Despair Is NOT Our Only Option (with Margaret Killjoy) 11.19.24

In episode 1778, Jack and Miles are joined by host of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and author of The Sapling Cage, Margaret Killjoy, to discuss… The Various Reactions To The Election, How Suppressing Protests Helped Democrats Lose This Past Election, Stories/People From History That Give Us Hope and more!

Checkout Margaret Killjoy's Substack: Birds Before The Storm

LISTEN: Big Mike's (Live) by Dijon

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
You know the French call orgasms little deaths. I actually
I actually call Poop's little death. I'm gonna go have
a little death real quick.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
But then you're coming on the toy.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
No, like the eldest death. It's a little Elvis.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Okay, they're still having an orgasm. I'm also having a
full blown orgasm. Is that the wait? Is that the
Latin or that's a French? Oh they say the French
phrase for orgasm is little right.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, it's just like a saying yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
I have not asked any of my French friends if
this is true or not.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
The very hopeful idea of death, the death is actually
just a giant orgasm. If that's a little one, I
feel like I would also smoke. If I thought that's
what death was, I.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Wouldn't be super surprised.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Oh that it is.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I feel like when I went on I mean this
is it wasn't very orgasmic. But like when I went
under to have my like teeth polled recently, like some
wisdom teeth, I was like, it's like when I was
flooded through with whatever chemicals they put into the IV.
I was like I went in super nervous, right, I
do not like going under, or I thought I didn't,
and instead I was just like, oh, I'm not worried

(01:20):
about anything. Yeah. They could have been like, and now
we're killing you, and I would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Like, that's eight. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I got my wisdom teeth out in my early twenties
and was told secondhand that when they took me out
from under, I was like, hey, could I have more
of whatever? You just like, I go take me back.
I don't want to be here. Hello the Internet, and

(01:47):
welcome to season three sixty five, Episode two of At
Least I Die. It's a production of iHeart Radio. It's
a podcast where you're taking deep to have into American
shared consciousness. It's podcast that now has a YouTube tube
channel at Daily z eyke Guys Pod. On YouTube, you
can go see what we look like when we're saying
stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, see the contorted faces. Now for your viewing pursures,
these are my words. Happy season three sixty five.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
We've done it. We've done it, We've done it. We've
gone a whole year around the sun. Our little trip
around the Sun, true.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Daily z Eye Guy's challenge. Listen to an entire, entire
season's worth of episodes every day, and you can do
that for a full year and now get through every
episode we've had on the show.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Wow, yeah, do that.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Please don't actually don't do that.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Fantastic for our numbers and horrible for your mental health.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
My name?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Oh wait, no, I didn't even tell them what date
it is. No, that's my part. Okay, Tuesday, Yeah, November nineteenth,
twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Let's just see. I'm just trying to see if there's
any interesting birthdays. Shout out Meg ryan a if anyone
wants to impress a young Jody Foster, maybe today on
her birthday born in nineteen sixty two.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It worked.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, I'm saying you can. You can impress her with
your knowledge of her films, like quoting lines from the
movie Now or Contact.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay the Beaver, Yeah Noil Gibson is funny.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Also, what it is, right, November nineteenth is also National
play Monopoly Day. We're already living it. That's okay, but hey, Jack,
it's your day. It's National carp This is so so vague,
National carbonated beverage with caffeine Day. So all of God's
children are in the sun today.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
But that was like a day invented by cavemen. Like that,
I feel like by Encino man coming forward and experiencing
coca cola for the first.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
It's like something in cone Heads. He's like, yes, more
carbonated beverage with caffeine.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah. Anyways, shout out to the of us who used
to enjoy that and can't really anymore.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, you're not drinking die coke.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I haven't been drinking diet coke. I haven't been drinking
mountain dew, mountainkies, or.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
You haven't even touched everything. Okay, I haven't mountain dew.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, I know. I'm only on my second one and
I haven't indented it.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Do you feel judged when you go through the line
at checkout for not having a two liter?

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, everybody's looking, hey man, you forgot your two liters
of mountain dew.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
No, that's a different guy. No, you're dude Jack.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Trying to eat healthy, and they look at the food
that I actually have on there. You know you're not at.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
These are Pillsbury Crescent rolls, just those tubes of them. Yeah,
they're they're really underrated. Those are so good.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Holy shit, they're not carbonated exactly, or no caffeine either
the difference between like fresh break baked bread and not
fresh baked bread is a powerful thing. And like I will,
I will go through a whole canister of those crescent
Those things are great.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
You just bunch them up into one mego role basically
just eat like an app. Have done that?

Speaker 3 (05:12):
You ever forget to put him in the fridge?

Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
They just start popping.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Right right right, yeah, too warm. It's rising. Things are
rising in here. My name is Jack O'Brien aka Haty.
The snow Man has a dirty carrot peen. He was
brought to life to fuck your ex wife with the
mind of a preteen courtesy of Cleo Universe. It's too

(05:44):
Hot Frosty, which I haven't seen, Miles. What is the
mental age if you had to pinpoint it at a
years old of hot Frosty? Definitely under ten, under under ten,
because I guess it counts as pretty simple.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Simple shit is having to be explained to the hot
snow Man. The one thing that they do, and this
isn't really a spoiler, is that like he catches onto
shit really quick. I think that's the way they make
it seem like, and he's able to like mature pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I know he started off presenting as a childlike mind,
but by the end he's about like a seventeen year
old dude, probably.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
With the mind of a pretty smart preteen, so it's
okay smart. Yeah. Anyways, thrilled to be joined as always
by my co host, a man who I can count
on to have watched Hot Frosty and Ye first weekend
of release. It's mister Miles. Great, Miles Great.

Speaker 5 (06:41):
Okay, Carrit Dicken, he's melting slowly. Hot Frosty's coming to
save us, car Dicken, He's melting slowly.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I shout out to Richard B.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Three sixty. I know, I got a flurry of a
lot of people on the Blue Sky asking for the
Discord invites. I've I've not seen this name, so welcome
to the server and shout out everybody that's been joining
the Discord server. Hit me up on Blue Sky. Miles
of Gray over there for the invite, y'all. But you
gotta sign up for Blue Sky. Okay, let's sign Just
leave the other place, go to Blue Sky.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Okay, it's getting better that I feel like the longer
it goes, the less of the content. Will be about like, hey,
a lot of people are on Blue Sky.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Now right right right, We'll get hey, who do I
know on here?

