It Could Happen Here Weekly 15

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Welcome to it could happen

(00:27):
here a podcast about things falling apart, and occasionally also
about what you can do about it. And today we're
doing We're we're going we're we're going completely full into
it what you can do about an episode and specifically
we're gonna be talking about unions, union organizing, the basics
of what they are and also some of the history
of it and to to talk with us about this.

(00:49):
I I have brought. I have brought my good friend
John Horonomus, who is a nurse steward with National Nurses
United in Chicago. Hi, John, how are you? How are
you doing? I'm doing good. Yeah. Esterday was my first
full day back at work after being out on light
duty from having COVID UH for this last year. And
so I got home yesterday and was pretty tired because

(01:11):
I haven't walked that much in a day. It's fine,
but I mean it was a good day. I got
lots of lugs from my coworkers. I didn't I didn't
forget anyone's name, which I was terrified of, um, and
didn't funk anything up. Um. And then when I got
when I got home, I hopped on after I got
my kids from school, I hopped on a union organizing

(01:33):
call with twenty nurses from a hospital in the South.
We're very excited about so um I was. It was.
It was a big day that that rules. Oh yeah, yeah,
I guess it's awesome. Do a do a very very
brief long COVID check in because this is everything that

(01:56):
I think people are talking about that is also like
a huge labor issue, which is that yeah, like long
COVID fucking sucks and like I know, like I know,
like like like one of my cousins had it, and
you know, they they've been in bad shape for a
long time, like they still can't taste properly and like
they I think you got from from what I remember,

(02:18):
like pretty bad like in terms of yeah, sorry, if
you don't have you don't want to, but oh I
don't care. I mean I think people should like know
that this is still going on, Like the pandemic is
still happening. Um, people are still getting sick and some
are still dying, which really sucks, and the long COVID
thing is real. Um they I didn't get sick in

(02:43):
the sense of showing up having to be in like
a hospital or I see you or anything like that mine,
but I got sick, and um, the recovery, like the
the year or the month or so after I got
sick was when things actually got bad because something happened
with my um my nerves and my neuro I had

(03:04):
a neuromuscular variant of like the long COVID symptoms, and
that led me to having all its kinds of issues
with basically just being exhausted from basic things. Anything more
than just getting up and walking around. I would have
to like lay in bed afterwards. And it would add
multiple episodes of the past year where I would cross

(03:24):
some invisible line in terms of like endurance and then
be stuck in bed for a week. And so it's
been a long thing. But I've been slowly getting better,
and people who fall into that neuromuscular thing do slowly
get better. I think that's the upshot people with heart problems,
those tend to be permanent and aren't getting better, which sucks. Um,

(03:46):
But yeah, I mean it's just like I think that
a lot of people. It's a very weird, surreal thing
to watch what is effectively like a like a a
global public health catastrophe get politicized the way it has
and treated the way it has been by everybody involved.

(04:07):
So um, anyway, I just I'm doing better with that,
and it's shaped me over the last year, and it's
shaped union organizing, and um, I'm glad that I would
say this to people who are thinking about unions. I'm
glad that I had the union kind of backing me up, um,
even when I had to pull them a little bit
in the direct the right direction. Uh. It's much better

(04:29):
to have that kind of collective power behind you when
you're dealing with those kind of problems. So that's actually
a good way into looking at just sort of in
general what a union is, because I think there's there's
there's two things here. There is what a union is

(04:49):
legally and what a union actually is in terms of
just the people in it and the sort of power
behind it. And so I was wondering if you could,
well one, I mean, is on an incredibly basic level,
explain what a union is like legally, like what is
legally defined as doing, because I feel like that's also
something that is not as well understood as it should be. Yeah,

(05:12):
for sure. So in the United States, there's a series
of laws that kind of regulates, UM, you know, the
kind of collective UM bargaining UM and collective organization of
workers at work UM. An important thing to understand is that, UM,

(05:32):
those laws are mostly designed to constrain workers power to
affect their their you know, working conditions UM. And so
when you look at what a union legally is UM,
unions are for the most part, UM, they're legal organizations

(05:58):
that kind of like operate on a dues basis. So
if you're in a union, you're paying dues out of
your paycheck. UM. If you work at a unionized workplace,
those dudes will get subtracted out regardless of your membership
or activity within the union. UM. One thing that people
don't understand is that you can if you don't want

(06:19):
your dues to go to anything besides supporting organizing your
particular workplace. You can request, unions are legally required to
offer you that as an option. UM. And then those
dudes get taken out of your paycheck and they get
used to do things like rent a union hall um,

(06:42):
pay staffers to help you with your organizing. UM. They
get taken to do lobbying, various types of political activity.
And so for a lot of people, unions will feel
like a professional association that lobbies on their break behalf
rather than a collective expression of the will of workers

(07:07):
in a particular workplace. But UM, or it'll feel like
patronage machine for you know, Democratic party, that sort of stuff. UM.
But that being said, UM, unions all have by laws,
they all have mechanisms by which there you know, theoretically
democratically accountable to the membership UM. And there are oftentimes

(07:33):
UM campaigns by workers to change how unions operate and UM.
And then also you know, when you're setting up a union,
if you're in a new if you're in a place
that doesn't have a union and you're looking to get
a union because you're fed up with not having any
kind of power over your workplace, or you feel like
people are getting discriminity against or bullied, UM, you feel

(07:56):
like you haven't gotten a raise, um, those sorts of things.
You can pick the union that you decide if you
want to get up a collective bargaining agreement, which is
a legal contract kind of like dictating how your workplace
operates in a uniform way. You can pick the union
that you want to organize with, and their unions that
are better to organize with, that are more democratic and

(08:18):
more collectively accountable. There are unions that are more organized
or more focused on actually building the union power and
organizing new workplaces. And then there are unions that are
kind of like there, you know, and I'm gonna say
that kind of blur. In the US, there's like a
blurry line between rank and file unions and business unions

(08:40):
because even rank and file unions are kind of constrained
by the same pressures that business unions operate under. And
I'll explain the difference. I'll sell any difference in a second,
but I just want to say that, like when you're
when you're getting a new union, it's really important for
you to critically look at what you're options are and

(09:01):
you're set and who you're organizing with, because unions have
different cultures and different amounts of UM, different kinds of politics,
and you should be aware of that before you and
your coworkers decide to commit to working with one union
while you're getting an or a union organized. UM. And
then I can explain that next part if you want

(09:22):
me to. All right, so yeah, so, And you know,
if you get deep into union history and deep into
organizing and figuring out like what unions are and what
they do and how they've worked kind of in the past,
you'll find that there's different types of unions. So American

(09:43):
unions started as like kind of like craft guilds, where
basically you would have a factory that might have like
twenty different unions of each individual group of people UM
in each individual skill set would be underneath the union,
and it was used as a way to kind of
control UM who was able to do the work and

(10:07):
who was getting hired in to do the work. And
a lot of times that would end up in the
United States UM being segregated UM. And there would be
these called union scamming where you would go in and
do work against people who are striking because your union

(10:27):
was fine, and you were cool with your boss and
these other people, whatever their problem is, You're just going
to keep doing the boss will offer you more money
and you'll do the work right. So and a lot
of that has kind of carried into we called trade
unions in the US a specific, and trade unionism is
particularly um prominent in uh in construction. So you'll have carpenters,

(10:54):
and you'll have you know, mason's and you'll have you know,
pipe fitters and iron workers, all these different guys and
they all kind of come together and work as a
crew for like a construction company, and oftentimes their union
operates more like a contractor than like a collective like uh,
expression of the power of those workers. So um, then

(11:18):
there are more there are unions that are would be
considered like industrial unions, so industrial unions. Industrial unionism was
invented by a union a hundred years ago called the
Industrial Workers of the World, and they were like, what
if we got took all of the workers in an
industry and got them into one big union, right, and

(11:40):
then what if all those workers in those different industries
were talking to each other and building their their power
And the goal would be that you would become so
powerful that you could basically take over industries as workers
and run them on a democratic basis, so that you
wouldn't have you kind of liquidate capital. And I want,

(12:02):
I want to say that this briefly also like yeah,
so the bosses did not like this. I mean the MW,
Like the MW was so feared that like, like there's
something the Everett massacre where it's like it got to
a point in the early nighteen hundreds where just a
group of IWW people showing up to a place was
enough to get like the the the the entire like
the entire city police force and like rounding up literally

(12:25):
every right winger they could do and deputizing them and
then just opening fire like into the crowd because like
the IWW had showed up on a boat like this
was these people were tired, Like people were terrified of them.
And I think that the other thing I think was
really interesting about the early ww's history is that is
the so you know, part of the response to them
is like they are just massive, and this is what

(12:45):
the first red Scare was. Basically it was an anti
IWW thing. And also you know, they shot people, they
arrested people. They like they deported people. And but they
also you know a lot of the things that I
think we we have this tenants you look at as
like a socialist reform where for example, like putting workers
on corporate boards, right, or like like in internal democratic

(13:07):
self management, but that's like, you know, that's still still
sort of boss controlled, right, It's like, wow, Okay, you
have like a council of people who can make recommendations
or like even even down to you know, we're going
to have our own internal like corporate unions like set
up by the company, but you know that the corporate
union gives you a workers council and the council can
sort of control production. But you know, it's it's still
it's still run by the bosses. Like all of these
things were stuff that like the Rockefellers set up or

(13:29):
like even even the early neer levels would set the
stuffup because they were they were so scared of people,
like they were so scared of people just taking over
stuff democratically, just running it just literally through the union
that they were like we will we will literally give
you democracy in the workplace. We will give you like
we will give you like workers on corporate boards literally

(13:49):
just so long as you don't like take everything over. Yeah,
I think that it's it's hard for people to imagine
how intense like the struggle for getting any kind of
rights in the workplace have been in the United States
in particular. I think a lot of people think that,

(14:13):
you know, uh, maybe not so much anymore. But when
I was younger, you know, twenty years ago, people would
be like, oh, you know, we're in America. We've got
you know, like we've got all these things, like we've got,
you know, an eight hour work day, and we've got
like a weekend and all like. And the thing is
is that literally people were murdered to win those things, right, like,
if you like. The reason why we have an eight

(14:35):
hour work day is because there was in Chicago a
famous uh, a famous strike that um ended up with
a massacre of um. It was like a police riot,
and then they rounded up a bunch of union organizers,
socialists and anarchists who were like involved in the labor

(14:58):
movement at that time, and then the state of Illinois
hung them. Um and so the wife of one of them,
of one of those people who was murdered at the
Haymarket or they called him the Haymarket murders. H Albert
Parsons was one of them. Her or his wife, Lucy Parsons,

(15:21):
who was I had a very veritable kind of like
not quite sure what her background was, but we do
know that she was probably a former slave. Uh. Albert
Parsons was a former Confederate. They got married in the South,
became Southern Republicans trying to like participate in radical reconstruction,

(15:41):
and then they basically had to flee because they were
um with their lives to the north. And uh. But
after that whole trial and all that shook out, Lucy
Parsons became a labor agitator across the United States fighting
for the eight hour day. And and they memorialized the

(16:02):
Haymarket Martyrs. And something that I think some of your
listeners will know about. Maybe they won't, but you know,
made a made a lot of people is like, oh,
that's Russian or some foreign sort of thing. Now, that
is an American labor tradition that started here, and it
was because of a specific like the the labor movement

(16:22):
in the movement for the eight hour day in the
United States. So um, and that's kind of like once
you go from the IWW and industrial unions as an idea,
it got crushed in the twenties because it was so terrifying.
There's a really good, uh, a really good essay on
all that called the stop Watch and the Wooden Shoe
by a guy named Mike Davis, who kind of explains

(16:44):
how it is that IWW as the first union too
not only um try and build workers organization, but to
challenge workplace organization and to make those push back on
how production was happening and fight something called this speed
up where I think a lot of people who have
worked have experienced this time where a boss will come

(17:05):
in and say we're going to do things differently, and
they'll either get rid of a worker and put all
the extra work onto people who remain, or they'll change
things so you're doing more with the same amount of time. Um,
they got you know, they provoked a backlash. Um. There
were like spectacular like general strikes, the first general strike

(17:28):
in America in Seattle. There were i w W members
who are key members of the Seattle Labor Council, which
took craft unions and got their radicals together and coordinated
a general strike which is where there's a lot of
tweets about general strikes. But general strikes require a lot
of organization and coordination. We can talk about that later

(17:51):
if we want to, but key thing is the i
w W was always pushing for the organization necessary to
pull off a general strike, and they did it. And
so amongst those different things and their mine wars in
Colorado mine wars and Virginia West Virginia UM, they were

(18:12):
the first union that was explicitly anti racist. UM. They
they weren't perfect, but they were, but they organized multi
racial unions in UM, Philadelphia, the Docks, and various other places.
They were one of the few unions that really took

(18:33):
the first steps into organizing in the South in the
way that UM A lot of unions have kind of
failed too since. And because they were so effective and
so frightening, they got crushed. I mean. Also, what every
thing I want I want to say about them is that, like,
like the WW fought in the Mexican Revolution, because you
know a lot of the WW members in California particular

(18:54):
were like a lot of a lot of indigenous people,
a lot of sort of voted Mexican immigrants. So yeah,
they these huge ties and like they like they I think,
I think to this day this is still true outside
of Puerto Rico, Like they are the only leftist movement
that has ever like taking control of an American city,
like they they took to Lexico and Mexicality and like
a bunch of the sort of the border area. Yeah.

(19:16):
That that's that, that's you know, part of why it
just escalates to everyone starts shooting them because well and
and they were truly an international union because they were
they focused on like longshoremen and organizing and docks that
sort of thing. There were members of the i w
W organizing basically everywhere in the world, and they were

(19:40):
considered part of like what was like a global movement.
You call them syndicalists, which is kind of like a
an Italian term or French term um, which is this
the you know, like like the Latin version of the
Union of Syndicate uh and um. There were similar unions

(20:01):
across the world up through the early twentieth century until
right about the time when the Russians, the Russian Revolution happened,
and then there were subsequent crackdowns. And because these people,
who I mean, the IWW was a mix of native

(20:23):
native born Americans and immigrants, and they were painted as
this foreign sort of force. They were un American. That
was like the whole nexus of un Americanism as like
an idea, and the US state was able to mobilize
after World War One to really put that down and
so so there's a lot of history there in that.

(20:47):
But the idea of the industrial union didn't go away, right.
The union, the IWW was effectively dismembered and scattered. But
a lot of people who had experience as IWW members
who had been in those strikes, UM didn't like just disappear.
They didn't all get deported or sent away. UM. A

(21:10):
lot of them kind of tuck their heads down and
went back to work, you know. And in the ninet
thirties we saw the rise of another industrial the next
step towards industrial unionism. So it's called the c i O,
which is the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Now there were

(21:31):
multiple at that point. There was the Communist Party USA,
the Socialist Party of America, and UM, former members of
the IWW and various like anarchists who were participants in
kind of the organization of the c i O. And

(21:53):
the thing about c i O was was that when
they came together, UM, it was in the Great Depression
had really kind of kicked off, and they were able
to organize like really explosively across all these new industries.
So they like the U a W. United Auto Workers

(22:14):
was like part of the c i O. And they
would they pioneered forms of strikes called sit down strike,
which was basically a factory seizure. All the workers would
just say we're not going to walk out, We're going
to lock ourselves in and we're going to sit down
and it's our factory now, and now you're going to
have to negotiate with And it became this thing where

(22:39):
it was like millions of people were like the I
w W at any one time was like hundreds of
thousands of people, and the c i O became a
thing where it was millions of people and UM and
at least at the beginning when they had there, when
they had we're at the peak of their like power

(23:02):
and militancy. UM, they were able to mobilize workers to
take over factories, take over factories from some of the
most powerful corporations on the earth on Earth. And you know,
at the same time um. While they were doing this,
the police and UH company UM company security and vigilantes

(23:28):
which had never gone away from like the IW, we're
doing the same sorts of things. So they would regularly
beat strikers, would regularly there would be you know, regular
labor massacres, um disappearances of various um of labor organizers
or labor leaders or even just random workers that they

(23:50):
thought were like, oh, you're a unionist, um, you know,
get in the back of this uh, get in the
back of this truck. And then they were never seen again. Um.
And then laws started to be enacted, I believe out
of fear that if this, if this movement didn't get
somehow put under brought in under control, that there would

(24:14):
be a revolution. And so uh so that's when we
started to see the enactment of laws like the National
Labor Relations Act, which made having a union like that
was the first time when being any union was considered
legal at the federal level. And that uh the FDR

(24:35):
the New Deal Democrats basically attempted to broker something called
labor peace where they would say, we're no longer going
to mobilize the state against workers in the way that
we have previously. Now local police would still side with
bosses that sort of thing. But uh, and those sorts
of massacres and that sort of stuff didn't really go

(24:58):
away until like the forties. Um. But um, that was
the beginning of because what you do see is unions
get channeled into Once you have like a million people
in the union, you have just enormous amounts of resources,
all these dues coming in. You have the beginning of

(25:18):
the labor bureaucracy. Whereas before it would be you know,
there would be hired you know, paid labor organizers, but
they were always shifting around, and they were they were
brought up as communists or socialists, and they had ideological
commitments to building the power of the union and the
power of workers that you know, if you are just

(25:39):
a you know, and someone with some ambition and decided
you want to become like anyone at this point you know,
who wants to become a paid union staffer. If you're
like you know, if you care to and a lot
of people, Um, then being a union staffer was a
different thing than is now. It was. I think I'm

(26:02):
trying to remember the name of the president. I think
it's John Lewis. John Lewis, who was a Republican back
in the day, said, you know, I think famously said
at one point it's like, if you want to build
a union, or if you want to build a house,
you call a carpenter, if you want to build a union,
you call communists, and so uh and so they would

(26:24):
literally would go to like the the you know, the
Communist Party and say we need organizers. And the Communist
Party did a lot of work to training people to
be organizers, and they were militant, they were ready to
throw down because to them, they were looking at this
as part of a you know, class struggle against you know,
bosses and you know, a way of overthrown capital. Um.

(26:48):
That kind of went through until World War two. And uh.
When World War two hit, that's when the Soviet Union,
which in many ways controlled what was happening with communists
with CPUs A, basically said we need a labor piece

(27:09):
because we need to support the war effort. And so
that's when union started signing contracts with no strike clauses,
and they started um agreeing that they would no longer
strike um and and they started agreeing to things like

(27:30):
speed ups. There used to be a time when uh,
these mass industrial unions, the stewards would walk around with
a whistle on their neck. They have a whistle on
a lanyard and any time that workers decided that this
is like an example of how powerful these unions were.
Not just like as like an organization, but every day

(27:51):
at your workplace, if you thought that something was not right,
or you were not being treated fairly, or somehow the
contract was in breach, you would go to your steward
and your steward would pull out this whistle and would
blow the whistle. It's called a whistle stop strike and
everyone would set down their tools until management would come
out and they would either agree to pay more or

(28:16):
stop what was happening and fix it. And so um,
there was a time when strikes would be you would
have intermittent work stoppages. So you wouldn't go out like indefinitely.
You would go out on strike for like three months.
Though that happened. You wouldn't just and it wouldn't just
be your factory. It would be hey, we're getting on

(28:36):
the phone and we're calling our friends down the street
at the next at your supplier. It's called a secondary strike.
So if you're working at like a steel mill, and
your steel mills dependent on coke from the next factory over.
You're calling up your friends in the same union down
the way, say stop sending coke, stop sending materials. Where

(28:57):
these things to us, we're on strike. You as you
all set your tools down, you go on strike. And
it would and these strikes would like massively expand so
you would see things instead of seeing you know, we
just went through Striketober, right, yeah, and we just and
so we saw like what we call a strike wave.

(29:18):
But in and in some ways it was a strike wave.
But I think that we still don't I think it's
so far away from living memory of what a real
strike wave is, where people would go on strike in
one factory and then the next factory, in the next factory,
the next very it literally would be a wave of
people um going on strike. And this was all the
result of all the organization that people had, in the

(29:40):
militant attitude that people had about like how they were
going to be treated at work. It's worth mentioning that
one of the so the National Labor Relations Act, which
is past nineteenturty five, which is like that you know,
this is the beginning labor piece, Like you know, it's okay,
we'll give you the right re union, but you cannot
do secondary strikes like that, Like this is this is
explicitly banned in this if I'm remembering this right, is

(30:01):
that there's a specific thing that says you can't do
secondary strikes anymore. And you know, and this was this
was you know, the basis of this piece was that
like yeah, as you sort of said before, it was like, well, okay,
so the state will put their guns down, but the
workers also essentially have to put their guns down. And yeah,
and this this starts this whole process of you know,

(30:21):
on once once you lose like that kind of consciousness
and once you lose the practical experience of doing this stuff,
it kind of it fades and and over time, you know, yeah,
the atrophies and and the unions get weaker and weaker
because you know, like with without like you know what,
once you once you've set aside, right and you've decided
that you're gonna essentially you know, okay, we're gonna we're

(30:44):
gonna follow the laws, we're gonna sit down, we're gonna
do this, We're gonna like negotiate in good faith, we're
going to have all of this sort of um, you know,
we're we're gonna go through the National LA Relations Board.
It's like, well, at that point, people like people, people's
willingness to pick the weapons back up that they put
down just sort of continues to diminish. Well, I think

(31:07):
what happens is I mean, And so there was like
a ten year period. So first there was like the
first five you know, five ten years of c I
oh was when we see like this really like intense
militancy within these unions. And halfway through like you know,
the passage of that first long in the nineteen thirties, UM,

(31:28):
that's when we started to see the erosion. And we
constantly see I think I think that people don't understand
is that our bosses are always trying to assert their
control over work. And we'll see that like UM bosses
will do all kinds of contortions as long as they
get to stay in charge and that they're unquestioned. And
I don't think we understand quite how long the long

(31:48):
game is for UM, for management, for our bosses, and
for capital. And so you know, it starts with the
National Labor Relations Act and then it goes through uh, um,
it goes through World War Two. In the World War Two,
that's when the c i O goes from you know,
you know, millions of people to like tens of millions,

(32:08):
and it becomes like a thing where like that's when
you know, like Americans are in a union, right, um,
because I mean to the extent that that to the
extent that um, there were those compromises happened. It didn't
just compromise. It wasn't just like a failure of like, oh,

(32:31):
like we're just going to start capitulating. It's like there
were interests inside the union. They're looking at like, well,
this is a lot of resources and power that we
have now. But wait until like it's you know of
America paying union dudes. And there were people inside the
Democratic Party who were willing to trade um, that labor

(32:51):
piece for that you would start to see, you know,
that's when politicians would show up to UM two union
hall to talk and try and get you know, and
that's when you know, the Democratic Party, it would be
it wouldn't be unusual to hear a Democratic politician, UM
say things about like labor that you would like that

(33:14):
no politician would say today. And now that doesn't mean
that they were like on the side of the workers,
but you know, you would have literally, um, President Eisenhower
telling the president of U. S. Steel to get fucked
over like a general, like you're you're trying to shut
down like you know, this is like the the steel
industry is a lifeblood of backbone of the American economy. Um,

(33:37):
you know, and you're trying to shut this down, trying
to kill the golden goose, like get back to work,
let the pay these people what they're asking. Um. But
you know, so you would see the people who kind
of floated to the top of those uh unions trading
their trading away their workers power and their workers well

(33:58):
being for more and more month. First off, the would
be more money, so you would you like, they would
start getting raises that were really substantial, and it would
boost up a union steel worker or a union auto
worker into what we consider like the comfortable middle class
where people could like buy a like a fishing cabin
or something up on a lake, send their kids to college,

(34:19):
all these sorts of things that were just kind of
like unobtainable sorts of things. If you were the same
in the same industry twenty years earlier. Yeah, and um,
and that felt like wins, you know, two people. And
also in the nineteen forties, after World War Two, they
passed the Taff Hartley Act, which basically meant that they

(34:40):
forced unions. Well they did, okay, they wrote into law
that it was illegal to be a communist or an
anarchist in uh in a union. And so they're literally
still unions that still have language in their in their
membership parts or they're like I declare, I'm I've never
been a member of the Communist Party. I'm not an

(35:02):
you know, an anarchist. Uh. I mean like I have
friends who have pulled that out. Now it doesn't have
any effect now, but that was they basically took all
the people, you know, the people that uh that were
you know, the people that you would have called to
build the union twenty years later or before, we're getting
thrown out of unions. And that didn't happen in every like.

(35:25):
There were attempts to do that in all kinds of countries.
They tried to do it in the UK, and the
unions in the UK told basically told the government to
go fund themselves, and they you know, it's like but
because the leadership of the of the c I O
industrial unions began to see themselves more in alignment with

(35:49):
are ruling class and are you know, like the Democratic Party,
they decided that they were big enough that they didn't
have to have militants involved anymore. And that's when you know, uh,
people were literally would get fired out of did either
either militants and staff would get fired or uh, they
would get fired out of factories if you're like a

(36:11):
ranking file worker. So um, and that's when we begin
to see the rise of what we call business unionism.
And that's where we would have union bureaucrats would and
um would you know, would basically start making concessionary contracts.
And this started you know back in you know, a
lot of people are like, oh, you know, back in
the fifties, unions are really powerful and they were powerful

(36:34):
to get you know, like raises, but those raises came
at the expense of control over the work process, came
at the expense of the speed up um and as
unions like because the rank and file workers, like you're saying,
you know, ranking file workers, and they see their things
there these tools getting put down and they were more
reluctant to pick them up first off, is because of

(36:55):
the amount of money that they're getting paid. And but
they pushed back, they were like this is I mean, like,
there's a really great book called The Next Shift UM
by Gabriel win At. It's all about the shift from steel,
the steel industry as like the center of the U.
S economy to healthcare UM, and how unions basically started

(37:20):
to erode away there like throw it, like hand over
their power in exchange for money. And then when they
were told like there was UM and attempts to get
socialized medicine and the under the Truman administration, and when
they were basically uh, they they hit a speed bump

(37:43):
in there and it got shot down. They decided that
instead of trying to win those uh those broad social
reforms for everybody, they're like, well, we can use our
our power to strike to get basically construct a private
welfare date for our workers. And so that's when you
begin to see UM things like uh, the they call

(38:06):
them like the gold plated insurance plans for certain types
of unionized workers, and those would kind of UM and
those are kind of used as like a private welfare
state for all those workers. And it was built with
the assumption you're gonna have low cost workers basically doing
all this care work UM, and oftentimes it would be

(38:30):
women of color and UM. And through that you start
to see this real sharp client from the sixties in
like UH in union UM, militancy UM. And that's when factory,
when capital starts moving factories out of city centers where

(38:51):
it's very easy to organize a factory when everyone lives
within walking distance the factory, and when they're done with
their shift at the factory, they're all at the bar
outside the outside the factory gates, and you can just
like if you want to have a union meeting, if
you want organized even a wildcat strike, all you have
to do is show up at the right bar and
that's where everyone is after they're done with their shift. UM.

(39:15):
They started moving and dispersing the industrial capacity of the
United of you know, the the US urban core out
into suburbs. So that's now where you'll drive through rural
Indiana and you'll pass like five factories and they're surrounded
by nothing but corn fields. It's because it's a lot
harder to organize auto workers when they all live thirty

(39:38):
minute drive from each other, and none of them hang
out at the same bar anymore. Uh, And then you
start to see UM and all through that time, the
commitments to anti racism are eroded. So you'll see UM
jobs get start to get segregated out inside it's like
steel mills and things like that. But then, you know,

(40:00):
is also the rise of rank and file movements to
push back. So UM, all the while we're talking about this,
there's always workers who remember what these things were like
and why, and the power that they used to have,
and they would do the best that they could get
organized and so UM. There's a really good UM documentary

(40:20):
you can find a YouTube called Finally Got the News.
It's about the Dodge Revolutionary Union movement in Detroit, which
was a rank and file reform movement organized by UM
by black auto workers. They got like a fair amount
of support from white auto workers because they're basically there's

(40:41):
you know, interviews with U a W bureaucrats and they're
just like, you know, we're getting people these raises. Why
are they upset that they're like getting named in the
factory right, or why are they getting upset that you know,
you know, black workers are constantly getting put into the
shittiest jobs or the first to get laid off, that
sort of thing. And that's a it's a really I

(41:01):
suggest anyone has time. And that came out of like
the I think that was immediately after the was getting
organized after the assassination Martin Luther King and all the
riots that were happening in the h in the sixties
had like that late sixties period. Um, in the seventies,
there was a teamster, the teamster rank and file rebellion.

(41:23):
My grandpa was a teamster trucker. My grandma was a teamster.
She was like a punch card operator. But yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah, no,
I mean like teams, these unions got so big and
they have that's how you end up with like there's
U a W teaching assistance now, right, Um, Like how
do you end up with these huge like uh unions?

(41:45):
And during teams are rebellion And my grandpa would tell
these stories like we're going on there would be a
wildcat strike and they call it out over the CB radios.
And the way they would enforce the picket line wasn't
just like oh, we're gonna like standing in the road
or something. They would hang coke bottles full of rocks
over the overpasses, just high enough up to like that

(42:06):
cars wo pass underneath them, but if you hit one
and you're in a truck, it's funk up your day. Um.
And that was like a really um like a really
kind of like powerful pushback by rank and file workers
against what they saw was the erosion of their power.
Because I think that I think there's this sometimes amongst

(42:26):
people who consider themselves to be left or whatever, there's
like this kind of doom and gloom like, oh, it's
only like we're only losing, right. But and there's been
a lot of as the seventies happened, and capital is
kind of reconfiguring itself in the middle of all the
economic upheaval inflation. Um, Basically, they got to the point
where we can't maintain labor peace and maintain profits, right,

(42:47):
so they could maintain labor piece and have something more
like a socialist system, or they can maintain control over
the work process and just do everything in their power
to destroy the power of workers. And they decide to
do that. Um. So I think we were coming out
of this kind of era where you know, if you

(43:08):
were in a union and working at a factory. Um,
there was a real threat that they're like, well, we're
just gonna shut this factory down, and you know, naft
to get signed. Well, first it was the pet Go
strike with Reagan. Reagan gets elected and air air traffic
controllers decided they're going to go on strike and um,

(43:32):
and they and Reagan decided he was going to break it,
and they brought in they basically there was this bigg recession.
It was like this huge mess where people were really
desperate for work and um, you know, they said, we're
going to hire anyone to be an air traffic controller
and we're gonna break the strike. And that was the
first real the first like that the beginning of the

(43:56):
end of that final, like that big moment era of
industry real unionism in the United States. And we went
from a place where you know, U a W had millions,
the United Auto Workers had millions and millions of workers
and if you drove a car or a truck in
his main America is made by union worker, to this
point where now the AW is around fifty people. I

(44:19):
was shocked when I heard that, literally like two weeks ago. Um,
you know, we just have the big U, a W
strike at John Deer, UM. And there's been and you know,
all through this while this is going on, UM, there's
various union corruption scandals. And that's again the cause of
like when you kick out all the people who have
an ideological commitment to improving the lives of working people

(44:41):
and building the power of working people out of this
organization that's only existence is to like build the power
of working people. UM, then you then you end up
with people who are basically criminals. Like you end up
like there would be Uh. I think Reagan scat like
Ronald Reagan and was h was a union member, but

(45:05):
he was like the union member for like a corrupt
like there was like there was like a battle between
like the c I O controlled union in like Hollywood
and like the corrupt like moss mobbed up union and
the mobbed up union, like that was the side if
I'm that that was a side that Raagant picked and
uh and yeah, so it's like you could kind of

(45:28):
and there was a lot of like media where they
would be like you know, the Waterfront in various like
movies and things talking about union corruption. And I think
the union corruption is real and it's a it's when
it happens, it's a huge problem. It shouldn't like it's
in other countries like in like in Germany, if they
found out like a union union official like misappropriated like

(45:50):
two thousand euros, it would be a nationwide scandal like UM.
Also in uh In like European countries, you pay union
dues on a voluntary basis. Right in the US legally,
since we're a close shop system, like once you're at
a union UH union workplace, your dues get taken, whether

(46:15):
you know whether you're happy with the union or not.
Now there are people will say that's really important because
unions need every penny they can to fight where they have.
But when unions have to fight for membership and make
sure that their membership knows that they're getting like what
they're paying for, you get a little bit more responsiveness.
So I think that's another thing that especially people are

(46:36):
thinking about unions and thinking about joining a union are
creating getting any of the workplace. Just understand what a
union is and how they work and where your money
is going to, and that if you're unhappy with that,
the best thing to do is to get involved with
your union to try and like get connected with your
coworkers who have similar complaints and change the union. Because

(47:00):
there's a saying it's like any union is better than
no union. That's not always true, but it generally is
there there there's like a very small chance that like
you're like living in nineteen nine China and like your
union is like is controlled by like a commodation of
the K and T and like literally the Chinese heroine trade.

