It Could Happen Here Weekly 4

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation 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, all right, Welcome to it

(00:25):
could happen here, a podcast that is about fifty percent
of the time introduced well and about fifty percent of
the time us talking about how we're bad at introductions,
and today it is it is just be Christopher, but
with me is Hadley and Mike from Lobelia Commons, who
are here to talk about many things, one of which

(00:47):
is there is the first edition of their Earthbound Farmers Almanac. Hey, Hey,
how how are you two doing today? I heard I
heard there's maybe a thunderstorm rolling in. Yeah, we're doing
pretty good. Um, it's gonna be glad of the rain,
I guess, yeah, yeah, it'll be good. We're gonna talk
a little bit first about Labilia Commons. So how did

(01:08):
that project start? I know, I know was something from
the beginning of the pandemic, But had you all been
working on this kind of stuff before and yeah, I
just want roasty a little bit of that. Yeah. So
it kind of started, um last year during the pandemic basically, UM.
Basically at the beginning of the pandemic, we had UM
that's like a surge of interest in these like kind

(01:30):
of mutual a groups UM. And the largest of which
that formed in New Orleans specifically, which some of us
helped form, was called New Orleans Mutual a group which
was doing like food distribution. It kind of stemmed out
of a project that was already um running like a
food share basically getting excess produce that was coming into

(01:51):
the port and distributing it for free in front of
like one of the gentrifying grocery stores. UM. But within
like I want to say, like a couple of weeks, UM,
there was such a surge of interest in doing that
type of like volunteer or whatever UM, where that there
was like a ton of labor to make it happen

(02:12):
and that basically meant buying tons of produce eventually, because
the ports eventually shut down and there wasn't any produce
coming from anywhere at the beginning of the the pandemic, and
that basically buying tons of produce from like costco and
that labor meant like waiting in lines for you know,
wrapping around entire like massive like multi city block warehouse stores. Um.

(02:36):
And so that was basically doing like food distribution. So
we took the opportunity to since there was so much
labor happening, that we could go and start to adjust
the question of like food production specifically and and try
and do that in interesting ways. UM. So we felt
like it was pretty important to start like experimenting and

(02:59):
different forms of food production and like like ways of
relating to food production. UM. So I mean this this
first started with like a UM, we're basically just starting
tons of seeds and delivering them all over the city, um,
just driving around from We had like one centralized nursery
that was run out of the warehouse um, and that

(03:23):
was a ton of labor. Was a really time consuming,
it was super centralized, and so we moved from that
into a number of other projects. UM. Short Shortly thereafter,
we put together like a like a collaborative mushroom production
group where we were um, getting people who had been

(03:44):
growing mushrooms and teaching folks and like doing skill shares
to produce oyster mushrooms out of buckets. We started doing
some like woodlock production of chautaukias, which has like since
expanded pretty dramatically. Um and yeah, just like kind of
like things that that draw people's interests like that, and

(04:07):
and and think about like how you can grow food
in an urban or parry urban scenario fairly interestingly and
like with joy um also um. You know, after this,
we we were reached out to by folks that were like, well,
I want to grow herbs, and rather than specifically getting

(04:31):
like a lot and covering it in different herbal medicines,
we reached out had already had folks reaching out to us.
And so if someone came up with the idea of well,
let's just all grow in like our backyard stuns of
herbs and let's find herbs that already grow abundantly around
us to kind of collectively share the experience of harvesting

(04:55):
and um and turning those into medicine. Um. And so
now there's like this herb Commons group that the labor
is distributed, it's distributed geographically. Um, but there's these like
meet ups where they're bulk curbs are given up, Yeah,
given out, just like in a canal space and um. Yeah,

(05:18):
like there's skill shares happening there and and so there's
kind of some community being built around that. Um that
that happens in a very decentralized manner. Yeah, it's definitely
very decentralized. There are working groups that are part of
Lobelia Commons that I'm like not entirely sure what they're
doing in any given day or you know, what's going on.

(05:39):
I'm involved in like a couple particular projects within it UM.
And I think that it's really flexible for folks who
are trying to get involved. They can kind of be
involved at whatever level they want. Like, um, if somebody
doesn't want to go to a bunch of garden work
days or a bunch of meetings or something, which you
know are have been a great way for us to
like see each other and see our friends during the

(06:00):
pandemic and stuff, is to get together for these work
days outdoors or whatnot. But if somebody wants to just
like do nothing but sprout plants at their own house
and then somebody will come pick up those seedlings and
and you know bring them to one of our decentralized
nursery spots. That's great. Um. That's one of the other
kind of projects we have we call the decentralized nursery.

(06:21):
And that's kind of like just something that people already
do at a certain time of year. You know, gardeners
will regularly start more plants than they need and then
just kind of give them away to friends and neighbors
and stuff. And we tried to just make it a
little bit more of an intentional thing. Um. And this
was also kind of growing out of like at the
very beginning of the pandemic, and we were actually doing

(06:43):
seedling deliveries to people, which made sense of that time,
but it was like very labor intensive. Um. So we
kind of moved to this model of having just like
free stands in front of houses on street corners in
different places. Um. You know, there's already like a huch
or free fridges around New Orleans and things like that,
and so this is kind of like the free plant

(07:04):
version of that. And it's really easy for somebody to
just set one up. Um. And then that kind of
also allows us to like work on this other aspect
of of decentralizing food production, because like that's definitely one
of our goals, right is to like not have a
tiny percentage of the population be the only ones who
know how to grow food and doing it under the

(07:26):
control of a tiny number of corporations that own all
the land. And you know, obviously we're trying to get
away from that food system, and so one of the
ways we can think about doing that is finding ways
to really decentralize some of the skills that are um,
that are necessary. So for example, like if somebody's growing
avocados for our nurseries, UM, the thing about growing an

(07:48):
avocado from a pit actually is that, uh, that tree
probably won't produce fruit. It actually needs to be grafted. UM.
So we can have people starting pits, and then we're
also you know, sharing the knowledge of how to graph
these things, UM, because we kind of like see a

