September 20, 2021 • 44 mins
A discussion with author Margaret Killjoy on how to get involved in your community and first steps to take towards resiliency.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to it could Happen Here the show where I
had to change the introduction because Sophie said it would
confuse people. So now we're just doing the boring thing
and saying the actual name of the show, which is
it could happen here. Um. It's a show about the
fact that the society is kind of falling apart or changing,
depending on your perspective of things, and people need to
(00:25):
prepare for what's coming, which is a world of greater
instability and economic collapse and rising authoritarianism and increasing fights
in order to reverse and stymy all of those terrible things. Um.
And you know, one of the things I've seen in
some early feedback from um other stuff I've done on
(00:45):
other shows, and also from earlier episodes of this is
people who will go like, Hey, everything you're saying about
mutual aid is rad but I live in X town
and whatever state, and there's there's nothing here. There's not
not an organized left. I don't I don't know of
any mutual aid groups. Um, how can I get involved?
Or like, how could I start my own organization and
try to get people involved? And then another thing we
(01:08):
get asked a lot of us, like, hey, what you're
saying about building resiliency and preparing for difficult times, gardening
and whatnot sounds great. But I'm poor as ship and
I live in a tiny apartment um or whatever. I
I have no resources or no room um. Even if
you're not of enough money, like I'm in the middle
of some horribly dense city. So this week we're gonna
(01:29):
be talking around those subjects in a number of different ways.
And to kind of kick us off, I've got, of course,
Garrison with me. Woke come up at nine in the morning.
How are you doing, Garrison, ungodly early? Yeah, it's it's
it's hideous. It's hideous. Um. And then Margaret Killjoy, who's
up at a much more reasonable hour because time zones
(01:49):
are a wild ass thing. Margaret, how do you? How
do we how do we introduce you? You're an author? Uh,
you're a writer of fiction. You host a podcast called
Live like the World is Dying, right, and you've had
me on and you talk about a lot of the
same things we talked about it and it could happen here.
We're actually shamelessly stealing your your your podcast in order
(02:11):
to make it corporate and sold out. How are you doing, Margaret.
I'm excited to be part of the corporate sold out
my own podcast, um, and and actually very glad that
you all do a wider audience thing. But um, I
think that is a decent way to introduce me. I
do a lot of different things, and I've been doing also,
like organizing and trying to seek radical political change for
(02:36):
about twenty years, to degrees of success. Actually mostly not
to any success, because we actually still live in maybe
a worse society than we were in two years ago.
I tell people that I dropped out of college to
ride freight trains and overthrow the government, and I wasn't
good at either of those things. I mean, you have
(02:58):
all your limbs, that's true. I do have all in
my limbs. Yeah. And you're not in prison, um, which
is really all anyone can ask of the universe. UM.
So you have started a number of organizations in your
career as an activist in kind of that hat. And
(03:19):
I guess let's start with like, yes, somebody who lives
in a place there's no kind of really really organized left,
there's probably not in a lot of these places much
of even like a democratic party. There's certainly not mutual
aid efforts UM, and I do think that there's a well, well,
mutual aid as a concept is is pretty firmly rooted
an anarchism. There's mutual aid kind of organizations that are
(03:39):
are not particularly leftist or at least people doing stuff
like that. Like I think a good recent example will
be the Occasion Navy, who did a lot of rescues
after the most recent set of hurricanes, where certainly not
a left or an anarchist organization, but a lot of
what they're doing is UM is a community aiding itself. UM.
So I don't where where do we Where do you
(04:01):
want to start here? Well, I guess I mean specifically
in disaster times, you don't necessarily work with the people
that you would assume that you're expecting to work with.
And you know, one of the one of the stories
that really sticks with me is like a friend of mine,
who's this you know, UM train riding anarchist with governed
in tattoos and and all of that. And during flood
(04:21):
relief in eastern North Carolina was like flying into storms
and small planes with libertarians because the people who are
willing to fly small planes into storms and own planes
tend to be the more libertarian side of things, and
so here's anarchists and libertarians working together to get people
what they need. And one of the things that I try,
(04:42):
because this is one of the biggest questions I think
that the left faces, and you know, people trying to
make the world better faces, is how do we get
people involved? And also how do people get involved if
no one's helping them get involved? And UM, I don't
have all the answers about it, but it's something that
I I think about obsessively some a lot. And one
of the things that I really try and focus on
(05:02):
with people as people say, well, I want to be prepared,
and you talk about community being a very important part
of apparedness, but I don't feel like I have a
community because we live in a very isolated society. And
one of the main things I try and remind people though,
is that in the same way that property relations break down,
like someone's like, oh, I don't have any stuff and
if the apocalypse comes, what will I do? And like, well,
the kind of the answer is that, like when's property
(05:23):
relations break down, there's a lot of stuff and it's
very people. There will be much stuff around, like warehouses
exist full of stuff, and yeah, Amazon warehouses are going
to become like fun boxes, Yeah exactly, slash fortified outposts alleged. Yeah,
and community is the same way, not that you would
(05:44):
go raid community, but instead that um some people. Yeah,
that's true. And but you can you can create community
in times of crisis in a way that's actually harder
to do when the existing social order exists. And and
the the thing I always say uses my my dumb
example of this about how people come together during times
of crisis is you know, when I'm waiting for the
(06:04):
bus and you know, some city or something, and no
one talks to each other if you don't know each
other until the bus is like five minutes late, and
then everyone is comparing notes about where they think they
saw the bus last, and everyone's friends and sharing snacks
and things. You know. So in some ways, I'm like,
be optimistic if you don't already no a community. Yeah,
(06:26):
And I think there's also things you can do that
don't necessarily cost a lot of money to both kind
of build resiliency and kind of community connections. Now, one
of those things, I've had a lot of friends in
different cities work for there there will be different farming
co ops, right, and generally the arrangement is you volunteer
some sort of time helping them with you know, there's
a lot of ship work on farms and in return
(06:49):
you generally get some amount of produce or whatever. But
really what you're getting is practical experience growing food and
you're meeting the kind of people who are interested in
growing their own food, and you know, those kind of
connections can be really helpful when things get worse. And
so I think it doesn't necessarily it doesn't have to
cost much to to try building community now, or to
(07:14):
at least try putting yourself in some of the spaces
where the kind of people you might want to be in,
the kind of people you you might want to know
when things get worse might be. Yeah, and there's a
lot of um, there's a lot of like opportunities. The
world kind of wants you to volunteer, you know, there's
there's all of these things that if you reach out
(07:34):
to people and you're like, hey, I don't have any connections,
but I'm interested in volunteering. There are types of organizations
that do interesting things that are open to that. You know,
I kind of maybe it's terrible. But whenever my friends,
especially my friends were in their twenties or something, who
who don't really feel kind of lost and without direction
for a while, I'm like, yeah, go sit in a tree, like,
(07:55):
go join direct action environmentalist groups that are desperate for
people to come live their lives in this like self
sustaining community. That is incredibly traumatic and hard to do.
And I don't necessarily recommend this to everybody, but you know,
it's a thing that you can do, is that you
can go participate in in different movements, some of which
(08:16):
do want strangers, you know, some of which don't write. Um,
you can't show up to everything and be like, why
aren't you including me? You're a bunch of assholes. Yeah,
and UM, I don't know. So when when it comes
to actually like trying to start something, um like like
like going out and accepting, Okay, there's not Maybe I can't.
(08:37):
I can't leave my family behind and go to a
tree set, but I would like to, you know, start
a community engaging in something direct Maybe that's not illegal
direct action, maybe it is. It's none of my business. Um,
how do you recommend people just kind of start organizations?
(08:57):
Find people avoid pitfalls, like, you know, if you've got
to make your own mutual aid group because there's not
one in your town and you you wanna. I mean,
people have expressed a desire to understand how to do that.
So I'm you know, I've never I'm not an organizer.
I'm barely a journalist. I am curious for your thoughts
on that. Well, okay, so as my own caveat is,
(09:17):
I'm no longer an organizer. I spent much of my
twenties being part of organizations and then I finally um
realize that I can just kind of do whatever I
want and then figure out how to plug that into
other people's things. But I will say the the main
way I've heard this expressed and I believe in is
that we should do if you want to start getting involved,
is you think about what you're good at, and or
(09:38):
you think about what you want to be good at,
and then you think about the problems that you're facing,
and then you think about how to apply what you're
good at to the problems that you're facing. So if
you're sitting there and you're like, well, I'm a I'm
a really good illustrator, right, I'm not I'm a terrible illustrator.
But let's say you're a good illustrator, and then you
you could basically reach out to organizations that maybe you
aren't even close and be like, hey, I'm an illustra rader.
(10:00):
Is there anything I can do for you? All? Um,
But if what you want to do is start an
organization locally, it's okay to start small and build up.