(47:22):
But you know that that like, yeah, that like doesn't
there there there are things where you'll have like there,
my dad worked at a factory and there was it
was a teamster organized factory, and like some of the
stewards for bullies and literally like there were some people
who were dealing drugs out of it, and they gave

(47:43):
the the workers like try to bring in another union,
and the and the management decided to offer to also
try and desertify decertify the union at the same time,
and the workers voted to desert. And the thing is
is that now that factory shut down and gone um

(48:06):
and I guess like the thing is is that you
have to It's far better for workers to assert their
rights within their union where they have some modicum of
democratic control over what's going on than it is to
just throw up your hands and like there's and do nothing.
Because if you do nothing, the boss is always doing something. Yeah,
Like that's the thing is, like management is always organizing.

(48:27):
They're always coming up with ways to like to undermine
the control of workers at work, to pick people against
each other. Um, we can get into it later, but like, uh,
they want, they'll use racism and those sorts of things
to dole out favors or curry favoritism and like you know,

(48:48):
pit people against each other. So I think that it's
important to just say that, like the union is going
to be your only effective way to push back, well,
the union or collective action, because I guess I also
want to say that there are times when organizing union
isn't the best solution to solving your problem at work. Ultimately,
this is all about how do you solve problems at work? Right?

(49:09):
And they're sometimes when you can do collective action that
is protected as you know as labor organizing, but it's
not done within a union. And so and because America
is a really best of place and you have right
to work states and places where like being in a
union is like literally illegal. Um sometimes putting the time,

(49:30):
you're like you can't get into a union, and therefore
you have to come up with other solutions, or sometimes
because of the nature of a workplace, like getting a
union is like it's very hard or like basically impossible.
That doesn't mean that you can't organize, And I think
that that's the thing that everyone needs to understand. I
think there's a lot of like boosterism of unions amongst

(49:52):
younger workers because people just don't understand how they work
or they haven't experienced in themselves. And I think that
the main thing is is that you've got to be
very careful with your time and understanding. Like building a
union can take like ten years from the beginning of
we're upset to now we have a collective bargaining agreement,

(50:14):
or now we have a collective bargaining agreement. It could
be another five or ten years before you actually get
to the point where you're organized enough to go on strike.
And people oftentimes think that that's like they look back
at the history of things and they're like, oh, it's
so easy. But back then people were taking all they mean,
they it took them years to build the the US

(50:36):
labor movement into what it was at its peak. It
took decades, right, and I think that we are kind
of used to this instant gratification kind of stuff. We
have to understand it. It's like, if you're going to
be in a workplace where you're there for enough time
to build the trust and relationships and understanding of how
the work workplace works and keep your job and be

(50:59):
someone that people don't look at, is like a shirk
or whatever. Not that I don't think that people should
you know, people should work as hard as they can
and not any more harder than that. But whatever. Um.
But I think that you know, I'm anti work, but
you know that's the whole other thing. Unions are the
best way to limit the amount of work that you
have to do. Um, if you're gonna if you're going

(51:22):
to uh, you know, work as a wage labor um.
But I'll just say that, it's like I think that
people don't that. It's difficult sometimes to understand how much
work goes into getting to the point of getting a union,
but it's always worth putting the time in to get there.
And you may not win the first try, but if

(51:44):
you are if if the conditions are right and things like,
you know, we make our history, but not in conditions
of our choosing. Sometimes things don't work out, but not
doing it is I think, a it's detrimental to you
and your co workers. And even times like I've talked
with people who have been involved in campaigns where they

(52:04):
got fired but then all of a sudden conditions approved afterwards,
and they look at that as like, oh, ship, we
didn't get our union, but everyone got raises and they
change some things at work, and that's actually a victory.
So you know, I think that I think of each
other as like collective building collective power, and the amount
of time it takes to do that is daunting, but

(52:27):
I think it's the sort of thing that we need
to do if we're serious about changing how we can
actually like how our lives work and how much power
we have outside of work, because unions are also places
where we do things that affect outside of our work
as well. Um, George flayd uprising. You know, uh in

(53:06):
Minneapolis there were nurses union nurses who walked out the
door um to support uh, you know, people who were
uh basically having an insurrection against like you know, police violence.
In in Minneapolis when the when COVID pandemic hit off,

(53:29):
year of everything going off, nurses nurses were going out
and confronting UH. Union nurses were going out and confronting
anti mass protesters. Like I was literally getting screamed at
by like some Looney Tunes doctor holding a banner that
said nurses are dying. Go home with like twenty other
union nurses And we were the only people out there
who are like together, who are you know, immediately impacted

(53:53):
by this stuff and UM, And I think it made
a difference, Like I think it's important, and so I
think that UM some idea called social unionism. So if
you get to the point where building a union and
you're making progress, and you get to that point where
you have a union, always be advocating for to the
extent that you can that your union is engaged in
the kind of UM, like connecting with your community around

(54:17):
your workplace, figuring out the things that are impacting people's
lives outside of unions. Because I think that's another thing
that UM. For a long time, unions just ignored or
let atrophy because they didn't think it was their problem anymore.
Was you know, mutual aid helped build the labor movement.
You know, workers would get would literally like in West

(54:39):
Virginia and matuan Uh they had uh company police throwing
people out of their apartments who are on strike, and
the there were you know, all of a sudden, two
thousand of your fellow workers showing up and throwing the
police out of town and putting people's uh, you know,
belonging to in their house or you know. And I

(55:03):
believe we're getting back to that point where you know,
teachers went on striking West Virginia and the union and
the teachers did everything they could to support their students
while they were out, because like, I think there's this
idea that a lot of union workers at this point
are you know, everyone is like, you know, the American

(55:26):
workforce is so desperate and so and they've just been
pushed around so much that you know, there was this
idea for a time like in Wisconsin, what was or
what was the Scott Walker consint Uprising just eleven, wasn't it?
I think it was like right around occupy It wasn't
around there, And like there was this idea that's like,

(55:48):
oh you're a nurse, Oh you're a teacher, Like you
should just be happy that your job has some kind
of meaning to it, right, And it was a lot
of like weird discourse around in the media of about
like how dare these people? I think that they deserve anything?
And the thing is is that how can you, like,

(56:09):
as a nurse, how can I take care of my
patients safely when I'm constantly having, um like, more and
more work put on me, right, and that that immediately
affects the people that I'm taken care of. So that
when when we went on strike in twenty nineteen, it
was around our safe staffing. UM and if I've seen

(56:32):
management make decisions about staffing that kill people, and I've
seen management make decisions that lead to my coworkers getting injured.
Um I management made decisions that led to me getting
COVID and messed me up for a year. And so
when people in these kind of care worker roles, which

(56:52):
I think has become a more prominent part of the U.
S economy as people are getting older and they need
more like care work, home care workers, nursing home workers,
hospital workers. UM. Parents don't can't rely on family the
way they used to to help take care kids. School
has become like this really important, like uh institution for

(57:15):
you know, working class survival. Um that you can't do
those jobs as a worker if you don't have the resources.
So like our our children were at the Chicago public
schools and there that you know, the Chicago Teachers Union,
which was taken over by the rank and file UM,
I think in two thousand five or six by you know,

(57:38):
a group of black women led by Karen Lewis. They
set up a group called like a rank and file
caucus called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators or
Radical Educators. Cores might be messing up, but it's called CORE.
They went out on strike in and and as a

(58:01):
you know, as just this was before my kids were
old not to be in those schools. I was out
there still taking them coffee donuts, right because I knew
that they're in there. Because things stuck. By the time
my kids were old enough in nineteen for it to
be a big thing, and the teachers when I'm striking
in Chicago, it had gotten so it's so bad that
Chicago teachers like Chicago Public schools have the the lowest

(58:26):
number of staff two students of any school system in Illinois.
It's not even like half right and um. And it's
funny because the state had been constantly trying to erode
the power of the union. They're making Chicago teachers like
pay their for their own retirement basically in a way

(58:46):
that no other like workers have to. Um. They were
making it so that Chicago teachers could only go on
strike over of the teachers voted to go on strike.
UM so when so what that does is there's kind
of like a a little bit of a flip where oh,
we have to make of you know, people agree to

(59:10):
go on strike. Well, let's organize so much that we
get people to agree to go on strike, and then
how powerful is our strikes? Our strikes is going to be.
We're literally like one of the things I do as
a steward is I connect with all the different unions
and at the University Chicago where I work, through a
labor council, we were going, as you know, university workers

(59:32):
to all the picket lines of the public schools around
our neighborhood and we're bringing out coffee, bringing out donuts,
talking to people. Hey, I'm a nurse. We were on
strike like six or like two or three months ago.
What do you all need connecting with people. And then
and then like at one point when the teachers were like,
we're not getting what we want and this is LORI

(59:54):
lightfoot is trash there, uh, we helped organized this mass
march where multiple marches of teachers and school workers and
we're all out in the streets dodging cop cars until
we have this big convergence. And it was really beautiful,
Like we had like multiple people with like multiple banners

(01:00:15):
and different columns, each one saying we will win, going
through the streets of our neighborhood UM and like messing
up like the commercial traffic area in uh in our
very bougie neighborhood. UM. But that was happening all over
the city and it's just like when you see that happen,
it's because we're literally in the support of the community

(01:00:35):
for those strikes was so overwhelming because people knew that.
It's like these people, aren't it. I mean, like, first off,
it's a hard job. There's no reason why anyone doing
that job shouldn't have like a materially comfortable life. That's
how stressful it is and how much work they do.
And I really like, I really need to emphasize this
enough people. There's this whole thing is like, oh, teachers

(01:00:57):
don't work over the summer, like, oh, but no, like
their job sucks. They have to they have to deal
with these kids all day. And the other thing is like,
you know, the part of it that you don't see
is they have to do all the lesson plans. They
have to great all the stuff, have to do all
this stuff like after the school day end, they have
to do all the suff honestibly, all the time. This
job is awful. It is extremely hard, and like they don't. Yeah,

(01:01:19):
the conditions are extremely bad. I'll never forget when I'll
never forget when I ran into my seventh grade science
teacher on the summer she was waiting tables at a
local restaurant, you know, I mean, And so I think
that there's this assumption that like that, especially care workers
get some sort of you can't you know, you can't

(01:01:39):
cash in fulfillment right or prestige or whatever that doesn't
pay the rent, that doesn't put you know, groceries on
your table um that sort of thing. And so you know,
I think we're beginning to see this thing resurgence. And
it started with teachers and I know, for and teachers
and nurses have been out fighting like hell for the

(01:02:00):
past like five years, and it's beginning to kind of
like spark other kinds of organizing outside of outside of
the care work areas, and a lot of this stuff
was It's funny how it was kind of like predicted
by occupy and like revolt of the carrying classes. Someone
who wrote a really cool book that just came out,
David Graeber, who was talking about, like, why is it

(01:02:22):
that we're seeing all these people who are out in
the streets like during occupy, who are like social workers
and nurses and teachers and all this stuff there There's
something going on here, and I think that so you'll
see places where organizing conditions are easier because the pressure
on especially care workers right now is immense in a

(01:02:45):
way that it isn't as immense other places. But look
at for those like when you're thinking about unions and
whether to do build a union at your workplace or
do some sort of collective organizing your workplace, do you
have the dynamics where you guys are can the boss
shut down your, uh, your your workplace and move it

(01:03:08):
like ten miles without completely destroying their like their business right,
And so you know, we've seen strikes happen in grocery stores,
um and uh Massachusetts there was a really like uh
pretty well publicized grocery worker strike and apparently there was

(01:03:29):
like internal documents got released to like shareholders about how
that was like one of the most like it was
like for a month in the winter or three weeks,
and they said they lost like of customers refused across
the picket line. I mean, and I think we're thinking
it's like getting to the point where you can go
on strike. It's a lot, it's a process, and it

(01:03:49):
takes a lot of work, and I think that people
underestimate what that looks like. Hence we see hashtag general
strike things all the time. Um. But like when you
get there, I think that we're at a point now
where people have a lot more sympathy for workers, and
workers have become more visible in the way that they
weren't before. Like the essential workers over the past year

(01:04:11):
and a half have been the only workers that sometimes
people will see, right, So you'll see things also like
you have you know, Amazonians United, which is a union
that's organizing, but they're trying to organize something called a
solidarity union. So they're not, you know, at least the
ones here in Chicago, and I think some of them
in New York. And this may be changing. Things are

(01:04:32):
always shifting around. But for a long for a while,
through like the pandemic, they were organizing on a like
in contrast to the best sumer uh Amazon campaign. Sorry,
there was a a business union tried to organize a
union in Alabama, Investment Alabama at an Amazon warehouse, and

(01:04:55):
there was a lot of like media attention to that.
Democratic politicians, we're paying attention to it, you know, Joe
Biden said, I support the right of workers to choose
to have the choice. Stabby union some really milk toast
bullshit and a lot of celebrities showing up. And what
wasn't happening was you weren't seeing a lot of evidence

(01:05:16):
that the workers themselves were very excited about the union.
And it turned out that that campaign failed. Um, whereas
workers at Amazonian's united up here, like in Chicago, and
granted it's a very different organizing environment in Illinois than
it is in Alabama. UM, they haven't been focusing on
getting contract. They've been focusing on getting work changes like

(01:05:37):
They're like, we want to have water, like we need
water breaks, and so they would they have these stand
up meetings at the beginning of every shift, and they
had coordinated where you have you know, thirty of your
co workers all say we're not starting until we get water.
And then management panics because they're not used to that

(01:05:58):
kind of demand. They're used to We're going to have
a campaign. Then we can you know, mess with votes
and that sort of thing and make people afraid. Collective
action overcomes fear, right, So when you have collective action,
even through a regular like a more regular conventional union campaign,

(01:06:19):
those collective actions are what needs to successful unions. So like, um, so,
you know, they'd say, we aren't starting the shift until
we get water, and then all of a sudden a
manager disappears and then comes back with palates full of water, right,
and all of a sudden, people are like, I'm gonna
have the drink water before I start, like all together,
and then they go off and do their thing, and
it's like, you know, things like that build the power

(01:06:41):
of the union to the point where they shut down
that warehouse. But then Amazonian United popped up in the
three new warehouses that they step in Chicago. So it's
like when you build that kind of collective power and
people feel like this is how you get things, then
it's hard to repress. Right. It's one thing we're like,

(01:07:04):
we lost an election, why did we even bother? It's
another thing where like no, we wont like all this,
like this, that, and the other thing like we got
you know, like our regular schedules fixed. We got like
water on our shifts. We got this. You know, that's
what gets people into the mindset that they can change things.
And I think this is the thing that a lot
of people don't get. It's it's like, the difficult part

(01:07:24):
isn't getting people to agree that things are fucked up
at your workplace. Most people understand that things are sucked
up in their workplace. Difficult part isn't saying that, like, well,
this is a solution, right. The difficult part is getting
people to understand that collective action is the only way
to solve the problems, right even within unionized workplaces. Getting
your coworkers to understand that if we don't do this

(01:07:47):
as a collective, we will fail. And so like when
there was a like the first successful private hospital union
drive North Carolina popped off early. UM. Throughout that campaign,
they were constantly like demonstrations of collective power. We're gonna

(01:08:12):
do a vigil. How many people are gonna show up
to the visual We're gonna all walk around stickers saying
like safe staffing saves lives or like you know, um,
patients over profits. That sort of stuff and building that
kind of collective power together is what gets you. UM,
It's what gets you a successful Like that's what builds

(01:08:32):
a union. Fundamentally, union is UM. There's the legal thing
and then there's the real thing, and the real thing
is only as powerful as people are willing to fight
for and build that kind of collective power together. When
nurses were on straight and I talked a lot about
nurses because I know a lot about nurses, but like
you know, or like you know in um in Iowa,
when the John Deere strike happened, people were out on

(01:08:56):
the picket lines and people were ready to get hit
by cars to like stop scabs from coming like crossing
the picket line. And if you're not willing to do
that kind of stuff. And I'm not saying that you
need to put your body on the line for things,
but you do need to be willing to draw outside
the lines. Right, there's the law and then there's what
you can get people to do. And you will be
surprised when people start moving. They move fast and they

(01:09:18):
get really riled up, like this, funk, this, this is
what we're gonna do. And sometimes unions try and like
bottle that energy up um or you know, if you're
in a good union, you use that energy to fix things.
So I think that's kind of where land on all
this stuff. It's like be aware of like the pitfalls

(01:09:40):
of what organizing at work means. Everyone has a right
to organize at work everywhere in this country. If you
get fired for like for organizing, you can fight that
that sort of thing. Yeah, it's federally protected, like it's
this is this is a federal government thing, like you know,
this is this is this is what we got in
exchange for everything else is like like this is you know,

(01:10:00):
like this this is what we got in exchange of
putting our guns down. Is that Like yeah, the the
the actual Feds will be like, no, you can't do this. Yeah,
I mean and sometimes that doesn't sound like fold consolation
and it doesn't always work. But and I guess this
is the other thing is there are people who are like,

(01:10:22):
this is how we're gonna, you know, we're gonna when
socialism is everyone's in the union. And I guess, like
my take on it is is this is how we
build all the networks and get the skills and all
the necessary things to be prepared to do bigger stuff
down the road. So when we when workers are talking

(01:10:42):
to each other across like you know, at when Chicago,
when Chicago teachers went on strike, they didn't just go
on strike as the teachers. They also talked to the
They lined up their strike to go out as the
same as education like the school workers who are in
s C I you and they went out at the
same time, um, in order to incre improve the power

(01:11:03):
of the strike, because the more workers who are out,
less able the bosses are to like like to undermine
the boss either with people scabbing on each other or whatever.
And I think it's just like and like that's the
point of our labor council is like when like the
grad workers at Universe Chicago go on strike, we got
teachers out or we got well, there were teachers from

(01:11:25):
CTU out on those picket lines. There were nurses and
anew on those picket lines, and we were doing everything
we could to communicate to each other because like in
my work, it doesn't matter that I'm a nurse and
you're a secretary. We have the same boss. We have
the same problems a lot of the times. And so
I think people people want to do the thing, which

(01:11:48):
is to all have the glorious general strike that like
overthrows capitalism or whatever or fixes all the problems that
your work. But you know, starting everyone forgets all the
necessary intermediate steps to get to that point. And sometimes
it means just get the union in the door in
the first place, because like at a campaign I was
a part of here in Chicago where my University Chicago

(01:12:09):
bought a non union hospital that was out in the community.
Just getting in there, they were able to expose like
basically an entire hospital wide scheme of like racial racist
like practices around raises and compensation. And that is like
that first step and then fixing that right, because you
don't want to have like white worse nurses making more

(01:12:32):
than black nurses and black percent more than like did
immigrant nurses like Filipino or like Mexican nurses, get everyone
on the same page so that you're fighting together instead
of fighting each other. And you know, those are those
first steps that you take. And then and then you
start reaching out to people on other other workplaces or

(01:12:53):
other work areas and build that kind of militancy across
unions so that you can support each other. So maybe
a secondary strike is illegal right now, but that doesn't
mean that you don't have, you know, teamsters who won't
cross the picket line, right you know, how do you
go out and make it or you can build that
solidarity so that like in Buffalo and the UM the

(01:13:16):
c w A nurses went on strike and they want
pretty impressive things around staffing ratios. They literally had other
unions going out and picketing board members of their hospitals
businesses and like getting really really like aggressive with that
sort of stuff. So I think that I think that
people need to just big takeaway is is the biggest

(01:13:40):
barrier to any of this stuff, is just getting people
to believe that collective action is possible and they can
get you wins, and then making sure that you take
your time and be patient and understand that there's going
to be losses. But in the grand scheme of things.
Don't don't don't mistake what looks like a setback when

(01:14:05):
it's actually a victory for like a victory like for
a real like a defeat, and um, and talk with
people like that's what they hate that, Like, bosses hate
it when we're talking with each other and talk to
people you're not comfortable with. That's the That's the other
thing is that people are very nervous to talk to
people like. It's always funny when you run into people
who are ra ra like unions, ra ra like socialism,

(01:14:27):
YadA YadA YadA, and they don't talk to their co workers, right,
and your co workers are the people you're gonna be
around for maybe some years, and that's where you spend
a huge chunk of your time. And like, but you
don't know what's going on, they're like, oh, they're all hostile.
They don't want to know anything, they don't want to
do anything. Funny thing is is that oftentimes the most

(01:14:47):
people who seem very skeptical and anti union can be
flipped and sometimes those people become the best, like the
most dedicated people to the union. It also means that
you're going to talk to people you disagree with. Like,
there was a Trump dude who was on like the
argating committee for the like our last strike. He fucking
loved that thing. He was like, we're going on strike,
but you know, it's also a union full of black women,

(01:15:07):
and he shut the funk up when you know it
wasn't like, you know, being racist and ship, but you
know you're gonna be with those people. And part of
the thing is is that it's about how we're all
moving together rather than making sure everyone is on the
same page for every single thing, because the biggest thing
is the collective action and building that collective power, and
hopefully the collective power is hopefully the collective power outweighs.

(01:15:32):
It's if you stand firm on principles like anti racism
and fighting against discrimination and misogyny that sort of thing,
it actually builds the power of the union. I think
that's the other thing is that people are like, oh,
I don't you know, like, you know, working class people
are all racist or reactionary or whatever. So I'm going
to do that and that's how I'm gonna get that's
my inn And it's like, I think there are a

(01:15:53):
lot of people who like they really don't like, you know,
they don't like being around loud, racist assholes or people
who you know, say slurs, like especially if it's like,
I mean, you can make the arguments like this is
that's their way of dividing us. Our goal is to
be together. And historically speaking, the one thing that's done

(01:16:14):
the most too fight working class racism is union organizing. Yeah. So,
And I think also, like you know, in terms of
like building something that's actually you know, durable and powerful
on top of sort of just the division. I mean,
you know, even when it becomes stuff like transphobia. Right,
it's like, you know, if if you can convince people

(01:16:38):
to fight like first like fight for the person next
to them, right, you know, I mean this is this
is the thing that people like said a lot during
the Dreean the Burning campaign. But it was like, you know,
if people like, yeah, like, if you can get someone
to uh fight like fight for the person next to
you in a concrete way in the workplace, in a
way that's actually real for something that doesn't directly aff them,

(01:17:01):
you think, you know a A it is just like
the the amount of power that you've built there is incredible.
And then be also Okay, I forgot where I was
going with that, Daniel, please cut that. Hold on, hold on,
I can kind of build off. Let me just say this,
My personal experience is that queer women run the labor

(01:17:21):
movement and that like and that if you think that
people who have been bullied from the day they like
stepped into like a into a kindergarten aren't going to
be the people who are most equipped to fight bullshit,
bullying from a boss or injustice or bullshit you're fucking like, like,

(01:17:42):
just get the funk out because you haven't been in
a union and you don't know what you know. I mean,
you like the like people, unions are at their best
when they incorporate, you know, all, like when they are
fighting for everybody, because what a boss can get away
with with the weakest person, that's what they'll do to

(01:18:02):
all of us if they get the chance. And so
I think that there's this idea that's like, oh, we're
going to set we're not going to we're going to
ignore this or that sort of thing. It's like, you know,
that's when people like, you know, people will turn away
from unions as they feel like they're not being listened
to or taken seriously, and you don't know what people's
like identities are just because you see how they look.

(01:18:23):
And so I think that it's real important for us
to understand that if we're going to fight these fights,
we need to do so with the understanding that it's everybody,
and that the working class is a giant, multi racial
conglomeration of every identity in this country. Um, and that
the more marginal your identity is, the more useful having

(01:18:44):
a union is to like solving your problems. Like I said,
like racist racist compensation practices, there was no way that
was going to get fixed, Like it wasn't even uncovered.
People didn't understand that it was happening until like the
union got in. Doesn't mean there are other ways of fixing,
but it's one of the one of the most powerful
ways to fix things. I think that people just like

(01:19:06):
don't understand because they don't have experience. Because they don't
have an experience, they end up with they end up
with misconceptions about what they're going to get into, and
then they get disappointed. And I think the reality, I mean,
I think that the reality is not as bad as
sometimes it seems. But also you gotta go into all
this ship with open eyes. And I think that there's

(01:19:28):
and that's the other thing one of the fun things.
Maybe this will make it into the podcast. I don't know,
but um, one of the fun things is always like
hanging out with like if you like every workplace has
like its lefties just about, and like hanging out with
the lefties who just can't get their brains wrapped around
the ship that you need to have a union. I

(01:19:48):
think that there's like this idea that's like, oh, I'm
gonna talk to my friend. They're like they're like they
say they're a communists, so that the and then that
all those people do not always but they're they're sitting there.
It's like talking a bunch of ship about like the union.
They're a bunch of sellouts is or that, and it's
like literally it's the only thing you're gonna do to
get your like to fix the problem. And you're just like,
we're just trying to get this problem fixed. Can we

(01:20:10):
just set aside what you think needs to happen like
that you guys talked about it. You're like Spartacus League
meeting or whatever, like, oh, this isn't a real strike,
Like we're not going out until like for like you know,
three months. And it's like, you know, it's like the
sort of thing where um sometimes or oftentimes, and I
think it's because a lot of people kind of pick

(01:20:32):
up their politics almost like an aesthetic as opposed to
like a thing that like is about like fixing the
problems in their lives. And sometimes even I'm like, you know,
like this is the problem that I face is like
like shit is real like for a lot of people,
and you can sit there and talk about this or that,
and like you're you know, you think that things. You know,

(01:20:55):
you've got this perfect ideal vision of what things should be,
and then you've got this kind of imperfect thing in
front of you that is even though it's imperfect, it's
basically what you've got. And so it's like you've got
to kind of you've got to work with what you
have and fix it up and make it the best
that you think it can be. UM, but also understand,
because it's an organization full of people, that it's not

(01:21:16):
going to be perfect every time. And yeah, maybe your
union is going to do some liberal ship, you know,
and you're gonna and that's going to annoy you, but
you know, like, um, those people are still going to
show up on the picket line if you're like, if
you're organized and you're good and like, you know, that's
it's not the end of the world that your union
isn't perfect. Um, but you've got to do everything you

(01:21:38):
can to do your best to make it better because
if you don't, then then liberals will do whatever they're
gonna do, or conservatives will do whatever they're gonna do,
and then they will like furtter away this thing. Like
you can destroy a union if you aren't engaged. Like
a union can be destroyed by people who think that
you know, they're just like I just want to get

(01:21:58):
my rays and like go home them and like, you know,
if people's can main concern is like their healthcare or
like you know, that hour of prep time before they
start their shift or whatever should you know, start their
school day or whatever. Um, you know, a union can
like dissolve out from underneath you and people are like,
why is no one showing up to this thing? It's
because you didn't talk to people and find out what

(01:22:21):
it is. I think that's the other thing. It's like listen,
like there's this idea that you're gonna get up and
give a big speech and get everyone really excited about
your about like being in a union. But the main
thing is listening to people and listening to people who
are critics. You know, your coworkers who have complaints aren't
like people that you should ignore. Those are people who
need to listen to because those are people who they've
got I mean, everyone's got legitimate problems with how you know,

(01:22:44):
work is happening. And like just because someone's like, you know,
union is like, you know, trash, Like then find out
why they think it's trash and then try and be
like I want to try and fix out what can
we do to fix it together? That sort of thing.
I remember when when I was working, So I worked
at like maintenance and a county facility for a while,

(01:23:05):
and you know, so I was like a like I
was like I was like a summer higher basically, and
so we we weren't in the union, but like everyone
we were working for was in the union, and they
all like, you know, these are old ex construction worker
guys and you know, like they're in the union. But
like I remember that we show these conversations that were
like okay, so we have a union meeting this week,

(01:23:27):
just like do you want to be the person who
tries to talk about raising wages? And it was like
everyone was just like no, and you know, people you know,
like these guys are like very right wing and they
were just sort of like piste off all the time.
But it was interesting because the thing they were piste
off all the time about was that, like, you know,
their union didn't do anything like the union like they

(01:23:47):
they're they they're like they they were. They were basically
constantly annoyed that like the union didn't like the the
the union wasn't fighting for pay raises us and wasn't
sort of fighting And I think that was, you know,
an example of how this stuff sort of just fails
if if people aren't like if people don't feel like
they can actually do something like itself. I mean, and

(01:24:09):
they call it service unionism. There's this idea that like
um or like like that a business union's job is
to kind of serve you and you kind of like
they do all the work. Like one of the complaints
that some people who are not big fans of our
union our hospital is that like, oh well, other other
unions have lawyers negotiate the contract for you. And when

(01:24:34):
we negotiate, we have a room full of nurses who
are doing the who are doing the negotiations, and the
goal is to have it be as transparent as possible,
and like the idea that you're going to hand over
negotiations to a lawyer and somehow get a better deal
than than a room full of of the actual workers.

(01:24:56):
And it's funny because we have our bargaining team and
then like will periodically do something called open bargaining because
it's the thing that bosses hate. It's like they want
to make a deal like with a door shut right, um,
But there's no reason why a union has to do that. Like,
you can invite whoever you want to your bargaining. You
can invite community members to your bargaining if you feel

(01:25:17):
like you're man it could because management behind closed doors
will say all kinds of things, and you know, they'll
they'll trash talk everyone involved and they'll you know, and
they will make absurd demands about you know, it's like, oh,
you're all gonna take a pay cut, you know, on
this contract, that sort of thing, and they hate it.
They absolutely hate it when like workers actually show up

(01:25:39):
to these things, and so, um, I think that understanding that, like,
I think there's this idea that like some people are
big on like we have to be kind of like
secretive to like get the best deal, and like we
shouldn't be like we shouldn't be transparent with everyone about

(01:26:00):
what's going on because that's how like because then they'll
figure out some way to counter us. But in my experience,
my understanding is that the more transparent your union is,
the more involved people get, and the more able people are,
the more willing people are to put their time and
energy into it. Because that's what comes down to is

(01:26:21):
like people out to like everyone's working and busy and
their life life is hard and sucks, and so like
do you have time to dedicate to show up to
like talk to like if you why would you go
to a union meeting if when you raise the concern
like we want higher wages, and like the union like
staffer doesn't care if you get higher wages because they're

(01:26:42):
like while we're getting our union dudes, and like what
what then do we care? Right, that's like a huge problem.
And the part of the thing is that those problems
don't get solved if they if they exist, because they
that definitely exists. And and a lot of unions, more unions,
and uh than not if the workers don't get organized together.