(08:11):
future in which a lot more people, um will need
to be involved in food production. But also, like Mike
was saying, like we want this to be not like
a job that it feels like people have, but this
joyous kind of thing that's just a part of everyday life. Yeah,
what are the other things that I was I was
interested in is you know, so so part of part

(08:35):
of what I think the beginning of the Earth Performance
Romanac is about is talking about how I guess people
people have this tendency to sort of focus on climate
change is just like the only sort of climate thing
that's happening. And you know, I mean there's obviously the Yeah,
there's there's a bunch of sort of stuff that is

(08:55):
climate change. But isn't the weather that are sort of
you know, things like the phosphor cycle, things like the
nitrogen cycle that are breaking. But simultaneously, I think it's
it's also true that you know that that that kind
of stuff and this is also something that's that's talked
about in there is is going to have a large
impact both on sort of like even just what what

(09:16):
kind of biomas exist in the in a very short term.
And you know, another product of that is, you know
it is that the sort of increasing rate of storms.
And I was wondering if you all could talk a
bit about what happened after Ida and how both just
sort of in the short term in the long term
that the sort of the increase of just hurricanes and

(09:36):
I hesitate to call natural disasters because you know that
there's there's a whole thing about how these disasters are
sort of manufactured in a lot of ways, but how
how that's been affecting how y'all think are sort of
thinking about and working with these kind of mutual aid
projects and food production. Yeah, so I think with IDA,
it's kind of complicated because, UM, you can almost look

(09:58):
at look at it as like two different storms, um,
because what happened in New Orleans versus what happened and
say like um Homa or the river parishes, Um, these
areas that are you know, generally south and west of
New Orleans. UM are are are kind of like two
different uh animals in some ways, like what happened in

(10:21):
New Orleans specifically relates to infrastructure. So like what you're saying,
like the kind of quote unquote natural disasters thing, that's um,
you know, that's a pretty commonplace way of looking I
mean it's not a very radical um conception that like
these aren't natural disasters wherever the disasters is created. As
soon as UM there was the attempt to create a

(10:45):
colonial New Orleans in the first place. UM, so this
became honestly part of like national discourse as a result
of Katrina, most famously because of the Army cord engineers
failure UM teven five and UM. So what happened this
year UM was with with Hurricane Ida. Was one of

(11:06):
the main transmission towers for the the Energy Energy Corporation
in New Orleans is called energy that outside of the
Gulf South aren't familiar with. So the Entergy tower fell
into the Mississippi River, and you had that happening at
the same time that thousands of power lines fell down.
The power lines are are are on poles and very

(11:28):
prone to getting knocked down even just during the during
any day of the week, UM. And so there wasn't
actually really much flooding UM that was happening. It was
it was primarily wind damage. So that the tower falls
into the river, power lines down. You had something like
I believe fifty five barges in the Port of South
Louisiana falling into their falling off their moorings and floating

(11:51):
around just crashing into things, just crash, just like there's
like several ferries that connected east and west banks of
the city. UM those fell off the worrings. So so
like the physical infrastructure of the place and and how
that relates to beyond New Orleans is. New Orleans is
located at the very um southern reach of the Mississippi
Rivers port of south southern Louisiana, which is like a

(12:15):
fifty five mile port I believe a fifty two port
um that processes like six of all U S grain
going to exports. So it's like a massive, really really
important piece of American capitalist infrastructure. So that when when
those boats follow their mornings, it's not like, oh this

(12:35):
like whatever quaint like vyou problem, it's a very serious
imperial problem. UM. But so for for the average person
living in New Orleans, UM, this looked like I think
I think it ended up being for most people around
a week and a half without power, which if anyone's

(12:55):
lived even with air conditioning in New Orleans for a summer, UM,
it's extremely difficult to live uh here during the summer. UM.
It's that it's obviously not impossible when we have modern amenities,
but when you're when you're without those, when you're without
the refrigerator, when we throughout without new freezer air conditioning,
it's it's really really really hot. Um. You know, so

(13:19):
that's what was happening in New Orleans. There was some
some damage to people's rooms, there was some you know,
fairly fairly substantial damage to the structures. But what happened
to the west, in cities like Laplace, UM, which is
about thirty miles west of New Orleans. UM, that's where

(13:42):
you started to see like very severe flooding, very severe
UM damage to structures, places like Homa, Lafitte, um Portchean,
all these places that are closer to the coast. That's
where you saw the real heavy destruction. So a lot
of people have been framing let's been down the Bayou
and in the river parishes, as we would say, um

(14:05):
as like those places Katrina, because it's the destruction was
was so total in that way. UM. So the way
that you relate to UM, that type of again quote
unquote disaster is much is much different, whereas what happened
in New Orleans, UM is more of a continuation of

(14:25):
of what could be called like a series of apocalypses
that have been happening since colonization. UM. I think that's
a that's an interesting point also that that that I
want to talk about a little bit about US grain
exports because I think that that's another part of this
whole food system question that is important on a scale

(14:47):
that I don't think people understands, like you know, it's
just for furvent background for listeners. So when when all
of the sort of giant like free trade agreements went
into effect, um, you know, so so the free agerments
are like, okay, you're you're not supposed to be able
to like have government subsidies of agricultural products. And there's
there's a couple of carve outs that were put into

(15:08):
this now almost all of them. There are exceptions for
there's a couple of like weird manufacturing stuff in like
Italy and Germany that have carve outs. And the other
big one is that the US government is allowed to
just do enormous levels of agricultural subsidies that no one
else like really in the world is allowed to like
match or I mean do it. Like you know, you

(15:29):
know if if if you try to have grand subsidies, right,
it's like you know, the I M F will come
after you, like you know, you're not allowed to do it.
But then you know somethings that you have the US
producing all of this like this. I mean it it's
it's not it's not really cheap, right, but it's it's
you know, this enormously subsidized grain that nobody can actually
really compete with. And I think that's that's like an

(15:50):
interesting I was wondering what, like, how how how do
you guys think about that in terms of you know,
try trying to do decentralized I guess, a your culture
in a place that's to a large extent this sort
of like conduit of grain to the rest of the world,
but in a way that like also inhibits those places

