It Could Happen Here Weekly 6

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Jake Calbern, host of deep Cover. Our new season
is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.
He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk
free until one day when he started talking with the
FBI and promised that he could take the mob down.
I've spent the past year trying to figure out why
he flipped and what he was really after. Listen to

(00:23):
deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. What girls in the Forest,
our imagination, and our family bonds. The forest is closer
than you think. Find a forest near you and discover
the Forest dot Org. Brought to you by the United
States Forest Service and the AD Council. Hello, and welcome

(00:47):
to our show. I'm Zoe de Channel and I'm so
excited to be joined by my friends and cats Meats,
Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit
television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on the
Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the
scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week,
we answer all your burnie questions like is there really
a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll

(01:09):
hear hilarious stories like this that was one of m
yea all professional pasketball players. Yeah yeah. Listen to the
Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody,

(01:29):
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. God Area takeover. I asked for I'm grunting.

(02:00):
That was like a word what okay, what it was?
I know lots of they could have been here. And
openings have become Bastard's openings now just kind of opening.
Robert doesn't have more than one type of opening. There's two.
There's there's grunting and then yelling something weird that is
that's basically the same learning how to do your job

(02:22):
is cuk shit. Also, to be honest, most of the time,
doesn't know which podcast he's doing. What is this are
we doing? Is this the daily sidegeist? Is this is
my Jack O'Brien, this is this is it could happen here.
So we're talking today about the different things that are

(02:46):
it here being the States this time. UM, but we're
talking about basically, over the course of the past few months,
we have covered a few different topics on the show, UM,
some of which have already kind of had some results
of had up dates to what we've already covered. So
we're I'm gonna I'm gonna go through a list of
like a three different things we've covered and talk about

(03:07):
kind of the updates in these stories. Um. You know,
most of what we've covered around these topics have been
like a mix of original reporting and interviews. So now
there's been further further work down on this, and I
just want to kind of update people. If you know,
they're not as terminally online as us, maybe they have
not heard that there's been changes to these stories. And
I wanted to kind of put together a nice little
concise thing talking about updates to all the things we've covered. UM.

(03:31):
So the first thing that we're gonna be talking a
bit about is the Cops City in Atlanta, and they
defend the Atlanta Forest collision. So I think like a
day after our episode dropped on that, UM, Atlantic City
Council voted UH ten to four in favor of getting

(03:51):
the militarized police training facility greenlit Um nicknamed Cops City.
There was seventeen hours of public testimony. We're seven many
percent of the callers bilk out against the facility. Yeah,
I mean that we had that happen in Portland. It
doesn't Yeah, Yeah, it never matters. It doesn't matter what
the vast majority, especially when there's especially when this money involved. Yeah,

(04:12):
do not, do not ever be deceived into thinking that
you live in a democracy and that what you actually
want to matter is in any way, shape or form.
This is just not This is empirically not true. Like
like sixty percent of Texans periods support vaccine mandates in
some instances, but the governor just made it illegal to
do them. Ever, Um, Like it's it's it's that way

(04:33):
across the board across the nation. UM. People ask sometimes
because like you know, when you get into anarchists discussions
of politics, there's a lot of criticism of democracy. I
don't I think democracy is a lovely idea. I would
like to try it something. It would be nice to
get it ago. It would be nice to experience. So yeah,
this Sin City Council voted to least the acres of

(04:54):
city owned forest land to the Atlanta Police Foundation, UM,
at least eighty five acres of which is going to
be slated to become the police training facility. UM. The
facility is going to cost around ninety million dollars. Jesus Christ,
I could train cops much cheaper than that, although training
is the wrong word. Yeah, that is the wrong word
for that. UM. So yeah, no, nine million dollars. It's

(05:15):
gonna include. It's gonna include a state of the art
explosive testing facility, firing ranges, emergency vehicle operations course, a
classroom space, UM, and an emergency and an emergency space
will probably learn to read right. I'm sure it's for
teaching people to do bad things. UM. There's going to
be an emergency helicopter pad and an entire like mock town.

(05:37):
It is good that they have the emergency helicopter pad
because cops shoot each other with live ammunition all the time,
and that does happen. Does happen a lot so yeah,
the main backroupd for this project is the Atlanta Police Foundation,
which is a political advocacy group that you know, has
a lot of funding from corporations and they try to
you know, sway the political power of the city and

(06:00):
to giving more power to the police. Um uh huh.
So the interesting thing about this though, is like the
vote was supposed to happen in August, UM, but it
was rescheduled for early September after there was a lot
of public backlash around this proposal. Um. Then the vote
that was supposed to happen on like thet got pushed
back the whole day because there was too many callers

(06:20):
saying that they didn't want the facility. So the vote
got pushed back a day in September, but it stays
still voted for it. Yeah, So thirty million dollars is
going to be footed by taxpayers and the other sixty
million is going to get paid for by the Police Foundation,
which has a lot of different like corporate donors. So
that's that's that's that's that um. And of course it's

(06:43):
on you know, on this forest land, which is like
some of the you know, biggest forest land in any
major American city, so you know, they're tearing down all
this forest to build this concrete city to train cops in.
We also mentioned that at the end of her interview
with some of the people resisting the they basically said, like,
if the vote goes through, resists is going to continue,

(07:04):
so we will continue. There's probably gonna be efforts to
like actually try to physically prevent the construction of this.
But the next thing we're gonna be talking about is
stop line three um, which mean there was also you know,
physical efforts to prevent that. But the type of efforts
that people usually do in you know, modern green activism
usually are a lot more performative or they're specifically to

(07:27):
pressure to create scenes that will try to convince politicians
to veto the process. So it's not you know, it's
it's it's different from the nineties when it was easier
to like actually physically stop the prevention of things. Now
a lot of the people who you know are trying
to do this, it is they're not convinced that, you know,
doing a lock box is going to actually physically prevent it.

(07:49):
What it's gonna do is create media coverage that truy
that is going to hopefully convince politicians to be like, hey,
maybe we shouldn't do this, and that's a hard bargain, right,
that's not there's no saying that that's actually going to
do the thing. Know, in the in the case of
stop Line three that did not stop line three. Um.
There was a really good uh um critique of the
stop Line three protests posted in It's going down by

(08:11):
an Indigenous anarchist who lives on that land who was
like younger um, and they're you know, watching all of
these you know, older indigenous anarchists, you know, keep on
getting arrested and brutalized, Like, but we're not actually doing anything.
And the methods that we're doing that, the methods that
we're trying to like, you know, game public support, this
isn't working in this specific context. Maybe we should reevaluate
what we're actually doing. I know It's going down, and
faced a bit of backlash for posting that critique, but

(08:34):
I think that I think the critique is actually worth reading.
Any other thoughts on the Atlanta thing before I move
on to the stop line three stuff, um, No, no
other than to note that I think the best brisket
I've ever had came from Atlanta. Okay, well I'll probably
I'll probably visiting Atlanta in the near future, maybe there
with you, um, in which case I'll get some more

(08:55):
motherfucking brisket. Yeah. It was actually the fun story. We
were road tripping through town, me and another friend in
another car and we were talking over radios and a
trucker got on like the channel we were on because
we were talking about where to get barbecue, and he
told us where to go. Um. It was neat. It
was like an actual nice, like like moment of CB

(09:15):
radio connection. Like this guy was just scanning the waves
and found us and I was like, oh, I can
tell you where to go anyway, continue Garrison. That was
completely unrelated to stopping Line three. So the next thing
is earlier, I think in September maybe August. I forget,
it's been a while. We we we posted two episodes
about me visiting the top Line three protests and the
Earth First camp, and a lot of stuff has happened

(09:37):
since then. UM. So you know, the main you know
thing is that the pipe planet has been finished now
um and is basically getting is ready to be operated,
or it probably already has some operation. It's unclear how
much is being used right now, but it is done construction.
It doubles the capacity of the original pipeline. It's going
to be doing like a seven hundred and sixty thousand

(09:58):
barrels of oil a day's so in the carves outland
through through wet lands where people grow wild rice and
do hunting. Um So, overall the past few months police
arrested over nine people, and it's there's been a lot
of like felony charges specifically for locking down, which is
pretty new because they're using felony theft charges for people

(10:19):
just locking down to equipment. Yeah, that is an unfortunate escalation. Yeah.
Um So by the time we posted our top line
three episodes, we kind of already figured this was going
to be the result that That's kind of how he
ended the episode saying, there's been all this resistance, but
probably it's going to get built, and you know, there's
other things that we can learn from this movement going
on into the future. Um but the new developments that

(10:42):
have happened. Um I. I did mention in the episodes
how much Enbridge was directly paying cops. That was something
we already knew. What was happening. But there was an
article by the Guardian that really gave a lot of
new information around how much police involvement there is with
like with Enbridge, Like they are actually coordinating a lot.

(11:02):
So overall, uh, Enbridge has reimbursed US police almost two
and a half million dollars for arresting and surveying protesters. UM,
also paying for like food, lodging gas. So like's they're
not just not not not just paying wages, they're paying
like for extra stuff as well. So at least at
least two and a half million dollars that's been paid

(11:23):
from the Canadian oil company um, you know, including that
includes officer officer training, UH, police patrol routes, surveillance, all
this kind of stuff. UM. The one one interesting thing
that was noted in the article is that the company
at Enbridge meets daily with police officers to discuss intelligence
gathering and patrols um. And when and when Enbridge wants

(11:43):
protesters removed, it directly calls or sends letters to police.
So they they actually like coordinate when to actually get
police involved during protests, and they have at least daily
information meetings. The one other interesting thing besides just directly
paying them for food for you know, a training equipment,
and the coordination between en Bridge and people being on

(12:04):
the ground is um how much that the Enbridge paid
for uh, like proactive safety patrols and specific like specific
officer surveillance following alleged activists like home. So they would
like trail specific cars for a long time and try
to like do like in person surveillance on specific people
they thought were activists. And all of this time was

(12:26):
paid for by Enbridge and was being coordinated with Enbridge.
So it's not just you know, paying for training, it's
not just for paying for equipment. It's specific surveillance of
certain people. And that is I don't know, that's something
that we weren't We did not really know the depths
of that for sure, but it's pretty it's pretty messed up.
I know. We we suspected some of this coordination before,

(12:47):
Like when we talked about police showing up to the
Stop Line three camp and blocking off access to the road. Uh,
this was at the same day that drilling under the
river was just being finished, and we so we suspected like, yeah,
there's like Embridge obviously talking with police to prevent people
from leaving so that they can they can finish up
this specific drilling project that was that was pretty obvious
to us at the scene. Um, and now we have,

(13:09):
you know, extra confirmation that, yeah, they do like meet
daily to coordinate these types of things. Um. So it's
good to have that extra confirmation of the stuff we
already like suspected and stuff we already kind of like
put together through experience. But now we have like, you know,
court documents and records showing the extent of the coordination.
All right, well we'll talk about terrorism, but you know

(13:30):
who else is a terrorist? Oh boy? The products and
services that support this podcast are all right in a
good way, you know, uh like um, you know, like
uh like uh kind of alright, well, it's it's complicated,
all right. Do ads just run ads stuff? Oh yeah?

(13:51):
So if it will probably be funnier if you bleep
out the name of the terrorist organization. This is how
we get This is how we pick up from the
ad brancast. Are you saying that? So? Um? Garrison, We
got some some critiques that came in to the old
news line, by which I mean people deemed me on Reddit,
which yeah, I never respond, Um, I almost never respond,

(14:15):
it's nothing against people. I just don't like being communicated with. Um.
But too many, too many people ask me to send
messages to you and like yeah, you're not my secretary's
and welcome to the last three years of my life.
Uh yeah, anyway, yeah, I mean, but that's funny, Sophie. Ah,

(14:42):
I don't know. Um, there were people who were like, hey,
I don't know if you know this, but Earth First
has a problematic history with like eco fascism and that
sort of stuff. Um, just like that too. Yeah, and
it's it's one of those things. They definitely are an
organization that has said things in the past that I
don't agree with. There's been specific people who do organizing
with them that don't have great beliefs specifically around like

(15:05):
you know, a lot of like in the old green
movements has been you know, a lot of like transphobia,
some like racism. Um, It's it's not because they're the
green movements. Like all left spaces deal with versions and
there of variety stuff, you know, not like respecting like
indigenous people. Um, you know that that's been that's been
a thing. Um. But the specific term eco fascism, I

(15:26):
believe is incorrect, um, because they don't advocate for the
genocide of a specific group, UM. And they don't have
like far right populist policies. So like, you can have
bad opinions and bad ideas and you can actually be
a racist without actually being fascist, especially eco fascist. UM.

(15:47):
So I feel like people throw that word around a
lot and they don't actually know what it means. UM.
But what were you specifically referring to, Robert Um. I'm
trying to find the message here. But because I got
a message saying that Earth First is bad because they're
anti natalists, that means they're fascist, which isn't It isn't
really got that yeah, which isn't. Actually like, I'm just

(16:07):
going to disagree with that actause I don't think anti
natalism quits fascism, especially anti natalism. For like, an anti
natalism is basically saying, don't don't make people. Maybe we
should maybe we should stop having more kids right now
because we have a lot of problems to deal with
and maybe we shouldn't be having like, you know, three kids,
which is not it's not a take. I'm not an

(16:27):
anti natalist. I don't actually disagree with that take though,
But I think it's more in the line of, like,
the most fundamental of all human desires for the majority
of the population is to make more people, which is
kind of why I like anti natalism, because it has
that thing that's opposite to one of a lot of
humans natural reaction, and like, no one's forcing anti natalists

(16:49):
don't want to force you to be anti natalist. Bring
up this as an idea, Yeah, and I think it's
a valuable idea to discuss. And I don't think it's
I don't think you're I don't think you're embracing like
the massacre of human beings or genesis by saying like,
I think it'd be best if we didn't make anymore.
I'm not planning an arguable point, I'm not planning to

(17:10):
have any kids because I don't see why it wou
especially when there's so many like children that can be
a doctor Garrison, we talked about you having kids so
we could experiment with making them blue. This is a
separate conversation that we're not talking about involving We are
not talking about this on the plot. We'll just include
that tantalizing hint. I also just think in general, when

(17:33):
we talk about a group that's had a long history
and a specific thing they're doing in the present. Yeah,
this has happened in another situation where people like, well,
you know, they did this or some one of them
said this. And there's a couple of things I feel
about that. For one thing, it's it's like it's entirely
possible that the people doing the thing in the present
day have nothing to do with the people twenty years ago. Yeah,

(17:53):
Like most of the people there were First Gathering Gathering
were like in their twenties and around my age, Like
they weren't in the they weren't in Earth for night.
Like that's not like, so I feel like silly about
kind of making them be held accountable for something somebody
else said under a similar maner decades ago. And on
the podcast, I talked about how like people on their

(18:15):
Earth First Earth First Gathering like talked about this stuff
like that. People talked about Earth First like history and
how they haven't handled some issues very well. There was
a lot there was a massive effort for this gathering
to like um to like uplift and make sure everyone
focuses on Indigenous voices, Like they invited over multiple indigenous
groups to give talks on green resistance and like land

(18:36):
back like that. That was a big focus of like
making sure that this actually is something that has heard
because people know like this is, yeah, this is something important,
this is something that actually should be done, and there
are I think in general, when we talk about like
holding organizations and individuals accountable for their past, um, what
matters is like a mix of what they did and

(18:58):
what they're doing. So obviously, if Earth First had been
saying twenty years ago, we need to wipe out all
the Jews, I would be like I wouldn't care what
they were saying now, you know, it would be like, yeah,
you can't really come back from that. If you want
to do a completely different thing, it needs to be
a new organization. Don't. But they weren't. And I'm not
saying that where I'm just making an example, but like,
as a rule, I think we should embrace the fact

(19:19):
that organizations and people can change throughout time and be
better than they were in the past, um and and
learn from mistakes and flaws. And I feel pretty unwilling
to condemn individuals or organizations for the mistakes of their past,
although that is dependent upon the kind of mistake and
the harm that it cost. Yeah, and like and how

(19:39):
they address it in the futures, like a lot of
these Yeah, because like it wasn't like first as an
overall organization of specific people they were affiliated with, like
you know, specifically UM like um Edward Abbey has said
some not great things around different different different social issues,
and his books were extremely influential on the beginning of
green resistance. But that's something people talk about now, Like
that's something that is like discussed and debated. Um. And

(20:01):
he was and he was like even in the eighties
and nineties, he was like kicked out of our first
gatherings for kind of being a loser, like for for
having these bad views. Were like, yeah, we probably shouldn't
have you here anymore. Leave go away. It's like that
was something that was even talked about back like back
then as well. That is that isn't just a modern thing. Yeah,
And I think in general, Number there's a couple of things.

(20:21):
Number One, whenever we talk about like an organization in
a specific context they're doing this, that doesn't mean we're
embracing everything they've done. And number two, whenever we talk
about the history of of of of a movement or
a group. I hope nobody ever takes that as like,
here is the authoritative stance on the history of this thing,

(20:41):
Like it's when we talked about the Black Panthers. There's
a bunch of stuff we left out that's very important.
Um My hope with those episodes, and I hope with
anything we do, is that it like inspires people to
want to learn more and read more, and we're giving
them a basis of understanding that they can use to
expand their knowledge on an important topic. So please, we
are we are. There's like one thing, uh collectively that

(21:06):
that Garrison and I have any kind of expertise on,
and uh, outside of that, you should not take anything
we say as like, here's the comprehensive history of of
this because it's I I understand one thing, and it's
it's how the internet makes people shitty. Yeah, so yeah,
um yeah, I mean that that was something that this

(21:28):
whole thing was. Something I thought about when writing these
episodes is how much to include of this stuff. And
I did not feel like it was super important to
discuss this stuff because it wasn't relevant to the topic
of stop line think such relevant to the topic of
like the current ongoing green resistance. If we want to
do like a history of green activism, then yes, this
is something that that would be that. Yeah, and I
think like at some point we probably should do absolutely

(21:49):
about just like Mirror and like all of that ship.
But like that, there's a kind of stuff we want
to talk about that we haven't yet because it's a
daily show and my God, give us some fucking time.
People speaking of Edward Abbey, you know what, huh Cells
Quality monkey wrenches. Okay, alright, that's fine. The maybe one

(22:12):
of our sponsors, I hope, so Ace Hardware, it's hardware
bas hardware sponsoring us. They do sell You can get
some good monkey wrenches from Ace Hardware Quality for fixing
your faucet, for fixing your faucet. So go get wrench
pilled and then listen to the rest of the show.
Well we're back. We just had a good discussion about

(22:32):
what we're gonna talk about, and we realized that it
wasn't after the ad break, so here we are. Um
In in early September, we had an episodes about both
California's climate and the ongoing recall election against Gavin Newsom.
So a few days after our episodes dropped to think
like the day the day of the second one dropped
was was election day? Um we we we got the

(22:53):
results in faster than what I was expecting. Um and
Newsome did handily beat lay very Elder with like so
people people voted sixty no and like yes, so he
Knewsome did a decent job and pushing off Elder. Um.

