October 10, 2023 • 48 mins
We are joined by Shane Burley, Emily Gorcenski, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, and Michael Novick to discuss their personal history in Antifascism, and their new anthology book ‘No Pasaran.’
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to it could happen here on Garrison Davis. This
is the show where we talk about how everything is
kind of falling apart and how we can sometimes put
it back together. Joining me is as my my dear
dear collaborator and friend, James Stout. Good morning, James.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Good morning Garrison. That's very kind of you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And we got a very special episode here today. We
are talking with four people who have put together a
new book by AKA Press called No Parseran. We're gonna
have kind of a little bit of a like a
group discussion about anti fascist history and this kind of
this the state of anti fascism in the past few years.
(00:49):
I know, this is how I kind of got started
with radical politics growing up in Portland, Oregon. You see
Nazis marching around in your street and you're like, oh, well,
this is obviously a problem, so much a problem, do
something about this. And stuff has changed a lot the
past the past few years. I mean, like the anti
fatist movement that I got kind of that I kind
of got into only twenty eighteen. You know, it's very
(01:12):
different now, and it's I don't know, these types of
things live on through like oral histories as well as
you know, books, and I think it's really cool to
have these types of conversations. So joining us today is
Shane Burley, Emily Gorcinski, Michael Novic, and Darryl Lamont Jenkins.
Greetings everyone, I'm going to hand it over to Shane
(01:34):
and you can kind of talk about the book.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I guess, yeah, Thanks Scarrison, Thanks James for having us
on the whole crew of us. Yeah, this book was
something came out last year, but we had been working
on it for about four years. I'm starting in twenty eighteen.
I was drunk with Kim Kelly and New York and
we thought it'd be really great to put together something
(01:58):
with all of our friends. And what do you do
with a big group of people. It takes like four
or five years to pull off. But really the idea
was trying to do something that was bigger than what
had been written about anti fascism at that point, which
was shockingly narrow. What people understood it as of just
a few movements, mostly very recent history, and so much
(02:22):
wasn't being included in that conversation. So the idea was,
how can we build out like a much bigger picture
of this by including as many voices as possible. So
we ended up getting a couple of dozen folks together
that had different takes on it. Some talking about tech,
some talking about deep history, some talking about anti fascism
in their countries, o their continents, and so in general,
(02:44):
the idea was to make it feel like a discussion
between people who either know each other or should be
like in some kind of comradeship with each other. So
that was sort of where it came together. I think
with this conversation. The way we were thinking about this
is I want I wanted the opportunity to talk with
basically my friends about their history a little bit, and
(03:06):
so I asked three folks that had a really long
history with doing organizing work, and so I thought it
would be cool maybe if we go through talking to
them a little bit about their prehistory or their early
history organizing. And Michael, your history goes back the furthest
as you know, we know, so I thought we could
kick off with you and then talk with Emily and
(03:27):
then Darryl just kind of getting into your background. So
how do you get started in movement work? I actually I
should say first, when did you get started in movement work.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Well, yeah, so I sometimes felt a little bit of
a dinosaur. I was born in nineteen forty seven, so
the fascism in power was a fairly recent reality in
my life. My father was a immigrant from Poland. I
came here in the thirties. Most of his family was
destroyed in Biello Stoke. They had uprising there similar to
(03:59):
the Warsaw Ghetto r Almost everybody was lipidated in that process.
So there's a family history there for me. Also obviously
grew up in the shadow of you know, the US
atomic bombing of Rosa Manakasaki and the US incarceration of
Japanese Americans and concentration camps, so you know, those are
(04:21):
realities in my life. I've lived in a you know,
orthodox Jewish immigrant working class family and neighborhood in Brooklyn,
which is now dominated by extremely right wing forces. Borough Park.
It's one of the bastions of probably you know, neo
fascist Republican prosionists. But somehow, when I grew up there
(04:47):
that was not the case. Anyway. I got involved in
politics in the sixties and you know, student movement stuff,
anti war stuff, and at Brooklyn College, which when I
was there, it was free public four year college part
of the City University System in New York, and I
(05:08):
was actually eventually elected student body president. They had liquidated
the student government earlier when you know, people opposed the
Korean War, and we had a struggle to get you know,
for student rights and anti war stuff and so on,
and we succeeded in getting student body elections for offices
(05:29):
for the first time in about a dozen years. But
you know, as part of all that anti war and
anti police brutality and other stuff that was going on
in Brooklyn at the time, and then we raised the
question of the fact that Brooklyn College was ninety eight
percent white, white in a borough that even then was
(05:50):
you know, majority black in Puerto Rican, and suddenly all
the student support we had had for all the other
struggles cops off the campus and you know, avy up
the campus and so on, and we got you know,
dean of students fired and other stuff. But as soon
as we raised the question of opening the campus up
and having open admissions to the City University system and
(06:11):
a special emissions program for black and Puerto Rican high
school students, most of our students support have oporated. And
for me, that was an object lesson that unless you're
you know, consciously organizing about internalized and institutionalized racism, everything
else you do that is you know, progressive or anti
imperialist or anti war is kind of a house of
(06:32):
cards or you know, castles made of sand. And in
particular and raising those issues, we discovered that there was
a fascist element down the campus. There were people who
formed the Early Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn who were
primarily anti black. And also there's a group called the
youth what is it, Young Americans for Vitom YAF, which
(06:55):
was like the youth wing of the National Review, right
wing Republican formation, and they were pretty openly fascistic in
their politics. So, you know, it became a question that
if you were doing you know, anti racist and anti
war an anti capitalist organizing, you were going to face
not just you know, a struggle against the force of
(07:16):
the state, but that there were reactionary elements within particularly
white society, and I think because of set the colonialism,
you know, there's a mass base for that. And struck
by the title of the show just say, I don't
know if people are familiar with the book, it can't
happen here, but Obviously your title is a reflection it
could happen here. I think it has happened here. For
(07:38):
one thing, I think the fashion has always been an
element of US political culture because of settle colonialism. You know,
I mean definition of fascism is that it's bringing the
methods of rule of the colonies into the metropol But
the US is a settler colony, and therefore there are
colonized people inside this country, you know, always have been,
(08:00):
and so fascistic elements of you know, slave labor, genocide,
you know, land theft, all the rest have always been
part and part of that is also creating that mass
base within the settler population that supports you know, that leadership.
So anyway, I think that that you know that both
(08:21):
those personal aspects and that consciousness, and so I came
in contact with, you know, the very radical forces in
the Black Freedom Circle. Back then, the Black Panther Party
is very active. There was one of the people in
the Black Student Union joined the Black Panther Party. You know,
it's a period of very fascist attacks and the Panthers
(08:42):
had formed the National Committee of the Combat Fascism and
had an analysis that you know, the US was fascistic,
and you know, George Jackson at that time said, you know,
fascism is already here, and I think he meant it,
you know, literally, And so that's part of the perspective
I've carried through for you know, I don't know what
(09:05):
that is sixty years now close.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
To Yeah, I mean, I think really quickly, I would
like to hear kind of what your experience was with
forming John Brown. Where did the idea come from? Because
I think for a lot of a lot of people
are thinking of recent anti fascist American anti fascist history
that ends up being kind of a starting point for
a certain kind of no platform tactic. So how did
(09:28):
you first kind of develop that? What brought you in?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
So, yeah, just to say, I was, you know, coming
out of the movement as I did, I moved from
New York to California because there was a strong There
was a newspaper called the Movement, which was the newspaper
basically of friends of Snick. It was the people who
left Snick when Snick adopted a black power analysis and
(09:53):
said that white people who were involved should go organize
in the white community. And there was a you know,
kind of a I was part of a Working Class
Organizing Collective in Hayward, California. Eventually, out of that I
got connected with, you know, some of the people that
later formed Prairie Fire Organized Committee. I was in a
group in the Bay Area called the June twenty eighth Union.
(10:14):
It was a gay ends, pro socialist, anti imperiallests, pro
feminist collective of mostly people of European decent. And we
went to what was called the Hard Times Conference, which
was put on by Prairie Far Organizing Committee in Chicago,
and it turned out that there was secretly an effort
by the weather underground to come up from underground to
(10:39):
create a new communist party, and they serviced that at
that conference. But there's a lot of opposition to that
from across the board, from different Black liberation, American Indian Movement,
the Puerto Rican in Deepending, the struggled Chicago movement to
all of them, you know, felt that there was a
sell out of the politics there anyway. Out of that
process I was part of, I joined a Prairie Fire
(11:01):
Organized Committee eventually, and that split and then there was
a West Coast group which captained Prairie Far. The East
coast formed a group called the main eineteenth communist organization,
and they launched the original John Brown Anti Clan Committee,
an initiative from the prisons. The organized prisoners in New
(11:23):
York had discovered that there was an extensive network of
clan claverns that were based in the prison guards and
some of the white prisoners, and they asked for outside
supporters to begin to expose that and deal with it
and help them deal with it. And John Brand of
the Gillen Committee was formed out of that. Separately, very
far on the West Coast had formed a group called
(11:43):
take a Stand against the Klan. There was a lot
of you know, that was the period that the beginning
of the notification of the clan that was going on.