(16:11):
from actually you know, having their own kind of like
essentialized a your culture. UM. I mean I can speak
a little bit about like what that kind of does
to our context of like making it, like especially when
I see people in the kind of organic gardening farming
world trying to go on this model of like, oh,

(16:32):
we're gonna make you know, regenerative agriculture profitable, and we're
gonna make it somehow compete with conventional agriculture. UM. And
I guess I just don't really think that that is
feasible in that in that terrain. Like you know, if
if we're trying to compete on that same terrain, and

(16:53):
we're competing with these absurd subsidies. It definitely just the
same problem that you see around the world world where
people aren't able to afford to grow their own thing
because there's no way they can they can sell it
as cheaply as as us grain. Um. So I think
it's more important to sort of like look at like
there's there's a piece in the almanac actually that sort

(17:14):
of gets into this this issue of like, well, are
we really growing enough food in this regenerative way, Like
you know, we don't even hardly grow that many grains
or that many high calorie things. A lot of things
are just focused on vegetables and things like that. And like,
I think that's a really important critique. And also I
think that the way out of it isn't just gonna

(17:36):
be us trying harder or something or um Like the
future iron vision for us, like really changing the food
system kind of involves like really large scale expropriation of
that land where the grain is being produced and of
those huge machineries, those huge like satellite powered or satellite

(17:58):
directed you know, allows and tractors and whatnot that are
that are doing this stuff UM. And so like when
I'm trying to think about like the impact that a
food project is having, or like a food justice project,
I don't try to think like we're trying to replace
uh aggro business on its own terms. I think like

(18:19):
we're trying to be an ally or an aid to
any kind of antagonistic sort of social movement that actually
is going to create the conditions where like we can
all get together and start to actually address these problems
UM without being hindered by you know, things like private property.

(18:39):
So I guess that that that that's a good point
to to jump into the Almanac from. I think, yeah,
do do you want to just introduce the project a
little bit and then we can talk about some of
the stuff in it that I thought was really interesting. Yeah,
So the Almanac kind of came out of like a
little bit of a like partially is like a joke.
You know, we're like everyone gets the uh UM Almanac

(19:02):
and kind of you know, it doesn't really relate too
much to UM like most of us what we would
be growing UM. So we had we had posited something
like different, you know, something that that does kind of
grapple with some of the questions of you know, growing
food and kind of the conditions we live in. Maybe
you can speak kind of yeah, I can even just

(19:24):
I'll actually just read the back of it, because I
think it speaks to it pretty well. This is a
farmer's almanac for the end of the world. Growing food
used to be a lot more straightforward, when you plant
your okra at the same time every year like your
grandpa did. Now we've got to be ready for anything,
late spring freezes, freak heat waves that bring plants out
of dormancy, to early fire season longer every year, the

(19:49):
polar vortex, and if that wasn't enough, we've also got
to contend with the fallout from breakages in the global
supply chain. When millions of gallons of milk get poured
down the drain and mountain of potatoes are left to rock.
It's a world that calls for a new kind of
farmers almanac. Today's crisis has roots in the earliest moments

(20:09):
of land theft against Native people's, a process that has
continued alongside hundreds of years of slavery and colonization. The
way forward out of this mess will mean grappling with
the crimes of the past. As well as charting a
new course guided by black and Indigenous knowledge, creative experimentation
and food production, and paying attention across generational and species divides.

(20:33):
So I mean, what one like very concrete example of
like how this farmer's almanac is different than what you
might see just from the standard almanac is um, you know,
we we don't have like oh, it's it's May, it's
time to plant corn or whatever, because I mean, first
of all, that that was never that useful as for
a publication that's meant to be used across this vast continent.

(20:54):
You know, it's going to be different everywhere, um, where
you're going to plant things at which time? Um. But
also like those standard resources that we would go to
like for here, for the southeast for example, or wherever,
Like if you're looking at something that was made a
few decades ago, it's not going to actually be accurate
or it's going to give you undo certainty about where

(21:17):
the seasons line up and things like that. So you know,
instead of telling people exactly when to plant their seeds,
we have a chart that has the actual German nation
temperatures of like all the major annual vegetables that people
would want to grow. UM. And then we also have
like the monthly notes from this local farm in New Orleans,

(21:38):
so you know, located in this area. You can you
can also get a really precise view of like oh
they were planning this, then they were harvesting this. Then. Yeah.
I think that we hope to make something that was
you know, our our original focus was something that was
specific to New Orleans in the region, UM, you know,
in the Gulf South and the Southeast generally. UM, because

(22:00):
we're so aware of the you know, the differences or
what have you between growing through here and growing food
in Ohio or something or whatever, and we all get
these same seeds you know, out of Walmart or Lows
or whatever and try and grow the exact same plants
all over the place to trying to um hone in
on some of that local perspective. UM with me with

(22:24):
in terms of like getting some like folk tradition, getting
some um, you know, anecdotal evidence about you know, things
that worked with things that people are trying UM. And
I think that that was that was fairly successful. UM.
I think I think aside that we weren't really expecting

(22:44):
as much was just the amount of national and even
international UM kind of grasp that it had UM. I
think a lot of people like could could use something
like this in their area UM. And it's fostered some
really interesting connections for people that are experimenting in New York,

(23:05):
for people that are are growing things or thinking about
maybe UM food systems and how they relate to prisons
in California or UM even you know, as far away
as Brazil. UM. It's kind of began to foster a
connection between Labelia Commons and a group called the BOGUS,

(23:26):
which translates roughly to like the Web of People's UM
in Brazil, so called Brazil UM, where it's kind of
like experimental agroecology project that's very specific UM specifically focused
on UM, you know, sovereignty, land stewardship, kind of following

(23:46):
a little bit in the tradition of the Landless Workers movement.
If anyone's familiar with mst UM, it's kind of following
in that tradition a bit UM, but is heavily stewarded
by Black and Indigenous knowledges. Yes, so I was something
I think of a like a kind of pleasant surprise
out of it. Yeah, I thought that was that was

(24:07):
really interesting way of looking at it, because I feel
like there's this tendency in the US too, you know
when when when when we talk about sort of a
relationship to the land, which which is something that comes
up a lot in in the sort of essays that
are are in the All Neck is about, you know,
like there there there there's a piece that I related