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Where are my people at?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I hate everyone's first Blue Sky skeet or whatever we're
calling it that they do and it's like, hey, trying
this thing out. It's always some version of that, like
an ellipsis. I'm like, yeah, I get it. I mean
I did something similar, but look, that's what you do.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
So much of my Blue Sky contest is like Mark
Hamil is here and people think that's pretty neat.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
The second one is always were so much better than
everyone who's still on Twitter?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah right, exactly, Yeah, don't which.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Is true, but not worth that.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
No, no, no, no, don't don't let that be part of
your personality out loud.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
No. Then they're like just posting fire over on Twitter.
Well posts is terrible.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
This is actually what I did for about a year. Yeah, yeah,
I joined Blue Sky early enough to get the name
Margaret on it.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Margaret straight up Margaret killing it.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I know part of me wanted to just go on
a run of just owning every handle I could. That's
that a brand would want, and just be like I
am bed bath and Beyond on Blue Sky. But I
think they're a defunct company, know, so maybe it's not
the best idea.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
I got in there early, but I've decided instead to
Jacob one or jack Ob one, but it does look
like Jacob. Yeah. Anyways, Miles are thrilled to be joined
in air third seat by an author, musician, podcast host
of the anarchist survivalist podcast Live Like the World Is

(09:03):
Dying and the podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
on Cool Zone Media. Her substack Birds Before the Storm
is a must read. Please welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Margaret killed Joe.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Margaret.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Hi, she's back with the wisdom and she's great to
have you, Margaret, great to have you, great to have you.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I just went on a book tour and I met
people who came up and said they knew me because
of this show.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
So oh, I love Gang Zeigang.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
We love you. We love that. Shall support the people
that come on this show. That's really dope. That's super dope.
How was the book tour?

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Oh it was amazing. I'm incredibly exhausted. I did twenty
seven cities and twenty eight events because somehow I went
to Brooklyn twice. Wow, I got years ago, and I
don't want to go anywhere.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Oh man, also shout out to the people we have
on this show who are worth going to visit in person.
Mm hm, that's awesome. Can you talk a little bit
about the books? What's the book?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, I want to or the book called The Sapling Cage,
which is a it's technically not a YA. It's a
crossover which is YA, but you're admitting that adults read
it too, about a young trans girl witch who dresses
up as a girl to run away and join the
witches in a fantasy world and then has to help
everyone else save the world from people consolidating power through

(10:20):
destroying the environment, which is completely unrelatable to anyone who's reading.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Where do you come up with this stuff? Coming drugs
of drugs and think this wacky stuff up?

Speaker 3 (10:33):
No, I spent a lot of time alone in the woods, honestly,
that is the actual answer, just right, meditating on what
it is, kind of losing my mind, but yeah, yeah, total.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
It.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah right, yeah, losing your mind in the woods, the
original drugs. All right, Margaret, we want to talk to
you about where we're at. A lot of people having
trouble moving forward, or from the election, you had a
great substack posts. That was one of the few things

(11:06):
that I think made us feel hopeful or you know,
like there are things to be done and that there
is a way to move forward in time. So we're
gonna get into that, what fascism, what living under fascism
might look like, all of that, But first we do
want to get to know you a little bit better

(11:27):
by asking you, what is something from your search history
that's revealing about who you are?

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Okay, I swear this is because of work, but Irish
Woman who tried to kill Mussolini was a very recent
search string for me.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Go on.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
An awful lot of people tried to kill Mussolini. Eventually,
some partisans succeeded, right, and they hanged them upside down
and all of that, But.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
I succeeded all at once. Yeah, failed, and then a
lot of people.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Succeed Hey, get your licks in on the street.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
The first person actually tried was this anarchist who immediately
snitched out and became a fascist. And then like his
like friends were like, hey, go kill Mussolini. He was
like totally and then he went over and was like,
they told me to kill you and what do I get?

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Right?

Speaker 3 (12:14):
But then there was this Irish woman named Violet Gibson,
who I don't know enough about yet. I haven't finished
in the episode that I'm going to write about all
of the people who tried to kill me Mussolini, which
of course is coming up for no reason at all.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Right, He does Mussolini have like the record for most
attempted hits in terms of being like a dictator?

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Oh, I don't know. I mean I can point to
four off the top of my head, right. One of
him was like a fifteen year old m But I
like this woman who shot him in the nose because
everyone was like she was crazy and she might have
actually just been crazy. I'm not sure yet Violet Gibson,
but she she shot him in the nose and then
it like grazed his nose and then tried to shoot again,

(12:53):
but the gun jammed.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Ah wow, a grazing of a single facial append whatever
those things are called, the things hanging off our faces?
And he yes, again unheard of. Where do you come
up with this stuff?

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Lightly graized? Yes?

Speaker 3 (13:10):
And it's funny because that this actually turned everyone. This
Mussolini was able to use this to like consolidate a
lot of power. I think this is what Trump was
hoping would happen, and then it just didn't. I mean
he won the election clearly, right right right, but no
one was like it dropped out of the news cycle
like and like we felt well.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
I think that was a lot of people's reactions were like,
holy shit, the way he's going to use this, And
then most people are like Joe Biden dropped out? Yeah, yeah,
or not even based on the Google search is maybe
not everyone knew that so debatable.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, the Irish having a moment, But first we talked
before the election about how the Irish model of politics
post the Trebles is one that we should look to,
especially with regards to local politics, proportional representation, that to
go through the troubles, to get still to go through

(14:01):
the troubles. And speaking of which, there's a new Hulu
show about the Travels that is apparently very good. Some
of the worst billboard advertising I've seen because they have
a woman's face and then the same woman's face but
she has like a black I think it's like a balaclava,

(14:23):
but it looks like she's dressed as a ninja and
it just I think it's called don't speak or say
nothing is the show?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
But the the.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Image had me confused. I was like, ah, yes, the silence.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know something ignorant dudes like do finally a white
ninja show?

Speaker 3 (14:45):
White women get to be ninjas?

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Or the other verse like great a woke white woman
ninja series. Everything except understanding what it's about.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
That's supposed to be good Say nothing the sequel to
say anything? It is not, apparently, Margaret, what is something
you think is underrated?