So this is the seventies and eventually, you know, under
a challenge from particular the New African Independence movement, the
Malcolm XS grassroots movement New African People's Organization which both
(12:06):
Praise Fire on the West Coast and May nineteenth and
the East Coast were connected to. They pushed for a
joint organization. So at that point there was a kind
of reconstitution of John Burnett the Clan Committee, and so
I was part of that and we merged. You know,
there were chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, the Bay Area, Los
(12:28):
Angeles where I ended up in New York, I think
Bowling Green, maybe the couple of Connecticut, and so they
were quite active in that period, and you know, street
level confrontations and you know other exposures of early Neo
Nazi activity and clan activity, but particularly from a perspective
(12:53):
of conscious and active solidarity with the Black freedom struggling,
particularly the New African Independence movement, which is a very
high level of unity, and over a period of time,
you know, there was a struggle to broaden that out
and try to be a more all embracing organization that
could relate to the struggle. There were a lot of
different formations at that time. There was the National Anti
(13:15):
Clan Network, and there was a couple of others, and
there were differing politics among all of them. And you know,
John Branda Clink made that time, took more of a
position of pro direct action and also, as they say,
conscious solidated with the Black freedom struggle as a basis
for doing that work.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Anti Clan Network. I think so people kind of know
that's where the Southern Poverty Law Center eventually came out
of another networks of these different groups out here in Oregon.
The Rural Organizing Project was sort of like a down
the line there. I think it's interesting too about the
found story. I was talking with our mutual friend Lisa Roth,
who was part of the founding of that. Very first
(14:07):
iteration of the John Brown Committee was they were doing
a prison organizing with Black Panthers and Upstate New York
and they were writing these letters saying the prison guards
are clan and they thought, you mean they're really racist,
you know, obviously they're the prison guards. Yeah, And when
they went and looked it up. No, the president of
(14:27):
the prison's guard union was the Grand Dragon of the
State KKK, and they.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Were actually he had a position within the prison system
as the head of the sort of education activity educational
activities in the prisons, and was using his formal position
within the prison system to organize white prisoners along with
the guards into clan clamorance.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Which seems like a total That was sort of a
validation with the centerpiece of John Brown being that cops
and clan have that kind of collaboration, because that was
their kind of the founding like lesson of that organizing.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Sure, the blue by day, White by night, and a
lot of those slogans come out of that period, and
you know, I think it is you know, it's related
to the later the aar A line that you know,
fascism is built from above and below that there's you know,
elements within the state that are operating independently, but there
are also state forces and then they're you know independent, Yeah,
(15:21):
so called revolutionary fascists that claim to be opposing the state,
but we're not really.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, I think to fast forward a little bit, quite
a bit, Emily, I don't remember when we first met
each other. Obviously it was probably shortly after Unite the
Right happened. But how did you first get drawn into organizing?
Did you have a long history before that happened, or
were you just part of getting involved around the ramp
up to that now?
Speaker 5 (15:48):
I think, you know, compared to the other folks here,
I'm sort of the summer child of the of the group, right,
I don't have a super long history in organizing. I
think that, you know, I came to anti fascism before
Unite the Right happened. I work in the tech industry
and sometimes sort of around the gamer Gate era, I
(16:12):
started noticing how white supremacist the tech industry had become.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
Right, it was.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Sort of this nexus for a lot of this strongly libertarian,
strongly supremacist mindset. It was sort of the worst of
that meritocratic ideal that a lot of us had to
experience in university and in our workplaces, and it just
seemed like it was getting out of control. And that
(16:40):
was kind of at the same time that we were
seeing a lot more women come into the tech industry,
we were starting to see a lot of changes in
the space.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
And then there was sort of like this this.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Vacuum left by gamer Gate, as that all sort of
died down, A lot of this sort of energy needed
to go somewhere, and so I started speaking out against
some white supremacist organizing that was happening at conferences and
things like that. And I think the first wake up
call for me happened when some folks that are are
(17:11):
linked to Milo Yanapolists put together a list of of
SGW social justice warriors and this was journalists and activists
and people who were speaking out and I somehow made
that list. And I realized, after you know, looking at
this and seeing what was going on that being a
(17:32):
political being sort of just somebody with an opinion, wasn't
you know, there was no way to be that wasn't
a defense against what was coming. And so I just
sort of looked inside and said, well, if this is
the way it's going to be, like I'm going to
fight back, I'm gonna I'm going to figure out what
to do.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I didn't really have a lot of organizing ties.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
They didn't really have a network, so like every other person,
I just you know, shouted at Twitter and somehow that worked.
The irony of this all is that all this was
going on, I was starting to do you know, digital activism,
using my tech skills to try to shine.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Light on things that were wrong in the.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Federal government and the Trump administration and things like that,
and I really just wanted to step away from that.
I kind of had like I went to Prague after
Trump was inaugurated. I wanted to like, you know, clear
the air a little bit. I didn't like the fact
that I was on this hit list that was put
together by people who have like a couple of handshakes
(18:36):
away from.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
The president's desk. So I went to Europe.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
I went to Prague and I cleared my head, and
when I came back, I said, you know what, I'm
going to just focus on local activism. I'm going to
focus on the issues that are in my community. I
knew that we had things going on with our local
low income housing space, we had a lot of you know,
stuff around the statues that was coming up in town,
and I didn't really expect, like it was kind of
(19:01):
random that Unite the Right was you know, destined for Charlottesville,
and so all of the work, all of the organizing
that I had started to do that spring, and that
where I guess that winter in that spring started to
pay off, as you know, as Charlottesville became the target
of all of the neo Nazis. So I think it
(19:21):
was sort of I don't want to say it's it's fortunate,
because it's not really the greatest, like it's not a
positive thing that that's what happened. But I guess that
I am lucky that as I came to this awakening,
it was happening you know, before and not after, and
that I was able to use the network that I
was building, the audience I was building in order to
(19:42):
help like back. So yeah, I guess that's that's sort
of like, I don't know that I would have been,
you know, as much as dedicated as I was if
it wasn't for that very personal sort of experience. And
I look back at that like I'm kind of embarrassed
by that. But you know, we all have our own paths.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Absolutely, And I think, you know, there's something interesting about
that year in advance of the Unite the Right, where
where different groups were testing the waters a little bit,
and how that was their ability to ramp up in
the area, but it was also the anti fascist ability
to ramp up, you know, So talking with Mimi and
other organizers there, like those earlier events like the earlier
(20:23):
Clan rally that happened like you know, months earlier, or
kind of those that early flash mob that Richard Spencer
led that gave people the opportunity to build up the base.
So how did you kind of shift to focusing on
that first? I guess how did you hear about Unite
the Riots, this big kind of like target event, But
what was the steps along the way there?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Yeah, I think one of the things that really that
I really tried to do that year was to use
the experience I was having traveling to try to understand
the history of movements that were against you.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Know, great state powers.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Right when I was in Prague, I spent a lot
of time reading about and looking into and walking through
the sites of where the Prague Spring took place, and
where the Deil Revolution took place, and how these groups
of people were able to overcome this massive amount of
state violence and still be successful. And when Richard Spencer
first came to town that first flashbob is now called
(21:22):
Charlottesville one point zero.
Speaker 6 (21:24):
I was in Berlin at the time. I woke up
to see what was going on.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
And it was, you know, I think again just sort
of these you know, the universe coming into alignment. As
that was happening, there's also this big anti Nazi demonstration
that was happening in Berlin. So I took that opportunity
to go and learn about what anti fascists are doing
in other countries and other localities, how they are organizing,
(21:50):
how they spread their message, and so I think that,
you know, as I learned about all of this going on,
what the first thing that I tried to do is
just look around and say, what can we learn from
people who have been here before? Who have done this
before and have this in their living memory, and that's
what I tried to take back to Charlottesville. And then,
(22:11):
you know, I think it was after that trip. I
was in Berlin in May. I came back for that trip.