(24:27):
to a lot, which is about someone from Guam trying
to sort of deal with like I mean particularly like
legacies or Japanese imperialism and being driven from their home.
And it was like, oh, hey, look like this is yeah,
you know is this is this is someone who experienced
which when Japan went west. And I was like, oh yeah,
my family had this basically very similar thing when they
went east. And you know, but but there's there's I think, yeah,

(24:50):
and I think it's very smartly you get you get
to a point very quickly where you're trying to grapple
with you know, how do how do you build connections
to land? But then also how how does that work
in a context in you know, in a context that's
basically defined by southern colonialism and defined by by this
sort by this occupation. And I think looking at the

(25:14):
MSc looking at a lot of stuff that happened in
Latin America. I mean there there's very similar to what
you guys were talking about. In Brazil, there was a
huge movement like this that was indigenous land recormation sort
of agrocology in in Columbia for example too in the nineties,
and they they run into this problem of you know,

(25:34):
there's there's a civil war going on in Columbia and
they a lot of them getting murdered by sort of
state paramilitary is in the army. But I think it's
it's a it's a really interesting way of of looking
at what what does what does lambak actually look like?
And how how you deal with interacting with land. And also, yeah,
the lands workers in particular, they use a lot of methods,
but you know they actually do just take a like

(25:55):
an enormous amount of land like back from this state
and sort of back from corporate things. So I'm interested
in how we all started talking to a lot of
these a lot of the Brazilian groups, and how that
sort of like that that perspective is shaped the way
that like this, this this whole sort of project turned out. Um,
So we were specifically to dispose UM some previous connections

(26:21):
that some of us had UM in Brazil had when
talking about what we were doing and just kind of
keeping up an exchange of uh, you know, just like
kind of updates from from the Gulf, and they would
send updates from things going on down there. They kind
of do the connection for us and put us towards them.

(26:45):
And I reached out to day Dispobos and was like, hey,
we're you know, we're doing this thing, and I, you know,
and inspired by what you're doing personally and UM, you know,
I I'd be curious to see what what what kind
of relationship whatever we can foster. And they took it UM,

(27:09):
you know, also with with some inspiration, seeing that this
very clear connection in terms of relationship with land historically,
this possession historically between the two continents across the Caribbean UM,
the implementation on a wide scale of plantation, monoculture UM.

(27:32):
It that was fueled entirely by slavery and genocide UM.
And And I think that having that kind of like
shared common history, I think gives us a good bedrock
to like UM exchange notes about where we are now
kind of multiplied by the fact that the way that um, yeah,

(27:56):
so called emancipation happened here versus in Brazil, radically different
UM the UM like the for instance, the existence of
PET or the Workers Party in Brazil being such a
force after the dictatorship and having that like strong populist
movement UM that was you know, rooted a very traditional

(28:19):
left UM that that fueled MST. Well, you don't have
anything like that here. You know that that happens at
the same time that here, Actually the workers movement in
the US was was kind of getting defeated, I mean
them up in the seventies. So with respect to like
UM land back specifically, UM, you know, I don't know

(28:42):
if you I don't know if you will see it
in the same forms. I doubt at least obviously would
totally be there cheering it on. And I'm happy to
see it, UM. But I think it looks a lot
more like during the uprising last year. You saw in Chicago,
for instance, UM, the when when like the trains were
being expropriated as they were moving, taking goods out of

(29:06):
these box cars, UM, and just expropriate in tons of goods,
taking you know, taking goods that would normally be going
you know, just commodities normally going to court just cut
off in the middle of line or you know, UM,
these these these these kind of like more um ah,
I don't want to say small scale, but um focus

(29:29):
more on like infrastructural choke points rather than necessarily um,
like having thousands of people swarming uh you know, a
massive industrial agriculture UM set up in Kansas or something.
You know. Yeah, yeah, I think it's great to imagine that.
I think I really love sharing the history of MST

(29:52):
with people in America who have never heard it before,
because I think it's a great way to kind of
expand the imaginary of like what is possible, like what
kind of actions are actually at our disposal like it
and it truly is not, you know, look exactly like that.
And I think it's also really important for us to
like not forget a lot of the similar histories here,

(30:14):
like um. Part of the inspiration for the Almanac or
what kind of drove us to to make it was
some of us were doing a reading group of this
book called Freedom Farmers that's about kind of like various
uh um, black projects in the South for food autonomy

(30:34):
after slavery, and a lot of it is about Fannie
Let Hammer and UM Freedom Farms, and you know, we've
we're definitely inspired for some of the little Bilia things
by UM Fannie Leehammer's pig bank, which was a really
cool thing where they just like started with a bunch
of pigs and if you were in the community, like
you get you get your pigs from, you get a

(30:57):
couple of piglets from the pig bank, and then the
inch risked on that is a couple of years later
you got to give them a couple of pigs because
you're producing your own pigs, and so the pig bank
is like self sustaining. UM. And another thing from that
book that was inspiring to us was UM reading about
George Washington Carver's public education projects out of Tuskegee University

(31:21):
that were UM just really inspiring in terms of like
he was doing all of his own kind of independent
research about soils and pests and all these different crops
and everything and creating these farm bulletins that were then
being distributed h to black farmers throughout the region to
kind of, you know, share better practices, and a lot

(31:43):
of the stuff was like agro ecology before people had
that word like he was very far ahead of his
time in terms of understanding soil dynamics and and passed
and things like that. Um, so yeah, we we definitely
try to try to lift up all that history as
much as possible. Yeah, I guess what Whene're the ether.
Thing I thought was very interesting that you alluded to

(32:05):
briefly in this was Yeah, because there's there's a session
of this is talking about food in prisons, and I
wonder if you could talk about that part a little
bit more, because that's a connection that I that I
really don't think it's drawn very often here on me
flip to the piece, right, I mean one of the
things that it's kind of hard to describe. I do
love the visual that that we have for this piece,