It's okay to you know, it's kind of a if
you build it, they will come kind of thing in general,
like if you start, if you figure out what you
need to do, you know, we want to distribute supplies, right,
(10:22):
then you just do it like you just um, even
if you start by yourself or ideally you kind of
start with yourself and a couple of friends that you
drag into it, and then you see what gets inertia
like rather than like forcing, rather than starting off, don't
start off by writing your by laws. Um, you know,
maybe start with an idea of like if you have
a cool name that you want to use, Like sometimes
(10:43):
that's great to start with, like a hook, and like
starting a band or something, you know, you start with
like the thing that brings everyone together, which is sometimes
a clever name. But but mostly you just start by
doing it, and um, you know, one of the one
of the ways that's longest standing that people can get
involved with low really or start locally, and there's a
lot of resources about how to do it is is
Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is a a mutual
(11:05):
aid project that's existed and I wish I knew off
the top of my head since when I want to say,
the late seventies, but I really couldn't tell you. And
it's just food. It's just organizing food to give to
people in public. And it's actually wild how illegal it
is in some places, Like people get arrested for food
nut bombs all the time in Florida, in a couple
of other places. But yeah, we talked about them in
the first part of the season because there have been
(11:26):
a couple of point. I don't think nationally the FBI
is talked about them as a terror threat, but like
in the Austin Field office, and I think one or
two other places they've been like discussed as a terrorist
threat for handing out food. I've had like helicopters flying
overhead and like riot around the corner and stuffed for
for handing out food with food nut bombs. Yeah, it's
a they missed the second half of the name. I guess.
(11:47):
I don't know. I don't know. I think maybe if
we were to create bombs not food, we we might
not get as much police attention. But that's just a sory. Yeah. Well,
what everyone says is that we need food, and no
one says. No one would ever say this, no one
would ever believe this. But we need food and bombs. Um,
food and bombs, bombs for some food for others. We
(12:07):
don't judge. We provide explosives and we provide food. Yeah, okay,
So if you can, I think, if you can, you
start by working. You figure out what you're good at.
You find a group of people that are interested in
accomplishing the same thing, who maybe have such similar skill
sets or different skill sets, and you figure out what
you can do, and you start doing it, and you
(12:28):
organize calling people and being like, hey, well you donate
to us, or getting all your friends together to give
you stuff to to redistribute or whatever, right, putting out
calls on social media for things to redistribute. You know,
most structures start grassroots, and most of the time they
kind of tend to do best when they're grassroots instead
of becoming a little more codified. So if possible, do that.
(12:50):
But if you're just you, um, sometimes tying into existing
organizations is a thing worth doing. And if there's nothing locally,
you can look at things a little further away, or
you can look at things that are on maybe on
a national level. But there's a lot of dangers in
joining existing organizations and structures, and I guess, I guess
I would say there's like three types of danger, and
(13:12):
one is that you talked about all the time. And
thanks for bringing into the leftist vocabulary of the word grifter.
I never heard anyone use the word grifter until your podcasts.
It's the most important word in the American English for sure.
We live in a fucking grifter republic. It's incredible and
we always have This isn't new, Yeah, but we need
(13:32):
more words because we also need the word for people
who are looking for useful idiots. And there's a lot
of social movements and not to be like I, I
support the left. I think that what we're attempting to
do is very worthwhile, and I like us more than
the other side by a fair amount. But there's a
lot of things that there's a lot of problems with
the left, and one of them is that people are
(13:52):
looking either to just have you as a body with
no decision making power and no autonomy, which doesn't actually
build a better world because you're just stop being a
cog in their machine and become a cog in our machine. Right.
And then there's also people who are kind of um
looking for useful idiots, canon fodder, like people to hang
(14:14):
around while they while they do stuff, or you know,
and I don't want to go to hot bodies to
stand out in front of cop shops sometimes, yeah, and
even like you know, even like movements that I really
care about that might do a lot of like non
violence of this obedience, although I don't I'm not particularly
I'm not passist personally, but you know, it's a very
useful strategy, non violence of disobedience. But sometimes they're like, oh,
(14:36):
you're young and new, lock yourself to this thing. Get arrested.
And I would definitely say to people, don't get arrested
on purpose at your first actions, like don't be anyone
else's cannon fodder. And so you feel like you are
part of the decision making and part of like like
you really matter and like then then don't um do
(14:58):
dangerous things for other people? Those projects like the ship
that states do that's so messed up is is turn
human bodies into resources that then get sacrificed for unclear ends.
Um And unless you feel like you have some sort
of like there are times we're being arrested is necessary
and helpful, but unless unless you feel you fully understand
(15:23):
not just why you're doing it, but also that like
you you you're not being told to do it, you
have autonomy and like I'm going to do this thing
that I know will end in my arrest because I like,
I don't know. That's probably like I think most people
in that position know this, But I definitely have encountered
some uncomfortable situations in the past, I'm sure similar to
(15:44):
once you have, where it did seem like people were
kind of being pushed to take that risk for reasons
they didn't fully understand or in a situation they didn't
fully grock you know, yeah, which which it's at one
of the things that when I talk about how I
think this is the biggest problem, not not the cannon
(16:05):
fodder issue, but the getting people involved is the biggest
issue I think we currently face because there's so many
people who want to be involved right now because the
world is even worse than usual and um, and it's
hitting groups of people who haven't been hit by before.
And people are often also looking for a sense of community.
(16:25):
And there's a thing that people we don't talk about
enough when people are getting involved. There's two different reasons
people get involved, and both are entirely valid, and one
is to fix things and another is to find to
break out of the isolation that they live in their
daily lives. Um. And we need to be aware of
that when we talk about how to onboard people, and
(16:46):
we need to be aware about that. If you are
getting involved, you should think about your own desires. Are
you looking for community and if so, you can find
it within radical action right um. But you are doing that,
then you especially need to be on guard against peer
pressure because it's a really easy way to feel like
you're involved with things is to go hang out with
(17:07):
people who are all doing a release scary thing and
and that's beautiful. And I absolutely did that when I
when I first got involved in anarchism and politics in general,
I i joined in head first, and you know, spend
a night in jail within the first couple of months,
and I don't have any particular regrets about that. And
(17:28):
I found community in a way that I had never
had in my life because of how isolated our society is.
But that's not the only reason to go do these
and that is I mean, I think a lot of
people experienced that last year during the George Floyd protests.
It's the kind of I mean, it's the thing we've
talked about on in the first season. If it could
happen here that times like that this war does this too,
(17:53):
can actually provide meaning that that people have lacked. And
a lot of it is that community that like community
of suffer, is the trauma bonding UM that feels like
the most important thing, even because maybe it is the
most important thing you've ever done. I think in a
lot of cases it is UM. But that's also mind
altering and it um it can lead to situations that
(18:14):
are not entirely dissimilar to cults. UM. I'm not saying
that they are cults, because cults are number one. With
a cult, there's generally going to be like a leader
and a in such but like there are things that
happened that that draw people into cults that are just
human things, their aspects in some cases, as I've said before,
of like a good party. Um, but there are cults
like aspects to the kind of groups that form in
(18:35):
these traumatic situations that can lead people to start making
really poor decisions. Um. And and so you have to
really you always have to be kind of analyzing not
just what you're doing, but what's going on in your
own head, in the head of the heads of the
people around you. UM. That's that's just always important. But
(18:56):
I think particularly when you're when you're trying to do
something new and different in a lot of ways, bigger
than anything you've done before. R. Do you have any
(19:17):
specific advice for like kind of avoiding the cults of
personality that sometimes form in new organizations. Yeah, so you
have both informal and formal structures can both cause problems
with cult of personality. There are these brilliant essays that
I haven't read in like twenty years that come from
the feminist movement, and one of them is called the
Tyranny of structural Lessness. And as best as I remember,
(19:39):
these are very short essays as best. I remember at
the Tyranny of Structurallessness says, if you don't have a
formal structure in your organization, you're going to have this
informal leader who basically tells everyone wants to do. And
that's a problem and and as a very important piece,
and I believe it comes from a Marxist feminist perspective,
but I'm not certain. And then there was an anarchist
(19:59):
femin response around the same time, maybe I'm not sure,
called the tyranny of tyranny that was like, yes, that's true.
And also when you have a formal structure and put
someone in charge there in charge, and that has other
problems too, And I think that it's just we we
have to be aware of both of these things that Um,
you know, the fact that most movements are very decentralized
(20:21):
in grassroots as as huge advantages, right, but it does
have problems of causing informal cults of personality. UM. Podcasting
is a big part of this problem. UM. And actually,
I really appreciate that you're not an organizer like Frankly,
And it's part of why I'm not an organizer on
some level is because when people read the books that
(20:43):
someone writes or listen to someone's voice all the time.
It is very influential, right, and being aware of that
and therefore not exerting that power is a very good thing.
Um And but there's okay, So the other thing, like
when I worry about like people getting involved with like
don't get peer pressured into stuff when you first join.
(21:04):
There's also this thing that is needs to be talked about.
And maybe I'll have talked about this some previously, but entrapment.
Entrapment is a huge problem, and specifically the FEDS tend
to look for young idealist activists who can be peer
pressured into actions that they may or may not have
(21:26):
otherwise ideologically agreed with, like hey, let's go blow up
a bridge or let's go blow up a damn And
and this doesn't just happen to the left. It happens
m oh, yeah, it's all around, yeah for sure. Like
there's that case of the guys who are trying to
kidnap the governor of was it Michigan. A lot of
(21:46):
that was informants who were there's a lot of there's
you can debate heavily whether or not it was entrapment. Obviously,
what we we might consider entrapment morally often isn't entrapment
legally because the FBI doesn't know where the lines are legally,
But that doesn't mean it isn't morally entrapment, right, And
(22:06):
they do that a lot, and they usually succeed. Um well,
they may not usually succeed it, though they usually succeeded
the case and entrapment defenses are hard to succeed with.
