because you don't want to discover that when you put
it on armor like and then it fails. Gaza is

(02:27:20):
an acid test of all of these things, because not
only our devices generally not available or expensive, it's kind
of at the bottom of any purchase list, for example,
but also in Gaza there's a complete international blockade Israeli led,
of course, but there are other countries that are that
are contributory, and that blockade means that equipment can't get

(02:27:45):
in so long as the Israelis deem it to be
of military value. Um. This is where things like dual
use devices and so on come into play. The tourniquet
is a medical device. It is it can only be
a medical device. There is no second use, and so
it should be exempt. However, even if the Palestinians could

(02:28:07):
afford fifty U S dollars per unit, which should be
the cost to get one in, the Israelis won't let
them in. So de facto, even though they shouldn't be banned,
they are de facto banned, and that means that not
only can we depend on cheap Chinese retailers. Let's say,
to give us replica turniquets, we actually have to manufacture

(02:28:28):
them ourselves. When we open sourced our designs, it was
with an eye to two things. One making it available
so that the replica makers can make higher quality replicas.
They're already making replicas. We may as well give them
a legal replica rather than a patent break busting replica.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that in

(02:28:48):
these cases where there's emergencies, but just the same Glia's
tourniquet doesn't break any patents. And at the same time,
in addition to think them the ability to make high
quality turnikets, we can also make high quality turnkets locally
and domestically. Because of course, national liberation, as it were

(02:29:10):
in the medical device space can't come if you can't
make your own devices. We discovered that during COVID. The
Palestines have known that for decades now, and we're kind
of rediscovering it in Ukraine where there just aren't enough
turniates and so they are forced to improvise or except
tourniquets that they don't want to accept, right, Yeah, Like

(02:29:31):
I think I think COVID was this great example that
we can't continue to rely on the sort of winds
of global capital to provide things that we need to survive.
I think you're manufacturing is fascinating because you're using essentially
commonly available materials in the three D printer, Is that right? Yeah,
that's correct. I mean, we're not against using other things,

(02:29:53):
they just have to be very simple. For example, are
electronics use PCBs. You can't three D print electronic circuits
just yeah, so we use PCBs. But when we design
our PCBs. There are a couple of ways to design it.
You can design an eight layer board that can only
be manufactured in one or two places in the world,
or you can design a board that's three times the

(02:30:15):
size but can be manufactured anywhere in the world. And
when you're talking about credit card sized devices, if it's
notebook size instead of credit card size, it doesn't really
matter that much. For example, the example I'm thinking of
here as an electric cardiogram, where we took a device
that had failed UM in the sort of market that

(02:30:36):
they the makers open source and they had intended it
to be a fitness device, and then it didn't work.
Their company went bankrupt and so they open sourced it.
So we looked at their schematics all of the problems
that they had already solved. We said, okay, the problem
we're going to solve is to make it so that
this can be manufactured in a high school electronics lab.

(02:30:56):
And we were able to achieve that it was bigger.
It was twice as big, but who cares. The old
one was half the size of a credit card. You know,
who cares? You make get a little bit bigger. But
at the same time, UM you make it much more accessible,
twice as big, twenty times more accessible. And if some
of your staff like your tourniquets, it's really um. There's

(02:31:17):
not much or any really of a performance trade off
from what you've seen, right. Indeed, they might be better
for some pediatric applications if I remember correctly that that's right.
So when you think of the way in which corporate
devices are made, they are made to the specifications of
particular buyers, and the buyers are the people who have

(02:31:37):
the money. Who's the buyer for tourniquets? When you think
about who needs tourniquets consistently, who do you who has
money to give you turnickets? Who should you market too?
There's only one sane answer, and that is First world militaries,
especially occupation militaries or militaries that are engaged in UH
ground level warfare, who are expected to take small arms

(02:31:58):
or i e. D s. And so there are not
many children who you have to sell to in that
particular market. There aren't many small women, or even women
at all they have to sell to in that market.
So I don't think that North American rescues engineers would
have any trouble making sure that their TURNI gets worked
amazingly well for children, But why why would they spend

(02:32:21):
one to million dollars doing that work and research when
that's not their audience and that's not their buyer. For us,
the normal person, the civilian is the in quotation marks buire.
They're not the ones buying, but they're the ones who
are the main consumer, and so they're the ones who
we target. In Gaza, specifically, of the population is under