I joined in the anti fascist march almost as soon
as I got back, and that's when we had heard
we've learned about the two rallies, the July eighth KKK
rally and the August twelfth Unite the Right, And at
that point, like from that moment, it was just like
every waking moment of my day was spent organizing for
(22:35):
those for those rallies.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's the sort of effect that just circumstance sort of
speeds people's capacity to do it, and that maybe even
maybe capacity is not the right word, they're kind of
understanding of what it takes to do that work. So
I was interviewing a number of the rabbis in the area,
and these were not super political folks. These were not
people like from some activist synagogues wh were mainline synagogues,
(23:00):
but they connected with a number of faith leaders from
the historically black churches, both of which were saying, okay,
we're both going to be targeted here, and there's no
there's no institutions coming to help. Really, there's no one
we can count on here. So they created those collaborative
spaces and really pretty complicated and effective organizing models having
no experience doing it because of that hyper intense space,
(23:23):
which I think is in a way that's why those
circumstances have such an important effect on it. So how
did you basically plan those couple of weeks in advance?
How were you thinking about it, and what was the
kind of groups you were working with these like networks
that were coming together formal organizations.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
Yeah, I think there were a bunch of, you know,
organizations on the ground that I connected with. Certainly we
had a local chapter of Surge showing up for racial
justice and they were doing a lot of organizing. And
there was the Anarchist People of Color APOC. They were
a great group of people that we connected with and
(24:03):
that I connected with. And it also happened that I
started dating somebody who's also connected to the local anti
fascist scene at the time, so I sort of brought
into all of these circles through that relationship as well.
And so I think that sort of all of these
things combined really made it clear that we had a
small but very knowledgeable base of people that could organize.
(24:28):
And I think that one of the things that we
did exceptionally well in the lead up is because we
had such a small core of people who don't who
didn't really have, you know, a breadth of experience, you know,
in doing this, we were able to compartmentalize really well.
Speaker 6 (24:44):
You know, some people were focusing on, you know, what.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Are we going to do with the you know, the
clergy collective, and how are they going to organize?
Speaker 6 (24:51):
What is their action going to be?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
And we had a media collective and that was where
I put most of my energy. And so I think
that we had these different groups of people that focus
on different things that helped us unblock ourselves from the grander,
sort of more theoretical, more abstract way to respond. We
didn't have the time to debate over tactics, we didn't
(25:15):
have time to debate over the ideology of anti fascism,
what the right thing to do was, or what the
best thing to do was. We really had to focus
our time on what do we have time to do?
What can we achieve given the constraints that we have
and with those sort of constraints, I think that maybe
we left some good actions on the table, but what
(25:37):
we came up with I think was fairly effective.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Do you think that it carried those community folks together
through and after the event. Do you feel like those
community ties were still there?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
I think some of them are and some of them
are not. There are certainly community times that have broken.
There was a lot of pressure that built up. There
were differences of opinions that we set aside and hoped
to resolve afterwards, and those did not necessarily get resolved
in some cases, some interpersonal issues, some interorganizational issues. I
(26:14):
remember at one point there was a decision that was
being made, driven by a couple of the organizing groups,
that they would not support anyone that was going to
be armed, and this was a tension point between those
groups and groups like Redneck Revolt that were coming armed
to help support anti fascist rallies, and that like that
(26:35):
is something that still you know, affected me pretty well
because I was being targeted because of how present I
was in social media and Twitter.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
And things like that.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
I needed to have an armed security detail, and you know,
that created a lot of a lot of tension I
didn't have legal like I had legal support pulled away
from me. I didn't have legal support until until November
of that year, when noise of a.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
Lawsuit started happening.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
So I think that some of those things did create
some tension that led to fracturing of community, but some
things actually really did tie the community back together and
kept it close even as we have drifted apart and
moved into different you know, different cities, different countries, different states, whatever.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
I think it's a bit of both. You know.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
There's one of the founding members of Rose Head Antifa
said something that kind of stuck with me, which is
that a lot of people will look to anti fascism
as a way to rebuild the left or as to
build this big mass united left. But that's not actually
what's being demanded of the situation. The situation is very
pretty straightforward, is to basically destroy this opposition of people.
(27:43):
And how you do that. I mean, you can have
considerations about how they bring in the community and try
and align with other groups, but in the end, there's
other decisions are being made, and so people often get
disappointed when that ends up being what those projects actually are. Now, Daryl,
you were down there right right correct, that was there.
You're everywhere when we're there, I try to be.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
I think one of the things about Charlottesville that was
really important is that we saw it coming, and we
had seen it coming months, probably even years before it
even happened. Hell, we saw it before in my case,
because one of those everywhere places I had been was
(28:29):
in York, Pennsylvania about twenty years prior, where you had
somebody from a group called the World Church Creator. He
was He was a local from World Church to the
Creator that invited the leader of that group, Matt Hale,
to hold the public meeting at that local library. It
(28:51):
was a tactic that that particular group had and what
that resulted in was about out three hundred neo Nazis
coming to York, PA, about three four hundred anti fascists
coming out to oppose them. And you pretty much saw
a parallel of Charlottesville. As I said, up to an
(29:12):
including a this was January twelve, twenty twelve, and up
to an including a someone driving into a group of
people and no one pat no one died, no one
was killed, hurt. Pretty bad. I think the only reason
why he served two years was because one of the
(29:37):
people that he hit was a cop. Now we fast
forward to Charlottesville, and ironically, I saw the person that
organized things in York represented Vanguard America at Charlottesville.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Two days prior, we MI for One People's Project had
a little bit of a pot cast where we basically
said that after everything that was going on in Charlottevielle
prior to Charlottevield one point oh, Charlottesville two point zero,
and then this whole Unite the Right thing was happening,
where it was just making a big production out of
(30:17):
having this event. We pretty much were resigned to the
idea that this was going to be the so called
rights ultimate in the sense that this was going to
be what sent everybody, you know, realizing how bad things
can get. You know it's going to be bad. We
(30:39):
expected it to be bad. I went to Charlotteville armed,
and I think really it was one of the first
times that I ever did strap up when I went
to one of these things. When everything went down, I mean,
prior to everything going down, I was just basically, I think,
(31:00):
videotaping everyone cracking jokes. I was playing happy Warrior because
you know, you see this all before up to and
including the fighting. The fighting is there, I mean, that
happens all the time, even that massively, I'm used to it.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
What I wasn't used to.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
Was when someone was murdered, when someone was killed, because
that's never happened, and that that actually freaked me out.
It Actually I actually got really pissed off when that
went down, and I think a lot of us did
because because if we recognize this ourselves, if we who
(31:44):
have been on the front lines all these years recognized
that this was the direction that was going in, we
also recognized that we had the ability to do something
about it beforehand. That's one of the reasons why the
Aco you got into a lot of trouble because they
were busy trying to protect the free speech of everybody
(32:05):
in all the neo Nazis there and insisting that they
were going to be in that park because that's where
they wanted to be. And when everything went down, a
lot of people just looked at the ACO and said,
could you at least recognize just how dangerous they was
trying to make the situation ACOU I believe will no
(32:29):
longer represent groups that insist on holding armed rallies. I
think that was one of the things that they had
said that they were one of the changeups. And even
with the whole discussion about their freedom of speech and
saying it was a matter of the free speech, people's
attitudes were just like, Okay, fine, that's a given, But
(32:50):
couldn't you let them get their own attorneys? Why do
you have to keep defending the worst of society in
the name of a free speech that frankly doesn't seem
to be afforded the rest of us whenever we are
opposing them. That's the attitude that a lot of people had,
and it was really the last straw. Charlotteville was really
(33:12):
the last straw, and people really got on a different
footing and dealing with fascism. I was used to people
trying to pull all the stops and trying to defend
the quote unquote defend the freedom of speech of not
(33:32):
just the fascist in our society, but the right in general.
So every time I would criticize somebody on the right,
somebody would try to say things ranging from we have
to respect their freedom of speech or we should just
ignore them, you know. And I hated it whenever it
(33:54):
was and when it was combined the best way to
fight hate speeches with more speech. You use the more speech, Well,
why don't you just ignore them? That stopped after Charlottesville.
All of a sudden, people started saying, Okay, we need
to start doing something about this group. That's why you
saw forty thousand people in Boston protesting against the fascists
(34:18):
up there when they tried to hold a rally maybe
a week or two later. You know, that's why you
saw websites like the Daily Stormer get you know, yanked
out of yanked out of the mainstream, and now they're
sitting on the dark web. That's why you saw people
disowned their family members because they went to this rally.
(34:39):
We are seeing people being not just James Field's but
others being held legally accountable for what they did in Charlotteville.
And all of those individuals are fascists. All of the
individuals were white supremacists. We realized that we had the
ability to do something, and we started doing something. Unfortunately,
(35:05):
we stopped after Trump lost and people tried to go
back to that whole just ignore them routine, and within
months we got January sixth, and that was when they
tried they ratcheted up again about how we're going to
(35:26):
really curtail the right and all and all that we
but now that just became rhetoric. We're here again because
you're starting to see a lot of the rumblings with
the attacks on the trans community. Basically conservatives across the
country are primarily trying to essentially do something to the
(35:49):
rest of the country. I mean, you heard that when
you go to the SEAPAC meeting, the Conservative Political Action
Conference a couple of months ago. All they did was
talk about things they wanted to do to America.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
And this is what we have been fighting all our lives.