(23:16):
So this, this, this whole recall processed costed California taxpayers
two hundred and seventy six million dollars. It's not like
we needed the money for anything else. Garrison. Come on, yeah,
so you know a few takeaways. We're going to spend
it oners literally anything else. Water giving California needs water

(23:37):
and firefighters. Garrison coming giving houses to people who need houses.
I don't know. Um yeah, so takeaways from this, Uh,
the recall process still should absolutely be invented. Yeah, it
shouldn't require should require more than twelve signatures of the
last voter turnout. Um and the government should be requiring
to get to if you're if you're gonna be elected

(23:58):
in the government, you should be red to get a
majority of votes. Um. Not not not just a plurality
of a specific you know, sect, So there's a whole
we we we talked about the specific reasons why it
was bad in those episodes. Those are still those are
still like, those are still valid, those are still relevant
because there's still the same issues. Yeah, and none of
the fact that this turned out well had anything to

(24:20):
do with the Democratic Party who very nearly bungled it
and it and it doesn't it doesn't really impact. It
doesn't impact, you know, the California's climate issues so much.
And like just because new Sims in office doesn't mean
they're going to get much better. You know, there's still
things that it needs to be pushed on to to
you know, make the climate a little bit more habitable.
In the meantime, it it means that we will continue

(24:43):
stumbling towards a cliff rather than speak sprinting. So generally
what voting for Democrats means, I will say, it's interesting
to me that it doesn't seem like you can get
the vote was rigged thing to work unless the election

(25:04):
is like kind of this is the next thing I
was going to talk about. Um, Yeah, because because like
in the week before the election, uh, the Fox News
Republican Party and Larry Elder and even Trump, we're really
starting to ramp up this idea that if Elder loses,
that means the election was rigged. Uh. This was like
they were really pushing this hard and you know, spreading it,
like they were giving links to a website like before

(25:25):
he lost, even be like, if you know, when I lose,
use this website. I was like, Okay, that's okay, that's weird. Um.
But on the night of the election, Elder seems to
kind of claim climb down from the inflammatory like rhetoric
around the election. In his concession speech, he told supporters,
let's be gracious and defeat um. So he once the

(25:45):
actual results were in, he really climbed that down. So
we can read into that. The other thing I want
us to read into here is that could this could
this rhetoric around if we lose that means it was rigged?
Could that disenfranchise republic Can voters from even showing up
if they believe that all elections will be stolen from them?
Will that being that they'll be less Republican turn out

(26:07):
if there's just if they think that it doesn't matter.
So that's the other side of things, Like I'm not
sure if if if the other side effects that this,
that this rhetoric could have. Yeah, there's an interesting So
during during the last election like national election cycle, there
was a bunch of me to use people who weren't
voting in Florida, And I thought it was really interesting
because there were there were several people they talked to

(26:28):
who were like, yeah, I don't vote because last time
I voted was two thousands and they stole the election,
which which literally which which yeah, And you know i'd
say that, yeah, Like, I think it is slightly different
when like two thousands, when the actually like like literally
but there was there was the bricks like there there
there Roger Stone, Yeah, Roger Stone led a riot to

(26:49):
stop like the votes from being counted, like whatever, weird Bush.
I think people people got like like a bunch of
people with like vaguely black names got like their aims
struck off the like the voting roles. Like there was
a lot of yeah, but yeah, and and I don't
I don't know if it'll if it if the effect
can work that strongly when it's like completely bullshit, I

(27:16):
think it's Yeah, I don't know, It's it's hard to
say because it's it's it's unclear whether the voter turnout
on the because, like you know, there were times where
they were pulling like fifty fifty between between between Newsom
and Elder, and it's unclear. I think definitely the big
advertising push that corporate donors gave to Newsom in the

(27:36):
month before the election did help get Democratic voter turnout,
you know, like people voting for news getting people scared
about fucking is the governor that not was not ineffective,
that that very much works. That did increase turn out there,
But I don't know because like with the whole election
being stolen rhetoric that can both increase Republican voter turnout

(27:56):
and then there's also the side effect now where maybe
it could decrease it because they're just disenfranchised about this concept.
But this is kind of just speculation at this point.
I don't have actual data backing up this claim right now.
This is just something that I thought about while running
this right up, I'm like, huh, I wonder if this
could be a contributing factor in the future. People really
I feel like they're always gonna lose. Maybe they just
not not even are gonna bother um. But it's hard

(28:19):
to say. It's like, you know, the main reason why
Elder lost wasn't due to newsom strength. That was because
Elder is like, it's completely like he it was like
it was the most yeah, well like wildly unqualified and
like one of the more extreme candidates like running. And yes,
he did get a lot of support among Republicans, but

(28:40):
among moderates and people you know, left of center in
terms of like an American spectrum. Uh, they're like, yeah, no,
this is gonna be a disaster if he if he
gets elected. And that's the main reason why he didn't. Um,
it's not due to Newsom being great. But I mean
Sophie did mention a few things that Newsom has done
since then. Um, so we do do do do you
want to say the specific details just so I don't

(29:01):
have to look so if he's famously a big Newsome fan,
so yeah, not come on. Uh so not to give
news some credit because this is like an obvious right
thing to do situation. But um. At the beginning of October,
the Senate Bill seven was signed into law. It was

(29:23):
an unanimous vote and Newsom signed off on it to
give back Bruce's Beach, which was owned by a black family,
Willa and Charles Bruce back in their land was illegally
taken away from them. It's a beach front plot in
Manhattan Beach, and I signed into LATA give it back. Yeah,

(29:45):
more of that should be done. I mean that is
kind of the basis of like, you know, that is
one side of land back, is just giving land back
to people who used to have it. Yeah, of course
this is this isn't sally tied to like indigenous stuff.
But you know, I've seen people make that same comparison
for Yeah, we should just be doing this more in
general to a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah, that's I'm
glad that that was done. It's also now illegal to

(30:07):
remove a condom without consett in California, which is wait,
what You're going to have to change a lot of
things about how you have sex with Californians. Yeah, during intercourse,
that's the it's the first state to do that, first
of all. Huh. Yeah, and it's wild because under any

(30:30):
reasonable definition, that's rape. Yeah, yeah, it's just ra Yeah,
it's absolutely rape. California also now requires menstal products in
public schools, so that's bare minimum and that is good.
I didn't realize that it happened. Yeah, And I want
to be clear here, I'm not giving you some credit
for this, but if he had lost the recallection, none

(30:52):
of this would be happening. No, it's nice that he
I'm sure some of this was him kind of providing
a sop to the people who lined up to stop
the recall. And those are good things that were done. Yeah,
And I think I think that's sort of an important
thing to understand about when politicians occasionally do good things.
It's like they don't do good things because they want

(31:15):
to do them. They they they do things that benefit
from you because they're either in some way scared of you,
or it's because they need to buy they buy you off,
and and that that is, you know, that is that
is a legitimate way that good things happen. But I've
got a couple other Uh, there's been a lot signed
in recently, So I got a couple of other ones
that I that I think are relevant to our show.

(31:36):
California will not streamline extend assisted death law. So that's
that's good. That reduces the time until terminal patients can
choose to be given fatal drugs, So good. Starting January one,
the waiting period required time a patient makes separate oral
request for medication were dropped to forty hours, down from
the current minimum fifteen days. That is that is good,

(31:58):
pretty rad Yeah, I mean there's just there's there's a
I mean, we'll see if it's it's hard, a lot,
there's a lot, it's it's hard, it's hard to be
like worse than Larry Elder. Yeah, that's this one definitely
would not get through for No, California California Acts a

(32:20):
lot of strip badges from bad officers, like very vaguely written,
is very vague. But yeah, well we'll see what happens
to like, No, none of that stuff would have happened
under a thing I am surprised at, Like I'm surprised
that some of those things actually got through because I'm
I'm surprised that Democratic politicians would actually vote for those
things we put office. That's why I was like basically

(32:41):
the condom, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I was not expecting
that to go through some science legislation to extend to
go cocktails. Wait, all right, that's sure, Okay, more where
am I to go cocktail heads? Sorry? Alright, so at
least Larry Al there's not in office. There's till a

(33:02):
lot of climate issues, and maybe this rhetoric around stealing
the elections not gonna work every single time they do it. Um,
that's kind of the main that's the main things that
I was going to talk about, and it is it is.
I mean, one of the things that people are talking
about in a lot of the spaces I generally agree
with is like the foolishness of voting is harm reduction.

(33:23):
And there's been a lot of if you want to
believe that it isn't, there's been a lot of information
coming up from the Biden administration that will support that belief. Um.
But what we're seeing right now in California is that
can be like the these are not none of this
is going to fundamentally change the major problems that are
confronting us. But but a bunch of those things are
going to Like life's going to be easier for some

(33:45):
little girls whose families don't have much money. You know,
life got easier for that one family who got their
land back. Um. You know, potentially it's going to be
easier to get bad police officer, or to get particularly
bad police officers off the Street, and that's not that's
not nothing like when we say voting can be and
I'm not saying that it usually is, but when we

(34:07):
it can reduce harm, that's what it means. It means
that like, oh, some bad things that that would be
worse are not as bad because of this. Not that
everything is better. A lot of stuff will be the
same and is the same in California, Like ecologically, nothing
sundically fundamentally changed, but some ship's a little easier for

(34:27):
certain groups of people as a result of some stuff.
And specific specifically, I think the getting getting more like
contraceptive products menstrual products inside public schools is one of
the literally the best things we can do, like like
for the whole country. It is like something that if
that was required in every public school, that would make
so many people's lives better. That ridiculous degree significantly reduces

(34:50):
harm in a specific way. And I think that just
because like, yeah, I mean, it's not going to stop
us all from burning up, um, but that doesn't mean
it's not worthwhile. Yeah. So those those are the three
stories that I wanted to give some updates for, um
because I know, you know, there were changes happened you know,
very soon after posting those episodes. UM, I still think

(35:11):
the California ones are worth listening to because they do
lay out a lot of stuff around around California's climate,
um and the specific weird stuff that it has with
its specific weird things that has with its election process. UM.
I think the line three episodes are going to be
pretty good to go back to as well. UM, And
then uh, I at the specific Cop City thing in Atlanta,
that is the stuff that I am. It's gonna be

(35:33):
the most like ongoing thing stills because that's going to
be an ongoing project. So I'm sure we'll come back
to the Cops City at different points throughout the next
few months. So that that that that that's the updates. UM.
Any any any closing notes from either Christopher, Robert or Sophie, Yeah,
just just I do well excuse me, Okay, sorry Sophie, Sorry,

(35:56):
just I just just remind him we've said this earlier
in the episode that like we're just giving you brief
brief sniff. It's about this stuff. There's a lot there's
a lot of really good articles online that go go
deep into these things, and we'll post our sources on
the website. Yep, yeah, yeah we we we we do.
We do a good job, I think most of the time. Yes, yes,
but we're great. Yeah, we're we're the only heroes, that's

(36:20):
fair to say. Absolutely, But do do not have a
podcast be the only source of information? Absolutely not. Don't
listen to if you think more of a of a
left perspective that is that that goes in some directions,
we don't. It's going down is a lovely place to

(36:42):
check out. Margaret Killjoy's um uh live like the World
is Dying. St Andrew's YouTube channel. Um he does some
some really incredible stuff. Um, you know, there's all sorts
of good people out there. And then also like history
books more than anything like history books straight books for
the thing that Yeah, if you want to read more

(37:04):
about the new sub notable laws signed recently, the k
c r A and Sacramento did a did a really
good breakdown article. Oh sorry, so it's okay. And and
as a note, we will be doing more episodes like
this over time, as like stories that we cover have
additional things happened to them. This is like we don't

(37:26):
want to just be like dropping a story and then
ignoring whatever happens next. Um. Sometimes they don't mean following
up with people that we're talking to on the ground,
but you know, we are trying to like keep you
updated on the things that we think are important, you know,
even when they end uh in a in a broadly
positive sense or whatever. And Uh, lastly, what was the

(37:46):
name of that brisket place in Atlantic, because I'm sure
people are gonna ask about it. Oh, I don't remember.
It was some shitty little place in the middle of
South Atlanta. Um, and like a fucking strip mall that
was really helpful. I don't remember. So if it was
like eleven years ago, what do you I don't remember,
the best brisket you've ever had? And it was but
the best. Like if you know anything about good barbecue,

(38:09):
the best barbecue you ever have is either cooked by
like your uncle or is cooked in some shitty little
place with a turn that wouldn't pass a code inspection.
That is true that the more the more codes it violates,
the better the bisket. Um. Anyway, if you see the
chef actively ship on the grill, that means just going
to be incredible. Jesus Christ, Twitter and Instagram, what happened here?

(38:31):
Poticles media, subscribe to the feed and leave a five
star of you. That's it. Don't don't don't shoot on
your brisket, grill on everything. Alright, life, Here's to the

(38:52):
great American settlers. The millions of you has settled for
unsatisfying jobs because they paid the bills, and uh, you
just kind of fell into it, and you know, it's
like totally fine, just another few decades or so and
then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something

(39:12):
else you could do. If you've got something to say.
You could, I don't know, start up podcast with Spreaker
from my heart and unleash your creative freedom and spend
all day researching and talking about stuff you love and
maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your
irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset, Hey,

(39:37):
I'm no settler, I'm an explorer. Spreaker dot com. That's
spr e a K e er hustle on over today.
Raphie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation, Baby Little So, who is the man

(40:01):
behind Baby Bluga. Every human being wants to feel respected.
When we start with, all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new Dad and host of Finding Raffie,
a new podcast from my Heart Radio and Fatherly. Listen
every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. This is Roxanne Gay, host of

(40:24):
The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Frominast podcast of Your Dreams. Now,
what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask, Well,
It's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind
about what's on my mind, and that could be anything.
Every week, I will be in conversation with an interesting
person who has something to say. We're going to talk

(40:45):
about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food, pop culture,
and yes, politics. I started each show with a recommendation. Really,
I'm just going to share with you a movie or
a book, or maybe some new sick or a comedy set,
something that I really want you to be aware of
and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary

(41:07):
original podcast, The Roxanay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast of
Your Dreams, every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast Garrison, Is

(41:32):
that good? Is that? The show? No? Just keep going though? Okay, Well,
it could happen. Here is the show that A tonal
Noise is my introduction this week because I'm a hack
in a fraud. Who isn't a hack in a fraud?
Is is our guest this week. St Andrew. St Andrew,
you are a solar punk anarchist from Trinidad. UM. You

(41:56):
have a YouTube channel, UM where you talk about solar punk.
UM you talked about stuff like seed bombing. Yeah. I'm
just very excited to have you on the show because
I'm a big fan of YouTube channel. Thank you, glad
to be here, big fan of your work as well, Andrew.
I kind of wanted to start with why this why
solar punk is important? Because, UM, I think it's easy

(42:19):
for folks who just kind of skim it to see it.
It's just like, oh, it's an aesthetic. It's maybe an
art style or a fiction style. UM. Maybe something that's neat,
but not something that has like a lot of inherent
value to people trying to change the world. And obviously
you disagree with that. I disagree with it to UM.
A quote I keep coming back to again and again
is one from Werner Herzog in the nineteen seventies, and

(42:41):
it was something along the lines of I think that
without better myths, were destined to go the way of
the dinosaurs. Um. Actually, of I forget his name right now.
But there's this excellent, excellent book called The Truth About Stories,
and I think what it really emphasizes throughout the book
is the importance of stories on how stories impact how

(43:03):
we navigate the woot, which is why I sort of
embraced sua punk, you know, as a story that we
can work with green forward. Yeah, I think, Um, I
think it's incredibly important to have better stories, better myths
because for one thing, I think where the Left falls
down a lot is not having is accurately diagnosing the

(43:27):
problems without providing a better look at at the at
the future, you know. Um. And when the problems are
when the people who do kind of propose solutions, it's
often um not in a way people can feel. One
of the benefits that that that the right has, that
fascism has, is that they they're very good at providing

(43:49):
people with myths and providing people with kind of a
fictional look at at their idealized world that draws people in.
You know, you can laugh at the right. You know,
they have a lot of people that work on like
meta narratives and that's very, very core to their ideology. Um, So,
I guess where I'd like to start with you, Andrew,

(44:10):
because this is kind of the first time I think
we've really talked about solar punk on on this show,
even though from the beginning before any of these episodes dropped,
this was always a central part of our discussion about
what the show was was going to be. Um, would
you kind of provide an introduction to to what solar
punk is for our listeners? Sure? Sure, So I would

(44:32):
say that solar punk is the vision of the future
that places emphasis on the existing world and how we
get to that future from where we are now. So
it emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, for self governance,
and for a toronomy and social justice. It emphasizes the
need for you know, human and ecocentric ends to really

(44:57):
be in sync, and it aims to really heal the
current rift between humanity and Nietzsche. It also recognizes, of course,
that there isn't this binary between climate change happens and
climate change doesn't happen. Rather, it understands that how we
navigate it, we uh have a variety of consequences and

(45:24):
some of the positive, some of the negative, but it's
up to us to really shape that. Yeah, and it's UM.
I want to drill into a couple of facets of that.
But I want to quickly plug one of your YouTube
videos for folks who kind of want a more involved
um explanation and background. You have a video called what
is solar Punk on your channel Saint Andrewism like Andrew

(45:45):
I s m UM that I think is a fantastic
introduction not just to like the aesthetics of solar punk,
but some of the practical some of the practical kind
of expressions of it. And and two of the ones
you list is like examples of here's here's what this
is is like actual praxis, you know, and not just
an aesthetic is seed bombing um. And then you talk

(46:06):
about this this very interesting kind of like terra Cotta
air conditioning, which I think is I think it's neat
because it's it's one of the problems that I think
with kind of some versions of of of particularly kind
of on the more liberal end of of of solar
punk imagining is just sort of like ways of replacing um,

(46:26):
ways of gaining the same kind of consumptive benefits that exist,
I guess not even not even like greenwashing, right washing, greenwashing,
Like here, let's get the same consumptive benefits. We get scrapers, yes, skyscrapers,
the same consumerism, same level of you know, destructive, extractive practices.

(46:47):
But we have some flowers and some trees. So yeah,
and that's not enough. But at the same time, there
are things that aren't. Like air conditioning is contributes massively
to climate change. It's also not a luxury. Like if
you live in a place where it's a hundred and
twenty degrees a lot of the summer, that's not a luxury. Yeah,
this is going from someone in a tropical country. Yeah,

(47:09):
definitely a necessity. Yeah, So I wonder if you could
talk about kind of those two, I mean, or if
you have different ones you'd like to pick, but just
kind of what you see is sort of the practice
expressions of solar punk, sort of beyond the aesthetic, although
we're going to drill into the aesthetics some too, because
I also think that's important. Right, So, I think some
of my favorite manifestations of the punk in a practical context,

(47:33):
things like um gorilla gardening, really gardening is really the
biggest one because it's one that someone could literally pick
up and do today or tomorrow, you know, as soon
as they hear about it, doing about it. Just get
some clay, get some seeds, you know, and put those
things together, and as you're walking home or walk into
the store, just toss them wherever there some free dud um.

(47:56):
So that's a fun one. There's also, of course things
like litten one involved, like community gardening and particularly forest gardening,
because that will provide a level of food autonomy and
agency for people who have been healing it for a
long time from the process of food production. UM. They're

(48:18):
also practices like compassing or corpach ng and it's like
a way to produce lumber without chopping down a whole
set of trees, so you are able to get the
wood from the trees, but the tree remains alive. UM.
There's also things like, of course solar powered technology, whether

(48:43):
it be algae based UM windows that you know, extract
energy from the sun, or solar sales or solar ovens
uh or like the terra Cotta their condition in which,
by the way I learned recently contrary work in a

(49:05):
human environment. Yeah, but yeah, there are a lot of
difference opportunities there also there are things like you know,
tool shares and make up spaces and seed libraries, all
different ways to sort of bring it into fruition that is. Yeah,
and I uh, I think a lot of that's really valuable. UM.