Speaker 3 (15:08):
I think underrated is organizing with your friends and community
assemblies of any scale, getting together with people and talking
about the problems you're facing and figuring out how to
deal with them together. People do it all over the world,
both instinctively and in an organized fashion, and it never
gets talked about, right.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
I feel like there's a like a lot of this
stuff online will be like how do you like, how
do you organize? Like hang out with your friends? And
I feel like to just be like hang out with
your friends, but also like to your point, it's not
merely that. It's to collectively understand what you're up against
and just and then articulate something with then do some

(15:47):
kind of analysis with your friends.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, like get a whiteboard and then be like, what
is the problem, What are the things that can be
used to solve the problem? How do you get those things?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Sure? Sure? Sure? Yeah? Yeah? Do you think that's like
an intentional thing? Like how organizing is sort of obscured
or made to be more digestible in a way that
is I don't know, like leaves out the real details,
because I feel like sometimes it the impression i'd get
on the internet is people it's been like and you
just hang out with people, and I do get I

(16:18):
mean understanding like building community like that is obviously one
aspect of it. But is that truly doing the kind
of like work you're describing.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
That's a really interesting question because it is the step one, right,
is get people to actually go meet up with each other.
But the really important step, too is the outline your
problems and how you want to deal with it, right,
And leaving that out does seem like a dereliction of duty.
And I wonder whether it's because a lot of the
people writing about it, because writing is a different job
than organizing, and I write about organizing and I used

(16:48):
to do a lot of organizing, right, But I don't
do a lot of organizing anymore. I do a lot
of writing, so like maybe it's coming from there. More
people are like, it's the question mark question mark, profit
it part of the problem, right, But they're actually a
ton of like books and resources about the question mark
question mark of community organizing and they just don't get

(17:11):
they don't fit as well into your little Instagram slideshow
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right, right, right, sure, Yeah. The most insidious portrayal I've
seen of organizing is bringing this up a lot because
I'm old as fuck. Forrest Gump where where he goes, Yeah,
the scene where he goes to Washington, d C. During
a protest and they just put him in a line

(17:36):
and they like all march around from place to place
like aimlessly, and like the idea is like they're just
organizing for the sake of following a leader, and everyone's
like performatively angry, but nothing is actually happening. And I
do think, yeah, I do think that the portrayal of
organizing in American mass media is specific designed. Like PCU

(18:02):
is another example of that, where it's just like these
people don't actually believe in what they're saying. Yeah, they're
just doing all this hard work because it makes them
feel superior and cooler than you.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Which is what people tell themselves to get themselves off
the hook for not doing something that they think maybe
they should. And you could just not organize. You don't
have to, Yeah you could, but yeah, like if you
feel like morally you should and they're and you're not,
so then you just turn around and be like, oh,
well those people are all posers.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
When's when's uh yeah, when's Ron Howard making a movie
about stokely Carmichael. I think that's gonna come out.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
I mean that was Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump. But yeah, yeah,
much just.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
You know, but it feels like one of those things
that they're like, this could be a great story to
tell and will take out all the teeth from it.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
What is something, Margaret that you think is overrated? I
think party politics are overrated?

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I think you want Trump to win?

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Huh yeah, no, yeah exactly, like, yeah, it's overrated. Not
refuse to ever deal with or in knowledge, but yeah,
that attitude that you're talking about a butt. As soon
as the election is over, people are like, well, we
tried and we lost, so now we're done and we'll
just have to accept and wait for the next tournament
in four years. Like that's not what the world.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Is, right, that's how sports works. And maybe that's the
things like, well, we dust ourselves off and we'll get
them next time. It's like, yeah, there's that whole in
between part we need to think about.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, yeah, like the part so you vote, your side loses,
and then you get the t shirt that says, don't
don't blame me, I voted for her, and that's that's
the second step, right, Yeah, yeah, I think you.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
Wear that And well, yeah, alright, let's take a quick
break and we'll come back and talk about the reaction
the election and just generally where do we go from here.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
We'll be right back and we're back, We're back, and yeah,
I don't know. I think a lot of people are
having trouble dealing with the aftermath of the election, the loss,

(20:28):
the resounding defeat of the Democratic Party. To your point
about big party politics. I think people are like, well,
what do we.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Blewing on?

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Should we just like join bluing on and say the
election was stolen?

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Startling?

Speaker 1 (20:45):
What do we do from here?

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think? Yeah, yeah, I mean like for me personally,
I think my first reaction was like, oh, fuck, bro,
they're going to do the thing. They won and they're
going to do the thing. And I think as people
process with the future, sure will bring it's important to
like grieve and just sort of like process what's happening.
But then also we have to begin to sort of
turn a page on some level. But I'm curious, Margaret,

(21:10):
just from like what you've seen, did anything strike you
in terms of how people have reacted to the election.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
I think that there's a lot of people to almost
don't know how to feel. Like obviously in certain communities
you're like, well, this directly affects me immediately. I have
friends who are running around trying to get their gender
markers to match what they look like or what they
want to look like. By the time then you know,
the whole thing's over, and like you know, are people
who are like running out trying to get their tubes

(21:39):
tied and stuff right, and like just trying to get
all of the healthcare that they might not be able
to get. Sure, but I think that there's this kind
of people aren't sure whether we're just looking at there's
like this like more radical than now cynicism where you're like, oh,
it's going to be twenty sixteen again, and we survived
it last time, which isn't entirely true, but most people did,
you know, and so we'll survive it again and it'll

(22:01):
just be the same. And everyone who's saying Trump is
that much worse, is you know, giving into it, is
not successfully critical enough of America as an evil empire
or whatever, right, And then there's the people who are like, well,
Trump two point zero might be hitler and I mean
the whole spectrum as possible, and that's what's so terrifying, right,

(22:24):
And we don't know, and so I feel like it's
going to be like halfway between the two. But that's
the main thing I'm seeing is people are kind of
sorting themselves into the sky is falling, it's over right, right,
get the hell out, we gotta go. And then there's
the like, what are you panicking about? It'll just be
the same thing as always, you know.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Look, it's a bunch of stupid people he's appointing.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, totally, they'll be ineffective and we're good here. Yeah, yeah,
either way, as long as I don't have to do
anything I'm good with either of these potential theories.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
Yeah, exactly, It's exactly that. It's the well, I'm no,
it's ways for our brain to trick us in a
no feeling obliged to take action.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Right right. Yeah. I think that's the thing that I
think a lot of people, I think for me personally,
like when you looked at the binary between Harris and Trump,
you're like, well, Harris allows us to kick the can
down the road for just a little bit longer. It'll
still be grinding people down to dust, but it won't
be as on the same sort of trajectory as a
Trump presidency would. And I think that is one of

(23:28):
the like, to your point, it is one of those things.
Now it's like, there's no way at this point having
you know, an articulated project twenty twenty five or what
their goals are and who he's putting into positions of power.
It does feel like, yeah, there's really no space to
just be like, I don't know, like, can I be
passive at this point and expect everything to go okay?
Because I don't think the examples in history are sort

(23:51):
of demonstrate that.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, and they're not kind to the people who are
passive during the rise of fascism in their country, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think people who get their worldview from the mainstream media.
You know, for a long time, I think this was
you know, this was me have a hard time imagining
where to go from here because the world in your
substack post, which is really good. Everybody should go check

(24:24):
it out.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Youta dot com.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
There you go. You you quote this crime Think article
that says a Trump victory means that all the institutions
that centrists have counted on to protect them electoral politics,
the court system, the police, ordinary citizens inclination to obey
the law and respect the authorities are now weapons in

(24:48):
the hands of their enemies, which I think is just
it's such a radical shift for And by the way,
you don't quote that part, but when I went to
the article you linked off to, that was something that
jumped out to me as like kind of summarizing what
is so different for from like where we were in

(25:09):
twenty sixteen, and how people could like get on board
with all, right, well, we're going to root for a
good guy at the FBI to counterbalance Trump, and now
it feels like, no, the they've captured kind of all
of that. This needs to be kind of coming from

(25:31):
a different what's next needs to look a lot different
than cheering for a Robert Muller investigation and like, you know,
checking for hourly updates on MSNBC of the various things
that Trump is doing that are wrong and violating norms.
And I think people sense that because nobody's watching MSNBC anymore.