(01:27:03):
Like right, we just saw a an election within the
Teamsters International where uh the halfa uh Jimmy Haffa Jr.
One of the half a kids was like president of
the union and was this like not doing a great
job and um, and like there was a rank and

(01:27:26):
file like push to get that guy uh unelected, you know,
and put it replaced with a rank and file worker
who wants to put actual time and resources into organizing.
You know. Like there's nothing sadder than a than like
watching a union campaign failed because the union clearly is
phoning it in, Like that's happened. I've seen it happen,

(01:27:48):
not inside my union, but in other unions. And uh
and I mean like at my workplace, there's several unions
and I've seen I've seen a failed campaign and it's
like obvious, like there's uh, you know, I'm not I
don't co sign everything that someone like Jaye mccavalary. I
think that's a share McCay clary has to say. She wrote,
like no shortcuts. Um, I don't sign off and everything

(01:28:10):
she has to say, but she has some really insightful things.
It's like if you're not organizing to win, like you'll fail,
and like you have to take this so seriously. And
that's where like I'll say that, like, if you've got
a choice between I'm going to put time into a
political political campaign versus a union campaign, You're going to
get way more bang for your buck. You're gonna get
so much more experience, You're gonna get like a durable

(01:28:33):
organization that's going to be around for years if you
put that time into a union campaign. Because like, imagine
winning an election right, um, except the politician you're running
against is the incumbent and they can um basically drag
every one of their constituents into like a meeting and
tell them how awful you are all the time and

(01:28:55):
lie and say whatever they want, and then they can,
you know, do all kinds of tricks to like basically
dismantle your campaign. So I guess like the thing that
I would say is that like if you if you
do it the right way and you actually win one
of those campaigns, you're going to come out way ahead
and sort of understanding like you have to talk to people.
You have to be super organized. You have to know

(01:29:16):
what people's issues are in their different targeting units. UM.
You have to find people like part of like it's
successful campaigns. I've been part of literally going on a
search to go find like the people that need to
be like signing cards and stuff. And you just have
to be a very good listener, ready to talk and

(01:29:37):
listen and hear what people have to say, um, and
then turn that um information into knowledge and knowledge and
power um and UM. I think that if you pull
it off, you have done something substantially harder than say,
like winning a school board election or something like that.
I mean, it's it's it really is. It's like taking

(01:30:00):
like those kind of skills that you would use to
like win some sort of small municipal election, and it's
like exponentially more hard because the rules are just so
tilted against you winning. So if you are serious about it,
if you're serious about changing the world, if you can't
like someone, uh yeah, I think Murray Buckschen once said,
if you can't run for dog catcher, you probably shouldn't

(01:30:23):
be talking about revolution, you know. But I think that
probably more you know, more appropriate to be like if
you can't win a union election, you probably shouldn't be
talking about revolution because even if you want to do
all the things, you need to have the ability, the skills,
the ability I mediate conflict, getting everyone on board to
do the collective action that like you would need to

(01:30:45):
do to successfully kind of like carry out. Like you know,
it's one thing to have the the grand insurrection. It's
the other thing to carry it forward and keep carrying
it to the point where you're over the line you've
completely changed the world, right, So and I think that
and so I just think that like UM and I
think that's similar things go with, like you know, tenant organizing,

(01:31:06):
community organizing. There's various types of organizing that use those
similar skills that you get in like a union campaign. UM.
And it's just a very different type of UM politics
and organization and skills that you would get from you know,
showing up for your local justice down and you know,
like knocking on the doors of strangers you'll never you

(01:31:28):
may never speak to you again. You know, when you're
talking with your coworkers, those are your coworkers. They are
going to be there until you're you know, you retire
or you're fired. Or you quit. So anyway, that's I
guess that's another good takeaway I think from all this.
So one thing I wanted to make sure to get
to is, so I think there's a lot of people

(01:31:50):
who are listening to this who working non union workplaces
and want to try to start this, and I wanted
to know what would be your recommendations for them. You know, how,
how how do you start this process? What does this
look like? In what kinds of conversations should you be
having with your coworkers? Yeah, for sure. So, um, I

(01:32:13):
think one of the first things that I think a
lot of people, a lot of people don't understand is
that there's an amount of risk and stuff too organizing
and that you're like, first off, like you should be
chill and like not like running around telling everyone you
want a union, because that's a great way to lose
your job. Um. I think the thing is is that

(01:32:35):
you build relationships and find out what's happening, like just
like you know, take from your experience and figure out
what's like in uh, like, man, it really sucks, like
I got like I got screwed over on my vacation
requests or like I you know, man, our raises were
really shitty this year, and I heard like, you know,
boss talking about like how much like like they've made

(01:32:58):
so much money that sort of thing. Um, So I
think that it comes down to you have to be
it's kind of like a combination of like like an
investigative reporter and like someone who is just really good
at like talking to people and just kind of like
understanding what's making them tick and understanding also that maybe

(01:33:22):
you're not the person who's going to get everyone on board,
but that finding other people who every like I think
the big thing is like who's like the most respected
person on like in your work area that sort of thing,
who like they know that the unit, or they know
the work area, they've been there the longest, they have
like the most experience. People look up to them. There

(01:33:43):
are the people who train other people that sort of thing.
Those are the people who everyone looks to when it
comes down to these sorts of things. And you know,
just you don't have to be friends with everybody, but
like doing it's I think it's really good to just
like two be open to you listening to everybody that
you work with and finding out what it is that's

(01:34:04):
really going on. Yes, I've noticed like in a lot
of places that I've worked, like the bosses often don't
really know what's going on either, like they and I
think that that that's something they can give you if
you understand how the process works and who's doing what
and what people like need, that gives you like a

(01:34:26):
big advantage over the bosses who just have no idea
what's going on. Which I think, yeah, I think it's
very it's very normal for bosses to really not know
what's happening, and there's always someone who does like figuring
out the people who really know how things work are

(01:34:48):
like those are like the those are the people who, um,
you want to be talking with and figuring out like
where they kind of stand on things, and um, you know,
I think like the first step is like just having
good relationships and people trusting you and you know, you know,
if you know, Like, I don't think everyone needs to

(01:35:10):
be a superstar workers sort of thing to be a
good union organizer. But like they always say, it's like
people who have the most problems oftentimes are people that
aren't don't make great organizers because people don't see them
as people to follow. But um, um, but I think
that it's important to just like talk with your to
like just figure out what's going on first. That's your

(01:35:32):
first step. Figure out what's going on? What are the
things I mean? And you can come around together in
you know, and like and how do you get people
outside of the workplace? So you talk like how do you,
like do you have like a group chat or signal
chat or like a What's app chat or Facebook group?
And where do you just like start kind of like
and you know, be very care be careful about who's

(01:35:54):
involved and just kind of like low key, just like
start talking with folks and identifying to people who who
are outside of your work area, who know people Like
sometimes it's you know, you'll talk to people and they're like,
I don't want to talk about a union, but you
can be like, do you know anyone who cares? Who
who has said anything about unions before? And so talking

(01:36:14):
to people to find out who they know. Like these
are all this kind of like crucial first steps to
like organizing. And I think the thing is is that,
like there have been times where you'll have a non
union workplace where if the people in a particular area
of of like a of like a hospital or like
a workplace wherever we'll do some collective thing that gets

(01:36:37):
some sort of results. So I think it's always like
it's like, let's get people to sign off on a
petition about like you know, like if of your coworkers
are unhappy with like races or something like that. Like
the more people that are involved in those first steps,
the more likely it is that it won't result in

(01:36:58):
retaliation and like you'll end up getting some sort of victory. Um.
So I guess like the thing that I would say
is just like be be ready for like people to
look at greet you a skepticism because like it's it's hard,
it's a hard thing to do, and um, always just

(01:37:19):
be finding out what is bothering people and then look
at little things that you can do to kind of
like flex power, like to like collectively flex your power.
And um, it can be as small as like everyone
bringing up the same issue at like a work meeting, right,
Like if you and it could be like, hey, let's

(01:37:40):
talk about this at this work meeting. This is and
if we all say something together like we're going to
be fine. Right. Um, So, like starting with those first steps,
I think it is the first like thing Like the
first thing is know what's going on, build relationships, be
a trustworthy person, Like you can't be like the unit
gossip or the the work a gossip that like knows

(01:38:01):
that's in everyone's business or stirring up stuff and be
successful at this UM. But if you are, you know,
if you're someone that people like trust or look to
or you know, like a person that people are like
they help solve our problems, those are the people who
I mean, you're going to be well set to begin
to kind of take the steps on that and then

(01:38:21):
you know, as you kind of build those kind of
like build that organization step by step. No, no union
UM is going to invest the time in a union
campaign if it's just you and like to other people
like you need like you need to get a room.
They're always say like, well, if you get a room
full of people together, I'm willing to talk to them.

(01:38:43):
And that's kind of the thing. And you know, Zoom
and stuff has actually made that a little bit easier UM,
which in some ways can be a weakness because you
end up with like it's a lot less commitment to
show up to a Zoom meeting that it is to
UM to show up at like a bar or a
place to work UM or a church or wherever it's

(01:39:03):
like a good like like neutral, safe place and people
feel like they can be honest with each other about
what's going on. UM. But at the same time, just
like being the more the the more people you get
on board with the thing, the more likely that it
will succeed. You'll attract support from like an actual union

(01:39:26):
that m is able to help you if you decide
that that's how you want to do it, or if
that makes sense in a legal context. And so I
just like always like start small, figure out the small things,
be willing to do like collective action to get little
small victories. And that's a great way to get started,
I think, and then like really do like sleuthing and research,

(01:39:48):
like figure out how things actually work. UM. That's like
you know, that was a problem with the best Market
campaign down in uh down in Alabama with those Amazon
workers is they didn't know how many people worked at
that facility, and then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, yeah,
we're going to include like an extra thousand people on
this vote, you know, like six weeks out, and you know,

(01:40:11):
like I don't want to I don't want to take
a dump on the people who did that. But like,
if you don't know that there's like another thousand people
or you don't have like everyone on board, you're not
going to succeed. So no, everything you can as you're
going in and do everything you can to find out
things or make buddies with the friends buddies of the
people who are gonna you know, know these things and

(01:40:33):
you know, and then support each other, like it means
showing up and like someone. Sometimes what we do during
these campaigns is someone will will have the contact for
someone who's interested, and then your job is to go
and find that person where they work and talk with
them and then talk with them while they talk with
their coworkers, or back up them while they're talking to

(01:40:54):
the co workers, because they trust their their co workers,
trust their coworker. You know, you're a random stranger, you know,
And then like don't be afraid to say, I don't know,
but I will find out. Right, there's like this there's
this pressure I think to like have all the answers
to like whatever people's questions are. And I think that
it's like, um, I think that it's like I think

(01:41:17):
that it's important to be honest when you don't understand,
but then do the work of figuring out the answers
for people. Um, and I think people respect that. And
you know a lot of people who are vocally against
these sorts of things up front, it's because they don't know.
And if you you know, you're like, no, we've got
a right to do this, or like, you know, the

(01:41:39):
the you know, a management will say things like managion
will say things like oh you will, um, you know,
the union will get in between our relationship with you know,
with you and us, right, And the point is is
that like, well, the union is us where the cod
where the people doing it, like everyone running. You can't
run a union if you don't have a bunch of

(01:42:00):
people involved from the workplace. And it's like and making
sure that people who are um, those people who end
up being kind of like spokespersons for everyone else, are
people that folks trust and they have like a good
like grasp of what everyone wants and yeah, so yeah,
and then like you know, don't get bogged down in
the legal ship. Like you know, collective action really is

(01:42:23):
like your most powerful tool, um, all the other kind
of like the grievances and that's some stuff. It's important
and you can't let it go. But it's also like
it's designed to kind of grind people down. So um,
you know, the more collective action you take, like, the
more likely it is that you're going to be successful
and keep people engaged and excited. Yeah, going back to

(01:42:45):
what you were saying earlier, this might mind up being
last episode depending on where this breaks down time wise,
But yeah, I think it's also it's just this is
going to take time and a lot of work, and
I think it's it's it's important age to understand going
in that this is a long and difficult process. It's

(01:43:06):
not gonna happen overnight and be that it's a lot
of work, Like you have to there's there's a lot
of things that you have to do. There's a lot
of sort of logistics, there's a lot of talking, there's
a lot of like negotiating, there's a lot of sort
of I mean just just even I don't know, before
anything gets off the ground, you have to spend enormous
amounts of time and effort doing stuff. And that's that's

(01:43:29):
that's like it's just the reality of it. So yeah,
there's there's no there's there's no there's there's there's there's
no magic bullet, like there's no sort of yeah, there's
there's no just like one thing you can do that
like magically makes a U need appear. It's a bunch
of people coming together and like fighting for it for
a long time. Yeah, I think that that's like the

(01:43:49):
main thing is like you're it's it's a cliche, that's
like it's a marathon not as prints. Um. Sometimes I
hate when people say that ship, but it's true, like
you you really do have like, um, you're in it
for the long haul, and a lot of times it's
like your people are ready to do these things when

(01:44:10):
they're like this is like I don't want you know,
it's one thing to pop up in a place and
be there for like you know, six months, be like
I need a we need a union, right, No one
you know that works at that place, trust you. They
don't know who you are, Like they're not going to
follow you to do anything or you know, or take
you you know, follow your lead. Um, it's the people

(01:44:31):
who are like I'm gonna be here, this is my
this is where I want to be, and you know,
this is a I want to be here for the
next two years and think of it as like a
long term investment in the quality of your life and
the quality of life at your workplace, because to win,
you have to be sticking around, you know. And I
think that's where it gets tough with people who are

(01:44:54):
in like precarious types of employment or different types of
and that's you have to start looking at alternate ways
to organize because maybe you're a precarious worker who does
maybe you drive, like for a rideshare service, or maybe
you like do delivery or like you know, um for
an app or whatever, you delivered for an app. And
I think the thing is is like that sort of

(01:45:18):
thing because of how and you know, these aren't like
new forms of work. This is actually really old forms
of work that are just like been like rebranded by
tech bros who have decided like they're like they're like
they're great geniuses like rebranding the kind of like precarious
work that was really like prominent like throughout the nineteenth century.
And it's like, so then what do you do is

(01:45:39):
you come up with ways to organize people regardless of
like oh, like I'm you know, I work for this,
like I work for Lift or I work for Uber,
and it kind of switches back and forth. Like the
thing is, it's like that's when you start talking with
you know, rideshare drivers across different like apps or whatever,
and then you come up with a way to work

(01:46:00):
collectively um to to change sorts of things. And sometimes
that's it's gonna be it's gonna be tough, you know,
And that's when I kind of look at those that
sort of thing is like this is where it's a
learning experience and maybe I don't get everything I want,
but you know, it's really important. I mean, it's like
building these networks that people who care about like what

(01:46:20):
they're working conditions are like, and you can pull things
off maybe unexpectedly that you didn't expect. We're going to
be like the thing, you know, like you may start
with something that looks like a union drive and then
you end up with something that looks like very different.
It could you know, could go in all sorts of
different directions. So um you know there and look outside

(01:46:43):
of the US, you know their countries where like in
UM I think that there have been some pretty successful
delivery app or going to organizing in London UM and
you know, I think that to a certain extent, like
formal extent, US unions have not been very successful in

(01:47:05):
organizing those workers because it doesn't it's hard to do
from the extant business union model, and so it's like
it's one of those things where you know it used
to be you know, they would have like you know,
the fight would be instead of trying to get like
workers are like a contract at a particular like work site,

(01:47:30):
you'd set up a hiring hall, like the i w
W would set up hiring halls UM and like you know,
for lumberjacks and that sort of thing, and those workers
are always precarious, right, but they would go trying set
up so that like people would only take jobs out
of the hiring hall, and that's how they would control
their like their work. And I think that more unions needed.

(01:47:51):
And part of this is like if there's any union
people out there who are in staff and that sort
of thing, is like there needs to be a serious
examination of how we do unions in this country. And
I think a lot of people inside unions understand that,
but no one has quite done it yet in a
way that's effective and I think that we really do

(01:48:12):
need to kind of re evaluate that sort of stuff.
So just you know, as someone who's going into like
a new sort of organizing campaign, just understand that like
getting the union contract isn't necessarily the end gold end
goal is to try and get your boss to do
things differently so that you're not like miserable at work.
And that might look like a contract, or it might

(01:48:33):
look like you know, a a one day like uh,
you know, app strike or something like that. You know,
you'll you'll figure you've got to figure out how it's
going to work. Like with you know, in healthcare, you know,
there's this idea that like, you know, there's the gold
standard of the strike where you strike until we win
and we're out for like you know, like two or
three months. Well, the problem is that there's an industry

(01:48:56):
of scab nurses and health care workers where at any
point they can bring in people to replace enough of
you that a hospital can maintain operations. And unless you're
super organized like they were up in um Buffalo, uh
with c W A like, and have a big network
of people and you're ready to go to like you know,

(01:49:17):
like picket board members houses and that sort of stuff. Um,
those long term strikes can end and defeat where you
end up with you know, you're all replaced with scabs,
and and it sucks and it's happened, and then you
gotta I guess you gotta learn from it, you know,
like we've there was a famous strike in Minnesota with

(01:49:38):
healthcare workers and they went out and they were out
for months and months, and there are people on you know,
going to the super kitchen to feed their kids and stuff,
and they lost right. And so my union tends to
do one day strikes, but instead of just being at
one hospital, we organized multiple hospitals across the country so
that it soaks up all the like the scat drives
up right, scabs, and it really like that. I think

(01:50:01):
ideas like intermittent strikes we're actually a really powerful tool.
Back when you know, back when it was the c
I oh, and it was like we're going to just
stop working until you fix this problem. Um, And that's
why they made them illegal. And it takes a lot
of work to pull them off. But if you can't
pull them off, that could be an effective way. And
if you're not in a union, maybe getting people down
for a one day like work stoppage at your work

(01:50:23):
or even you know, maybe it's like we're not starting
our shift, right. I've been in the room. I've been
in the room where it's like, no, we're not going
out to take that assignment until like we get our
staff situation set up like fixed. And you know, sometimes
it's just those collective actions are you know, it's not

(01:50:44):
the end, Like there's no end. I'll be all one
size fits all solution. Just be ready to kind of
like explore what it means, get all the resources you can.
There's groups like there's still like the Industrial Workers of
the World, which has really good organizing trainings OT one
on one one of too. I'll pitch that as a
member of as a also a dual carding member of

(01:51:05):
the i w w UM. But there's also Labor notes
UM and other groups like Essential Workers Organizing Committee that's
sort of things that like give you good like rundowns
on how to do the organizing work. So just be careful,
always be careful, to be aware that people are afraid.
Bosses use fear um to scare you guys, to scare everybody,

(01:51:29):
and like the the more people on board with a
thing the less fear. Like it's amazing when you're running
up into a strike and you're really firing on all
cylinders and like everyone in your like work areas like
we're getting together to take a picture, like getting ready
to go on strike, and it's like literally, i mean
when we went on strike, when our hospital went on strike,
it was the first time where like there was like

(01:51:50):
nurses on one places, the first time when all of
us were in one place ever. And it's this massive,
like coming together thing experience. It's and it's really hard
to describe when you when because you know, we're always
griping at each other about this or that thing's like,
but when you're actually all out there together at the
same time, when you pull it off, it's really amazing. Um.

(01:52:12):
It's hard, it's it's hard to describe, um. But when
you do it, it's like it's like the purest drug.
And so I've I've heard some people who are union
skeptical be like, well, you just experienced like the good ship,
and like what about all the defeats, Like, well, get
the little hits, get the little hits here and there,
and get yourself to the point where you can do
the big thing. You know, you're the whole thing is

(01:52:34):
like getting people to do the thing is like the
is it's like the perennial uh you know, curse of
the left, can you do it? Or curse of you know,
like the organizer activists or you know, whatever you wanna
call it. You know, it's just but you know, if
you don't do anything, nothing happens. You can all sit

(01:52:56):
and complain and nothing changes. So you know, the only
way to changes things just take those complaints and turn
them into collective action. Yeah, I think I think that's
that's that That that that that's that's a pretty good
positive note to end on. Just go do thing. Go
do the thing now. Stop tweet stop tweeting, stop tweeting
about it, Go do the thing. Um yeah, I think

(01:53:21):
that's I Like, I guess one last thing because I
talked about social media and talk you know, I talked smack.
I like, I've been off Twitter for some months now,
is it really cleared my brain? But you know, um,
being on finding the social media space where your your
coworkers are at is really important and that might mean
setting up like a discord or you know, what's app

(01:53:43):
or a Facebook group you can set up secret Facebook
groups that no one can see, and yeah, like you like,
Facebook will periodically shut them down. But like our hospital
has like a like a Facebook group with like two
thousand nurses and we and that's where we really amped up.
And it was a way for us to be talking
with each other and talk each other through, um, the

(01:54:06):
stress of setting up you know, this thing. And then
also like you know, people workers can't organize like like
people will do organizing even if like they don't have
like that full support. So like some coworkers that coworkers,
but members of my union went on strike at Coke
County this year, and the whole thing was organized practically

(01:54:27):
without like staff, right because the staff were barred from
being in meetings, like in person meetings because of COVID
and they couldn't go into the hospital because of COVID.
So people were very pissed about how things have been
going and they were talking to each other and we
organized that strike. They organized that strike on their own practically, Um,

(01:54:50):
you know, it lined up. They were off there. You know,
they didn't have that no strike clause like operating at
the time, and um, and they pulled off like a
pretty like a significant victory UM from there one day
strike and it really um really you know, like got
them some big wins. But and they didn't they didn't
need the union to do it for them. You know,

(01:55:12):
the union was kind of like a facilitation tool rather
than like the thing that got it done. I think
that's the other thing is that there are people who
think that like it's all dependent on like having like
this hero staffer sort of thing situation, and at the
end of the day, like if it's not the workers
doing it themselves, nothing's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, right,

(01:55:32):
the power. The power is with the working class itself,
and if the working class doesn't use it, nothing will
ever happen. Yeah, but if it does use it, I
will trail off here. It sounds good. So, John, is
is there any place that you want people to find
things that you do? Like? Yea, I used to be

(01:55:56):
on Twitter. Um periodically will show up on uh varn vlog,
which is uh see Derek Varnes vlog on YouTube. Um
there's I recommend people UH listen to. There's a group
of podcasts called the Emancipatient Network. I really like their stuff,

(01:56:18):
specially UM. There's a what's it called General Intellect Unit,
which talks about like cybernetics and the left. UM. They
have a lot of particularly cool stuff that's just come
out recently about UM, about strategy that I think is
really important for everyone to understand. UM. I was a
founding member of the UH Libertarian Socialist Caucus at d

(01:56:42):
s A. But I'm no longer in d s A.
There's a but that group is still kind of kicking around.
We're coming up with new things. Uh. Then then I guess, like, um,
the University of Chicago Labor Council is a group that
I spend a lot of time with. And there's also
a tennency unit at Highe Park with Loan, which is
a tenant union that you helped set up. And to hell. Yeah,

(01:57:07):
so you know, um, go out there and you know,
don't don't listen to me or don't try and find
follow me. Go like you go figure it out and
you're our neighborhood and ye, and set up a mill,
set up a million different you know, like labor councils
and worker committees and tenant unions that yeah, like build
build power. That's why I think I sometimes we are

(01:57:30):
afraid of the term power. I think that power is
that it's best when it's everybody. And so I guess
I might say it's like, go out there and build
community and worker power and um, don't be afraid because
fear is the one thing that they've got to wave
over our heads. And sometimes you just got to take
that jump and do the thing. And uh and that's

(01:57:53):
how we're hopefully going to win one day save the world.
And you can do this just like all of these things,
everything we've been talking about for the past like two hours,
these were all just done by ordinary people. Like there's
just there's there's it's all. It's all done by random people.
And you know that random person can be you. You
just have to go and do go to the thing. Yeah.

(01:58:18):
So yeah, this that this has been it could happen here.
You can find us on Twitter at Happened Here pod
and also on Instagram there and uh yeah there's other
cool zone stuff. Oh I guess yeah, well there's there's
there's a new show called Mega Corp. That that we
have that's about how corporations are bad, and the first

(01:58:39):
seasons about Amazon. It's out now. Okay, he just doesn't
have a Twitter, but Yeah, it's it's called Mega Corp.
And you can find it wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Yes, okay, bye,

(01:59:10):
m welcome everybody too. It could happen here. Um podcast
about I don't know, how things are kind of kind
of kind of crumbling and how we can maybe put it,
put stuff, put stuff back together. And today I am
excited to talk with a senior let's see what is
what is what? What is the actual? What's actual term?

(01:59:30):
I saw it A senior programs strategist at Wikimedia, Alex Stinson. Hello, greetings, Hi,
it's so good to be here. I'm very excited about
our talk today because I mean, this should this should
surprise nobody that I used to I used to be
a Wikipedia editor back in the day. Not not shocking

(01:59:53):
at all, if if if you know me. Um, but yeah,
we're gonna be talking about what kind of Wikipedia just itself,
and then also climate misinformation and disinformation and how we
can maybe create a better understanding of climate change in
its effects across kind of the world and how digital
information works. Those are all kind of topics we talk

(02:00:14):
about often enough, but never within the actual context of
like Wikipedia as an entity. Um, so I guess let's
let's just start there with with Wikipedia. And like for
those who don't, maybe maybe people like use website, but
they're not quite sure what it is. Like how how
do you actually describe what Wikipedia is? Because it is
like an interesting kind of amorphous entity. It's so many things. Um,

(02:00:38):
I think most people are used to thinking about Wikipedia
is like the fact checking device. Like I have a
bar argument with my friends and I pull out my
phone and yeah, yeah website at me. Right, Um, it's
a lot of things. It's three language Wikipedia's. Actually it's
not just one. Each of these communities has its own

(02:00:58):
editorial community. Um. At last I checked, it's like sixty
million articles across the languages. It's it's really it's a
lot of different content. Um. And a topic can be
on each of those Wikipedia's right. Um. And this is
important as we start talking about disinformation. Is like each
Wikipedia because it's edited by people in that language, and

(02:01:19):
it's written by that language community. Um. You know each
article is different and have different perspectives. Um. Two d
eighty thousand volunteers editing every month. Uh so this is
a lot of people, right, But the bulk of that's
happening on English, Wikipedia, and some of the larger languages
that are spoken across multiple cultural context And then there's

(02:01:43):
also a lot of other content sitting behind Wikipedia. So
there's a media repository, um. And there's a we called
Wikimedia Commons, and there's a database called wiki Data, which
kind of powers those little knowledge graphs on the right
side of Google and a whole bunch of other parts
of the Internet. Wiki data shows up in Amazon, Alexa

(02:02:05):
and all kinds of other places, right and and so
it's it's we're not just like one website. It's many websites,
lots of knowledge, lots of platforms, lots of context. Um.
And we'll come back to that the more as we talked. Yeah,
what really interesting part of it is like I don't
know my my personal kind of social leanings. I generally

(02:02:27):
kind of like things that are more decentralized in general. Um.
Other other hosts in the podcast are generally kind of
on like the progressive left libertarian spectrum. Um. And one
thing I do really appreciate about Wikipedia is is it's
more like it's It's not I I don't think it's
like open source, but it's the way it has decentralized

(02:02:51):
editing and all that kind of stuff. It's just a
really interesting model of of like what if a lot
more stuff worked this way? And I'm not sure like
how how much like a decentralization focus is there, like
consciously at people at the foundation and people who try
to like actually like run it behind the scenes and stuff. Yeah.
So Wikipedia grows out of the like open source movement

(02:03:12):
and the kind of early days of the Internet. Right,
this idea that like knowledge wants to be free, technology
wants to be free, software wants to be free. Um,
let's let's use the legal infrastructure to like create freedom,
right uh in that sense. And then there's also the
free as in like anyone can edit, and then the
free to like do whatever you want out there in
the world. Um. There there's people are like free as

(02:03:34):
in beer and free as in speech, right uh, and
those things are those things are also there's they're always
intention uh and they're kind of working. And as you
can imagine, especially when you get outside of kind of
multicultural Internet spaces like English Wikipedia, um, it can get challenging.
Like if you're in Croatia and everyone is speaking Croatian,

(02:03:56):
there's a very small bubble in which to create that
Wikipedia right, um. And so it's interesting in that sense. Um.
I think there's also another part of Wikipedia that a
lot of people don't see, which is the movement behind it.
So there's the editorial communities. People show up and make edits. Um.
But because there's this ideology that you're talking about, this
like decentralized, like we need to share knowledge or culture

(02:04:18):
or language on the Internet, there's also a whole social
movement sitting behind the scenes. Uh. And there there's a
podcast recently dot com The Wikipedia Story that kind of
captured that the essence of that, um. And it's it's
a lot of people like myself, So I started editing
in high school. Yeah, yeah, one of those like, oh

(02:04:42):
I know how to click the edit button and I
figure out how to use the Internet and that kind
of thing. But there's a lot of people that like
the intuitiveness of clicking and edit button on a piece
of open source software to create content is just not
It's not clear, right, And so you have to organize
and invite people in. And so we have a whole
movement that does that too. That there's about a hundred

(02:05:05):
organizations around the world that we organize events, work with
libraries and museums and educational institutions, and so there's always
this um kind of interesting dynamic where our values, which
is this like open software platform stuff has also lived
in our practice, in our outreach, like creating change through

(02:05:26):
society by sharing knowledge and education. Um. And so I think, yeah,
it's it's it's an interesting it's an interesting dynamic. Yeah.
I think that does create a really oftentimes beautiful reflection.
It could it can have some dark sides different once
in a while, but it is it is really nice
to have like kind of the ideology driving it being
reflected in the actions of operating it and spreading it

(02:05:47):
and that kind of thing. Um. So this is something
we kind of briefly touched on already, but I think
I'd like to move on to kind of why, like
how climate change in broader like social issues are covered
on Wikipedia, because you already mentioned like it's kind because
there's not a Wikipedia, there's many based on different languages

(02:06:09):
in places. It feels like to me, whenever social issues
kind of get covered on Wikipedia, it's going to be
in some part like a local reflection of whatever is
in that area. You know, if if there's like a
white liberal writing articles in New York, it's gonna be
different than someone you know, halfway across the world writing
them in you know, a much smaller country, let's say,

(02:06:30):
like Belarus, who's under like what I would call a dictatorship.
Um so that's gonna change kind of the nature of
what people are making because of that kind of divide.
So how how does that kind of crop up and
is there any like solutions to that or because because
the because of the decentralized thing, it's like, how much
can we like impose like who like I'm I'm, I'm

(02:06:53):
I'm not in Belarus? How much can I impose what
I want their Wikipedia to look like? Yeah, there's kind
of two or three dynamics you're you're touching on here.
The first is because there's kind of an intention bias,
Like something comes up in the news, and our Wikipedia community,
like people are within minutes of breaking news stories are

(02:07:14):
usually like editing the page, working to improve it. Right.
Um So if things show up in the you know,
European American press, it's very likely, especially something like English
Wikipedia will pick up on it and immediately cover it.
And because there are multiple perspectives in those press usually um,
kind of the ideological uh kind of multi sided nice

(02:07:38):
like works itself out because there's a lot of eyes
and a lot of people who know how to edit there, right,
um on in a kind of cultural linguistic geographic context
where there's like one set of stories and there's not
a lot of diversity. Um uh, this this happens. And
and I'm going to refer to the creation Wikipedia because

(02:07:59):
we we actually had an external researcher look at Croatian
Wikipedia because part of it has been kind of caught
by by folks with kind of very ideological leanings in
a way that's excluding others. And this is not good, right.
It creates a very one sided information environment and it
really reflects um, kind of the news dynamic going on there.