(49:29):
I'm interested in in parts sort of your your attitude
on UM what. Uh let me think about how the
phrase this, UM, what do you think are kind of
the things as we talk about sort of the things
that can be at least potentially replaced UM with with

(49:52):
less extract of less consumptive methods. Is sort of an
example of solar punk practice is replacing those things. There's
also things that we're not going to be able to
have if we actually want to live in a more
sustainable UM future that that doesn't contribute to some of
the nightmares that we're all going to be increasingly facing.
UM you're you know, And again I think it's it's

(50:15):
telling that so much of kind of the future fantasies
of that are written by people who come from you know,
my part of the world. The United States focus on
like kind of post scarcity methods of of guaranteeing the
continuation of consumption just through in some cases like fantastic
methods um you know, magical three D printers and the like. Um.

(50:37):
You come from a very different part of the world,
very different perspective, what do you see as the things
that like we're going to have to give up Coming
from a country that is actually reliant on oil and
natural gas production, we have to get rid of cause
we definitely absolutely have to get rid of cause um
free to ships as well, and really the whole way

(51:03):
that you know, global supply chains are structured right now.
Not to say that they wouldn't be any sort of
global um sharing of resources in the future, but the
way that it's happening right now, it can't continue to
go on. We can't continue to structure our cities, in
our lives around cause you know, and other methods of

(51:26):
gascuselin transportation because we're literally going to run out. And
we've known this for a long time, but it's nearing.
The day is nearing Clusia and cluso, and yeah, we
we have to find a way to do without it. Yeah,
and it's it's I think tell like, there's a couple
of things that are important. One of them is you

(51:48):
can't just say we have to stop global trade because
in global travel, because the people have have sought and
done that for as long as there have been people
in one former another. It's it's a fundamentally human thing.
But there are aspects of it, like you know, expecting
that every kind of fruit and vegetable will be available

(52:08):
year round, which is certainly thing that we in the
United States expect. Um. That doesn't that that's not part
of a realistic future. Um. And if it's part of
the future, then it's only going to be part of
the future for an ever shrinking chunk of the country.
And you can see that in sort of um or
of the of the West, and you can see that
in kind of um the like what we're dealing with

(52:30):
right now with like the supply line shortages and failures,
and like one of the I think the symbols of
how far we have to go in my country is
the degree to which people are freaking out by the
fact that Christmas presents might be late. Um. Let alone
being like, yeah, you might not be able to buy coffee,
um um ever, or all the time, you know, you
might not be able to get tomatoes in December um

(52:53):
which UM. I think one benefits to grilla gattening. And
that's what's a mindset is as you learn to so
you also learn to reap. Right. So a lot of
people who get into grilled gardening aliso end up getting
into foraging, and they are absent stuff you could download
that allow you to, you know, learn how to identify
plants in your area. And we surprise the number of

(53:15):
plants in your area that are you know, useful for
teas or for salads or for whatever purposes that can
be used as replacements. I'm not sure if they could
replace coffee, but they could be beneficial, um in recognizing
how we have to live with our local ecosystems. Basically, yeah,

(53:42):
and a big you know, when you talk about living
learning how to live with our ecosystem stuff like planting
um forest gardens and the like or food forest, I
think is the term UM. I think something that has
to be discussed is the matter of indigenous sovereignty, especially
when we're talking about you know, it's not just you know,
North America, a lot of chunks of the globe Indigenous

(54:04):
people had spent you know, in some cases thousands of
generations setting forests up in order to sustainably produce food. Um.
And when when colonialism arrived, that was often just seen
as like, oh, this is this is these are wild
places for us to for us to extract or tear

(54:25):
down and replace with mono cultures, you know, single crops. Um.
And so a big part of actually building back that capacity,
the capacity of us to to survive off of the
food that can sustainably grow where we live is looking
back to those indigenous methods and and also um, you know,

(54:45):
giving back land in a lot of cases, um And yeah,
that's something you talk about in your videos that I
think is really important to um to to to to
explain to people. Yeah, I mean there's there's really is
no way to separate the violance and oppressive institution of
clunealism with the equosido Nietzsche of modern states. You know,

(55:11):
those two are deeply intertwined, deeply married together. And so
you can't fight climate change without addressing the issue of
severnty of indigenous serenity and land back. Yeah. It's um,
it's really interesting. I've been I've been up hunting on
mountain Hood with a friend who is who went to

(55:32):
school for like forestry management, And as we were driving
way to drive through a chunk of the reservation in
order to get to the BLM land where we're able
to hunt, and he pointed it out, and once he did,
it was immediately obvious just how different the land under
indigenous control looked from the land, you know, just feed
away that was being managed by the federal government in

(55:55):
terms of like how much better the forest management was,
how much how much smarter it was it was manage
in order to reduce the chances of like a ladder
fire that that actually kills you know, the trees and whatnot.
There's this whole thing blowing up on Twitter right now
where you've got a chunk of Marxists tour are trying
to frame land back as uh, just like shifting ownership

(56:18):
of resources, which I think is really missing the point.
But I find interesting about Twitter is that the exact
same discourses are repeated over and over and over again.
So I remember this exact conversation happening around this time
last year, around April last year, um earlier this year
as well. It's just the same discourses get recycled over

(56:41):
and over again, and it's reached a point for me
when I realized that these people don't want to learn
about land back or what it really means because they
are invested in the structure as it exists and they
don't want to have to interrogate that. So, Yeah, this
will out to be an interesting thing I've known. Yeah,

(57:04):
and it's UM, it's it's it's frustrating. UM. I guess
that that acts as like a general uh description of
Twitter discourse, but certainly does. Yeah. I think it's I
think it's telling the degree to which people, even on
the left treat it as a fantasy as opposed to

(57:26):
doggedly pragmatic UM and and proven so like proven by
like like you know, like you can read you in
reports that will that will essentially say land back in
the space of a five page you know, study on
how indigenous land management functions a great deal better than
UM than a lot of the stuff that's like centralized

(57:47):
by the federal government, where we're like, our federal government
is terrible at land management. UM. And it's part of
the it's part of the problem. I think one of
the things that that excites me about solar punk as
an aesthetic and idea is getting back to this relationship
with the land as opposed to talking about just preserving
it um as talking about managing it. Because because none

(58:09):
of our none of the land that people live on
is like wild in the sense that people mean it
as it's been cultivated. And that's that's the thing, right.
The whole philosophy of you know, um land preservation as
was taken up by the US government with the whole
um you know, you can stop forest fires kind of

(58:31):
thing ended up leading to more forest fires downline, because
they we have a rule in the ecosystem not just
there to stand back from a fire and to observe it.
So we don't do our part to manage the underbrush
and whatnots and clear away and exercise you know, controlled fires,
but we end up in the situation we're in today,

(58:51):
you know, cultivation not just sterile preservation. Now. One of
the things that you talk about well because because one
of the more frustrating discourses this is not just a
Twitter thing, this has been going on for years, is
the discourse around GMO crops. And usually I would say,
like the two most commonly heard sides are GMOs are

(59:13):
bad because you know, monsanto cancer whatever, or GMOs are good.
Um end end thought. Um. And the thing that you
point out, which is I think the accurate take is GMOs.
The preponderance of evidence says that, like, there's nothing inherently
dangerous about genetically modified crops, but the way in which

(59:34):
they're often used in order to create these massive mono
cultures is really toxic. So there's a lot of promise
um for GMOs in terms of keeping our our existence
on this planet sustainable. But what's not sustainable is the
kind of industrialized agriculture where you have ten thousand acres
of one thing which just doesn't happen in nature exactly exactly.

(59:55):
And if you look at how genetic modification took at
least at to you know, all advanced funds in genetic
modification technology. UM, I'm not how many people are familiar
with the dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of varieties
of just corn they were present in the America's prior
to the colonization. A lot of those varieties were wiped

(01:00:17):
out or were suppressed in fear of these mono cultures.
But if we're able to cultivate the diversity of these
crops and maybe bring some of them back through jestic modification,
that would really help us with you know, food resilience
in a world with an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yeah, yeah,

(01:00:38):
I think that. I mean, I think you said it perfectly.
I want to move back to kind of what I
introduced the episode with, which is talking about the value
of of fiction and myth making in a in a
very pragmatic sense. I guess I'll start by saying, I
think one of the clearest signs of the danger that
we're in and how toxic our society has gotten. Um

(01:01:00):
And I am speaking from a primarily US centric standpoint here,
but I don't think it's unique to the United States.
Is the extent to which trust me um as as
the saying is when the US sneeze, So anytime there's
some phenomenon happening in the US, there are the coffee cuts. Yea.

(01:01:20):
And I do think this is pretty global. I mean
you see it in like South Korean films and all over.
I know what you're gonna say, Yeah, the obsession with
apocalypse and when we when we go to the future,
it's always a dystopia. Um, there's a degree to which
we've almost forgotten how to imagine utopia or even not
just utopia, just a way of living that is an

(01:01:42):
improvement in a lot of ways of future that's better.
We've forgotten to do both utopian fiction and any just
kind of like positive fiction in a lot of ways,
because yeah, it's understandable because the world is kind of
terrible right now in a lot of in a lot
of ways. But there's also there's been utopian fiction inside
other terrible worlds as well. I think just the modern

(01:02:04):
interconnected media sphere has really rewarded this type of like
dystopian and collapse based apocalypse fiction. Yeah, and I'm sure
that's that's worth interrogating why, but it is a problem
that needs to be solved. Yeah, and it is, and
and you're I think it's important. And it's not entirely
based in how fucked up things are, because like when
the first Star Trek came out, we were at like
the height of the Cold War. Things were terrible. There

(01:02:27):
was a lot of utopian fiction during World War Two.
During World War two, UM, I will always be impressed
by the fact that Gene Roddenberry saw it as incredibly
important both to be like, okay, well in the future,
like in the middle of the Civil rights movement. In
the future we will have overcome like racism, but not
just that, but like I'm gonna I'm gonna stick a
Russian on the bridge too, because nations are going to

(01:02:50):
end as a concept and like this stuff won't matter. Um,
And that just that kind of utopian fiction, at least
at this at the scale of popularity that you know,
Star Trek wasn't its time just isn't present anymore. And
I that's tremendously worrying to me. And I see a
lot of hope in in Solar Punk for that, um.

(01:03:13):
And I guess for starters, I'm interested in in your
thoughts on this, and you're interested in Andrew, what you
think is like the pragmatic value of of of positive
a fiction that that that imagines a better world. Yes,
so I've done probably I think I've done like two

(01:03:36):
videos on Soula Punk soufar um, two major videos on
Sila Punk, as well as a smaller video two other
smaller videos. Um. And what I've seen in the comments
and in the general social media reaction again and again
is sol the Punk saved my life. You know, Sola
Punk has given me hoop. You know, I was slipping

(01:03:57):
into the spare. But this video really gave me a
jump start to try something new and to start a
fresh and to pursue action as opposed toggest lying down
and taking whatever comes next. And that that is it
for me. You know, I think the fact that Sulla

(01:04:20):
punk offers like an energizing vision. It's not just a vision,
it's an energizing vision because in every step of the way,
it shows what you can do. You know when you
show it. When you look at sula punk art or um,
you look at the small but growing genre of sulla

(01:04:40):
punk literary media, or you know, you look at but
there's don't have many silpunk video games right now, but
hopefully there will be in the future. When you look
at the various forms of silapunk media that are coming
out and people's responses to them, you see that it's
not like as all mentioning like Star Trek, where it's

(01:05:03):
all this far our technology that we can only aspire
to for now. You know, sol the punk is something
that you can literally put in your backyard or your
balcony or your home, or your school or your community.
You know, you could put these things in place like
from now, you know, and you can incorporate it into
your politics as you know, as they are, and they

(01:05:26):
could also help to push your politics forward, you know,
because through solar punk, we can open up discussions about Okay,
so how do we ensure that people live comfortably within
the parameters of you know, the Earth's carrying capacity? You know,
you open up a discussions about indigenous soevereignty. You can

(01:05:47):
discussions about, um, the relationship between the Goloble North and
the global South, and responsibility with regard to our response
to climate change. Well, you're en up a lot of
different discussions through the realm of sulla punk. It energizes people,
as I said, and yeah, I think that is its

(01:06:10):
pargmatic purpose. It doesn't stand alone, of course, but it
is a driving force. Yeah. Would you kind of give
out a list of if people are you know, if
this is someone's first introduction to the concept of solar punk,
what is some reading you want to draw people towards.

(01:06:30):
What are some fiction like I know you mentioned The
Dispossessed by Laguin, right, um, which often gets cited. Um. Yeah,
I'm interested in kind of other other recommendations you might
have for our listeners. Are that right? So? UM. I'm
still getting into the genre myself, so I don't have
too many UM recommendations. There are some UM decent short

(01:06:52):
story collections UM like sun Vaults by a couple of
different authors. There's also multi species Cities, so the punk
urban futures UM. And the one I read most recently
was Ecotopia, which is quite is much older than all

(01:07:13):
the others. It's actually a book that was published in
UM and not all aspects of its politics things I
agree with, but I think for a first UM it
was one of the really the first of its kind
in that sort of equo utopian genre that really laid

(01:07:37):
out what this society would look like. UM. The book
is structured in a series of novel entries and notebook
reports by a journalists from the United States who has
gone to this country called Ecotopia, which is sort of
where the Pacific Northwest States are, and he's basically breaking

(01:07:58):
down He's going to different parts of the country and
breaking down how they have lived and how they have
decided structure their lives. UM. And even though not every
aspect of it is one that I would want to
see implemented, I still think that it really sparks the

(01:08:21):
imagination really gets you thinking, well, maybe I wouldn't do
it this week, but how else could this be done?
And I think the capacity for stupunk stories suggest generate
that thought and generate one's imagination is very useful in
a world where we don't really get to use our
imagination as much, not really since childhood, you know. And um, yeah,

(01:08:49):
I I think it's often understated the degree to which
using your imagination is a vitally necessary part of actual
radical politics. Um. And I think there's a lot of
people who consider themselves radicals, you know, some of these
some of these not to you know, slam every Marxist

(01:09:10):
Leninist on the planet, but certainly some of the ones
who were coming up with these bad faith criticisms of
land back. It's like, you're not a radical, You're a
conservative who wants to go back to a different kind
of problematic thing. Um. It's more the fact that the
Soviet Union poisoned like the largest body of water in Europe.
You know, all the different things that the Soviet Union
did that were horrible for the environment and extractive. And

(01:09:33):
it's interesting that, you know, are these people who call
themselves radicals, but the very foost um. Encounter with a
radical idea, the foost instinct is to shut down. The
whost instinct is to just pushed back against it. Whereas

(01:09:55):
not to my own corner or anything. But you know,
when I see an idea that I haven't encountered before
that may seem strange to me, that challenges my precontinutions,
my first reaction is not to shout about how this
goes against everything then, and said, you know, my first

(01:10:15):
reaction is to investigate it and to open space for
it in my mind, to really, you know, tune it
around and imagine what it might look like and how
it might fit with what I have learned about before. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean I think that's that's that's great advice for

(01:10:37):
radical politics. It's also just good life advice, Yeah, especially
for engaging with ideas that you are less keen on
at the moment or or or just unaware of. Yeah.
I mean, my whole thing is if I have like
a strong gut reaction to something, it might be because

(01:10:58):
it may be hitting a part of me that might
be benefiting from that system, you know. I mean I
don't benefit from the system in a lot of respects.
You know, as a black guy from the Caribbean, but
as a man, as in as a sit sis headman.
You know, I do have privileges that I must be

(01:11:21):
aware of and I can't just like be so quick
to shut down you know, something that might even a
bit uncomfortable, you know, Yeah, I think that's such a
valuable thing to keep in mind, especially as a a
more or less sis white guy like a you know,
a significant number of people listening are if you're uncomfortable

(01:11:42):
by a new idea? Is it? Is it because the
idea is bad? Or is because it strikes at an
area in which you may not even have like thought
about being privileged, like I'm I'm uncomfortable I had even
though there's no I have no intellectual argument against it
with the idea of of ending, are you of cars
as they exist? Because I love I love to drive.

(01:12:03):
But that's also heavily rooted in in in tremendous privilege
on my behalf um American culture and stuffy and um
you know, we we we we did talk about that
a bit and the opening episodes of season two, the
idea that like a more you know, when we we
kind of had our little utopian ending the idea that like,
well maybe you'd have a car that's communally owned and

(01:12:25):
used for certain tasks. But you know, the idea of
of of car culture as the center of a city
is um is death. It's just death. When we talked
about getting past cars is not to say that like
people will never use vehicles that move again, Like obviously
we will. They're necessary for something and all. Going back
to horse drawn buggies. I think one of the last

(01:12:48):
things on like solar Punk and kind of tying into
the whole kind of nature of the shows, I really
liked enter your point on like how solar punk is
like an energizing force, and I feel like we have
very few of those on the left and especially on
the anarchist left. Um, like i've i've, i've, i've I've
had my decent stint of like anarcho nihilism. And the problem,

(01:13:10):
like the problem with that is like it's very easy,
Like anarch nihilism is one of the easiest ideologies to
grasp onto because it vlidifies all of your bad feelings. Um.
But it also it's most of the people who I
know who are like real into anarchro nihilism, they're generally
not very happy people because it's kind of it's kind

(01:13:31):
of miserable all the time. Um, and sure they'll like
scoff at like solar punk is like some like greenwashed
yogurt commercial, like you know, like utopian thing, but also
like it's actually lots of solar punk that we've talked about.
It's like actually about doing specific things, Like it's actually
like actually going to do something rather than just being

(01:13:53):
an insurrecto kid um or just just you know, talking
about nihilist znes and books on Twitter for all day.
And I think one of one of your one of
my favorite videos of yours is your video on the
psychology of collapse UM, because I think that's one of
my favorites as well. It's it's, it's, it's, it's it's
really just like a masterpiece and how deep you get

(01:14:15):
into every different type of collapse thinking, because it's not
just on the rights, not not not not to the left.
It's not just whether you're you know more you know, anarchist,
more authoritarian. It's like you get into every specific type
of thinking that plays into this idea around collapse. And
I think if I recommend everyone check out your channel
especially watching your Solar Point videos, but specifically on the

(01:14:36):
topic of collapse. You know, part of our show we
were trying to kind of be a little bit like
anti collapse UM. And I think your your video really
shows the depth of that topic UM and how to
approach this, because collapse is a feeling, like it's a
feeling we all have, and it needs to be interrogated.
And I think your video is just a magnificent job
interrogating that feeling, right, thank you. I can't overemphasize how

(01:14:59):
important that is, because I I one of the major failings.
There were a number of victories for kind of anarchist thought,
particularly within the United States during the the insurrection last year,
one of its tremendous defeats is that it has become
characterized in a huge number of people's eyes as breaking

(01:15:20):
windows and and starting fires um. And yeah, that's a
lot of that is because the media is trash, um,
and it's trash it reporting on on all of this stuff.
But some of it is because a lot of people
have let that be their primary praxis UM. And that again,
I don't care about people breaking windows, I don't care

(01:15:42):
about people lighting dumpster fires, but if that's what you're
presenting to the world as your practice, that doesn't appeal
to people. And you have to um, because yeah, anarchism
is not just destructive, it is also constructive. The constructive
part we need to be boosting more than And there

(01:16:03):
were some, you know, from the context of Portland's some
really strong examples of that last year. The incredible amount
of mutual aid that was was put together aid of time. Yeah,
during the fire relief was was incredible. UM. And the
Red House, the the eviction defense occupation was a really
good repost to you know, the disaster that was the
Chaz in Seattle, that this was like, this was an

(01:16:26):
area that was temporarily autonomous from the police, that did
not collapse into violence, that succeeded in its goal, and
that cleaned up after itself and presented an option for
people like this is how it can look when we
try to evict people. You know, this is what can happen. UM.
So I think there I don't want to like be
too negative, but I think that a lot of folks

(01:16:46):
because of for a variety of reasons, you know, the
there's been so much focus on kind of the insurrection,
not even that because I think that building can be insurrectionist.
I think that se guerilla gardening can be profoundly insurrectionists.
It's like, destruction has an immediate result of making you
feel better, right, it has an immediate of endorphins and hormones.