This is what we have been warning about all our lives.
And while anti fascism has essentially become mainstream, there is
still a lot more work that we have to do
(36:28):
in order to basically see all that work bear fruit.
And that's some pretty much the deal.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah, that forty thousand person kind of response to a
Proud Boy rally in Boston just a couple of weeks
after Unite the Right, it was one of the most
(36:55):
common sense kind of moments and it totally dwarfs into them.
I mean, forty thousand people will do it whatever they want,
right forty thousand people will stop any kind of small march,
even a large one, and so the lesson was learned
then it seemed to be forgotten immediately.
Speaker 7 (37:09):
And they're perfect example of that because that group that
they were protesting went on to become Super Happy Fun America.
They're the group that are now pushing the straight Pride
rallies and they are really in the forefront of all
the anti trans anti LGBTQ plus activity, And of course
(37:30):
some of them got arrested in at January sixth, so
they pretty much built up their stock since then, but
so did we, and it's just a matter of using
that stock. Who's going to use that stock more effectively?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, I think it was really interesting how you centered this,
like this shift that happened among people who went previously
involved in anti fascism, from this kind of near liberal
understanding or maybe even liberal understanding of the sort of
struggle against fascism being one that could take place in
the open, with free speech being the most important thing
(38:08):
that's at stake, and one that moved like in a
moment right when I Nazi killed Heather Higher.
Speaker 7 (38:16):
Two.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
There's a ton more at stake than we thought, and
I think you're right that we've gone back, like right,
we've gone back to the previous understanding, which I think
is what everyone kind of a lot of people, I
guess they felt like they could vote for Joe Biden
and then it was done, like it had disappeared. And
I'd be interested to hear all of your insights, with
(38:39):
all your experience in the movement and like what needs
to be done. I guess to keep that organizing going
as worrying this kind of nadir or thermidor of like
anti fascist organizing in the US.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
If I could offer something from maybe a little bit
of a longer view, you yeah, you know, Darrell talked
about somebody being killed and that never happening before, but
of course it has happened before. And so nineteen seventy
nine there was a Death of the Clan rally in Greensboro,
North Carolina, and people were attacked and killed by an
(39:16):
alliance of the Clan and the Nazis with you know,
the ATF had people in one and the forget. I
think the FBI had people in the other and were
instrumental in bringing the two forces together to attack the
anti Clan group and several people were killed in that,
and then the same thing with aar in Las Vegas,
(39:41):
Lynn S Newborn, a black tattoo artist, and Darren Shirsey.
It was actually I think a sailor, active duty sailor
who were in anti racist action in Las Vegas were
executed and killed by neo Nazis there, And so I
think there is a history of that that we need
to be aware of, but also that that there's ups
(40:01):
and downs and lulls in both fascist organizing anti fascist organized.
One of the things that happened after the seventy nine
killings is that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for president
in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the scene of the killing of shor
En er Chaineyan Goodman on a state freights platform. And
(40:24):
while he was president, you know, I brought in Pat
rob Pat Buchanan and you know, went to Bittberg. So
there's a long history of the state, you know, playing
foot seet with these people, and I think we should
recognize that, but also that there are going to be
ups and downs in in both fascists and anti fascist organizing,
(40:45):
and you know, just see that that. I think the
longer range perspective that is important to understand. The other
thing I did want to take a little exception to
is the idea that the role of anti fascist is
to destroy fascists, and I think that I don't completely
agree with that analysis. I think that it's critical that
actually anti fascists forced to see themselves as part of
(41:06):
a revolutionary transformation of the society and its entirety, and
that the ability to actually reach an organizing people has
to do with making it clear that fascists are not
providing an alternative to what's wrong with the society, although
they claim to be, and that we are, that we're
part of liberatory and you know, self determination elements, anti
(41:28):
colonial elements, you know, support for sovereignty of indigenous people,
you know, support for LGBTQ people's rights and all those
things that have a positive aspect of a way to
reorganize society in a different way than the fascists are
putting forward. And I think that that is critically trying
to sustain a base and build a base by you know,
having a positive you know, one of the things that
(41:50):
I've been doing for many years, I published Turning the Tide,
which you know, started as a little zine. We were
sending it to other chapters of Anti Racist Section and
also went to the prisons, and you know, eventually we
changed the subtitle of that to the Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity,
in the sense of saying, Okay, it's not just Anti
Racist Section, it's not just anti fashions, but what are
(42:11):
we ford? You have to have a positive if you
really want to organize people, you have to have a
positive sense of what they're struggling for, not just what
they're struggling against.
Speaker 7 (42:19):
Yeah, Michael's right, Greensboro did happen. I was really referring
to in recent time. It wasn't. It was the first
time for myself to be at a rally and not
see anyone and see somebody get murdered. But yes, Greensboro,
November third, I believe, nineteen seventy nine in North Carolina,
(42:42):
that happened, and all the clan members had actually gotten
away with it. They did not. They were found. They
cleared them. Meanwhile, recruiting state court and federal court both.
Their claim was that they were not They were brought
up in civil rights judges in the federal court and
they claim they weren't against black people. They were just
again communists, and that right, there was something that even
(43:04):
family members when I first heard of Remember, I'm a
kid at this time. I'm sitting there listening to family
members basically laugh about the situation because all they saw
were clan and communists and they were just had the
attitude of just let them kill each other. And that
was actually a line that was said, don't. I don't
know which family members said it, but that was a
(43:26):
line that stuck with me since I was a kid
and at the time I wasn't really politically a student.
I just that's how I recalled that situation, and with
Dan and Spit the Las Vegas murders that that is
a different situation, however, because that wasn't the rally they
sought them out. That was basically on the off time,
(43:49):
so to speak. Yes, and we've seen that before, most
certainly Luke Cerner from Portland, for example. I mean, he said,
but he's a quadriplegic because somebody came after him.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
The German police intercepted one. When Adam often came to Germany,
they tried to get me. I don't know if you
know about.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
I think because I have been fairly public, I've been
docked and tracked down by fascists and several different occasions
in different places that I lived in. You know, we've
had armed patrols that you know, at various points that
you know. It's clearly you know they do try to
target people as well as you know, attacking mess action.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Emily, you've gotten it as much as anyone I've ever
seen in terms of dosing and harassment and targeted attacks
and threats like that.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
Who are you referring to? I think you Oh, I
think we've all gotten it bad.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
I don't. I don't think that there's any there's no competition.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Here contest who has the most death threats on.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
I did want to just jump back real quick to
the thing that you were mentioning Michael about. You know,
building anti fascism needs to be about building, and I
think that there's two there's two sides to this. I
like to talk about, like the breaking work, which is
what a lot of the street anti fascism is about, right, Like,
sometimes Nazis come marching into your town and you have
(45:22):
to break that. You have to stop that, you have
to confront that, and you have to do things to
make it so that they don't want to come back
into your town or any other towns like your town,
and I think that that's breaking work, you know, the
work of cracking down Nazis, docsing them, exposing them, whatever,
that's breaking work. I think that in the last few
years has become more high profile for various reasons. But
(45:46):
I think that as we're looking at you know what
you were mentioning therel like the anti trans legislation, the
rise of the political far right in government in power,
we do need a different solution. I'm not saying that
you can't go out and like intercept Ron DeSantis's motorcade
(46:06):
and like punch him in the face. I am saying
it will probably end very badly for you if you
try to.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
Do that, right, right, So maybe what.
Speaker 5 (46:14):
We actually also need is to try to build those
alternative structures that are not reliant on the state right.
Speaker 6 (46:22):
You know, when we see these these.
Speaker 5 (46:24):
Trans bands coming in like it's a horrible thing. But
the only thing that actually comes through my mind is
we have more tools, more resources now to create the
networks of support than we've ever had in history. A
lot of our energy should be pouring into supporting those networks,
supporting that that care supporting that mobility and that freedom
(46:46):
of movement rather than just trying to run up against
this brick wall that is this Republican you know behemoth
that is moving you know forward into into all of
our rights. Like we're not going to face it down
head on. We need to go around it in some way.
And I think that that going around it is going
to require that building, that community, that sort of redevelopment
(47:10):
of those alternative structures. So I think it's so important
to have that as well.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Big thanks to Shane Burley for setting up this conversation.
The second half of our talk with Michael Novic, Emily Gorcinski,
and Daryl Lamont Jenkins will be coming out tomorrow. We'll
talk a bit more about the modern state of anti
fascism and what things from the past might help inform
us in the anti fascist struggle of today. See you
(47:36):
on the other side. It could happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com,
(47:57):
Slash sources, Thanks for listening.
