May 20, 2022 • 50 mins
Mia is joined by Shannon and John, two organizers working on the Dual Power Gathering, to talk about how you can join a bunch of cool people camping in the dunes and talking organizing from July 29th to the 31st!
https://opencollective.com/tenants-united-south-chicago/projects/dual-power-2022
https://dualpower2022.org/update/2022/03/07/gathering-content.html
Twitter: @DualPower2022
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's well it it is the podcast. It could happen here,
but for once, it is not about the world falling apart.
It is entirely about putting it back together again. Uh.
And and joining me to talk about putting it back
together again is zero of the other people who are
normally on this podcast, But I'm joined by Shannon and
(00:25):
John Horonymus, who are part of the team of Organized
Is working on the Dual Power Gathering. Shannon, John, Welcome,
Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Hey. So, I
guess the first part of the Dual Power Gathering is
dual power, and I think we should walk through what
actually that is, in what our sort of visions for
it look like, because man, I know we've talked about
(00:47):
this on the show before, but that was a very
very long time ago, but which I mean like probably
only like seven months, but you know, feel it feels
like ancient history. So yeah, I guess do you two
want to talk about what dual power is and how
how do you do? Yeah? Sure, I'm gonna stop trying
(01:11):
to think about what happened seven months ago and I'm
trying to Okay, you said that, I was just like,
oh wow, Okay, no, never mind. Um, So dual power, John,
how about I go ahead and share with our audience
what is sort of the poetic language that we have
up on the website from the organizers, and then we
(01:32):
can kind of like break it down and talk about it. Um.
That works for me, all right? So of the website
texts such dual power is a way to imagine the
moment just before our movements converge, as the possible becomes
the actual, when the seeds of social transformation we have
sown for generations bloom, when the old world begins to
(01:56):
wither and new worlds can be born. Is a way
of thinking about how we got to that moment and
beyond it. Dual power is the project of building self determination,
mutual aid, solidarity, and direct democracy in our communities by
creating spaces that empower us all and from which you
do in mansipatory institutions can emerge. It's a pretty yeah.
(02:20):
So what does that mean? What does that mean? Um?
First off, I want to say like a shout out
to a lot of people have been working on this
vision of what dual power is for years and years now,
and that includes uh a lot of groups. Um, that
(02:41):
we are either in conversation with or have been taking
inspiration from UM. One of the biggest, I think most
developed groups that's doing that work is cooperation Jackson Jackson
Jacks Mississippi UM and UH. I think the goal is
(03:02):
people went up. Oftentimes when people do like here dual power,
if they don't have any other UM context for it,
but they are maybe from the left. They've heard about
this moment in the Russian Revolution when there were these
two competing like uh, you know, basis of power in
like Russian society while they're undergoing this revolutionary change, and
(03:28):
uh Lenin wrote like a pamphlet about it, calling it
the dual power, and looked at it as like a
thing that needed to be like overcome by you know,
workers in Russia UM too, like establish a workers state UM,
which they kind of outlined in a book called State
and Revolution. And but when we look at what they
(03:52):
were describing, we kind of look at this as a
thing that emerges in any time when there's a social
revel kind of unfolding in a society where you have
various classes who are like changing like social relations, workers, peasants, UM,
(04:12):
different groups of people who like have like a class
they have come together around a class interest and overthrowing
their oppression, and they have to go through stages of
building their collective power their collective identity there, and they're
kind of like overall strategic movement in a particular direction, UM,
(04:38):
and they create this tension between the existing state order
and a newly emerging like uh like social revolution that's
like overthrown, challenging UH and overthrowing that like UM power.
So that being said, we want to ground that. We
(05:00):
want to ground that a little bit in a like
less historicized context or whatever. We could say, maybe that's
the work that we're doing to build up the institutions
and relational structures that we need to care for ourselves
in each other UM as we moved through uh sort
of like different states of like institutional organization in the society. Right.
(05:25):
So when we're thinking about how do we meet our
basic needs together in ways that are not dependent on
the pressive institutions that we're trying to overthrow, we're talking
about dual power. Yeah, it's like any time working class folks,
And it's like in a broad definition communities people who
aren't necessarily working but like depend on like taking care
(05:47):
of each other or who do the work of reproducing
every you know, society, UM basically build their own independent
power like uh to chance, like to be able to
fight back, to challenge the you know, the status quo.
So like there's a lot of things they're kind of
percolating that we've been like that have been happening in
(06:10):
North America that takes inspiration from areas of the global South, UM,
but also our homeown homegrown like traditions UM. So that
could being anything from like your local mutual aid network
to uh your local tenant union to like a rank
and file UM union of like Amazon workers or teachers
(06:35):
or care workers, UM. You know whose existence puts them
in conflict with the state capital UM and like patriarchy,
settler colonial relations um. You know, like indigenous water protectors UM,
folks who are building up places where the more developed
(06:58):
it becomes, the more it kind of built its own momentum.
And you have spaces that are like autonomous fully like
autonomous regions from like state power and to begin to
like pick apart at capital and like reconfigure are like
(07:19):
relations of like how we make things and do things
and take care of each other in like fundamental ways,
and we have lots of beautiful examples of this from
the like organizing history not even that long ago, and
people will be familiar with some of the Black Panther
programs or some of the programs that were integrated into
the farm workers movement, and some of the programs that
(07:42):
were put together by the anarchi feminists who were trying
to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through
things like mutual aid healthcare and and things like that.
So we'll see there's like a lot of really beautiful
examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements.
(08:02):
And we're all really excited about what's going on now
and we want to see that just to sort of
come together and a flourish I think it's important to
think about do a power or something that's like I
don't know, like I I think there's a lot of
people who look at it as sort of like dual
power is planting a garden, and it's like, I mean
sort of yes, but like there's you know, they're there.
There's there's sort of two components of it right there.
(08:24):
There's this sort of there's a defensive component and an
offensive component. There's a component that's about taking care of
each other, and there is a component that is attack. Right,
there's there's there's a component that is the people who
are preventing us from taking care of each other need
to be stopped from doing that. And so yeah, I
think I think it's important to, yeah, think about different
(08:45):
kinds of like, different kinds of institutions that you would
not normally think of as doing the same thing, as
being part of the same struggle. And yeah, I guess
that brings us to what YouTube and a lot of
other people have been working on. For god, it's been
this been in the work for a long time. Yeah,
which which which is the which is the this uh
(09:08):
dual power gathering? And yeah, I guess you sul want
to talk about what what that is because yeah, yeah, well,
you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple
of years dreaming about being together, and so I think
this is kind of the fruit of that dream. Right
coming up at the end of July, UH, we're inviting
everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip,
(09:32):
uh and during that time, we're hoping to see a
collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can
bring to it, which we know far exceeds the uh
sort of even the scope vision of the organizing body.
(09:53):
So we're really trying to um, just create a space
for people to come together. We are interested in these
ideas who have various levels of experience working with it
that will be valuable to everybody, from people who are
brand new to this stuff and just want to learn
more about it too, people who have have been doing
it for years, for decades even um And yeah, that's
(10:17):
sort of the the underlying ambition of it is to
get people together in space. You know, a lot of
us have been to these kinds of events before and
felt like the most important thing that we got out
of that was the relationships that we were able to
build and the people that we were able to meet
that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues with, and
(10:37):
that we could find inspiration uh in in those dialogues
and in those connections that would birth new projects that
you know, we don't yet know are even possible. And
so this is kind of, at least for me, like
that's the really important and exciting force of the of
the plan. Yeah, yeah, I think that why they're the
(11:01):
Some of the things about this I think are really
like it's been like really a collaborative effort to come
up with this thing, Like we had the discussions about
this is a thing that needs that we thought need
to happen, because at the end of like by the
end of the middle of one, we're like, look, clearly,
we've all been through so many different experiences over the
(11:24):
last ten, fifteen, twenty years. At this point some of
us are getting to be elders, and um, we uh
and we need to like, um, it feels like it's
now is an excellent a really great time to have
like a actual conversation about where we where we're coming,
(11:46):
where we are, where we're coming from, and where we're
going and how do we translate these experiences into like
networks of like trusting relationships and sharing u a sharing
of all this knowledge. Is like we need to debrief
like the like the past five years I think in particular,
(12:08):
have been like it's like crammed. It feels like, you know,
the whole saying like some some years nothing happens, and
some you know, in some months decades happen paraphrasing or whatever,
and it's like so much stuff has come. We've all
gone through so many things and come to like, uh,
and we're seeing people who didn't have like maybe a
(12:32):
stance on various political things or are like seeing their
communities torn apart by like the real lived experience of
like climate change and wants to and need to do
something about it. That sort of thing like bringing in
people who have lots of experience with people who have
maybe are just now figuring things out and really kind
(12:52):
of like musing and taking this as an opportunity to
maybe to generate new knowledge so that we're going to
like kind of like clarifying what we've gone through and
where we're heading, and um get people like in the
same space who like might as a like I do
(13:13):
a lot of union ship, So I'm always thinking about
how do I get like rank and file union radicals
in the same space as like a like a neighborhood
abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community land
trust and getting all these like different groups because together
and then like thinking about how they overlap in support
(13:34):
and build off of each other. Because we I think
the operating theory of many of people who are involved
in this is that every context is different where we're organizing,
but many there are many kind of principles that can
kind of translate across context, but the context will shape
(13:55):
very like like the I was just talking with one
of the organizers who's like twenty minutes away over in
northwest Indiana and you're like in Gary, and you know
those areas and their context for building something like a
an ecosystem too. Power organizations is going to be very
different from my context where I am like down the
street from this big global center of capital that's like
(14:22):
University of Chicago and like, and it's doing all in
my neighborhoods being gentrified by two billion dollar corporations and
I've got a big nurse union, whereas they're in the
middle of like a neighbor community that's being actively divested
and destroyed like just like eating away at by like
because capital just pulling out and has been doing that
(14:45):
for basically as long as you've all been. At the
same time, y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere
complications and climate change implications, and so yeah, we're thinking
about the ways in which like the kinds of affiliations
that makes sense for us to be successful in our
projects are like, you know, they're not just They're not
(15:07):
just local, they're not just national, they're not just continental.