(01:17:10):
It makes you happy when you do it. It's it,
it is it is an exhilarating act, and you feel
like you're accomplishing something. What's harder is to like have
that same feeling by doing seed bobbing right by by
actually like improving your community slowly through these types of
like so the park ideas, they don't have the same
immediate emotional reactions. So a lot of people like when
they you know, think about what insurrection is, they can

(01:17:32):
a default to this destructive pendency which destruction has its
time and place. Um, But if that's your only practice,
we're not gonna improve the world at all, Like, right,
that's that's not gonna do anything. Helping through you know,
giving out food, helping through giving out socks and clothes,
helping through all of these solar punk ways. These are

(01:17:52):
things that actually like are going to improve things on
a tangible level. They and they're gonna make more people
be like, oh, hey, what are the anarchists doing. That's
actually interesting versus oh, what are these anarchists are doing?
This is stupid? Ignore everything they say. Yeah, people have
to remember as well that, um, you know, there's seeds
I sort of funk in Kirp Potkins writ things, you know,
from the Conquest of bread to mutual aid, and those

(01:18:16):
are sort of things that should be just as emphasized
as the destructive, exhigerating aspects of anis. Yeah, there's a
line in a Frank Turner song, a couple of lines
actually in a song called nineteen thirty three that I
go back to a lot, but one of them is
you can't fix the world of all you have is
a hammer. And that's I guess what I see is

(01:18:36):
like the primary practical benefit of solar punk, just as
an aesthetic as a piece of fiction, is getting people
to expand their toolbox. Yeah, get yourself a trowel, you know,
some some screwdrivas, you know. Yeah, keep the hammer, you
need that sometimes too, but let's grab some other tools.

(01:19:00):
Expand the toolbox. Thing isn't really great metaphor this type
of thing. Yeah, Yeah, Um, I think that's most of
what we're going to get into today. Um, there's a
couple of pieces of things I would want to read.
One of them Isn't. This Isn't directly I think it
predates the solar punk but it it I think feeds
into some of what I think. It emotionally feeds into

(01:19:22):
a lot of what we're talking about here. It's an
essay from David Graber called The Shock of Victory UM,
which I think is really useful to me. Yeah. Um,
And I would also recommend um Corey doctor O's new
fiction novel walk Away UM, which I think is a
really wonderful piece. Was a wonderful, wonderful book. I should

(01:19:44):
have included my recommendations. It was really great. Yeah. I
read it recently and it made me, Um. It made
me feel the way like as a fiction writer that
a good piece of fiction should, which is like I
felt bad. Uh. I felt bad about out some of
the things that I had written, because there's there's there's
such there's so much more courage because I wrote a

(01:20:06):
piece of fiction that has some solar punk elements, has
some quasi utopian elements in the dystopia, but I didn't
have the courage to kind of go as far as
as Corey did, and to imagine a kind of passivism
that he he has the courage to kind of put
into the into the hands of his his protagonists. Like I,
I really respect that about the book. I mean, the

(01:20:28):
book goes in some very interesting eye directions as well,
but it's it's got some great ship um, and I
always enjoy Corey's Corey's lef of burning man. Um of
what it could be is kind of what the what
what some of it's turned into? But yeah, um, Andrew,
is there anything else you wanted to get into before

(01:20:48):
we we close this out? I just want to remind
people to check on your friends. M you know, Um,
we're all going through various stages of collaps as I
outlined in my video, and you know we shift between
them from time to time, so try not to go

(01:21:11):
through it alone. You know, there's no there's no eye
in Sula Punk. Yeah yeah, um check out st Andrew
on YouTube at st andrews Um. Um, Andrew, is there
any anything else you wanted to kind of plug from
your own your own personal work. Yeah? So, um, other

(01:21:32):
than the you know, the Sula Punk videos and the
collapse videos, I want to remind sorry, I rather I
want to shout out my video on black anarchism. I
think that is a pretty essential look into, uh the
history of black anarchism in the United States and in

(01:21:54):
the world. I also want to recommend um my video
on the psychology of authoritarian his own. I know a
lot of people have family members who are conservative or
on the right to will maybe leading fascist, and I
think I can to be helpful for you know, helping
them to or rather helping you to understand the way

(01:22:15):
they mindset side mm hm. And also, you know, check
out my video on puma Let's Sing. I think that
was a pretty fun one as well. It breaks down
a lot of it break breaks down how you can
go about implementing food forests or puma culture gardens wherever
you find yourself. Awesome, Um, thank you very much for

(01:22:39):
being on the show, Andrew, thank you all for listening.
We'll be back tomorrow, or if this comes out Friday,
we'll be back, you know, another day. We'll be back
at some point. You know, you know how this works.
You understand podcasts the art world, it is essentially a

(01:23:00):
money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off
people's walls. You know they don't even know or suspect
that they're fakes. I'm like Baldwin and this is a
podcast about deception, greed, and forgery in the art world.
You knew that the painting was fake. Um. Listen to

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(01:24:45):
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and make
sure you leave a review a podcast. All right, Chris,
you go, so welcome, Welcome to it could happen here

(01:25:05):
a podcast that I think, for the first time is
just me and Robert h. This is this is the
very first time that this is happening. You're You're all
here at a moment of legendary significance and historic importance.
So try to try to face it with the requisite
all that's all I ask, yes. And another thing that, man,
this is a terrible transition. Something else we're facing with

(01:25:27):
requisite awe is weird shortages of goods and price increases.
M So it's fucking rad. I was just at the
Asian market today, um, and they did not have the
snack chips that I most prefer now officially a calamity. Um,
we've entered crisis of historic proportion. Yeah, I think I

(01:25:51):
don't think we're going to live through this one. Nope,
we're doing We can't look at that without the Asian
snack chips, Like it's the ones that are like they're
like pieces of seaweed but that have been fried and
temper a batter's completely out tragic, absolutely tragifying. I think
there's a couple of things. I mean, you've got a script,
so I'll probably just let you do that in the

(01:26:12):
not too distant future. But one of the things that's
frustrating to me, although maybe it shouldn't be because I'm
probably partly responsible for this, is that this is being um,
this is often kind of being talked about with by
people online, is like, oh, it's a sign that like
society is crumbling. And what they mean by that is
that like, oh, well, we just don't have stuff, like

(01:26:33):
we're we're not able to like keep up with with
demand and like the ability to produce these things is crumbling.
And it's actually much more complex than that, and a
lot less rooted in a lack of specific resources and
more decisions made under capitalism about how the supply chain
would work, and it's I don't know. I think it's
important because it is you can say it still is
like a situation where this is an example of the

(01:26:56):
system falling apart, but it's not falling apart because we
don't have the paper to make toilet paper with. It's
falling apart because decisions were made in order to increase
the stock prices of companies by reducing the amount of
products that they kept on hand, and that's led to
an incredibly fragile system that that did nothing well but

(01:27:16):
maximize profits. And I think, well, okay, I think there's
there's there's a couple of things with that that we
should talk about. Yeah, because there's a lot of different
explanations they're floating around for why is happening, and I
think some of them are good, but I think a
lot of them are missing part of the story. And
I think it's important because so like, like my grandma
like called me yesterday, like like called our family to

(01:27:39):
like talk about the supply chain problem because someone had
like she'd been like fed a conspiracy theory that like
the shortages were because American dock workers like didn't want
to open containers from China. Yeah, it's like yeah, like
I mean, this is not that's not right. But it's
not like if that had happened, it would be like, well, okay,

(01:27:59):
that does scan like yeah, and I think yeah, and
like I think this is this is a moment where yeah,
you know, okay, think think things are not working how
they're supposed to. And there's a lot of sort of
competing stories about it, one which because on which are bad.
And I think most of the conventional accounts and whereber
It was talking about this, uh, you know, even the
really good ones, they start with sort of the eighties

(01:28:21):
Wall Street takeover of corporate America and the transformation of
sort of all corporate management into an attempt to like
raise short term stock prices. And you know, part of
this is lead in production and this is true, and
this is sort of true, but dismisses about half of
the story. And and the part of the story that
it misses that's really important, I think is the sort

(01:28:43):
of it's it's the broader like frame in which all
of this is happening in is essentially the story of
how the working class essentially loses the class war. In
the six season seventies and weirdly, it's also a story
about the co's boomerang, which you have. Yeah, yes, long,

(01:29:05):
throw in, throw in the music clip that we've all
decided is going to be the one we put in
whenever someone talks about foods boomerang, which is probably just
going to be another time machine noise. So real quick
Corse credit to Cody. Um, Okay, continue brief refresher on
what that is. So basically the free cost boomerang is that. Okay,

(01:29:27):
if if you if, if if a government does something
like repressive like technology, repressive technique or passive technology like
in a colony, like in a war somewhere, eventually it
will come back and be used against like the citizens
of that country. And yeah, a great example would be
fingerprinting was invented for the British, like policing um insurgents

(01:29:48):
in Malaysia, and is now has come back to every
you know, colonizing nation now uses fingerprinting, which is also
deeply flawed as a technology. But anyway, yeah, yeah, and
you know, and I think most people tend to think
about this as a armored personnel carriers. But we will
eventually get to this. The boomerang technology here is actually
shipping containers hell yeah, which have done like irreparable damage

(01:30:11):
to the mankind. Alright, alright, I'm ready for this. I
don't know much about this. Hit me, all right, bear
with you with this, because we're we're we're we're gonna
talk about two threads. They're going to seem like they
have nothing to do with supply chains, and then they're
all going to tie together. It turns out is literally
all supply chains. So in the citties and seventies, you have,

(01:30:32):
you know, in very very broad general strokes, you have
two kinds of class war. The first kind is what
I'm sort of very broadly calling the war and the factories.
And this is this is an enormous series that sort
of strikes outright uprisings a stretch from sort of Detroit
to tur into Tokyo. And you know, the most famous
of these is the student sort of worker uprising in

(01:30:52):
May sixty eight in France. And they you know, they're
they're they're close enough taking the country that like French
presis at Charles de Gaul, like flees in a helicopter
to in secret, and like flees to Germany in secret
and you know and that that that that's like a
big event, but it's sort of it sort of fades.
What doesn't fade is May sixty eight in Italy, and

(01:31:16):
you know that it doesn't fade there because Italy, Italy
has been in the middle of a strike wave since
two sixty four. It's the whole sixties that basically just
strik waves there and you know, they have their own
sixty and unlike in France where peters out, in Italy
you get the just incredibly named hot Hot Autumn of

(01:31:39):
sixty nine, which is a hot autumn. Yeah, it's it's great.
And so basically what happens is you get hundreds of
thousands of workers go on strike, they start seizing control
their factories, um and most of most of this is
playing out in in the Fiat factories. Yeah, it's giant

(01:32:00):
car factories in Italy's industrial triangle. And you know, I
mean they're there for like, they're there for a long time.
They're into like seventy and eventually they lose. But you know,
Italy is just sort of rocked by conflict and sort
of class war stuff, and all of this reculminates in
yet another enormous uprising in en seventies seven. This one

(01:32:22):
driven like in large part by people who we're basically
just like, funk this, I'm not working in the factory anymore.
It's awful, which which I think is something that like,
you know, if you're looking at the modern political landscape,
you have a bunch of people who are going like,
funk this, I'm not going to go like die in
these factories anymore. And those people all have in a

(01:32:44):
lot of cases, safer employing situations than many people today. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Like it's starting to get worse then, which is why
people are are frustrated. But like yeah, yeah, you know,
And and this is sort of interesting because is there
there's a kind of like Vicky Uster while I've had
on here, it calls it, it calls it like the

(01:33:05):
Monkeys Paul thing where it's like people in the seventies
and Italy wanted like autonomy and like freedom from work,
and so what what capitalism gave them was like, oh,
we'll give you autonomy, We'll just make you all contract workers.
And now like yeah, you don't you don't have to
like wake up every morning and like go to a
job in the factory and leave it five or whatever.
But now you just you know, you're you're a contract worker,
so you just have no stability whatsoever, and that that's

(01:33:26):
your autonomy. But you know, this, this is this is
really bad for the Italian ruling class. Like they almost
lose control of Italy three times in ten years, and
after a seventy seven they're just like fuck this, and they,
i mean, they started to start doing mass arrest. They
imprison like tens of thousands of people, the torture a
bunch of people, and you know, but it becomes clear

(01:33:50):
that like pure political repression is like not going to
be enough to like just destroy the section of the
working class movements that you know, God help you thinks
that you should like run production for themselves. And so
they start looking elsewhere for answers. And the place they
find these answers, weirdly enough, is in the second set

(01:34:10):
of wars that are going on in this period, which
are the sort of national liberation wars. And you know,
these are the national liberation wars. Are these these are
full scale, like these aren't sort of class warm metaphors.
These are you know, this is this is giddy be Saw,
This is Algeria and you know, importantly for for our purposes,
the US fights two of them, which is Korean Vietnam.

(01:34:34):
Now Korean Vietnam are strategically really bad places for the
US to fight wars, like they're on the other side
of the world, which you know, it makes it more
difficult to do war crimes because you know, if you're
fire bombing of village, right, you have to be able
to move fire bombs, jet fighters and like oil and

(01:34:55):
rations to the other side of the world. And this
is hard, as it carried about. It easier when they
can commit war crimes. And like I don't know, duloof, Yeah, yeah, well,
like even even like you know, you you got to
commit a war crime in Mexico, it's like, okay, you
just sign a bunch of people over the border. It
would be so easy to commit war crimes in Mexico. Yeah,
and and really really up our war crime quoti. Well,

(01:35:16):
I would say, we do do a lot of war
crimes in Mexico. It's just that like they're done based
on by proxies. That's true. But I mean we've filled
like we've killed like a million people there in the
last like twenty years, and the War on drugs. But yeah,
you knows, so the US, you know, the U s okay,
So it has this logistics problem. In logistics problem is

(01:35:36):
that it can't do war crimes enough, and so it
comes up with a couple of solutions to them. One
of them is essentially they rebuild the whole Japanese economy
in order to just use Japan's industrial base to fight
the war in Korea, and then after the war in
Korea ends, they rebuild the South Korean economy in order
to you know, fight the war in Vietnam. And this works,

(01:35:57):
but it doesn't solve the problem that you know, okay,
even even even if you're you know, you're you have
an industrial base in Japan, right, you still need to
be able to efficiently move things by sea to Korea,
and you know, you still need to still supplies you
need to move from the US. And so the solution
for this is containery shipping. And containery shipping. This is

(01:36:21):
the pivot point upon which the entire history of the
twentieth century and everything that's happening in the twenty one
century hinges on like this, this is the pivot and
you know, like I'm not even this isn't even really
an exaggeration, because it turns out that like the ability
to have uniform boxes that you can stack on top

(01:36:42):
of each other like legos and put on a ship
is like like it's like comparable to the nuclear bomb
in terms of how important it is, which is really
really used to the only way to get things from
A to B was a big wooden ship filled with
the bloons like pilet bags and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I

(01:37:02):
don't know, how did we like global commerce work before
shipping containers? What did we what did we literally like
you just like sometimes sometimes you would just like physically
people would just pick up the items and put them
on the ship, or they would like sometimes they put
them in boxes or like you would like strap them
to like the top of the ship. And so with
the UH trains a lot, they would just like strap

(01:37:26):
like machinery like onto a train car. And this was
like not this is like really inefficient, it's really so yeah,
and so the US in order to like do war
crimes in Korea, and then you know it's just like, oh, hey,
what if we just make metal boxes and then they
get they progressively get better and better at it, because

(01:37:46):
you know, they have to go do more war crimes
in in Vietnam. And but by the time you're getting
to the end, yeah, yeah, you know, look lots of
war crimes that do you need? You need good logistics
networks to do all of these war crimes. I mean,
it makes sense that that's where we got shipping containers.
But I didn't realize. I had just assumed it would
have come out of the shipping industry as opposed to
like we had to get more missiles over to these places. Yeah,

(01:38:10):
well this is the interesting thing. We'll get to this
in a bit. But basically, like a lot of the
logistics revolution stuff either comes out of the military or
is developed by X fascists and and and a lot
of the reason for this is Okay, I mean this
is you know, this is the seventies. They're still are
indeed happening like this still actual research and developments. But

(01:38:31):
the military is doing just an enormous amount of the
research development for all of global capitalism. And you know,
and and and the other thing, Yes, what's happening here?
And you know this this is the sort of boomerang
thing is that you know, so the container is shipping
logistics stuff that had been used to just like obliterate

(01:38:52):
the global South suddenly starts spreading into capital, like you know,
just into like broader shipping because people look at this
and they're like, oh, this is a fish. And then
the contracting companies the US is using. This turns into
the solution to both sort of the war and the
factories are talking about in in in Europe and the
US and in Japan itself, and then also to the
solution of the national liberation movements and sort of like

(01:39:14):
communism in East Asia because you know, Okay, so you
have this question, right the US, like we kind of
fight to a draw in Korea, like we kill a
norm's number of people, but the North Korea, yeah, and
like yeah, but we don't really win, right, like we
we we can't actually defeat the Chinese army or yeah,

(01:39:36):
and and you know, and we lose Vietnam. And so
the question is, okay, so like how how are we
going to stop communism? And the answer, it turns out,
is to just integrate integrate the communist countries into the
capitalist supply chain. And I mean there's a lot of
examples of this, like market Thatcher, for example, is like
very good buddies with Nikolai chessqu Ah. That's nice. They
could be friends despite their the fact that they yeah,

(01:40:00):
well I guess they weren't really that different as people, No,
not really like ba. Basically the difference is that Ky
lost and thus got like murdered on state television on
a state funeral treatment. That's the official stance they should
for stuff we will talk about in a bit. But yes,

(01:40:23):
but you know, the archetypal example of this is actually China.
And you know there's a lot of various sort of
skilled diplomatic work by Kissinger and also the US like
throughout the seventies just like they're just like sending entire
factories to China, like like the like they'll they'll they'll
take an entire factory, break it down, put it in
boxes and then just like ship at the China great

(01:40:46):
at the time. And yes, so yeah, they're they're they're
just like sending technology of China. And the end result
of this is that you know, China goes from like
fighting American troops with like like do banit charges like
three yeah yeah against the Yeah. I was just like

(01:41:07):
yeah to to you know, being an American ally in
like invading Vietnam as a way to like stick it
to the Soviets basically, and so, you know, so the
uses sensely just integrates China to the global supply chain,
and they eventually do the same thing to Vietnam, which
again is another country that they couldn't defeat militarily. But
what they you know what they actually beat them with.
It's a shipping container. And before the shipping container, this

(01:41:29):
would have been impossible, right, like basically it was too
inefficient and too expensive, like the cost of shipping was
too high to have all of this production, you know,
like some half your parts made in China, some of
them made India's on them made in like Japan's one
of the maiden Korean and then shipped them all around
the world, which is how the modern system works. But
with with container I shipping, suddenly shipping is really cheap

(01:41:51):
and it becomes much cheaper to pay shipping costs it
is to pay labor costs. And this is the solution
to to the sort of war in the factories. Know,
if if workers start making too much noise about pay
or like again a god forbids start talking about like
taking control of factories and running the democratically like some
kind of anarchist monsters. Corporation can just move the factories overseas,