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to it could happen here on Garrison Davis. This
is the show where we talk about how everything is
kind of falling apart and how we can sometimes put
it back together. Joining me is as my my dear
dear collaborator and friend, James Stout. Good morning, James.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Good morning Garrison. That's very kind of you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And we got a very special episode here today. We
are talking with four people who have put together a
new book by AKA Press called No Parseran. We're gonna
have kind of a little bit of a like a
group discussion about anti fascist history and this kind of
this the state of anti fascism in the past few years.
(00:49):
I know, this is how I kind of got started
with radical politics growing up in Portland, Oregon. You see
Nazis marching around in your street and you're like, oh, well,
this is obviously a problem, so much a problem, do
something about this. And stuff has changed a lot the
past the past few years. I mean, like the anti
fatist movement that I got kind of that I kind
of got into only twenty eighteen. You know, it's very
(01:12):
different now, and it's I don't know, these types of
things live on through like oral histories as well as
you know, books, and I think it's really cool to
have these types of conversations. So joining us today is
Shane Burley, Emily Gorcinski, Michael Novic, and Darryl Lamont Jenkins.
Greetings everyone, I'm going to hand it over to Shane
(01:34):
and you can kind of talk about the book.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I guess, yeah, Thanks Scarrison, Thanks James for having us
on the whole crew of us. Yeah, this book was
something came out last year, but we had been working
on it for about four years. I'm starting in twenty eighteen.
I was drunk with Kim Kelly and New York and
we thought it'd be really great to put together something
(01:58):
with all of our friends. And what do you do
with a big group of people. It takes like four
or five years to pull off. But really the idea
was trying to do something that was bigger than what
had been written about anti fascism at that point, which
was shockingly narrow. What people understood it as of just
a few movements, mostly very recent history, and so much
(02:22):
wasn't being included in that conversation. So the idea was,
how can we build out like a much bigger picture
of this by including as many voices as possible. So
we ended up getting a couple of dozen folks together
that had different takes on it. Some talking about tech,
some talking about deep history, some talking about anti fascism
in their countries, o their continents, and so in general,
(02:44):
the idea was to make it feel like a discussion
between people who either know each other or should be
like in some kind of comradeship with each other. So
that was sort of where it came together. I think
with this conversation. The way we were thinking about this
is I want I wanted the opportunity to talk with
basically my friends about their history a little bit, and
(03:06):
so I asked three folks that had a really long
history with doing organizing work, and so I thought it
would be cool maybe if we go through talking to
them a little bit about their prehistory or their early
history organizing. And Michael, your history goes back the furthest
as you know, we know, so I thought we could
kick off with you and then talk with Emily and
(03:27):
then Darryl just kind of getting into your background. So
how do you get started in movement work? I actually I
should say first, when did you get started in movement work.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Well, yeah, so I sometimes felt a little bit of
a dinosaur. I was born in nineteen forty seven, so
the fascism in power was a fairly recent reality in
my life. My father was a immigrant from Poland. I
came here in the thirties. Most of his family was
destroyed in Biello Stoke. They had uprising there similar to
(03:59):
the Warsaw Ghetto r Almost everybody was lipidated in that process.
So there's a family history there for me. Also obviously
grew up in the shadow of you know, the US
atomic bombing of Rosa Manakasaki and the US incarceration of
Japanese Americans and concentration camps, so you know, those are
(04:21):
realities in my life. I've lived in a you know,
orthodox Jewish immigrant working class family and neighborhood in Brooklyn,
which is now dominated by extremely right wing forces. Borough Park.
It's one of the bastions of probably you know, neo
fascist Republican prosionists. But somehow, when I grew up there
(04:47):
that was not the case. Anyway. I got involved in
politics in the sixties and you know, student movement stuff,
anti war stuff, and at Brooklyn College, which when I
was there, it was free public four year college part
of the City University System in New York, and I
(05:08):
was actually eventually elected student body president. They had liquidated
the student government earlier when you know, people opposed the
Korean War, and we had a struggle to get you know,
for student rights and anti war stuff and so on,
and we succeeded in getting student body elections for offices
(05:29):
for the first time in about a dozen years. But
you know, as part of all that anti war and
anti police brutality and other stuff that was going on
in Brooklyn at the time, and then we raised the
question of the fact that Brooklyn College was ninety eight
percent white, white in a borough that even then was
(05:50):
you know, majority black in Puerto Rican, and suddenly all
the student support we had had for all the other
struggles cops off the campus and you know, avy up
the campus and so on, and we got you know,
dean of students fired and other stuff. But as soon
as we raised the question of opening the campus up
and having open admissions to the City University system and
(06:11):
a special emissions program for black and Puerto Rican high
school students, most of our students support have oporated. And
for me, that was an object lesson that unless you're
you know, consciously organizing about internalized and institutionalized racism, everything
else you do that is you know, progressive or anti
imperialist or anti war is kind of a house of
(06:32):
cards or you know, castles made of sand. And in
particular and raising those issues, we discovered that there was
a fascist element down the campus. There were people who
formed the Early Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn who were
primarily anti black. And also there's a group called the
youth what is it, Young Americans for Vitom YAF, which
(06:55):
was like the youth wing of the National Review, right
wing Republican formation, and they were pretty openly fascistic in
their politics. So, you know, it became a question that
if you were doing you know, anti racist and anti
war an anti capitalist organizing, you were going to face
not just you know, a struggle against the force of
(07:16):
the state, but that there were reactionary elements within particularly
white society, and I think because of set the colonialism,
you know, there's a mass base for that. And struck
by the title of the show just say, I don't
know if people are familiar with the book, it can't
happen here, but Obviously your title is a reflection it
could happen here. I think it has happened here. For
(07:38):
one thing, I think the fashion has always been an
element of US political culture because of settle colonialism. You know,
I mean definition of fascism is that it's bringing the
methods of rule of the colonies into the metropol But
the US is a settler colony, and therefore there are
colonized people inside this country, you know, always have been,
(08:00):
and so fascistic elements of you know, slave labor, genocide,
you know, land theft, all the rest have always been
part and part of that is also creating that mass
base within the settler population that supports you know, that leadership.
So anyway, I think that that you know that both
(08:21):
those personal aspects and that consciousness, and so I came
in contact with, you know, the very radical forces in
the Black Freedom Circle. Back then, the Black Panther Party
is very active. There was one of the people in
the Black Student Union joined the Black Panther Party. You know,
it's a period of very fascist attacks and the Panthers
(08:42):
had formed the National Committee of the Combat Fascism and
had an analysis that you know, the US was fascistic,
and you know, George Jackson at that time said, you know,
fascism is already here, and I think he meant it,
you know, literally, And so that's part of the perspective
I've carried through for you know, I don't know what
(09:05):
that is sixty years now close.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
To Yeah, I mean, I think really quickly, I would
like to hear kind of what your experience was with
forming John Brown. Where did the idea come from? Because
I think for a lot of a lot of people
are thinking of recent anti fascist American anti fascist history
that ends up being kind of a starting point for
a certain kind of no platform tactic. So how did
(09:28):
you first kind of develop that? What brought you in?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
So, yeah, just to say, I was, you know, coming
out of the movement as I did, I moved from
New York to California because there was a strong There
was a newspaper called the Movement, which was the newspaper
basically of friends of Snick. It was the people who
left Snick when Snick adopted a black power analysis and
(09:53):
said that white people who were involved should go organize
in the white community. And there was a you know,
kind of a I was part of a Working Class
Organizing Collective in Hayward, California. Eventually, out of that I
got connected with, you know, some of the people that
later formed Prairie Fire Organized Committee. I was in a
group in the Bay Area called the June twenty eighth Union.
(10:14):
It was a gay ends, pro socialist, anti imperiallests, pro
feminist collective of mostly people of European decent. And we
went to what was called the Hard Times Conference, which
was put on by Prairie Far Organizing Committee in Chicago,
and it turned out that there was secretly an effort
by the weather underground to come up from underground to
(10:39):
create a new communist party, and they serviced that at
that conference. But there's a lot of opposition to that
from across the board, from different Black liberation, American Indian Movement,
the Puerto Rican in Deepending, the struggled Chicago movement to
all of them, you know, felt that there was a
sell out of the politics there anyway. Out of that
process I was part of, I joined a Prairie Fire
(11:01):
Organized Committee eventually, and that split and then there was
a West Coast group which captained Prairie Far. The East
coast formed a group called the main eineteenth communist organization,
and they launched the original John Brown Anti Clan Committee,
an initiative from the prisons. The organized prisoners in New
(11:23):
York had discovered that there was an extensive network of
clan claverns that were based in the prison guards and
some of the white prisoners, and they asked for outside
supporters to begin to expose that and deal with it
and help them deal with it. And John Brand of
the Gillen Committee was formed out of that. Separately, very
far on the West Coast had formed a group called
(11:43):
take a Stand against the Klan. There was a lot
of you know, that was the period that the beginning
of the notification of the clan that was going on.