(25:54):
But I think they're trying to figure out, like, where
where do we go now?

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I mean, I think you're right. I think it's that
they are absolutely positioning themselves to take all of the
different chunks of the state and apply it towards a
potentially fascist end. Like the de wocification of the military
that they're talking about doing, right, you know, is right, Yeah,
which it creates an interesting situation and I want to

(26:20):
use interesting to not say good, But it creates an
interesting situation where you're now going to probably have a
bunch of like generals and like a pretty large chunk
of the most powerful military in the world suddenly kicked
out of the most powerful military in the world. And right,
that's complicated.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
That has historically not gone that well for the people
who kick them out. Right, Yeah, the country in which
they get kicked.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Out, and yeah, and and have the institution of power,
like the the different parts of the state potentially being
in conflict with each other. Like actually, or rather in
this case, if you have the capture of the entire state,
instead of having this sort of like oh, the FBI
is like a little bit investigating Trump or whatever, It's like, well,
now if I don't know if Trump runs all of it,

(27:06):
I don't know where I'm going with this.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
I maybe the DOJ will. Yeah, I mean, they can
definitely do a lot to not tell them to be like, no,
we're not looking into that. Yeah, pretend to like they
did with Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, when he was like on
his way to confirmation.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
And if anything that goes to the Supreme Court is
just not we're just screwed on, you know, right. But yeah,
but it puts us in a situation where it's like, Okay,
well we have to we can no longer count on
daddy state to save us, right, because you can still
look at the fact that actual progressive values are massively
popular in this country, even in the deepest red states.

(27:43):
You know, people are going like fifty seven sixty percent
on abortion rights, and you know, we're getting like Muslim
and trans and like a lot of different people are
like winning these local elections, even in these areas that
didn't go for for Harris, you know, and and so
the people we shouldn't give up on yet, you know,

(28:05):
we just need methods by which to organize ourselves to
counter the stuff that's happening.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, I think that was another sort of immediate election
response that I was actually at least happening in my brain,
where you're just like being in public and just being like,
like fifty over half of these people are you know,
over And that first of all isn't a safe assumption

(28:34):
in Los Angeles, but also just yeah, I feel like
people are a lot of the values that are important
to me are important to a lot of Americans and
have been like demonstrably so. But that there are all
sorts of reasons that we've talked about that people voted

(28:57):
for Trump. None of them good, but I don't think
all of them are. Just there are half the people
I see on a daily basis are evil, and I
should be afraid of them. It is probably not the
way to move forward through time.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Like I just I think the other thing that is
affecting people a lot. Is just like when you look
at the media right now, especially in this last week,
it just feels like the capitulation is just it's on
right now, you know, it's bend the knee fest at
mar A Lago. Like on MSNBC on Monday morning, Joe
Scarborough and Meeker Brazinski, they're like, so, we went to

(29:34):
mar A Lago to speak with President elect Trump, just
to begin to restart our lines of communication, but it
totally read as this sort of thing like, hey, viewers,
we should just lay down and die and be nice
to them because we don't know what the fuck they're thinking.
And I think it's really hard to watch sort of
the Fourth Estate like erode even further in real time

(29:56):
like this, and that's very disorienting. But it just feels
like at the moment, you're just getting a lot of
stories that creates this feeling that this impending experiment with
fascism should just be accepted. And I think that's kind
of like this fork in the road that we're at.
There's the version where people like, so should I just
watch it but be internally upset by everything I'm seeing?

(30:20):
Or is there also a path where I'm I can
do something that invigorates me. And I think that's kind
of I feel like most people, I think, for us
to really resist this with any kind of intention and effectiveness,
we have to take the path where we begin to
prepare ourselves for action. Doesn't mean you're brawling in the streets,

(30:40):
but that politics and the direction that the country's going
isn't just merely a thing that we're going to watch
just completely burn up in flames. That there is some
you know, like you said in your substack posts, that
we need to sort of get in touch with our agency.
What how do you like? So is it good to
look at it as this sort of like forking off,
Like there's a version of what this administration looks like

(31:02):
if we all just say, oh my god, it's over,
it's cooked, We're cooked, and there what's And then there's
the version where we can at least get a little
bit more in touch with what we're able to do
as people collectively.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, I mean, and I think that I think that
the fork in the road is accurate. And there's also
like wild Pie and the Sky dreams are worth articulating
and fighting for. You know, there is a version of
this where okay, the pie in the sky dream is
not what I'm about to say, but there's a version
of this where he crashes the US economy right where
tariffs just destroy the US economy and therefore the world

(31:36):
economy and so like, that would be bad. But if
we are able to articulate, like our wild pie and
the sky dreams about what we can do during crisis,
we will be better positioned to do that. And so I,
like I went and did only for a couple of days,
but I went immediately after Hurricane Helene to Asheville, North Carolina,

(31:56):
because that's where I lived for a long time, and
my friends needed some of the stuff I had, and
I went to go drive supplies around everywhere, you know,
And in the middle of the worst disaster that that
area has faced in recorded history, I saw people just
building amazing communities and mutual aid and a lot of
people including not just like the anarchists and the socialists

(32:19):
and the you know, lefty Christians and stuff like this,
not just the people who normally say this stuff. Everyone
is like, well, what if we just live this way?
What if we just take care of each other?