There's like a lot of different things that are going
on there. And that's the only way for us to
really like sort out who we need to be in
coaligion with on any particular issue is to know everybody,
uh and to try to understand better there They're specific
contexts and their specific experiences. And I think there's like,
(15:30):
you know, I think, you know, to John's point about,
you know, how much has changed in the last two,
you know, handful of years or whatever. I think one
thing that we've all come away from the pace of
change is pretty humbling, you know. Um, I think we
definitely all we gotta we got We took in a
bit of the humility around around that what is it
that we actually need to do? We are definitely not
(15:52):
prepared for it, you know. And it doesn't matter how
many decades we've been doing this organizing work. We just
are not ready for how quickly things are changing right now.
And the only way for us to get ready is
to make sure that we show up and strengthen the
networks of people that we can rely on to produce
kind of positive interdependence um as we move forward with
(16:16):
the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah, I mean,
and then part of this is also like thinking about
because the way this is structured, this isn't just like
a series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers
have curated like you you're gonna listen to you know, uh,
(16:36):
so and so who's like, you know, a prominent tenant
organizer so and so. It is like a prominent like
uh like in like climate change direct action work. Like
the goal is is that we like specifically chose a
format and like officially it's called like like an unconference,
but the way I think of it is it's like
(16:57):
which which comes out of tech, which I find kind
of irritating, But that doesn't But the core of the
idea of the thing is is that we're coming into
this space in generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there
and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who designate
as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that
(17:18):
people who don't have a lot of experience and a
lot of like skills aren't going to be there. It
just means that we're going to be because one of
my things is popular education, coming from the tradition of
like Palo Fair and like um, everybody learning together is
like it's like taking those principles and kind of like
(17:40):
doing them in parallel in various circles. Where there will
be a circle here of like cooperative organizers or people
who want to get coops off the ground. Will be
a circle here of people doing land trust work, will
be a circle here of like unionists. There will be
a circle here of people doing like abolition work, and
(18:01):
or interest are people who are interested in all those things,
are getting those sorts of things off the ground. And
as they work through like a like they present tell stories,
share ideas, do debriefs on like the various things that
we've all been going through over you know whatever, how
far back our timeline is depending on how far which
(18:22):
elders decided to attend UM. But then taking that knowledge
with our facilitators and then being like, you know what,
I think that these two conversations are happening kind of
like in parallel would be better if they were merged
together and beginning to kind of like build that sort
of like and so the idea isn't necessarily come away
(18:42):
with like a pre like we're not setting up like
a like a predetermined set of conclusions for people we
believe and based off of we've been having monthly community
calls for people who are going to be attending. All
the different groups of folks who will be coming to
this is going to be I think, like the depth
of experience is going to be really phenomenal. Um and
(19:04):
people coming from We definitely have people confirmed who are
coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks
with experience the indigenous communities is uh in Mexico, we
maybe have We're fairly confident we're gonna have people who
are like just come from areas like northern Syria and
(19:26):
iraq Um and taking all these different ideas and experiences
and then generating next like coming to new conclusions, maybe
unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite that we
weren't anticipating, but maybe asking new questions right Like this
is a kind of intended to be a pre figure
(19:46):
of space for engaging with things where we don't know
what the right answer is. And I think we all
need to release sit with the fact that we do
not have like a clearer right solution into the problems
that we're facing right now. Like I've been kind of
pulling on the slogan a little. It's like no gods,
no masters, no right answers, you know, just like get
used to it. We need to be more creative and
(20:11):
we need to be more open to experimentation. And you know,
there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff
that's going to be coming at us fast. And you know,
this is a we we we hope this can be
a space where we can kind of take some time
to slowly get square with what it is we're going
to have to be thinking about, even if we don't
know what to do exactly yet. So I had I
(20:35):
had a really good experience where I was listening to
like one of the like a person who came out
of act Up giving a talk in my neighborhood. And
she was saying, because we had had questions, is this
going to be about a lot of theory? Are we're
gonna be talking about a lot of abstract stuff? And um,
(20:56):
this organizer was like, you know, act Up had no theory,
right they did, they took action and the theory followed afterwards,
and so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming
to this with like the right answers already figured out
is just not like something that I think it's going
(21:17):
to be a super generative discussion. The idea of coming
up with like coming up with orientations and thinking about
like where we are heading kind of in a general sense,
and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is I
think a big, key, key aspect of what we're trying
to do when we come together. We'ch is not to
(21:38):
say yeah, which is not to say that there won't
be theory, because that's not up to us. That's up
to y'all. So you know, um, I probably you know,
like what I'm really interested in is having conversations about
the community mental health care, you know, And like, for me,
the theory is less interesting than you know, like talking
about what we actually need in the spaces that we again,
(22:00):
but that's you know, that's where I'm coming from, and
everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective too,
So I'm really excited to see what people bring to
that space and what we can get out of it.
Um by just thinking that we all are contributing something
constructive to that conversation. Well, and then also there's gonna
be a lot of discussions about like literal practical skills,
(22:20):
like here's how you like, here's how you uh. This
has always been the perennial thing. This is how you
pick a lot, This is how you uh, this is
how you organize comms at like at like a like
on a picket line. This is how you pull together
uh a demand letter for like a list for like tenants,
(22:42):
like you know, these are the sorts of things that
like we're gonna be talking. We're going to be doing
concrete skill shares, plus these discussions about our experiences and
sharing our stories and you know, hopefully we're going to
come away from this. A big goal of it is
to um come up with a lot of like different
(23:03):
like um just like content. We're going to be recording
videos and uh like audio and like also and then
transcribing things and writing things up and we're hoping that
once we're then we're gonna have a big report that
we can share out with people who can't attend. Yeah,
privacy concerns obviously considered, so yeah, for sure, Yeah, there
(23:25):
is a very consent is a big is a big
thing with us as organizers, I should help. So yeah,
you would think, but you know, not everyone is down
as you would imagine. Okay, So basically we're building a
perfect little utopia for like four days and you all
come out because we're going to fix the revolution. So
(23:48):
kidding obviously, on on on a work on crete level, Like,
what does like a day here look like? Like? What
what are what? What are we doing? Oh? That's fun,
(24:09):
that's a fun question. Uh, if I may, John, Yeah, yeah,
go for it. Um, what we're thinking right now basically,
is it a day It looks like we get up
in the morning, we drink coffee, we have breakfast, and
we have a little assembly check in to see how
things are going if we need to make any major adjustments,
and we put up a uh sort of schedule for
(24:30):
the afternoon's events that was populated from the conversation that
was happening in the evening the night before and anything
that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that
happened between yesterday and this morning. Uh, then we're gonna
roll off into um basically what would be some of
the kind of like things we already know for sure
(24:54):
that we wanted to see happening that we could get
on a on a sort of schedule ahead of time.
So some of these skill shares we're planned that would
require kind of like pre planning or maybe some discussions
that people reached out ahead of time that they definitely
wanted to have, so that stuff would be happening earlier
in the day. Um, the you know, we're we're talking
about having sort of just like sandwich bars and you know,
(25:15):
make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There
should be a lot of different things happening in different
geographical locations on the site, so you kind of get
get a choice of where you want to go. It's
not like there's one big event. Um, we're going to
try to group things that are sort of thematically similar
in so that they're nearby each other in case you
want to go around and see, um what the different
(25:36):
kind of stuff is going to be. And then in
the afternoon it's going to be like I mean you okay,
of course, this is like how we're intending right now.