And so really, just like and thinking about it, I
think developing your own moral compass and sticking to it
is one of the single most important things that a
(22:28):
new activist can can do. And not to be afraid
of radical action necessarily like militant action, but but be
wary of it um. But then again, I mean in
terms of like being wary of what the other thing
to avoid doing is like accusing each other, like fed jacketing,
(22:48):
like being like, oh, well, that person is doing the
same thing a FED might do, like wink wink. You know. Um,
it's a really complicated an annoying game to play, and
if you're just getting involved, you're gonna have to learn
how to get it play this game of not fed
jacketing and also not um falling. Into stuff, and it's
annoying because you probably have to kind of learn some
(23:08):
of the stuff, even if all you want to do
is give away blankets. You know, if you want to
tie what you're doing to a larger ideological structure, then
it's going to come up that you need to be
aware of how repression applies to that larger ideological structure. Yeah,
like all this is very useful specifically if you're trying
(23:30):
to find something kind of pre existing um or you know,
looking you know, or you know, starting something in the
bigger city where you have like connections can be made
to other existing organizations. And I'm trying to think, you know,
there's a lot of people who live in more like
rural areas. It's not much like a liberal or like
(23:51):
you know, especially left is kind of subculture. How would
how would you recommend people who live in those kind
of scenarios try to start building this can really wouldn't
say like they only have a few friends, Um what
what steps do you think people can take if they
have more, you know, a secluded set up, so it
(24:12):
is harder. And I live in a red area close
to a blue area, right, and I do most of
my organizing and as much as I do organizing within
the the nearby small hippie city, even though theoretically the
thing that I care the most about is connections to
my immediate neighbors. Right, Um, that is harder, and it
is harder for a lot of different reasons, especially if
(24:35):
you have cultural differences between you and the people that
you're around. Right Like, I'm a trans woman and I've
live around a lot of like farms and stuff, right
And and previously this wasn't a problem before Trump. This
what just wasn't a problem after Trump. Now all of
a sudden, the fact that I'm trans as like an
attack against people in a way that it never used
to be. And and so now they all have an
(24:56):
opinion about the fact that we're in address. But it
still at the end of the day, I would say
that most of the people that I'm around are actually
totally chill. Like there's a vocal minority of really horrid people,
right um. But even the people who might be and
might have even voted for Trump or whatever, um, are
(25:17):
not necessarily at least along my own identity lines. And
also white are not necessarily going to give me ship.
And you know, I can go talk to them and
address and they might be sort of confused, and they
might not be. But if you have more culturally in
common with the people around you, then there is a
lot of room that you can start working on from there.
And this actually ties into something that I think applies
to people across the board, which is we have this
(25:38):
especially new activists, but also including people who've been in
it for a long time, have this like real arrogance
about the fact that we're like right, And when you
want to change the world, you need a certain amount
of arrogance. You need a certain amount of like I mean,
I literally believe we need to not have a government
or capitalism, and these are very major changes to our
existing structures, a huge amount of arrogance to that. Although
(25:59):
not having a guft amen a slightly less of a
major change now than it was a couple of years ago,
it's true. And also like something like sometimes, actually, it's
funny I used that it more in common with these neighbors,
but then all the libertarians when goddamn authoritarian That bummed
the funk out of me. Yeah, there's there's some good
ones still, There's like again, there's the there's the there's
(26:21):
the taking your private plane and do a disaster area libertarians,
and God bless him totally. And you know, they're like,
they just don't want them. You know. It's like, my
dad is sort of on the libertarian side of things
and keeps twenty dollar bills in the visor of his
truck to give to people flying signs, and he just
doesn't want the government redistributing his money. He doesn't mind
redistributing his money. Yeah, And I'm like, all right, I
(26:44):
don't have any real objection to that. He's also no
longer anyway. If you come at people with this attitude
of like I'm right and you're wrong, the kind of
people that you can get to join your side by
saying I'm right and you're wrong are not the people
you want. You want people who challenge authority, including the
authority of people who claim there should be authority, and
(27:07):
and so just actually listening to people and like hearing
people out and um when possible. Avoiding drawing lines between
people is one of the main ways to connect with
people across either cultural divides or especially political divides. And
this this can't always happen, right, Like I walked down
the street and address and someone like calls me a
bad word, like I'm not going to be like, I
(27:29):
understand why you think to call me that, and I
understand how like me dressed this way kind of challenges
your sense of masculinity that you've been brought up into.
Is the only way that you can hold yourself strong
in a very hard world. No, I don't do that.
I um scream funck you and chase them. Um, I
would ever chase anyone with a knife. I think that's
not legal, So I wouldn't do that, but um, you
(27:52):
know that might work. And you know, like, funk those people.
I don't care what they have to say. No, of
course not. And it when I think one of the
things that I don't know Twitter brain has done is
that like when you when you talk about reaching out
and talking to people who you know don't agree with you,
(28:13):
aren't aren't on your side ideologically, there's folks who will
kind of assume, like, oh, so you're saying I should
like try to be friendly with people who would have
murder me. Like, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not
saying that, Like, as a trans person or black person,
you should go talk to um a militant anti LGBT
activist or a fucking klansman or something. I'm saying that, like,
that's not within the broad I'm saying what what you
(28:35):
need to recognize, But what I think is important to recognize,
especially if you're when we talk about like post you know,
collapse or whatever, is that within broad political tendency. So
I'm not talking about like fascist or whatever, but I'm
talking about like liberal, conservative, progressive, very broad political tendencies.
You have roughly the same percentage of people who are ship.
(28:56):
So in an anarchist group, the amount of people who
are shitty is to be similar to the amount of
the general population that are shitty. It's the same with
every political tendency. But the corollary to that is, again,
within broad tendencies, you'll find roughly the same amount of
people who are basically rad And maybe yeah, there's some
they have their brain got poisoned with dis info and
they believe some stupid shit and they vote like an asshole.
(29:19):
But you know they'll stop their car if they see
someone in an accident, and they keep a fucking medical
kit in their bag, and you know there that it's
the it's the it's the ship that you know, I
talk a lot about this, the stabbing on the Portland
Max train. Well, the two people who who died confronting
that asshole. Um, we're a republican retired veteran and a
(29:40):
far left social justice activist, and they both you know,
put their bodies on the lines. I think that, like
when we talk about like being willing to kind of
talk with people who are who are not on the
same ideological boat as you, that's that's what I mean.
Not you should make nice with the people who want
to w terminate you, Like fuck those people. Yeah, because
(30:03):
the thing you're looking for, the thing I'm looking for
is the Republican who's going to, hopefully, instead of dying
to saw alongside me, successfully defeat the you know, actual
far right person. But yeah, yeah, totally, And and I
think that that actually is part of the It's not
always the answer for every person who's isolated, right, everyone
who's socially isolated, but it is part of it. If
(30:25):
you're trying to organize with people where you say you're
the only leftist or the only anarchist in your area,
then maybe you don't start. And this is actually funny.
I'm very into being very public about my political ideology
so that people know what bias is UM coming into
things with. But but maybe you don't start your rural
mutual Aid project calling it the rural Mutual Aid project,
or maybe you do, and maybe you you just start
(30:47):
doing it and you find people who are willing to
have the same goals and means as you, and and
I think you can do alongside of that, you can
also just be really public about what you believe. I mean,
you know, UM Again, as an anarchist, I end up
working with like church groups and things that I don't
necessarily agree with on a lot of a lot of things.
(31:07):
But they're not mad when I'm like, oh, I'm an anarchist.
They're just like, huh, okay, I'm a church person or
what you know, and like, okay, I'm not. I don't
expect different of them, and they don't expect different of me.
And we we know what we have in common and
what we don't to a certain degree, and then we
work on what we have in common and so airing
(31:27):
and so this is both true if you're within the
movement and you're hoping to try and solve this problem
for other people. But I also think it's going to
be true for people who are trying to build things
in areas where they don't have, where they don't feel
like the part of something larger is airing on the
side of inclusion versus exclusion and not And like you're
talking about, it's about airing on the side of not
always include everyone, not always committing to a hard and
(31:48):
fast rule. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, be be open to
the fact that people can surprise you in ways that
aren't terrifying. Yeah. Also, because you get terrified enough by
an of like people who you think are on your
side that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm sad. You all
donto the ad pivots in this show because you can
(32:08):
do it. We can do it, we can we can
cut it in during one of the long awkward pauses.
Go for it, and we'll keep all this up to
it in, but we'll actually cut the actual so you'll
hear it. It's like Finnigan's Wake. You're going to hear
it out of order, Okay, And I hopefully you all
be able to figure out the second half of it.