Speaker 1 (32:28):
You know, And.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
That is not what's likely to happen in North Carolina
in the immediate future, right, But some of those systems
have now been deepened, And so I think that getting
ready to fight for some of the immediate problems that
are likely to come up with the Trump presidency also
positions us really well to articulate what we really want,

(32:54):
and if the opportunity for those things occurs, to positioners
ourselves well to try and fight to get it. And
I think that, for example, I would say, off the
top of my head or not the top of my head,
the thing I've been thinking about for a couple of
weeks is probably the most clear and important organizing that
needs to happen on a mass level is to fight
the mass deportation.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
I know that like trans people and migrants are the
two groups that are likely to become after to come
after that, the state is likely to come after the
most in a Trump presidency. And I don't mean to
put down the importance of trans organizing, but it just numerically,
I think organizing to protect migrants is the most important whatever, right,

(33:41):
And I think that we can do that, and I
think that we can do that, and we can build
a movement around that that is like heterogeneous and not
just one voice, one name, one tactic, one group, Right,
I think that we can have multiple groups working in coordination.
I think it's the most effective method anyway. And I

(34:02):
think that if we do that, we can really start
looking at saying like, well, what if, like we can
take care of each other. And since we can take
care of each other, why do we need to listen
to you know, this increasingly fascist state in the first place.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, that's a really good point.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
So, like, because I think for a lot of people
who I think listening to this show, people have like
varying degrees of involvement and activism, But I think most
people that listen to this show are deeply disturbed by
what a Trump presidency can bring. And I mean, if
they're they're still listening at this point, are pretty much

(34:42):
bought in on the fact that we really all have
to look after each other in order for any like
for this kind of collective sort of mutual aid or
action to work. What for for people who are dipping
their toe into this for the first time, what do
you say to them to sort of begin to say, look,

(35:02):
I get it. For the most part, you've probably not
had you've been able to be on the sidelines and
just observe what's happening. Maybe you've donated, maybe you've gone
to a march or two, But here is the work
that we can all be thinking about without you know,
to understand that it's incremental or however deep you want
to jump in. But what do you think is like
a first step, just mentally for someone to take to say, Okay,

(35:24):
there are some things we're going to have to resist.
I do care about my community. What do I do now?
What's my frame of mind I need to enter and
think about the actions I can take That sort of
help take that first step down that road.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, I think one thing to do is, both personally
and with your groups of friends, think about what kind
of actions you're willing to take, what kind of risks
you're willing to take, and also who you're willing to
support who might be taking further risks than you, And
then also think about what you're good at or what
you would like to be good at, and then how

(35:58):
to apply it to those things. So, for example, if
you get together differends and you could say, look, none
of us have any protest experience, but Honestly, if someone
who's helping organize tells us where to stand in front
of buses, we will go stand in front of buses
to keep them from taking migrants out.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
This is a tactic that has been used effectively in
the United States before. Right, And maybe that's a level
of risk you're willing to take, but maybe it's not
a level of risk you're willing to take. And in
which case you're like, well, I'm I'm the sole provider
for my family, or I have panic attacks, or you know,
whatever it is, Right, you could also say, well, who
do I know who is willing to take those risks?

(36:35):
What kind of support work do they need?

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Right?

Speaker 3 (36:38):
What kind of do they need? You know, are there
legal support lines that will crop up? Because one of
the things is during crisis, opportunity arises, and that also
includes opportunities to get involved. So if you're kind of
preparing yourself to be ready and then you start seeing
these groups that start doing a thing, well, then you
can start saying like, oh, okay, I am prepared to

(36:59):
go sit by a phone and bail people out of jail. Right,
that is a level that I am willing to do. Right,
And then when something comes up, you can reach out
to that group and say, hey, I'm willing to do this.
The other thing you can do is you can reach
out proactively to anywhere that you live the groups that
help migrants in those areas, because those are likely to
be the sort of nukeli of larger coalitions or organizations

(37:23):
that are.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Likely to come up.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
And then you could also start something. If you don't
find something in your area that like matches your vibe,
you can start something and then be in communication with
those groups. And maybe you start with something that like, well,
then maybe there aren't any buses to block yet because
of where you live, right, you probably shouldn't go around
and like compile lists of all the undocumented people in
your area. That's probably a bad idea, right, you know.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Just to support you, can I get your name? Yeah
and you live here? Yea great? Great?

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Great?

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:52):
But yeah, so I think that reaching out to groups
that are already doing it and or forming like there's
a there's a concept called the ffinity group, which is
as the sort of cell level of a decentralized movement.
It's the like group of three to seven people or
twenty people whatever.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
I don't care you.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Know that all have each other's backs really deeply. And
that doesn't mean that everyone's necessarily going to go out
in the streets, but they are. But they're the people
that you're going to organize with to get involved in
other things. And this maximizes your ability to come at
those to join those groups with agency. It also helps
prevent you from there's this kind of thing that you

(38:30):
should be careful when you're new at activism, especially direct
action activism like blocking buses or something right where some
of the cynical older organizers are going to be like, oh,
you're young and impressionistic. Why don't you take all the risk,
you know, right? And that's like not great, right, And
so the more that you think about this ahead of time,
the more you can go into a meeting and being like,

(38:50):
I won't get peer pressured into the following action because
I know ahead of time that I'm not willing to
do that right now. Maybe three actions down from now,
you decide you aren't willing to go get arrested, you know, right.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, let's uh let's take a quick break. We'll come
back and we'll keep talking about specific things we can
do and uh, other other aspects of your posts that
are giving us hope We'll be right back, and we're back.

(39:28):
You have this sentence about kind of a psychological dynamic
that I've found to be true that I thought was
really important that you write. A therapist friend of mine
reiterates to me all the time that acting with agency
is the primary way to avoid being traumatized but by
negative experiences. This is this is a big thing in

(39:48):
recovery from like addiction. There's like the serenity prayer that
I think everybody has heard, where it asks for the
courage to change the things you have power over. But
I've had somebody who I've worked with pointed out it's
actually like the reverse.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
A lot of the.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Time, you change the things that need to be changed,
and the courage comes from that. But you need you
need that first action to build on and hopefully it's
not an action that kind of meets with Yeah, like
you were saying, like manipulation or shame or dismissiveness. So
I like that so far, you've been kind of emphasizing

(40:26):
building with people you know and trust to begin with,
and then like plugging into existing existing groups. But yeah,
doing so kind of in a in a well informed way. Yeah, yeah, anyways,
I thought that was cool where you also talk about

(40:50):
this need to de escalate conflict that isn't with the enemy.
And one thing that's come up a few times in
the aftermath of the election for me is this idea
that I feel like we need to really in some
political way that feels real, like target the mainstream Democratic

(41:12):
Party and it like more specifically like not allow them
to do the thing they do with activism. That is, basically,
any anything that you are doing that doesn't like fall
within the realm of like neoliberalism is actually unrealistic and
childish basically. But I guess I'm curious when you say

(41:34):
de escalate conflict that isn't with the enemy, like who
is the enemy? Are you deciding that kind of person
by person and just or group by group, or how
are you thinking about that?