(32:29):
but yeah, I mean it's just like the it's a
striking image, you know. It's got like, um, in the center,
there's a picture of a really high density chicken operation
and there's somebody wearing sort of like a full tibex
suit suit and just walking through this like massive herd
of chickens. And then that's super imposed over this just
like really nasty looking close up photo of a prison

(32:51):
food draining and just like the canned veggies and the everything.
And like, I mean, I don't I've been to jail
a number of times, and the food is always terrible.
It's always one of the things that you talk about
or you can bond over or whatever. It's just how
bad the food is. But I think people who haven't
experienced that don't really think about just how much systematic

(33:15):
like starvation is going on and mannutrition is going on,
where it's like the only way you can possibly survive
in these places is spending a bunch of extra money
on commissary to get stuff that also isn't healthy, but
at least you can get more calories and stuff. Um.
And like I think that that there's like a lot
of parallels between kind of the structure of prisons and

(33:37):
the structure of our of our food system. Um. I
mean one example that I used to talk about this
is like the banana plantation, um, where like the you know,
we have an entire variety of banana that's like basically
stanct or it's it can't be grown commercially anymore because
the banana industry, you know, functions by putting like warehousing

(34:03):
these banas together and these like super tight plantation formations,
you know, which really only makes sense if you're just
trying to maximize your profits and get as much out
of a small space as possible. But what it does
is is the exact same thing that happens in prisons
during COVID or with any kind of uh, you know,
pathogen like tuberculosis or whatever. Um. You know, it's it's

(34:27):
like the trees are so close together that the fungus
spread so rapidly, and then they're also like pumping all
these things into to fight that, and they're actually breeding
super funguses all the time. And at some point the
banana that we eat now is going to also stop
existing because of this. Um. And I guess I don't
know if I can draw anything deeper out of those

(34:49):
similarities than the fact that there's this like overriding logic
of capitalism that is just like has no respect for
these beings, like whether it is a person or a minatory,
Like it's all just commodities and things to be warehouse.
Um yeah, I think. UM to add on that, I

(35:13):
mean this this is the piece in there which is
called the struggle for good food across walls. Um, I
think it does a nice job of talking about how like, um,
you know, if we're talking about quote unquote food, food
justice or what have you, like, UM like, how can
we talk about that on the outside of all forgetting
about just the most deplorable UM food conditions on the

(35:38):
entire continent. UM. And I think that that it's it's
really good at that. I think I would really like
to see in the next year all the ways that um,
the imaginaries of of inmates kind of go in in
like attack that UM the like the lodge of prison

(36:01):
food being completely deplorable. Like you know, you have all
these forms of creativity of like making tortillas and stuff
and like doing wild things with like stuff that's in
the commissary, you know, contraband kind of ways of of
making kind of life a little bit more livable in there.
And and if anyone has um spent time in jail

(36:24):
or prison or or kept up a relationship with someone
on the inside or what have you, UM, everyone has
a story about a way of UM making making food
more UM interesting and joyful, and and like there becomes
whole cultures around them. One of the things that we're
starting to do in one of the farm spaces we

(36:48):
work with outside of the city is is UM through
pre existing relationships with inmates in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, which,
for those that don't know, UM was a plantation civil
War happens two years after the Civil War, it becomes
a Louisiana State pen Potentiary. It's still a plantation. It's

(37:11):
you know, uh this many times the descendants of the
same enslaved folks who were on that plantation prior UM
and you know it's a it's a guard on a
horseback riding around while these UM folks pulling cotton, UM
and so so through some of these relationships with some
of these inmates who are m like kind of uh

(37:33):
clandestine organizers, UM, we're starting to come up with ways
to like grow food collaboratively with folks that are behind
walls and and find ways to get food to either
their family or maybe sell and get that into their commissary.
Kind of just like trying to um spitball ideas about

(37:55):
like different ways of producing food despite people's incarceration. Yeah,
that that seems that seems like a really I guess
we're you can really say is a necessary way for
for this sort of food politics to go if it's
going to actually deal with sort of both the land
conditions and the conditions of just you know the fact

(38:16):
that we haven't in that there's still just an enormous
slafe population the US. And I think that kind of
resistance in creativity, I think is how Yeah y'all, are
y'll on the right track with with pushing it that way? Yeah?
That this is this is sort of a bleique note
to end on, I think, but I don't know. I
think it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a hopeful
one too, And where can people find but basically all

(38:40):
of your's work. And then also you talked a little
bit about trying to get submissions for everything, So can
you talk a little bit about how that how that's
gonna work. Yeah, Um, so we're it's it's kind of
been on hold a little bit because we've been like
very active after IDA. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, trying

(39:01):
to make sure our people are all good and supporting
um in various places UM kind of doing like different
workshops and stuff. And and because that our focus isn't
just on food production, it's also like neighborhood survival or whatever.
So we've been UM working with an old UM neighbor

(39:22):
of one of ours who UM. You know, she's already
been kind of doing this mutual aid stuff you know
by any other name for decades, you know, letting people
stay in their house, UM, feeding people. UM. She's like
kind of like a block MoMA and she's really one
of the last UM black home others in her neighborhood.
So we're really trying to like help her achieve some autonomy.

(39:45):
One way that we've been putting it is UM when
all the airbnbs like lose their power because they're still
reliant on the colonial world, Well, miss Elfie I could
still have her lights on because she's going to be
totally autonomous from the system. So UM, I think that
that link is on our Instagram page if you click
on the like UM the link or whatever, there's a

(40:06):
go fund me that UM is UH where we've been
putting a lot of our effort and really working with
her on UM and then also like growing growing a
garden like adjacent to her so that the people in
that community are are food as as food autonomous as
UM as we can get we can we can put
it in the show notes yeah, and the the handle

(40:28):
for both Twitter and Instagram is at Lobilia Commons and
the Almanac. You can find links to the Almanac pdf
on through either of those um if you want to
just read it for free, and then UM there's also
copies for sale on emergent Goods dot com. And for

(40:50):
um submissions, I mean, yeah, like I said, we've been
really behind on this just because of all this stuff,
But for submissions, we're really um looking for folks um
to contribute. Throw us a pitch. UM. I think if
you've seen the first one or I've listened to this,
you probably get something of an idea of what we're
looking for UM, and we're happy to like talk to