The afternoon would be the discussions and skill shares and
events and circles and spaces that um, we're generated out
of the conversations that have been happening in space, so
that people came and thought, you know, we had this
(25:57):
conversation yesterday that really inspired me. Let's talk about this,
and I'm going to make space for that. So we're
gonna have big map where you figure out where you
want to go, and you're gonna be able to wander
around and meet people. We're trying to incorporate a lot
of events that make it easier to meet other people
that you don't know yet. Um. Where there's gonna be
tables where you can do arts and crafts. There's gonna
be game space for whatever kind of games you want
(26:18):
to play. There's gonna be places for kids to hang out.
There's gonna be a quiet tent where you can take
some contemplation time. You know, at some point we want
to do it like a kind of brief circle for
people to deal with what they've been kind of going
through in the world. And you know some uh you know,
Utopia Envisioning Arts space, you know, these kinds of things
(26:39):
like where, um, you know, somebody wants to teach someone
else a dance, Like that's the kind of thing that
we're really hoping can go on in the afternoon. Uh,
then we would be feeding everybody dinner. And we kind
of had this idea we've been playing with that we
would have two campfires after dinner, and one campfire will
have kind of an open forum where anybody can talk
for like ten, fifteen, any minute, you know, whatever however
(27:01):
long people need, who are they're depending on how popular
that is, and just kind of air everything that's in
their head. And we'll have a NoteTaker so we can
try to incorporate what comes out of those discussions into
the next days to agenda um. And so that's sort
of like what we were what we were envisioning. And
then for the other campfire because people who don't the
(27:21):
other the other the other camp fire for people who
are like done with talk, I need to just sit
and stare at some flames for a little bit. Yeah,
I imagine I'll be going back and forth between the fires.
So you know, that's also an option. But the idea
is to get kind of like somewhere between I think
what we call it is like somewhere between a conference
(27:42):
and a music festival, you know what I mean, Like
there where you're able to sort of move around and
you don't have to go and sit in one place
and do like okay for this hour, this is where
you know, it's it's it's meant to be a bit
more informal, um and we're hoping that that makes a
lot more space for people to sort of explore and
people to meet other people that they don't already know.
(28:04):
I don't know if that if that, if that sums
up sort of like what I'm imagining, because that's like,
you know, that's the spirit. So I think if that's
the question, like what does the date look like, well,
hopefully it's fun. You know, that's kind of the main
the main thing we're thinking here, So make it sort
of low stress and low stakes place that we can
talk about some of the highest stress and highest stakes
questions that we have to deal with. So yeah, and
(28:26):
like that being said, like because we're modeling it this
way specifically based on people's experience with like the Symbiosish
Federations founding conference, that sort of thing where there were
a lot of stakes and people were trying to kind
of like funnel different discussions through different ways. And this
is not a necessarily critique of how that all went down.
(28:48):
It's just like based on our experience and our experiences
with those sorts of things. The goal is too for
this to be if it's successful, the first of many
of these sorts of things, UM, many of these kind
of gatherings and discussions, and to provide a model for
how it could happen. But to keep UM, we deliberately
(29:12):
decided that this we're not going to make like a bit.
We're not going to have big points of unity debate
and discussion in voting on assembly sort of thing. We
will use assemblies for you know, certain things like setting
up like our community agreements and that sort of stuff,
and kind of like getting the days rolling and kind
of getting the days closed. But the goal is, like
(29:34):
to not is to bring people into conversation who haven't
who maybe don't have the basis of trust for those
bigger collective like discussions yet, but maybe they will later.
But the goal is for now is we're getting we're
building and expanding our networks. We're building expanding our trust
(29:56):
with different people and building expanding our knowledge so that
we can go out and do the kind of work
that we think we need to do to I don't
know survived as a species on this planet. So Um,
that's one of the reasons why if there are some
people are like, oh, I don't know, this seems really
kind of wishy washy. It's very that was a very
deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who have
(30:20):
been to these sorts of things, and the goal is
really too to have a place where we can have
discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested in
it that we feel like if our concept of how
to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution,
that we've somehow failed. So it's like, yeah, I was
(30:45):
to say that I think one of the one of
these things that you that you brought up there that's
really important. It's like, not even just in these previous
conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to have
we seen to be a problem. But basically, at least
I can speak for myself in a lot of organizings
spaces that I've been in over the past, you know,
like fifteen years that I've been pretty active in in
(31:05):
the organizing universe. Um, basically that one of the main
problems that we have with this kind of like space
of trust that we definitely know that we need to
be able to work together and moving forward. Is that
we don't really have shared language a lot of the time,
and we think we do because we use the same words,
but we often use them to mean different things, or
(31:27):
we often use different words to mean the same things
as well, And that we come from kind of different
organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that
some are more, are less. We should say that maybe
that there there are different places where you show solidarity
in a different way, you show good faith, and you
show that you're committed in a different way. What it
(31:47):
means to be democratic in a space seems different depending
on this on the tradition that you that you maybe
come from. So what we're really hoping to do is
kind of makes space to incorporate all of that. So
we were was joking and it was a camping trip
where many upping trips fit, you know that, like that
there should be an opportunity for people to kind of
like learn to talk past those those barriers that we
(32:09):
might have to to understanding each other, and like that
success would really look like people coming away believing in
other people's commitment to get this done and with the
kind of contacts that they need to support each other
moving forward as things come up in different places, as
opposed to just like here's a solution, like here's a
(32:31):
blueprint for how to get this done. You know that
relationship that you have with a person who's had that
experience in the past is going to be way more
valuable than any document they give you based on their experience,
because you're gonna be able to say, well, ship, I
wasn't expecting this to happen, Like what do we do?
And then you can talk through that with them, and
like that's really I think that's really the foundation of
(32:53):
our being able to share this knowledge with each other
is that we have the opportunity to kind of engage
in these ways that are more focused on the kind
of just sort of dynamism of the of the challenges
that we're dealing with right now. So emergence is a
big thing. Things are always gonna like things that are
(33:15):
always going to be changing, Like, uh, we are we
need to be prepared to deal with a world that's
gonna be throwing challenges at us that like we haven't
like we haven't had solutions for and like because we're
going through this like really kind of like catastrophic like uh,
(33:39):
the moments of like uh climate change and um, I mean,
I don't know how else to say it, but like
and and so it's it's like engendering the idea, the
idea that we're constantly evaluating what's happening around us, both
like at our local level and across the regions and globally,
(34:02):
and then taking new knowledge in and coming up with
new solutions um in a real like in like a
truly experimental way, like thinking about things is like experiments,
and how we're going to like come up with new
solutions to these problems because it's just well, like as
we kept telling people, because when we're out there trying
(34:25):
to bring groups in, everyone is selling us our capacity.
This sounds great, Our capacity is incredibly low. Uh. And
that has just been across the entire spectrum of organizations,
and that includes huge, big put together organizations like you know,
unions versus little mutual a groups. Everybody is dealing with
(34:48):
this like feeling of exhaustion and like capacity. Our goal
is to get people together so that they can build
capacity um through these discussions and be prepared for or
think because capacity is always going to be an issue
and our goal is to get people to this point
where because they're um, their mindset is okay, new challenge.
(35:11):
Let's think about it critically and come up with solutions
that fit this moment as supposed to keep trying to
force things into um preset like easy. I mean, I
don't want to say easy, but like I think that
sometimes like everyone's trying to mind history for the like
the one weird trick to solve all these problems. And
I think that the one weird trick is that human
(35:34):
beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like our our brain
is like this thing for taking in information and generating
new new thought and action. And we need to embrace that,
um because if we don't, I don't think we're going
to be very successful certainly. And the yeah, and these
(35:54):
times of just increasing uncertainty, that kind of humility and
flexibility and like continued building of comfort with that uncertainty
is going to be super essential to our being able
to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to
take action. And I think so we're going to have
to like continue to like to lean into that uncertainty
(36:16):
and to sort of I think, you know, kind of
historically the being comfortable with things changing and being comfortable
with uncertainty is actually one of our great strengths, right
because we can actually start to get moving while everybody
else is still going, what the hell you know? And
so I think, you know, that's going to definitely be
something that's going to serve us. And yeah, anyway, I
(36:46):
have I have one last question on an extremely practical level,
which is like, what is the like facility situation here?