(02:08:22):
So when like breaking news happens, or when a topic
like a social issue or not neces like climate change
is not a social issue, right, this is a global
like life threatening issue. Um. When when something becomes politicized,
it's very easy for especially in smaller language wikipedias, for
few people to kind of swing the whole perspective on that. Um. So, yeah,

(02:08:46):
there's this breaking news issue and this is where are
kind of organized communities are really important. So the example
we when I point out of this working well UM
is in medicine. So are our medical community during the
all the outbreaks a few years back, UM in West Africa,
we're able to organize both on English and then languages

(02:09:09):
that were accessible for local communities, high quality coverage of
the medical content because it's like has impact on people's lives,
and so they recruited translators. They thought about, like what's
a simple way to communicate the story UM in that context,
and like what do the workers, the or the advocates
or whoever on the ground who's working with that crisis,

(02:09:32):
what knowledge do they need? Right? UM? And you see
like other open technology movements do stuff like this, like
humanitarian Open Streetmap has a similar kind of way of organizing.
They're like, hey, there's a crisis happening, UM, let's pull
people together from different parts of the world who have
the right knowledge or skills and like address the knowledge gap. UM,

(02:09:55):
so so you can solve it. It's just it's complicated. UM.
And you know, we've been trying to address as a
movement what we call the gender gap. So there's both
less women editors as women's content on many of the wikis,
and like, it's taken years, and it's very hard to organize,
and even when there's investment in it, um, it's it's

(02:10:18):
challenging to make substantial progress because there might be contextual
issues around it too. And so you can't just like
drop in on a Central Asian language with a like
Western perspective and expect to like change the culture of
the wiki overnight. You have to engage with it consistently
and be persistent and work on it over and over

(02:10:40):
and over again. We are going to take a short
break to hear a message from our lovely lovely advertisers
unless it's exomobile again, but we will be back shortly, Okay,
and we're back. Um. One one thing that we cover
decently part of my job and and and Robert Evans

(02:11:02):
job is disinformation and misinformation and how that type of
stuff spreads online, um, particularly you usually kind of linked
to like political extremism um or conspiracy theories or you know,
in that general kind of bubble um. And so, what
what type of kind of climate misinformation has really been

(02:11:23):
festering on various you know wikipedias across the world really
because like we were just were talking about like these
topics and how and how and like why it happens,
but like what are the main types of misinformation or
disinformation that is much more like prevalent. Yeah. Um, so
the first is just kind of neglect of uh, content

(02:11:44):
that's happening across the various things related to climate. Um.
But we've identified on English Wikipedia over three thousand, seven
hundred articles that are directly related to climate change. Uh.
We don't have a very big editorial community in English
on that topic. That's like interesting fluent in the science
and fluent and the other stuff. And then you go

(02:12:05):
out to the other languages and like some of the
languages have like three thousand of them, some of them
have like two hundred, right, um, And so there is
both um and some of that content was like translated
several years ago, right or five or ten years ago,
and yeah, you know, and like the climate rhetoric has

(02:12:25):
really changed it and like numbers and statistics all that
stuff gets updated every year, and it's yeah, that is
there is there's there's a lot to cap with and
like reading the IPCC report or looking at any of
the consensus science, there's like a lot of change that
you have to be influent in, like science communication, you
have to understand like where to look for the information. Um.

(02:12:47):
And it's interesting. My partner is a Spanish language speaker
and she was in a kind of workshop for journalists
in Argentina for climate communication, and the work shop is like, oh,
you should cite the Guardian, right, so even as to
to kind of understand this climate stuff. So a lot

(02:13:07):
of these local language contexts, there aren't even good sources,
and the sources they do have are often citing like
the dominant narrative that's going on and like the anglophone
news cycle, right, because there's not a lot of climate
communication going on, and so there's just a lot of
complexity involved in updating that much content all the time. Um.

(02:13:29):
And so the bulk of the stuff that kind of
creeps in is like this neglect, right. It's like some
dominant idea in the narrative just hasn't been updated and
like we need someone to update it. Um. And that's
like an organizing problem, right, that's uh, like we need
more people who are science literate, who speak the local language,
who understand how to edit Wikipedia. Um. And that's trainable,

(02:13:51):
like we can do that. Yeah. The reason that matters,
the neglect matters is it stops people from making decisions
about climate change because they don't have like an accurate
sense of what we need to do, right, which is
cut the false fuels, increase increased resilience, do adaptation like
actual political change, right. Um. And so so that that's

(02:14:15):
just it's a problem. Um. The other stuff is a
bit more it's a little bit more complicated. Um. One
of the things that happens is that, as you know,
there's quite a manipulation of narrative that has happened around
climate change. There's this really great podcast by Amy Westervelt

(02:14:36):
about how the fossil fuel industry like got its message
into schools in the last three years in the US,
and like that narrative is just so prevalent. And so
one of the things about wikipedias that we try to
do a balance of positions. If there are reputable sources

(02:14:56):
kind of describing or analyzing a topic, and this is
back to your polarization question too. If they're reputable sources
describing on topic, we try to give them equal weight
and balance across the article. The problem with climate is
that some of the narratives that look like reputable sources

(02:15:16):
are just pumped out of fossil fuel industry funded sink tanks, right,
and these things are not truthful narratives, right. Um. And
so the BBC ran an article, uh two weeks ago
on kind of climate denial and some of these smaller languages,
a smaller language Wikipedias, and what they found was a

(02:15:39):
lot of these narratives being given equal weight with the
climate science. Um. And I took a look our community
after that BBC article came out, started looking across all
the language Wikipedia articles about just the main climate change page,
and they found thirty one Wikipedia's that had some of

(02:16:00):
that like equal weight of bad climate science. Interesting, yeah, um.
And you know the BBC article only found like five
or ten, right, We found another lot a lot more
yeah yeah yeah. And so it's it's like a it's
a really like these narratives just seep in and you know, again,

(02:16:20):
I'm gonna go back to the Croatian example, like if
your media environment has been locked down by a certain
political rhetoric, too, those narratives might have traveled from like
the Anglo sphere into these other spaces and then gotten stuck, right,
and it's just like keeps getting recycled and so that

(02:16:43):
causes delay. UM. And I was listening to your podcasts
recently about soft climate denial, Like this is what's happening
in other language environments, right, is people are rehearsing this misinformation.
It's seems like a valid position because it's been rehearsed

(02:17:03):
so many times by by folks. Some people who are
championing that position are like doing so unknowingly, and then
the process, we're kind of disconnecting it entirely from the
source of the information, and that is just it's it's
really bad. One interesting thing that I thought of when

(02:17:24):
you were bringing up like sourcing, how sourcing itself coming
an issue in like in the States. There's kind of
like a joke that like wicked like when people use
just Wikipedia as like as a source to be like
they just they just link the article. But like that
is the default for so many people when they begin
begin a research project is like, Okay, what's the what's
the what is what does Wikipedia have on it? What's

(02:17:45):
the sources Wikipedia uses? Um and kind of branch off
from there. It's a very common thing. So I'm not
sure what like how different Internet culture will be different
in in other countries. But if they do not, if
they if they don't have like the bas sourcing necessary
to create like a decent home page article, than just

(02:18:05):
sourcing from Wikipedia in the first place becomes so much harder.
Um because you like you were saying, like just use
the Guardian is is like one of the things, like
that's not horrible advice, But if it's only just from
one thing, then that that's going to change the entire
nature of like coverage and information on specific topics. Yeah. Yeah,
I've had just be really interesting kind of thing that

(02:18:26):
I never thought of before is how different countries wikipedias
or like language with Wikipedia's will have will have like
different sources. So then getting information from from the page
it's just going to be so different. And like yeah,
like like the whole, like the whole like teared of
sourcing is just completely changed. Yeah. And and I think,

(02:18:48):
like you know, in medicine and most medical practitioners expect
most of the medical literature to be in a handful
of languages like English and Chinese and that kind of stuff, right,
and like part of your professional work and part of
like saving people's lives is being able to use those sources.
And so if a medical Wikipedia article has a translation

(02:19:08):
from like an English article into another language, and you're
distributing that to medical practitioners and they find the citation
and it's in English and they can go follow the source,
like that's not such a big deal. But with in
a topic like climate UM, where the vast majority of
the people that have to make decisions on this information

(02:19:29):
do not have access to other languages. Maybe their access
to English is through like machine translation, Google or something
like that. Like having not having sources in your local
language UM, or just having the sources that were translated
from an English Wikipedia article, which happens a lot on
these smaller language wikipedias, is kind of like not helpful

(02:19:53):
for climate decision making UM. And this is where it's
UM and it's easy for example, and a lot of
these like Eastern European languages or Central Asian UH languages
for like a politically spun news site opinion about something
to kind of creep in at the same level of

(02:20:13):
of kind of UH validity as as another as scientific
research as the the you know, consensus understanding of the
climate prices. So how how might I know we talked
about like like trainings for like journalists and people to
start editing Wikipedia's in their language. But like, how how

(02:20:34):
do we kind of improve climate communication overall with open
access to information and you know, creating more linguistic um
diversity and stuff. Yeah, well, I think there's like a
couple opportunities um in this, and then I there's some
other misinformation I also want to talk about too, UM.
But I think that this, the sourcing one, is a

(02:20:56):
particularly challenging one. UM. We need like more basic science
based climate communication and more languages. And I'm not saying
like just the the like more languages, like the big
un languages are the ones that are kind of colonial
across cultural languages like Spanish or French or Arabic or

(02:21:19):
you know, all these languages that have been used across cultures.
We also need it in local languages, um. And we
needed to be evidence based and we needed to be
an audience based. Right, So if if someone is like
searching online in Swahili about how like drought is happening
in Kenya right or Tanzania or or the you know

(02:21:39):
there's suddenly flooding or like I need to deal with X,
Y and Z adaptation to the climate crisis, UM, which
is by the way, what all of the global South
is doing right now, right, Like, the global South is
having to adapt to this crisis that polluting countries has
have made, and we're not at actually giving them the

(02:22:00):
resources to the to the problem that we've cost you. Well,
it's not even like giving the research. We're not even
like the people who are like, we want to adapt
our society. We're not resourcing the folks on the ground
who have the agency, who have the understanding, who know
how to do the research in the context, who know
how to do the communication in the context. Right, We're

(02:22:21):
not even like bolstering their their request for help, right,
Like the the the UN Climate Conference kind of failed
on this adaptation funding, right, And uh, this is you know,
this is where like a platform like Wikipedia and like
kind of approaching this from a knowledge activist perspective where
you're like, there are people who need this knowledge to

(02:22:45):
address like understand what's happening around them so they can
make decisions. That doesn't like you know, yeah, we need
those kinds of information. We need open source knowledge, not
just Wikipedia but one of the platforms UM. And and
you know the you all do open source investigation, and

(02:23:06):
you're used to like open source software communities, and I
listen a couple of your podcasts and you're kind of
constantly speaking back to those open communities that that come
out of like anglophone software spaces, UM, and like we
need to acknowledge that, Like we we figured out how
to acknowledge, but we haven't given all those tools. We

(02:23:28):
haven't transferred the knowledge on how to do it. We
haven't adapted those tools to other parts of the world
and other languages. UM. And so just like starting to
look for these other communities, asking for the people, like
who's ready to organize, like giving them money to go
do it? Right? These things are like really practical, UM,

(02:23:51):
And I think we're we're not We're not often not
listening or we're not looking for that solution. And reinder
like most of the people having to adapt UM are
in the global South and speak other languages, Like we
need to be there in that language if we want
the climate crisis so like resolve itself without you know,

(02:24:14):
destroying people's lives. Yeah, absolutely, UM. Yeah, That's that's the
thing we try to bring up, is that the people
is going to be initially worse affected are the people
who are already kind of not in the greatest situation
in the first place. That's like, how how like how
like the areas that are gonna that are gonna experience

(02:24:35):
the most flooding, the most extreme weather events, all this
kind of stuff. It's it's it's not it's not starting
with something like New York City. It's starting with areas
that are already dealing with a lot of like local
issues and now this is just something else on top.
And yeah, fixing all of that is uh, I mean,
fixing all of it's impossible. We can we can only
take like small adaptive steps to like mitigate some of

(02:24:58):
the worst as X And yeah, I mean that that's
that's stuff that comes up a bunch. But you mentioned
you wanted to at least briefly mentioned, um, some other
forms of disinformation. Yeah, so we we've also witnessed a
couple of times, um where something will hit like breaking
news or become a political position in a context, and

(02:25:18):
then like we will see bad actors show up on
Wikipedia and try to manipulate it. Um. I have two
examples of those. The first is about a year year ago, Uh,
we found a group of accounts editing about some of
the inter Amazonian highways that the Bolsonaro presidency is building

(02:25:42):
through through the Amazon UM where they were trying to
remove the environmental and indigenous people's UH impact assessments from
the Wikipedia articles UH and so like basic human rights stuff,
basic you know, healthy environment things that the government is

(02:26:02):
like expected to follow through on. We're being like manipulated
out of the articles for a more like pro economic
growth narrative UM and so you know, it's we can't
like the shift towards this like very extreme right like

(02:26:23):
economic growth only version of reality UM does play out
on the wiki. Now, we we were lucky that this
was fairly trans like fairly easy to see once we
found it, but we had to coordinate across UM, English,
Spanish and Portuguese to like address the problem. So so
we need like multi lingual communities who are kind of

(02:26:44):
coordinating and talking to each other to address that. UM.
The other thing we've seen is like, so did you
I don't know how well you follow the climate movement? UM,
but did you see when Disha Rabb got arrested and India?
By chance? I don't think so. So she she's a
youth climate activist that was part of Friday's for Future India,

(02:27:08):
which is like a group kind of sister group of
the group that formed in Europe around Greta Twinberg. Right
um and uh she uh um. Her Gmail account got
attached to a Google doc. Uh just seen active on
a Google doc that was about sharing social media about

(02:27:31):
the India the farmers protests in India, which have been
like a real political sticking point issue. And I had
written so I'm both a volunteer and a professional who
organizes the community. And in my volunteer time, I had
written the biography Adisha Rabbi like months before the Indian
government kind of identified her with this social media tool kit.

(02:27:54):
And um when she got arrested for something that's like
just basic social organizing tactic social media, umu, the kind
of Hindu nationalist social media environment like zoomed in on
her Wikipedia article and on all these other social media
presences she had, and they tried to silence it. Um

(02:28:18):
be like okay, we need to leave this article. And
uh Fortunately, like a group of us were watching the
page and we caught it and we're able to stop that.
But there's kind of the the the kind of flash
mob situation that happens a lot now in social media,
where it's that is, this thing has been polarized, now

(02:28:39):
we need to go attack it. Um. And so you
can imagine like English Wikipedia has a healthy immune system
for this kind of stuff. It like sees it, but
it has enough, it has enough people that it can
do that. Yeah. Yeah, but you can imagine on a
smaller wiki that the narrative could shift and stay permanently
shifted quite quickly. Yeah, um if that happened. And so

(02:29:02):
that that's another concern. Right, So there's like the subtle
like a few accounts just like quietly removing things, and
then like the act of political um kind of intervention
that happens. And in terms of like disinformation, do you
see the Wikipedia as being kind of susceptible to like
intentional disinformation campaigns of people slowly kind of editing the

(02:29:23):
ideology of of articles to to push kind of some agenda.
What whether that be like individually and like like you know,
more of like a crowd operation um or even like
run by like people with political power, um. Like do
do you how much of a risk do you see
that with this kind of open source idea is that's
of of like intentional slow dissemination of disinformation on like

(02:29:45):
important articles and stuff. Well, so I think I might
reframe your question a little bit like, uh, all open
source kind of knowledge spaces are susceptible to that, right. Um.
The question is to like what degree and how harmful
is it going to be? Right? Um, like is it

(02:30:07):
is it like very open to this and will it
cause a lot of problems? Um, the bigger language wikipedias
have healthy immune systems, but we we have a combination
of kind of bots that are like AI generated that
flag bag edits, and then we have a lot of
community patrolling happening. And even in some of the smaller
communities that have like medium sized editor communities, like Swedish Wikipedia,

(02:30:31):
it doesn't take a lot for that local language community
to patrol the pages and like be like oh okay, um,
these changes are kind of weird. I can roll it back, Um,
like this doesn't seem like it fits our culture of Wikipedia.
The problem is when a language Wikipedia has very few
editors and they're not active all the time. Um, And

(02:30:54):
and so this is where we need kind of more
eyes on the content, right because it's it's very easy
for like a really small language community to kind of
have a little bit of content but never see it maintained.
Um And and this is where the like where where
our communities are forming around these languages, like a lot

(02:31:15):
of the West African languages for example, that our communities
are are kind of organizing in we we like invest
in those communities existing and like figuring out the governance
and training people how to edit and getting access to
the kind of technical skills to do this. Um. And
you know, we have kind of systems that we're hoping

(02:31:36):
over the next few years invest in that resilience, right,
like building a code of conduct making it easier for
communities to see this kind of stuff. But it is
three languages, right, um yeah, And it is a volunteer
built system, and you do need a healthy editatorial community
in order to keep a wiki from like drifting too much. UM.

(02:32:00):
So a good example of listening to get a reference
creation because it's the one we've done research on, Like
it was possible for a few people to push people
who are more in consensus with the global position on
various topics out of the wiki. Um. And that's just

(02:32:21):
like we we have to find a balance between like
local language. Uh and this is my personal opinion, right,
we need to find a balance between kind of local
language sovereignty on this stuff and also not like radicalizing
its topical environment. And we and we see this particularly

(02:32:41):
on impactful topics, right, like ones that directly affect like
politics or in the kids climate crisis, like people's livelihoods
and ability to function in society, right. Um And we
just like we need to be cautious about that. But
but you know, Wikipedia is a common resource. Uh. And
I think this is really important. Like the way Wikipedia

(02:33:04):
works is you know, the Wikimmunitia Foundation provides the servers,
We fund our communities, we support them, we help them
work through governance issues. But like the we need editorial
communities to maintain it. That's what those two thousand people
are doing as volunteers as they're building an editorial practice

(02:33:24):
that makes the content work. Um. And and we we
need that um. And so we need you know, like
minded communities like the people for your podcasts who are like, oh,
we need the Internet to be reliable and have accurate
information a lot to show up um. Because if we
don't do that, it's it's really like it's the common

(02:33:44):
resource we we we have a decent international listening MACE
as well. UM, and I'm thinking like, what would would
you like recommend people you know in different countries or
even people inside inside kind of like, uh, you know
the States, America, Canada, the UK who are like multi langual,
would you at least encourage them to browse other language

(02:34:07):
wikipedias and maybe start making edits when they see this
type of misinformation popping up. Yeah, so I to kind
of perspectives on this one. Um, look for a local
organized community. So we we have what's called Wikimedia Affiliates.
These are fifty organizations around the world. They regularly run events,

(02:34:28):
especially now that we're leaving COVID, increasingly more in person events.
They trained folks like look for them in your context
and if you need help finding, you know, find me
on Twitter and I can connect you with those communities. Um.
And the other part is small edits. So I think
a lot of people look at Wikipedia and they think

(02:34:49):
about like a traditional publishing platform, right like, oh, you
know I have to write the whole whole article. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I have to be a master. And and the secret
sauce to all of this is most people start with
one citation, one comma, one type of fix, and they
do a handful of those a month, and then they
keep coming back. And as you do those small edits,

(02:35:10):
you start reading the content more carefully and fixing the
things you can fix. And so I recommend going in
to like add one citation. Like if you go and
add one citation today, that like makes life better, or
you fix the communication on the sentence. UM. The other
part of it is, you know, I said, there's these
organized groups, uh for the climate in particular, I run

(02:35:33):
this campaign called Wiki for Human Rights, which is focused
on UM. We with it's a theme that we kind
of identified with you and human rights on the right
to a healthy environment, which is this new human right
that has been acknowledged by the Human Rights Council. And
we're we're organizing kind of writing contests and editor the

(02:35:53):
fons and kind of train names for communities to go
and look for the human dimension of the climate crisis.
So I think when we think about climate communication, a
lot of people are like science right there, like, oh,
this is you know about how weather systems work and
how the atmosphere it forms, and the kind of stuff
and the content that's more impactful. Is this like human

(02:36:16):
inflected stuff like how does the climate crisis in fact
you as an individual and agriculture in the cities you
live in, and the clothing you buy in the manufactured
goods in mine around the corner that's producing water pollution
that's gonna harm your children for the next thirty years, right, um,

(02:36:38):
and and that is the kind of stuff that we're
encouraging communities to pay attention to. Is it is more
the like justice and human rights oriented perspective on these topics?
And your cat is very cute. Every once in a
while they love to love to take the camera. Um

(02:36:59):
and so yeah. So, so if you follow me on Twitter,
I will I can hook you up with that campaign
as well. Yeah. Yeah. Where where can people find you
online and to learn more information about, you know, the
various kind of topics we've discussed today. So, um, search
if you're interested in climate change stuff on Wikipedia English.

(02:37:20):
Wikipedia has a wonderful wiki project climate change that has
a little tab at the So if you search wiki
project climate change on Google and you find there's a
tab at the top that says get started with easy
edits and that kind of can get you oriented to like,
where can you affect English Wikipedia on this? And you know,
once you find a gap on English, it's easy to

(02:37:41):
find it on other languages. UM. For the kind of
learning about Wiki free human rights, you can search for
that um and or follow me on Twitter. UM s
A D A D S sad ads on Twitter. Um. Uh.
We also have a group called Wikimedians for Sustainable Development
who's kind of communicating on Twitter, which is the group

(02:38:03):
that's really focused on sustainability topics more generally. UM. And
you know, the other way to look is find something
you've been reading about about the climate crisis or sustainability
issues in the news. Look it up on Wikipedia. See
if it's missing. UM. If it's not, click that edit
button at a sence. Right. UM. The good example of this,

(02:38:25):
I learned about a park and uh the center of
Nairobi that's being protested by environmental activists because some of
the big trees were being cut down a Huru park. Right. Uh.
This came by on my Twitter handle, Like I'm not
connected to this at the moment, right, UM, But because

(02:38:46):
I had news sources, I had three or four news sources,
I could say really simply in two thousand one the
park came under scrutiny for renovation that included removing old trees.
That's a climate action, right uh. And I think you know,
I am constantly overwhelmed by the climate crisis, as as
a lot of people. Yeah yeah, And and like just

(02:39:09):
being able to tell that little story, like hey, um,
the decisions people are making are not productive here, right Um.
Just just gathering that story is important. And what's important
is Wikipedia plays institutional memory on this, right. I feel
like you know, a lot of a lot of activists
work is very temporal. It's very like in that moment,

(02:39:32):
right um. And if it doesn't get documented on Wikipedia,
the local news sources are gonna get lost in the
wind of time. Um. And so I think you know,
if you to do your little activist motion, like a
sentence describing what happened in a moment where resistance was happening,
is like a huge step forward, right um, because it

(02:39:55):
connects the environmental crisis, climate crisis, human rights issues too,
like daily lives. Like people look up this park probably
on Google because they want to go there, right or
they read about it because people are like when was
it created? What was that protest that happened? There the
other day. And if those sourcesn't there, um, then it

(02:40:15):
doesn't really exist in their minds. Yeah, it doesn't exist
in their minds. And I think that's like one of
the big issues with climate crisis, and you know, amplified
even worse in other languages, right, is that people aren't
making that connection. They aren't seeing it around them, and
they're not you know, kind of connecting action to how

(02:40:36):
we address it. That. Uh, that is a really good
that's a really good point. And yeah, I mean I
will encourage everybody to to start making small leddits. That's
what's what I did for a long time before I
moved into like open source um journalism and reporting. It's
a great way to get started, and it's a great
way to get just start start disseminating small bits of

(02:40:58):
information because the only thing that we can really do
is people is small steps. We can have like an
adaptive goal in mind, but you need to take small
steps to get there. And that is a really great
way to start influencing the way people think about climate
and our situation. Um. Yeah, And and I think too,

(02:41:19):
you know, your your podcast kind of appeals to folks
who are interested in like finding the truth and reality, right,
and that that's that's like that that investigation is what
a Wikipedia article is. It is like one ten hundred
editors out there in the world trying to go like,
what the heck is this topic about? Right? How do

(02:41:40):
I compile my notes? Uh in a way that helps
other people? And I think in the face of the
climate crisis, Dr Ianna Johnson says, like, find the thing
you're good at, find the thing you're passionate about, and
find the thing that like or that that makes you
feel good and you're you're just rewarding, And find the
thing that actually like helps affect the climate crisis. Right,

(02:42:01):
And a small idn'ta on Wikipedia meets your kind of
knowledge needs. It's very satisfying because people will read it
and it is incriminal change in the right direction, right,
people will make decisions on it. Uh. Yeah, I mean,
and I guess uh, I think that I think that
probably closes this up today and let's see anything else

(02:42:23):
to add. Um, I guess one more plug for your
Twitter so we can get get more eyeballs on you.
Um and the work that you're doing. Yeah, um so
at S A D A D S. It's my long
term handle on the internet and you you can find
me Oliver Plate uh and I tweet about Wikipedia on

(02:42:45):
the climate crisis. Will and we'll we'll link the Wikipedia
wiki project climate change page in the description for people
to find. Thank you so much for taking time to
talk to us all about these topics. I'm really really great, uh,
really grateful to have this type of knowledge readily accessible
to more people. Also, you know, in the spirit of Wikipedia.

(02:43:09):
Thanks so thank you so much. Um. You can follow
us by subscribing to the feed and on Twitter, Instagram
at Happened Here pod and cool Zone Media. See you
on the other side, everybody. It's could happen Here? That's

(02:43:43):
the podcast that this is. It's about things crumbling and uh,
how to maybe uncrumble some of the things that are crumbling.
And today when we think about the crumbles, when you
start thinking about the hell world that that we're all
increasingly inhappening, the scar y ship that is getting scarier
day by day. Number one on a lot of people's

(02:44:04):
list is going to be the cops um real cause
of anxiety for a significant chunk of people listening to
this podcast right now, including its hosts, Um Alexander you
and I have chatted before on the air. Our guest
today Alexander Williams, Um, you were a police officer in
the past and you are not currently and you want

(02:44:25):
to chat about Um the topic kind of the way
you pitched it to us is there's a lot of
aspects of police training that are very similar to what
colts do to indoctrinate people, and you kind of wanted
to speak on that. Yeah, there's a lot of there's
a lot of cross sections. Um, so, yeah, I used

(02:44:45):
to be a cop. I was in law enforcement for
just shot at fifteen years until I woke up and
got out luckily, and uh, all the stuff that's been
going on over the last couple of years, and the
craziness and really ingesting a lot of stuff around, you know, cults,
and I started going down that the little checklist that

(02:45:07):
you go down of like are you in a high
control group? And man, they all just look just deinged
in my head every single time of like, oh, this
is exactly what it was like being a cop. Oh,
this is exactly what it was like being a cop.
And I'm curious, kind of before we get more into it,
do you want to walk us through a little bit
more kind of what was your process of UM, I know,

(02:45:28):
de radicalization isn't exactly the right term, but I think
you know what I'm getting. It's it's in the it's
in the it's in the neighborhood shore. Yeah. Mine. So
I was raising a cop family. My dad was a copy,
went the whole nine yards, retirement, the whole thing. And
when I got into it, just shy of twenty two

(02:45:49):
years old, which that's young to be making these kinds
of choices looking back on it. Um. We had talked
on the last podcast of your season one, UM about
when my brother got arrested and got beat by my
own team, my my own crew, and the jail that
I worked with, which is the jails is where I

(02:46:10):
primarily spent most of my time. And I think that
that was, uh, item number one kind of on my shelf,
like people call it. That's that's that's a big one
to right on the shelf. Um. And during my training,
I've always been an obstinate little bastard and I've always
had that kind of like authority defiance. And in training

(02:46:34):
they say start telling you really early, like hey, you
know what you know where your family we understand you,
We're going to get you. And then like the language
even then kind of flared red flags wrong for me.
And whenever a group of people says we're your family,
and so right, like that's what you like, we're your
family and you can talk to us anytime. Fine, we're

(02:46:56):
your family and I got your back. Fine, we're your family,
and that's why you need to do this. Things have
got to ride. It's it's it usually is where your
family comma now? Yeah? Yeah? And yes. So that that
was like literally day one, it was where your family now,
where you're you know, they use all that language, the
familiar language, where your brothers, your sisters. Yeah. And the

(02:47:20):
one that kicked for me and my brain was they said,
within a year, you're not gonna have any friends that
aren't cops, Like all of your civilian friends are going
to be gone because they're not gonna understand you and
they're not going to be able to be around you
and handle you. So within a year, you know, we're
going to be everything you've got. And for me, that

(02:47:42):
was like that was a line in the sand, and
like part of my brain was screaming like nope, never
letting that happen. I will not let my uh myself
not have any non cop friends. Yeah, that's probably good
because that's I mean, you have like when it it
gets to it's the same thing that happens to anybody, right,
like some people got like last year in Portland and
Activist Brain where there was this all the people were

(02:48:04):
spending time with other people were out protesting, and so
we have this really intense bond and we also are
kind of separated, increasingly separated from the people around us
because we just can't communicate with anybody else. And that
kind of going on for years and years, because this
is your career for twenty something years, and it's like, yeah,
that would you'd be, you'd be after a couple of
years of that you were inhabiting a different planet. They

(02:48:26):
really are. And it's the how you said that, like,
you know, this is usually twenty to thirty years, you know,
because you want to get that sweet retirement at the
end after you've abused your mind and your body for
three decades um. It was keyed off something that you
and Garrison talked about in a previous episode of The
Hiring Practices where the Washington Stay guys and they were

(02:48:49):
they got busted because the therapist was showing tons of bias.
And that brought up for me the hiring process because
those psyche exams are the only time as a cop
did you get a psych exam? That's the only time
you ever talked to a therapist mandatorially. Yeah that's not great. Yeah,

(02:49:09):
it's a really bad move. And there's a joke in
cop culture of like, well, yeah, you gotta pass it
before you get hired, because after you get hired, you're
never going to pass that test. Mm hmm, because you know,
being a cop is is micro dosing PTSD and your
system the entire time. See, I guess one thing I'm

(02:49:30):
wondering because you you were in it for fifteen years,
so that's that's not an insignificant span of time. Has
it gotten to be more that way? Because I knew
about fifteen something years ago when I was like eighteen nineteen,
just like I lived in the shitty little apartment complex,
and like the dude who live below above me, and
then like the dude who lived two doors down, we're
both Dallas cops um, and I don't know, like I

(02:49:55):
you know, I was not particularly political at that point,
but I didn't. They didn't seem to have trouble relating,
like they would hang out and ship after work, like
just like not like like we would be like barbecuing
outside and they would drop by and stuff, and it
was never I never got the sense that they were
living in a separate planet. But this is like fifteen
years ago, and I'm wondering what to what extent do
you think this is kind of increased in recent memory,

(02:50:17):
Like this the kind of you don't really socialize with
people outside of the family, so to speak. It is
kind of like that. So, yeah, a lot of the
language you're using is perfect because so what you're describing
and what I remember from being a kid in the
eighties and the nineties and stuff was um community policing.