(01:42:12):
and this becomes an incredibly effective way to just destroy
the labor movement because anytime, you know, organized labor starts
making demands, you can be like, well, okay, sorry, we're
just gonna pack up and we're gonna you know, we're
gonna go to China, We're gonna go to somewhere else.
And this coincides with, you know, the thing, the thing
that gets talked about a lot in the conventional accounts,
which is the Wall Street sort of corporate takeover, well,

(01:42:34):
the Wall Street takeover of corporate America, which is something
I think that sounds really weird to us now, but
you know, the whole the whole story here is really
interesting and extremely long and if if you want to
like have a very detailed account of how this all
played out, The book Liquidated by Karen Hoe is just incredible,

(01:42:58):
like ethnography and his stree of Wall Street. She like
she's a karent hous'n athropologist, and she like went and
worked on Wall Street and like did ethnography there for
a bit and it's very interesting stuff. But it's kind
of outside of our scope. So the very very very
short version is that the Wall Street bankers basically figure
out a way to just like buy out corporations to

(01:43:22):
raise a bunch of money and just entirely buy out corporations.
And then once they have the corporation, right, what what
what what the you know? This is corporate rating. So
they're they're they're they loot all the assets, they sell
it off, and they try to sell off their stock
at a higher price. The parcels of this is sort
of complicated, but the net result of this is that
Wall Street completely takes over the corporate world in the
way they hadn't before. Like the Wall Streets, the Wall

(01:43:43):
Street like finance people are now you know, they're there
are people making off the decisions, and you know, and
and they're they're only goal is to raise the stock price,
like that's that's the only thing they care about. That
they don't they don't even care about making money. Right
if if you lose money and your stock price still rises,
like you don't care. And those guys start looking at

(01:44:04):
a lot of the things that had existed in corporations
before that, things like pensions, uh particularly things like research
and development. They look at it and go, Okay, why
are we spending money on R and D? Like this,
This doesn't this doesn't raise our stock price, This doesn't
have any immediate shorter and value. So they cut it right,
They start cutting pensions. They starts just destroying the unions.
And you know, and and because because this is happening

(01:44:26):
at the same time as corporations really like get the
ability to outsource for the first time, you know, they
lean into it and they start essentially we're just just
slashing the aount of people who work for the company,
right and so you know, and so and instead of
having direct employees, they start working with contractors, and they
start moving to the contractors overseas, and you know, and

(01:44:48):
and this is this is where we get to sort
of this whole outsourcing wave because you know, something I
don't think I talked about enough withoutsourcing is why actually
are the labor costs lower in the countries that these
people are are moving their factories to. H And part

(01:45:09):
of it is, you know, people talk about development like
they're moving to undeveloped countries, and you know, part of
part of part of development is just you know, how
much technological capacity their manufacturing system has, right, and that
you know. But but the other part of it is
that if you move your production to say Columbia, right
or like you know, you're investing in sort of like
cocoa bean farming in Columbia and people try to do

(01:45:32):
you need organizing, you can hire des squads to murder them. Yeah,
and yeah, yeah, it's like you can basically just sort
of like you can you can outsource the violence, and
you can you can you know, the corporate term for
it is reducing labor costs, but really what you're doing
is just like murdering people with death squads and terrorizing them,
and you know that that does lower labor costs, right,
But you know, and I think there's there's another example

(01:45:54):
of this, Like this is a lot of what like
the killing at Tienamen was really ab out it was
you know, not so much in Tianna Square itself. I
talked about the elseware, but like the workers that they
kill outside of the square, like a lot of the
reason they're doing very little about Tinament Square other than
like protesters China government bad. The guy stands up the

(01:46:18):
tank and then yeah, yeah, yeah, I've talked about this elsewhere.
More like the very short version is, so there's a
bunch of students in the square, right, and the students
in the square itself like basically they kind of went
democracy and mostly they want like market reforms to go faster.
But then outside of the square, you know, fijings like

(01:46:40):
whole working class shows up and there's these enormous demonstrations.
They basically start like like barricading, like blocks and blocks
and blocks and like this radius outside of the street.
You get this sort of like mini commune thing. And
those guys are like, you know, like they're they're they're
advocating for democracy and the factory like they're you know,
they're they're talking about things like like they're they're like that,

(01:47:05):
you know, they they they they they have their like
marks out and they're talking about how like they're they're
they're calculating their rate of surplus value that's being extracted
from them by the capitalists. And those are the people,
like almost everyone who dies at Chanta man Is is
from those guys, Like those are the people that they
just get massacred. And you know, and and the reason
that happens is that the CCP is looking at this

(01:47:26):
and it's like, okay, this, this is this is like this,
this is sort of this is the return of organized labor,
and we need to destroy it before it like gets anywhere.
And so they do, and organized labor and China just implode.
I mean it was already pretty weak because you have
a lot of state controlled unions, but I mean now
it's just nothing. And you know, and and and there,

(01:47:47):
I mean there have been attempts to labor organizing and
China sort of recently, and like yeah, this needs to
be just rest everyone, right, and so you know this,
this this is how this is. This is the price
of cheap labor, right, it's just incredible state repression. But
this is also you know, and this is this is
a sort of like macro scale thing of why the
supply chains suck because everyone talks about like the efficiency

(01:48:07):
of the supply change, but the supply chains aren't efficient.
They make no sense, right if if if what you're
trying to do is move something quickly from points A
to point B, they make no sense because you know,
the supply chaine are spread all over the world, like
in individual parts are being made in six countries, right,
you have like people will like for tax dodge purposes,

(01:48:30):
Like they'll have one part of a component's built in
one country, and then they'll move it from another country
to have another part of it, and then they'll ship
all of it to Mexico and they'll ship it across
the border and they'll have the whole thing be assembled
in the USC they can say it was made in
the US. Like, there's all of these things that are
just just nonsense right there. They're not they're not efficient
at all. It's it's completely ridiculous. It's it's this just
you know, it's just completely absurd web. And and the

(01:48:52):
reason why it is designed like this is as as
a giant sort of kind of unsurgency thing. Like the
reason the reason the supply chains are are just bad
is because there, you know, they they they're not designed
to move things that they're designed as an instrument to
just like solve the problem of of of of class

(01:49:12):
power right there there there, they're designed destroy unions. Are
designed to make sure that nobody ever sort of like
gets any ideas about whidges, to make sure nobody gets
any ideas about like taking anything. And so you know,
but in this this this can work for a while.
The problem is again, like they're not efficient. It's it's

(01:49:33):
just it just it is not efficient to like move
have everything made in like six countries and then you
have to send them somewhere else. Yeah, and so you know,
it's efficient in the sense that it efficiently maximizes the
value of stock prices for like stock by backs and stuff.
And that's generally what is meant by like efficiency in
that sense is like what makes the seventy people who

(01:49:56):
actually own this company the most money. That's the efficient thing.
But it's it's horribly inefficient in every practical sense of
the word. And and and that this is kind of
an interesting change because I mean, you know this this
isn't to say that like the supply chains that worked
before this were like better, because they also sucked in
a lot of their own ways. But all of the
like efficiency stuff that we're about to talk about with

(01:50:17):
just just in time production, etcetera, etcetera, Like you know
what isn't produced just in time? Sorry, it isn't add
right time. Yeah, they're they're they're they're not produced just
in time anymore because the supply chains falling apart. It's
that's what that is our promise about our sponsors is that, uh,
they're they're not at all in time. Who knows when

(01:50:39):
they'll get your products to you. There's no way to tell.
It's impossible to know. We're back, Yeah, we're back to
talk about how, you know, having having developed an entire
network of extremely inefficient supply chains that just absolutely suck
and don't make any sense. Uh, people tried to make
them efficient. And this this is where we go back

(01:50:59):
to Japan, because Japan, you know, I guess this is
this is this is the other Forks boomerang, which is
that you know, okay, so we we we industrialized Japan
in order to like fighter colonial wars, right, but then
you know, this turns into this huge like Pikachu face
moment when Japan suddenly starts like industrializing more efficiently than

(01:51:22):
the US does. It's very funny. And then and writes
a bunch of books that are the premise of all
of them. Is Japan scary? Yeah, it's very funny. Yeah,
you know, like this is interesting. Is this is an
interesting thing here, which is that like all of the
panic around China, there was exactly the same panic like

(01:51:42):
around Japan in the like the seventies, and it's exactly same,
like right down to like a bunch of socialists going like, hey,
look this this is a model for anti capitalism. Like
people people said that about the Japanese model, and it's
like it's it's all, it's all the same thing. It's
just it's just happening again. But you know what, what
what what What Japan did, and specifically, what Toyota does
is create this thing called the Toyota production system, which

(01:52:05):
eventually becomes known as just in time production. And this
if you've read anything about sort of the modern supply
chain problems, you've almost certainly heard of just in time
production or or leading production, and just in time and
lean production are technically difference, but the differences don't matter
for us. So yeah, and and this this stuff is

(01:52:26):
derived from what Toyota was sort of doing in the
post war era. And basically the goal of it is
you're you're never supposed to have any inventory that's just
sitting there, so that the whole distant supposed to be
constantly the whole system is supposed to be constantly in motion.
So you have parts come in, they get put into

(01:52:47):
their immediately get put into the production line and the
finished products immediately shipped out to the stores. And you know,
the theory is that the stores are only going to
carry exactly enough product to meet demands. And it's supposed
to be quote unquote flexible, which means that it can
react to shifts in consumer taste and demand by like
increasing or decreasing production, and it can't do this. This
is what we've been seeing for the entirety of COVID,

(01:53:09):
which is that you know that this is this is
why every time there's a run of toilet paper, everyone
runs out of toilet paper, because it turns out that
these systems can't even a ten percent increase just completely
obliterates this entire system and it just collapses and can't
produce enough toilet paper. Yeah, and again just because it's
expensive to store things. It's pricy. This is a big
part of like why actually, the John Deer strike, which

(01:53:31):
has the potential to disrupt the status quote movement more
than any strike in recent history, um is so potent
because John Deere tractors are kind of a necessary part
of the agriculture industry, not just their ability to sell
new tractors, but their ability to repair the extant tractors.
Like if harvest season comes around and there's not spare

(01:53:52):
parts to repair tractors that break, like food doesn't get harvested,
it's a significant issue. John Deer. We'll talk more about
this in another day. But like, not only did the
most that they could do to squeeze their employees to
suck out pensions, to cut you know, expenditures on wages,
but they they set up their factories in such a
way that there was no extra space, so they could

(01:54:14):
not scale up any of these factories to increase demand
when they needed to. So that now that John Deere's
going on strike, if they lose a month of productivity,
they can't ever catch up. It's impossible because they can't
actually expand the productive capacity of their factories. And because
the strike is hitting, they didn't have any extra spare
parts lying around, So if ship gets broken, they can't

(01:54:35):
manufacture the parts necessary to keep tractors functioning in a
lot of American farms because they didn't store anything, because
that was not the most efficient thing for the economic
bottom line of the CEO who gets a hundred and
sixty million dollars a year. And anyway, this is this
is the funny part about this whole thing, which is
that you know, okay, so this whole supply chain system
was based around just like destroying destroying the organized working class, right,

(01:54:58):
But it's like they were so successful at it that
they've like turned around and fucked themselves with it because
like you know, this this is this is the thing
about about the John Deer strike. Right. It used to
be you know, back back back if you look at
like like how how the unions were broken in the eighties,
or like if you look at like the giant like
auto strikes you'd have in the seventies, right, and companies

(01:55:21):
still do this to this day, but like there worst
at it. The thing they would do is so okay,
So you you you know, if you're a company, you
know roughly when a strike is gonna happen, right. And
the reason you know when a strike is gonna happen
is because in the US, like the way labor law
works is that like you can you can basically only
strike like when a contract is up. I mean you

(01:55:41):
can do wildcats, but it's illegal. But you know, okay,
so they knew that the audio unions, for example, we're
about to go we're going to go on strike. When
when the contracts like was was coming up, and you know,
they'd have spies, and you can get a sense of like,
you know, okay, so are are how likely are they
to do this strike? And you know so so that

(01:56:02):
that that lets you do things like build up an
enormous sort of inventorio spare parts. It lets you build
up an inventory of supplies, and it lets you build
up you know it basically, it lets you build up
the capacity you need to outlast a strike. But the
problem with just in times, they can't do that anymore
because yeah, they they've they've you know, they've they've completely
fucked themselves by by then the John Deer situation because

(01:56:25):
they hadn't strike, the workers hadn't had gone on strikes
since eighties six. They've been putting funds into their strike
survival fund for years, but the company had nothing like
has Um. It's rather and this is you know this,
this is the other part of of of why everything
like good that's happening right now is happening is that

(01:56:46):
they they they you know, they everything has circled back
around and suddenly all of these companies are you know,
we are incredibly vulnerable to strikes again, because yeah, as
you're talking about the just in time production thing, it
all only works if if everything actually comes in on time, right,
Like if if if any if any individual part is late,

(01:57:07):
the whole system starts to fall apart. And then and
then you can't repair it. And you know, and there's
there's a lot of ways that that this this this
can be very bad. Um. You know, we've talked about
the John we talked about the labor stuff. The other
big thing that's happening is COVID, which has happened and
continues to happen and has killed off just enormous parts

(01:57:27):
of the working class. I mean it's like four million
dead worldwide or something. And again that that's also probably
an undercount because that's just direct. Guess that's not like, yeah,
it's probably like twice that it's i mean, we're looking
at a minimum of seven in the US, and again
that's probably a million undercounted at least. Yeah, it's it's
a horror show, right, And and the people they killed

(01:57:49):
with that, you know, like especially in the initial phases,
like it was just it was just that they took
a chained chainsaw to the working class. And those are
a bunch of people who know that they're they're not replaceable.
They're they're very highly skilled and they do a bunch
of jobs that absolutely suck. And now you know, and

(01:58:09):
one of one of the places that this this has
caused a bunch of problems is in the ports because
the other thing that this entire supply gamber relies on
is being able to very quickly and cheaply moved parts
from you know, China to the US, from China to Mexico,
from like Bangladesh too. Like symbolia, you have, you have,
you have, you have to be able to continuously like

(01:58:29):
keep moving stuff around in in Yeah, you have to
continuously keep moving ships around. And you also have to
be able to load noneload them. And we you know,
we we we saw like there there was the that
when that ship got stuck in the Suez. There is
that whole yeah that you know that that that was
sex asses where where when people couldn't get sex asses

(01:58:52):
because the world's supply of sex asses for months was
on that one ship. Um, it was a real crisis
for the sex ass community. Those are plastic ascis that
you have sex with if you're curious. Yeah, it is.
The world appears as an immense collection of commodities, some

(01:59:12):
of which are sex asses. Yeah, most of which, in
terms of the ones that matter, sex asses. Yes, sex
ass industrial complex is really the lynchpin of global capital.
But please continue. Yeah, well, you know, but the sex
assi indictual complex falls apart. And you know, and it's
not just the ship being stuck in the sis like
made everything way worse, right, But it was very funny, Yeah,

(01:59:34):
it was. It was extremely funny, but it's extremely funny.
The part of the thing that is like not very
funny is that, like, okay, so in order to getting
this to work right, you have to have a bunch
of longshoremen. You have to unload all of the ship mhm.
And you know, one of one of the problems that
is that is happening in the sort of global supply
chain right now is that the ships can't be unloaded

(01:59:55):
fast enough. And part of this is like this job sucks,
and people just a lot of people don't want to
do it, and a lot of people died and in
the and it's causing this huge problem and and there's
and then there's there's another you know, if you want
to take like the macrospective about this, it's that this
whole system is relying on logistics workers and so it
also needs you know, you need truck drivers. And we're

(02:00:18):
coming back and you know in the US, is that
there's yeah, you know, there's there's a sort of a
truck drivers now because again their job sucks and they've
been like just absolutely screwing these people over for decades
and decades and decades now and turn into the subcontractors
just not paying them, and you know, and and this
and when you know, when the when the ports shut down,
like not even shut down, like when when the ports

(02:00:39):
are behind unloading stuff and when the trucks like that
are supposed to be moving this stuff, they aren't off
of them, and like the cost of that increases, it
throws off the whole system. And that's that's another big
part of like why this whole thing is is sort
of imploding. And and it's interesting because I remember this.

(02:01:01):
There was like a decade where like every other article
we'll be talking about how they were going to like
automate like truck driving. It was like the truck drivers
are all going to go out of business because they're
going to automated. It just never happened at all. And
say the same thing with with there. You know, there's
I mean, there's been some port automization, but like not
on the scale that you know, actually does anything. And

(02:01:23):
part of the reason for that is, you know, I
was talking about people not investing in research developments. Yeah,
so the biggest people who aren't doing that are the
shipping companies. And that's a good time because the shipping
cup basically like container shipping, has been taken over by
was essentially just like a monopoly of two companies. And
those two companies make just an indescribable amount of money.

(02:01:44):
They have like a thousand percent profits and they just
pay it all out as dividends. And so they're not
you know, they're not investing in any port infrastructure, they're
not investing automation. They're just pocketing the money. And that
means that you know, we have all that and they're
they're spending in in the case of John Deere, which
keep going back to a bunch of money lobbying to
make it illegal for farmers to repair uh their tractors. Yeah, yeah,

(02:02:06):
they're there. You know, they they figured they figured out
that like the the easiest way to make money is
just get the state to shake people down for you.
It's like, fuck like investing in in making anything that
we have better. Let's just you know, like let's just
turn the state into a deck collector. And and it's
interesting because so this, this is the part of of

(02:02:27):
the supply chain crisis that like Biden has been focusing on.
But Biden's plan, Biden's plans great. Biden's plan is literally
make the longshoremen work harder. So his plan is here,
we go, there, we go, there, we building back better. Baby. Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna make We're gonna keep the ports
open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,

(02:02:50):
and like make people work weekends now. And then he
also got FedEx, Walmart and Ups to do twenty four
hour or seven day a week shipping. So yeah, the
sally is literally just like feed more workers into a
grinder and make them work longer, which is which is
great and and you know will not in any way backfire. No,

(02:03:11):
it's fine. I don't even think we should be talking
about it. No, it's great, it's gonna, it's it's yeah,
it's you know but I get like this is the thing,
Like this won't work and it can't and the reason
it won't work is that, like part of the reason
there's a shortage is that you know, it's it's not
it's not just about the like the fact that people
aren't paying enough. It's about the fact that these jobs

(02:03:33):
are just awful. Like you have people, you have people
working like twelve hours shifts that start at like six
am and then they have to wake another twelve hour
shift in hours later, and that these people have them
can do this over and over and over again and
it's well, and they don't like the way that these
shifts are usually put on them is that, like you'll
find out when you come in that instead of working
six am to four pm or whatever, they're actually gonna

(02:03:56):
need you to stay until eight and then they're gonna
need you to come in. By the way, you're gonna
need to come in like two hours early tomorrow. So
you're realized that like in between your two shifts, you
have a total of eight hours to get home and sleep.
And if you say no, uh uh, well, the idea
is that if you say no, like you won't have
the job. It's required now, the reality is that most
of these companies are also pretty desperate to have these workers,

(02:04:18):
and a lot of these manufacturing and packing firms, it
takes time to train people up and then they quit
a couple of weeks in because the work is miserable
and the schedule is fucking miserable. Um, and it's yeah,
it's all, it's it's it's it's simultaneously like deeply inhuman,
but also is leading to a situation. There's a reason
why there's so many strikes on right now is that

(02:04:39):
there is opportunity because in sort of the chasing of
short term profits, a lot of these fucking oligarchs have
exposed themselves in a in a pretty vulnerable position. Yeah,
and I think you know this, this is coming back
to a sort of the other way that when when

(02:05:00):
there was a crisis in in the seventies, the other
way they saw this was just authoritarianism, right, it was
you know, is this is the pinos a solution, right, like, oh,
like workers are using control compromids, Okay, we'll just shoot them,
right and yeah, and yeah, and this is you know,
they're they're they're finally running into a point where you know,
this is this is the solution they've been trying to

(02:05:21):
do now with with with this crisis is you know,
the the they're relying on the fact that just the
workplace is just indescribably authoritarian. I mean, it's it's like
it's it's it's a dictatorship on a scale that is
like like even to like the most despotic absolute monarch
is just like unimaginable, Like your boss gets to control

(02:05:44):
like when you ship, like they get a control, when
you eat, they get a control exactly what you're doing,
like at all times, they get control when you do it,
they get a control like when the next time you're
going to do it is. They don't even have to
tell you when it's going to be and tell like
you show up and you know, for the this is
this is this has been the gamble for for you know, capitalism,

(02:06:08):
the tire existence, which is that like you just have
to take this and eat ship or they get to
take away your ability to eat, get medical care and
have a place to leave to live. But that's not
true anymore. Like you can just say no, you can
tell them to funk off. You can you know you can,
you can you can organize a union. You can just
fucking just leave your job, like, just leave it, fucking

(02:06:32):
walk out. And this is why we focus. I mean,
this is number one why within the context of unions,
strike funds are so important, but also why mutual aid
is so important. Is it it potentially when organized well enough,
provides people with the option to like, well, how are
you going to feed yourself? Well, there's people in my
community who want to make sure that I'm fed because
they believe in what I'm striking for. Um, that's the
promise of all of that. That's the practical behind the

(02:06:54):
kind of high minded you know anarchists, uh, just you
know whatever. Theorizing is the ability that like, well this
actually is a weapon too. Yeah, and I think you
know what else is a weapon? Chris are product. I
hope we're not being sponsored some I hope we are. Chris. Look,

(02:07:17):
I've I've said before for weapons, I'll read any ad
for a weapons manufacturer as long as they send me
some weapons. So come on, guys, get on it. You
could uh, you could be you could be in the
middle of this conversation raytheon, you know, send me a
couple of missile guidance chips. Lockheed Martin. You know you
want to give me an F thirty five, we'll we'll
plug you. You know. That's what's that's that's the deal.