Like how what what are what are people sleeping in? Uh? So,
like right now where we like, we have camp space
(37:07):
reserved for two people UM and so we understand the
camping is not always super accessible, but we are very
fortunate that like the National Lake Shore has specific accessible
facilities UM for folks, and we do have disabled like
(37:29):
UH comrades coming to this event, and we're working on
making sure that those uh that their particular needs don't
keep them from participating fully in the events. There's UM
the discussions and circles themselves will be UM at like
shelter space UM a bit away from where the camping
(37:51):
is happening, So we're organizing transport between us to split
those spaces UM for people who cannot camp. We are
working organizing some hotel space for folks UM and then
for people who can camp but don't have any equipment.
Our goal is to we're going to um basically acquire
(38:15):
like enough camping equipment for a sizeable chunk of folks
to come. And uh it's like literally today walking through
a Walmart with my daughter looking at their camp equipment
in pricing out things like sleeping bags and camp like
sleeping mattresses, intense that sort of thing. So yeah, if
(38:38):
people have have stuff they want to donate to the
cause to like, I think we should be able to
take some of that in. I think we were just
talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp gear
repair zone, so you have things that you find at
the thrift store that like a tour intent or something
like that will help you fix it. You know. We
just want to make sure that everybody has these uh
(39:00):
applies as well because they're they're broadly useful. I know
I've used my camping gear in uh some politically motivated
ways in the best I think that it's not bad
for people to have it if you need it. Just also,
you know, the camping aspect of it is also it's
(39:22):
more of a feature than a bug, Like there's like
a like so to so to speak, like the pandemic
is not over yet, as we're like seeing right um
in spite of everything that like a ruling class is
desperately trying to get us to uh agree to and
so having um the accommodations outside and doing the doing
(39:46):
the actual events like out of doors where there's lots
of ventilatation, we think it is like right now one
of these events so that we're not going to get
so the people aren't going to come away from this
getting sick, which is really important m from I mean
as a person who's recovering from COVID H COVID rounds
(40:11):
two UM and as a healthcare worker. That was one
of our big concerns because we when we started making
these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to
be happening in terms of the pandemic, and having it
out of doors was just like a sure fireway that
we knew that we could at the very least we
can minimize the chances that people would be getting sick
(40:33):
from just showing up and being the same space together. Absolutely,
and we're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with
friends and comrades and little groups to self organize their
camps as much as they would like to do that UM,
to sort of make plans together to limit the UM
you know, the need for spaces. You know, we're sharing
(40:55):
up tents and all this kind of stuff, which to
the extent that people are comfortable with that that you
know people well, if you need to get in touch
with people from around you, if you don't know anybody,
you can reach out to us. If we know anybody
else who's looking for somebody to try to coordinate with,
will definitely put you in touch to. Something we want
to be able to do is like offer some of
these connective services to help people UM to link up
(41:17):
with people who are coming from from their areas or
people who are interested in the same kinds of things UM.
And so we're kind of thinking of ourselves in the
organizing body is facilitators of those connections and trying to
imagine how what we do will make those connections most
likely to happen. UM. So in terms of the of
the facilities as well, I think we we've talked about
(41:39):
trying to get some camp stoves together for people who
need to use sort of a kitchen space to try
to limit the amount of things that people need to
bring for that, but definitely feel free uh to bring
bring your own stuff and and and set up whatever
whatever you need and let us know if you need
help from us, well we'll do our best to accommodate that.
And people are getting fed arranged and that will be
(42:02):
vegan and uh with the caveat that folks who want
to have separate food can like do their own self
organized like cooking with that other thing they that they're
really committed to UM. And we're playing and having like
all the necessities of like lots of water, make sure
(42:23):
that like we've got first aid lined up. There's gonna
be street medics who are participating in the work of
organizing all that harm reduction UM and just generally, like
like some of the other things that didn't really mentioned,
like we know that we're bringing a bunch of people
with a lot of big ideas and big personalities together
and that means we're probably gonna have to deal with
(42:44):
some conflict maybe I don't know, so having UM conflicts
uh read like people who are good at mediating conflict.
We're going to have a crew of people who do that.
We're working on child watch training because this is gonna
be like the family from space, making sure that we
(43:05):
know how to take care of each other in case
like shady people from outside trying to do something like whatever.
Like our goal is to just make sure that like
this is um as safe as it can be, bringing
people together, as successful as it can be. Understanding implementations
of who's gonna be We're gonna be outside, so there
might be you know, all the some of the fun
(43:28):
of having like a collective group of people all outside together,
which can be a lot of fun, like I'm I'm
waiting for karaoke and for um like our open mic
and people bringing out like instruments and like just having
like you know, we were people discussing like um, you
(43:51):
know some soccer uh potentially being a thing, um determining
like placing that song. Who's going to be more into
soccer based on various ideological reviews and past experience and yeah,
hit us up if you want to play some music,
(44:13):
if you've got an idea for something fun that sounds
cool to do. And just to come to circle back
to this, I think like with the point about conflict mediation.
I just want to make that, like super clear. Just
because we're not going to spend half a day trying
to come up with community with the points of unity
does not mean we don't have expectations about how you
act in the space. So our plan is basically to say, like,
(44:33):
don't be an asshole, and then that means, you know,
like in all the ways that we know, uh that
those things can happen. And then if somebody accidentally is
being an asshole, where somebody's are accidentally being an asshole
like that, those are things we can we can manage
because we all know what it is that we're doing here. Um.
So it's definitely not a free for all, you know,
it's a this is a space where the normal things
(44:55):
we would expect in space are expected, you know, explicitly. Yeah,
well man, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm looking forward to people.
I don't know, I don't actually know how widespread bonfires
(45:17):
are in the US, but we do a lot in
the Midwest, and bonfires are a great time. I'm excited
people to experience that. It's it's good. Um. Yes, So
I guess, um, do you if anything closing that you
want to say, and also where can people find this
and attempt to go to it? Also when is it happening,
(45:38):
because that's that's another important It's going to be July
uh twenty nine UM. And attendance is free, there's no
there's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're
doing a fundraiser UM through Open Collective UM and we've
(45:58):
spend very generously given UH an offer of matching donations
from one of the organizers who got like I got
a little bit of a chunk of change to kind
of contribute to that sort of thing. We're very I'm
excited about that. So if you go on too, you
can follow us on Twitter and I believe that's at
(46:23):
Dual Power uh to let me tell the chat. I
think it's at Dual Power gathering is our Twitter and um.
The website is Dual Dual Power dot org. Yes, yeh um. Yeah.
If you go on the website, you'll find the links
(46:44):
to everything you need to know. You can get in
touch with us, you can like, you know, give us
your your feedback if you love it, if you hate it,
if you've you know, whatever, we're we're probably not going
to change the whole thing right now, but show up
and we can change it at the time. I'll also
say we do have like an organizing discord and people
(47:04):
who are like serious about like getting involved in want
to have things like I want to come to this
and with things that they have specific visions for now.
It's like absolutely time to get engaged with that because
we're like we're working towards making getting people into the
like who are the participants to really own the event itself,
(47:26):
So that'll be like that's something we have. I believe
we're going to need probably two more community calls wanted
June and one in July. Every one of those calls
has been really amazing, lots of great people. UM, and
during those calls are gonna be doing some training on
because you've got to do some prep work when you're
doing this kind of like generative discussion like popular education,
(47:49):
like unconferdenced style UM events, like coming to them with
a little bit of un understanding of what that looks
like is really key to U being successful. So UM,
we encourage people who want to come get signed up,
and then we'll get into our mailing list, and our
mailing lists is where we disseminate like when those calls
(48:10):
are happening, and you can also hoping our discord u
as long as you're cool and agree your community very
men like bring you in and like get all sorts
of shipped together. And we're very excited for people. I
mean there's still a fair number of thoughts open for
the events itself, were like almost half way full. So yeah,
(48:32):
I mean definitely, we've we've been trying to think about
this as an event that we would want to go to,
and we wanted to be an event that you want
to come to also, so help us make it. So yeah, yeah,
that's that's yeah, this is really exciting. I'd be going
to it. Yeah. So yeah, thank thank thank you, thank
you to you you both for joining us for talking about this.
(48:52):
And I'm excited too. I'm excited to see lots of
people there. Hey, I mean we've all been wanting to
see each other. Are two and a half years, right,
so I miss your missing your face with dimension. Yeah,
I'm sick of your flat face real. Yeah, thanks so
(49:17):
much for having us on to talk about it. Really
looking forward to it. I mean we're getting closer and closer.