(02:32:46):
the age of fourteen. You'd have to be crazy to
go out there and put a tourniquet out that only
works on big, burly men. So that's that's why we
were we were driven to do that. And as for
the performance trade offs, yeah, you're right. The the what
we learned about spec sheets on lots of these devices
is that they're made up. There isn't really a great

(02:33:08):
way to know how well elternic it works. Unfortunately, there
isn't a really great way to know how well stetoscope works.
And so some of the first work we did was
actually designing some tests so that we can say, okay, well,
here's how you prove that the stutoscope works as well
as that stutoscope, or here's how you prove that you
know this works as well as that, and those testing

(02:33:30):
protocols we made them open source and easily available too.
For example, if you want to test the stethoscope, you
can do that with a pair of headphones, a microphone,
and the Hello Kitty balloon. That's how we did it originally.
Could we have spent ten dollars making that test right, Yeah,
we could have, but that wouldn't have helped us in
terms of helping other people make stuftoscopes wherever they are. Yeah,

(02:33:54):
that's very cool. And then by open sourcing that test,
you allow for other people who have ideas or sort
of models for their own improvements or different designs, that
they can then use that test right and continue to
improve and share their improvements with others. I do not
want to work on stethoscopes anymore. I want to people
to take it up. And it doesn't mean that I won't,

(02:34:15):
of course I will. But my favorite thing is when
somebody sends a message and says, hey, I like what
you've done. Here's how I think it could be better.
I love those messages. I love them, and you know what,
nine out of ton of those ideas don't work out.
They don't pan out. But like our stethoscope since two

(02:34:36):
thousands seventeen, all of the improvements have been from other
people because we haven't had the time and money to
work on it. But we have been open minded, have
incorporated lots of design changes that other people in the
community have suggested. That's a good thing. It's good for everybody. Yeah,
and I think it does an excellent job at getting it.
They like the fundamental conceit of a Dragon device development model, right,

(02:34:59):
which is uh, which isn't true. Actually, that there's massive
R and D costs and those R and D costs
have to be recouped by charging a massive amount for
a period of time and making access to that medicinal
device a privilege, not right, and then eventually the cost
will come down. They often don't, and then everyone will
have activities thing And it's like, it's been my experience

(02:35:19):
that it doesn't work that way. But what you've shown
is an alternative right that people want to help and
that that they don't that there's not a need for
this like price gouging to facilitate the improvement in this technology.
Is that fair? We're not taking a purely altruistic model here.
People are generally improving the stethoscope for their own uses,

(02:35:40):
so there is a self interested aspect, if you want
to present it that way. What we realized is that
actually the most useful way to develop a device is
to make it as good as possible and release it
and then have other people who want to improve it
have a capacity to share back to you. So as

(02:36:00):
much as I I believe in altruism and I do
think every time that I've seen people collaborate, I've seen
a tremendous amount of it, this more resembles the open
source software model, where which is actually the world I
came from. I came from the free software model, where yes,
you do things just for the fun of it, but

(02:36:22):
also very large corporations are involved. For example, some of
the stuffoscope's improvements happened because the lab needed to use
it for some experiments on animals, and so they made
modifications and they fed them back. Amazing, that's fantastic, And
but that that was totally self interested. That they knew
that it would cost them significantly less to build on
our work and it would cost them nothing to share

(02:36:45):
back their their contributions. So it's you know, we're not
going out there trying to to prove that everybody is
good at heart, even though I do actually think that's
fundamentally true. What what we're doing is showing through this
model the devices can advance with relatively little upfront costs

(02:37:08):
and with the contribution of many, many members. Yeah, yeah,
that's a view phrase it really well. I think that
people have this self interest which also serves out of
people's interests, and and it's like, yeah, I've seen it
in all kinds of open source communities, like we've reported
before on three D printed guns, which is obviously it's
kind of a different end of the spectrum. But it's

(02:37:31):
fascinating to see this global exchange. And I'm sure you
have people. You've mentioned that there are people in Myanma
who are who are printing your tornic case. Right. We
were amazed when people from Myanmar had reached out and
said that we've senior tourniquet and we want to implement that.
We have situation that's very similar to Gaza. We thought

(02:37:53):
that's exactly what we want. What they did was two things. One,
they took our instructions and they used them, but then
they also fed back to us how those instructions were incomplete,
how they could be better, and some design changes that
made their lives better again amazing by them using it,

(02:38:15):
by them taking, they also gave. And that's the sort
of relationship, the kind of solidarity that we've seen. Whatever
other people have used our devices, we've noticed that they take,
and it's it's not a problem if people in and
me and mar had just taken and not given anything back,