(41:12):
people about, like, you know, different ideas and bear with
us if we're a little slower to spawn because we're
you know, kind of still waist deep right now. But yes,
submission for deadlines is the end of October UM, and
you can email ideas or pitches or whatever to Lobelia
Commons at proton mail dot com. And lastly, the project

(41:35):
that I'm most focused on is the front Yard Orchard Initiative,
where basically we just propagate as many fruit trees as
cheaply as possible. Things that are really easy for us
to grow from cuttings like figs, mulberries, things they're easy
to grow from seed, like papaya, maringa, pecan um. And

(41:59):
we basically just have some nice flyers that we put
up and we advertise a bit on social media and
also just kind of go door to door in neighborhoods
where we already have gardens or connections and offer to
give free fruit trees out to people, and we're also
happy to plant them for people and then kind of
offer a consultation on how to take care of it

(42:20):
or whatever. And also if folks want to hear some
of the pieces from the Earthbound Farmers Almanac read by
some of the authors and then some interviews with those authors,
you can check out this podcast called Partisan Gardens that
did a really good episode that's kind of like an
audio exploration of the Almanac. Cool. Yeah, people, people definitely

(42:42):
definitely go read the Almanac. Is it's it's it's a
it's a really good it's a really good piece of work.
Um yeah, thank thank you too so much for joining us.
Thank you for you suddenly wake up to the loud

(43:04):
growling of a tactical vehicle must have left your window open.
A few streets away, you can hear the troopers doing
their morning patrols. This is closing in on week four
of the all day curfew. Cops and state troopers have
put checkpoints at every bridge and on all major streets
for about every ten blocks. Your friends and the city's

(43:25):
local liberal majority are now calling this what it is.
Your city is functioning as a full on police state.
National establishment media has been more hesitants to use that term,
but your Fox watching conservative family from out of state
has been texting you about how good it is that
someone is finally establishing law and order and taking back

(43:46):
the town. After months of senseless looting and destructive riots,
You've been mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit
your job when the recent amount of protests started up,
which now means you don't qualify for the working hours
exemption of the curfew. You've got enough money saved up
for another month, but you're looking to get a grocery

(44:07):
delivery job, which would have the added benefit of allowing
you to go outside during the day. Luckily, you've been
able to sneak out at night to do rooftopping and
surveil the police's checkpoints and patrol routes in your neighborhood.
You've noticed that the cops rarely look up. You've been
feeding your intail into a surveillance database shared on a

(44:27):
telegram channel ran by some various activists. After lying in
bed gathering your thoughts for a few minutes, you finally
roll out and pick out your clothes. Dark loose pants,
a plane shirt, beanie, and a highs jacket. Ordinarily, you'd
break into your red bull stache for morning caffeine, but

(44:48):
you've already got plenty of energy. Today it's your boyfriend's birthday,
and for the past week you've been planning to surprise him.
You think there's finally enough information in the surveillance database
to plan a trip us town with little to no
law enforcement interaction. Between the in person reconnaissance and hacking
into the city's traffic cams, which was surprisingly easy, you've

(45:10):
been able to figure out a route using city buses
and on foot that should be able to avoid checkpoints
and the regular patrol routes from what you've seen online.
Bus drivers won't ask for your work authorization card, and
you're hoping the high his jacket will make it look
like you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you grab your
small yellow messenger bag and jam in a water bottle

(45:30):
plus a ten of a half a dozen cupcakes. Deep breaths, slowly,
twist the handle of your door, and stare down in
your apartment hallway. You're on your way. You keep telling yourself,
just act like you belong. After taking the stairs down
to ground level, you make your way street side. This

(45:51):
part you feel more confident about. You've been able to
study the patrol patterns around your media area more carefully.
The bus stop you're going to was just four blocks away.
You can zig zig through two streets and to avoid
the main drags. As you walk through the sidewalks, you
keep your head down, but your eyes are darting side
to side to get a lay of the land. Don't

(46:11):
walk too fast or too slow. Match the people around you. Obviously,
not many people are out right now, but there are
enough to mirror their movement and pace. It feels like
it took forever, but you get to the bus stop
without incident or seeing a single cop. Waiting at bus
stops always feels like an eternity, but today it's worse.

(46:32):
Within a few minutes, the blue metro bus does pull up.
The bus driver gestures you on. The electronic ticketing system
isn't turned on. You peek up to the driver. The
look in her eyes is telling you just a head
on back. At least you know she's probably on your side.
You picked this bus not because it's the most direct
route to your boyfriend's place. It's not, but because he

(46:55):
gets you close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and
your internet buddies have mapped out. It's a slower, more
jagged route, but at least you get to relax for
a while and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can
get an in person look at the rest of the
city under the curfew and police occupation. The ride is
now closing in on a little over half an hour,
about ten more minutes until you get off. Your heart's

(47:16):
racing you might actually do this. In your flash of
nervous excitement, you look up ahead on the road and
your face drops. About half a mile up ahead, you
spot a checkpoint. Fuck no, this, this is wrong. This
wasn't on the map. The checkpoint on this street was
supposed to be further up the road. After you get off,

(47:36):
your mind flashes through different possibilities. Did the cops change
the checkpoint this morning? Wait? Did the police find the
database map on telegram? And are getting at false info?
You stop yourself from thinking because you realize you need
to act now and think later. You jump out of
your seat and sprint up the bus towards the driver.
You blurt out, I need to get off this right now. Please.

(47:59):
The draw ever looks ahead, looks at you, and tilts
her head down and pulls over quick. That's all she
says to you. You dart out of the bus and
into the half residential, half retail labyrinth, and as you're
running you hear sirens. Fuck they saw you. Your head
swivels around to catch a glance. One car from the

(48:21):
checkpoint is headed your way. You hope the bus driver
doesn't get in trouble, but right now that's not your problem,
you think. First thing you need to do is prevent
the vehicle from pursuing you. So off the big streets.
You take a second to tighten the messenger bag around
your body. And here we go to You're right. You
see a walled courtyard for a small two story apartment.