(02:07:40):
That's how it works. Baby. All right, we're back. Hopefully,
hopefully you have now heard the advertisement for knife missile
to knife missile harder now with like five knives that
I am not making. It actually exists. Yeah. People keep
being surprised that the R nine X is a real thing.
And yeah, but there's another one. There's there's one with
more knives. They put more knives. We do you You're

(02:08:02):
not gonna look again, you can't. It's like with Apple products, right,
planned obsolescence is a critical You have to You can't
just rest on your laurels. You're gonna run out of money.
So you've gotta make another knife missile with a couple
of more knives. Yeah, just keep keep adding knives. Nothing
can ever go wrong. Do not ask any questions about

(02:08:22):
why you're developing knife missiles. Send me one and like
a drone or three. Swear to God, I'll use it
for legal purposes. Yeah. So, I guess the last thing
that I that's that's really interesting about this moment that
doesn't usually happen is that you know, okay, so if

(02:08:46):
if you, if you, if you, if you, you read
your very basic marks, right. One of the things Mark
talks about is that there's this thing called the reserve
Army of labor, which is it's just like, you know,
there's a bunch of people who are just always unemployed
and they get along by doing sort of like odd jobs,
like you know, like my, my, my quintessential person for
this is like if you ever go on a subway,

(02:09:07):
there's you know, it's it's the guy selling candy bars
in the subway. Yeah, right, it's people who quasi legal
you know, sometimes they just kind of like doing whatever,
you know, we call them. In the West Coast, you
have a lot of those, like yeah, people who tream
marijuana for a couple of months and then just kind
of like crashing you know, camp sites the rest of
the year or whatever. Like yeah, there's a bunch of

(02:09:28):
those folks for sure. Yeah. And you know, and like
the the the number of these people who have been
just like kicked out of like the formal labor system
has been increasing for a long time. But what's interesting
about this moment is that you know, every every strike
you see, has a second strike behind it, and that
strike is the informal general strike, which is just again

(02:09:49):
people just quitting their jobs and leaving. And you have
this weird moment where where normally the sort of reserve
army of labor is this thing that like capitalism can
always sort of rely on as a way to sort
of solve its problems because it's like, oh, well, all right,
if if you're not gonna do this job, we can
bring another person. But you know this, this is a
weird moment where like the reserve army of labor is

(02:10:10):
like fighting on our side. Mm. And the fact that
all of these people are just like, you know, they're
seeing the just incredible authoritarianism of these workplaces that's just
horrific abuse. The fact that you know they're they're being
in a lot of cases just asked to show up
and die and they're saying no is a really sort

(02:10:34):
of is a really incredibly powerful thing. And when when
when you add that to the fact that you know,
all these companies have completely screwed themselves with how they
designed the supply chains or it's it's all it's all
come back around and suddenly all all the supply chain,
stuff that they carefully laid out over decades and decades
decades is a way to just like break the union
movement and make sure nobody ever asked for more wages.

(02:10:55):
You know. It's it's it's it's it's been revealed to
be incredibly fragile and you know, week to our attack,
and that leads us, I think to this other tension
in Biden's plan to sort of like revive the economy,
which is that so the US technically speaking has this
like very large central planning capability, but it only has

(02:11:18):
it to like build weapons. So you know, like the
army has this incredible ability like that. There there's a
lot of bullets, you know it despite the huge stress
on the bullets supply chain, it really has scaled. You know,
the prices have increased, but we're we're still still still
getting bullets. America is great at making bullets. Yeah, it's

(02:11:40):
less great at keeping tractors working, but it'll be a problem. Yeah.
Then you're like even if you remember at the beginning
of the pandemic, it was like the US just couldn't
produce masks, like we said, we we never we never
like did that, right, Like that like the government never
at any point was like we're just gonna make mass
given the people. They just never did it. And so
you know, our mass supply all those quy tions suck.

(02:12:01):
And the only way that like the states can intervene
and get the supply chains to work is by doing
one of two things. It's by either doing a thing
Biden was doing, which is just go to a bunch
of companies and tell them to make all of their
workers work harder, which is the thing that like, you know,
totally won't backfire or explode in his face. And then
the second thing is for Biden basically to like do

(02:12:26):
all this saber rattling about how we have to have
like medical supply chains in the US because national defense
or something, and that's the second thing he's trying to do.
But you know that just that just makes the problem worse,
right because once you, once you lose the ability to outsource,
you you lose the hammer even beating the unions with

(02:12:46):
and so you know, all all of the sort of
all of the tendencies that are you know, making things
like bad and scary right now are also weirdly making
this you know the fact that prices are rising right,
the fact that there's all these shortages, it's it's it's

(02:13:08):
making this like the best moment two you know, it's
it's it's making this the best moment that and that
anyone's had in ages to actually try to make something better. Yeah,
and and and the important thing is we're starting to
see it happen. And yeah, and we're we're we're we're
gonna talk more about St. October and sort of the

(02:13:30):
strike wave and the coming you know, weeks and months.
But yeah, we're gonna we're gonna be hitting this pretty hard,
even just next week. Um, we have a lot of
stuff in the pipeline. Kind of wish we've gotten to
it earlier, but there's a lot of stuff to talk
about in the world happening that that's within our milieu.
It turns out when you're when you're specific focus is
things falling apart, Uh, you're always behind uncovering all the

(02:13:53):
things that are falling on the mark. But I think
it is a good time to to drive this to
a close, to drag this episode out behind the farm
the barn, and and and shoot it and bury it
in a shallow grave and and break its bones with
the hammers that the police can't identify it. Chris, Um,

(02:14:13):
thank you for putting this together. I got anything anything
else to say? Uh, quit your job, you or you
and or unionize your workplace and or take it over
and run it yourselves, because Lord knows, the people who
are telling you what to do just literally do not
care if you die. Yeah, and I mean with with that, sorry, no, no,

(02:14:37):
no no, I was just gonna Uh, I don't know
what I was gonna do, Chris, I don't know what
I was gonna do. Do do Go go do something.
You know you're you're listening to things, Go do something. Yeah,
and and yeah, and if you want to listen to us,
do more things. We are allegedly allegedly we we we

(02:14:58):
are at cool zone media on the Twitter and and
the You can't prove that in court, it's true. Good luck,
good luck to them and trying to forgere if that
we did this. Yeah, that's right. Motherfucker's all right. Uh
uh I call the Union Hall as his amount of

(02:15:25):
life and death. I think these people of planning to
kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin Luther King
was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named
James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty to the
crime and spent the rest of his life in prison.
Case closed right James hil Ray was upon for the

(02:15:47):
official story. The authorities would parade all we found a
gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham the killed
Dr King, Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King.
One of the problems that came out when I got
the Ray case was that some of the evidence, as
far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances.

(02:16:10):
This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now.
Listen on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Give us over attention. We
need everything you've got fast. Waiting on Reparations would be
the podcast. Tune in every Thursday, politics and wordplay. We
fight for the people because they got us in the

(02:16:31):
worst way. From the Hill Cooper, the bomb bay Ton,
from the left on Clay to what the neo kanse
Every Thursday, the heavy conversation and to break us off
with some break because we're waiting. Listen to Waiting on
Reparations on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Conquer your new year's resolution

(02:16:53):
to be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In
each bite sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert
Laura vander Can teaches you how to make the most
of your time both at work and at home. These
are the practical suggestions you need to get more done
with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our body
strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental

(02:17:15):
equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you
get your podcasts. Excellent work, Chris, that's good. That's good.
That's the kind of a tonal grunting that people have
come to express respect from the introductions of my podcast.

(02:17:38):
I was hoping it wouldn't be that, but then it
was so bad that it was great thrill. That's our brand.
Now it can't be anything else. We've We've established it. Look,
nobody else is doing that. The Cometown guys, I assume
aren't a totally grunting to start their podcast. I don't know, actually,
but I assume not. What is the this podcast? I

(02:18:00):
guess this is just how we start. It could happen.
Here is a podcast you don't sound like you believe
it enthusiastically, Chris with feeling. This is a podcast happening here.
That yeah, excellent, that's how we do it. Okay, what
are we talking about today? Well, one of the things

(02:18:22):
that is happening here, as we have discussed briefly in
previous episodes, is a bunch of strikes. And with us
today to talk about one of these stripes, specifically the
Collogue strike. Is Mel Buer, an independent researcher, educator, and
freelance journalists based in Omaha, Nebraska, where this particular strike
is taking place, who has done done a lot of

(02:18:45):
journalism previously on the local Protestant uprising the street and
is also researching and writing a book on alternative media. Hi. Hello,
we welcome to the show Strikes Strikes apparently is what's up?
It is? It is Strictober. We're doing strikes strike wave baby. Ye.

(02:19:09):
So this this specific strike, Um, why don't can you
can you walk us through a bit about how we
got to the point where this Kellogg factory is on strike? Um? Well,
first off, it's four plants. It's all for American Kellogg
cereal plants have gone on strike. Um, the workers and

(02:19:29):
these plants are represented by the bakery, confectionery tobacco workers
in grain Miller's International Union. I do love that bakriyes
and tobacco workers are in the same union. Yeah that's
rat Yeah yeah. So UM their contract was up for
renegotiation in actually UM and UM due to a series

(02:19:52):
of weird things happening, they pushed the negotiations to UM.
They renegotiate their contract every five years, UM and at
stake this year UM was a sort of pushing back
against a recently introduced to tier employment system that they

(02:20:13):
company sort of strong armed the union into, which essentially,
UH is not it's not a good deal for anyone. UM.
In they pushed in this sort of two tier system
where one tier is a lower transitional tier and one
tier is a legacy or full time employee tier. UM.

(02:20:36):
And what it is is that you know, it amounts
to a difference of twelve bucks an hour and less benefits. Yes, yes, UM.
Dan Osborne recently did an interview with Max Salvarez at
Working People podcast and he really kind of talked about
exactly what was going on there. UM. And you know,

(02:20:57):
there's fourteen d people who work in four plants there
is about four employees at the Omaha plant, which has
been around for decades. And UM, Essentially, what this tier
system does is it's capped at their union workforce, and
the whole idea is as these full time employees retire

(02:21:18):
or quit, then these transitional employees will sort of be
funneled into the full time tier. Right over the last
five years, that hasn't really happened really at all. Um.
It was a bad deal from the start according to
many of the workers who sort of felt like they,
you know, they were backed into a wall because Kellogg's
was threatening to close the Memphis plant if they didn't

(02:21:39):
ratify this negotiated contract. So rather than experience you know,
five layoffs in Memphis, they just agreed to it. So
they knew going to the negotiating table in that they
were going to try and sort of walk that back. Um.

(02:22:00):
Because these workers all work in the same plant, same
days for a second third shift. The transitional workers are
working side by side with these full time employees, working
the same hours, which can amount to seven days a week,
twelve to sixteen hours a day on mandatory over time,
and they are making twelve dollars an hour less and

(02:22:20):
they are not getting the benefits that these full time
employees are getting. So really, these full time employees are
kind of going to bat for the transitional employees. Um
Kelloggs wants to remove the cap which the union negotiated,
which is att of their workforce. They wanted to do that,
do a way with that so that they can continue
hiring more transitional workers, and they want to funk with

(02:22:43):
the insurance benefits. So, uh, the union tried to negotiate this.
I think according to the local union president, Kellogg's negotiators
were at the negotiating table for ten hours and they
negotiated eight hours a day, five days a week for
two weeks. Ten hours there at the table. So they

(02:23:05):
weren't interested in negotiating a contract. They had laid out
their their terms and they essentially told the union to
go kick rocks. And so the union said, you know,
we have we have until October five and then our
contract is up, and if we haven't ratified a new contract,
then we're going out on strike. And that's ultimately what happened.
So they've been on strike for this will be their

(02:23:27):
fourteenth day today. I think the fight against the two
tier system. I think is an interesting part of this
because that's been a huge part of a lot of
the different strikes you've been seeing since John Deer strikes,
is part of the Kaiser strikes. And Yeah, I'm wondering
what you think specifically about the fact that this is like,

(02:23:47):
this is the moment that people have decided to like
push back against against two or even three tier systems
they were introduced in the last really like ten or
fifteen years for the most part. Well, I think it's
you know, it's a divide and conquer strategy for Kellogg's
or for these other companies. And ultimately, what it looks
like is it uh destabilizes well established unions, especially at Kellogg's.

(02:24:11):
UM and UM, it pits workers against each other, you know, UM,
particularly at Kellogg's. If they're able to remove this cap
on this tier system, UM, what they're essentially doing is
they're creating a more precarious workplace for these workers. UM.
The turnover rate and the lower tier at the Omaha
plant is right around UM. And you know, prior to

(02:24:37):
you didn't really see a whole lot of people leaving
the Kellogg's plant. You know, these were these are workers
who are spending their entire careers at this plant. Their
parents work their their grandparents work there. You know. Um,
they because they're all getting paid around the same amount
of money. There isn't this tension on the line, so
they're they're working with each other, they're helping each other, right, Um.

(02:25:01):
And with this tier system, what they're doing is they're
throwing these newer workers into uh pretty uh insane factory conditions,
um and making it really difficult for them to uh,
I feel like they have any reason to stay there. Right.
A lot of these people will, you know put in

(02:25:23):
some of these workers were transitional workers who weren't officially
hired by the company. You know, there aren't full time employees.
They aren't receiving benefits like the full time employees are
for five years. They work this every day, seven days
a week, three months on end. Right. Uh. They have
this really you know punitive attendance based points system that

(02:25:43):
discourages you calling in sick. There's injuries that happened in
the factory all the time. You know. I went out
to the line and wrote a piece for the Real
News about this, and pretty much every person I talked
to showed me scars from accidents that happened injuries in
the plant. Um. The union president himself got his hand

(02:26:05):
stuck in a um like a mill and broke all
the fingers in his hand. He had to have ten
surgeries on his hand. You know. Um, there was an
accident at the plant two or three weeks ago where
a transitional employee got both arms stuck in a conveyor belt.
You know. Um. The thing is is these folks super

(02:26:26):
proud of the work that they do, like absolutely take
this work extremely seriously. You know, they're not even asking
for changes to their overtime. They are not asking for
you know anything that you know from me on the outside,
I'd be fighting for more humane working conditions. But to them,
you know, it's it's not like it's a point of pride,

(02:26:49):
but they feel that they have put blood, sweat, tears, uh,
you know, fractured relationships, time that they could be spending
with their children in to this factory and Kelloggs is
essentially fucking them over. Yeah. You know, they see, as
we have sacrificed for this company for years and years
and years, um, and we are asking for equal pay

(02:27:12):
for all and for everyone to have the same health
care so that we can do this job, you know,
and Kelloggs is saying no, absolutely, you know. I think
the union president said that some of the negotiators called
those demands outlandish during negotiations, which I think is just incredible,

(02:27:32):
you know, just corporate greed. Yeah. I think the other
part of the story is that, like I mean, it's
kind of a weird consequence of it, but like one
of the things, one of those consequences is sort of
like rising like staple commodity prices, staple grain prices and stuff.
Is that Kelloggs like they're doing they have like record
they have record profits right now and they're still just

(02:27:53):
doing this ship because yeah, they made record profits during
the pandemic. They gave their CEO, uh, pretty hefty raise bonus. UM,
there was a stock buyback program that helped happened among
the c suite folks last year. They made a lot
of money, a lot of money. And um, you know,
these workers worked every day through the pandemic, um continually understaffed,

(02:28:18):
you know, UM, doing their best because again, they they
take this job very seriously and they are proud that
they are feeding the American people, you know, UM, and
they are proud to work at Kellogg's and uh, they
feel that this contract is just shit, it's just ship

(02:28:38):
and you know the only sensible thing to do is
to to walk out on strike because you know, they've
been backed into a corner and negotiations have stagnated completely.
You know. Um, and um, they don't want to They
don't want to back down from this, you know. Um,
they and I agree. I feel what they're what they're

(02:29:00):
asking for is fair. It's very fair. I mean, I
think it's I think asking for a lot more would
be fair, but not my place to be doing. One
of the things that strikes me about this you talk
about this tier system that Kellogg's introduced, which I can't
help but think of what happened that John Deere, where
they I think in nineties six cut pensions by two

(02:29:22):
thirds and then like last year eliminated them entirely. And
this kind of bid to pit chunks of the workforced
against each other. Um, where you have like you know,
different groups making different amounts and sort of like, I
don't know, it seems kind of like the strategy that
you see in the broader economy, like written within within

(02:29:42):
the space of a company, where you've got like some
people who are getting pretty well taken care of in
their jobs and other newer people who are who are
getting more screwed over in kind of this this attempt
to create division within the workforce so that this this
kind of organizing doesn't happen. M M m M. I
would agree. And you also have to think, you know,
if they are able to remove this cap on the

(02:30:06):
transitional tier, but that means that this is they'll be
able to instead of say, say a full time employee retires,
they leave that space empty, but they still need an
extra space, an extra person, right, so they can just
hire a transitional worker instead of funneling one of those
transitional workers into that full time space. Ah, what ends

(02:30:30):
up happening is suddenly you have instead of seventy full
time to transitional. The it starts tipping, right, it becomes
a more precarious workforce. Then say, for example, they do
that in the next five years, you know, now they
have seventy percent of these transitional workers who don't think
the union is offering anything for them. They can essentially

(02:30:51):
just offer a better deal to these transitional workers and
kick the union out of the company at some point,
you know, um, and these folks on the line understand
that and know that that's kind of Kellogg's plan, right.
They know that the Kelloggs, what Kelloggs is trying to
do is essentially destabilize the power of the union inside
the plants. And everyone on the line that I've spoken with,

(02:31:16):
I know exactly what's happening, you know. And these full
time employees are out there every day making sure that
their transitional and you know, colleagues know that that's why
they're out there because they want to not allow this
to be something that divides their workforce. It remains to
be seen what's going to happen, you know what I mean.