(02:38:36):
that's fine too, because it doesn't take anything away from
us to share. This is this is a kind of
sharing where the more you share, the more there's potential
for benefit, but there's never a loss. You never lose
by sharing in that sense. We're not also trying to
present it as though we need people to share for

(02:38:56):
us to feel that this model works. We don't. But
we're already may king it anyway. We're already using it anyway.
We're sharing, and some people help out by contributing black
and some people don't. It's it seems to me to
be the most effective way to develop devices for low
costs and make sure that they get out to where
they need to be. Yeah, because they can century and

(02:39:17):
people who need them can find them. As you found
out right like people across the world, do you have
a sense of where else they're being used? The turnickets
right now are being used in Gaza, in Ukraine and
in me and mar if they're being used in other places.
Were not really aware of it, but people aren't compelled
to make us aware of it. Um and and all

(02:39:38):
three of those locations have moved forward the project tremendously.
For example, for Ukraine, Uh, the Ukrainian support people weren't
really able to contribute so much their own ability to
construct and make, but they were able to contribute really
important research, financial and testing capabilit lidaes and so of

(02:40:02):
course a project like this costs money. They're like, hey, look,
you know, we don't have farms print farms, but we
do have some cash that we want to put into it.
And we were able to use that money very very effectively,
more effectively than if they would have bought the pieces
to then create the capacity for them to go and
make their own turn accounts. Okay, so yeah, let's talk

(02:40:23):
about that. That's fascinating and uh, and we could maybe
contrasted to a sort of another model, right like if
UM because you you understand you're able to go to
Ukraine and help them set up as opposed to Yeah,
it would have taken months, I imagine to do that
with I don't know how they make the cats, but

(02:40:44):
they like they molded or something. But with with a
non sort of with a non open source, non printed model,
like to set up a tournicate factory in Ukraine or
Poland would take months. Right, yes, absolutely, but you're not
going to. There's two reasons why Northern I can rescue.
I'll just call them now from here on out, won't
do that. One of them is that that conflict at

(02:41:07):
some point will end. It's very expensive to set up
production lines. And the other thing is the more tourniquets
you put into the market, the cheaper tourniquets get, you know,
supply and demand. Like we learned that one pretty well
from capitalism. And so they have an inherent disincentive, whether
they recognize it or not, whether it's conscious or not.
North American Rescue and all these companies have an inherent

(02:41:29):
disincentive in flooding the market with tourniquets, whereas we do not.
For us, it's the opposite. The more people we lose,
pretty much, GLIA loses about ten to twenty dollars per
tourniquet that we manufacture, we have no incentive to keep
doing it, and we want other people to do it
because we want as many tourniquets to be provided as possible.

(02:41:53):
What we do then is we heavily subsidize the tourniquets
using our own internal funds and and fundraising. That that
we do with the goal of getting them out there
so that deaths can be prevented. And so we want
other people producing. When I go there, every tourniquet somebody
else makes instead of me is less headache for me,
is less pain for me, and is less financial loss

(02:42:16):
for me and for glee. Of course, so our incentives
are different. They want a shortage, consciously you're not, and
we want an abundance. We want everybody to turnique in
their pocket. Now, that's that's our goal. Can you talk
a little bit about your experiences in Ukraine? Give with

(02:42:36):
that pretty recently? Right, Ukraine is a very very complicated
subject when it comes to tourniquets, because the tourniquet wasn't
this h I'm gonna mind my words very carefully. I'm
not Ukrainian, I'm not a Ukrainian doctor, and my experience,

(02:42:56):
there is very limited. I am in solidarity with the
medical community in Ukraine, and part of being in solidarity
with a medical community is recognizing that even when there
are weaknesses, it is not my place to insert myself
into their processes. And so the way that the Ukrainians

(02:43:19):
have approached tourniquets is at the outset to ban all
three D printed tourniquets and two basically make it so
that only what they considered to be high quality tournike its,
mainly the CAT and another another one or two models
were available in there. This unfortunately created a tremendous shortage,

(02:43:43):
and the other thing that functionally happened was a disconnect
between the policy makers within the medical community and the
people on the ground. The people on the ground, of course,
are doing whatever they can to provide care wherever they can,
and the policymakers are a little bit more disconnected from
that and so have different considerations. The shortage then creates