But the first the first half is anyone who claims
(32:29):
to have all the answers. Is selling you something? Oh
uh huh yeah, oh oh you know who else is
selling you something? Is it the ads? Go listen to
the Guico Geico or or Jesus. We've had some bad
ones lately. Um, there's that s os Cuba show that
sounds we're rough. Uh. There was that one that was
(32:53):
just like God, it was just like this is we
are sponsored by God. Yeah. I think I've gotten like
Walmart and McDonald's on your show before. Remember that's the
people's food. Oh yeah, organized actually try to organize around
the Walmart. That could be very so. Anyway, here's ads.
(33:27):
If someone is trying to start something new inside one
of these more secluded areas and like they have decided
like yeah, I'm willing to do something. I'm willing to
actually just like start it. How how would you recommend
they try to figure out what some of the like
biggest needs of the community are that they can actually tackle.
Like how how does someone find out what to do
(33:49):
with their mutual aid because they can like commit like yeah,
I can do something around supply, something around this, you
know whatever. Like how does one try to actually gauge
what is important to tackle? I guess It depends on
whether you feel like you're totally Like if in my head,
if I'm totally inside Annissie community, but an area, right,
(34:10):
I probably kind of know because I'm also experiencing whatever
the thing is. But if I'm if I'm a little
bit detached from it, then I do need to like
do kind of you know, the sort of traditional methods.
I think it's called listening projects. I've never actually personally
done a listening project. I've been around many people who do,
where you basically like sometimes you go door to door
and you're like, hey, what's up, Like what do you need?
(34:32):
Like what's going on? You know? Um, But like say,
for example, in the area that I live, there is
a a rural organizing It's not the actual Rural Organizing project,
which is a specific structure, but there is a rural
mutual aid group in the largely red area that I
live in that's run by by leftists, and they I
(34:52):
think that largely they did a lot of like firewood delivery,
for example, because a lot of the areas around here
are heated by wood stoves, and you have a lot
of poverty in rural areas, and of course poverty looks
very different in rural areas versus urban areas. And you know,
one of the advantages of being rural poor. There's many disadvantages,
like lack of access to certain types of services, right, Um,
(35:14):
But one of the sometimes advantages of rural poverty, as
I understand it, I'm not specifically an expert, um, is
do you have space? Right, you just don't have stuff
for money, and so you can have stuff if people
give you stuff, so you can like story your firewood
and so. And then also because it's this very specific
tangible thing, people can get really excited about, like, oh,
(35:35):
I can chop firewood, or maybe even I can't chop
firewood because my legs busted because I work in the
paper mill or whatever, but I can. But I got
a trailer on my truck, you know, Um, and I
can haul that. And people get really excited when there's
like things that they specifically are good at, especially things
that I kind of have alienated them from other people
that they're that they're good at that they can then
(35:57):
participate in. And O. Which isn't totally answer your question,
but I would say if anyone specifically is in a
rural situation, I was looking to start a mutual a group.
Look at the Rural Organizing Project. Yes, I don't believe
that they specifically do rural mutual aid organizing, but they
talk a lot about what it means to be an
organizer within areas that are largely controlled by the far right,
(36:18):
but are not. It's not like the people are all
far right, they're just controlled by the far right, you know. Yeah,
the people actually there, once you talk to them, might
actually be a lot more reasonable than like the media
influencers who are part of this you know, same thing. Yeah,
and it is. It is one of those things. This
is a topic we're drifting too, but it's when we
(36:39):
drift too regularly on this show. We're like, when I
talk with conservatives, it's it's not uncommon that I can
without especially if I don't start by mentioning anarchy, I
can get them to agree to a lot of the
things I believe, which is like, yeah, maybe people don't
need to be governed, Maybe that doesn't work out good,
Maybe politicians are corrupt and should have less power, And
(37:02):
like that doesn't mean that you're gonna you're gonna get
them on the barricades with you. Um, because any productive
kind of relationship starts from like a base of shared interests,
and it's not a useless endeavor to engage in kind
of trying to subtly, you know, if you if you
feel out people around you who are ideologically not particularly
(37:24):
similar to you, but also decent people, um, you can
kind of try and work in some some something you've
not not just some common ground, but you can try
and get them to see that they agree with you
one more than they think, um, and that that has
an effect of changing the way people think about the world.
It really does. Yeah, and you but you also have
(37:46):
to go into it open to yes. Maybe maybe it's
not going to change your opinion about the way the
economy should be structured or the way that sure works, right,
but you know, you definitely have to go into it
with a I can now understand why you drive a
big pickup truck that burns a lot of gas or
whatever whatever thing. You might be coming into it thinking, yeah,
(38:09):
or at least it might help you understand why they
believe or do certain things outside of you know, Dave
Reuben broke their brain because they got on YouTube at
the wrong time. I don't know, Margaret, did you have
anything else you wanted to really get into. I guess
to one of the other questions that you all brought
up was about preparedness, like maybe kind of almost in
the inverse situation where let's say that you live in
(38:32):
a small apartment and you want to be prepared and
in which case maybe you have better access to community.
Maybe you don't write A lot of people who live
in the city are just as isolated socially as people elsewhere,
But at least you kind of have, like there's a
little bit more easy access to ways to break out
of certain types of isolation if you put work into it,
(38:52):
because there's more likely to be groups around that are
that are public that you can go interface with. UM.
But in terms of like actual preparedness, you have the
inverse problem, right of if you live rural you might
have room to store beans and rice, and if you
live in the city, you might not write UM. But
I I will say, it's the other thing that I
find people The two things that people talk to me
(39:15):
about I think you all run into also is that
people are either I don't have any community or I
don't have any money in space. Yeah, and so if
you don't have any money in space. I mean, I
mean in some ways, it's like, well, maybe your focus
isn't like stockpiling stuff. Stockpiling and stuff is like the
single most overrated part of individual community preparedness. Um. I
(39:36):
mean I do it, but you know it's because I
M my brain works that way. Um. But also the
level of like stuff that you might be looking for
might be a lot less than like, like you know,
it's like prepper media is filled with like here's how
to build a bunk or under your pool, and I'm like, what, Yeah,
(39:57):
there's there's so many levels I mean, somebody, somebody other
things that you should be doing before you go to
that stitch. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, don't get me wrong,
if I had a pool, I'd be stoked, And if
I have absolutely under it, I'd be even more stoked.
I'd be so happy. Yeah. But but you know what
it's like, it's the first five gallon bucket of like
(40:18):
dried food you store is far and away more important
than the tent, right, and like so just having a
five gallon Jerry canful of water so that you're like,
you know, what if the water turns off or we
have a boil advisory, which happens all the time. I'm
good for a couple of days, right, because most of
(40:39):
the time people think about preparedness as like I'm preparing
for the end times, and usually what it is is
the end times are real slow and chunky and crumbles,
that's the word, um. And so you're just really looking
to like smooth out interruptions, and a lot of that
can be done very cheaply and honestly. When when you
start storing your fifth five gallon jerry can of water,
you're not storing for you anymore. You're starting for your neighbor. Yea, yeah,
(41:02):
And that's good, but not exactly not the first step,
you know. Yeah, it's better to prepare for if you
have like a week's worth of power outages or a
week's worth of the water not working right, And those
are more incremental steps because we're not just gonna drop
off and have no water forever starting in a month, right,
probably not, but we mean very like there's gonna be
(41:23):
there's enough remaining systems that that they want to fix it.
You know, it's more likely that some some disasters gonna
happen that we're gonna have, you know, a week worth
of stuff gone, you know, and that's the thing that's
actually more more reasonable to prep for. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, well, Margaret,
(41:44):
where can Where can the good people and hopefully not
the bad people, but statistically some of them will suck
find you? Um, the good people can find me on.
I have a podcast called Like the World Is Dying,
which they can listen to you on if they would like.
It's about individual community preparedness. I also am on Twitter
(42:04):
way too much, at Magpie kill Joy, Instagram, at Margaret
Killjoy my websites Birds Before the Storm dot net or
Margaret Killjoy dot com. And that has like a list
of all the books that I have out. And I
have a new book, an old book being reissued that
is coming out in November from a K Press. The
book is called A Country of Ghosts and it's an
anarchist utopian book because I was sick of people being
(42:26):
like but how would an anarchist society work? And I
was like, you know what, I wrote a book, damn straight. Um.
It also has a plot, so it's not fancy get
kind of bougie with yours. If you write a plot,
you get the wall. Plots allowed only post structural literature well, okay,
(42:48):
so this has actually happened to anarchist fiction writers before
Buds of Mara was this anarchist fiction writer. Um oh,
I can't remember where from I'm gonna this is terribly embarrassing.
But he moved to England from a colonized African country. Um, yeah,
(43:10):
what did Rhodesia become? This is the most embarrassing. So
it became a Zimbabwe, right, okay? Yeah, so yeah, so
he was from there and then everyone and he moved
to London until he realized that they're a bunch of
racists and he would like breaksh it at awards ceremonies
and then go back home. But he was a squatter
for a while in the eighties. But he wasn't writing
in the proper post colonial like Marxist realist tradition, because
(43:33):
instead he was writing postmodern fiction, which is duckett and terrible.
So he just like was like, I don't care, and
so he's great. That is that is anyway. I love
to see it. Um, that's the episode. That's the episode.