(02:50:38):
Like it's it's a literal style of policing, going back
to more of like the professional police style before it
went military, and in areas where people actively live in
their community and engage with their community, there's a striking
difference in the level of police violence that happens. But nowadays, uh,

(02:51:00):
it's not the same thing because a lot of especially
in bigger metropolitan areas, you're a cop there, you can't
afford to live there. You're you're definitely not getting paid
enough to live most of the time in the cities
that you're supposed to be, you know, a part of.
And it's gotten to the point where they actually teach
this like method up methodically in academies. They'll be like, hey,

(02:51:22):
if you want to be a cop in a big town,
you need to start shopping around in the smaller cities
around it to find a place to live, maybe like
an hour away. Um. And then they also pitch it
as a safety thing because it's all about, you know,
the cheology Grossman, we're all under attack, so they'll teach people,
you know what, it's it's safest to not live in
the town where you're a cop now. So it's become intentional,

(02:51:48):
and it's one of those things where because I don't
want to breeze past this is not the episode world
talk about community policing. There's very good criticisms of community policing,
and there's a lot of things that doesn't solve. But
I think it's yeah, yeah, absolutely, we're not trying to
say like the solution is just to get cops, you know,
to be members of their communities. But it it is
worse when they're driving in from an hour out of

(02:52:09):
town and see it as like I'm occupying almost this
area like it does. Yeah, that language fits perfectly, especially
with Grossman and all that. Yes, and we've got a
two partner on David Grossman or Behind the Bastards if
you want to check it out. But he's kind of
the one of the big, one of the big individuals,
who's who's done the most to like really push UM.
I don't even like it's usually framed as militarized thinking,

(02:52:32):
but I don't know a lot of soldiers who have
been who were trained to think that way about ship.
Like most of the people I know who we're getting
shot at every day for years overseas, we're not thinking
the way Grossman does. No, that's probably because he never
actually wouldn't did anything. I think maybe we should probably Alexander,

(02:52:53):
have you go start going through this um, this document
you put together, kind of walking through UM and I
wonder if you might start when you kind of started
thinking about police training and the mindset inculcated inside police
departments from like a cultic perspective, When did that really
start to come together for you? Uh? It probably really

(02:53:13):
started to come together. Um uh when actually when I
got involved, I used to be an instructor. When I
got you know, behind that part of the curtain, and
I got involved in those things. Um and I started
going to teaching, and I started teaching other departments that
would come to us, and it was it was a
joke in my head at first, was like, oh, we
all speak the same language. And then that got my

(02:53:33):
brain rolling on linguistics and how linguistics work and how
that you know, the words we use change how we
perceive reality. And then I clicked and I was like, oh,
we're like a We're a subculture. We're we're like no
matter where you go in the country, we are a
little subculture. We are a little group. And uh, that's
what started to kind of push me towards like it's

(02:53:56):
like being in a cult because you know, you girl
up around Central California and there's a lot of really
religious people and you start seeing the intersectionality of it
really fast. Yeah, and that's interesting because we've talked a
few times on various shows I've done about how any
good subculture, any really good party, has elements of like
a cult. Right, there's there's little bits of that. There's

(02:54:18):
bits of that in friendship and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, it's
just a thing like cults are taking advantage, like pulling
a bunch of things that people do together in order
to manipulate human beings. Um, I'm wondering kind of where
where you think? Where are some of the areas you
think it kind of crosses the line with police from
like this is you know a degree of like I'm

(02:54:41):
sure firefighters have a degree of this. You know, Um,
these are people that like I hang around with all
the time and we wipe up in some intense situations together.
That causes there are culti aspects that's always going to cause. Um,
I'm wondering, kind of where where are the first areas
you started to realize this this is crossing that line
of Probably the first area is in how much the department,

(02:55:03):
like and this was universal and lots of departments that
I had contact with, is how much the department owns you?
And I mean like they use that language. They they'll
tell you like we own you like anything you do
in your personal life. Your first thought needs to be
how does this affect my department and my my sheriff,
my chief, my whatever, Like every single thing you do

(02:55:24):
is supposed to be potentially pr for the department. So
they tell you flat out, in the forefront of your
mind every waking moment, your own duty. You're you're, you're here,
you're you, we own you. Um. And that that was
the first one that was just like, oh man, Like, no,
I punch out at the end of my shift and
I go home. This isn't like, this isn't this is

(02:55:48):
a job. It's not supposed to be a life. It's
it's then that that was the first one that started
going it. Um. Probably the second one that I really
noticed was that you can tell anyone's a because they'll
tell you within about five seconds of meeting them. But
they're common. If you're at a bar, you're at a party,
or at whatever, they'll be like, hi, my, my, mine's
Alexander work for the search part Like it's it's gonna

(02:56:10):
come out of their mouth in two seconds, because it is.
It's their identity, it's their entire sense of self. Yeah,
I wonder because one of the things we've seen in
the last couple of years in particular, is aspects of
that bleed out, like the thin blue line flags and stuff,
and some of that's some of that's just you know, signpost.
Some of that's just I know, people who were in uh,

(02:56:33):
certain jobs where they transported things that were sketchy and
had those flags. Is like, well maybe the cop won't
search mer, you know, but like there and there's elements
that they're just you know, I don't want the cops
to stop me from you know, fucking with these people
or whatever. But I think there's also elements of that.
Um And I think probably television is to blame for
aspects of this, but of kind of that sheep dog

(02:56:56):
culture as as as grossman calls that are starting to
bleed over into chunks of the civilian world. UM. And
I guess I'm wondering kind of like, yeah, what that
looks like as a as someone unlike the the deep
inside of that as a police officer, Like what is it?
I'm wondering, like to what extent where you kind of
conscious of that aspect of society like filling out around you.

(02:57:19):
Like some of these like the cult of the of
the heroic police officer kind of spreading to be um
something new, which which it really started doing from like
two thousand and eighteen up to the present moment is
when a lot of that shift seems to have happened
based on kind of what I've saw. You No, that
timeline fits perfectly because I remember when I first got hired,

(02:57:41):
the thin blue line. It existed. It was a thing,
but it was just it was just a matte black
with a blue line and that was it. Uh. And
you didn't really even in cop culture, like I didn't
grow up seeing that thing in the eighties and the nineties,
not much, not at all. And then when I was
in the department in the in the in the two thousand's,
you kind of saw it every now and again, someone
might have a pelpin like in the department, but out

(02:58:04):
in public, nobody had that stuff. No nobody, nobody had
any of that rocking stuff. And it didn't It never
really bothered me until it showed up on an American
flag and then that was that was a big red
flag of like, oh this m this is bad. I
was like, this is this is nationalism, guys, this isn't good.
And like my whole crew look to me and go
what's nationalism? And I'm just like, fuck, is there this

(02:58:29):
like sense that people are totying or is it this
sense that like this is kind of the silent majority
that backs us in doing whatever hard work we need
to do. I think it started out as tody, it
really did, and it's but it's now shifted into um
this whole like, you know, you get those guys that
are like, oh, if I see a cop getting in

(02:58:50):
a fight, I'm gonna get out of my car and
I'm gonna jump in there and I'm gonna back them
up because they're like they're playing top. They really want
that authority or that whatever, but for whatever reason they
don't go do it. M Yeah, but this has been
a way of like kind of they get to see
themselves as being like a posse kind of a thing,
like I'm in the I'm in the club. I'm not

(02:59:11):
in the club, but like they're my buddies and is
there I don't know, does that make being in the
club cooler? The fact that there's these kind of posse's
forming around it, these people kind of work worshiping the
culture associated with it. I mean, there probably is now,
but honestly, when I was in there freaked me the
hell out. It really really creeped me out. I didn't
like it at all. Yeah. I mean, you have to

(02:59:33):
think about if you're if you're a reasonable person, how
weird it would be to see your job turned into
a cult like Garrison, you know that feeling, or you're
you're going to learn when we when we make the cult. Yeah, okay,
so I wanted to. I guess let's let's let's get
back to this kind of list you put together, because
you were sort of going through different hallmarks of what

(02:59:54):
makes something a cult. One of them is the group
displays and excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its eater
and whether he is alive or dead, regards his belief system, ideology,
in practices as the truth as law. Um. And I'll
remind you we were not talking about my podcast. We're
talking about cults here. Uh that's right. Um, Yes, stay quiet, Garrison.

(03:00:19):
They're just smiling, silently staring at us through zoom. I
see you. Okay, And you've written under this the law
is the higher power. They grant control of their actions.
Blind faith in the system frees them from having to
consider their role in the system. It's my job to
arrest in charge high let the court figure out the
rest it sounds a lot like kill them all let
and let God sort him out. In this case, the

(03:00:40):
criminal justice system is a direct replacement for God. I think,
I think this is this is a really good point.
This is even this is the thing even when I
was like a dumb kid and thought cops were fine,
This was the one thing that even like just even
still freaked me out about cops because every once in
a while you would see a video of like the
cot was randomly like a saulting somebody, and then other

(03:01:01):
cops nearby just mindlessly join in, and I'm like, whoa,
that's so such a weird kind of group dynamic of
they see someone doing something and they just don't question
it at all and immediately back it up, no matter
what actually was happening. Because like I always tried to
think things through more like logically, and that type of
like mindlessness really freaked me out, and I think was

(03:01:21):
maybe one of the first things that was like huh,
maybe it was. It was one of the first cracks
and like maybe cops actually aren't good. Um. I think, yeah,
I think this is a really great point in terms
of how this ties into like, yeah, it's my job
to it's my job to arrest and charge. I don't
sort out what happens afterwards, so it doesn't actually matter.
Like it's like I'm not I'm not actually hurting these

(03:01:43):
people because if if they did something wrong, it's gonna
get figured out in the court system. I'm just doing
this like preliminary task. It's it plays into a whole
bunch of like weird psychological things that make you feel
better about horrible actions you're doing because you have so
much backing that's gonna make sure what you do actually
isn't bad. Yeah, this is like this, you know, this arrest,

(03:02:05):
which may be physical and ugly even if they're innocent later.
It's just part of what you have to do to
get to the point where you determine whether or not
they're innocence. So I'm not doing anything bad. Yeah, yeah,
And actually, Garrison, I it's it's what you said. It's
perfect because in the bottom of the thing where I
was just spewing notes to myself, I literally put down
here it's not a job to them, it's a central
component of their sense of self. This is why they

(03:02:27):
will do terrible things to validate their perceived reality and
how these things. Yeah, they it's you might say, like
imagine how like think about how hard it is to
get people to admit they're wrong about a political belief
on Twitter, especially when their name is attached to their account.
Now imagine you have like imagine that's the thing being argued,

(03:02:51):
is like the central thing around which you organize your life.
And also you get to shoot people who make you angry.
Oh yeah, it's it's a rough situ. It should to
be it. It is, it is. It's crazy. And the
part that I wrote of it's my job to arrest
and charge high, I think that's that's a part of
the mentality of it is like, yeah, I don't want

(03:03:14):
to say it's like a game, but it almost is
like a game. It's almost like they're trying to get points,
like score high and talk to me about talk to
me about when you say a rest and charge high
kind of what is that? What does that sort of
look like on the ground before we get into kind
of why people do that. So, when when you're using
your your powers of arrest, you're you're you're supposed to
adhere to a penal code. But there is code and

(03:03:35):
I'm only speaking to California, because that's where I got
my trainer. Um, they don't expect cops to remember every
single element of every single PC code because that's ridiculous.
No one's going to be able to do that. Um.
So there's there's wiggle room, there's play where I know
you did this thing, and I know it's what they
call a wobbler, Like I can go felony and go misdemeanor.

(03:03:57):
They'll teach you in the academy. They're like, if it's
a wabbler, always charge felony every single time, even if
you don't think it's gonna work. Charge it felony, take
it to the d A and let the d A
c if they can make it stick. And if they don't, whatever,
who cares. That's not part of our job anymore. And yeah,
and that's one of those things where a lot of
people I've had friends who got charged with felonies that

(03:04:19):
got dropped. But like, you're still living under your You
essentially have to live as like the diet version of
a felon while that's hanging over your head um, which
is not fun. No, And it's a big part of
the whole criminal justice. I'm sure you guys are aware
that d a's love to crack deals. They love to
make their big may general backroom deals, and facilitating that

(03:04:40):
is cops charging high. You're here in the room, you're
facing felony charges, and the d A is gonna be like, oh, man,
I can knock that down to him his demeanor. But
that's because he knows he doesn't have a case. But
he didn't get that opportunity without a cop charging the
higher charge. Now you know who isn't going to charge

(03:05:00):
high because their prices are incredibly low, very reasonable, very fair.
The products and services that support our podcast. Uh, we're back.
So the next thing you've got on here is kind
of talking about cult characteristics. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are
discouraged or even punished. And you've written academies are commonly paramilitary.

(03:05:21):
They're working to break down and build up cadets. As
discussed last season on my show, the FDO program is
where fresh cadets meet salty veterans in the cycle of
abuse starts. The paramilitary environment is usually casual and unnoticeable
until somebody questions orders or tradition. Questioning order gets the
that's an order threat. While questioning tradition and suggesting improvements
gets that's how it's always been done. There is no

(03:05:43):
forum for change your progress. Some places have these forums,
but they're just for public relations. And this is the
thing that I think people who are trying to engage
with from a perspective of like reform or whatever, trying
to change law enforcement, as a lot of people were
last year, where things get jammed up a lot is
the there's this attitude among civilians, so to speak, among

(03:06:07):
most of us that like, well, anything the government does
should be subject to like what we should watch out.
We should look at it, we should see if it works.
If it doesn't work, we should change it to make
it work better. And that's how kind of everything should work.
And that's what you're getting it here. Is interesting because
it's the reticence to actual change among police as legendary.
But I don't think there's a lot of discussion if
the psychology behind it. Yeah, I mean it's that it

(03:06:31):
goes back to that whole will do anything to reinforce
our perception of reality thing. Um, like I said earlier,
grew up in a cop family and it's specifically in
the department that I worked at so you know, we
were called like blue bloods or legacy kids, And no
matter what was going on, like anything that you questioned,
it was always, well, that's always it's that's the way

(03:06:53):
it's always been done. That's the way it's always been done.
And I grew to hate that answer, like with a passion,
in my personal life everywhere. I refused to give that
as an answer. When I became a sergeant, eventually, um,
and yeah, they'll do anything. I mean they will, they

(03:07:13):
will bend laws, they'll break laws because who's gonna charge them. Yeah,
because it's what they've always done always. My department famously
had um our union got all of our union news
embezzled by people in our brass and they got caught
dead to rights. But that case never went anywhere. Nobody
would touch it with a ten foot poll. Uh. And

(03:07:36):
even if you go and google it and you try
to look at archives from the local newspaper, it's gone.
It never happened. And Yeah, that's interesting to me because
that's like cops getting screwed over by cops. Why how
is that? How is that? How was it? Like? What
what what is the impulse to defend the hat Well,
because so there's a division in in cop culture of

(03:07:58):
like like ranks and a cult. Once you get to
what they called brass your your lieutenant, captain or higher,
they don't look at us the same way they don't
look at the grunts, the line workers, the guys doing
the twelve hour shifts were all that family talk goes
out the window and it's like, well, we're mom and
dad now, and they change their role in that world,

(03:08:21):
and again to maintain that power and authority, they'll do
whatever they have to do. Yeah, that's um. I mean.
It also kind of feeds into this this idea that
like there used to be less restrictions. There used to
be like we used to really be able to like
do this and do that, Like we like a lot

(03:08:42):
of violence get justified that way. But it also it
provides an opportunity I think for like police who are
trying to engage with reformers to do some sneaky ship
because often this like community policing is referred to like yeah,
we need to go back to the old methods of policing.
It's like, well, but there were probed do you remember
the fire houses being used to black people during the

(03:09:03):
Civil rights movement, Like there were issues back before we
got militarized. It's and I mean, and that was the
stuff they were doing outside. Um, the jail I worked in.
Because you bring up fire hoses, this is where I'm going. Um,
they we had big cotton fire hoses up on the
floors in this jail and there was actually built out
of old parts of the Texas prison. And you know,

(03:09:23):
everyone talks about the good old days when we could
really do stuff. And the story that always went around
was that when the inmates were getting rowdy, they would
just walk down the tier with the hose and just
name them. And then Jesus Christ put it back because again,
who who's gonna who's gonna tell on me? Who's gonna
believe these guys? Yeah, and that was back in like
seventies era. You know, that's the that's the big fish

(03:09:46):
story that guys used to always tell. But I'm like,
I have no reason to not believe that story. It
sounds very I mean worre stuff happens in prisons today. Yeah, yeah,
I'm not surprised. All right, moving on down your list,
This one's really interesting to me and I'm I'm curious
from some detail on this, because this is not something
I ever really thought about. Um. Mind altering practices such

(03:10:08):
as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, or debilitating
work routines are used in excess and served to suppress
doubts about the group and its leaders. And you've written
cop talk briefings, evails are always negative, and the work
routine is abusive. It is paired with hyper vigilance. Um.
I'm I'm extremely interested in that and kind of like
how it how it sounds like the kind of language

(03:10:30):
that you're talking about people using among each other when
they're doing this, So I you know almost, I mean,
I'm not even almost in kind of a PTSD response.
I've blocked out like a lot of my memories from
those years, Like I'll talk to that make sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll talk to X cops and they're like, hey, remember
blah blah blah, and I'm like no, Um, So cop

(03:10:54):
talk is mostly slang. It's like it's the ten code stuff. Um.
But it gets stuck in your head and you start
and it's it's one of those things where they talk
about how you're not gonna have friends outside of work
because you're gonna start talking in this language. You will say,
you know, what's your twenty You know, I'm code for
if you see someone who's acting a certain way, like
out of the ordinary, maybe a mentally ill person, you'll

(03:11:14):
say like, oh, that's a jay cat. Like you'll use
this jailhouse slang, and it just it permeates your brain.
And like we said before, your words manipulate how you
for see reality and you just start seeing everything that way. Um.
The big one is the hyper vigilance cycle. Is the

(03:11:34):
is the abusive part. That's that's the part that really
got me thinking of cults of how they'll you know,
deny your food, sleep, make you work crazy hours and
do all these things. Um. And that's that's that's the
one that really keep the whole calb aspect for me
was the hyper vigilance cycle. The studies that have gone

(03:11:55):
into it. UM. I learned about it from a book
this little guy right here. It's called Emotional Survival for
Law Enforcement. It's by Kevin M. Gil Martin, PhD. He's
an X cop who kind of PhD in neuroscience and
studies studied cops brains and got to see how they function.
And he's the one that kind of coined this whole

(03:12:15):
hyper vigilance cycle of you're always edging at this parasympathetic
fight flight or freeze response time when you're on duty. Yeah,
it just stays up there the entire time. I'm sure
soldiers about the same thing, funk. I'm sure you had
the same thing, Robert when you were doing your war
journalism stuff, man, or fuck just being in Portland last year. Yeah. Yeah,

(03:12:37):
it keeps you at that edge, that cresting peak, and
then you crash and you get back up and boom,
you peek up again and then you crash, And it's
almost like a drug. Your brain becomes addicted to that
peeked out feeling that you get from the hyper vigilance
because you do here a little better, you see a
little brother better, your brains moving a little faster because

(03:12:58):
there's that high the amount of adrenaline just constantly dripping
into your system, and then you crash. And when you
crash is when you're not at work, So you start
associating not being at work with feeling bad and being
at work feels good. Yeah, I mean, the same thing happened.
I'm sure Garrison, it happened like during the riots where

(03:13:21):
you would feel shitty when you weren't out there. Um, yes,
some days I would go out, not even to just
to cover it, just to kind of just stand there
like a block away because there was nothing else to do.
Like it was, there's like I could sit at home
and rest, but I'll just be watching whatever is happening,
not doing anything else. You just it it feels it
would feel more relaxing just to stand on a street

(03:13:44):
corner and watch people throws stuff over events, because that
that that's just that's more relaxing than laying down. It
was like it's that a very a very weird disassociate
of like feeling that. Yeah, Like my my brain is
it's accustomed to this environy it now, so this is
the environment I'm gonna be in. Right, And look how
fast your brain got into that groove now, you know,

(03:14:08):
imagine doing it for thirty years, yeah, instead of like
six months or even though it's it's it's started only
after like two months, right, and or even even in
some cases like a month. Yeah, it sets in fast. Yeah. Um,
all right, so I wanted to get into the kind
of the next thing here. Um, the leadership dictates sometimes

(03:14:31):
in great detail how members should think, act and feel.
E g. Members must get permission to date, change jobs,
are married or Leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live,
whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth. Um,
very classic cult ship, right, like the nut really of
what I had. We had all all that stuff when
I was a kid. Yeah, I would guess that, like
the time, if you ask someone for a quick definition

(03:14:52):
of a cult, this is what they're gonna say something
or there. This this is the kind of ship they're
going to highlight. Um. And I'm interes did in Yeah,
just talk because you already chatted a bit about about this.
Just the fact that, like the way in which police
policy works kind of restructures how you function off duty,
which I think is something that people everyone understands elements

(03:15:14):
of it, right, Like if you're a fucking dishwasher for
a living, you will wash dishes differently forever, right Like
if you if you bag your like bagsh it at
a grocery store, like that's something that you'll always kind
of know how to do. Like these bits and pieces
of this, but it's not quite the same as what
you're talking about. And I want to get kind of
into why. Yeah, it's kind of like when you're when

(03:15:37):
you're as an adult, you do something that you're like, oh,
I used to do that at my first job and
I was like fifteen, But yeah, it does stick with
you the muscle. The muscle memory sticks in those narrow
pathways that your brain gets carved unless you get the
right kinds of mushrooms to fix that. So and then
you just throw ship in the bad suck it. Yeah,
smooth out those curves. Um. But yeah, the leadership he

(03:16:00):
does dictate. I mean some of them are some of
them you can foy and some of the republic you can.
You can pull up policies and procedures, standard operating procedures,
and you can look at like there's a ton of
policies that literally dictate what you are and are not
allowed to do in your personal life. Things you're allowed
to post on social media, places, you're allowed to go
in uniform. And it all just starts like tinking away

(03:16:23):
at your armor of that that sense of identity, that
sense of self, and that's how the job becomes your identity. Again.
It permeates every corner of your life if you let it. Um,
if you don't have, like the I don't know the
mental strength to kind of resist that. It washes over

(03:16:44):
your real fast. Because while that's all going on, especially
as a young cop, you feel great. You're you're special. Now,
you're you're in this, You're in the magic club. You
you have the the symbol on your chest and the
gun on your hip, and it's really easy to let
that slip and just become everything about you. Um yeah,

(03:17:06):
remember permissions like so, permission to date and things like
that might sound a little weird, but there are times
where like, my wife and I don't dress like the
typical conservative Central Valley person. Uh, and at out of
work functions I would get I would get comments from
people being like, hey, maybe, yeah, your your wife has

(03:17:27):
a lot of really colorful hair, like maybe she should
tone that down Jesus for again. That was another one
where I'm like, what, No, that's my wife. She can
do whatever she damn well wants. Yeah, I mean that's
that's that's the kind of talking that should get somebody
slapped upside the head. Yeah yeah. Um. The uh. The

(03:17:51):
next thing you have here is the group is elitist,
claiming a special exalted status for itself, it's leader and
it's members. The leader is And I'm interested in kind
of because you you have you have elements of this
right um with it, like the sheep dog thing. We're
kind of like the cop is the center of the
cult for people who are not cop coults. I don't know,
like does this exist, Like I don't see like cult,

(03:18:13):
a cult leader sort of within this this thing. I
think it's it's almost more nebulous than that, where this
idea of the agent of the law is kind of
the center of the cult that the people who are
agents of the law buy into as well as folks
outside of it. You know, I don't know. This is
probably deserve any I mean, I'm interested in your thoughts
on this. This probably deserves significantly more analysis than we're

(03:18:36):
going to give it today. But I think it's a
fascinating thing to think about. Right. It's kind of like
how I when I put earlier that the criminal justice
system is the direct substitute for God. It is God,
the law is God. I mean, how many times have
you gotten into a debate with someone where they'll be like, well,
it's ethically fine because it's legal, and you're like, well, No,
legality does not equal you know, ethical or moral and there.

(03:18:59):
But there's these people in America who are just like, no,
if it's legal, it's legal, that means it's okay. Yeah.
And the elitism, Yeah, it's obvious. I mean if you've
met it's kind of a religious belief though that like, yeah,
it's illegal, so it's bad. She there were a criminal,
so they deserved X. Like making a making a homebrewed

(03:19:19):
cleric that believed in the law for D and D
was pretty easy, uh, to be like, yeah, this is
a church, this is a religion. Um, yeah it is.
It is the sheep dog 'm on on sheep and
the you know, it's us against the wolves and blah
blah blah. And then we have a guy's name in
here that I won't say for anonymity. But we had
we had a Braska a lieutenant that would give us

(03:19:41):
these prepared speeches whenever he thought someone's morale was getting low,
where he would talk about how and he was wrong
that the word sheriff comes from uh like Sanskrit or
Arabic sharif, which is not true. It comes from shire Reeve.
It's old English, just squished because English is a hideous
l which Um, but he had to. I mean, I

(03:20:04):
can't count how many times he told me that exact
same speech to my face, over and over again, as
if it was the first time I was hearing the story.
And it's to me that was another thing to click
where I'm like, God, it's like talking, It's like a
call and response when you're in church. Sometimes. Yeah, any
time you confront a religious person, they just to have

(03:20:25):
that that that that dogmatic skeew that regurgitates and just like, well,
here's my opinion that I was told by someone who
told me. Okay, So Alexander, UM, we've got more to say.
You've got a lot more that you've written here. Um,
we're gonna we've gone kind of a little over the
time we had here. So I want to have you
back on tomorrow for part two of this. Before we

(03:20:45):
roll out, do you have anything you'd like to plug?
Maybe the Washington State Patrol? No, Um, No, I don't
really have anything to plug. I'm I'm never say die
where all the easier threes because I'm that elder nerd
from the ninety Yeah, and uh saw hackers in the theater.
I it's claimed to fame on Twitter if you want

(03:21:08):
to come see me. How are your hips doing? I
talk about that. It's okay, Garrison's never seen Wayne's World.
Oh I know that's true. That's true. Too young. I
tried to show Wayne's World to my brother, who's still
like five years older than Garrison, and did not take.

(03:21:31):
Didn't take. It's it's a it's a time thing. My
oldest is about four years younger than Garrison, and they've
seen Wayne's World. I'm just wow. Okay, uh oh where

(03:22:04):
it's us? The podcast that we are. It could happen
here behind the podcast bad stuff. It could happen here,
it is, it could happen here. Okay. Well, Part two
of Why Police Are Occult? Thanks Garrison, Thanks for doing
the job that is one of our jobs, certainly, but
apparently not mine. Alexander Williams back again, Um, Alexander? How

(03:22:29):
are you? How are you feeling good? Is your life
in a radically different place now than it was when
we ended part one? Oh? Yeah? Like no, Well that's
for the best, because anything that would change in about
the thirty seconds between these episodes probably would not have
been a positive change. You're letting the magic out. People

(03:22:49):
are gonna know. Yeah, they should know already. Uh So
the next thing you've got here in terms of cult
characteristics that you saw inside the police is the group
has a polarized us versus them mentality, which may cause
conflict with the wider society. Um yeah, And I think

(03:23:10):
this is the one that like, yeah, we've all we
all kind of saw that one. Actually, are you sure
about that one? I'm not convinced. Yeah, it was a
Eureka moment, right Yeah. Um, I do think it's probably
worth a little bit of exploration about like what it
means emotionally to be told like I want to defund

(03:23:33):
or even abolish the police as a police officer, Like
that's that's a um yeah. Yeah. I remember the first
time that I heard that, the concept of it when
I was a cop. I think I was about five
years away from getting out, um, and it blew my mind.
It was it was like I'm like, you don't know,

(03:23:54):
we don't have enough funding, Like how how in the world?
But we can't do our job because you know, in
our in my head, we're we're the thing holding society up.
If we're not here, everything falls apart and crumbles. Um.
So the idea of being told like we need to
defund the police. For cops, it's it's an attack on
your values and your role in the world. It's also

(03:24:16):
attack on like your personal life because because your life
is police as well, right, and and and it's and
it's like you're you've you've been talking a lot about
how the job becomes such a central part of your
identity that it's not even just attacking like your paycheck,
but it's attacking like your essence now as a person.
It is it's like if you've ever had a debate

(03:24:38):
with with an extremely like evangelical religious person, it's the
same as trying to tell a cop like, hey, you
don't actually hold society up. You're not exactly as important
as you think you are. Um And like I said, like,
we don't get we don't get paid very much. Health
insurance usually isn't that good um our our unions that
we toad as being the best, we're usually pretty corrupt um.

(03:25:00):
And they don't really go to bat for us and
get us the good health insurance and get us the
good pay. They get us just enough. And so when
a cop here's like, hey, we defund the police, it's
like from our perspective, we think what we're hearing is
we don't appreciate you. We already think you get paid
too much. We we think of it less about like
the structure of law enforcement, and we think it personally

(03:25:21):
of like, oh, you don't think my kids should have dinner? Yeah,
and that's uh, I mean, yeah, of course that has
like of course it ends the way that we saw
it in you know, or at least it continues the
way we saw it and continue last year, right, And
and it's I think it could help like people like
us are on one side of the line and you know,

(03:25:42):
the other people are on the other side of the
line still, and I think it could help people on
our side of the of the of the barricades to
understand just how willing these guys are to do things
and things that they wouldn't normally do, things that you
would never consider doing on your own, but for the
job and as an order, they'll do it because again,

(03:26:04):
it's part of their identity, and it's it's there. You know,
you're attacking me, You're also attacking my family, You're you're
it goes back to that grossman thing of being told
a lot of Um, no matter what you do, you
go home tonight. So no matter what I do on
my shift, I go home tonight. It's better to be
judged by twelve and carried by six. Yeah that one. Yeah,

(03:26:32):
Like I'm thinking of like the police of the riot line,
and yeah, you can see them being like middle aged
conservative dudes, like look at all these like fucking like
gay queer teenagers throwing suffet me. Right, it's like the
specific thing you're like, oh you you like I'm getting
attacked by like the lowest of the low society. I'm
being attacked by like did like degenerates and like this

(03:26:52):
weird kind of scum. I'm actually what society should be.
The people that are fighting against me are like this
weird anti so sual thing, right, That's that's how it
is from their perspective. Um, when almost an actuality. I've
been I've been slowly kind of appropriating that type of
language for when I see a cop do something horrible,
I'm like, wow, look at that, like anti social, violent freak.