(02:44:08):
this um difficulty. You know, there are of course three
D printed turnikeates aren't accepted officially in Ukraine, but there
are an abundance of three D printed tourniquets in Ukraine
because the people on the ground are accepting them um,
and what we see is a kind of grassroots experimentation

(02:44:29):
with how it is that we can prevent deaths. The
other difficulty is that tourniquets are a tool, and in
bad hands, this tool isn't going to work, even if
it's a great tool. And so one of the things
that I realized, and I think everybody at this point,
I'm not saying anything that's new or unknown to the community,

(02:44:52):
we all realize that without appropriate training and how to
use a tourniquet, they're not going to work. Um. And
so even high quality tourniquets out there in the field
are failing because they're being used improperly. It's causing unnecessary deaths.
So I don't know how deep you want to get
into that experience in Ukraine, but I think what we

(02:45:13):
can say is that it's important to be in solidarity
with that community, and as such, we're providing them all
of the experience that we have and all of the
capability that we have to produce tourniquets that the Ukrainians themselves,
both officially and on the UH in the front lines,

(02:45:34):
are able to use and and feel are actually safe
for their patients. Yeah. Yeah, that's a difficult situation. I think.
Obviously a lot of what's happening in Ukraine has been
necessarily like like rushed, and it's somewhat graps chaotic is
in it's their own word, but it took a while
for people to fully sort of understand that the necessities

(02:45:57):
of the scale and the scale of the conflict, or
perhaps understand this is still the wrong word, but yet
to come up with the most of the way to
do the least harm. I guess that's such a great
way of to frame it. And I think even from
your experience as you see that very often in these
situations that's the name of the game. It's not even
doing what you know is best, but rather figuring out

(02:46:17):
what the least horst scenario was. Yeah, yeah, so often,
I think, and it's very easier I think, to to
like backseat drive these things right from from our positions
of safety and sort of plenty, you know, to say, oh,
what should them, they should do that, which I think
you did very well to explain that the first and

(02:46:39):
most important thing is to be instolid arity with the
people there and to hopefully allow their experience to guide
us in how we can best help them to to
prevent death, prevent harm, and so can you talk about
what you were able to do there, what sort of
interventions could you make to hopefully help prevent more dying.

(02:47:00):
The main thing that that we did in terms of
so I I kind of was there in with two
hats on. One of them was the tourniquet manufacturing hat
and the other one was as an emergency doctor. Because remember,
fundamentally what brought me to medical devices in the first
place was that I was an emergency doctor having problems
actually uh caring for my patients. As a tourniquet manufacturer

(02:47:26):
basically was about engaging with other people who are making
and using tourniquets to understand some of the roadblocks and problems.
One of the biggest ones is that there isn't a
great way to test units of tournikets. So traditionally tourniquets
are tested by design. Uh Nar says, here's our design
and here's how we tested it, and then we accept

(02:47:47):
that this particular company will make this particular device to
this particular standard. But in the Ukraine, especially with the
presence of replicas and three D to tourniquets, there became
a new problem how do you test each unit rather
than a specific line, and working on that, I don't
know how into the leads you want me to get,

(02:48:07):
but working on that is still a problem that is unsolved,
but has been one of the biggest issues that we've
been dealing with on the emergency medicine side. Of course,
when I provide direct care to patients, I was in
a hospital on one of the communities, on the front line,
on one of the fronts, and so providing direct care

(02:48:29):
became important. And working with the doctors, many of whom
didn't really experience that much have that much experience with
trauma patients, so working with them to share our experiences
from GAZA in low resource trauma medicine, and also to
gain from them their experiences because of course their scenarios

(02:48:49):
and situations are different. It's more artillery based rather than
small arms fire or um sort of bombing based, so
they're they're different scenarios. I had a ought to learn
from them. I did, and um I tried to contribute
some of our experiences as well. The training I think
is probably the number one problem right now, but that's

(02:49:10):
my personal opinion. Is one doctor who was there for
a limited period of time so that that individual unit
tests that you're you're working towards is um because I
know in theory, at least a CAT is a single
use device, right and so in theory, if you if
you just slapped it on something that could measure pressure,
and Titan did that, devices and being used and shouldn't

(02:49:32):
be used again to provide care. Is that the bottom
that you're running up against or is it sort of
making a way to test things it's replicable and cheap
and accessible. Reusability was the number one problem that we
tried to tackle in Gaza because we couldn't print turniquets
as fast as they're being used, and so we use
them up to ten times. And when I was in