Go out and right, postmodern jump on a train. But
(44:00):
to yeah, probably also a bad idea. I talked to
somebody who lost their legs doing that once anyway, Episodes
over
Welcome to it could Happen Here the show where I
had to change the introduction because Sophie said it would
confuse people. So now we're just doing the boring thing
and saying the actual name of the show, which is
it could happen here. Um. It's a show about the
fact that the society is kind of falling apart or changing,
depending on your perspective of things, and people need to
(00:25):
prepare for what's coming, which is a world of greater
instability and economic collapse and rising authoritarianism and increasing fights
in order to reverse and stymy all of those terrible things. Um.
And you know, one of the things I've seen in
some early feedback from um other stuff I've done on
(00:45):
other shows, and also from earlier episodes of this is
people who will go like, Hey, everything you're saying about
mutual aid is rad but I live in X town
and whatever state, and there's there's nothing here. There's not
not an organized left. I don't I don't know of
any mutual aid groups. Um, how can I get involved?
Or like, how could I start my own organization and
try to get people involved? And then another thing we
(01:08):
get asked a lot of us, like, hey, what you're
saying about building resiliency and preparing for difficult times, gardening
and whatnot sounds great. But I'm poor as ship and
I live in a tiny apartment um or whatever. I
I have no resources or no room um. Even if
you're not of enough money, like I'm in the middle
of some horribly dense city. So this week we're gonna
(01:29):
be talking around those subjects in a number of different ways.
And to kind of kick us off, I've got, of course,
Garrison with me. Woke come up at nine in the morning.
How are you doing, Garrison, ungodly early? Yeah, it's it's
it's hideous. It's hideous. Um. And then Margaret Killjoy, who's
up at a much more reasonable hour because time zones
(01:49):
are a wild ass thing. Margaret, how do you? How
do we how do we introduce you? You're an author? Uh,
you're a writer of fiction. You host a podcast called
Live like the World is Dying, right, and you've had
me on and you talk about a lot of the
same things we talked about it and it could happen here.
We're actually shamelessly stealing your your your podcast in order
(02:11):
to make it corporate and sold out. How are you doing, Margaret.
I'm excited to be part of the corporate sold out
my own podcast, um, and and actually very glad that
you all do a wider audience thing. But um, I
think that is a decent way to introduce me. I
do a lot of different things, and I've been doing also,
like organizing and trying to seek radical political change for
(02:36):
about twenty years, to degrees of success. Actually mostly not
to any success, because we actually still live in maybe
a worse society than we were in two years ago.
I tell people that I dropped out of college to
ride freight trains and overthrow the government, and I wasn't
good at either of those things. I mean, you have
(02:58):
all your limbs, that's true. I do have all in
my limbs. Yeah. And you're not in prison, um, which
is really all anyone can ask of the universe. UM.
So you have started a number of organizations in your
career as an activist in kind of that hat. And
(03:19):
I guess let's start with like, yes, somebody who lives
in a place there's no kind of really really organized left,
there's probably not in a lot of these places much
of even like a democratic party. There's certainly not mutual
aid efforts UM, and I do think that there's a well, well,
mutual aid as a concept is is pretty firmly rooted
an anarchism. There's mutual aid kind of organizations that are
(03:39):
are not particularly leftist or at least people doing stuff
like that. Like I think a good recent example will
be the Occasion Navy, who did a lot of rescues
after the most recent set of hurricanes, where certainly not
a left or an anarchist organization, but a lot of
what they're doing is UM is a community aiding itself. UM.
So I don't where where do we Where do you
(04:01):
want to start here? Well, I guess I mean specifically
in disaster times, you don't necessarily work with the people
that you would assume that you're expecting to work with.
And you know, one of the one of the stories
that really sticks with me is like a friend of mine,
who's this you know, UM train riding anarchist with governed
in tattoos and and all of that. And during flood
(04:21):
relief in eastern North Carolina was like flying into storms
and small planes with libertarians because the people who are
willing to fly small planes into storms and own planes
tend to be the more libertarian side of things, and
so here's anarchists and libertarians working together to get people
what they need. And one of the things that I try,
(04:42):
because this is one of the biggest questions I think
that the left faces, and you know, people trying to
make the world better faces, is how do we get
people involved? And also how do people get involved if
no one's helping them get involved? And UM, I don't
have all the answers about it, but it's something that
I I think about obsessively some a lot. And one
of the things that I really try and focus on
(05:02):
with people as people say, well, I want to be prepared,
and you talk about community being a very important part
of apparedness, but I don't feel like I have a
community because we live in a very isolated society. And
one of the main things I try and remind people though,
is that in the same way that property relations break down,
like someone's like, oh, I don't have any stuff and
if the apocalypse comes, what will I do? And like, well,
the kind of the answer is that, like when's property
(05:23):
relations break down, there's a lot of stuff and it's
very people. There will be much stuff around, like warehouses
exist full of stuff, and yeah, Amazon warehouses are going
to become like fun boxes, Yeah exactly, slash fortified outposts alleged. Yeah,
and community is the same way, not that you would
(05:44):
go raid community, but instead that um some people. Yeah,
that's true. And but you can you can create community
in times of crisis in a way that's actually harder
to do when the existing social order exists. And and
the the thing I always say uses my my dumb
example of this about how people come together during times
of crisis is you know, when I'm waiting for the
(06:04):
bus and you know, some city or something, and no
one talks to each other if you don't know each
other until the bus is like five minutes late, and
then everyone is comparing notes about where they think they
saw the bus last, and everyone's friends and sharing snacks
and things. You know. So in some ways, I'm like,
be optimistic if you don't already no a community. Yeah,
(06:26):
And I think there's also things you can do that
don't necessarily cost a lot of money to both kind
of build resiliency and kind of community connections. Now, one
of those things, I've had a lot of friends in
different cities work for there there will be different farming
co ops, right, and generally the arrangement is you volunteer
some sort of time helping them with you know, there's
a lot of ship work on farms and in return
(06:49):
you generally get some amount of produce or whatever. But
really what you're getting is practical experience growing food and
you're meeting the kind of people who are interested in
growing their own food, and you know, those kind of
connections can be really helpful when things get worse. And
so I think it doesn't necessarily it doesn't have to
cost much to to try building community now, or to
(07:14):
at least try putting yourself in some of the spaces
where the kind of people you might want to be in,
the kind of people you you might want to know
when things get worse might be. Yeah, and there's a
lot of um, there's a lot of like opportunities. The
world kind of wants you to volunteer, you know, there's
there's all of these things that if you reach out
(07:34):
to people and you're like, hey, I don't have any connections,
but I'm interested in volunteering. There are types of organizations
that do interesting things that are open to that. You know,
I kind of maybe it's terrible. But whenever my friends,
especially my friends were in their twenties or something, who
who don't really feel kind of lost and without direction
for a while, I'm like, yeah, go sit in a tree, like,
(07:55):
go join direct action environmentalist groups that are desperate for
people to come live their lives in this like self
sustaining community. That is incredibly traumatic and hard to do.
And I don't necessarily recommend this to everybody, but you know,
it's a thing that you can do, is that you
can go participate in in different movements, some of which
(08:16):
do want strangers, you know, some of which don't write. Um,
you can't show up to everything and be like, why
aren't you including me? You're a bunch of assholes. Yeah,
and UM, I don't know. So when when it comes
to actually like trying to start something, um like like
like going out and accepting, Okay, there's not Maybe I can't.
(08:37):
I can't leave my family behind and go to a
tree set, but I would like to, you know, start
a community engaging in something direct Maybe that's not illegal
direct action, maybe it is. It's none of my business. Um,
how do you recommend people just kind of start organizations?
(08:57):
Find people avoid pitfalls, like, you know, if you've got
to make your own mutual aid group because there's not
one in your town and you you wanna. I mean,
people have expressed a desire to understand how to do that.
So I'm you know, I've never I'm not an organizer.
I'm barely a journalist. I am curious for your thoughts
on that. Well, okay, so as my own caveat is,
(09:17):
I'm no longer an organizer. I spent much of my
twenties being part of organizations and then I finally um
realize that I can just kind of do whatever I
want and then figure out how to plug that into
other people's things. But I will say the the main
way I've heard this expressed and I believe in is
that we should do if you want to start getting involved,
is you think about what you're good at, and or
(09:38):
you think about what you want to be good at,
and then you think about the problems that you're facing,
and then you think about how to apply what you're
good at to the problems that you're facing. So if
you're sitting there and you're like, well, I'm a I'm
a really good illustrator, right, I'm not I'm a terrible illustrator.
But let's say you're a good illustrator, and then you
you could basically reach out to organizations that maybe you
aren't even close and be like, hey, I'm an illustra rader.
(10:00):
Is there anything I can do for you? All? Um,
But if what you want to do is start an
organization locally, it's okay to start small and build up.