So this is the seventies and eventually, you know, under
a challenge from particular the New African Independence movement, the
Malcolm XS grassroots movement New African People's Organization which both
(12:06):
Praise Fire on the West Coast and May nineteenth and
the East Coast were connected to. They pushed for a
joint organization. So at that point there was a kind
of reconstitution of John Burnett the Clan Committee, and so
I was part of that and we merged. You know,
there were chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, the Bay Area, Los
(12:28):
Angeles where I ended up in New York, I think
Bowling Green, maybe the couple of Connecticut, and so they
were quite active in that period, and you know, street
level confrontations and you know other exposures of early Neo
Nazi activity and clan activity, but particularly from a perspective
(12:53):
of conscious and active solidarity with the Black freedom struggling,
particularly the New African Independence movement, which is a very
high level of unity, and over a period of time,
you know, there was a struggle to broaden that out
and try to be a more all embracing organization that
could relate to the struggle. There were a lot of
different formations at that time. There was the National Anti
(13:15):
Clan Network, and there was a couple of others, and
there were differing politics among all of them. And you know,
John Branda Clink made that time, took more of a
position of pro direct action and also, as they say,
conscious solidated with the Black freedom struggle as a basis
for doing that work.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Anti Clan Network. I think so people kind of know
that's where the Southern Poverty Law Center eventually came out
of another networks of these different groups out here in Oregon.
The Rural Organizing Project was sort of like a down
the line there. I think it's interesting too about the
found story. I was talking with our mutual friend Lisa Roth,
who was part of the founding of that. Very first
(14:07):
iteration of the John Brown Committee was they were doing
a prison organizing with Black Panthers and Upstate New York
and they were writing these letters saying the prison guards
are clan and they thought, you mean they're really racist,
you know, obviously they're the prison guards. Yeah, And when
they went and looked it up. No, the president of
(14:27):
the prison's guard union was the Grand Dragon of the
State KKK, and they.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Were actually he had a position within the prison system
as the head of the sort of education activity educational
activities in the prisons, and was using his formal position
within the prison system to organize white prisoners along with
the guards into clan clamorance.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Which seems like a total That was sort of a
validation with the centerpiece of John Brown being that cops
and clan have that kind of collaboration, because that was
their kind of the founding like lesson of that organizing.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Sure, the blue by day, White by night, and a
lot of those slogans come out of that period, and
you know, I think it is you know, it's related
to the later the aar A line that you know,
fascism is built from above and below that there's you know,
elements within the state that are operating independently, but there
are also state forces and then they're you know independent, Yeah,
(15:21):
so called revolutionary fascists that claim to be opposing the state,
but we're not really.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, I think to fast forward a little bit, quite
a bit, Emily, I don't remember when we first met
each other. Obviously it was probably shortly after Unite the
Right happened. But how did you first get drawn into organizing?
Did you have a long history before that happened, or
were you just part of getting involved around the ramp
up to that now?
Speaker 5 (15:48):
I think, you know, compared to the other folks here,
I'm sort of the summer child of the of the group, right,
I don't have a super long history in organizing. I
think that, you know, I came to anti fascism before
Unite the Right happened. I work in the tech industry
and sometimes sort of around the gamer Gate era, I
(16:12):
started noticing how white supremacist the tech industry had become.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
Right, it was.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Sort of this nexus for a lot of this strongly libertarian,
strongly supremacist mindset. It was sort of the worst of
that meritocratic ideal that a lot of us had to
experience in university and in our workplaces, and it just
seemed like it was getting out of control. And that
(16:40):
was kind of at the same time that we were
seeing a lot more women come into the tech industry,
we were starting to see a lot of changes in
the space.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
And then there was sort of like this this.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Vacuum left by gamer Gate, as that all sort of
died down, A lot of this sort of energy needed
to go somewhere, and so I started speaking out against
some white supremacist organizing that was happening at conferences and
things like that. And I think the first wake up
call for me happened when some folks that are are
(17:11):
linked to Milo Yanapolists put together a list of of
SGW social justice warriors and this was journalists and activists
and people who were speaking out and I somehow made
that list. And I realized, after you know, looking at
this and seeing what was going on that being a
(17:32):
political being sort of just somebody with an opinion, wasn't
you know, there was no way to be that wasn't
a defense against what was coming. And so I just
sort of looked inside and said, well, if this is
the way it's going to be, like I'm going to
fight back, I'm gonna I'm going to figure out what
to do.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I didn't really have a lot of organizing ties.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
They didn't really have a network, so like every other person,
I just you know, shouted at Twitter and somehow that worked.
The irony of this all is that all this was
going on, I was starting to do you know, digital activism,
using my tech skills to try to shine.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Light on things that were wrong in the.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Federal government and the Trump administration and things like that,
and I really just wanted to step away from that.
I kind of had like I went to Prague after
Trump was inaugurated. I wanted to like, you know, clear
the air a little bit. I didn't like the fact
that I was on this hit list that was put
together by people who have like a couple of handshakes
(18:36):
away from.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
The president's desk. So I went to Europe.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
I went to Prague and I cleared my head, and
when I came back, I said, you know what, I'm
going to just focus on local activism. I'm going to
focus on the issues that are in my community. I
knew that we had things going on with our local
low income housing space, we had a lot of you know,
stuff around the statues that was coming up in town,
and I didn't really expect, like it was kind of
(19:01):
random that Unite the Right was you know, destined for Charlottesville,
and so all of the work, all of the organizing
that I had started to do that spring, and that
where I guess that winter in that spring started to
pay off, as you know, as Charlottesville became the target
of all of the neo Nazis. So I think it
(19:21):
was sort of I don't want to say it's it's fortunate,
because it's not really the greatest, like it's not a
positive thing that that's what happened. But I guess that
I am lucky that as I came to this awakening,
it was happening you know, before and not after, and
that I was able to use the network that I
was building, the audience I was building in order to
(19:42):
help like back. So yeah, I guess that's that's sort
of like, I don't know that I would have been,
you know, as much as dedicated as I was if
it wasn't for that very personal sort of experience. And
I look back at that like I'm kind of embarrassed
by that. But you know, we all have our own paths.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Absolutely, And I think, you know, there's something interesting about
that year in advance of the Unite the Right, where
where different groups were testing the waters a little bit,
and how that was their ability to ramp up in
the area, but it was also the anti fascist ability
to ramp up, you know, So talking with Mimi and
other organizers there, like those earlier events like the earlier
(20:23):
Clan rally that happened like you know, months earlier, or
kind of those that early flash mob that Richard Spencer
led that gave people the opportunity to build up the base.
So how did you kind of shift to focusing on
that first? I guess how did you hear about Unite
the Riots, this big kind of like target event, But
what was the steps along the way there?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Yeah, I think one of the things that really that
I really tried to do that year was to use
the experience I was having traveling to try to understand
the history of movements that were against you.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Know, great state powers.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Right when I was in Prague, I spent a lot
of time reading about and looking into and walking through
the sites of where the Prague Spring took place, and
where the Deil Revolution took place, and how these groups
of people were able to overcome this massive amount of
state violence and still be successful. And when Richard Spencer
first came to town that first flashbob is now called
(21:22):
Charlottesville one point zero.
Speaker 6 (21:24):
I was in Berlin at the time. I woke up
to see what was going on.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
And it was, you know, I think again just sort
of these you know, the universe coming into alignment. As
that was happening, there's also this big anti Nazi demonstration
that was happening in Berlin. So I took that opportunity
to go and learn about what anti fascists are doing
in other countries and other localities, how they are organizing,
(21:50):
how they spread their message, and so I think that,
you know, as I learned about all of this going on,
what the first thing that I tried to do is
just look around and say, what can we learn from
people who have been here before? Who have done this
before and have this in their living memory, and that's
what I tried to take back to Charlottesville. And then,
(22:11):
you know, I think it was after that trip. I
was in Berlin in May. I came back for that trip.
I joined in the anti fascist march almost as soon
as I got back, and that's when we had heard
we've learned about the two rallies, the July eighth KKK
rally and the August twelfth Unite the Right, And at
that point, like from that moment, it was just like
every waking moment of my day was spent organizing for
(22:35):
those for those rallies.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's the sort of effect that just circumstance sort of
speeds people's capacity to do it, and that maybe even
maybe capacity is not the right word, they're kind of
understanding of what it takes to do that work. So
I was interviewing a number of the rabbis in the area,
and these were not super political folks. These were not
people like from some activist synagogues wh were mainline synagogues,
(23:00):
but they connected with a number of faith leaders from
the historically black churches, both of which were saying, okay,
we're both going to be targeted here, and there's no
there's no institutions coming to help. Really, there's no one
we can count on here. So they created those collaborative
spaces and really pretty complicated and effective organizing models having
no experience doing it because of that hyper intense space,
(23:23):
which I think is in a way that's why those
circumstances have such an important effect on it. So how
did you basically plan those couple of weeks in advance?