It's just like it just gets more exciting and also
a little nerve wracking. But thankfully a lot of people
have been stepping up on a very I'm confident it's
gonna be really like a really great thing. Yeah, and
we will we we will have links to everything in
(49:38):
the show notes. Um yeah, this has just make it
happen here. You can find us in the usual places
happened to your pod stuff? All right, goodbye, have fun.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts on cool zone Media, visit our website
(49:58):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It's well it it is the podcast. It could happen here,
but for once, it is not about the world falling apart.
It is entirely about putting it back together again. Uh.
And and joining me to talk about putting it back
together again is zero of the other people who are
normally on this podcast, But I'm joined by Shannon and
(00:25):
John Horonymus, who are part of the team of Organized
Is working on the Dual Power Gathering. Shannon, John, Welcome,
Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Hey. So, I
guess the first part of the Dual Power Gathering is
dual power, and I think we should walk through what
actually that is, in what our sort of visions for
it look like, because man, I know we've talked about
(00:47):
this on the show before, but that was a very
very long time ago, but which I mean like probably
only like seven months, but you know, feel it feels
like ancient history. So yeah, I guess do you two
want to talk about what dual power is and how
how do you do? Yeah? Sure, I'm gonna stop trying
(01:11):
to think about what happened seven months ago and I'm
trying to Okay, you said that, I was just like,
oh wow, Okay, no, never mind. Um, So dual power, John,
how about I go ahead and share with our audience
what is sort of the poetic language that we have
up on the website from the organizers, and then we
(01:32):
can kind of like break it down and talk about it. Um.
That works for me, all right? So of the website
texts such dual power is a way to imagine the
moment just before our movements converge, as the possible becomes
the actual, when the seeds of social transformation we have
sown for generations bloom, when the old world begins to
(01:56):
wither and new worlds can be born. Is a way
of thinking about how we got to that moment and
beyond it. Dual power is the project of building self determination,
mutual aid, solidarity, and direct democracy in our communities by
creating spaces that empower us all and from which you
do in mansipatory institutions can emerge. It's a pretty yeah.
(02:20):
So what does that mean? What does that mean? Um?
First off, I want to say like a shout out
to a lot of people have been working on this
vision of what dual power is for years and years now,
and that includes uh a lot of groups. Um, that
(02:41):
we are either in conversation with or have been taking
inspiration from UM. One of the biggest, I think most
developed groups that's doing that work is cooperation Jackson Jackson
Jacks Mississippi UM and UH. I think the goal is
(03:02):
people went up. Oftentimes when people do like here dual power,
if they don't have any other UM context for it,
but they are maybe from the left. They've heard about
this moment in the Russian Revolution when there were these
two competing like uh, you know, basis of power in
like Russian society while they're undergoing this revolutionary change, and
(03:28):
uh Lenin wrote like a pamphlet about it, calling it
the dual power, and looked at it as like a
thing that needed to be like overcome by you know,
workers in Russia UM too, like establish a workers state UM,
which they kind of outlined in a book called State
and Revolution. And but when we look at what they
(03:52):
were describing, we kind of look at this as a
thing that emerges in any time when there's a social
revel kind of unfolding in a society where you have
various classes who are like changing like social relations, workers, peasants, UM,
(04:12):
different groups of people who like have like a class
they have come together around a class interest and overthrowing
their oppression, and they have to go through stages of
building their collective power their collective identity there, and they're
kind of like overall strategic movement in a particular direction, UM,
(04:38):
and they create this tension between the existing state order
and a newly emerging like uh like social revolution that's
like overthrown, challenging UH and overthrowing that like UM power.
So that being said, we want to ground that. We
(05:00):
want to ground that a little bit in a like
less historicized context or whatever. We could say, maybe that's
the work that we're doing to build up the institutions
and relational structures that we need to care for ourselves
in each other UM as we moved through uh sort
of like different states of like institutional organization in the society. Right.
(05:25):
So when we're thinking about how do we meet our
basic needs together in ways that are not dependent on
the pressive institutions that we're trying to overthrow, we're talking
about dual power. Yeah, it's like any time working class folks,
And it's like in a broad definition communities people who
aren't necessarily working but like depend on like taking care
(05:47):
of each other or who do the work of reproducing
every you know, society, UM basically build their own independent
power like uh to chance, like to be able to
fight back, to challenge the you know, the status quo.
So like there's a lot of things they're kind of
percolating that we've been like that have been happening in
(06:10):
North America that takes inspiration from areas of the global South, UM,
but also our homeown homegrown like traditions UM. So that
could being anything from like your local mutual aid network
to uh your local tenant union to like a rank
and file UM union of like Amazon workers or teachers
(06:35):
or care workers, UM. You know whose existence puts them
in conflict with the state capital UM and like patriarchy,
settler colonial relations um. You know, like indigenous water protectors UM,
folks who are building up places where the more developed
(06:58):
it becomes, the more it kind of built its own momentum.
And you have spaces that are like autonomous fully like
autonomous regions from like state power and to begin to
like pick apart at capital and like reconfigure are like
(07:19):
relations of like how we make things and do things
and take care of each other in like fundamental ways,
and we have lots of beautiful examples of this from
the like organizing history not even that long ago, and
people will be familiar with some of the Black Panther
programs or some of the programs that were integrated into
the farm workers movement, and some of the programs that
(07:42):
were put together by the anarchi feminists who were trying
to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through
things like mutual aid healthcare and and things like that.
So we'll see there's like a lot of really beautiful
examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements.
(08:02):
And we're all really excited about what's going on now
and we want to see that just to sort of
come together and a flourish I think it's important to
think about do a power or something that's like I
don't know, like I I think there's a lot of
people who look at it as sort of like dual
power is planting a garden, and it's like, I mean
sort of yes, but like there's you know, they're there.
There's there's sort of two components of it right there.
(08:24):
There's this sort of there's a defensive component and an
offensive component. There's a component that's about taking care of
each other, and there is a component that is attack. Right,
there's there's there's a component that is the people who
are preventing us from taking care of each other need
to be stopped from doing that. And so yeah, I
think I think it's important to, yeah, think about different
(08:45):
kinds of like, different kinds of institutions that you would
not normally think of as doing the same thing, as
being part of the same struggle. And yeah, I guess
that brings us to what YouTube and a lot of
other people have been working on. For god, it's been
this been in the work for a long time. Yeah,
which which which is the which is the this uh
(09:08):
dual power gathering? And yeah, I guess you sul want
to talk about what what that is because yeah, yeah, well,
you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple
of years dreaming about being together, and so I think
this is kind of the fruit of that dream. Right
coming up at the end of July, UH, we're inviting
everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip,
(09:32):
uh and during that time, we're hoping to see a
collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can
bring to it, which we know far exceeds the uh
sort of even the scope vision of the organizing body.
(09:53):
So we're really trying to um, just create a space
for people to come together. We are interested in these
ideas who have various levels of experience working with it
that will be valuable to everybody, from people who are
brand new to this stuff and just want to learn
more about it too, people who have have been doing
it for years, for decades even um And yeah, that's
(10:17):
sort of the the underlying ambition of it is to
get people together in space. You know, a lot of
us have been to these kinds of events before and
felt like the most important thing that we got out
of that was the relationships that we were able to
build and the people that we were able to meet
that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues with, and
(10:37):
that we could find inspiration uh in in those dialogues
and in those connections that would birth new projects that
you know, we don't yet know are even possible. And
so this is kind of, at least for me, like
that's the really important and exciting force of the of
the plan. Yeah, yeah, I think that why they're the
(11:01):
Some of the things about this I think are really
like it's been like really a collaborative effort to come
up with this thing, Like we had the discussions about
this is a thing that needs that we thought need
to happen, because at the end of like by the
end of the middle of one, we're like, look, clearly,
we've all been through so many different experiences over the
(11:24):
last ten, fifteen, twenty years. At this point some of
us are getting to be elders, and um, we uh
and we need to like, um, it feels like it's
now is an excellent a really great time to have
like a actual conversation about where we where we're coming,
(11:46):
where we are, where we're coming from, and where we're
going and how do we translate these experiences into like
networks of like trusting relationships and sharing u a sharing
of all this knowledge. Is like we need to debrief
like the like the past five years I think in particular,
(12:08):
have been like it's like crammed. It feels like, you know,
the whole saying like some some years nothing happens, and
some you know, in some months decades happen paraphrasing or whatever,
and it's like so much stuff has come. We've all
gone through so many things and come to like, uh,
and we're seeing people who didn't have like maybe a
(12:32):
stance on various political things or are like seeing their
communities torn apart by like the real lived experience of
like climate change and wants to and need to do
something about it. That sort of thing like bringing in
people who have lots of experience with people who have
maybe are just now figuring things out and really kind
(12:52):
of like musing and taking this as an opportunity to
maybe to generate new knowledge so that we're going to
like kind of like clarifying what we've gone through and
where we're heading, and um get people like in the
same space who like might as a like I do
(13:13):
a lot of union ship, So I'm always thinking about
how do I get like rank and file union radicals
in the same space as like a like a neighborhood
abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community land
trust and getting all these like different groups because together
and then like thinking about how they overlap in support
(13:34):
and build off of each other. Because we I think
the operating theory of many of people who are involved
in this is that every context is different where we're organizing,
but many there are many kind of principles that can
kind of translate across context, but the context will shape
(13:55):
very like like the I was just talking with one
of the organizers who's like twenty minutes away over in
northwest Indiana and you're like in Gary, and you know
those areas and their context for building something like a
an ecosystem too. Power organizations is going to be very
different from my context where I am like down the
street from this big global center of capital that's like
(14:22):
University of Chicago and like, and it's doing all in
my neighborhoods being gentrified by two billion dollar corporations and
I've got a big nurse union, whereas they're in the
middle of like a neighbor community that's being actively divested
and destroyed like just like eating away at by like
because capital just pulling out and has been doing that
(14:45):
for basically as long as you've all been. At the
same time, y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere
complications and climate change implications, and so yeah, we're thinking
about the ways in which like the kinds of affiliations
that makes sense for us to be successful in our
projects are like, you know, they're not just They're not
(15:07):
just local, they're not just national, they're not just continental.