It's okay to you know, it's kind of a if
you build it, they will come kind of thing in general,
like if you start, if you figure out what you
need to do, you know, we want to distribute supplies, right,
(10:22):
then you just do it like you just um, even
if you start by yourself or ideally you kind of
start with yourself and a couple of friends that you
drag into it, and then you see what gets inertia
like rather than like forcing, rather than starting off, don't
start off by writing your by laws. Um, you know,
maybe start with an idea of like if you have
a cool name that you want to use, Like sometimes
(10:43):
that's great to start with, like a hook, and like
starting a band or something, you know, you start with
like the thing that brings everyone together, which is sometimes
a clever name. But but mostly you just start by
doing it, and um, you know, one of the one
of the ways that's longest standing that people can get
involved with low really or start locally, and there's a
lot of resources about how to do it is is
Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is a a mutual
(11:05):
aid project that's existed and I wish I knew off
the top of my head since when I want to say,
the late seventies, but I really couldn't tell you. And
it's just food. It's just organizing food to give to
people in public. And it's actually wild how illegal it
is in some places, Like people get arrested for food
nut bombs all the time in Florida, in a couple
of other places. But yeah, we talked about them in
the first part of the season because there have been
(11:26):
a couple of point. I don't think nationally the FBI
is talked about them as a terror threat, but like
in the Austin Field office, and I think one or
two other places they've been like discussed as a terrorist
threat for handing out food. I've had like helicopters flying
overhead and like riot around the corner and stuffed for
for handing out food with food nut bombs. Yeah, it's
a they missed the second half of the name. I guess.
(11:47):
I don't know. I don't know. I think maybe if
we were to create bombs not food, we we might
not get as much police attention. But that's just a sory. Yeah. Well,
what everyone says is that we need food, and no
one says. No one would ever say this, no one
would ever believe this. But we need food and bombs. Um,
food and bombs, bombs for some food for others. We
(12:07):
don't judge. We provide explosives and we provide food. Yeah, okay,
So if you can, I think, if you can, you
start by working. You figure out what you're good at.
You find a group of people that are interested in
accomplishing the same thing, who maybe have such similar skill
sets or different skill sets, and you figure out what
you can do, and you start doing it, and you
(12:28):
organize calling people and being like, hey, well you donate
to us, or getting all your friends together to give
you stuff to to redistribute or whatever, right, putting out
calls on social media for things to redistribute. You know,
most structures start grassroots, and most of the time they
kind of tend to do best when they're grassroots instead
of becoming a little more codified. So if possible, do that.
(12:50):
But if you're just you, um, sometimes tying into existing
organizations is a thing worth doing. And if there's nothing locally,
you can look at things a little further away, or
you can look at things that are on maybe on
a national level. But there's a lot of dangers in
joining existing organizations and structures, and I guess, I guess
I would say there's like three types of danger, and
(13:12):
one is that you talked about all the time. And
thanks for bringing into the leftist vocabulary of the word grifter.
I never heard anyone use the word grifter until your podcasts.
It's the most important word in the American English for sure.
We live in a fucking grifter republic. It's incredible and
we always have This isn't new, Yeah, but we need
(13:32):
more words because we also need the word for people
who are looking for useful idiots. And there's a lot
of social movements and not to be like I, I
support the left. I think that what we're attempting to
do is very worthwhile, and I like us more than
the other side by a fair amount. But there's a
lot of things that there's a lot of problems with
the left, and one of them is that people are
(13:52):
looking either to just have you as a body with
no decision making power and no autonomy, which doesn't actually
build a better world because you're just stop being a
cog in their machine and become a cog in our machine. Right.
And then there's also people who are kind of um
looking for useful idiots, canon fodder, like people to hang
(14:14):
around while they while they do stuff, or you know,
and I don't want to go to hot bodies to
stand out in front of cop shops sometimes, yeah, and
even like you know, even like movements that I really
care about that might do a lot of like non
violence of this obedience, although I don't I'm not particularly
I'm not passist personally, but you know, it's a very
useful strategy, non violence of disobedience. But sometimes they're like, oh,
(14:36):
you're young and new, lock yourself to this thing. Get arrested.
And I would definitely say to people, don't get arrested
on purpose at your first actions, like don't be anyone
else's cannon fodder. And so you feel like you are
part of the decision making and part of like like
you really matter and like then then don't um do
(14:58):
dangerous things for other people? Those projects like the ship
that states do that's so messed up is is turn
human bodies into resources that then get sacrificed for unclear ends.
Um And unless you feel like you have some sort
of like there are times we're being arrested is necessary
and helpful, but unless unless you feel you fully understand
(15:23):
not just why you're doing it, but also that like
you you you're not being told to do it, you
have autonomy and like I'm going to do this thing
that I know will end in my arrest because I like,
I don't know. That's probably like I think most people
in that position know this, But I definitely have encountered
some uncomfortable situations in the past, I'm sure similar to
(15:44):
once you have, where it did seem like people were
kind of being pushed to take that risk for reasons
they didn't fully understand or in a situation they didn't
fully grock you know, yeah, which which it's at one
of the things that when I talk about how I
think this is the biggest problem, not not the cannon
(16:05):
fodder issue, but the getting people involved is the biggest
issue I think we currently face because there's so many
people who want to be involved right now because the
world is even worse than usual and um, and it's
hitting groups of people who haven't been hit by before.
And people are often also looking for a sense of community.
(16:25):
And there's a thing that people we don't talk about
enough when people are getting involved. There's two different reasons
people get involved, and both are entirely valid, and one
is to fix things and another is to find to
break out of the isolation that they live in their
daily lives. Um. And we need to be aware of
that when we talk about how to onboard people, and
(16:46):
we need to be aware about that. If you are
getting involved, you should think about your own desires. Are
you looking for community and if so, you can find
it within radical action right um. But you are doing that,
then you especially need to be on guard against peer
pressure because it's a really easy way to feel like
you're involved with things is to go hang out with
(17:07):
people who are all doing a release scary thing and
and that's beautiful. And I absolutely did that when I
when I first got involved in anarchism and politics in general,
I i joined in head first, and you know, spend
a night in jail within the first couple of months,
and I don't have any particular regrets about that. And
(17:28):
I found community in a way that I had never
had in my life because of how isolated our society is.
But that's not the only reason to go do these
and that is I mean, I think a lot of
people experienced that last year during the George Floyd protests.
It's the kind of I mean, it's the thing we've
talked about on in the first season. If it could
happen here that times like that this war does this too,
(17:53):
can actually provide meaning that that people have lacked. And
a lot of it is that community that like community
of suffer, is the trauma bonding UM that feels like
the most important thing, even because maybe it is the
most important thing you've ever done. I think in a
lot of cases it is UM. But that's also mind
altering and it um it can lead to situations that
(18:14):
are not entirely dissimilar to cults. UM. I'm not saying
that they are cults, because cults are number one. With
a cult, there's generally going to be like a leader
and a in such but like there are things that
happened that that draw people into cults that are just
human things, their aspects in some cases, as I've said before,
of like a good party. Um, but there are cults
like aspects to the kind of groups that form in
(18:35):
these traumatic situations that can lead people to start making
really poor decisions. Um. And and so you have to
really you always have to be kind of analyzing not
just what you're doing, but what's going on in your
own head, in the head of the heads of the
people around you. UM. That's that's just always important. But
(18:56):
I think particularly when you're when you're trying to do
something new and different in a lot of ways, bigger
than anything you've done before. R. Do you have any
(19:17):
specific advice for like kind of avoiding the cults of
personality that sometimes form in new organizations. Yeah, so you
have both informal and formal structures can both cause problems
with cult of personality. There are these brilliant essays that
I haven't read in like twenty years that come from
the feminist movement, and one of them is called the
Tyranny of structural Lessness. And as best as I remember,
(19:39):
these are very short essays as best. I remember at
the Tyranny of Structurallessness says, if you don't have a
formal structure in your organization, you're going to have this
informal leader who basically tells everyone wants to do. And
that's a problem and and as a very important piece,
and I believe it comes from a Marxist feminist perspective,
but I'm not certain. And then there was an anarchist
(19:59):
femin response around the same time, maybe I'm not sure,
called the tyranny of tyranny that was like, yes, that's true.
And also when you have a formal structure and put
someone in charge there in charge, and that has other
problems too, And I think that it's just we we
have to be aware of both of these things that Um,
you know, the fact that most movements are very decentralized
(20:21):
in grassroots as as huge advantages, right, but it does
have problems of causing informal cults of personality. UM. Podcasting
is a big part of this problem. UM. And actually,
I really appreciate that you're not an organizer like Frankly,
And it's part of why I'm not an organizer on
some level is because when people read the books that
(20:43):
someone writes or listen to someone's voice all the time.
It is very influential, right, and being aware of that
and therefore not exerting that power is a very good thing.
Um And but there's okay, So the other thing, like
when I worry about like people getting involved with like
don't get peer pressured into stuff when you first join.
(21:04):
There's also this thing that is needs to be talked about.
And maybe I'll have talked about this some previously, but entrapment.
Entrapment is a huge problem, and specifically the FEDS tend
to look for young idealist activists who can be peer
pressured into actions that they may or may not have
(21:26):
otherwise ideologically agreed with, like hey, let's go blow up
a bridge or let's go blow up a damn And
and this doesn't just happen to the left. It happens
m oh, yeah, it's all around, yeah for sure. Like
there's that case of the guys who are trying to
kidnap the governor of was it Michigan. A lot of
(21:46):
that was informants who were there's a lot of there's
you can debate heavily whether or not it was entrapment. Obviously,
what we we might consider entrapment morally often isn't entrapment
legally because the FBI doesn't know where the lines are legally,
But that doesn't mean it isn't morally entrapment, right, And
(22:06):
they do that a lot, and they usually succeed. Um well,
they may not usually succeed it, though they usually succeeded
the case and entrapment defenses are hard to succeed with.