Speaker 3 (41:47):
I make that decision conflict by conflict. If I find
myself like kind of in a conflict, I have to
think to myself, like, is this person my enemy? And
sometimes even if they're like ideologically the same as me,
in surface ways, they might be my enemy, right if
someone is trying to hurt me or my friends, Right,

(42:08):
you know, But then even then I'm kind of like,
on the other hand, I've successfully de escalated conflicts with
people who are trying to hurt me physically, you know,
and that is a better solution to that problem, right
than if I had like beat them up or gotten
beaten up. Right. But I do think that I can't
dictate for other people what counts as the enemy as

(42:28):
much as like say, if you are in a conflict,
just really saying yourself, is this person actually my enemy?
And most of the time they're not. And it is
interesting to me because overall people, individual people are unlikely
to be my enemy. There are individuals like just fascists, right,
people who are like, I'm a fascist. I like fascism, right,

(42:48):
But if they stop being fascists, they probably stop being
my enemy. And I think we need to have like
an off road for people to leave hate groups and
things like that. But there's also I live in like
a center, right the I live in West Virginia. There
is not a county in West Virginia that went for Harris,
which is depressing because West Virginia exists because it's the
part of Virginia that didn't want to die over slavery right,

(43:11):
and you know, actually died on the other side, like
fighting against slavery. But it is what it is. It
is now a center right state or a deep right state,
depending on where you're at.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
But I don't believe.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
I don't conceive of my neighbors as my enemies, and
I'm grateful that they do not appear to conceive of
me as their enemy either, right, But the Republican Party
is my enemy, and yeah, frankly, the Democratic Party is
also my enemy, at least structurally. I believe that the
Democratic Party exists to co opt protest energy and like

(43:45):
movement energy and turn it into this thing that has
never proven once that it can shift things to the left.
All it can do is slow, not even stop slow
right word creep right, right right. And so they are
doing the work that I oppose, and I want to
oppose it, and so I'm going to organize to oppose it.

(44:06):
And I I have enemies on the left. I specifically
strongly disagree with authoritarian like communist tendencies and not the problem.
My problem here isn't the word communism. The problem here
for me is the word authoritarian like I And I'm
not trying to tell anyone in the crowd what to think.
But I like, I am opposed to people trying to

(44:27):
advocate for a totalitarian society, regardless of what it's.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Called, you know.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
And but but then the people who are necessarily sometimes
the people who are arguing for that are could be
fellow travelers, and they've just been convinced that there's this
strategy that will magically work that has never worked, you know.
And and so enemy is weird. It is weird to
have enemies. But I also don't want to be like
there is no enemy. We're all friends, right, sometimes.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Hug everyone Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah, right, like.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
You were saying earlier, like hey, it doesn't necessarily mean
rumble in the streets, but like sometimes it does, right,
And like maybe you don't want to go rumble in
the streets, dear listener, but you should support the people
who beat up fascist in the streets, because overall, fascism
is a coward's ideology. And once they get beat up
in the streets, they stop coming into the streets, and
then they stop building successful movement. That is not the
only or the most effective strategy with which to confront them.

(45:20):
But the people who go and fight them are my friends?

Speaker 1 (45:22):
You know?

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Right yeah, I'm like, because right now I think you're
we're beginning to see a lot of misidentifying of quote
unquote enemies yea, because you know, because the Democratic Party
is in total free fall and you have people who
were on the verge of like sort of seeing the
light about being like this party is actually truly ineffective,
and it just feels it's the really good at empty

(45:45):
promises and co opting that. Like twenty twenty, it was
like we need to do something about the police, and
then Joe Biden's like we should just be a little
bit nicer to them. You're like, wait, what the fuck?
And they're like this just makes your head spin. And
then there's this version too where you see a lot
of people who are now from like the you know,

(46:05):
sort of establishment side of the party, people who are
like blue no matter who types. Immediately now going after again,
we're seeing like the woke is broke, like why was there,
why were we trying? Why are we bothering to protect
vulnerable people like the trans community or what or the
people who are like, hey, Arab voters. I hope you're
happy now because look who Trump just appointed yeah, you know,

(46:27):
and that's where I'm seeing, like, that's that's a that's
gonna be a huge setback for sort of like bring
like creating a larger coalition. But the way those people
speak at the moment, they're not ready. I think for
the bigger picture, they are still very much hyper focused
on the pain of the election loss and are just
trying to be like it wasn't because of the policies,

(46:48):
it's because of them. Don't ask me to interrogate what
the policies are, because I'm not I'm just not interested
in that conversation.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
What how do you like?

Speaker 2 (46:55):
I guess historically when you see like sort of a
party that was in power, seemed like it was quote
unquote doing the right things, then collapsed to sort of
like usher in fascism, what happens to like the scraps
of like the people that were supporting that party, And
like how important is it for to find to remind
people of like what the larger issue is because more

(47:17):
people you see more people people blaming than system blaming. Yeah,
And I think that's what's interesting is like the needles
definitely a lot of people, plenty of people are blaming
the system but it feels like more people are blaming
other people at the moment.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
I think that's a really important point, that people are
blaming people instead of systems. And I think overall we
need to try and be doing like coalition building and
stuff with people who are looking to do coalition building,
who are looking to find to work pluralistically, like to
you have this kind of a tolerance paradox. You know

(47:51):
that if you tolerate intolerance, then you lose your tolerance
or whatever, right, And I think that that's the same
is true for like working logically put pluralistically, where there
are so many people that we can work with who
have no problem not trying to dominate the movement and
tell everyone what to do. You know, in an activist
spaces we see this really easily, where like the average

(48:14):
church group isn't trying to convert you, you know, if
they're if they're activists, if they're Christian nationalists, they're trying
to convert or kill you, right, But the average like
we're the Catholics of the Protestants who bring food to
the border and give it away, Like those people aren't
trying to like save your soul. They're just trying to
feed you and because they understand those as related, you know,

(48:34):
or in their own theological understandings, and so you can
work in coalition, you could, they would work with like
Satanists for feeding migrants, right, And and so it's I know,
I'm kind of only going with half of what you
were saying, and I apologize for that.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
But but then to the other part of your question
about what happens when totalitarian takes over. One of the
things that I think that people aren't quite as much
as like, my goal is to spread hope, but not
ignorant hope, right. My goal is to we have to
soberly look at how bad this situation is so that
we can successfully confront it. And one of the things

(49:11):
that could happen and has happened a lot, is that
when totalitarian and totalitarianism comes in, it comes in fast.
You know, when Hitler came to power, he was arresting
his enemies of the night he came to power, right,
And that's not always the case. I actually don't think
that's going to be the case in the United States.
That is, I'm still in the United States, you know,

(49:34):
like making my decisions based on the fact that I
don't think that Trump is going to come to power
and then immediately arrest all the leftist podcasters in the
progressives and whatever. Right, he might criminalize a bunch of stuff,
and he will make organizing hard, and he will start.
But on the other hand, there actually are already groups
he's planning to criminalize and do horrible things too. And

(49:54):
so it's almost like self important for like for those
of us who are citizens to like, oh, well, he
might do the following. He's like, he said, which very
large group of people he wants to put into camps.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
He doesn't mean it. We've all learned. Yeah, he tells
us the horrible thing he's about. Oh wait a second, Yeah,
he always does. He's done it every time. That's right.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
He's actually the most honest politician we've had in this
country for a very long time. Someone's gonna use that
out of context. He he tries to hold to his
campaign promises. Right, they're monsters. He's like, I'm going to
be a monster, and everyone's like, hooray, He's going to
be a monster, and then he is so, and then
of course all of the people who are going to
go benth and knee and I really like that framing
of it. I think that's a good framing of it.