There's like a lot of different things that are going
on there. And that's the only way for us to
really like sort out who we need to be in
coaligion with on any particular issue is to know everybody,
uh and to try to understand better there They're specific
contexts and their specific experiences. And I think there's like,
(15:30):
you know, I think, you know, to John's point about,
you know, how much has changed in the last two,
you know, handful of years or whatever. I think one
thing that we've all come away from the pace of
change is pretty humbling, you know. Um, I think we
definitely all we gotta we got We took in a
bit of the humility around around that what is it
that we actually need to do? We are definitely not
(15:52):
prepared for it, you know. And it doesn't matter how
many decades we've been doing this organizing work. We just
are not ready for how quickly things are changing right now.
And the only way for us to get ready is
to make sure that we show up and strengthen the
networks of people that we can rely on to produce
kind of positive interdependence um as we move forward with
(16:16):
the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah, I mean,
and then part of this is also like thinking about
because the way this is structured, this isn't just like
a series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers
have curated like you you're gonna listen to you know, uh,
(16:36):
so and so who's like, you know, a prominent tenant
organizer so and so. It is like a prominent like
uh like in like climate change direct action work. Like
the goal is is that we like specifically chose a
format and like officially it's called like like an unconference,
but the way I think of it is it's like
(16:57):
which which comes out of tech, which I find kind
of irritating, But that doesn't But the core of the
idea of the thing is is that we're coming into
this space in generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there
and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who designate
as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that
(17:18):
people who don't have a lot of experience and a
lot of like skills aren't going to be there. It
just means that we're going to be because one of
my things is popular education, coming from the tradition of
like Palo Fair and like um, everybody learning together is
like it's like taking those principles and kind of like
(17:40):
doing them in parallel in various circles. Where there will
be a circle here of like cooperative organizers or people
who want to get coops off the ground. Will be
a circle here of people doing land trust work, will
be a circle here of like unionists. There will be
a circle here of people doing like abolition work, and
(18:01):
or interest are people who are interested in all those things,
are getting those sorts of things off the ground. And
as they work through like a like they present tell stories,
share ideas, do debriefs on like the various things that
we've all been going through over you know whatever, how
far back our timeline is depending on how far which
(18:22):
elders decided to attend UM. But then taking that knowledge
with our facilitators and then being like, you know what,
I think that these two conversations are happening kind of
like in parallel would be better if they were merged
together and beginning to kind of like build that sort
of like and so the idea isn't necessarily come away
(18:42):
with like a pre like we're not setting up like
a like a predetermined set of conclusions for people we
believe and based off of we've been having monthly community
calls for people who are going to be attending. All
the different groups of folks who will be coming to
this is going to be I think, like the depth
of experience is going to be really phenomenal. Um and
(19:04):
people coming from We definitely have people confirmed who are
coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks
with experience the indigenous communities is uh in Mexico, we
maybe have We're fairly confident we're gonna have people who
are like just come from areas like northern Syria and
(19:26):
iraq Um and taking all these different ideas and experiences
and then generating next like coming to new conclusions, maybe
unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite that we
weren't anticipating, but maybe asking new questions right Like this
is a kind of intended to be a pre figure
(19:46):
of space for engaging with things where we don't know
what the right answer is. And I think we all
need to release sit with the fact that we do
not have like a clearer right solution into the problems
that we're facing right now. Like I've been kind of
pulling on the slogan a little. It's like no gods,
no masters, no right answers, you know, just like get
used to it. We need to be more creative and
(20:11):
we need to be more open to experimentation. And you know,
there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff
that's going to be coming at us fast. And you know,
this is a we we we hope this can be
a space where we can kind of take some time
to slowly get square with what it is we're going
to have to be thinking about, even if we don't
know what to do exactly yet. So I had I
(20:35):
had a really good experience where I was listening to
like one of the like a person who came out
of act Up giving a talk in my neighborhood. And
she was saying, because we had had questions, is this
going to be about a lot of theory? Are we're
gonna be talking about a lot of abstract stuff? And um,
(20:56):
this organizer was like, you know, act Up had no theory,
right they did, they took action and the theory followed afterwards,
and so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming
to this with like the right answers already figured out
is just not like something that I think it's going
(21:17):
to be a super generative discussion. The idea of coming
up with like coming up with orientations and thinking about
like where we are heading kind of in a general sense,
and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is I
think a big, key, key aspect of what we're trying
to do when we come together. We'ch is not to
(21:38):
say yeah, which is not to say that there won't
be theory, because that's not up to us. That's up
to y'all. So you know, um, I probably you know,
like what I'm really interested in is having conversations about
the community mental health care, you know, And like, for me,
the theory is less interesting than you know, like talking
about what we actually need in the spaces that we again,
(22:00):
but that's you know, that's where I'm coming from, and
everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective too,
So I'm really excited to see what people bring to
that space and what we can get out of it.
Um by just thinking that we all are contributing something
constructive to that conversation. Well, and then also there's gonna
be a lot of discussions about like literal practical skills,
(22:20):
like here's how you like, here's how you uh. This
has always been the perennial thing. This is how you
pick a lot, This is how you uh, this is
how you organize comms at like at like a like
on a picket line. This is how you pull together
uh a demand letter for like a list for like tenants,
(22:42):
like you know, these are the sorts of things that
like we're gonna be talking. We're going to be doing
concrete skill shares, plus these discussions about our experiences and
sharing our stories and you know, hopefully we're going to
come away from this. A big goal of it is
to um come up with a lot of like different
(23:03):
like um just like content. We're going to be recording
videos and uh like audio and like also and then
transcribing things and writing things up and we're hoping that
once we're then we're gonna have a big report that
we can share out with people who can't attend. Yeah,
privacy concerns obviously considered, so yeah, for sure, Yeah, there
(23:25):
is a very consent is a big is a big
thing with us as organizers, I should help. So yeah,
you would think, but you know, not everyone is down
as you would imagine. Okay, So basically we're building a
perfect little utopia for like four days and you all
come out because we're going to fix the revolution. So
(23:48):
kidding obviously, on on on a work on crete level, Like,
what does like a day here look like? Like? What
what are what? What are we doing? Oh? That's fun,
(24:09):
that's a fun question. Uh, if I may, John, Yeah, yeah,
go for it. Um, what we're thinking right now basically,
is it a day It looks like we get up
in the morning, we drink coffee, we have breakfast, and
we have a little assembly check in to see how
things are going if we need to make any major adjustments,
and we put up a uh sort of schedule for
(24:30):
the afternoon's events that was populated from the conversation that
was happening in the evening the night before and anything
that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that
happened between yesterday and this morning. Uh, then we're gonna
roll off into um basically what would be some of
the kind of like things we already know for sure
(24:54):
that we wanted to see happening that we could get
on a on a sort of schedule ahead of time.
So some of these skill shares we're planned that would
require kind of like pre planning or maybe some discussions
that people reached out ahead of time that they definitely
wanted to have, so that stuff would be happening earlier
in the day. Um, the you know, we're we're talking
about having sort of just like sandwich bars and you know,
(25:15):
make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There
should be a lot of different things happening in different
geographical locations on the site, so you kind of get
get a choice of where you want to go. It's
not like there's one big event. Um, we're going to
try to group things that are sort of thematically similar
in so that they're nearby each other in case you
want to go around and see, um what the different
(25:36):
kind of stuff is going to be. And then in
the afternoon it's going to be like I mean you okay,
of course, this is like how we're intending right now.