And so really, just like and thinking about it, I
think developing your own moral compass and sticking to it
is one of the single most important things that a
(22:28):
new activist can can do. And not to be afraid
of radical action necessarily like militant action, but but be
wary of it um. But then again, I mean in
terms of like being wary of what the other thing
to avoid doing is like accusing each other, like fed jacketing,
(22:48):
like being like, oh, well, that person is doing the
same thing a FED might do, like wink wink. You know. Um,
it's a really complicated an annoying game to play, and
if you're just getting involved, you're gonna have to learn
how to get it play this game of not fed
jacketing and also not um falling. Into stuff, and it's
annoying because you probably have to kind of learn some
(23:08):
of the stuff, even if all you want to do
is give away blankets. You know, if you want to
tie what you're doing to a larger ideological structure, then
it's going to come up that you need to be
aware of how repression applies to that larger ideological structure. Yeah,
like all this is very useful specifically if you're trying
(23:30):
to find something kind of pre existing um or you know,
looking you know, or you know, starting something in the
bigger city where you have like connections can be made
to other existing organizations. And I'm trying to think, you know,
there's a lot of people who live in more like
rural areas. It's not much like a liberal or like
(23:51):
you know, especially left is kind of subculture. How would
how would you recommend people who live in those kind
of scenarios try to start building this can really wouldn't
say like they only have a few friends, Um what
what steps do you think people can take if they
have more, you know, a secluded set up, so it
(24:12):
is harder. And I live in a red area close
to a blue area, right, and I do most of
my organizing and as much as I do organizing within
the the nearby small hippie city, even though theoretically the
thing that I care the most about is connections to
my immediate neighbors. Right, Um, that is harder, and it
is harder for a lot of different reasons, especially if
(24:35):
you have cultural differences between you and the people that
you're around. Right Like, I'm a trans woman and I've
live around a lot of like farms and stuff, right
And and previously this wasn't a problem before Trump. This
what just wasn't a problem after Trump. Now all of
a sudden, the fact that I'm trans as like an
attack against people in a way that it never used
to be. And and so now they all have an
(24:56):
opinion about the fact that we're in address. But it
still at the end of the day, I would say
that most of the people that I'm around are actually
totally chill. Like there's a vocal minority of really horrid people,
right um. But even the people who might be and
might have even voted for Trump or whatever, um, are
(25:17):
not necessarily at least along my own identity lines. And
also white are not necessarily going to give me ship.
And you know, I can go talk to them and
address and they might be sort of confused, and they
might not be. But if you have more culturally in
common with the people around you, then there is a
lot of room that you can start working on from there.
And this actually ties into something that I think applies
to people across the board, which is we have this
(25:38):
especially new activists, but also including people who've been in
it for a long time, have this like real arrogance
about the fact that we're like right, And when you
want to change the world, you need a certain amount
of arrogance. You need a certain amount of like I mean,
I literally believe we need to not have a government
or capitalism, and these are very major changes to our
existing structures, a huge amount of arrogance to that. Although
(25:59):
not having a guft amen a slightly less of a
major change now than it was a couple of years ago,
it's true. And also like something like sometimes, actually, it's
funny I used that it more in common with these neighbors,
but then all the libertarians when goddamn authoritarian That bummed
the funk out of me. Yeah, there's there's some good
ones still, There's like again, there's the there's the there's
(26:21):
the taking your private plane and do a disaster area libertarians,
and God bless him totally. And you know, they're like,
they just don't want them. You know. It's like, my
dad is sort of on the libertarian side of things
and keeps twenty dollar bills in the visor of his
truck to give to people flying signs, and he just
doesn't want the government redistributing his money. He doesn't mind
redistributing his money. Yeah, And I'm like, all right, I
(26:44):
don't have any real objection to that. He's also no
longer anyway. If you come at people with this attitude
of like I'm right and you're wrong, the kind of
people that you can get to join your side by
saying I'm right and you're wrong are not the people
you want. You want people who challenge authority, including the
authority of people who claim there should be authority, and
(27:07):
and so just actually listening to people and like hearing
people out and um when possible. Avoiding drawing lines between
people is one of the main ways to connect with
people across either cultural divides or especially political divides. And
this this can't always happen, right, Like I walked down
the street and address and someone like calls me a
bad word, like I'm not going to be like, I
(27:29):
understand why you think to call me that, and I
understand how like me dressed this way kind of challenges
your sense of masculinity that you've been brought up into.
Is the only way that you can hold yourself strong
in a very hard world. No, I don't do that.
I um scream funck you and chase them. Um, I
would ever chase anyone with a knife. I think that's
not legal, So I wouldn't do that, but um, you
(27:52):
know that might work. And you know, like, funk those people.
I don't care what they have to say. No, of
course not. And it when I think one of the
things that I don't know Twitter brain has done is
that like when you when you talk about reaching out
and talking to people who you know don't agree with you,
(28:13):
aren't aren't on your side ideologically, there's folks who will
kind of assume, like, oh, so you're saying I should
like try to be friendly with people who would have
murder me. Like, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not
saying that, Like, as a trans person or black person,
you should go talk to um a militant anti LGBT
activist or a fucking klansman or something. I'm saying that, like,
that's not within the broad I'm saying what what you
(28:35):
need to recognize, But what I think is important to recognize,
especially if you're when we talk about like post you know,
collapse or whatever, is that within broad political tendency. So
I'm not talking about like fascist or whatever, but I'm
talking about like liberal, conservative, progressive, very broad political tendencies.
You have roughly the same percentage of people who are ship.
(28:56):
So in an anarchist group, the amount of people who
are shitty is to be similar to the amount of
the general population that are shitty. It's the same with
every political tendency. But the corollary to that is, again,
within broad tendencies, you'll find roughly the same amount of
people who are basically rad And maybe yeah, there's some
they have their brain got poisoned with dis info and
they believe some stupid shit and they vote like an asshole.
(29:19):
But you know they'll stop their car if they see
someone in an accident, and they keep a fucking medical
kit in their bag, and you know there that it's
the it's the it's the ship that you know, I
talk a lot about this, the stabbing on the Portland
Max train. Well, the two people who who died confronting
that asshole. Um, we're a republican retired veteran and a
(29:40):
far left social justice activist, and they both you know,
put their bodies on the lines. I think that, like
when we talk about like being willing to kind of
talk with people who are who are not on the
same ideological boat as you, that's that's what I mean.
Not you should make nice with the people who want
to w terminate you, Like fuck those people. Yeah, because
(30:03):
the thing you're looking for, the thing I'm looking for
is the Republican who's going to, hopefully, instead of dying
to saw alongside me, successfully defeat the you know, actual
far right person. But yeah, yeah, totally, And and I
think that that actually is part of the It's not
always the answer for every person who's isolated, right, everyone
who's socially isolated, but it is part of it. If
(30:25):
you're trying to organize with people where you say you're
the only leftist or the only anarchist in your area,
then maybe you don't start. And this is actually funny.
I'm very into being very public about my political ideology
so that people know what bias is UM coming into
things with. But but maybe you don't start your rural
mutual Aid project calling it the rural Mutual Aid project,
or maybe you do, and maybe you you just start
(30:47):
doing it and you find people who are willing to
have the same goals and means as you, and and
I think you can do alongside of that, you can
also just be really public about what you believe. I mean,
you know, UM Again, as an anarchist, I end up
working with like church groups and things that I don't
necessarily agree with on a lot of a lot of things.
(31:07):
But they're not mad when I'm like, oh, I'm an anarchist.
They're just like, huh, okay, I'm a church person or
what you know, and like, okay, I'm not. I don't
expect different of them, and they don't expect different of me.
And we we know what we have in common and
what we don't to a certain degree, and then we
work on what we have in common and so airing
(31:27):
and so this is both true if you're within the
movement and you're hoping to try and solve this problem
for other people. But I also think it's going to
be true for people who are trying to build things
in areas where they don't have, where they don't feel
like the part of something larger is airing on the
side of inclusion versus exclusion and not And like you're
talking about, it's about airing on the side of not
always include everyone, not always committing to a hard and
(31:48):
fast rule. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, be be open to
the fact that people can surprise you in ways that
aren't terrifying. Yeah. Also, because you get terrified enough by
an of like people who you think are on your
side that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm sad. You all
donto the ad pivots in this show because you can
(32:08):
do it. We can do it, we can we can
cut it in during one of the long awkward pauses.
Go for it, and we'll keep all this up to
it in, but we'll actually cut the actual so you'll
hear it. It's like Finnigan's Wake. You're going to hear
it out of order, Okay, And I hopefully you all
be able to figure out the second half of it.