How were you thinking about it, and what was the
kind of groups you were working with these like networks
that were coming together formal organizations.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
Yeah, I think there were a bunch of, you know,
organizations on the ground that I connected with. Certainly we
had a local chapter of Surge showing up for racial
justice and they were doing a lot of organizing. And
there was the Anarchist People of Color APOC. They were
a great group of people that we connected with and
(24:03):
that I connected with. And it also happened that I
started dating somebody who's also connected to the local anti
fascist scene at the time, so I sort of brought
into all of these circles through that relationship as well.
And so I think that sort of all of these
things combined really made it clear that we had a
small but very knowledgeable base of people that could organize.
(24:28):
And I think that one of the things that we
did exceptionally well in the lead up is because we
had such a small core of people who don't who
didn't really have, you know, a breadth of experience, you know,
in doing this, we were able to compartmentalize really well.
Speaker 6 (24:44):
You know, some people were focusing on, you know, what.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Are we going to do with the you know, the
clergy collective, and how are they going to organize?
Speaker 6 (24:51):
What is their action going to be?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
And we had a media collective and that was where
I put most of my energy. And so I think
that we had these different groups of people that focus
on different things that helped us unblock ourselves from the grander,
sort of more theoretical, more abstract way to respond. We
didn't have the time to debate over tactics, we didn't
(25:15):
have time to debate over the ideology of anti fascism,
what the right thing to do was, or what the
best thing to do was. We really had to focus
our time on what do we have time to do?
What can we achieve given the constraints that we have
and with those sort of constraints, I think that maybe
we left some good actions on the table, but what
(25:37):
we came up with I think was fairly effective.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Do you think that it carried those community folks together
through and after the event. Do you feel like those
community ties were still there?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
I think some of them are and some of them
are not. There are certainly community times that have broken.
There was a lot of pressure that built up. There
were differences of opinions that we set aside and hoped
to resolve afterwards, and those did not necessarily get resolved
in some cases, some interpersonal issues, some interorganizational issues. I
(26:14):
remember at one point there was a decision that was
being made, driven by a couple of the organizing groups,
that they would not support anyone that was going to
be armed, and this was a tension point between those
groups and groups like Redneck Revolt that were coming armed
to help support anti fascist rallies, and that like that
(26:35):
is something that still you know, affected me pretty well
because I was being targeted because of how present I
was in social media and Twitter.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
And things like that.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
I needed to have an armed security detail, and you know,
that created a lot of a lot of tension I
didn't have legal like I had legal support pulled away
from me. I didn't have legal support until until November
of that year, when noise of a.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
Lawsuit started happening.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
So I think that some of those things did create
some tension that led to fracturing of community, but some
things actually really did tie the community back together and
kept it close even as we have drifted apart and
moved into different you know, different cities, different countries, different states, whatever.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
I think it's a bit of both. You know.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
There's one of the founding members of Rose Head Antifa
said something that kind of stuck with me, which is
that a lot of people will look to anti fascism
as a way to rebuild the left or as to
build this big mass united left. But that's not actually
what's being demanded of the situation. The situation is very
pretty straightforward, is to basically destroy this opposition of people.
(27:43):
And how you do that. I mean, you can have
considerations about how they bring in the community and try
and align with other groups, but in the end, there's
other decisions are being made, and so people often get
disappointed when that ends up being what those projects actually are. Now, Daryl,
you were down there right right correct, that was there.
You're everywhere when we're there, I try to be.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
I think one of the things about Charlottesville that was
really important is that we saw it coming, and we
had seen it coming months, probably even years before it
even happened. Hell, we saw it before in my case,
because one of those everywhere places I had been was
(28:29):
in York, Pennsylvania about twenty years prior, where you had
somebody from a group called the World Church Creator. He
was He was a local from World Church to the
Creator that invited the leader of that group, Matt Hale,
to hold the public meeting at that local library. It
(28:51):
was a tactic that that particular group had and what
that resulted in was about out three hundred neo Nazis
coming to York, PA, about three four hundred anti fascists
coming out to oppose them. And you pretty much saw
a parallel of Charlottesville. As I said, up to an
(29:12):
including a this was January twelve, twenty twelve, and up
to an including a someone driving into a group of
people and no one pat no one died, no one
was killed, hurt. Pretty bad. I think the only reason
why he served two years was because one of the
(29:37):
people that he hit was a cop. Now we fast
forward to Charlottesville, and ironically, I saw the person that
organized things in York represented Vanguard America at Charlottesville.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Two days prior, we MI for One People's Project had
a little bit of a pot cast where we basically
said that after everything that was going on in Charlottevielle
prior to Charlottevield one point oh, Charlottesville two point zero,
and then this whole Unite the Right thing was happening,
where it was just making a big production out of
(30:17):
having this event. We pretty much were resigned to the
idea that this was going to be the so called
rights ultimate in the sense that this was going to
be what sent everybody, you know, realizing how bad things
can get. You know it's going to be bad. We
(30:39):
expected it to be bad. I went to Charlotteville armed,
and I think really it was one of the first
times that I ever did strap up when I went
to one of these things. When everything went down, I mean,
prior to everything going down, I was just basically, I think,
(31:00):
videotaping everyone cracking jokes. I was playing happy Warrior because
you know, you see this all before up to and
including the fighting. The fighting is there, I mean, that
happens all the time, even that massively, I'm used to it.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
What I wasn't used to.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
Was when someone was murdered, when someone was killed, because
that's never happened, and that that actually freaked me out.
It Actually I actually got really pissed off when that
went down, and I think a lot of us did
because because if we recognize this ourselves, if we who
(31:44):
have been on the front lines all these years recognized
that this was the direction that was going in, we
also recognized that we had the ability to do something
about it beforehand. That's one of the reasons why the
Aco you got into a lot of trouble because they
were busy trying to protect the free speech of everybody
(32:05):
in all the neo Nazis there and insisting that they
were going to be in that park because that's where
they wanted to be. And when everything went down, a
lot of people just looked at the ACO and said,
could you at least recognize just how dangerous they was
trying to make the situation ACOU I believe will no
(32:29):
longer represent groups that insist on holding armed rallies. I
think that was one of the things that they had
said that they were one of the changeups. And even
with the whole discussion about their freedom of speech and
saying it was a matter of the free speech, people's
attitudes were just like, Okay, fine, that's a given, But
(32:50):
couldn't you let them get their own attorneys? Why do
you have to keep defending the worst of society in
the name of a free speech that frankly doesn't seem
to be afforded the rest of us whenever we are
opposing them. That's the attitude that a lot of people had,
and it was really the last straw. Charlotteville was really
(33:12):
the last straw, and people really got on a different
footing and dealing with fascism. I was used to people
trying to pull all the stops and trying to defend
the quote unquote defend the freedom of speech of not
(33:32):
just the fascist in our society, but the right in general.
So every time I would criticize somebody on the right,
somebody would try to say things ranging from we have
to respect their freedom of speech or we should just
ignore them, you know. And I hated it whenever it
(33:54):
was and when it was combined the best way to
fight hate speeches with more speech. You use the more speech, Well,
why don't you just ignore them? That stopped after Charlottesville.
All of a sudden, people started saying, Okay, we need
to start doing something about this group. That's why you
saw forty thousand people in Boston protesting against the fascists
(34:18):
up there when they tried to hold a rally maybe
a week or two later. You know, that's why you
saw websites like the Daily Stormer get you know, yanked
out of yanked out of the mainstream, and now they're
sitting on the dark web. That's why you saw people
disowned their family members because they went to this rally.
(34:39):
We are seeing people being not just James Field's but
others being held legally accountable for what they did in Charlotteville.
And all of those individuals are fascists. All of the
individuals were white supremacists. We realized that we had the
ability to do something, and we started doing something. Unfortunately,
(35:05):
we stopped after Trump lost and people tried to go
back to that whole just ignore them routine, and within
months we got January sixth, and that was when they
tried they ratcheted up again about how we're going to
(35:26):
really curtail the right and all and all that we
but now that just became rhetoric. We're here again because
you're starting to see a lot of the rumblings with
the attacks on the trans community. Basically conservatives across the
country are primarily trying to essentially do something to the
(35:49):
rest of the country. I mean, you heard that when
you go to the SEAPAC meeting, the Conservative Political Action
Conference a couple of months ago. All they did was
talk about things they wanted to do to America.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
And this is what we have been fighting all our lives.