The afternoon would be the discussions and skill shares and
events and circles and spaces that um, we're generated out
of the conversations that have been happening in space, so
that people came and thought, you know, we had this
(25:57):
conversation yesterday that really inspired me. Let's talk about this,
and I'm going to make space for that. So we're
gonna have big map where you figure out where you
want to go, and you're gonna be able to wander
around and meet people. We're trying to incorporate a lot
of events that make it easier to meet other people
that you don't know yet. Um. Where there's gonna be
tables where you can do arts and crafts. There's gonna
be game space for whatever kind of games you want
(26:18):
to play. There's gonna be places for kids to hang out.
There's gonna be a quiet tent where you can take
some contemplation time. You know, at some point we want
to do it like a kind of brief circle for
people to deal with what they've been kind of going
through in the world. And you know some uh you know,
Utopia Envisioning Arts space, you know, these kinds of things
(26:39):
like where, um, you know, somebody wants to teach someone
else a dance, Like that's the kind of thing that
we're really hoping can go on in the afternoon. Uh,
then we would be feeding everybody dinner. And we kind
of had this idea we've been playing with that we
would have two campfires after dinner, and one campfire will
have kind of an open forum where anybody can talk
for like ten, fifteen, any minute, you know, whatever however
(27:01):
long people need, who are they're depending on how popular
that is, and just kind of air everything that's in
their head. And we'll have a NoteTaker so we can
try to incorporate what comes out of those discussions into
the next days to agenda um. And so that's sort
of like what we were what we were envisioning. And
then for the other campfire because people who don't the
(27:21):
other the other the other camp fire for people who
are like done with talk, I need to just sit
and stare at some flames for a little bit. Yeah,
I imagine I'll be going back and forth between the fires.
So you know, that's also an option. But the idea
is to get kind of like somewhere between I think
what we call it is like somewhere between a conference
(27:42):
and a music festival, you know what I mean, Like
there where you're able to sort of move around and
you don't have to go and sit in one place
and do like okay for this hour, this is where
you know, it's it's it's meant to be a bit
more informal, um and we're hoping that that makes a
lot more space for people to sort of explore and
people to meet other people that they don't already know.
(28:04):
I don't know if that if that, if that sums
up sort of like what I'm imagining, because that's like,
you know, that's the spirit. So I think if that's
the question, like what does the date look like, well,
hopefully it's fun. You know, that's kind of the main
the main thing we're thinking here, So make it sort
of low stress and low stakes place that we can
talk about some of the highest stress and highest stakes
questions that we have to deal with. So yeah, and
(28:26):
like that being said, like because we're modeling it this
way specifically based on people's experience with like the Symbiosish
Federations founding conference, that sort of thing where there were
a lot of stakes and people were trying to kind
of like funnel different discussions through different ways. And this
is not a necessarily critique of how that all went down.
(28:48):
It's just like based on our experience and our experiences
with those sorts of things. The goal is too for
this to be if it's successful, the first of many
of these sorts of things, UM, many of these kind
of gatherings and discussions, and to provide a model for
how it could happen. But to keep UM, we deliberately
(29:12):
decided that this we're not going to make like a bit.
We're not going to have big points of unity debate
and discussion in voting on assembly sort of thing. We
will use assemblies for you know, certain things like setting
up like our community agreements and that sort of stuff,
and kind of like getting the days rolling and kind
of getting the days closed. But the goal is, like
(29:34):
to not is to bring people into conversation who haven't
who maybe don't have the basis of trust for those
bigger collective like discussions yet, but maybe they will later.
But the goal is for now is we're getting we're
building and expanding our networks. We're building expanding our trust
(29:56):
with different people and building expanding our knowledge so that
we can go out and do the kind of work
that we think we need to do to I don't
know survived as a species on this planet. So Um,
that's one of the reasons why if there are some
people are like, oh, I don't know, this seems really
kind of wishy washy. It's very that was a very
deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who have
(30:20):
been to these sorts of things, and the goal is
really too to have a place where we can have
discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested in
it that we feel like if our concept of how
to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution,
that we've somehow failed. So it's like, yeah, I was
(30:45):
to say that I think one of the one of
these things that you that you brought up there that's
really important. It's like, not even just in these previous
conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to have
we seen to be a problem. But basically, at least
I can speak for myself in a lot of organizings
spaces that I've been in over the past, you know,
like fifteen years that I've been pretty active in in
(31:05):
the organizing universe. Um, basically that one of the main
problems that we have with this kind of like space
of trust that we definitely know that we need to
be able to work together and moving forward. Is that
we don't really have shared language a lot of the time,
and we think we do because we use the same words,
but we often use them to mean different things, or
(31:27):
we often use different words to mean the same things
as well, And that we come from kind of different
organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that
some are more, are less. We should say that maybe
that there there are different places where you show solidarity
in a different way, you show good faith, and you
show that you're committed in a different way. What it
(31:47):
means to be democratic in a space seems different depending
on this on the tradition that you that you maybe
come from. So what we're really hoping to do is
kind of makes space to incorporate all of that. So
we were was joking and it was a camping trip
where many upping trips fit, you know that, like that
there should be an opportunity for people to kind of
like learn to talk past those those barriers that we
(32:09):
might have to to understanding each other, and like that
success would really look like people coming away believing in
other people's commitment to get this done and with the
kind of contacts that they need to support each other
moving forward as things come up in different places, as
opposed to just like here's a solution, like here's a
(32:31):
blueprint for how to get this done. You know that
relationship that you have with a person who's had that
experience in the past is going to be way more
valuable than any document they give you based on their experience,
because you're gonna be able to say, well, ship, I
wasn't expecting this to happen, Like what do we do?
And then you can talk through that with them, and
like that's really I think that's really the foundation of
(32:53):
our being able to share this knowledge with each other
is that we have the opportunity to kind of engage
in these ways that are more focused on the kind
of just sort of dynamism of the of the challenges
that we're dealing with right now. So emergence is a
big thing. Things are always gonna like things that are
(33:15):
always going to be changing, Like, uh, we are we
need to be prepared to deal with a world that's
gonna be throwing challenges at us that like we haven't
like we haven't had solutions for and like because we're
going through this like really kind of like catastrophic like uh,
(33:39):
the moments of like uh climate change and um, I mean,
I don't know how else to say it, but like
and and so it's it's like engendering the idea, the
idea that we're constantly evaluating what's happening around us, both
like at our local level and across the regions and globally,
(34:02):
and then taking new knowledge in and coming up with
new solutions um in a real like in like a
truly experimental way, like thinking about things is like experiments,
and how we're going to like come up with new
solutions to these problems because it's just well, like as
we kept telling people, because when we're out there trying
(34:25):
to bring groups in, everyone is selling us our capacity.
This sounds great, Our capacity is incredibly low. Uh. And
that has just been across the entire spectrum of organizations,
and that includes huge, big put together organizations like you know,
unions versus little mutual a groups. Everybody is dealing with
(34:48):
this like feeling of exhaustion and like capacity. Our goal
is to get people together so that they can build
capacity um through these discussions and be prepared for or
think because capacity is always going to be an issue
and our goal is to get people to this point
where because they're um, their mindset is okay, new challenge.
(35:11):
Let's think about it critically and come up with solutions
that fit this moment as supposed to keep trying to
force things into um preset like easy. I mean, I
don't want to say easy, but like I think that
sometimes like everyone's trying to mind history for the like
the one weird trick to solve all these problems. And
I think that the one weird trick is that human
(35:34):
beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like our our brain
is like this thing for taking in information and generating
new new thought and action. And we need to embrace that,
um because if we don't, I don't think we're going
to be very successful certainly. And the yeah, and these
(35:54):
times of just increasing uncertainty, that kind of humility and
flexibility and like continued building of comfort with that uncertainty
is going to be super essential to our being able
to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to
take action. And I think so we're going to have
to like continue to like to lean into that uncertainty
(36:16):
and to sort of I think, you know, kind of
historically the being comfortable with things changing and being comfortable
with uncertainty is actually one of our great strengths, right
because we can actually start to get moving while everybody
else is still going, what the hell you know? And
so I think, you know, that's going to definitely be
something that's going to serve us. And yeah, anyway, I
(36:46):
have I have one last question on an extremely practical level,
which is like, what is the like facility situation here?