But the first the first half is anyone who claims
(32:29):
to have all the answers. Is selling you something? Oh
uh huh yeah, oh oh you know who else is
selling you something? Is it the ads? Go listen to
the Guico Geico or or Jesus. We've had some bad
ones lately. Um, there's that s os Cuba show that
sounds we're rough. Uh. There was that one that was
(32:53):
just like God, it was just like this is we
are sponsored by God. Yeah. I think I've gotten like
Walmart and McDonald's on your show before. Remember that's the
people's food. Oh yeah, organized actually try to organize around
the Walmart. That could be very so. Anyway, here's ads.
(33:27):
If someone is trying to start something new inside one
of these more secluded areas and like they have decided
like yeah, I'm willing to do something. I'm willing to
actually just like start it. How how would you recommend
they try to figure out what some of the like
biggest needs of the community are that they can actually tackle.
Like how how does someone find out what to do
(33:49):
with their mutual aid because they can like commit like yeah,
I can do something around supply, something around this, you
know whatever. Like how does one try to actually gauge
what is important to tackle? I guess It depends on
whether you feel like you're totally Like if in my head,
if I'm totally inside Annissie community, but an area, right,
(34:10):
I probably kind of know because I'm also experiencing whatever
the thing is. But if I'm if I'm a little
bit detached from it, then I do need to like
do kind of you know, the sort of traditional methods.
I think it's called listening projects. I've never actually personally
done a listening project. I've been around many people who do,
where you basically like sometimes you go door to door
and you're like, hey, what's up, Like what do you need?
(34:32):
Like what's going on? You know? Um, But like say,
for example, in the area that I live, there is
a a rural organizing It's not the actual Rural Organizing project,
which is a specific structure, but there is a rural
mutual aid group in the largely red area that I
live in that's run by by leftists, and they I
(34:52):
think that largely they did a lot of like firewood delivery,
for example, because a lot of the areas around here
are heated by wood stoves, and you have a lot
of poverty in rural areas, and of course poverty looks
very different in rural areas versus urban areas. And you know,
one of the advantages of being rural poor. There's many disadvantages,
like lack of access to certain types of services, right, Um,
(35:14):
But one of the sometimes advantages of rural poverty, as
I understand it, I'm not specifically an expert, um, is
do you have space? Right, you just don't have stuff
for money, and so you can have stuff if people
give you stuff, so you can like story your firewood
and so. And then also because it's this very specific
tangible thing, people can get really excited about, like, oh,
(35:35):
I can chop firewood, or maybe even I can't chop
firewood because my legs busted because I work in the
paper mill or whatever, but I can. But I got
a trailer on my truck, you know, Um, and I
can haul that. And people get really excited when there's
like things that they specifically are good at, especially things
that I kind of have alienated them from other people
that they're that they're good at that they can then
(35:57):
participate in. And O. Which isn't totally answer your question,
but I would say if anyone specifically is in a
rural situation, I was looking to start a mutual a group.
Look at the Rural Organizing Project. Yes, I don't believe
that they specifically do rural mutual aid organizing, but they
talk a lot about what it means to be an
organizer within areas that are largely controlled by the far right,
(36:18):
but are not. It's not like the people are all
far right, they're just controlled by the far right, you know. Yeah,
the people actually there, once you talk to them, might
actually be a lot more reasonable than like the media
influencers who are part of this you know, same thing. Yeah,
and it is. It is one of those things. This
is a topic we're drifting too, but it's when we
(36:39):
drift too regularly on this show. We're like, when I
talk with conservatives, it's it's not uncommon that I can
without especially if I don't start by mentioning anarchy, I
can get them to agree to a lot of the
things I believe, which is like, yeah, maybe people don't
need to be governed, Maybe that doesn't work out good,
Maybe politicians are corrupt and should have less power, And
(37:02):
like that doesn't mean that you're gonna you're gonna get
them on the barricades with you. Um, because any productive
kind of relationship starts from like a base of shared interests,
and it's not a useless endeavor to engage in kind
of trying to subtly, you know, if you if you
feel out people around you who are ideologically not particularly
(37:24):
similar to you, but also decent people, um, you can
kind of try and work in some some something you've
not not just some common ground, but you can try
and get them to see that they agree with you
one more than they think, um, and that that has
an effect of changing the way people think about the world.
It really does. Yeah, and you but you also have
(37:46):
to go into it open to yes. Maybe maybe it's
not going to change your opinion about the way the
economy should be structured or the way that sure works, right,
but you know, you definitely have to go into it
with a I can now understand why you drive a
big pickup truck that burns a lot of gas or
whatever whatever thing. You might be coming into it thinking, yeah,
(38:09):
or at least it might help you understand why they
believe or do certain things outside of you know, Dave
Reuben broke their brain because they got on YouTube at
the wrong time. I don't know, Margaret, did you have
anything else you wanted to really get into. I guess
to one of the other questions that you all brought
up was about preparedness, like maybe kind of almost in
the inverse situation where let's say that you live in
(38:32):
a small apartment and you want to be prepared and
in which case maybe you have better access to community.
Maybe you don't write A lot of people who live
in the city are just as isolated socially as people elsewhere,
But at least you kind of have, like there's a
little bit more easy access to ways to break out
of certain types of isolation if you put work into it,
(38:52):
because there's more likely to be groups around that are
that are public that you can go interface with. UM.
But in terms of like actual preparedness, you have the
inverse problem, right of if you live rural you might
have room to store beans and rice, and if you
live in the city, you might not write UM. But
I I will say, it's the other thing that I
find people The two things that people talk to me
(39:15):
about I think you all run into also is that
people are either I don't have any community or I
don't have any money in space. Yeah, and so if
you don't have any money in space. I mean, I
mean in some ways, it's like, well, maybe your focus
isn't like stockpiling stuff. Stockpiling and stuff is like the
single most overrated part of individual community preparedness. Um. I
(39:36):
mean I do it, but you know it's because I
M my brain works that way. Um. But also the
level of like stuff that you might be looking for
might be a lot less than like, like you know,
it's like prepper media is filled with like here's how
to build a bunk or under your pool, and I'm like, what, Yeah,
(39:57):
there's there's so many levels I mean, somebody, somebody other
things that you should be doing before you go to
that stitch. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, don't get me wrong,
if I had a pool, I'd be stoked, And if
I have absolutely under it, I'd be even more stoked.
I'd be so happy. Yeah. But but you know what
it's like, it's the first five gallon bucket of like
(40:18):
dried food you store is far and away more important
than the tent, right, and like so just having a
five gallon Jerry canful of water so that you're like,
you know, what if the water turns off or we
have a boil advisory, which happens all the time. I'm
good for a couple of days, right, because most of
(40:39):
the time people think about preparedness as like I'm preparing
for the end times, and usually what it is is
the end times are real slow and chunky and crumbles,
that's the word, um. And so you're just really looking
to like smooth out interruptions, and a lot of that
can be done very cheaply and honestly. When when you
start storing your fifth five gallon jerry can of water,
you're not storing for you anymore. You're starting for your neighbor. Yea, yeah,
(41:02):
And that's good, but not exactly not the first step,
you know. Yeah, it's better to prepare for if you
have like a week's worth of power outages or a
week's worth of the water not working right, And those
are more incremental steps because we're not just gonna drop
off and have no water forever starting in a month, right,
probably not, but we mean very like there's gonna be
(41:23):
there's enough remaining systems that that they want to fix it.
You know, it's more likely that some some disasters gonna
happen that we're gonna have, you know, a week worth
of stuff gone, you know, and that's the thing that's
actually more more reasonable to prep for. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, well, Margaret,
(41:44):
where can Where can the good people and hopefully not
the bad people, but statistically some of them will suck
find you? Um, the good people can find me on.
I have a podcast called Like the World Is Dying,
which they can listen to you on if they would like.
It's about individual community preparedness. I also am on Twitter
(42:04):
way too much, at Magpie kill Joy, Instagram, at Margaret
Killjoy my websites Birds Before the Storm dot net or
Margaret Killjoy dot com. And that has like a list
of all the books that I have out. And I
have a new book, an old book being reissued that
is coming out in November from a K Press. The
book is called A Country of Ghosts and it's an
anarchist utopian book because I was sick of people being
(42:26):
like but how would an anarchist society work? And I
was like, you know what, I wrote a book, damn straight. Um.
It also has a plot, so it's not fancy get
kind of bougie with yours. If you write a plot,
you get the wall. Plots allowed only post structural literature well, okay,
(42:48):
so this has actually happened to anarchist fiction writers before
Buds of Mara was this anarchist fiction writer. Um oh,
I can't remember where from I'm gonna this is terribly embarrassing.
But he moved to England from a colonized African country. Um, yeah,
(43:10):
what did Rhodesia become? This is the most embarrassing. So
it became a Zimbabwe, right, okay? Yeah, so yeah, so
he was from there and then everyone and he moved
to London until he realized that they're a bunch of
racists and he would like breaksh it at awards ceremonies
and then go back home. But he was a squatter
for a while in the eighties. But he wasn't writing
in the proper post colonial like Marxist realist tradition, because
(43:33):
instead he was writing postmodern fiction, which is duckett and terrible.
So he just like was like, I don't care, and
so he's great. That is that is anyway. I love
to see it. Um, that's the episode. That's the episode.
Go out and right, postmodern jump on a train. But
(44:00):
to yeah, probably also a bad idea. I talked to
somebody who lost their legs doing that once anyway, Episodes
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