(02:49:55):
the hospital, I walked by this I V poll with
a bunch of tourniquets hanging from it. To night instantly
recognized what I was looking at. That was a tourniquet
rewashed station in which tourniquets that came off of patients
who are being rewashed, dried, and then sent back out
into the field. Whatever you think the standards are for

(02:50:17):
a tourniquet. When there's this level of of shortage, that's
what's going to happen. That's what happened in Gaza, and
that's what happened in the Ukraine. That's what I saw
in my own eyes. Of course, we don't need to
stretch that far anymore to recognize this. What were people
doing with the ninety five masks two years ago in
my hospital. We were holding them, storing them, washing them,

(02:50:38):
reusing them. So this is something that we see whenever
there's a shortage, and it makes the unit testing that
much more important because if you could take an already
used tourniquet and assure that it will succeed the next
time it's being used, that is so valuable, so valuable,
and it cuts down every tourniquet you can reuse as
a tourniquet. You don't have to import, you don't have

(02:50:59):
to buy, you don't have to package, you don't have
to ship over all of these lines. Yeah, yeah, of course,
And I think it's probably we should probably address like
the the ways in which they can fail because I think, uh, look,
just people in the United to date, if in an
extremely like resource rich setting, right, we'll probably have knownly

(02:51:23):
are unknowingly acquired trying to get on Amazon or somewhere
else eBay that that might not be a real one,
and so I want it's real, but we might not
be a reliable one. Can you explain like like how
they fail and what the consequences of that failure are.
There are two kinds of failures when we talk about

(02:51:43):
turnick outs. One of them is what we would call
a technical failure, and the other one is a clinical failure.
A technical failure is the easiest one for most people
to spot. The tourniquet literally breaks in your hand. And
that said, you hear a crack, you see something crack,
you see a break, things fall apart the end, and

(02:52:06):
so one of the things that we we want is
to minimize these by over engineering. So, for example, the
first GLIA tourniquet was engineered to spec you're supposed to
be able to turn it three times, and so we
made it so you can turn it three times. And
then what I realized is that even I, who is

(02:52:27):
like super well trained, I would be in the field
running while my eyes were full of tear gas while
people are shooting, and I didn't I'd forget did I
turn it two times? Three times? So we over we
started over engineering the tourniquets at a certain point. Of course,
every turnikid is going to break. You turn it enough times,
every turniquet is going to break. But that's not necessarily

(02:52:50):
going to be the case if you have even a
moderate amount of training. I'm going to turn it for
five times, but I'm not going to turn it twenty times.
So the technical failures are one kind of failure. The
other one is clinical failure. Now here's something that I
wonder if you knew about tourniquets from the gold Standard

(02:53:11):
Company fail They fail on application, and that number goes
up to if you were to check sixty seconds after application.
So what does this tell us? What this tells us
is a clinical failure is actually the important marker here,
because we know turniquets break, and we know turniquets fail
in general, especially turnickets that have been in some g

(02:53:34):
i's pocket in Afghanistan for six months, those ones that
their failure rate can go even higher. And so what
we train people to do is to recognize clinical success.
Put on a tourniquet, did the blood stop? No? Put
on a second turniquet, did the blood stop No? Try

(02:53:57):
a third one if you have them, obviously, And so
the routine training involves applying a second turniket, and one
of the like happiest moments for me. I mean, this
is obviously better sweet, but it was when I saw
a patient who was brought in by a medic who
I had I had been in the training four and

(02:54:18):
he had applied to turnickets to a guy who certainly
would have died had he had he not had the
turniquet applied to him. You know, I was exaguinating so much,
injury so severe that he needed a couple of turnickets
to really get it under control. So it's it's where
we have to recognize that there is no magic tool.

(02:54:39):
This is part of an overall program. There's no three
D printer that's going to train people just gonna make
you stuff and then you have to do the rest
of it, right, Yeah, Yeah, So I think if we, uh,
we should look maybe at the fact that like I
live in the United States and you're in Canada, and
I think there were like three mass shooting is yesterday, right,

(02:55:01):
that they that the threat of violence is certainly at
a high for recent times in h for why a
more diverse range of people. Right, There's always been violence
in this country. There's always been violence against certain groups
of people disproportion in this country, but people are probably
more concerned with treating down to your wounds, and they