Like how what what are what are people sleeping in? Uh? So,
like right now where we like, we have camp space
(37:07):
reserved for two people UM and so we understand the
camping is not always super accessible, but we are very
fortunate that like the National Lake Shore has specific accessible
facilities UM for folks, and we do have disabled like
(37:29):
UH comrades coming to this event, and we're working on
making sure that those uh that their particular needs don't
keep them from participating fully in the events. There's UM
the discussions and circles themselves will be UM at like
shelter space UM a bit away from where the camping
(37:51):
is happening, So we're organizing transport between us to split
those spaces UM for people who cannot camp. We are
working organizing some hotel space for folks UM and then
for people who can camp but don't have any equipment.
Our goal is to we're going to um basically acquire
(38:15):
like enough camping equipment for a sizeable chunk of folks
to come. And uh it's like literally today walking through
a Walmart with my daughter looking at their camp equipment
in pricing out things like sleeping bags and camp like
sleeping mattresses, intense that sort of thing. So yeah, if
(38:38):
people have have stuff they want to donate to the
cause to like, I think we should be able to
take some of that in. I think we were just
talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp gear
repair zone, so you have things that you find at
the thrift store that like a tour intent or something
like that will help you fix it. You know. We
just want to make sure that everybody has these uh
(39:00):
applies as well because they're they're broadly useful. I know
I've used my camping gear in uh some politically motivated
ways in the best I think that it's not bad
for people to have it if you need it. Just also,
you know, the camping aspect of it is also it's
(39:22):
more of a feature than a bug, Like there's like
a like so to so to speak, like the pandemic
is not over yet, as we're like seeing right um
in spite of everything that like a ruling class is
desperately trying to get us to uh agree to and
so having um the accommodations outside and doing the doing
(39:46):
the actual events like out of doors where there's lots
of ventilatation, we think it is like right now one
of these events so that we're not going to get
so the people aren't going to come away from this
getting sick, which is really important m from I mean
as a person who's recovering from COVID H COVID rounds
(40:11):
two UM and as a healthcare worker. That was one
of our big concerns because we when we started making
these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to
be happening in terms of the pandemic, and having it
out of doors was just like a sure fireway that
we knew that we could at the very least we
can minimize the chances that people would be getting sick
(40:33):
from just showing up and being the same space together. Absolutely,
and we're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with
friends and comrades and little groups to self organize their
camps as much as they would like to do that UM,
to sort of make plans together to limit the UM
you know, the need for spaces. You know, we're sharing
(40:55):
up tents and all this kind of stuff, which to
the extent that people are comfortable with that that you
know people well, if you need to get in touch
with people from around you, if you don't know anybody,
you can reach out to us. If we know anybody
else who's looking for somebody to try to coordinate with,
will definitely put you in touch to. Something we want
to be able to do is like offer some of
these connective services to help people UM to link up
(41:17):
with people who are coming from from their areas or
people who are interested in the same kinds of things UM.
And so we're kind of thinking of ourselves in the
organizing body is facilitators of those connections and trying to
imagine how what we do will make those connections most
likely to happen. UM. So in terms of the of
the facilities as well, I think we we've talked about
(41:39):
trying to get some camp stoves together for people who
need to use sort of a kitchen space to try
to limit the amount of things that people need to
bring for that, but definitely feel free uh to bring
bring your own stuff and and and set up whatever
whatever you need and let us know if you need
help from us, well we'll do our best to accommodate that.
And people are getting fed arranged and that will be
(42:02):
vegan and uh with the caveat that folks who want
to have separate food can like do their own self
organized like cooking with that other thing they that they're
really committed to UM. And we're playing and having like
all the necessities of like lots of water, make sure
(42:23):
that like we've got first aid lined up. There's gonna
be street medics who are participating in the work of
organizing all that harm reduction UM and just generally, like
like some of the other things that didn't really mentioned,
like we know that we're bringing a bunch of people
with a lot of big ideas and big personalities together
and that means we're probably gonna have to deal with
(42:44):
some conflict maybe I don't know, so having UM conflicts
uh read like people who are good at mediating conflict.
We're going to have a crew of people who do that.
We're working on child watch training because this is gonna
be like the family from space, making sure that we
(43:05):
know how to take care of each other in case
like shady people from outside trying to do something like whatever.
Like our goal is to just make sure that like
this is um as safe as it can be, bringing
people together, as successful as it can be. Understanding implementations
of who's gonna be We're gonna be outside, so there
might be you know, all the some of the fun
(43:28):
of having like a collective group of people all outside together,
which can be a lot of fun, like I'm I'm
waiting for karaoke and for um like our open mic
and people bringing out like instruments and like just having
like you know, we were people discussing like um, you
(43:51):
know some soccer uh potentially being a thing, um determining
like placing that song. Who's going to be more into
soccer based on various ideological reviews and past experience and yeah,
hit us up if you want to play some music,
(44:13):
if you've got an idea for something fun that sounds
cool to do. And just to come to circle back
to this, I think like with the point about conflict mediation.
I just want to make that, like super clear. Just
because we're not going to spend half a day trying
to come up with community with the points of unity
does not mean we don't have expectations about how you
act in the space. So our plan is basically to say, like,
(44:33):
don't be an asshole, and then that means, you know,
like in all the ways that we know, uh that
those things can happen. And then if somebody accidentally is
being an asshole, where somebody's are accidentally being an asshole
like that, those are things we can we can manage
because we all know what it is that we're doing here. Um.
So it's definitely not a free for all, you know,
it's a this is a space where the normal things
(44:55):
we would expect in space are expected, you know, explicitly. Yeah,
well man, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm looking forward to people.
I don't know, I don't actually know how widespread bonfires
(45:17):
are in the US, but we do a lot in
the Midwest, and bonfires are a great time. I'm excited
people to experience that. It's it's good. Um. Yes, So
I guess, um, do you if anything closing that you
want to say, and also where can people find this
and attempt to go to it? Also when is it happening,
(45:38):
because that's that's another important It's going to be July
uh twenty nine UM. And attendance is free, there's no
there's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're
doing a fundraiser UM through Open Collective UM and we've
(45:58):
spend very generously given UH an offer of matching donations
from one of the organizers who got like I got
a little bit of a chunk of change to kind
of contribute to that sort of thing. We're very I'm
excited about that. So if you go on too, you
can follow us on Twitter and I believe that's at
(46:23):
Dual Power uh to let me tell the chat. I
think it's at Dual Power gathering is our Twitter and um.
The website is Dual Dual Power dot org. Yes, yeh um. Yeah.
If you go on the website, you'll find the links
(46:44):
to everything you need to know. You can get in
touch with us, you can like, you know, give us
your your feedback if you love it, if you hate it,
if you've you know, whatever, we're we're probably not going
to change the whole thing right now, but show up
and we can change it at the time. I'll also
say we do have like an organizing discord and people
(47:04):
who are like serious about like getting involved in want
to have things like I want to come to this
and with things that they have specific visions for now.
It's like absolutely time to get engaged with that because
we're like we're working towards making getting people into the
like who are the participants to really own the event itself,
(47:26):
So that'll be like that's something we have. I believe
we're going to need probably two more community calls wanted
June and one in July. Every one of those calls
has been really amazing, lots of great people. UM, and
during those calls are gonna be doing some training on
because you've got to do some prep work when you're
doing this kind of like generative discussion like popular education,
(47:49):
like unconferdenced style UM events, like coming to them with
a little bit of un understanding of what that looks
like is really key to U being successful. So UM,
we encourage people who want to come get signed up,
and then we'll get into our mailing list, and our
mailing lists is where we disseminate like when those calls
(48:10):
are happening, and you can also hoping our discord u
as long as you're cool and agree your community very
men like bring you in and like get all sorts
of shipped together. And we're very excited for people. I
mean there's still a fair number of thoughts open for
the events itself, were like almost half way full. So yeah,
(48:32):
I mean definitely, we've we've been trying to think about
this as an event that we would want to go to,
and we wanted to be an event that you want
to come to also, so help us make it. So yeah, yeah,
that's that's yeah, this is really exciting. I'd be going
to it. Yeah. So yeah, thank thank thank you, thank
you to you you both for joining us for talking about this.
(48:52):
And I'm excited too. I'm excited to see lots of
people there. Hey, I mean we've all been wanting to
see each other. Are two and a half years, right,
so I miss your missing your face with dimension. Yeah,
I'm sick of your flat face real. Yeah, thanks so
(49:17):
much for having us on to talk about it. Really
looking forward to it. I mean we're getting closer and closer.
It's just like it just gets more exciting and also
a little nerve wracking. But thankfully a lot of people
have been stepping up on a very I'm confident it's
gonna be really like a really great thing. Yeah, and
we will we we will have links to everything in
(49:38):
the show notes. Um yeah, this has just make it
happen here. You can find us in the usual places
happened to your pod stuff? All right, goodbye, have fun.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts on cool zone Media, visit our website
(49:58):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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