(03:27:15):
Because you can look at that language because it flips
the way we usually view like aesthetics. When you know,
because like when you see someone do something horribly horribly violent,
but they addressed in a uniform. It is it has
the appearance of being proper, but like, no, that actually
still is anti social and extremely violent. So I think
I've been playing around with like flip flipping that language,

(03:27:37):
but you can definitely see it on the cops faces
when a whole bunch of like young queer as fun
people are throwing water bottles at them. Oh yeah, you can't.
And and the thing that to the thing to remember
about most cops is they're there. Their ego is paper thin,
their skin. They cannot take a joke, they cannot take
an insult. The the number of cops that I would see,

(03:27:58):
and I would argue that I saw some of the
worst worst behavior than on the streets, because because inside
the jail you're you know, you're in your own little world.
You're inside these walls. The public can't see you unless
you're on camera and prebody cameras, you know where all
the cameras are. And I the the amount of guys
that like an inmate would call them like the f
slur or any other slur, and the cop would just snap,

(03:28:23):
we just lose their mind. And me and another couple
other guys being the only kind of cops that would
get in the guy's way and be like no. And
it was never we couldn't say no, that's wrong, don't
do that. It was always no, it's not worth it,
or no, you're gonna get in trouble, or no, you
know if you do that, he wins man, because if
we said don't do that, it's wrong, we may have

(03:28:46):
we may have stopped that bad thing from happening, but
we have now marked ourselves as being, you know, potential
apostates against the close. Um. So yeah, that's yeah, calling
them names works. Six and stones do breaktops bones, Like,
oh boy, it does work. Like in terms of if
if the goal is make them extremely angry, yes, it

(03:29:09):
doesn't work. It's yeah. Obviously the next one you've got
is the leader. The leader is not accountable to any authorities, um,
which the police regulate and investigate themselves. That's one of
the most basic ones. But it does it kind of,
It does lead to this, like it is interesting to
think about the way the Church of Scientology handles uh

(03:29:33):
misbehavior from its agents and the way that like a
police department does. Because there's not a ton of daylight
betwixt the two, there's not listening to you the l
Ron episodes. Anyone who hasn't listened to them, go back
and listen to them. They're fantastic. One of my favorites.
Um yeah, listening to that. And the way that they're
a little internalized security system was structured was very, very

(03:29:55):
analog to exactly what happens in law enforcement when they're
sowing so policing themselves b s because god they don't.
They'll do every little thing to manipulate the situation to
have the cop come out on top and not be
in trouble because who's gonna all them responsible? That my
own guy at my own department's interviewing me. We've known

(03:30:19):
each other since you were kids, or I've known his dad,
or his dad's known me, or or he's you know,
related or whatever. It never works when the you know,
the watchmen are watching themselves. It doesn't work. I don't
know how. We don't, well I do, you know how,
But I really wish there was if we do have

(03:30:39):
to still have law enforcement, civilian oversight with actual power,
actual authority to do. Yeah, that's that's the thing is
that everywhere and a lot of the times that's been
try to put into legislator. It doesn't. It's always like neutered,
It's always like and I'm like, I've I've seen version

(03:31:00):
of it pop up in Portland and it just never
does anything. Yeah, And that's I mean, obviously the whole
the question of is to what extent can increasing civilian
oversight UH solve problems? To what extent is it like
papering over them? Those are all things worth discussing. UM.
I think I want to kind of keep us focused

(03:31:21):
on the mindset that that inflcates, because that that's the
thing that I don't think people get in part because
like most people who are part of these abolitionous movements,
most people who are are on the sides that we
are on this um either probably don't know a police
officer very well apart and certainly almost most of them
have not been police officers. And I'm kind of wondering,

(03:31:44):
what are you actually scared of doing as a police officer,
Like what what what are you actually scared of in
terms of like the blowback, the fault, Like, what what
is it you actually get worried about if it's not
pissing off everyone else in the city who wasn't a cop,
you know. So Yeah, what it comes down to is, uh,

(03:32:06):
you know that the the church of law, the Church
of criminal justice, and what they're scared of is so
if I get a dirty cop who's not blatantly doing
something bad, like he just he hit a guy too
hard or something, it's something that hasn't hit the news yet. Um,
but I have to morally, like ethically, on paper, I'm

(03:32:27):
required to have an I A division investigate these people.
The reason that in my head when I was there
and being interviewed for these things, it's because you have
to hold up the infallibility of the law. It doesn't
matter what really happened. All that matters is what's in
black and white on paper in our files. If we

(03:32:49):
ever get audited by a federal body and we can say, look,
a bad thing happened, Yes we investigated it, here's what
Here were the results. And it's all about holding up
the infallibility of the law, because if it really gets
out and cops really get in trouble for stuff like
some of the stuff that's been happening where cops are
actually being convicted finally for doing terrible things, it erodes

(03:33:14):
the blind faith that the masses have in law enforcement.
Because I've heard people here in Utah, which is a
very conservative place, look at some of those shootings that
have happened where the cops have actually been found guilty
and they've actually been like, oh wow, like I never
once thought a cop would do this, And it doesn't
sound like much, but in their head, that's that's a
seed that's setting in their consciousness. And that's that's the

(03:33:38):
whole point of the blue wall of silence and keeping
everything in the house is if everybody realizes that we're
just a little weird man behind a curtain, you know,
the Wizard of Oz doesn't work anymore. We have to
maintain this false image that we are infallible and we
know we know exactly what we're doing, and we are

(03:33:59):
taking care of you. You have to believe that. So
they'll do anything to maintain the lie. Wow. Yeah that
makes sense. It's bleak, but it makes sense. Yeah, it
felt bleeping in there. This ties into kind of the

(03:34:20):
the role of like lying right and and and the
kind of the cult thing you're tying this into is
that like colts will often talk about how the things
the cult is doing are so important that you can
do terrible things to achieve them. Right. You see this
in the Church of Scientology and their dirty tricks programs.
Sent and On had its its version of this. Um
and you you've written here we are taught to lie

(03:34:41):
to get what we need. It's only true if it's
on tape or written down. As long as it looks good,
it is good. Um and I uh, I mean it.
It made me think, among other things, of a guy
I used to know who became a local prosecutor. Um
and eventually quick it because he kept being assured by

(03:35:03):
police officers that like something that they had put in
like the charging document was true, and then being unable
to prove it in court. Um and it it pissed
him off after a period of time. Um And I'm interested,
like in the I'm sure like obviously some fraction of
people doing it are just like just literally don't give

(03:35:24):
a ship. But how does someone who actually does have
a moral compass and believe in the law. How does
someone who really believes justify lying to screw somebody over. Um.
So as the guy who was there, who had morals,
which is why I'm not there anymore, I couldn't all right,

(03:35:46):
And I actually got in trouble on a couple of
instances of everybody was going one way on a story
and I was going in the opposite direction, and without
using blatant terms, they use all the like the little
you know, legal legal fuckory terms to not say what
they're trying to say, but implying and getting it across

(03:36:06):
to you of like you need to get on the
same page, you need to tow the line, you need
to you need to get in here. And I could
never do it. I just I don't know, it's just
my moral fiber won't let me do that kind of thing. Um.
I once was told by a lieutenant that I had

(03:36:27):
my moral fiber was too high, Like he literally told me,
because you can't expect everyone else to live up to
your moral standards. And I'm like, dude, we're we're supposed
to be like a little bit above the typical moral standard.
We're supposed to be the example of how you know,
our civilians, our citizens are supposed to act. But it

(03:36:48):
wasn't the truth. Yeah, I mean, my first I think
kind of radicalizing thing very early on was just like
the fake drug scandal in Dallas, was realizing that like
on a significant scale. Uh, local police had been planting
ship on people in order to charge them. People have
gone to prison, which happens other places too. But like, yeah, um,

(03:37:11):
and I'm the bulk of the work making something like
that happen, isn't the people who are planting the fake drugs?
The people who realize that the department will look bad
if it gets out and then dedicate themselves to stopping
it from getting out even beyond because you have you know,
X number of people are willing to plant plant fake
drugs on a guy, but a much larger number of
people are willing to try to cover that up. So

(03:37:31):
it's not a problem. That's That's the thing I really
appreciate about, Alex. You're framing of this in terms of
like their main or not one of the main motivations
is not, you know, actually doing the job itself. It's
about it's about making sure that their reality and by extension,
what they want everyone else as a reality to be,
to stay the same. Like they all of the effort

(03:37:53):
into whether that be lying for supposedly in their view,
like moral reasons and all, that's kind of work. It's
it's it's it's to maintain the specific version of reality.
It's not it's not actually for like like it's it's
it's not for like actually promoting what is like the
law and the books by any means. It's it's it's
it's the it's the thing like in hot fuzz, it's

(03:38:15):
for the greater good. That's that's what that is. That
is what they're trying to That's what they're trying to do.
So even if they like, as long as their reality
is maintained, then you know, we have some semblance of
like order in the world, whether that be you know,
this nostalgic, semi like proto militaristic nationalist version of order.

(03:38:37):
But that's that's that's the thing that wants to be maintained.
So every every task, everything that they're doing isn't just
a simple task. It's all in the overall effort of
maintaining this like this perception um and and that's a
a much more I think interesting way to think about police. Yeah,

(03:38:58):
it really is. Uh, these guys in like in pill talk,
these guys would take the blue pill and a heartbeat
and then they don't rest Morpheus for trying to deal drugs.
Like that's how dedicated. These guys are too staying inside
this version of their reality. Now, um, I kind of
let's move on next to um, the next kind of
cult aspect, the leadership induces feelings of shame and or

(03:39:20):
guilt in order to influence and control members. And you're
talking you've litten down here, toxic masculinity and the warrior mindset. Yeah. Um,
do you have any kind of like case examples of
how that that actually looks of like kind of using
shame or guilt to people who aren't kind of in
the this quote quote unquote warrior mindset. H Yeah, I
mean it happened a lot. Um, there was a lot

(03:39:42):
of Monday night quarterbacking that would happen, especially with the
advent of like cameras and things becoming more popular. Uh
I love my body camera. That was my little best friend.
But we would go you know, you go back and
you'd watch videos of incidents and things, and if somebody
wasn't like engaging fast enough, they would get real did
hard like haze and you know, made fun of and

(03:40:03):
mocked it. And when you were in this, you know,
we're a family mindset, and you're you know, we're we
got each other's backs and we only understand each other,
and then all of a sudden, you're on the outside
because you dared to have even a remotely moderate to
liberal position on anything, or you didn't jump in on
the you know, the the ass beating on something to

(03:40:23):
fast enough, they turn on you fast. Like. The only
thing I could compare it to is like you know
every eighties and like nineties military movie or or you
know nerds movie where people just haze the ship out
of each other, and it's that that dude brow everyone's
got a our wire sun tattoo on their bicep, just

(03:40:45):
rampant everywhere. I mean, it permeated the whole place. That
drove me that that was one of the things that
really drove me next, because I've never been that kind
of guy. I've always been a a more of a
a de escalation person and a book reader. And then
I think it helps explain a lot why you see
some of these videos where it's just like why did
they go to zero to ten from zero to tend

(03:41:06):
so fast with well, because somebody's gonna make fun of
them and call them names if they don't go hard enough,
fast enough on somebody when they do certain things like
and yeah, the zero to a hundred thing also ties
into that whole, that whole hyper vigilance thing that always
being um a compressed spring, and then it ties back
into that warrior mindset of like they tell you flat

(03:41:28):
out like if anyone ever attacks you, they're trying to
kill you. It's it's there's there's no offens or, but
you need to act like they're trying to kill you,
because it goes back to the whole I'm going home
at the end of the shift kind of thing. And
once once that's ingrained itself into like your muscle memory,
and that becomes the reflex, that becomes the thought that
passes in front of your mind when a critical incident happens,

(03:41:51):
then that's how you're gonna act, and you're gonna do
and you're gonna go from zero to a hundred because
you're going to assume that any little furtive movement movement,
which god, there's that language furtive movement UM, any little
movement that someone makes, like that's that's a green light.
That's an excuse that I can end whatever interaction I'm
having with this person with violence because they flinched enough

(03:42:12):
where I think, Okay, I got this, Yeah, Jesus. Now
one of the next ones you have here is talking
about recruitment, which obviously COLT STU, but also like it's
a job and jobs do this constantly recruiting. I'm kind
of wondering because you've you've listed here things like Explorer programs,
which are like r OTC or the Boy Scouts kind
of these different one of which Kyle Rittenhouse did like

(03:42:35):
ways in which kind of people get onboarded. I'm wondering
sort of what how you see how you see police
recruitment as kind of different in a fundamentally cult your way.
Then you know, every job has to bring in new people, right, like, yeah,
it's it's it didn't used to be this way. But
I think in the in the two thousands, especially when
numbers staffing numbers really started to drop because it's I

(03:42:58):
don't know if they've just realized it isn't worth it
or they found somewhere better to get paid. But employment's
gone down for law enforcement, and so recruitment goes up
in response. But now they have a more active role
in most places where it's almost on part of the military.
They'll go to job fairs they go to high school
career days. Um, they didn't used to do that stuff.

(03:43:19):
And when they do, they'll they'll find someone to like
pull stuff out of the pulp cultures thatitgeist what we know?
What cool? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, what can we what can
we cash in on to try and draw these kids in,
because just like the military, cops are looking to pull
in disenfranchised kids who probably aren't going to go to college,

(03:43:41):
don't think it's an option. And here's this job. All
you need is a high school diploma. Here's the health insurance.
Here's the retirement package, which is trash. But you're seventeen.
You don't know that, you don't know how to read
all this, but it looks real. Goal Yeah yeah, um yeah,
they explore stuff. I mean you're familiar with that. So

(03:44:04):
but yeah, they get little kids to go out and
you know, the little baby cops and it's I mean,
it's it's one of those things like some of this
is so much deeper than even the the individual departments
or any choice made by the police. Because like, as
a kid, some of the first toys I had were
cop toys, right, like everything every boy, I think, like, yes,
some of the first what you're gonna get badge a gun,
you're gonna play detective. You're gonna be watching cops shows,

(03:44:26):
You're gonna be watching movies where cops are the And
that's I mean that that's a bigger subject than today.
But like, yeah, no, that is like what the one
of the most prevalent forms of media that's instilled in
young uh boys, I guess yeah. You know what else
is instilled in young boys the love of capitalism and

(03:44:47):
products and specifically products and services. Find a child and
whisper the names of our sponsor into their ears, preferably
a child that's yours. Hopefully know any child, any child
throw something so there, parents look away and then leaned
down and whisper better. You only counts if you get caught.
We're back, um. And your next point was the group

(03:45:11):
is preoccupied with making money, which is a huge thing
for cults. Um, not all of them. There are some,
like you know, there there are some cults that were
shall we say pure um, but they're nearly We're like
hey man Manson, just it was all about the music
and the Heaven's Gate was a pure cult. Yeah, yeah,

(03:45:33):
Heaven's Gate. It certainly wasn't just the money for Heaven's
But yes, cops. Cops have civil acids forfeiture, which they
just took a hundred thousand dollars from someone in Dallas. Yeah,
and the person did not get charged with anything, um,
which is usually the case. Yeah. But but I mean yeah,

(03:45:56):
like you have written here that like the main the
main ways just increasing their budget as much as possible,
which you have. Most police departments right now have the
biggest budget they've ever had. UM. Specifically in like main
cities we have, they're they're the most funded department, um
in in for the whole city. There's there's this there's
this great gag in the opening episode of a show

(03:46:18):
called Ugly Americans that's about trying to rere financialize the
city's budget. And they have like like a social spending
and cop budget and they take like all of social
spending and move it over and leave this one tiny
sliver and they're like, oh there, that's better. That will
solve all the problems. Um. It's it is a better
sketch than what I explaining it just like this sounds

(03:46:39):
not funny, but the sketch is actually pretty good. But yes,
and and it is and it is relatively accurate in
terms of just moving all the funding from social programs
over into law enforcement. Yeah. So there's uh there, you know,
there's everyone gets their financing different ways. There's county, there's stayed,
there's their city. But a common thing that would happen
was the uh law enforcement agencies would try to take

(03:47:04):
anything that they could under the umbrella of law enforcement.
So if it was like, hey, we want to have more,
you know, security equipment at the high school, and then
the cops will be like, no, no no, no, no, no,
give us that money. We'll give you another another officer
on campus. Or they want to hire something for the part,
you know, and we want to install lights the city
park to increase security. No no no, no, no, no, no no,

(03:47:25):
you just give us that money. We'll make sure our
guys patrol it more. Mm hmm. So they actively try
to just like coach money from everybody else. Yeah, I mean,
and you you can see this in a lot of
towns where like the number one use of public funds
is the police. I mean, it's it's all over the
country at this point. Um, yeah, that makes sense. Uh.

(03:47:49):
So members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time
to the group and group related activities. Um, yeah, because
you have written here four years with no days off,
but scored a satisfactor told to put in more time
outside of work. Yeah. So, like I said, our emails
were always sounds so much like MLM shit it is.
It is they they every time you're going for an evail,

(03:48:10):
they negg you, like no matter what are Our scoring
system was one to ten. Um, nobody ever got higher
than a six. Maybe I think I saw like one
or two sevens in my entire time there. And when
I became a supervisor, I asked the brass I'm like, hey,
I want to give this guy this this upper grade
of like an eight or nine, and he told me flat,

(03:48:31):
because no, we don't do that, Like, no one's allowed
to get higher than a seven. And if you want
a seven, you're gonna have to like write a novel
about how great this person is to get them this rating. Um,
it was just yeah, it was. It was consistently just
pinning you down. The four years no dated off. So yeah,
I did h four years straight without calling in sick once,
like I took vacations. But um, when I went in

(03:48:54):
from my email and he slides me a thing that says.
It says attendance satisfactory. And I was like, what are
you talking about? I was like, I haven't taken a
day a sick day in four years. You know, I
have three kids. How do you think I managed that?
Like I've sacrificed to be here that much. And his
response was well like, yeah, but I never see you
at barbecues, I never see you at the union meetings.

(03:49:15):
I never see you at the fundraisers for the sheriff's reelection,
even though it's blatantly against policy and illegal to do.
And I told him that in his response was, what
are you gonna do? Tell on me? Are you're gonna
tell Jesus? Yeah? That makes sense? Yeah, yeah, I mean
who are you going to tell that? Who are to? Yeah?

(03:49:35):
And it is it's also just like this. It isolates
you from other people. It stops you from knowing folks
that aren't cops. And it's yeah, it's a lot like
what your up line is gonna tell you if you're
selling mary kay that that that that ties into the
that ties into the next point. Members are encouraged to
or required to live and or socialize only with other

(03:49:55):
group of members um and you say this is like
part of the hyper vigilance isolate isolation cycle. But I
also see this in terms of like something I uh
get into for fun, is I join like a wife
of cops um Facebook groups just because it's fast just
to have all of just to have all of these
like cops spouses in a Facebook group, and it's super Yeah,

(03:50:17):
Like it's it's a really interesting like culture of like
just associating with other people on the job. You know,
there's like cop barbecues like you mentioned and all this
kind of stuff where it's like we're the only ones
that can understand you. So we're gonna build like this
like you know, force field around all of us and
we can be together as a family and keep out
everyone else because we're the ones that really know what's up. Um. Yeah,

(03:50:43):
it seems uh, I mean for some people who are
really into it, I guess that is you know, that's
how humans socialize in some ways. So like, you know,
for people who think being cops are good and quote
unquote enjoy it, I'm sure they have a decent time
hanging out with their cop buddies, right, Um, And I'm
sure the cops spouse facebook groups I'm sure they have

(03:51:06):
a good time laughing about whatever viral video there is
of someone using too much force, you know who, who
knows what? Like how how they actually think about those
types of very isolated environments, because you know, it's it's
about fend find you know, it's it's almost like it's
it's extending out into like fandom rules where you're associating
with other people the same way fandoms work, which is

(03:51:27):
very just very similar to to how cults work. Um so, yeah, yeah,
it's an armed, militant fandom. And your last point here,
the most loyal members, the true believers, feel there can
be no life outside the context of the group. They
believe there is no other way to be, and often
fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave or

(03:51:47):
even consider leaving the group. Yeah, so I put in
the note of just self expantiory. But yeah, it's me
quit was weird. I knew I needed to do it,
but I I had a massive existential crisis of identity

(03:52:09):
and of of logistical things, but a lot of it
was it was tied to my identity, and it was
it was letting go of something that was like a
core pillar of my personality and it really freaked me out.
And I think that if I was more inside the group,

(03:52:30):
and I was more like one of the guys, a
golden boy or something like, I probably would have never left.
If I was, if I was getting that constant reinforcement
of the good boy feelings, I don't think I would
have quit. Um. But after I did quit, that actually
kicked off a cascade of people around my same age
and within my same seniority level in looking at their

(03:52:52):
job and looking at what it was doing to them
psychologically and physically and with their families, and thinking to themselves,
I can and leave that. That is how cult, How
that is how leaving cults work. Yeah. Yeah. And so
once I left, a bunch of other guys were like, oh,
I don't have to do this until I'm fifty five.
I can I can go start another career somewhere else.

(03:53:13):
I can go start another retirement plan at a different place.
And I just it felt great to see other people
tear away and do that. But at the same time,
I know for some of that it hurt mhm really
bad to leave that behind. Because once you're once you
are out, UM, you are kind of out. Even if

(03:53:35):
you leave amicably like hey, I just want to go
do something else with my life, you're no longer in
those people's minds anymore because you're not part of the team,
you're not in the club, you're not in the family anymore.
You're that guy that used to be here. And I
guess kind of at the conclusion of this and this
is you know, when you when the question is like,

(03:53:55):
how do you de radicalize get people out of colts?
How do you like, no one has good answer to that,
So I don't think we should expect you to suddenly
have like here's how to here's how to convince everybody
to stop doing this, because we can't do that for
fucking Q and on, like de radicalization of the people
who say they're involved in it are fucking drifting, like
it's it's it's a big mess of a of a

(03:54:17):
fucking field in the first place. But I am wondering,
do you have some insights into like, yeah, how then
do we de radicalize these people? Uh? Like I don't
think there is Like I don't think there is a
cookie cutter answer for like pulling people out. Um, you know,
we can't bag them in a white vand and take
them to a hotel. Uh. The only thing I can

(03:54:38):
think of that would actually change the culture is a
huge shift in our national culture around like mental health
and toxic masculinity and you know, wrapping your identity into
into your job because it's not just cops that do this'
it's it's it's it's like that is that is America now?

(03:54:58):
Is that is like hustle culture and that is what
the idea of a career is my name and I
am a blank Like that career career comes from the
word that means like careening, Like you are going full
force into this thing that is that is what you
are doing now. That is your existence, is your career.

(03:55:19):
You're going at it um that is that is what
this whole country is built on. Uh. So getting out
of that for a lot of people, for just regular jobs,
it's difficult. Now adding on the idea that you are
the thing that holds society together, that is that that
has a whole other level of complexity, like psychologically for

(03:55:40):
the person inside it um. Because I'm sure like telemarketers,
if you can get really into it and make money,
sure that can be a career. But you know, you're
not holding society together and like that's not that's not
that's not a delusion that you have and nobody outside
shares has There's there's no there, there is there's no

(03:56:03):
thin telemarketing line of supporting you. So it is it
is different for like police specifically, even more so than
like firefighters or like E. M. T. S. UM. This
particular fandom that's developed around police and and and like
the the incredible self importance that they is that is
cultivated um to. Yeah, like the idea of I'm doing

(03:56:26):
this to maintain reality is like a very like big
thing to tell yourself and get getting out of that
seems uh challenging. Yeah, it really is. It's like it's
almost it's almost worse than most like churches in a
sense because in this version it's so it's so materialized.
It's it's it is, Yeah, it's it's it's right in

(03:56:48):
front of you. I can reach out and touch it
because I'm part of society. But if I'm not here
and we're not here, you know, anarchy the bad guy
that the way people think the word means, you know,
everything's gonna catch fire, and the only reason people are
good to each other is because the law makes them
be that way and all that kind of toxic bs.
So the only thing I can think of to be
like to help de radicalize people is it's almost like

(03:57:11):
treating someone in your family that listens to too much
Q and on is to you know, if you know
a cop or you have a friend that used to
be a cop, and he ever like reaches out to you,
maybe with like kid gloves, kind of be like, hey,
how you doing just small things because that could maybe
lead to him putting them putting something on their shelf.

(03:57:34):
Just like when people get out of religions and things,
they'll often reach out to people and be like, hey,
this is such a fucking it kind of means something
if he's going outside of the group. And so yeah,
maybe recognize that, like you have an opportunity. Yeah, if
if a cop reaches out to you, it's just like
someone in a religious institution. They're reaching out to you

(03:57:54):
because they feel safe talking to you because you're not
going to turn them in your It's not gonna have
any uh immediate impact on their life right now. Yeah
that makes sense. Um, All right, well, Alexander, anything else
you wanted to get into I mean I could talk

(03:58:15):
about this kind of stuff for days and days and
hours and hours, the whole hyper vigilance cycle, and like
I said, I've read a bunch of books on it.
I really tried to get training on just the hyper
vigilance cycle. Like well, if you ask most cops about
hyper vigilance, they would just look at you and be like,
I don't even know what that means what you're talking about,
which is why I used to I used to give
this book, the Emotional Survival Bout for law enforcement. I

(03:58:37):
would I gave it to new hires, and some of
those new hires didn't come back, and I'm fine with that.
Yeah that's good. Yeah. Some of them looked at it
and we're like, no, I'm not signing up for this
because you you really don't know what you're signing up
for the real stuff that you're signing up for until
you're in it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean also like a

(03:59:02):
cult um Yeah yeah, well all right, uh, Alexander, thank
you so much for coming on and for sharing this
with us. I think it's a useful look behind the
curtain um that that folks need um and this has
been it could happen here you can find Garrison on

(03:59:24):
the internet. Go go, go track down Garrison's fake Facebook account.
You know what goes do that you can't? You can?
I I have, I have made up possible specifically for
this reason, a cop wife group with Harrison joined me
and Vanessa so we could discuss our husband's careers. Hey,

(03:59:44):
for all you know, you may cause the de radicalization
of the cop Yeah. That, or Garrison just gets really
weirdly into role playing as the wife of like a
career episode is over. We are done. This is I
am pulling the plug. Harrison starts the episode. I don't

(04:00:21):
trust Robbert to me, you want me to start, I
don't trust Robbert. Today. It's time, Garrison, it's time for
you to learn. Wow, my advice is a tonal shrieking.
I am not doing that. Everyone's gonna be like, oh,
Garrison's just copying Robert's tone and cadence. You mean you
mean they're making sounds with my mouth. Yeah, that's that's
how that's how, that's how communication works. Start the episode

(04:00:46):
with that and trigger everybody like me. You use a microphone,
it's very real. Yeah, you Steve, we're a recording. Let's
let's do this Hey, time for stories we love We
love stories here Attika Happen here pod the podcast about
how things are kind of falling apart and too maybe

(04:01:08):
some ways to put them back together. Um, I'm Garrison.
I'm starting this episode today. I'm not sure why hungover
Robert is real hungry because I didn't trust Robert to
do his job today. But I trust you, Garrison. You
didn't really not trust me to do my job. I
know that's that's fun. Um. We also we also have
Christopher here, hey, and and we have uh writer Rebecca Campbell. Hello, hey,

(04:01:40):
and uh, what why don't you briefly explain who who
you are and what what's what's going on today? Okay,
while I'm a Canadian writer and sometimes I'm a teacher,
but mostly I just write really sad stories about climate
change and coasts and aies and near future stuff like that. Um.

(04:02:01):
This story I'm reading is called thank You from Your Patients.
It came out and reckoning for I guess last year.
And uh, it's based on my partner's time when he
was working in a call center and the kind of
nightmares stories that I heard from them every time he
came home from work. But It's also about me being
on the other side of the country from the part
of the world that I love the most, which is

(04:02:21):
the Pacific Northwest. Um. And you know, watching Fukushima a
few years ago, and watching wildfires a few weeks ago,
and um, being separated from the things that are important
to you, um as they're all falling apart. Well, I'm
just excited that this podcast is now two fifths Canadian,
So that's that's the main thing I'm excited about. Uh no,

(04:02:46):
oh my god, I just Tim Horton's cup just appeared
next to me. It's terrible donut I have. I do
have a Tim Hortons kept in my kitchen. Um do. Anyway,
let's uh, let's let's let's start at this. Start this, uh,
start this reading. Let's eat this popsicle stand as they
say a thing, Let's continue, Let's let's eat this. Okay,

(04:03:12):
thank you for your patients. I'm lucky because they replaced
a bunch of chairs last month and I got a
new one. A good chair is important when you spend
ten hours a day in a cubicle talking to strangers
about their problems. I've been here three years and worked
on most of Western Morgan's Services, which means I can,
with no thought, help Grandma set up her WiFi, or

(04:03:33):
troubleshoot banking software, or set up your cell phone plan,
or help you with some app designed to find your
soulmate that nevertheless fills you with hopelessness. I can't help
you with the hopelessness. It's nonstandard. But I'm Western Morgan's floater,
and Jordi or Kirsty just dropped me where the calls
are heavy or turnover as high. On Twitter, I can
answer questions within five seconds of some asshole in Toronto

(04:03:56):
saying what the fuck my TV doesn't see the house network,
and I respond, I'm sorry to hear that Toronto asshole.
Let's see if I can help. I'm impossible to rile
because I've heard everything, every possible stupid question, every strange
request regarding lapsed policies and mispayments, every paranoid rand, every
sort of impotent rage. The management is shitty and the

(04:04:18):
customers are irritable. But there's beauty and problem solving. The
really bad stuff started at the end of last month,
when I had to do on one on one majority
team lead for the floor. I've been fielding a bunch
of questions regarding a recent patch that had broken everything.
I had this rhythm, hitting my thirty second age t
and typing without thinking, Mark here, how can I help you?

(04:04:41):
But one on one is mandated interruptions. So I listened
to Geordy brainstorm about improving morale. They stopped having barbecues
because it was too expensive, even when the burgers were
sawdust and soy. Also, no one wanted to be outside
because Detroit was still burning, and the PPM up to
something like Beijing. Listen to this Western Morrigan idol. Jordi

(04:05:02):
told me we judge three of the top right calls,
and we have a thing, and someone walks away with
a Timmy's gift card like fifty bucks. Jordy said that
like it was a good thing. What about a key fob?
I asked, we can't get out with what without one?
After hours? But only management could hold or the winner
gets to wear Jane's or keep their phone for a shift.

(04:05:24):
That didn't rate an answer. The most frustrating thing about
Western Morrigan is that team leads have to hold your
phone like you're an untrusted teenager who's been grounded. I
feel like I'm lost in a cave or a space station.
When I do a lot of overtime, I arrived when
it's dark, and I leave when it's dark. And while
sometimes I go around the corner for coffee or McNuggets,

(04:05:45):
it always feels like I'm just visiting the world. I
don't know what's happened, if a government's fall on or
if an ice shelf has collapsed, if Detroit is burning again,
or maybe California or the Great Lakes are dying at
a slightly faster rate than they were before I left
for work, never knowing what's going on outside. I sit
in my good chair and say that sounds frustrating to everyone,

(04:06:08):
no matter who's talking or what they want. Let me
see if I understand your problem, you could judge, Jordy,
Stead said, still talking about Morrel. You're impartial. You hate everyone.
I don't hate everyone, Geordy, I said, reflexively, though, to
be fair, I hate a lot of people here. After
my mandated fifteen minutes with Jority, I saw that Misty

(04:06:30):
had a problem with my documentation, which has been rough
since they changed policy on me. She's in the Philippines,
where most of the real work happens. Upper management is
all in India. They only have us because they need
Canadian accents on the phones and they get tax breaks
bringing jobs to one of the more desolate parts of
the country down when from Detroit Rampant West Nile and
ninety percent of the province's heavy metals processed at the

(04:06:53):
plant out by the ball. Seventy percent of the baby's
born here or girls. Something to do with residual b P.
A misty is on the other side of the Pacific
in Lagazpi. But you think she was right here considering
how aggressively she organizes us. Your ship at filling out
forms mark the right up is going to kill your rank.

(04:07:13):
We're stack ranked. Every shift it gets you points you
can redeem. You can redeem, which honestly is worth it
for the grocery store gift cards. Just tell me what
I did wrong. Lagazpi, we were in the middle of
a rough month. The flu hit everywhere at once, and
no one could afford to lose the work, So we
had a bunch of people come in sick coughs and

(04:07:35):
juicy sneezes all over the floor, and half the time
you got on the elevator and everyone was gray faced
and weaving. I came in over the weekend to cover
mobile because they lost half their staff, so i'd been
on for eight days by Monday, when Jordy was manic
trying to call people in so he wouldn't have to
go on the phones. He always says when we're smoking outside,
and he's pointedly not looking at the place where the

(04:07:56):
jam building used to be. It's not the extra fifty
cents and hour. It's the fact I don't have to
deal with people. He hated taking calls. He offered me overtime,
so I started coming in at six and leaving at ten,
and I didn't even notice the weekend. I do remember
going home those nights and thinking how hollow my room
felt with my roommates playing Call of Duty in the

(04:08:18):
living room, and how my body seemed to vibrate caffeine
maybe your pseudophedan. I heard phantom time warnings and chimes,
and when I closed my eyes I could see the
screen and call after call flooding the queue. By Saturday,
Western Morgan was a haunted house, but I still wasn't sick.
That sounds frustrating. Let me see if I can help.