(02:31:37):
They've brought in scabs to get the plant up and
running again, and most recently, uh, yesterday this morning. Yesterday,
the Building and Construction Trades Council union met with the
union president in Omaha because they have about a hundred
third party iron workers, carpenters, atricians, and skilled trades people

(02:32:01):
that are union trades people that have contracts at Kellogg's.
And they came to what Dan Osborne, the union president,
decided called was a tough decision that those union workers
are going to cross the picket line to honor those contracts.
So Kelloggs is forcing the unions in the city in

(02:32:24):
like into a bind really because they're they're you know,
uh going to lose their own contracts at Kellogg's. So
that's kind of been like the most recent development here
is that rather than just temps coming in, we have
now skilled union trades people from various Omaha unions who

(02:32:44):
are also crossing the picket line two honor their contracts
at Kellogg's, you know, um past these striking workers. So
it's a bit of a mess a little bit, you know. Yeah,
there's so going on right now. I'm kind of wondering
what you think are the because we've got a number

(02:33:06):
of strikes kind of all coming to ahead at the
same time, I'm wondering, specifically from the Kellogg strike, what
do you think are kind of the lessons that should
be taken from what's happened so far for the broader
labor movement. UM. I think the biggest thing that's kind
of impacted me as I've gone to the line. UM,
I've stood on the picket line, I've covered these you know,

(02:33:27):
this strike, I've talked to people, UM, is that when
these types of actions happen. They really only can be
sustained because the community comes together to support them. You know. Um,
these strike funds that are going around and folks showing
up to stand on the picket line who are not
part of the union are really sort of become you know,

(02:33:50):
they are helping support these workers who can only hold
out so long with finite resources. Right. So the big
thing to is that past these news cycles of excitement
of striked ober of you know, these people just walked
out today, Well they may be you know, they may

(02:34:10):
be on the line for months and months on end,
and the new cycle is going to move on, and
these communities are still going to have to try and
and and back up these labor actions, right Um. You
really can't have true you know, you can't have a
labor movement without you know, support, right um. And that's
kind of been the biggest thing that has impacted me particularly.

(02:34:34):
You know this Almaha used to be a really formidable
union time. You know, back in the eighties, it was
really really something to see that the business unions in
in the various locals here really had some of these
union leaders had more political power than the mayor, right Um,
And that has gone downhill over the last forty years,
and it's really cool to see, uh, the level of

(02:34:58):
solidarity that's happening amongst community, you know, um in the
ways in which people are kind of coming out to
talk to and and be a part of this strike
and to remind these Kellogg's workers that they're not operating
in a bubble, you know, and that the rest of
the community really hopes that the strike will end quickly
and peacefully and with a really good resolution for these workers.

(02:35:20):
You know. Whatever thing I wanted to ask about in
in terms of sort of this this kind of research
in to the union movements and in in in terms
of sort of communities support is the level of violence
that there's been against, like against the strikes. I've seen

(02:35:41):
a lot of like stuff about people cann hit by
buses and like, and I don't I don't know if
I think I think I'm getting my strikes. I don't
don't know if they've they've been direct car attacks on
this specific picket line, but that's been I think that
it's been happening a lot. And I was a couple
of documented races. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I was wondering

(02:36:04):
what you think about that, and like what actually can
be done about the fact that, like you know that
you know, like this just the fact that we're just
seeing auto attacks on picket lines regularly now, I mean
that's you know, it's a it's a shitty development. You know. Um.

(02:36:24):
I was out on the picket line last Thursday and UM,
they were attempting to bring in busses at shift change
past the the picketers who walk slowly. You know, they
don't want to stop in front of the bus. It's
illegal to stop and and you know make it, you know,
so that they can't pass through the gates, but they

(02:36:44):
slow them down for a little bit. And UM, one
gentleman was trying, you know, was standing there and this
bus just bumped right into them. You know, there's videos
that have been shared through local news of buses knocking
down workers as they're trying to cross the picket line. UM.
And I you know, there are also the personal vehicles

(02:37:07):
that go through and it could be the private security
that's been hired, it could be managers. UM. But you know,
they're running through these lines really quickly dangerously. It's unfortunate,
and you know, I don't have an answer for what
the best h solution for that is, you know, but

(02:37:29):
vehicle tax have become sort of more Uh. I don't
want to say commonplace, but you see them happening a
lot both at protests last year, and you know, I
think Warrior met Cole had some bosses running through the
lines and being reckless with their vehicles. You know. Um,
the problem is is on the on the back end.

(02:37:51):
The police don't step in when they see these instances,
you know. Um and in fact, last Thursday, when we
have hundred plus motorcyclists from various mc s show up
to support the strike, um, the police were the ones
who protected the scabs and made sure that they made

(02:38:12):
it through the picket line. So you know, UM, the
answer to that, IM not sure. You know. Yeah, I
mean that's a time honored police tradition. Yeah, they historically
don't don't exist to protect laborers, with the notable exception
of of the sheriff And what was that Mattawan and

(02:38:32):
uh during the um the coal miner strike in West Virginia.
M Well yeah they shot him so well yeah, but
he shot some people first. Yeah, Um, Sid Hatfield that
was the name. Yeah, I don't know, Um, I've gotten
to know some of these folks on the line of
the last two weeks, and they're just fantastic human beings,

(02:38:54):
you know. Um, they are accommodating and hard working, and
they come from all age brackets and they bring their
families out and you know they're getting they're getting a
raw deal from Kellogg's. And UM, so far, the community
support has been overwhelmingly positive. UM, there hasn't really been
like at the John Deer strike. They're not getting eggs

(02:39:15):
thrown out them, you know. UM, they get a lot
more honking and messages of support than they do people
driving by to yell at them for uh, you know,
being a strike. So that's been nice to see, you know. Um.
And actually this weekend on Saturday, UM, there's gonna be

(02:39:38):
a like cool vintage car show cruise around Kellogg's event
that they've got planned. The fire departments bringing rigs and
um teamsters yeah, yeah, and the teamsters are bringing cars
and then there's a bunch of vintage car clubs that
are gonna be coming out. So you know, those types

(02:39:58):
of things I like really kind of like fired up
these people to keep them out on the line as
long as they need to be, you know. So communities
there for him. One of the things I'm continuing to
wonder about is what it takes to close the gap
between understanding that you and your colleagues are getting screwed
over by this system and understanding that you and all

(02:40:21):
of the other people striking at the same time, and
perhaps even a bunch of people not striking, are all
kind of fighting the same fight. And then maybe there's
grander things to achieve than the negotiation of a single contract,
because that seems like the big leap that is going
to be the real struggle to clear. Uh. Yeah, you know. Um.

(02:40:44):
I will say that some of the workers are fully
aware that this is not just about a single contract
negotiation and is actually, you know, more about struggles of
the working class against corporate greed and the ways in
which the working class gets their asses handed to them
all the time, um um. And they know that they
know that at some point, perhaps at some point in

(02:41:05):
the future, someone else is going to look at their
example and be inspired by it. Right. Um. As far
as like maybe I don't know, ideologically speaking or politically speaking,
for these folks, it's uh doesn't fit into any sort
of ideology leftist or conservative or whatever. Everyone's got their

(02:41:25):
own personal politics, but they don't really talk about it
on the line. What they talk about is working class
versus ruling class. Um that you know, that's their sense.
It's corporate greed, it's um. Asshole CEO is making eleven
point six million dollars a year while they're struggling to
pay their own bills, you know. UM. And and you

(02:41:47):
know that conversation is more common than UM. Trying to
fit this into a larger political movement or revolutionary movement,
if that makes sense, you know, yeah, um. But I
would say that the vast majority of the workers, regardless
of their own personal politics, have a very clear sense
of where they sit in terms of class consciousness and

(02:42:09):
understand that this is one of one of the most
effective tactics to try and force the hand of these assholes,
you know, UM, is to withhold work and withhold their labor.
So well, this has been great. I mean, that's everything
I had to ask Chris. Anything else not that not
that I have. So there is there a call to

(02:42:30):
action we could have for our listeners or pages people
should be following strike fund Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a
go fund me, and there's a PayPal set up for
the Almaja strikers. I believe the b c t g
M international page has like a page of each of
the strike funds for each of the four plants, So
that might be something that you might not want to

(02:42:52):
share with your listeners. I can send you an email
with that, UM, because it's probably going to be easier
to do UM. But yeah, it's ours. I know. Bct
g M isn't called for an official boycott of Kellogg's products, However,
they wouldn't be mad if you just didn't buy any
right now. There was some talk last week that some
of the picketers might you know, be flying outside of

(02:43:14):
grocery stores to try and educate the community on what's
going on with this strike. But beyond that, they also
are concerned about the quality of the food being produced
by scabs. So it probably would be healthy for you
to not by the food, you know, because I think
it was in what two thousand eighteen during the works
a lockout in Memphis, the same company that they brought

(02:43:37):
in then that they're bringing in now uh piste in
the cereal on the line, and they didn't release video
of that for two years after the incident, So it
ended up in someone's home, you know, GROSSI yikes. Yeah, yeah,

(02:44:01):
that's pretty fun right. Um. So yeah, you know, uh,
support your local strike fund and if you are in
a city where Kellogg's plant is striking, I'm sure those
workers would love love to to hear from you fill
your support. So where and where can our listeners follow you?

(02:44:23):
I am on Twitter primarily at cold Brood Tool. I
don't know why I picked that name, but yeah, yeah
I got. I haven't changed that handle since I got
into Twitter, so um, but yeah, that's usually where I'm at. Otherwise,
you know, I teach locally and had to have a
podcast that I'm developing and do a bunch of different projects.

(02:44:46):
So Twitter is the best way to get a hold
of me if you have questions. Awesome, all right, thanks
for having me on folks. Apate, thanks for thanks for
joining us. I'll be back at the picket line, you know,
talking to these folks and and um, gonna do my
best to keep this ship in the new cycles so
that they aren't forgotten. So awesome. We've got a link
to the strike fund and some other ways to help

(02:45:07):
me in the description. So yeah, this has been it
could Happen Here Pod, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, at
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(02:45:30):
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(02:46:16):
a hit man walk free until one day when he
started talking with the FBI and promised that he could
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I wouldn't trust the guy. He looks like a little

(02:46:36):
scum big lawyer still bidging. He looked like what he
was or at. I can say with all certainty I
think he's a hero because he didn't have to do
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I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

(02:46:58):
your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here your favorite podcast
are also legally the only podcaster that that people are
allowed to enjoy on the internet. Here to introduce a
really exciting episode of it could happen here. So for

(02:47:18):
the last bit of time, I've been in and out
of touch with a number of members of the Puget
Sound John Brown Club. They have provided armed self defense
groups for a couple of different protests in the Washington
area over the last year and change. Um and we
wanted to sit down and talk to them about the
ideas behind community self defense, how to do it responsibly,

(02:47:39):
how to do it irresponsibly. We also had some discussions
with them about the disasters that happened at the Chop
Slash Chazz last year. They were not involved with that
as an organization, UM, but they have some insights on
the matter. UM. That's going to be coming at you
in a separate episode or maybe even a couple of
episodes in the near future. Today we're just kind of
talking about concepts of armed community self defense. You know,

(02:48:03):
what's responsible, what's irresponsible, how people should think about it.
I think you'll enjoy the conversation here. It is a
decent chunk of the folks listening, especially the Portlanders, will
have experience with UH and that that Garrison and I
have certainly had experienced with. It is people at protests
declaring themselves security, sometimes even wearing shirts that say security,

(02:48:23):
and picking up a variety of weapons off in paintball
guns and mace and using them often irresponsibly on other protesters,
on on bystanders in the name of of of keeping
things safe and UM. I think we're pretty clear and
I think most reasonable people can see that that's not
community self defense. But often those people uh certainly claim

(02:48:47):
that what they're doing is community self defense UM. And
I'm specifically wanting to start by getting a kind of
a range of definitions from folks. As you are all
people who have engaged in community self defense UM, and
particularly armed community self defense. What do you see as
the actual role of community self defense and how should

(02:49:08):
it look as opposed to, you know, a guy with
a paintball gun yelling at kids for tagging a window.
Ray You wanna you want to kick us off with
an answer there, I do. Community defense should be part
of the a broad health and safety infrastructure set up
for a protest movement or a community. Being deliberately vague here,

(02:49:30):
but specifically, armed community defense deals with mitigating lethal and
egregious harm to members of a community. The goal is
forced and foremost prevention, mitigation and control of those threats.
In my mind, ideally community defense would involve no one
doing anything, carrying around a bunch of really heavy ship

(02:49:52):
and nothing happening, but deterring those from harming others. In
the absolute worst case, it means you have to actually
do something that can get messy pretty quickly. I want
to circle back to a couple of things. Actually, I
do have one one quick follow up question for you
before we move on to the next people. Ray, When
you say like carrying heavy things and whatnot, I'm wondering,
what do you think? I'm interested in you, and I'll

(02:50:15):
probably ask other people to follow up when it when
it comes to carrying and bringing a firearm to either
a protest situation some other community self defense situation, what
it is going through your head when you determine what
to bring? Because I've seen people carry a variety of
different guns from like shotguns and in one case is
of mos and negat to a r S or handguns. Um,

(02:50:35):
what do you think is kind of the the logic
train I guess that you would take, Like, what is
the appropriate tool to bring like in this situation? So
that depends entirely on what the anticipated threat is and
how one plans to mitigate the anticipated threat. There's no
correct answer for that. Sometimes the answer to mitigate lethal

(02:50:57):
or regious bodily harm is not a firearm at all. Indeed,
firearms are applicable in an extraordinarily narrow range of scenarios,
but those range of scenarios are catastrophic and need extreme
measures to be mitigated. So it depends on what If
you are considering bringing firearm, what is the firearm good
at And then you get into the minutia of what

(02:51:18):
firearm is good for what thing, which depends on your
legal context and particular threat. But I think one has
to start with the question is is the thing I'm
bringing able to mitigate the type of harm I might
see happen to my community, And to get a little
bit less vague, there are people who think that bringing
a shotgun is a good way to stop a car
speeding into a crowd when it clearly isn't right. So

(02:51:42):
one has to make sure that the tool, whatever they
have is you is appropriate for the task at hand
and the threat you anticipate. That was great, Thank you,
ray um Katie, you want to you want to give
us your answer next. I agree with everything that Race said,
and the only addition that I'd make is that, um,
it's specifically in our in our cases generally doesn't mean

(02:52:05):
standing between protesters and police, but more guiding protesters, you know,
our activists or participants away from potential situations of harm.
It's like we can't stand in front of police and
stop cops from doing their job like that just gets
you arrested and uh or worse or worse, and that's

(02:52:29):
not what we're here for. So yeah, that's all I
wanted to, could you, because I have chatted with a
couple of your number about this, about um, kind of
the role that that an armed contingent at a protest
can play in kind of allowing an avenue of retreat,
you know, especially during confrontations with non state actors. UM,

(02:52:50):
I'm interested in kind of what you um, you know
you're not You're not to kind of as you did,
kind of kind of clarify this conception. You don't see
your role as ending in front of the protesters between
them and the cops and like presenting a threat to
the cops. What is the utility and kind of an
act of protest situation that you've seen of of of
what y'all do. So that's a good question. And UM,

(02:53:14):
if we're doing our job well, then most people think
we don't do anything at all. UM. A lot of
what we do is we're watching external potential threats who
might try to come in. The most common factor these
days is a car UM, but generally we're looking for
folks that might cause trouble and finding ensuring that we're

(02:53:34):
not putting ourselves in a position where we're gonna get
cornered or trapped, and and really you know, just trying
to help facilitate and work with the facilitators and organizers
to keep things, you know, progressing in a safe way.
So as far as what we're protecting against threat wise,
that that ranges from everything from like angry people who

(02:53:55):
are just angry and trying to go home and getting
blocked by a protest, to people who are who are
actively looking to do harm to a movement that happens
to be involved in the protests, or you know, maybe
it's something as as as specific as a person who's
looking to specifically do harm to UH organizers. So most

(02:54:19):
of the time it's we're focused outward and and just
making sure that our exits are are covered and that
we have ways to get people away from potential bad situations. Um,
that was great, Thank you, Katie Shannon, you want to
give your answer, it absolutely thanks. I would add there's
a really critical element to community defense that begins and

(02:54:42):
ends with the word community. Obviously, there's a big difference
between proclaiming yourself security and showing up someplace and being
there as an intentional community support where the community plays
a role in you being there and also has some
influence on that question what are you carrying and what
is the response? I think it's just really important that

(02:55:06):
you keep the community aspect at the forefront, and that's
a huge part of our collective work is making sure
that when we're providing community defense, we're aligning ourselves with
the desires of the community group that has asked us

(02:55:27):
to be there, also filtering it through our judgment as
to what's safe and appropriate under the circumstances, using some
of those filters that Ray mentioned when they were answering
and what do you see as like like, this is
something that I kind of gets to both what what

(02:55:49):
is an issue with me? And kind of the folks
who declare themselves a security, which is that they're often
kind of separating themselves from the rest of the movement,
specifically in a cop like way to say like, well,
it's my job to keep you ad even though that
means or it's my job to keep things order leaven
if that means attacking some other people at this protest.
One of the things that Scott Crowe in is uh

(02:56:09):
in Setting Sights, which is a really good book on
community self defense, does is set out that, um, a
key aspect of community self defense, as you said, is
that you're like a member of the community. And I think,
I guess the question I have is because guns are
what they are and have the kind of cultural weight
that they have, it's you people are always people who

(02:56:34):
accept being armed as an aspect of their personality are
always going to be kind of fighting having that dominate
their personality. And it wouldn't It's clearly something that a
lot of people have an issue with. The thing that
is important is to be a member of the community
who happens to be armed, as opposed to an armed

(02:56:55):
activist whose whose role is being armed. Right, Like I
I mean, do you agree with what I'm saying? Are
kind of like I'm wondering how you think about it,
because this is something that I'm kind of going around
in my head about as well, because it's it's it's
clearly where a lot of the problems happen, right that
the gun becomes central to the identity of the people
who bring it, which is something that happens to the

(02:57:16):
cops yes, and also the mentality of separating yourself from
the community and not being part of the purpose of
being there. And so I'll defer to my my comrades
here to go a little bit further with it, but
I would just say that there's a significant difference between

(02:57:38):
armed community defense and having an intentional presence of armed
community defense at an event or protest and being a
person who shows up with a gun. Those are two
really different things, and so I think that's the that's
one of the benefits of being part of an organization

(02:58:01):
that does this collectively, with accountability, with training, with a
known role in the community, so that there is um
consistency among what we do and why we do it,
and a history of folks understanding that if we're present somewhere,

(02:58:25):
it's because we've been asked to be there, and that
what we're doing there is aligned with and approved of
by the people who are organizing the event. And then
I'll let somebody else who's more eloquent than I am
uh answered that further if they feel like they can. Yeah,
I think Nova is up now. If you wanted to

(02:58:46):
give your answer and kind of also comment on what
we've been chatting about what Channon and I were just
chatting about Nova. Hi, thank you so much. UM. I
would say that folks like Ray and Katie and of
course Shannon really put it very systemictly, very well together
and answered a lot of the things that I was
gonna already provided things that I was going to add
to it. But um, the specifically the part about the

(02:59:10):
gun becoming the driving factor in somebody's presence at the protest,
or the gun being a part of the personality of
somebody who is going to appoint themselves as a guardian
towards a bunch of people, I would I would say
that with any responsible community community defense role within a

(02:59:31):
protest context, that the act of being a body in
between a threat and your community has to come first,
and that the that the firearm has to be secondary. Um. Uh.
There there was an incident on the night of protest
where uh many of us were at risk of being

(02:59:54):
harmed by a vehicle attack, and uh, in retrospect, a
firearm would not have mitigated that threat terribly well. But
the idea of being in between a threat such as
that and somebody else who is possibly more vulnerable than
you are bore a lot more of a significance on that.