(50:36):
There's no safety in that, like there's no Yeah, there's
the all of the people who voted for him and
are like now gonna all of their stuff is going
to be twice as expensive. You know, it's anyway whatever.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Yeah, he could kill it on eBay as a seller.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
He just bought a ton of like some Chinese made
stuff and yeah, just.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Something something else that you raised that. I think the
election results should probably have made clear to a lot
of people. But you're right that moderate reforms are won
by making radical demands. If you demand moderate reforms, you
generally get nothing. And it just also it seems like
the suppressing of the protests helped cause the democratic kind

(51:23):
of cratering that we just saw. Both the suppressing of
the pro Palestinian protests on college campuses, but just protests
in general by the Democratic Party is like something they
feels like they've been pretty hostile towards and thus it's
been harder for people on the left to build kind

(51:46):
of community and sort of the structures that we're talking
about needing. But give examples of like the two types
of movements like the radical demands versus like the ones
that make moderate demands. Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Could do that.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
But first of your point about the suppressing protests, I
think the Democratic Party is very good at building off
of the momentum of protests and from my point of view,
co opting it. But that's not the only way to
view it. And so yeah, of course, but then they
want to be the only adults in the room, so
when they're in charge, everyone is a bunch of children
if they protest against them, and so yeah, of course

(52:25):
it doesn't work. Like I think if they were smarter,
they would have been like, we too, support free Palestine
without doing anything. They would have to All they would
have to do is give lip service, right, And you
see Biden try to pull this at the last minute,
being like thirty days and then later being like just kidding,
I don't care.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Do whatever you want. Psch. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
But in terms of radical and moderate demands, okay, the
abolition of legal chattel slavery in the United States, it
the reformist abolition. They tried that for a century or so.
And the primary argument that they would make is they
came up with all these like you know, They saw
it as like very mature and compromising positions where they're like, well,

(53:03):
what if we slowly buy people out of slavery, Like
what if we allow you know, we have to of
course we have to pay back the slave owners, right.
You know, they of course need to because their property
has been taken away from them, you know. And there's
all of these arguments that they made for a very
long time. And now some of the reforms that they've
pushed for, I will say actually did accomplish things like
stopping importation of enslaved people had some impact, but it

(53:27):
very clearly took a zealot, right, well, it took a
lot of zalots and a lot of blood to stop
legal chattel slavery in the United States. It took a
whole ass war, and it took the demand We're going
to kill you if you don't stop enslaving people, right.
That was the demand that made any of this possible.

(53:50):
And what's funny is that they actually could have the
South could have at that point probably sued for peace
in a way that there was like, okay, we accept
the compromise. Pay us for what we could have, pay
us for our losses and we'll stop, like that was
a that was an offer that they that was on
the table more or less, right, and so they could
have gotten the moderate thing, but instead they were like

(54:11):
wanted to go whole hog and got killed.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
And to help with them.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
But another example of this, like gaining moderate things by
being a radical group is you have the Young Lords,
which is a Puerto Rican radical movement comparable to the
Black Panthers in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and they
were in Chicago and New York City primarily. They're actually
still around, but they're like sort of heyday, and some
of the things that they accomplished are really tangible. We

(54:38):
have the Patient's Bill of Rights. They did a lot
of healthcare focused work, right. They like took over hospitals
time and time again, well maybe only twice, I don't remember,
but they did it a bunch.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
They would like go in carjack X ray vans and
bring them into neighborhoods like where minorities were living, because
the x ray vans were only going into these white
neighborhoods in order to search for tuberculosis and stuff in
the community.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Right.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
And they also got trash pickup in New York City.
They completely got it overhauled. And it wasn't that they
formed the coalition of concerned voters who care about trash pickup,
could you please change the way that trash is picked up.
They just started collecting all the trash and burning it
in the streets. And then instead of doing it in
their own neighborhood, they'd drag it out to like the

(55:25):
busy intersections where like the rich people had to drive,
and then they would just throw street parties and burn
all the trash. And finally the city was like, all right,
we'll we'll start doing this. What they were fighting for
was a free Puerto Rico, right, right, And they didn't
get that right, but by trying to get that, they

(55:49):
got an awful lot, and they got stuff that people
who were asking for moderate demands weren't going to get ever.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Right, Yeah, because in your subject you also point to
the summer of twenty twenty, like it rightly, It wasn't
like we're like we want Joe Biden, so we're out here,
you know, because people are in the streets been like
we need to defund this ship. These people like we
have authoritarian anti black racism, like with people who are
have been given the blessing by the state to take

(56:16):
people's lives. We need to fucking end this.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Find the police phrase ever come up with the swamps?

Speaker 2 (56:24):
I know about it, Luso, but like he does this,
like you know, that was a point where we were asking.
There were a lot of people came together to ask
for these larger reforms. You got it in varying degrees
in some places. But what it did do in the
end was fully blunt the momentum of a Trump reelection,
which in that moment, Yeah, that that was that was

(56:46):
a that was a that was a nice thing that
we got that we had an end at least to
the Trump administration. Now, the co opting definitely happened. I
mean we saw it all the time. All I can
think about is Nancy Pelosi with the can take cloth
on and the rotun and I'm like, it's over. They
did it.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Yeah, and it's worse than it was before.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Right exactly. But to that point is if enough people
clearly become incensed about a thing and come together to
do that something, things happen, whether directly or indirectly. And
I think that was one of the biggest takeaways for me,
reading the sub stack was when people are able to

(57:25):
act collectively, there are going to be results. It might
not be the intended top of the list thing, but
other things do come from it that end up being
somewhat of a positive or at least begin to beget
you know, create conversations that you have like in LA,
where the city controller became someone who's like, my whole
thing now is just posting police budgets on the billboards,