(02:55:24):
would have been ten years ago. So if someone was
looking to make one of your devices, how can they
do that? And they ensure or do their best to
ensure that they are doing so in a way which
gives them the best chance of success. At the moment,
I would say to the individual maker, don't do it,
not for a life threatening situation. If then, do individual

(02:55:47):
makers want to make turnikuts, then they're going to have
to be proficient at three big things. One of them
is plastics three D printing, ensuring that the quality of
the plastic is good. The other one is sewing, that
is to say, assembling sod stuff. And the third one
is is quality assurance, because even done perfectly, a certain

(02:56:10):
number of tourniquets aren't going to make it. And that
quality assurance is both at the moment of manufacture and
then over time, because of course all devices deteriorate over time,
but tourniquets have such an important role that you have
to check them periodically to make sure everything is okay.
So I would say to the individual maker, don't or

(02:56:33):
if you do do it as an exercise rather than
as an actual tool. If somebody is in an emergency situation,
there's nothing they can do except to do it then
be in touch with us. So, for example, there are
makers in in countries that have been in touch and
have said, okay, look, I have to do this because
the situation here is bad. We support them as best

(02:56:57):
as we can. We try to send people out to them,
or we try to have them ship units to us.
We try to get them up and going. Glia is
not a medical device manufacturer. GLIA is a access to
medicines and access to medical devices company, and part of
that is making sure that people who are making medical

(02:57:17):
devices are doing them to the highest possible quality. So
if you are forced to make them be in touch
with us, we will help in any way that we can. However,
there's another category of people, and that is manufacturers who
already know how to make medical devices. To those people,

(02:57:38):
we say, take our stuff, please use it. Please. It
is there for the taking, and it is high quality,
it works really well, and if it's missing something, tell
us we'll make it better for you and for us. Yeah,
that's great. I think that's really excellent. Advice. Uh, perhaps
a good note for us to finish on where can

(02:57:59):
people find you they want to get in touch, if
they if they want to look at some of the
devices like making a stethoscope, I imagine could be like
a fun project and put a lot less potential risk there.
So where can they find that stuff? Absolutely, the stethoscope
is such a fun project. It's fun because any everybody
has a heart in general, and um, you can listen

(02:58:21):
to your family and friends and loved ones. And it's
one of my favorite things when I'm in practice and
I listen for sometimes patient will be there with their
son or daughter or child, and I'll tell the kid,
you want to listen to mommy's heart, your daddy's heart.
It's one of the best things. So the stethoscope is
a great fun, low risk project. Please go ahead and

(02:58:42):
do it. Make it. You can find our stuff anywhere
you can find principle stuff. It's on thinking versuss, on printiples,
it's basically everywhere or through our geth hub or on
the Glia site. So that's clia dot org. And if
people want to participe paid, they're very welcome to. We
always want need and love, help and of course, it's

(02:59:06):
a community. You can never have too many friends, so
we're always looking for more friends and love to see
more people. We have a matter most obviously, it's not
just our devices that are open source. We try to
make our tire stack open source so people can join
and chat with us and you know, hang out with
people who are doing really, really cool and super impressive stuff.

(02:59:27):
At this point, I love to recognize the fact that
I'm one of the least productive, least impressive people at
clear Really the work that's happening is amazing, and it's
led by lots of smart, dedicated, visionary people. Yeah, that's
great to hear that. It's really cool that you can
we can work with people as well, So hopefully people

(02:59:48):
do get in touch. I'm sure there'll be someone who's
interested in what you're doing but has something to contribute
in some fashion. Yeah, thank you so much for giving
us some of your evening. Is there anything else you'd
like to say before we finish up. I think the
most important thing to say is that there's this mystique
that people develop. You alluded to it earlier. There's a
mystique people develop around medical devices. Medical devices are solutions

(03:00:09):
to problems and they were made by people like me
who don't know what the hell they're doing sometimes, and
so let's not you know, aggrandize or like separate ourselves
from the people who are doing this work. Yes we
have to be cautious, Yes we have to be vigorous,
but at the same time we can all contribute to
be a part of us. Very cool. And can people

(03:00:31):
find you personally anyway? Do you have social media that
that people could follow. Yeah, if people look at my
name Terrik Labanny, I'm on all the all the socials,
as is Glia as well, so you can contact me
or Glia and participate in anything that you want. And
like I said, we we always welcome friends. Great, wonderful,
Thanks so much man, Thank you so much. That was

(03:00:52):
such a pleasure. Hey, exackday with more episode this every
week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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(03:01:13):
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
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slash Sources thanks for listening.