(03:00:15):
So the firearm being there to respond to a threat
and perhaps mitigate an active, ongoing deadly threat to your
community is one thing, But I think the primary thing
is going to be just putting yourself in harm's way
so that you can spare that responsibility from somebody possibly
more vulnerable than you. If that makes sense, that should

(03:00:37):
be the primary responsibility. And um, how do you avoid
letting that turn people doing that into feeling like a
separate and even elevated chunk of the community. Because that again,
that's what happens with police. You know, this idea that
it starts as like, well, we're here to serve and
protect um, and that that, through of variety of toxic alchemies,

(03:01:01):
turns into this idea of the thin blue line. What
is the way you push back on that? How do
you actually stop it from going from I'm someone who
is accepting personal responsibility for the well being of the
people around me, UM and putting my body in between
them on harm's way if necessary, uh, to I it's
my job to protect people, to it's my job to

(03:01:23):
you know, from turning that into kind of this idea
of I think stewardship in some ways that like some
people in law enforcement have where like you're there, they
they get to tell you what to do because that's
their responsibility to keep you safe. Like, how do you
how do you stop that attitude from evolving? Because I've
seen it happen to people fairly quickly when they put

(03:01:45):
themselves in some of these situations sometimes and it's certainly
not like most people, but it is. It doesn't take
a long time for somebody to, like especially if they're vulnerable,
to get in that position. So how do you, especially
if you're approaching it from an organizational standpoint, right, you're
an organization made up of people who come to do this,

(03:02:06):
how do you fight back against that? Like? What is
the active kind of counter programming? If you will? I'd
say I don't have an easy answer for that question,
to be completely honest with you, but I say that
the closest thing, uh to an answer to that would
be that and almost you know, monastic devotion to the

(03:02:30):
task that was acts asked of you by the group
that asked you there. Um So if somebody asked us
to be a part of a march and to simply
look outward for external threats and to be willing to
respond to those threats of need, be again putting our
bodies in harm's way, but also be willing to respond

(03:02:51):
to lethal force and kind should the worst case scenario arise. UM.
I'd say that the ult accountability rest with the people
who asked you to be there. Uh. And there's no
easy answer as to what that mechanism of accountability looks like.

(03:03:11):
But you know, in several layers, that would start with
your teammates, the people who are part of your organization
that asked you to be that is asked to be there.
So other members of of j B g C are
you know, definitely going to try and keep each other accountable.
But it's also the larger, the the the the the

(03:03:35):
larger contingent of the action that you're a part of.
UH to be ultimately willing to back down from whatever
you're doing if a concern is voiced by that community.
And I wish I had a better way to word that, uh,
But just the the the the constant vigilance within oneself

(03:03:59):
against overstepping the boundaries that were clearly set by people
who invited you into a space. UM, that's really the
best answer I can get for that at the moment
without further percolating. Well, I mean, yeah, for for one thing,
I think this is the reason we're having this conversation.
And I'm getting ahead of us a little as because
this is still very much a developing thing on the

(03:04:22):
left and and I don't think anybody has all the
answers on how to do it well, although I think
an increasing number of folks except the necessity. UM. So
I think that's part of the reason for the conversation.
Is this like continuing exploration of how to actually do
this responsibly. UM. But I do think you hit on
something important there when you talked about the that you're

(03:04:46):
there at the invitation of a community as opposed to
you are there too to police or to maintain order.
Like the idea of approaching it as if you were
to guess strikes me as a really good idea, um,
in order to keep yourself on a certain behavioral um standpoint,

(03:05:06):
Like I'm I'm I'm here at the request of this
community as their guest, as opposed to I am here
to protect this community. You know, absolutely, that's a that's
a that's a perfect way to summarize what I was
trying to go for with that one. I think that
the ultimately to be averse to being put in a

(03:05:28):
position of power or authority is the best way to
check against that UM and to simply be a servant
to the community. That is again inviting you into that
space and putting yourself in a m servile is not
the right word. I'm looking for a different word for that,

(03:05:50):
but a a position of service, a true position like
like yes, what what what community and should be is
ultimately a service and a burden rather than a reward
of responsibility and power over your fellow community members. Okay, yeah, great,

(03:06:12):
I think next was Ray again, Um, you had something
to say there. Yeah, I'll just finish that thought in
my notes under the section of what happens when things
go right. I think one thing that can go right
is normalizing that firearms are just a thing that can
be around and they don't have to be your entire
as personality, nor do they have to be a differentiating factor. Indeed,

(03:06:36):
I think one of the successes they are not many,
but of community defense in the chop was normalizing the
idea that people can have firearms and they're not an
inherent threat UM thinking of people who are armed often
and we're pointed out routinely, and I was like, Nah,
he's still he's He's a cool dude, you know, just
a guy just like I think. It's like, you know,

(03:06:59):
do you really think the black guy is going to
shoot up the top? I don't know that. He's totally fine.
I know him. His jokes are great. Um. Again, an
overhearing of these kind of conversations, it helps, you know,
firearms become like part of the tapestry of life, not
this differentiating factor, not a beauty item, not something to
write your personality around. It's just like they're there and
that they can be good, bad, right, wrong, or in

(03:07:21):
different And I think that normalizing effect is one of
the successes community defense can have. And I'm happy to
talk about other things that community defense can normalize, but
I wanted to emphasize the you just have a firearm.
You're not talking about it, you're not touching it, you're
not thinking about it. You know people have that. It's
just around and it became pretty chill, and there is
kind of the chop. Specifically, there's an area where firearms

(03:07:43):
just kind of were around and nothing happened really and
that was kind of wonderful in my mind. So from
my experience with with the club, Uh, it's basically like
even though we are the John Brown Gun Club, the
guns are like the last thing that we even consider. Like, Uh,

(03:08:06):
it would technically if we were to actually rename the club,
it would be the John Brown de Escalation Club. Um,
we would like most of the time any um, any
anything that's gone on. Even when I did visit the
Chop and there was some weird stuff going on, like
Brother Matthew being Brother Matthew, people were um using their

(03:08:27):
skills to um to d escalate situation, to calm the
calm out, calm down individuals, to make sure that that
whatever hostility they have would be abated through just verbal
verbal communications. Talk about that in a little more to
tail because I don't know who I mean, I was
at the Chazz briefly, but I don't know who Brother

(03:08:48):
Matthew was or like what incident you're talking about. Something
is a guy who shows up up here all around
the Seattle area and also I think he's even up
in Portland as well. Um, preacher guy gets in everybody's faces,
usually not liked by everybody, super afraid of snakes, thanks Jerry. Um.

(03:09:08):
But yeah, he like like he's he's a person who
drives off a confrontation and uses the Bible as as
his mode of of operation. But Um, I remember distinctly
at at the chop Um he was getting it, getting
into it with people. But everybody who was around tried

(03:09:32):
to talk him down. They tried to chill make him
chill out, even though he was continually screaming for attention
and just being weird. But um, but in the end,
UM like that's just like that happens more often with
protests situations or marked situations or direct action situations where

(03:09:56):
we're asked to be a part of it by the organizers.
And and as um Ray had mentioned and Nova had mentioned, um,
we like we're asked to be there and we're not
just asking and then we suddenly show up, like we
get involved with the people who are organizing, any of
the partners that they that they of, that they get

(03:10:18):
that they bring into it. We try to learn as
much about what's going on with them, who are the threats, Where,
where the event is, how the event is um going
to be thought of? We ask a lot of questions
about it, Like we plan and plan and plan and
plan to make sure that everything is super safe or
as safe as possible based on all known variables and UH,

(03:10:41):
and then the stuff that's unknown, we do our best
to mitigate that somehow. Yes we are armed, but that's
like the last thing that we ever even think of,
and that's even in our planning. Like we say, flat out,
de escalate first. Um, if things start to ratch it up,
respond in kind. So like if someone you know, like

(03:11:02):
tries to like I don't know, like starts to fistfight,
We're not going to pull out a gun on someone
who wants to box somebody on the street. We're going
to do our best to stop So stop them through
other means, like whether if it's just to block a
punch or whatever. But the first things and foremost is

(03:11:25):
de escalation. Calm, calm that person down and tell them
to go away or just to chill out or whatever
the whatever is necessary. I mean de escalation. All of
the best community self defense that I've personally watched has
been de escalation. Um, you know, they're they're not the
only situations I've seen. I've seen force used a couple

(03:11:47):
of times in situations that were necessary but by far,
de escalation is the thing I've seen, um actually protect
people in dicey situations the most um and generally that
that's going to be the case. Yeah, I know for myself,
Like my attitude is we all go home. Everybody who
shows up there goes home, not to the hospital, not

(03:12:11):
to jail, or not to the morgue. We all go home. Yeah,
I think that's definitely seems like the best way to
look at it. So into the specific question of how
not to become a cop in this position and become
the gun the only way I've been able to do
anything in that regard has been to not have that

(03:12:34):
be my primary thing that I fulfilled. I'm part of
a community and I'm a mechanical person this community. I
try to have my mission be not that other skill
set or that other access to being of an aid
to a community, be my actual purpose in the community.

(03:12:54):
If that makes any sense. M Yeah, that makes complete sense. Um,
And yeah, I think is the healthiest way to to
deal with it. So something I've been wondering about as
so I'm like not armed at all, So I guess
I'm on like the other the other side of defence

(03:13:15):
of the sort of community self defense think that people
show up to protests, um. And so something I was
wondering about is is the relationship between this stuff and
you know, between the sort of cop mentality development and
the difficulty of sort of integrating to the community of
having organizations that are basically independent security groups and not

(03:13:38):
for example, like taking like I don't know, take like
an historical example, like there was a thing in China
you'd see a lot in in like the nine hundreds,
where you know, you'd have armed pickets, right, and so
you you you have an armed force there, but the
armed force is like you know, this is this is
like a branch of the union, right, And that's that's
how they sort of like like that that was their

(03:13:59):
sort of solution to how do you stop cops syndrome?
Is that you know they're they're they're basically like a
part of another community organization. And so I'm curious what
you all think about what the sort of I guess
that the strengths and weaknesses of being an independent or

(03:14:20):
having having sort of independent security organizations versus having I
guess subsections of other organizations that are armed. Yeah, I
feel like I can offer a unique perspective here as
someone who's been privy to multiple angles of this, including
separate organizations, ones integrated with others, and ones that are

(03:14:41):
sort of just parts of the community, I don't think
there's any like inherent, sort of best answer here. I
do think being part of a separate organization makes it
harder to be in the community versus of the community,
meaning you came from the community, now you're sort of
kind of separate but not really UM Like JB in particular,

(03:15:06):
has a perpetual problem with people saying, oh, you know,
John Brown will do X, and this is something that
has been discussed, and often this is to people's immense fire.
I don't want to speak for everyone here, but it
does seem to be that so seldom does one wish
to be said, oh hello. It's kind of like saying, oh,
the Union will solve this, and it's like, turns out

(03:15:26):
you're the Union buddy, um right, and never referred to
be union in the first person. So I do think
being embedded into other groups, or being sort of this loose,
diffuse group can make it easier to be part of
the community because of the structural forces that make that um.
It is easier to get there. A separate organization can

(03:15:47):
help focus and codify certain procedures training, you know, make
sure that people have some sort of unified goals and
values at the expense of making it a bit harder
to integrate into one's community. I think given the era
we're in, I'm not surprised we see many many approaches
to community defense with varying effectiveness at different times, including

(03:16:09):
JBS perspective. Yeah, and um, I guess I'm interested as
we are as we move on here, and like, one
of the one of the questions I see is how
do you the difficulty and kind of you don't want
to have a situation where there's absolutely no where the

(03:16:32):
community self defense contention is anyone who shows up with
a gun, because then anyone can show up with a gun,
and you as someone else who's showing up with a
weapinar potentially like if that person, uh makes a bad decision,
that's going to I mean, as it as it has
in the past, that has significant repercussions on everybody else.
And I that is one of the thorny or points

(03:16:55):
because I do one of the things I see is valuable.
Someone mentioned earlier, like the nice thing about it, just
in not being firearms being normalized, not as a like
gun culture thing, but as this is just a thing
that is present in the community. And I saw that
a lot in Rojabo, right that everybody was armed, or

(03:17:15):
at least the significant chunk of the populace had access
to arms, but nobody was showing off with them. They
were not like anybody's like like piece of identity. They
were just one of the tools like a like a
like a spade or a shovel that were present in
the community. Um okay, I think I've skipped over a
couple of people. I wanted to give Thud a chance
to talk. M that's actually very much should have in

(03:17:37):
line with But the point I was going to make,
which is for me, a huge part of community defense,
is making sure that the aspect that is defending the
community is not alienated from the community because it isn't
concentrated in just a few people. Because I think one
of the other things that we emphasize the lots with

(03:17:59):
outside of direct protest actions is you try to teach
people how to safely operate firearms, but also to give
firearms the respect that they deserve. That firearms are not
there so that you are badass. Firearms are not there
because you know you're going to get into a gunfight.
And it's well, the first rule, I mean, one of

(03:18:20):
the one of the things that we stress sort of
beyond the basic four rules of gun safety is the
first rule of gunpipe is don't get into a gunpipe.
That it's you know, you want to exhaust every possible
option that you have. And when the community at large
is engaged, and like Pray was saying, that it's sort

(03:18:42):
of it becomes normalized that oh, we're not relying on
these several people to keep us safe, but that in fact,
as an entire collective, we are keeping us safe. And
that gives recognition the fact that some people it's not
it's not the right choice for them to areagain for
one reason or another. And the at the same time,

(03:19:04):
the power that is present in that particular tool is
dispersed to the point where it doesn't you know, you
don't have people getting self aggrandizing thoughts because of the
fact that they're possessing firearps. And I think that's something

(03:19:27):
that we, you know, work really hard to instill in
evil in a variety of context, and I think is
really critical to this question. So the question trying to summarize, UM,
what the question was earlier, What the strengths are weaknesses
of having an organized armed response are UM. One of

(03:19:47):
the things that that I wanted to bring up is
the historical context of armed response, specifically community armed response
in Seattle. UM. I did some digging and owned in
a book called History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement
to the Present Time, Volume two, which I started pouring

(03:20:09):
through and found that there was in eighteen seventy four
there was a group called the Seattle Amateur Rifle Association
which least land for a range on current present day
Capitol Hill, UM, like right where the train station is
if you're familiar with the area, so like right where
protests always happened these days. Later on, there's record record

(03:20:32):
in eighteen seventy seven of the Seattle Rifle Team organizing
and shooting contests. And then later on in six which
is a number that probably rings a bell, the Chinese riots,
as they called them at the time, happened, which was
sort of the start of the labor movement where everyone
decided that Chinese immigrants were the cause of all of

(03:20:52):
our woes that the low wages being paid to Chinese
immigrants were because of Chinese immigrants and not racism. So
they decided to run every person who looked Chinese out
of town. Literally. They referred to this as the Tacoma method,
and that's what they did in Takemma exactly. It started

(03:21:13):
there and uh, there was a February seven, this massive,
angry racist mob tried to push all of the Chinese
folks out of Seattle or anyone they thought might look
like Chinese, and they tried to push them onto a
steamboat but there weren't There wasn't enough room for them
all there. Um, cops got involved, a bunch of other

(03:21:35):
stuff happens. They decided no, give them time in court.
But in the process uh of making this decision, you know,
the racist got a mob together and we're basically just
going to try and put a stop to this before
the legal proceedings could to go forward. So they reached

(03:21:58):
out to local allies and arms had the Home Guards,
which I'm not exactly sure exactly what the Home Guards were,
but I assume there's something related to National Guard later on,
or maybe just an extension of military. But the Home
Guards and the Seattle Rifles as well as the University Cadets,
which I'm assuming are of course soldiers in training, and

(03:22:21):
pulled them all out and made a community self defense
group out of them. They didn't put a rifle line
and held the mob back and enabled those folks to
get you know, safely, to have their day in court, um,
and then to protect them for a while afterward. They
actually organized a sort of a watch because they didn't

(03:22:44):
have enough police to to manage the mob. They used
books from the Seattle Rifles and these other groups to uh,
to sort of bolster the police forces and keep peace
in the town. So the sort of thing that we
do is a long stand in historical presence, but I
think there's a lot of things you can look at
the history of and sort of take lessons from so

(03:23:07):
um as As very mentioned, a unified response is of
course a huge benefit of having a huge strength of
having an organized armed group. UH. And it's it's literally
if someone reaches out and says we need help, help
is available. Um. But there are a lot of weaknesses.
Businesses and clubs can be held liable legally, and this

(03:23:29):
is an endemic problem within gun law as it stands
the laws are written such that they effectively there that
it comes down to situational context to determine how a
gun law should be enforced. And the law will never
be on the side of a group trying to abolish
parts of the law. So you have to be very
careful about how you how especially an organized or formally

(03:23:51):
organized armed group has to be very careful about how
they put their their work in play with that. In
my Yeah, that was great, and I was unaware, actually
I was aware of the of the riots. I was
unaware of that part of the history, which is fascinating,
um and I think very important. Yeah, right, did you

(03:24:14):
want to explain the threat onion? Yeah, the integrated threat onion.
So this is kind of a a well known meme
in certain circles slash actual thing, and it's designed to
help you understand how to like mitigate threat and sorry,
integrated survivability onion mitigate threats. Right, So the tel deer is,

(03:24:39):
you know, do you want to try to preserve life
by having body armor and hoping a bullet hits you
in the body armor or do you want to preserve
life by I don't know, not showing the funk up
to something where you might get shot. And the idea
is it's it's a meme because so often, you know,
people are like, oh, they want to get in there
and get and get engaged with conflict and be the hero.
And the answer is, you know, you could just like

(03:24:59):
not go there, right, and it would probably be a
lot easier to do that, But there's some real weight
to the survivability onion, which is like, there are many
many ways to mitigate threats to yourself in your community,
and very often the most boring and mundane answer is
probably the one that's going to actually result in the
biggest impact. And the heroic answer is probably the absolute

(03:25:22):
worst answer and only what you rely on if everything
else has gone to hell. So that's someone I think
it was thund spoken to alluded to the threat onion
and ways to mitigate harm to oneself and one's community,
and I had to repeat it because it's this this
meme that's been coming up forever. Yeah, And it is

(03:25:43):
like the basic idea of the threat onion is that
you have like this again, you if you think of
it in layers. That's why they call it an onion
um of like things that protect you, and the things
that provide the most protection are stuff like not being
seen or present when somebody wants to hrn you, um
not or being behind cover when somebody wants to harm you.

(03:26:04):
And the thing that offers the least protection is having
body armor. You know. It's this the idea that like um,
the things that people buy and and focus on because
they look cool um are all things that offer less
protection than situational awareness and good judgment. UM is kind
of the actual like lesson I think to take out
of the threat onion. That would be my opinion on

(03:26:26):
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(03:26:48):
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