This is what we have been warning about all our lives.
And while anti fascism has essentially become mainstream, there is
still a lot more work that we have to do
(36:28):
in order to basically see all that work bear fruit.
And that's some pretty much the deal.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah, that forty thousand person kind of response to a
Proud Boy rally in Boston just a couple of weeks
after Unite the Right, it was one of the most
(36:55):
common sense kind of moments and it totally dwarfs into them.
I mean, forty thousand people will do it whatever they want,
right forty thousand people will stop any kind of small march,
even a large one, and so the lesson was learned
then it seemed to be forgotten immediately.
Speaker 7 (37:09):
And they're perfect example of that because that group that
they were protesting went on to become Super Happy Fun America.
They're the group that are now pushing the straight Pride
rallies and they are really in the forefront of all
the anti trans anti LGBTQ plus activity, And of course
(37:30):
some of them got arrested in at January sixth, so
they pretty much built up their stock since then, but
so did we, and it's just a matter of using
that stock. Who's going to use that stock more effectively?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, I think it was really interesting how you centered this,
like this shift that happened among people who went previously
involved in anti fascism, from this kind of near liberal
understanding or maybe even liberal understanding of the sort of
struggle against fascism being one that could take place in
the open, with free speech being the most important thing
(38:08):
that's at stake, and one that moved like in a
moment right when I Nazi killed Heather Higher.
Speaker 7 (38:16):
Two.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
There's a ton more at stake than we thought, and
I think you're right that we've gone back, like right,
we've gone back to the previous understanding, which I think
is what everyone kind of a lot of people, I
guess they felt like they could vote for Joe Biden
and then it was done, like it had disappeared. And
I'd be interested to hear all of your insights, with
(38:39):
all your experience in the movement and like what needs
to be done. I guess to keep that organizing going
as worrying this kind of nadir or thermidor of like
anti fascist organizing in the US.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
If I could offer something from maybe a little bit
of a longer view, you yeah, you know, Darrell talked
about somebody being killed and that never happening before, but
of course it has happened before. And so nineteen seventy
nine there was a Death of the Clan rally in Greensboro,
North Carolina, and people were attacked and killed by an
(39:16):
alliance of the Clan and the Nazis with you know,
the ATF had people in one and the forget. I
think the FBI had people in the other and were
instrumental in bringing the two forces together to attack the
anti Clan group and several people were killed in that,
and then the same thing with aar in Las Vegas,
(39:41):
Lynn S Newborn, a black tattoo artist, and Darren Shirsey.
It was actually I think a sailor, active duty sailor
who were in anti racist action in Las Vegas were
executed and killed by neo Nazis there, And so I
think there is a history of that that we need
to be aware of, but also that that there's ups
(40:01):
and downs and lulls in both fascist organizing anti fascist organized.
One of the things that happened after the seventy nine
killings is that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for president
in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the scene of the killing of shor
En er Chaineyan Goodman on a state freights platform. And
(40:24):
while he was president, you know, I brought in Pat
rob Pat Buchanan and you know, went to Bittberg. So
there's a long history of the state, you know, playing
foot seet with these people, and I think we should
recognize that, but also that there are going to be
ups and downs in in both fascists and anti fascist organizing,
(40:45):
and you know, just see that that. I think the
longer range perspective that is important to understand. The other
thing I did want to take a little exception to
is the idea that the role of anti fascist is
to destroy fascists, and I think that I don't completely
agree with that analysis. I think that it's critical that
actually anti fascists forced to see themselves as part of
(41:06):
a revolutionary transformation of the society and its entirety, and
that the ability to actually reach an organizing people has
to do with making it clear that fascists are not
providing an alternative to what's wrong with the society, although
they claim to be, and that we are, that we're
part of liberatory and you know, self determination elements, anti
(41:28):
colonial elements, you know, support for sovereignty of indigenous people,
you know, support for LGBTQ people's rights and all those
things that have a positive aspect of a way to
reorganize society in a different way than the fascists are
putting forward. And I think that that is critically trying
to sustain a base and build a base by you know,
having a positive you know, one of the things that
(41:50):
I've been doing for many years, I published Turning the Tide,
which you know, started as a little zine. We were
sending it to other chapters of Anti Racist Section and
also went to the prisons, and you know, eventually we
changed the subtitle of that to the Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity,
in the sense of saying, Okay, it's not just Anti
Racist Section, it's not just anti fashions, but what are
(42:11):
we ford? You have to have a positive if you
really want to organize people, you have to have a
positive sense of what they're struggling for, not just what
they're struggling against.
Speaker 7 (42:19):
Yeah, Michael's right, Greensboro did happen. I was really referring
to in recent time. It wasn't. It was the first
time for myself to be at a rally and not
see anyone and see somebody get murdered. But yes, Greensboro,
November third, I believe, nineteen seventy nine in North Carolina,
(42:42):
that happened, and all the clan members had actually gotten
away with it. They did not. They were found. They
cleared them. Meanwhile, recruiting state court and federal court both.
Their claim was that they were not They were brought
up in civil rights judges in the federal court and
they claim they weren't against black people. They were just
again communists, and that right, there was something that even
(43:04):
family members when I first heard of Remember, I'm a
kid at this time. I'm sitting there listening to family
members basically laugh about the situation because all they saw
were clan and communists and they were just had the
attitude of just let them kill each other. And that
was actually a line that was said, don't. I don't
know which family members said it, but that was a
(43:26):
line that stuck with me since I was a kid
and at the time I wasn't really politically a student.
I just that's how I recalled that situation, and with
Dan and Spit the Las Vegas murders that that is
a different situation, however, because that wasn't the rally they
sought them out. That was basically on the off time,
(43:49):
so to speak. Yes, and we've seen that before, most
certainly Luke Cerner from Portland, for example. I mean, he said,
but he's a quadriplegic because somebody came after him.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
The German police intercepted one. When Adam often came to Germany,
they tried to get me. I don't know if you
know about.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
I think because I have been fairly public, I've been
docked and tracked down by fascists and several different occasions
in different places that I lived in. You know, we've
had armed patrols that you know, at various points that
you know. It's clearly you know they do try to
target people as well as you know, attacking mess action.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Emily, you've gotten it as much as anyone I've ever
seen in terms of dosing and harassment and targeted attacks
and threats like that.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
Who are you referring to? I think you Oh, I
think we've all gotten it bad.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
I don't. I don't think that there's any there's no competition.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Here contest who has the most death threats on.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
I did want to just jump back real quick to
the thing that you were mentioning Michael about. You know,
building anti fascism needs to be about building, and I
think that there's two there's two sides to this. I
like to talk about, like the breaking work, which is
what a lot of the street anti fascism is about, right, Like,
sometimes Nazis come marching into your town and you have
(45:22):
to break that. You have to stop that, you have
to confront that, and you have to do things to
make it so that they don't want to come back
into your town or any other towns like your town,
and I think that that's breaking work, you know, the
work of cracking down Nazis, docsing them, exposing them, whatever,
that's breaking work. I think that in the last few
years has become more high profile for various reasons. But
(45:46):
I think that as we're looking at you know what
you were mentioning therel like the anti trans legislation, the
rise of the political far right in government in power,
we do need a different solution. I'm not saying that
you can't go out and like intercept Ron DeSantis's motorcade
(46:06):
and like punch him in the face. I am saying
it will probably end very badly for you if you
try to.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
Do that, right, right, So maybe what.
Speaker 5 (46:14):
We actually also need is to try to build those
alternative structures that are not reliant on the state right.
Speaker 6 (46:22):
You know, when we see these these.
Speaker 5 (46:24):
Trans bands coming in like it's a horrible thing. But
the only thing that actually comes through my mind is
we have more tools, more resources now to create the
networks of support than we've ever had in history. A
lot of our energy should be pouring into supporting those networks,
supporting that that care supporting that mobility and that freedom
(46:46):
of movement rather than just trying to run up against
this brick wall that is this Republican you know behemoth
that is moving you know forward into into all of
our rights. Like we're not going to face it down
head on. We need to go around it in some way.
And I think that that going around it is going
to require that building, that community, that sort of redevelopment
(47:10):
of those alternative structures. So I think it's so important
to have that as well.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Big thanks to Shane Burley for setting up this conversation.
The second half of our talk with Michael Novic, Emily Gorcinski,
and Daryl Lamont Jenkins will be coming out tomorrow. We'll
talk a bit more about the modern state of anti
fascism and what things from the past might help inform
us in the anti fascist struggle of today. See you
(47:36):
on the other side. It could happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com,
(47:57):
Slash sources, Thanks for listening.
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James Stout
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