(57:48):
so people of LA understand like where the money's going. Wow,
And you just get these like sort of smaller things
and more people become a little bit aware. And I
think that's the thing that we sort of have to
sort of emphasize for ourselves is to know that a
the time will come where we will need to sort
of figure out a way that how we're going to
contribute to make something better and that it is possible,

(58:10):
and you can do it in a way that is
specific to whatever your level or ability is of whether
if you're your ability you're like whether it's physical abilities
or just whatever your your comfort level is with being
in physical space or putting yourself in a situation where
you might have to be confronted by law enforcement, et cetera.
But there are many ways to do this, so it

(58:31):
doesn't have to feel like, well, it's either I'm putting
on a uniform and I'm out there in the streets
doing my thing cracking heads. No, no, that there is
a There are many other ways, And I think it's
important that we get together identify within our own communities
or like we all need to talk about this, like
if I need medication, do you like, like what how

(58:51):
far out can you get? How far can you drive?
Do you have a generator? Do you have these kinds
of skills? Who does Oh are they down to? Do
they think? Like us? Okay? Cool? Now we have fit
teen people then and among us we have an engineer,
we have someone who has a medical background, we have
someone with the skills for horticle whatever. It is that
you begin to understand that they're like, collectively, we can

(59:13):
actually do a lot of things that will keep us
safe while also keeping an eye on the larger goal,
which is to, you know, again, try and blunt the
momentum of fascism in the country. So I think that's
the one thing I hope a lot of people are
able to sort of get in touch with It's it's
as easy as you need it to be. But the
hard bit is just to take that first step, and

(59:35):
you can take it as comfortably as you want, but
make sure you are focusing on how you either you're
going to keep yourself safe, your friends safe, whatever, and
then from there so many other things can branch off
and it doesn't have to look like, you know, whatever
the scary thing is in your mind that might be
putting you off from wanting to take action, because it's
it's very easy and you'll find many other like minded

(59:56):
people out there.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yeah. Well, Margaret Killjoy, thank you so much for coming on.
It's you know, it gives me hope that someone who
has a much deeper knowledge of the history of these
sorts of movements. Is optimistic feels like the wrong word
because it's not like we're optimistic that this thing is
going to take care of itself. Not the way I

(01:00:19):
was optimistic based on the Seltzer poll, where I was like,
we're gonna be good, but that we can come together
to strategically do things to help one another. So I
really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find more
about you? Follow you all that good stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Yeah, you can follow me on Blue Sky at Margaret
whatever the thing that comes after your name on yea
and which is newish to me. But and then you
can follow me on Instagram market kill Jo. You can
follow me on substack. Half my posts are free, though
always like more important posts are always going to be free,
so you can subscribe for free. And then if you
want to know more about like my personal life as

(01:01:00):
a weird person who lives in the woods and used
to ride trains or whatever, you can pay for the
premium version where you can read my journals and things.
And I have a podcast. I have a podcast on
this very network on iHeartRadio, and it is called Cool
People Who Did Cool Stuff. It's part of Cool Zone Media.

(01:01:22):
And if you want to know more about individual and
community preparedness, then I also have a podcast that's not
on this very network, and it is called Live Like
the World Is Dying. And I have a bunch of
co hosts on that and every week on Friday, we
talk about how to get prepared as both individuals and
communities to get ready for things that are happening.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Awesome. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
No, this was in the prompt and then but I
have this thing where I forgot to write it down
and then my brain turns blank every single time. Okay,
I just read this book called The Deluge and I
don't have the author's name in front of me, and
it's a climate change book and is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
It and what is it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Stephen Markley.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I listened to it on audiobook, so I wasn't
like picking it up every single time and seeing the cover.
And then Kim Stanley Robinson has a book called The
Ministry for the Future, and together these are two of
the most in depth analyzes of possible futures as relates
to climate change and the fight for it that I
have ever read, and so I guess I would recommend those,

(01:02:25):
not as like neither one is like the plan that
I'm signing off on, especially The Deluge, which is not
very optimistic. Well, actually it kind of is actually anyway,
I don't want to spoil anything, but.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I'm assuming it's basically a novelization of water world, is
that it's not the furthest thing from that. Yeah, we
did a whole episode just me giving a book report
on The Ministry for the Future.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Oh amazing. I actually need to go back and listen
to that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Then it's a lot of fun. Great, that's a great recommendation. Miles.
Where can people find you as their work media you've
been in?

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Yeah, find me on all the social media's, but check
me out on Blue Sky, Miles of Gray, Besky dot
social you know where I'm just chatting shit and talking
to all you guys. So thank you for reaching out.
Find me on or actually find Jack and I actually
on the basketball podcast Miles and Jack Got Mad Maths
where we talk about the NBA.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
And then my other hobby, which is watching reality TV.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
I do that talking on four to twenty Day Fiance.
The piece of media that I like is actually also
the song we're gonna go out on. But the reason
it's the piece of media I like is because there
is a video version of this track that I think
is cool to watch, and it's nice to watch people
make music and just be kind of feeling it while

(01:03:45):
they do it. So I'm just gonna do two birds
in one stone. It's it's the artist djon d I
j O and and he like who does a lot
of work with the artist McGee, who's really popular right now.
Mk dot ge you might have seen that name floating
around lot. This guy Mike Gordon, who's like a really
good producer guitar player. The track is called Big Mics,
but it's the live version, and it's really cool because

(01:04:08):
it's just like one take in this like dining room
and everybody's just it's such a dope track. It reminds
me of like almost like di'angelo voodoo esque kind of
like feeling, because it's really soulful and simple and builds
in this way that is really nice. So this is
also the song we're going out on, but it's dijon
Big Mics, but the live version, which you should watch

(01:04:29):
on YouTube, and that will be in.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
The footnotes footnotes. Yeah, we'll link after that in the
foot notes. It's very good. I've not seen Miles quite
this smitten by a work of media in a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
He's nice to watch jam.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
We entered the Monday morning recording and this recording. He
was listening to this song and it's great. Yeah, you
can find me on Blue Sky at jack ob One,
who can find us on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist. Oh work,
you've been enjoying. We've got a lot of recommendations for
English Teacher on FX finally watched it really really enjoyable

(01:05:09):
eight episode sitcom series. Blow right through it real quick
and it's it's a lot of fun. So shout out
to all the guests who recommended it as their working
media that is now also a work media. I would
recommend you check out. You can find us on Twitter
at daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily Zekeeist on Instagram.

(01:05:30):
We have a Facebook fan page and a website Daily
zeikeist dot com where we post our episodes and our
footnotes to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
as well as the song that Miles just recommended. Yeah,
so you can that's Big Mike's Live or watch it.
The Daily Zeikeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or

(01:05:52):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going
to do it for us this morning. We are back
this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we
will talk Sheldon, Bye bye. M