(04:08:41):
I was dealing with this woman on Vancouver Islands who
couldn't generate invoices. We've been at it for two hours
and I could feel her getting upset when I told
her to wipe the whole system and start again. I
could help her with that, but she was like, no,
we'll lose two weeks of work. There's nothing I can
say to that, so we keep troubleshooting, even though it's pointless. Okay,
I said it. You can go back to your root
invoice and try. Oh, she said what, And that was it.

(04:09:07):
I didn't hear anything but the line itself, which just
went dead, that kind of absence you get when someone
hangs up on you. Are you there, ma'am? I called back,
but I got a reorder tone, not voice mail or
an old fashioned busy signal, but the one that means
the whole system is busier, blocked or down. I dropped
out of the queue then, which you're not supposed to do, obviously,

(04:09:29):
and went looking for Jordy, who was chatting with Kirsty
about Western Morgan idol. I asked if they knew anything,
but of course they didn't, And when I asked if
I could at least grab my phone to see what
was happening. Kirsty did a kind of elementary school teacher
sigh documentation for three eight zero your overdue mark call
you dropped. I saw that explanation happening across the board.

(04:09:51):
Looks like the problems at their end. I didn't find
out until Moe came back from Break Street. Wet in
the way you are if you run out into that
rain blowing in from Detroit because you don't want it
to touch your skin, saying earthquake on the West coast?
You know anyone out there? I thought about the woman
trying to get the invoice together for a tiny order
of sea salts from some equally tiny place on Vancouver Island.

(04:10:15):
Her business so miniscule it's still fit into our cheapest subscription.
In my unsubmitted documentation for Misty, I had written that
her voice sounded like a hopeful but slightly overwhelmed great
aunt trying to make the remote control work. No one,
how bad like nine point six, the worst since forever,
like for hundreds of years, Jesus, I said, Jesus, Jesus,

(04:10:39):
I've had similar moments on calls when they're shooting. Happened
in Montreal, not view Ma real, but the one where
the kids ran downtown from McGill and the photographer caught
the girl as the bullet tour at her right kneecap.
I was on the line with this dick wad and
a coworking place on Maisonneuve, who was talking, who was
asking to talk to my supervisor. Then midwhile and he

(04:11:00):
stopped talking like he suddenly didn't care about my attitude.
I could hear his phone pinging, sir, are you there?
Can you hear that it's happening on the street. I
can see a faint popping voice raised and doors slammed.
Then he cut the call. I kept in the queue,
helped someone update. I did a subscription renewal. The next person, though,

(04:11:21):
needed a backup and that took forever. So we chatted
about hockey until she said, did you hear about Montreal? No, ma'am,
I said, thinking about the sound I maybe heard before
his phone cut. Firecrackers, backfires. Some guy shot up the
whole downtown. I think it was terrorists, who knows FLQ
or Muslims, maybe Red Power fifty dead, but it was
going up every single time ever fresh the page. She

(04:11:44):
kept going on like this while we did a backup,
and then I made sure everything worked. And it had
been like three hours at that point, and I kept
thinking of the guy and his silence and what was
going on in the streets while we talked about his
log in and how unprofessional I was. I don't have
any friends in Montreal. I there wants to drink when
I was eighteen. But that's it. I just had that
guy and the thump of footsteps fleeing the coworking space.

(04:12:07):
When I took my break, the rain was falling again,
the faintly gray kind that runs down the sidewalks and
the gutters, and when it builds up enough you can
see it's a little milky because it's full of ash.
If you think too hard about what's running into your
eyes as you stand outside smoking until your pack is empty,
you go eat a twenty four box of tim Bits
or six Big Max, or you stop for one beer

(04:12:29):
on the way home and only leave when they push
you out the door. Jordy was outside. I gave him
a cigarette, even though he doesn't smoke either, and he said,
it doesn't seem to be getting cleaner. Wasn't it supposed
to get cleaner? He grew up in Detroit, though he
was already over here when it burned last year. Maybe
it's safer. The ham is worse. I thought the ham
was supposed to go away. When they send in the

(04:12:50):
cleanup cruise. We watched the warm, ash colored water run
down the gutters until it was ankle deep. This city
is a wetland, and there isn't far for water to go,
so it ends up in people's basements. All that ashy,
bony water running through foundations and drains, A constant trickle
in the background, sort of like the faint pop you

(04:13:11):
might hear while you're on the phone with a guy
from Montreal wants to talk to your manager. Does it
feel Jordy said, and lit another cigarette. What Jordy? I
hate how often he doesn't finish his sentences. Does it
feel like it's happening more now? The sort of thing.

(04:13:32):
I dropped my smoke into the rain water and I shrugged.
Then I said I wish I knew what to tell you,
which wasn't a real answer, and I used my tech
support voice when I said it, because I didn't want
to have that conversation. On my first break after the earthquake,
I smoked and watched the rain and videos on my phone.
Someone live streaming the moment it hit bored talk about
food or weather, than a strange look on their face,

(04:13:54):
their eyes dart upward. Then the phone falls overhead footage
from helicopters of downtown Vancouver, all those green towers swaying
and falling, and the bridge swinging until the cable snap
like rubber bands, the worst in recorded history, worse probably
than the last mega thrust in seventeen hundred. I just

(04:14:14):
kept thinking of that woman and the sort of quiet
shock in her voice, her Oh is that? And then nothing,
And I was standing out in the rain, still warm,
when it occurred to me that I might have heard
her last words. I kept thinking about the texture of
the silence after the call dropped, and what had happened
the moment after that, if that had been the worst
of it, the shock of the whole world rumbling, or

(04:14:37):
if it had been worse for her after that or
right now or tomorrow. I only had ten minutes because
call volume was increasing, My throat started to tickle. In
the world just suddenly out of nowhere started to look glassy.
The light thick from the ceiling squares, and my skin
prickled when I ran my hands over my arms, which
were covered with goose bumps. The floor was nearly empty

(04:14:58):
except for Gjority running around super rising and not taking calls,
and the cue was packed. My first call was round
way north along the coast, Prince Rupert, a woman calling
about a password reset. I want Mark, she said, he
helped me before. Can I talk to Mark? While I
was documenting, I thought, fuck it, I'm gonna tell Misty
what the old woman told me while we were waiting
for the password reset email about how when you're that

(04:15:20):
far north you don't notice time passing, and you feel
good in an unimaginable way in summer, luminous and hopeful,
and how in winter all you want to do is
die and drink yourself into a coma, so you know,
it balances out. After that, I reopened three zero. An
elderly woman I wrote on a phone trying to print

(04:15:41):
invoices for locally produced sea salt, looks over at the
rack of glass jars in which she keeps her stock
because she hears a rattle, then another. Then she says, oh,
is that and nothing else, because at that moment, the
force of rashimas lit the Cascadius abduction zone on which
Vancouver Island rest. It's like a cork in a bottle.

(04:16:02):
Centuries of continental tension released. I type that, then I
hit send. Then I added a secondary note on her file.
At PST A nine point eight hit the Cascadia subduction zone,
and Misty was right there on chad Hive, not telling
me it was inappropriate. She wrote, rest their souls. And
I was comforted by those temporary words, which surprised me.

(04:16:26):
My grandparents were in MINDA now in the nine earthquake,
you got anyone there? No? I heard the hum from Detroit.
It was somehow a relief to know that. Across the world,
Misty was in a similar room among people evaluating documentation
for apps and I s p s and accounting software,

(04:16:46):
people saying that must be frustrating. Let's see if I
can help. Something occurred to me. Do you hear anything
about tsunamis no word so far? Do you have your
phone so you can get the alerts they let us
know we're so bad. I'm taking calls so I won't
be fixing your dog until tomorrow. I wondered if Kirsty
would let us know or if she would dither about it,

(04:17:07):
until all we could do was climbed to the top
floor of the building and watch a way consume what
was left of Detroit before it swamped us to five
more calls, and I refilled my water bottle, the one
with the slogan on it, fueling small Business with the
tools to succeed that some now lost Western Morgan contract
brought in. And I was looking at my skin reflected
in the sink, which was the color of those pale,

(04:17:28):
lumpy smokers you see outside the entrance, the color of
a raw filet o fish. I felt adrenalized, like a
moment before it'd been terrified, but I could not remember
how or why. I wondered what it was doing to
me inside all those cells now remade into virus factories,
turning to goog and mah and sloughing off while the
virus proliferated through my system, and I left traces of

(04:17:49):
it on everything I touched. The water ran over the
top of the bottle clear. So far, the ash hasn't
worked its way in through the city's water system, or
maybe it has, and it is invisible like the micro
plastics in the lake so you're gonna judge it was Jordy,
We're gonna do it next week. I was thinking, that's
at a time limit, like five minutes, you and me

(04:18:11):
and Kirsty judge it. I'll grab a fifty for the
Jimmy's card too, man, I said. Georgie just stared at me.
You're getting sick. You know what you need to do.
He went on about ekenesia and flu effects, and I
thought about the tsunami that was or was not traveling
across the Pacific, or just hammer your system with antioxidants
to take a double dose of night quell. Without thinking,

(04:18:31):
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. You know
you can't have that anywhere on the floor. I was
already googling Pacific Tsunami Alert and it was rolling rainbows
and I stared at it so hard that it seemed
to take over the whole world. And then I shivered.
But Jordy was still talking, don't make me write you up.
I don't want to deal with it, okay, I said.
It's about privacy for our users. They need to know

(04:18:53):
that they can trust our integrity, our word, and our system.
The poster on the far side of the break room,
said integrity ward and system. I saw that the alert
had been issued for Japan. That's when he took my phone.
You fucked the dog. I have to write you up.
I don't want to write you up Japan. In six hours,
eight pm, i'd still be on. Then, while very far away,

(04:19:14):
a wave crested on the sea coast, filling the river
basins and the car parks. I know you don't have
to surrender your phone, even if they can require you
to leave it at home. I know they're not supposed
to lock you in either, or let you smoke within
three ms of the door, even when the ashes falling.

(04:19:35):
They're not supposed to pay you in points. You can
then exchange for grocery store gift cards, which you need
because the new minimum wage wasn't even covering rent. But
I needed a job. The next call I got was
farther south, closer to the epicenter. The first thing I
did was asked about the earthquake. Oh, we felt it,
and there's a tsunami warning. But we're far enough inland
it shouldn't be tsunami warning. So when I go try

(04:19:57):
to log in tsunami, I keep getting the same error.
It says, my accounts frozen. What does that mean? I
need to do some invoices, And yeah, I just got
the text like half an hour ago. Landfall is like
an hour. The account was frozen due to misspayments. So
I pointed that out and the guy insisted no. He
set up an automated transfer, and he kept me on
the line while he chatted with the banks tech support

(04:20:18):
on another line to sort out the direct deposit, and
then I reactivated his account. All this time, the tsunami
traveling towards the coast or the shallower bottom would raise
the waves height by narrowing its length. Because the last
time I'd been outside, I'd looked at a gift on
Wikipedia that demonstrated how tsunami's crest as they traveled through
shallow waters. The last thing he said wasn't thanks, it

(04:20:39):
was there. It is. The tide's going way out. I
hope everyone's out of downtown. Then he was gone, and
I can imagine it, the water running away from the
shore like a huge exhalation, and then collecting into a
rising wave that would destroy them all the tsunami warning
I wrote in chat hive, hoping Misty was there. Kirsty
responded instantly, that is not appropriate chat hive for important

(04:21:00):
work stuff. We haven't heard anything, but we were swamps,
so who knows what's going on outside. Chat Hi channel
will only be used for appropriate business related business. Maybe
you should get out chat hi channel will only be
used for appropriate business related business. I've been there for
sixteen hours, and I couldn't remember the last time I

(04:21:20):
slept a full night at home when I hadn't been
buzzed on cold pills and exhaustion and the sound of
call of duty from the living room. That week when
I did sleep, I kept saying, this is Mark from Magnicore,
or this is Mark from wherever I am right now,
and heard explosions and the way voices carry over for
the river from Detroit, the screams and the crowds and
the gunshots. Or maybe I was never actually asleep. Maybe

(04:21:44):
I was just off my head. I shouldn't have washed
the pills down with beer. But there's that thing that
happens when you stop in for a beer after work,
and the inertia of the whole thing, the job, the
shitty beer, and the fact that a person brings you
food even if you can't afford it it sticks you
to your seat. It was bad last summer when we
couldn't afford to run the A C. But the bar
on the way home could and it was full of
familiar guys, broke and lonely and trying to avoid looking

(04:22:07):
at what was left of the Detroit skyline, or the
gray green clouds boiling to the north, and the hail
and the lightning storms every afternoon like clockwork. The summers
are definitely hotter, and the mosquitoes are definitely worse. And
the last summer I noticed that the birds don't sing anymore,
all their whistles and like video game lasers. I stepped

(04:22:27):
outside for another cigarette and realized the door had been locked.
And I don't have a fall because I don't rate
a fob. Jordy was there too, setting up his stupid
Western Morgan idol piles a bright pink and green and
blue post it not it's all over his desk. I
need to go out. The doors are locked for the night.
I need to go out. We lost another girl from online.
You'll have to take over social media if we lose

(04:22:48):
anyone else. Take your break here. I just kind of
stared at him, and my skin prickled, like all the
suit of a phedron I had taken had rushed to
the surface and was blasting every single nerve ending in
my body. I need to go outside. You can't, like
you physically can't. I kind of stood there, and I'm
ashamed to say I wanted to cry, like a little

(04:23:10):
kid who isn't allowed to use the bathroom, who just
wants to sit with his dad but keeps getting dragged
away by unfamiliar relatives. The kind of crying you see
on the bus at rush hour when some little kid
coming back from the mall loses it and lies in
the aisle wailing, cramming road salt in his mouth, and
you just think you and me both. I didn't actually cry.
I hate myself because I just said begging, can I

(04:23:32):
please have my phone back? Please? Jordy looked at me
like I was an idiot him in the middle of
all the post it notes that read congratulations and You're
a winner and Western Morgan idol. I didn't say anything.
I left at first. I just sat in the lunch room,
shivering and nauseated, staring at the plastic solo cup left
over from the barbecues they used to give before the ash.

(04:23:53):
There will be worst moments in my life, no doubt,
more pain, more sadness, But I can't imagine anything so
wide rangeing in its desolation as that moment. The only
thing I could focus on was telling miss Ty to
get her phone back and watch the horizon and be
ready to escape. A girl from online staggered through, sweating

(04:24:13):
and pale, and I knew that Jordy would be there
in a minute to ask for another eight hours overnight
answering stranger's questions so perfectly that they treat me like
a shitty customer service AI built to serve. There aren't
a lot of choices in life, are there. You can
choose to have kids or not, to leave your hometown
or not, or to stay in a terrible job you
are for some reason, very good at. But other than that,

(04:24:36):
what is there? Just a lot of compliance and non compliance.
This moment didn't feel like a choice. I said to
the girl, we need to get out of here, and
she nodded. Then we headed down to the lobby. The
doors were locked and no one caring a key was
in the building, and the girl just looked bad. But
when I went to the fire escape she still said no, no,
we're not supposed to. We need to get out. They'll

(04:24:57):
fire us. And I could hear of the fear in
her voice, and I wondered how badly she needed this job,
that she was here in the middle of the night,
so sick she could hardly stand. Tell them I did it,
I said, and hit the bar, only it didn't move
because the fire escape was locked too. The next thing
I did was stupid, but I don't know what else

(04:25:18):
I could have done. I walked back to the lobby
and picked up a garbage can and began slamming it
into the glass door behind me. She was coughing and
coughing and said maybe stop, stop, but so faintly I
could ignore it. Then we were out, and she was
staggering towards the emergency room on wilette and I was
alone in the rain water the same temperature as my blood.
Then I went looking for a pay phone, because the

(04:25:39):
only way to sort this out was to call in,
but I couldn't remember which of Western Morgan's departments Misty
was assigned to. So when I finally found the city's
last pay phone in the bus depot, I called them all.
All the sad voices of men and women here and
on the other side of the world. Welcome to Caiphus
Business Systems. Jane speaking, Can I help you? Welcome to

(04:26:01):
Tesla Mobility. Can I help you? Welcome to Roscommon Account Services.
Welcome to Lighthouse Mobility. I'm looking for Misty, she helped
me before. I'm sure I can help you. What's your
user number, Misty, Misty knows, I said, my voice, queer
less and elderly. Put on Misty. I could hear the
exhaustion in his silence than the compliance. One moment, I'll

(04:26:23):
transfer you. Hey, Misty, I said, Misty, Misty, you need
to get to high ground. What who is this? Just promise, kay,
there's no tsunami warning. It's on its way. It's passing
Japan and Hawaii. It hit the Allusians California. I hope
she didn't mistake me for what I felt like right then,

(04:26:43):
a crazy old man, mad with loneliness, longing to hear
a voice in the void, even if it was only
to harangue them for the weakness of their service and
the terrible nature of their product. Mark another six hours
to landfall. I know you'll still be on shift. Promise.
I waited for her to disconnect, which was okay because

(04:27:04):
at least I told her then. I think maybe she
said thank you, Mark, or maybe it was just the
noise in my head. I held the line another moment
that hung up. I felt okay because I got through,
because I wasn't in a cubicle anymore, because I could
walk home and enjoy the silence before call of duty,
marathons in the living room, enjoy the ashy rain falling

(04:27:24):
across my slowly cooking skin. I walked home, Misty. I
walked home, hoping. Misty said thank you Mark. It felt
like I was slipping through a gap in the world
between noises, kind of silent passage, the way kids slip
along the abandoned rail easements in town below grade, the

(04:27:46):
corridors of grass and rats and squirrels and birds. Between
the noise of the phones and call of duty, between heartbeats,
between crusting waves, The silence you hang on too for
just a moment when someone hangs up before you go
on to the next call, because there is temporarily a
respect from the tyranny of the queue. The silence after
a bullet connects or a wave hits on the other

(04:28:08):
side of the world. I just hope harder and harder
and harder that Misty would insist they unlocked the doors
and break the windows, and they would escape before the
wave arrived to wash the rest of us away. I
don't know how to add a clapping sound effect without
it just sounding horrible in the audio. Airhorns, you know what,

(04:28:29):
danial Um already straight seconds of air horns or or
or not? Um. I think the air horns are good.
I was beautiful. Yeah, that was wonderful. It's really incredible,
Thank you so much, and particularly relevant now. Yeah yeah unfortunately,

(04:28:50):
yeah yeah, it with what happened Yeah, yeah, that is
extra extra thou the whole time, what happened in the
past week. Yeah yeah, that is a It sucks hm.
If people want to find more of your work, or

(04:29:12):
if there's anything you'd like to plug, now is the time, okay. UM.
I have a website. It's called where is here dot
c a UM, and I have jeez links to a
bunch of my different short stories there. I have a
novella coming out next year. A few years ago I

(04:29:33):
post relished a novel. Um. But if you're interested in
the climate change stuff, there's probably one I'd recommend called
um an Important Failure that was in Clark's World. It's
available to read online. It's been translated into Polish. It's
in a couple of different collections. Um And, if I'm
allowed to brag, which it won the the the Sturgeon

(04:29:58):
Award last year, which is a science fiction award handed
out by UM, an academic organization in the US. So,
and it's about it's about climate change. It's all set
on Vancouver Island, in Vancouver. I've heard you. I've heard
you also have stories about ghosts. Yes, I have a

(04:30:20):
genre I'm trying to establish that I call obstetrical horror
that I started writing when I was pregnant. Yeah, giving
birth is just such body horror. So ghosts, childbirth, all
that stuff. Yeah, I read a lot about ghosts as well.
You can find, like I say, a lot of that
stuff on my website and links to anything that's available
for free online. So yeah, where is here? Dot c

(04:30:42):
A And I'm on Twitter a um at Canadianist, but
I don't really use it that much. So I am
excited for the combination of climate change fiction with horror fiction.
Um And. By excited, it's like half half actually excited,
half dreading because a lot of it's gonna probably be

(04:31:02):
horrible in terms of people being like, you know, what's
scary climates change, and you're like, okay, but yeah, but
oh sorry, go on. I don't know, but I think
there definitely is a good way to combine the the
essential elements of both of those things to something that
actually is really impactful that plays on human fears and

(04:31:23):
emotions and how we can get over those fears and
move towards something useful. Yeah, and it's also that horror
going back for well however long you want to, we've
been telling stories has given us a series of structures
to kind of process that. UM. And I think that's
really valuable that their patterns we can use to work through.
And I mean writing climate change fiction. For me, I

(04:31:45):
just finished another novella UM that's specifically about like near
future stuff and about the wildfires a lot um. But
you know, having a story to tell about it as
a way of processing all the research I was doing,
UM was really valuable. It's it's super useful. Yeah, and
just um, I mean, you can call it therapeutic if
you want, but I don't think it's that. I think

(04:32:06):
it's organizing information in your head that is just simply
too large for you to actually grasp. I mean I
can't actually grasp this stuff, but no you can't. It's
it's too bad. Yeah, exactly, exactly trying to mean, Yeah,
horror does that probably better than almost any other genre. Yeah,
I mean look what it horror does with adolescent anxieties

(04:32:29):
or um, you know, all sorts of different the fear
of dying, the fear of aging, if your illness, and
stuff like that. So yeah, I think we have structures
in place with horror fiction, um, and with sort of
science fiction horror that kind of are gonna let us
start to process things that are otherwise just too intellectual
or not intellectual. But to abstract it's too it's too Yeah,

(04:32:51):
abstractors I think is the right term, because I mean, like,
I guess my fear of that is that, like climate change,
fiction is just gonna resort to like the disaster story
and it has very like glamorized weird versions of like
apocalypses and disasters and like collapse and very like big

(04:33:12):
ways that impact everything around you, when in actuality, the
effects that they have are very localized and small and
are still horrifying, but the way that they're framed is
always frustrating in films, and you look at like, you know,
a typical like you know, like apocalypse themed movie, I
think is I'm afraid that the bigger you know, if

(04:33:32):
you turn turn talking about like big movies, how it's
going to frame in that way instead of these more
kind of personal stories of like the horror of being
trapped inside a warehouse as a tornado comes and you're
not allowed to leave, which is a way more horrifying
than oh, look, all of New York City is crumbling
because of this pseudami, which is so big and like possible,

(04:33:54):
I guess, but like that's so big you can't feel that.
And what's more like gonna happen is people getting trapped
in buildings and not being allowed to leave. And that's
that's that's like, that's actual horner. Yeah. And it's intimate too,
write like it's not it's not in distant idea, it's intimate.
It's the particular consequence of something for a community, for
an individual, for relationships, And if I can go on

(04:34:17):
on this um there's an entire genre of apocalyptic fiction
that kind of comes out of the early Cold War,
and they're always these weirdly cozy apocalypse is where one
white guy survives and in the new world he builds
this kind of feudal fantasy. So I've actually this one
filled The Last Babylon, where a character says, of these

(04:34:39):
two spinster ladies that were miserable before the nuclear war.
After the nuclear war, they're really happy because their lives
have meaning now. And it's this, it's those are the
apocalyptic stories that we've had. We need a new kind
of story, a new kind of horror that I think,
um that does exactly what you're talking about, that doesn't
default to that weird heroism and one surviving kind of thing.

(04:35:02):
There's a wonderful Corey doctor short story that that I
think pivots off that idea nicely. Um in his his book, Uh,
What is Unauthorized Toast? I think Bread an Authorized Bread
is one of the stories in it, but the book
is has a different it's a collection of his short stories.

(04:35:23):
But there's um a post apocalyptic story that kind of
follows a bunch of tech bros trying to do the
traditional like survive the the apocalypse makes everything, you know
better for me. I get to be a cool warlord
thing and it's it's good. It doesn't end well for them.
Um yeah, I I think the I think the thing

(04:35:44):
that is important to do is like focus on the
horror of the little things, like the little things on
like a global scale. Like, like, the thing that is
so frightening about climate change is that all of these
the terrible things it's bringing are going to hit the
same way mass shootings do, where it is a calamity
for a community and people fifty miles away try to

(04:36:09):
pretend it didn't happen and get to doing like their
their daily stuff, Like that's what's that's what's so scary
about it. It's not like you said, it's not the
buildings in New York collapsing from a tidal wave. It's
the birds stop singing and you still have to go
to work. I'm I'm I'm writing a script right now
for probably the show about how climate change is hard

(04:36:30):
to think about because because how how big it is.
And one of like the models that I'm trying to
draw a comparison from is like it's almost like climate
changes is like a type is like a type of
Cathulhu in terms of the way it affects you, but
you'll probably get by it's it can affect your neighbors,
and you can watch it and you can watch it
have other people, But like, it doesn't mean that your

(04:36:54):
life is going to end this way because it's so
it's so big and uncaring. It can attack so many
places at once, but you don't know how like how
big this effects are and how and what what what
what the scale of them will be on your local area.
So it's like this, it's this thing that is way
more existential than anything else because it it does not

(04:37:15):
it does not care, it has it has no morality.
It's it's not it's not out to get you specifically.
It's this weird, this weird thing that's just getting imposed
upon us now. And that type of horror in fiction,
I think is something that at least I want to
explore in my next few years of writing. And I'm
excited to read other people's work who kind of covered
that similar side of horror and combining with like climate

(04:37:39):
change and the small ways it's going to start affecting
us in places around the world. I think, um that
what you said and isn't isn't there someone you talks
about the Catholic scene, I don't know. Yeah, that's Donna Harroway,
Donna Harroway, that's it. Yeah. Um. But but also just

(04:38:01):
how weak some of our previous narratives like you can't
you can't bring in you new Judeo Christian apocalypse is
to this kind of thing because we can't. There's not
you can't. We can't have that kind of moralizing in
it um that we need. And that's honestly, Catholo is
really handy for that cosmic horror because it forces you to,
as you say, face something on an existential level, um,

(04:38:24):
that how you feel and who you are and your
individual experience does not matter. So it's like a lot
of people, like you know us, we're watching what's happening
in Kansas right now, and like I'm not in Kansas.
I don't know anyone in Kansas. I'm looking at this
calamity and it's so distant from me, but yet it's
also very close. And that's a weird feeling to deal with. UM.

(04:38:48):
And I can see, oh yeah, corporations are contributing to
this specifically like climate change as in general, but like
Amazon trapping people inside inside inside these warehouses. It's like,
I can there's way used to fight extensions of this,
but you can't fight it. You can only fight its extensions.
And that's and yeah, it's it's it's a super it's

(04:39:08):
a super interesting thing that I'm gonna I think, Yeah,
we are going to see you know this, this idea
get dealt with more and more as these things start
happening more and more. Um, and yeah, I mean climate change,
cosmic corps, maybe maybe the way to go. Yeah, yeah,

(04:39:29):
I think that's I think that's a good line to
end on, or at least a good thought to end on. Well,
thank you so much, Rebecca for coming on and sharing
your story. Would you mind plugging your website one last
time since we extra like fifteen minutes? No, no, no, no,
that's that's that's good. People may not have noted it

(04:39:52):
last time before the conversation. We should give them another chance. Okay,
So the website is where is here? Dot c A.
It's O w h E R I s H E
r E dot c A. Excellent. All right, Well, thank
you very much, Rebecca. Um, until next time, everybody lose

(04:40:12):
your mind with the cosmic horror, something something, anything, any
kind of cosmic harror that consus you to to your
your mind to scramble and you to begin worshiping in
the dark corners of the world. Any anything that does
that is good. So well, thank you so much for
having me. It's an absolute pleasure, very very happy to

(04:40:34):
have you. It could happen here to welcome the Evans

(04:40:56):
Robert podcast. End of the World and beginning of news. Yeah.
I think we did it right. Evans, Evans Robert. Who's
here with us? That would be killed Joy, Margaret and
Victorman Sophie. I like this m keeping Victim Comma Sophie,
kill Joy Comma Margaret, Um Margaret common as I could

(04:41:20):
also attorney's general you kill Joy's Margaret. One of my
hobbies is anytime I pluralize something, attorneys generally it Um, Margaret.
How are you? How are you doing on this beautiful
December day. I'm good. I just got my booster shot

(04:41:41):
and the negative effects haven't kicked in yet. That's good. Um.
How does it feel to have, like as your internet
sped up now that I have a boost? Yeah, I'm
making the same fight that everybody makes because it's easier
than thinking about the fact that, oh, Macron looks like
it's going to be a real, real, right mare, and
the world's never going to go back to you know,

(04:42:03):
it's not going back to normal. I miss It's it's
being able to walk into a bar and not worry
that I was going to catch a new variant of
a plague. Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah. Yeah, how are
you doing with the plague? I live completely alone and isolated,

(04:42:25):
so which I you know, I'm not sure this is
how I would have built my life if I hadn't
done it during a plague. Yeah, I mean, well, I
dream about interacting with humans. Yeah, just like hugging a
person that that you don't know all that well and
it not being like involving both of you risking your life.

(04:42:46):
It's like a blood pact. Yes, we're going, Doug, and
if we wind up in how we'll scream at Satan together. Um,
come hug. You have written another story. I mean you
wrote this a while ago, as you did with the
last one. But we're doing We decided we one of
the things we wanted to do to close this year

(04:43:07):
out was a little bit more fiction, because fiction I
think plays an underappreciated role in revolutionary practice in kind
of every aspect of being someone who envisions the different world.
Um so we we've always I mean, it could happen here.
From the beginning, there was always a strong kind of

(04:43:29):
um uh focus on fiction. Um and I'm really happy
to be presenting another one of your stories today. Thanks.
You want to introduced this piece, sure. This piece is
called The Free Yorks of Cascadia. It was first published
in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is the name of
a magazine. And this one was also really important to

(04:43:52):
me because Fantasy and Science Fiction F and s F
was one of the magazines that my my dad had
a subscription to. Yeah, they go this a while. Yeah,
this was a very um uh and it was a
very important piece for me that it got published there. Yeah,
that's awesome. Um well, let's uh, let's let's let's take

(04:44:13):
a take a hop in a publicly funded bus and
roll down to Storytown. Speaking of taking one's life in
one's hands. The story is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia.
You all know the first part of the story, the
song ended in blood. It was two years ago in

(04:44:33):
the summer. Rick Green, the singer of Goblin Forest crooned
in his osbornesque voice to fifteen thousand Goblin metal fans.
A short man wearing green body paint and brown leather
stepped out from backstage, drew a sword and cut the
singer down from behind. The last lyrics, Green Ever sang
where take me back, take me back, take me back
to the Misty Mountains. The man with the sword, of course,

(04:44:56):
was Golf and Bull, the rhythm guitarist for Crumpatool. The
been an act. He and his bandmates escaped in the
ensuing chaos and remain at large to this day. Neither
band has released a song or played a show Since
the rest of Goblin Forest decided to call it quits.
Without Green and crimp Atool, no one knew what happened
to Crimpatool. Fans deserted the genre in droves, and overnight

(04:45:18):
Goblin Medal went from stadium rock fad to a niche
interest of the obscure Canadian orc cults were originated. It
was no longer hip to be Green. If Golf and
Bull had been trying to take the Goblin Medal throne,
as it were, he failed spectacularly. Rumors have flown about
motives and locations, but there have been no arrests and
no public statement from the band. All we've had to

(04:45:41):
work with were rumors until now. Earlier this month, Orc
folk act uls Ereth listed Golf and Bull as the
harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray
Fog of a Ruined Forest. Lsyth was as obscure as
Crimpatool was infamous. The band had never done an interview,
not even a photos shoot. Like everyone else these days

(04:46:02):
in countercultural music, their videos featured only masked performers. I've
been casually obsessed with post civilization culture ever since the
Communicate from the Junkyard Rats of the Rust Belt, and
I've been covering music of pretty much every secessionist movement
and subculture I could sink my teeth into since after
I saw those liner notes, I put out feelers to
friends and friends of friends, and I waited, and last

(04:46:24):
week I was invited to go to an Orc village
hidden away in the burned forests of Cascadia. I was
invited to be the first person to tell Golf and
Bull's story hell Fire Harriet Exclusive. Usually I post full
interviews for everyone, but reserve my travel diary for the
patrons of my blog. This time, though, I'm foregoing that
this story is too important, so I've interspersed to the

(04:46:44):
two below. All I knew before I went with what
everyone else knew. Three years ago, a bunch of metal
heads and hippies and burners and nerds all decided to
dress up like orcs and goblins, and some of them
took it too far and decided to distance themselves from
the rest of society. They got really famous one summer,
then that fame died in a single bloody act, and

(04:47:05):
who knows what kind of weird ship they're up to. Now,
Before you get worried, no, I will never offer a
platform to a fascist. Fascist. Fascism, as it turns out,
is the furthest thing from golf and Ball's mind. What
he's into is a lot weirder than that. Still, it's
sort of lucky that I survived to write this story.
So you killed a guy, Yeah, I killed a guy.