(48:43):
Estimate the wall is eight feet tall. Doable. You turn
out the street and run towards the wall, slowly gaining speed,
jump up and punch your foot on the side. Then
your arms reach up and grab the top. It's a
bit of a struggle to pull yourself up. You've got
some stuff weighing you down and you're a bit out
of practice, but you get up. You hop down onto
the other side and keep going for now. You batrol

(49:04):
through some dense bushes and vault a few small railings
as you traverse the side streets. Soon enough, you're far
enough away from the car, with plenty of obstacles in
between you and it that you feel like you can
catch a quick breather. Now you have a choice hide
it out here for a bit or figure out a
way to your boyfriends. You still got a decent sense

(49:24):
of where you are. The destination should be only about
ten blocks away. Now in a diagonal direction, you'll get
plenty of time to rest your boyfriend's place, so you
figure you should continue on. As you're about to head
on your way to armored state troopers turned the corner
on foot. You remember you're still pretty close to the checkpoint.

(49:45):
One look at you with your hands on your knees.
As you pant. The cops know you're out of place. Stop,
yells the cop. You're being detained. Fuck, time to book it.
Gonna have to think as you run. Good news is
is that they're armor. Bad news is that you're tired
and your outfit is blown. You can change clothes once

(50:05):
you get to your boyfriends, so you decide the best
course of action now is to make it hard for
two people in armor to follow you. Time to put
some obstacles between you and them. You're already mostly out
of the retail area, which means it's time to hop
some backyard fences Ferris Bueller's Day Off Shit. You make
a sharp left turn behind a car and into someone's
yard and up and over their fence. One hand grabs

(50:26):
on top, one hand goes to the far side, and
you flip your body over. Next few fences are shorter,
regular speed vaults will do. The sound of the clinky
tactle boots chasing you gets quieter as you traverse through
the yards and zig zigging around blocks. Before you know it,
you're on the back street of your partner's place. Only
a few more steps and you can see their backyard
in the distance. You quick to in your head and

(50:48):
look around. From what you can see, you've lost the
State troopers. You scurry through four more yards before you
reach your target. You let it a sigh of relief.
You jog past the side yard towards the front. You
probably should use the front door before you knock. You
take a look inside your messenger bag. You unclipped the latch,
and inside lies a smushed pile of cupcake crumbs with

(51:10):
pink frosting coating insides of your bag. H Well, at
least I made it in one piece, you say out loud.
After an exhausting trek, you finally knock on the door.
It could happen here. Podcast Robert Evans. Sophie is not

(51:32):
here today, so I get to open the episode with
a tonal grunting um because she was unable to stop me.
Welcome to the podcast that this is talking about things
falling apart? How to you know make it not? Maybe? Uh?
My guest today, well, my my co host today first
is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how are you doing today? I'm

(51:52):
doing good good. We have a little bit of a
fun update. This actually happened last week but this will
be the first episode we're recording since it happened. UM.
Last week we put up some links to ago fund
me and a couple of different episodes of Bastards and
of It Could Happen here to try to help a
woman named Ruba who lives in Portland, UM and is

(52:13):
a community activists save her house. UM. When we started
the fundraiser, she'd raised about twenty eight grand to to
you know, get basically keep her home. UM, and it's
up to the fifty grand she needed. Y'all did that
in about three days. UM. So you've you've you've kept
a woman in her home UM and allowed her and
her family to stay where they are. And I'm just

(52:35):
extremely grateful to everybody who donated, who shared. UM. It's
just awesome. UM. You know this comes after earlier in
this year you all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. UM.
I just continued to be very impressed with with how
how much people who listen to these shows are willing
to throw down to help people out. So thank you all. UH,

(52:57):
and now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison,
what don't we what do we? What do we? What
are we? What are we? What are we talking about today?
So today we're gonna be talking about and discussing two
of kind of my favorite practical skill sets hey been
training for I don't know seven eight, I think almost

(53:17):
eight years now. UM, and it's what, yeah, one of
one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's
also useful for fun. We're talking about, uh parkour, which
people may have hurt me discussed before, but also just
kind of like stealth in general, um, and how to
become mindful of your presence among other people. UM. As

(53:39):
a big, clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in
aggressive situations, I can confirm that your parkour is very
very effective because you are a fast, little set of
a bit very good at getting away from the cops
and getting to where you need to be to film things.
It was always, um kind of amazing, as frustrating as

(54:00):
it was sometimes when you would when you would start
out ahead of everybody, but yeah, I can't argue with
the results. So and to help us kind of talk
about parkorn and stealth, I have brought on a friend
of mine who is the person who mostly taught me
um parker and stealth. My friend Rick, who has been

(54:22):
teaching Parker for a long time. UM, say hi Rick,
that that that's right. Rick is very not super social,
so it's I think it's amazing that I was able
to convince him to come in a podcast. Pretty funny. Um.
First off, Rick, do you want to kind of just
like give your definition of like park or in general,
because I know whenever we say Parker, everyone just thinks

(54:43):
to the office, um, which I know you find frustrating.
But yeah, for people who maybe aren't as into it
as us, don't want to just give the kind of
a brief overview of of Parker as like a concept. Uh,
Parker is really annoy and concept to actually pin down. Um.

(55:03):
But basically speaking, it's movement with purpose. You are somewhere,
you want to get somewhere, and you're trying to find
the best way of doing that. When we're training, we
kind of focus on efficiency, safety, speed, and the reason
behind the movement. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's thinking of

(55:26):
it more as like the movement with purpose or like
like intentional movement, Um, is much better than thinking of
it's like like parkour isn't like flips like flips and
that kind of stuff is more of what we call
like UM free running. It's it's more of like a
creative expression. It's more of like a kind of kind
of like a sport, whereas like Parker is more usually
I mean, there's always gonna people that are going to

(55:47):
fight you on this in the park, in the Parker community,
but it's generally Parker is kind of more based on utility.
So like last last summer at the protests, I I
used you know, Parker in a lot of different ways,
both to like you know, get somewhere specifically or parkor
is grade is like a recovery tool, like if you
get pushed over by cops. UM, park Work would be
very useful for like getting up very fast. You know.