(04:47:30):
We stared in silence at one another for a while.
He wore rawhide and fur, and not much of either.
He wasn't painted up, but his skin was sort of
natural olive. His lower teeth were filed down to fangs
like any serious works. There was still something unassuming about
him that I have a hard time describing. You're waiting
for me to tell you about it, aren't you. The

(04:47:50):
interview was not off to a good start. Are you
worried about how your words will sound in court? I
killed Rick Green on stage with a sword in front
of thousands of witnesses. Talking to the media isn't going
to make anything worse for me at this point, and
I don't respect the authority of the US government to
hold me accountable for my actions. I will not go
to court. So why do you do it? The old

(04:48:13):
world is dying My world, the Free Orcs of Cascadia.
We're not going to replace the old world, but we
will be part of its replacement. In order to do that,
we have to take ourselves seriously. An element of that
struggle is the struggle to create meaning, to create a
new sacred. I killed Rick Green because he was defiling
something meant to be sacred. How so we share an aesthetic,

(04:48:36):
but he didn't understand what it meant to be an orc.
You killed him because he was a poser. I guess
you could put it like that. So the lesson here is,
don't be a poser. Don't be a poser. You heard
it here first. Kids, don't be opposer, or golf and
ball will literally murder you. They picked me up in

(04:48:59):
the parking lot of girl This re outlet in northeast Portland.
That's a mundane detail, I suppose, but perhaps the single
most remarkable thing about my trip was the ever present
contrast between mandanity and the bizarre. I bought a case
of coconut water while we waited. Works might like coconut water.
Who doesn't like coconut water? They showed up in a
mid teens Honda Civic Sedan, and I've been hoping for

(04:49:20):
something out of Mad Max. The two women who got out,
one cis one trans, both white, were dressed in clean
gray tank tops and leggings like half the women who
live in Portland. To be honest, I only noticed them
in the parking lot at all because the trans woman
was cute. Hell Fire this this woman asked. She was
tall and severe, with the fierce but almost trustworthy look
of a loan shark, or, as it turned out, an

(04:49:42):
Orchis enforcer. That's me, I said, Fenrik. This this woman
offered her name, but no handshake. Fist bump or hug.
I nodded. Norinda, the trans woman said, like a lot
of trans women these days, she didn't bother to feminize
her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it.
How is this going to work? I asked. We're going
to drive around back where no one can see us.

(04:50:03):
Fenric said, We're going to take your phone and laptop
and any electronics and put them in a fara day
in the car. Then we're going to put you in
the trunk and drive out to the forest. Will provide
you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive. You'll
get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded, I'd
pretty much expected this. Do you need to use the bathroom?
Nor Into asked, have any medical conditions we should know about? No,

(04:50:25):
and no, I said, either of you want a coconut water?
Goblin Forests sang in English, but Crimptool's lyrics were all
in Tolkien's Black Speech. Dark speech. Are lyrics were in
dark Speech. Tolkien referred to the language as black speech.
Token meant well, but he was about the most influential

(04:50:45):
unconsciously racist author of the twentieth century. All his villains
were either Green or Middle Eastern. When you engage with
the work of historical authors, especially when you make derivative
works a century later, you have to adapt to one's
own social context. Calling the language black speech today is
at best wildly misleading. Its name is a translation anyway,

(04:51:06):
It's possible that dark speech is just as accurate. Besides,
Token didn't write the language. He only wrote like sixteen
words or something. We wrote the rest. Most of us
prefer to translate the name of it as dark speech,
since where murderers PC, my status as a person who
has ended the life of another person carries no implications

(04:51:27):
about my personal ethics other than that I clearly believe
there are circumstances under which it's okay to kill someone.
Imagine being at the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits
and you're stuck trying to recreate society, surrounded by swords
and minstrels and these and thous. You know how that
sounds like either heaven or held, depending on who you
are and also who you're stuck there with. That was

(04:51:49):
my first impression of the village of Graymorrow. The fires
out west have burned forest after forest and small town
after small town. And no one tries to deny that
pretty much every bioregion on the planet is going through
transformation right now. It's in the worst spots, these dead ecologies,
that the post civilization movement has found its roots, like
wild flowers growing up between paving stones or rat's hiding

(04:52:11):
in the walls. I guess, depending on who you ask,
Gray Morrow sits in the scorched graveyard of a Douglas
Fir forest, halfway up a mountain, occupying the remains of
an evacuated town. Slab foundations are all that remain of
the original structures. A seasonal creek runs through what was
recently a river bed at the edge of the village,
and long abandoned train tracks skirt the ridge above town.

(04:52:32):
Even armed with all of that information, you'd still have
at least seventy or eighty possible spots to search. Satellite
imagery would help, of course, I can't imagine that the
Big Six texts or the U. S Government don't know
where Gray Morrow is. The residents of Gray Morrow in general,
and Golf and Bole in particular, had an awful lot
to lose by letting me write this report. Nourenda let

(04:52:53):
me out of the trunk, and she smiled when she
saw me. Her bottom teeth were filed. That should have
been unnerving, but I've always been a sucker for face
tattoos or anything that really shows someone is going for broke.
Fenric just stared at me severe. Being severe was pretty
much her thing, as far as I could tell. She
took a sip from her coconut water. Three other cars
filled a makeshift parking lot. The village itself was surrounded

(04:53:16):
by a wall built from black and logs, set upright
and buried in the ruins of the road. My escorts
had changed clothes and route. Fenric looked like a bandit
out of Skyrim, complete with iron pauldron on one shoulder
and a hand axe strapped to her belt. I won't
lie it was a good look. I'm no fashion reporter,
but I figured half the magazines in New York would
love to get someone out here and take pictures of

(04:53:37):
orcs like her. Nornda wore a simple, modest dress of
undyed wool. Imagine a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears
a rather large dagger horizontally on her belt at the
small of her back. My crushing on her intensified. She
handed me a spiral notebook and an old fashioned digital recorder,
and we walked into the village. A lot of people

(04:53:59):
say that you killed Rick Green because you're jealous of
Goblin Forest's success. That the orci Is Code insisted that
if you wanted the throne, you had to kill the
reigning monarch. Golf and Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly
at me, his dark brown eyes boring into me. That's bullshit.
I'm sorry, it's like three layers deep of bullshit. He

(04:54:22):
was still staring at me. I was starting to regret
this line of questioning. Okay, to start, there are pretty
much two ways to interpret the Orcis Code of Honor.
It's not written down anywhere, but there's some strong central themes,
like an interdependence between individual sovereignty and collective identity. We
value strength, but the idea is that everyone develops their

(04:54:42):
own strengths, whatever they may be, for the benefit of all.
One should be as self reliant as one is able
to be, both for one's own sake and again for
the community's sake. I cared deeply about this. That same
basic idea, though, can be interpreted two different ways. So
there's a split in the arc community. Damn right, there's
a split. The free Orcs are matriarchal and the or

(04:55:03):
Seene are patriarchal. Golfin Bill produced a cigarette from god
knows where, considering how little he was wearing, and lit
it with a lighter from the same mysterious origin. It
wasn't tobacco, it wasn't weed. Maybe mugwart. The matriarchal way
of interpreting those tenants is roughly anarchist. It's anti authoritarian,
an anti nationalist. At the very least. We respect the

(04:55:25):
wisdom of elders, children and women self identifying women. But
the hierarchy is anything but rigid, and the guidelines are
anything but laws. Most importantly, our sense of community or
tribe is fluid. Gray Morrow is a free Orc village.
Go fifteen miles southeast and you'll find a larger village
lonely mountain there or seen. The patriarchal way of interpreting

(04:55:47):
Orchish tenants is roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute. Rank within
the hierarchy effects every aspect of one's own life. It's
not racialized, but it's nationalistic. There are very specific considerations
of who is isn't a part of any given social grouping,
and definitions of strength tend to skew toward boring ship
like physical size and power. So you tell any doubters

(04:56:10):
that you weren't trying to claim the goblin throne because
your faction of Orcs doesn't work that way. No orci
Is culture works that way. Even those fascistic ships don't
work that way. Among the or Seen. If you kill
your superior, people aren't going to just suddenly start kissing
your ass. They will literally flee you and turn your
skin into a battle flag. You advance and rank by
demonstrating your capacity to lead. This isn't some fucking Hollywood bullshit.

(04:56:34):
Evil is a lot more banal than that. I didn't
have the heart or maybe the courage to tell him
that to me too, pretty much, any outsider Hollywood bullshit
is exactly what the whole place looked like. When you
say battle flag, what do you mean? Who do they do?
Battle with? Us? The free Orcs? Are you at war
for the very soul of our culture? How did that start?

(04:56:57):
When I cut down Rick Green, the Mountain King? You
killed him because he was the leader of a rival faction.
Then not because he was a poser. They weren't a
rival faction until I killed him, but sure he was
a poser though all fascists opposers. Did you go on
tour with Goblin Forest specifically to murder him? Yeah? Probably?

(04:57:18):
What do you mean probably? That's a very specific question
about a very specific intention. I mean, I guess I
had been thinking about killing him for a while. It
was premeditated, and it wasn't you know, No, I don't know,
because I've never killed anyone. So it's like I've known
Rick Green almost five years. He and I and maybe
thirty other people. We started this whole thing, Goblin Metal

(04:57:40):
of the Orcs, all of that. Rick Green has always
been a fucking bastard. I figured I'd probably kill him
one day for being kind of a Nazi or whatever.
Then we go on tour together and I tell myself, Hey,
if this goes badly, I can always just kill him
on stage. You've got to understand Orcus culture wasn't even
a year old at that point. We weren't split into
the Free Orcs and the oar Seene yet. There were

(04:58:01):
only maybe five villages total. We were just starting to
explore what it meant to be ourselves, what kind of
culture we could build. Then, while we were on tour,
I hear he's got himself crowned the mountain king. And
this isn't a game. I don't know how to get
that through to you or your readers. This is our life.
It's one thing to put on a silly hat and
pretend to tell people what to do in some larp somewhere.

(04:58:23):
But Rick Green had gotten himself corornated for real dictator
over actual people. So I killed him. The Free York
split off the oar seen closed ranks, and we've been
at war ever since. Am I safe here? He didn't
answer me at least he didn't stare me down again.
He just looked off into the distance, maybe towards lonely mountain.

(04:58:45):
I've been to LARPs before, where when you show up,
they make you put on garb. That is to say,
they make you wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird
interpretation of period appropriate that particular group of Larbers had
come up with. As I met the denizens of the village,
they all came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves.
I realized they didn't insist on anything like that because

(04:59:05):
they weren't LARPing. Pretty much every one of them was
dressed like either a Viking reenactor or fantasy game villain,
but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
kids lived there, running the age gamut from six months
to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
About a third told me she a third he in
the third day. Many of them were white or past

(04:59:25):
as such, but a significant minority were black. Nourenda told
me later their Orc villages with substantially higher proportions of
people of color. That might be true, but I got
the impression she said it to convince herself or me
that the free Orcs aren't a specifically white phenomenon. No One,
no one decent, likes looking around their community or scene
and seeing only white faces smiling back. After everyone introduced themselves,

(04:59:48):
immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many
fantasy names like Lazarre and Demolin that you can hear
before they all just sound the same. Nourenda and Fenrik
flanked me as we walked through a gate in the
wall into village. It's strange to say village in America.
We don't really have villages here, but in some ways
Graymorrow isn't the United States. And to be certain, it

(05:00:09):
was a village, maybe ten or fifteen houses crowded together
along either side of a single potholed street. Two architectural
styles reigned, junkyard shacks built out of railroad cars in
regular cars, and traditional American log cabins, many of them
were adorned with solar panels. At the end of the street,
near the black Palisade, the beginnings of a stone tower

(05:00:30):
stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't sure if I was
impressed or not. On one hand, the village couldn't have
been around longer than three or four years, and they
had already done so much. On the other hand, it
was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm kind of obsessed with
the post civilization movement, so I wish I could tell
you everyone looked well fed and happy. They didn't people
looked proud, and they didn't look miserable. But there was

(05:00:51):
an intensity in everyone's eyes you simply could not mistake
for happiness. A trash pile needed attending near the front gate,
and some of the animal hides stretched tanning had begun
to rot. Everything looked like it was about to fall apart,
both physically and metaphorically. What now, I asked, when we
reached the central square, a stone cobbled chunk of what
had been once an intersection, now decorated with poorly tended

(05:01:13):
gardens and rustic benches of dubious quality. You're here to
interview golfen Ball or you're not, Fendrick asked, I am
golf Ball doesn't live here. I waited for her to elaborate.
Golfing Bull lives in the forest with the rest of
his band. He's on his way. You'll meet him a
bit outside of town. I'll take you to him when
he gets there. Someone near the gates shouted, and both

(05:01:34):
of my escorts flinched bodily and turned to look. It
was just a kid chasing another kid with a wooden sword.
Fenrick and Narindo were on edge. Something was about to happen.
Tell me about your new band, Ulcerreth. What does the
name mean? Alsrith is the dark speech word for the
phase of the moon on the last night before the

(05:01:56):
new moon, the last sliver of light. Ulsareth is a
whole le day, a day of self reflection. Our band's
music attempts to capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcareth,
we listen to our naysayer and think about ourselves and
our community your naysayer. Free Orchish villages don't have leaders,
We have naysayers. Two years ago we tried rotating leadership.

(05:02:19):
It was ineffectual. We didn't need leaders. We stuck with
it anyway, because we felt like we had to, because
those were the rules we had come up with. Then
one person said, basically, this is bullshit. We don't need
someone to tell us what to do. We need someone
to tell us what to stop doing. We need someone
to tell us what we're doing wrong. Every new moon,
every village picks a new naysayer. That person spends the

(05:02:41):
month picking up heart group structures, observing what's happening, being critical.
On Alsaret, we fast and listen to the naysayer. They
don't offer solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems to light.
Does that work surprisingly well, except about a third of
the naysayers end up leaving after their month. Some go
to other villages, some good to live in the forest,

(05:03:02):
like Narinda Alsyreth singer did, but most leave the woods.
As we put it, most go back to civilization. That's
why Noriinda's name sound of familiar when she didn't she
introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name list
in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention to
the rest. That's an argument for me to take my
name off our next release. If there is one, why

(05:03:24):
did you put it there in the first place, Why
did you agree to this interview? And what do you
mean if there is one? I told you we're at war. Yeah,
we're losing that war. He took a deep breath, trying
to keep himself calm. He didn't strike me as a
man who was afraid to cry, but he was clearly
trying to keep his composure. There's no way that Gray

(05:03:45):
Morrow would have let you talk to me here if
any of us thought that Gray Morrow had a future.
There's no way I would have talked to you at
all if I thought I was going to be alive
to see another alterra. Why are you losing? Why are
you going to die? It's not a question of military efficacy,
or of bravery or strength or any of that ship.
It's just a question of numbers or seen society. As

(05:04:07):
a military society, every member fights as far as we
can tell, they've got fiftundred warriors. We've got five hundred,
so use guerrilla tactics. Golf and bull shook his head.
Striking Rick Green down from behind was a cowardly action.
I can justify it almost by the fact that Green
had declared himself my monarch. But the or Seen warriors

(05:04:29):
are my peers. They would not stalk me in the night.
I will not stalk them. That sounds, I know how
it sounds. So this interview I want to be remembered.
I want the free Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered.
I put my name on the liner notes so that
someone like you, an anti fascist music blogger, would talk
to me. I leveraged my own infamy to draw attention

(05:04:51):
to what we're doing, what we've done. I fucking hate
the tragic utopian trope. What like seriously like fuck you? Okay,
I know I'm here as a journalist, but I'm not
gonna write your fucking obituary. I don't think I've ever
turned on an interview subject like that before. I get it.
Hopeless causes are beautiful, but as I understand it, the
whole goddamn point of holding onto your honor more firmly

(05:05:14):
than your life is because the world is a better
place for everyone if more people did that, right, Okay,
the world isn't a goddamn better place if you let
your subculture. And I'm sorry, I know it's very serious
and I'm not trying to downplay it, but that's what
this is, A musical subculture be taken over by fucking Nazis.
And I respect that you're going to fight them for it.
That's cool. But if you consider buying some guns, maybe

(05:05:34):
a few drones. They'll come in here with spears, right,
and you'll fight them off with other spears. It's man,
there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a
shit about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot
the Nazis. We're trying to kill you. You You don't understand,
You're fucking right, I don't, if I'm being honest. Most
of the time I was waiting, I spent flirting with

(05:05:55):
Norenda and avoiding talking to Fenrich Horenda asked me to
keep our conversation off the wreck heard. We didn't talk
about Gray Morrow or the orc thing much anyway. Everything
I learned about the village and its culture, I learned
by observation. Only an elderly man came by and offered
us cold tea and wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves sweetened
with juice from the berries. He said, no caffeine, no

(05:06:16):
other particularly strong medicinal effects. The three of us took
cups from his bladder, and he continued down the street
passing out drinks. No one else approached us. I watched
people go about their lives, though the tension in the
air was thick. I saw a few people look at
cell phones and spent a not inconsiderable amount of time
trying to decide if that was hypocritical and or bad

(05:06:36):
ops SEC. Eventually I gave up because frankly, it wasn't
my business, and one of the most interesting things about
all the post civilization groups is all the bits and
pieces they choose to carry over from mainstream culture. Finally,
after an hour, Fenric stood up come with me. I
followed her to the other side of town and through
a smaller gait. On the other side, a box truck

(05:06:57):
that had seen better days sat on a road that
had to We skirted around the truck and up into
the black forest. The scorched hills looked more like meadows
than forests, with green grass and undergrowth broken only by
black spikes of burned trees. We followed the path this
way and that, and soon I was lost. Soon after
fog set in, I was further through the looking glass

(05:07:19):
than I had realized. I imagined us lost a mile
from a town full of people who gave a double
meaning to the word stranger, and probably at least an
hour's drive from civilization. My guard hadn't shown me much
in the way of kindness, and I was on my
way to meet someone I knew to be a murderer.
It's the kind of shift I live for. If I'm
being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird job in
the stupid fucking weird world we live in. Thank you,

(05:07:40):
my readers, for making that possible for me. Be sure
to check out my Patreon page if this is the
first thing you've read by me. Lots of members only
content over there, including a few snippets of orc song
from Narinda. The only thing I saw in the distance
was a single black spire, thicker than the dead snags
around me. As we approached it came into focus as
a boulder jutting up into the sky like an angry finger.

(05:08:01):
Sitting at the base of it was a short man
with a sword across his lap, golfing bull. I'll leave
you to to it, Fenrick said. She left me alone
with an armed murderer. I sat down across from him,
took out the notebook and recorder, and asked him questions.
All right, convince me we can't fight them dishonorably, because

(05:08:21):
you can't protect an idea by defiling that idea. We
don't want them to destroy our way of life, but
we don't want to destroy our way of life ourselves either.
The basic problem with your scene is that they're interpreting
your code of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes.
By facing them an open battle and nobly dying or
whatever your goddamn planet is, you're just letting them make

(05:08:43):
m right. You're letting their superior numbers dictate what your
cultures to look like. It's like majority voting, but even
dumber because more people die. I expected him to double
down on his position. Most men would. What do you
suggest instead, Fuck? I don't know. Don't be here when attack,
go somewhere else. Stay on the move, build your strength.

(05:09:03):
Oh ship, That's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it.
Huh Goblin Forest singing in English, a stupid name like
Rick Green. All that ship was designed to make Goblin
metal more palatable to the masses, to get fans, to
get recruits for his stupid, fucking fashy goals. Yep, do that.

(05:09:24):
I mean, don't become fascists or change your name or
make your music worse. Everyone knows Goblin Forest and have
shipped on Crimpot School. Just don't be obscure for the
sake of being obscure. Fucking advertise you have a decent
thing going here. People are abandoning mainstream society left and right,
no political pun intended. Make it easier for them to
get here. Make it so that when you fight the
fashion your epics swords and spears Viking deathmatch, you win

(05:09:47):
better Yet, make it so they don't even want to
funk with you because they know they'll lose. I don't
know whether that would work, Yeah, but dying doesn't work either.
The Eark way of life isn't meant to be some revolution.
It's not meant to supply it the mainstream. It will
never appeal to the mainstream, not without losing its soul.
Would you live like this? Would you want to? You're right,

(05:10:09):
I'm obsessed with you weird subcultures, but I wouldn't want
to live like you. We both stared at each other
in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We're both just thinking, okay,
scrap that. You're never going to get big numbers. You
don't need big numbers. You don't want big numbers. You
don't need recruits, you need allies. What would that look like? God,

(05:10:29):
damn dude, all orchishmn note, actually listen to women's ideas.
I'm used to guys just talking over me or shutting
down completely. If I get mad free orci ish men,
I would hope know how to listen. Guns break the
spell and the spill you're casting here. It's powerful, it's good.
So no guns. Other people have guns, though, Let those
people stand guard or make their arm presence. Note outside

(05:10:51):
or seen camps, other people have access to, say, dock scene,
how many recruits are the or scene going to get?
If every time some want to be forced Nazi dude
joins someone to as his mother what they're about for
access to the media. How many recruits are going to
join if everyone knows the or sene or poser is
putting out substandard water and down goblin metal just to
try and lure an impressionable military aged men to fight
their holy war. You'll write those stories. I'm not gonna

(05:11:15):
write you any propaganda, but sure I'll tell the truth.
How do we get allies? But at another single, maybe
a full length? The gray Fog of a Ruined Forest
was the best ship of hurtin years. You're redefining folk music,
just like you redefined metal without ship like that, and
I'll cover it. Talk to more press, maybe someone other
than you. Not everyone's going to be sympathetic to what
you did, even if that fucking guy was a fucking

(05:11:38):
tree Nazi hunting horn cut through the fog and through
our conversation, and my subject's face fell into despair for
a half second before determination took over. What's that? Interviews
over and I thought there would be more time another day.
At least we have to get you out of here.

(05:11:58):
Turns out Fenrik had taken us on a purposefully circatuitous
route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a
mile straight downhill before golf and Bull and I reached
the box truck at the back entrance to Graymorrow, Norinda
and Fenric stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen,
who was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps
of fur and leather and cloth, like you might imagine
a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed all the

(05:12:19):
twigs and sticks and moss tangled up in the fabrics
I recognized it as camouflage. I saw about thirty the scout,
for that's what she was said about. Fenrick asked, exactly
thirty ten with pikes, ten with tower, shields and swords,
five archers, two scouts to command, one non combatant. I'd
guess a surgeon, but I couldn't promise how far away
I asked. Fenrick glared at me for interrupting. Five miles

(05:12:42):
Norenda said probably three and a half by now downhill.
We have time to get you out with the children
and the elders. The scout had just run five miles
uphill because she was too stubborn to use a walkie
talkie or a cell phone. We should evacuate everyone. Golfen
Bull said what Fenrick asked. We've got walls and almost
even numbers. Fuck them, this is our home. I wanted

(05:13:04):
to shout at her. I wanted to shake her, to
tell her this wasn't a fucking game, that it wasn't
the twelfth century, and that killing people or dying over
some squatted chunk of nowhere was somewhere between stupid and reprehensible.
It didn't, though I'm a good journalist, This isn't the
place for us to debate this, Nerenda said, and all
four of them walked through the gate and left me
standing by the truck. That was why the gardens were untended,

(05:13:26):
and with the trash was piled up and the hides
were left to rot. They were expecting this. They'd lost
their will to pretend like their lives were going to
continue to progress forward. I'm not the first to suggest
that nihilism is the dominant effect of society today, with
climate change destroying communities and bioregions all over the map,
with the economic crisis deepening and the wealth gap widening,

(05:13:48):
I think all of us are guilty of forgetting to
tend our gardens. All of us have a hard time
figuring out why it matters whether or not we deal
with our trash. All of us have proverbial or literal
Nazis marching on us. The Nazis the free orcs A
Cascady are dealing with are the literal variety. Some cosplain
fascist was about to stick a sword between Norinda's ribs

(05:14:09):
by ale rose in my throat. I don't know. I
believe in love at first sight or any of that ship,
but I just couldn't handle the idea. I fucking hate honor.
I will never be an orc. I got lost running
through solutions to the problem of hypothetical arrows and swords
that were going to interfere with Nourinda's continued existence. Most
of those solutions involved AsSalt rifles, which I didn't have

(05:14:31):
access to. Cars, though were available. What's thirty warriors of
medieval armor versus one station wagon driven by an angry
woman with a lead foot. I put the odds in
my favor. I wasn't going to do it, though. Instead
I waited to evacuate. I don't think that speaks well
of me. Individually and in groups, people came out through
the gate and loaded bags and baskets onto the back

(05:14:52):
of the truck. Noarinda returned with a simple backpack sewn
from raw hide. Most of her belongings were probably wherever
she engulf Am Bull and the rest of Alstreth lived.
She handed me my phone. I didn't have service. I
wondered whether or not she engulfing Bullward dating It wasn't
relevant to the present moment exactly, but my mind always
is a way of thinking about bullshit to avoid thinking

(05:15:13):
about impending doom. Another important effect of our generation distract
ourselves with disaster with petty things like love and jealousy.
I don't know what you said to Golf and Bullner
and said, but whatever it was worked. He just convinced
everyone to evacuate everyone, I asked, shocked, everyone except him
and Fenrik and Gorn. Which one's Gorn, the man who

(05:15:34):
brought us tea? Do you remember him? He's old as ship, though,
I said, because I have no fucking manners or common sense. Yeah,
he's old as ship. He's a linguist by training. His
main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
when he can't figure out how to say something, he
just makes up new words. He developed about a third
of the language. Did all that ship before orc culture
was even around he's also a widower three times over.

(05:15:56):
He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
book was called Soon I will return to the earth. Oh,
Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and
Fenric they're going to hold the wall as long as
they can and then fall back to the woods. And you,
I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,

(05:16:18):
I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
might leave the woods go back to being a vet tech.
I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
life advice. Oh, and Golf and Bull said to give
you this, he said, it's in case he dies. He says,
you're right. You shouldn't have to write his obituary. So
we wrote his own. She handed me a piece of paper.
I piled into the back of the box truck with

(05:16:38):
forty other people, many of them in tears, many of
them in shock, and we drove away from Graymorrow. None
of the three free Orc survived the battle. Gorn died
and paled on a spear while holding the gate. Fedric
was killed by an arrow that struck her in the back.
Of the neck as she and golfing Bull ran golf
and Bull Fenric's lover turned and stood his ground over

(05:16:59):
her body. I didn't know any of that yet. I
found out when Norinda found out two days later. Maybe
all three of them would have survived if I hadn't
interfered and they'd all fought with equal numbers, Maybe more
of them would have died. Maybe I can forgive myself.
Maybe there's nothing to forgive. In the back of the truck,
by the light coming in through a crack in the

(05:17:20):
steel wall, I read golf and Bull's note all my life.
I didn't give a shit about anything. I liked weed
and metal in whatever counterculture trend was big in a
given year, but my heart wasn't in it. I just
went through the motions until I became an orc, saying
I'm an orc and meaning it. Isn't like a trans
man saying he's a man and meaning it. Gender is

(05:17:40):
a social construct that goes back as far as I understand,
to the beginning of humanity. There has always been gender,
and there have always been people who transgress the roles
assigned to them at birth. An orc is a social
construct that we just fucking made up. I mean, I
guess the Orc is an archetype too, but it's a
fantasy archetype. We know what to make believe. Make believe.
Eve is what gave my life meaning. I promise you

(05:18:03):
that for me. The day we decided we were works
was the first day that the sun shone benevolence upon
the world. It was the first day that color radiated
from everything I saw. It was the first day that
the rain on my roof tapped out codes of meaning.
It was the first day of my life, my real life,
my first Also, I fell in love with the world.
Everyone finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by

(05:18:25):
believing in some ship we made up and letting that
be real. I was born Jason Sanchez. I died gulfing bull.
I'm not sorry. That was great that I mean, not
my narration, the story. The story, not my narration. H
the second way finished. We all just got that little

(05:18:47):
smirk on our face, like that was delightful. Yeah, Margret,
you're the best. Yeah, I mean, if I were going
to be an Orc, there would be rifles but its
own problems. Yeah, this is absolutely this is like a
really good example of what I mean that when I

(05:19:08):
write utopian fiction or like fiction about other societies. I'm
not saying, hey, everyone go do this, or like this
is what people should do. No, I mean I liked that.
I like I like that I've had that experience in
other cultures, you know, places like slab City and different
kind of encampments and whatnot that I've spent a lot
of time and as a journalist where it's like I'm
fascinated by and I respect aspects of this, but like,

(05:19:30):
I also think some of these things are that you're
doing or dumb or I don't understand why you do it,
or this isn't like you know, but you don't your
notes don't matter. You know, that's not your job, although
actually having an impact in that way is is kind
of Yeah, I don't know. Somebody go somebody go make

(05:19:52):
an work village. Yeah, yeah, I'll go out there, I'll
report on it. We'll go. It'll be fine. Don't take
the banda all sort of though I already stole that.
There's a number of dope band names in here. All right,
people should make orc folk. I'd be really excited to
hear make orc folk abandon civilization to live as fantasy. Creatures, um,

(05:20:21):
fight fascists, all that good stuff. Yeah, Margaret, is there
anything you'd like to plug? Well? I do have a
new book out, or a reprint of an older book
called A Country Ghost that is a more directly utopian book.
It's out from a K Press, came out last month,
and um, I think that's it. That's the main thing. Oh,

(05:20:44):
you can support me on Patreon, although it's no longer
supporting me on Patreon. It's supporting a publishing thing that
I'm starting back up with people called Strangers and a
Tangled Wilderness. And it will publish fiction and memoir and
like the kind of like more culture side of radical
politics and less the like theory and stuff. What's the
patreon Patreon dot com slash Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness

(05:21:06):
because why would I pick short names for things? Don't
do that? Yeah, and we have we have a live
show coming up right, Robert, uh that doesn't sound like us.
It's a virtual live show of for Behind the Bastards
put our Friend prop that's on Thursday February. Allegedly moment

(05:21:27):
House dot com slash Behind the Bastards. I can't confirm
or deny that. Okay, you're getting a lawyer on here
before you can. Sure, Yeah, let's get Moira on the
horn and where come on the horn and tell us
if we're actually doing this thing? That? Yeah? Are we also?

(05:21:47):
Are we alive? That's another question? How I texture that
most days? Um? All right, well, thank you Margaret, and
thank you all for tuning in in the first year.
Of the rest of the next year. Ya hey, we'll
be back Monday with more episodes every week from now

(05:22:10):
until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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for listening.

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