(56:09):
It's like all that kind of more practical side of things.
And I've used Parker you know before I was doing
filming at different kind of activism related type things. It's
just it's a super useful skill to have UM And
today I wanted to talk talk a bit about like
Parker's practical application in you know, conflict ish scenarios, but
also wanted to touch on stealth um as you know,

(56:34):
sometimes you don't need Parker and if you can avoid
a scenario where you have to use it would be
kind of great. So I've asked Rick to kind of
prepare a few things on stealth, which then we'll kind of,
you know, bounce off each other and talk kind of
a general discussion of Parker and stealth in general and
how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. Um. So, Rick,

(56:54):
where would you like to start for you know, stealth overview? Well,
in conflict with other people, there's like three different levels
of the conflict um and all of these get trained
in different places. Usually there's the actual um like conflict.

(57:16):
The combat, which is more of a martial arts or
gun training or weapon training of any kind as well,
compares you for that Beneath that is the Parker level,
where you can avoid getting into the conflict in the
first place. If you can get away from the situation, Yeah,
if you're more of an arm's length of way, then
you can create more distance between you and someone it's

(57:37):
trying to hurt you. And in nine percent of conflict situations,
that's going to be a better self defense option than
literally any weapon you could carry. Just getting the hell
away is always the preferred. There's there's there's a really
good comic. Um, it's it's like it's it's like a
it's like a like like a comedy comic of like
someone someone trying to get into like a knife fight

(57:58):
and you're just like, nope, I'm running away because there's
no there's no winner in a knife fight. The only
way to win a knife fight is to be oh
far away from someone with a knife. Yeah, I mean
literally Again, the only justified situation I can think of
too physically getting into a knife fight is like what
happened on the Portland Max train when someone else can't

(58:19):
get away. Yeah, you're still gonna stick to them. And
the two guys who did that died. They died. Yeah yeah, um,
not that they did the wrong thing. They did the
only thing they could. But that's what a knife fight is.
So yeah, it's being able to get the funk away
is the best self defense. Yeah. I carry weapons with
me wherever I go, but I don't want to ever

(58:39):
use them. My first response is always going to be
look for an escape path. Yeah yeah, yeah. A weapon
is only for if you can't get away or if
someone else can't get away. So pretty much like yeah, well, yeah,
I've always been interested because again I've watched you know,
Garrison hop Away from Cops over ps is where I

(59:00):
had to like, you know, fall over the fence essentially
because I'm not nearly as good. I'm someone who exercises,
But like number one, is it even possible to like
learn this stuff without fucking your thirty three year old
body up a bunch in the process. That's a lot
of scared of is like over sixty, and he's good,

(59:21):
very good. He's actually like one of my high intermediate,
low advanced students, honestly, and he started when he was
like fifty. How do you uh, I mean, like it
it just seems like injury, I guess because my my
my stereotypical view of it is like a bunch of
jumping up on buildings and leaping over stuff like, um,

(59:45):
it seems like injuries would be a pretty common fact. Um. So,
I guess that's kind of like always been my first
concern there, like how do you how do you how
do you train people to do this stuff with a
minimum of risk? Well, that's kind of always the focus
of my teaching. There certainly are other instructors out there,
like the guy who taught me Parker was Basically, this

(01:00:07):
is a con vault. This is what it looks like.
Do it my training, Like, I sucked at Parker when
I started, So my teaching method has been coming at
this as a sort of Okay, I'm gonna try to
break this down into as many pieces as I can,
and I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. Um,

(01:00:27):
Bumps and bruises do happen when you're training Parker. That's
just unavoidable. It's learning how to do walking but fancy.
So you get bruised when you're learning how to walk.
You get bruised when you're learning every technique in Parker.
But I've been doing it for fourteen years now and
I've never broken any of my bones. If you do

(01:00:48):
it right, you should be able to stay safe when
training you. Definitely, if you can get someone who's more experienced,
getting them to break down steps for you was very useful,
whether that be like a park Ord gym in your
area or just like a friend that that's that's been
that's been messing around. Trying to like train with somebody
is probably one of the most important things, um, is

(01:01:08):
to have someone else there both if you like want
like get hurt, you need help, but to to kind
of prevent to help prevent that from even happening in
the first place, because there's a lot of like very
simple moves that can be introduced in very safe environments.
I've I've I've been wanting to get Roberts down to
the gym for like over a year now just to
go over like a few basic kind of stuff that's
just really really useful, pretty and like pretty easy. Like

(01:01:31):
we're not we're not jumping to like you know, doing
like roof topping right where we're like jumping from one
roof to another. We're starting by we're starting by being like,
here's like a concrete barricade, what's the safest way of
getting over this if you're under pressure? Right? It's it's
it's it's that kind of stuff that's specifically useful and
like conflict scenarios, right, because like when we're when we're
facing in a riot line, I'm not gonna be doing
like flips and cart wheels to like get over fences.

(01:01:52):
I'm trying to be like, what's the safest, fastest way
I can get over this thing? Well, making sure I'm
not going to get like shot with the rubber bullet, Right,
that's kind of it's it's it's it's it's very different
from like what you see on YouTube, right, YouTube's very
like showy people are like trying to like basically when
what you see on YouTube is people are doing people
are doing like a choreographic performance, whereas Parker from a
utility standpoint is very different from what you see online. Yeah,

(01:02:18):
and that's one of the things that we try to
train to when we're training Parkre is we just give
ourselves an environment and say, okay, I'm going now, yeah,
and like do it over and over again and try
to figure out what's the best way of getting over
this specific path. Right, if you can like make a
designed path, be like, you know, even doing this at
like a playground or like any any place with like logs,

(01:02:39):
you know, you can do Parker in the forest and stuff,
be like, I'm just like setting this path and experiment
with how many ways can I move through this kind
of set set of obstacles, um, And you can kind
of figure out Parker on your own on in in
in that kind of way, because because your body knows
what it's gonna do, Like, you know, people have been
moving like this for thousands and thousands of years. It's
only in the past few hundred years we've like kind

(01:03:00):
of lost this ability, or it's like become it's become
less necessary. So like we we know how to interact
with our environment in creative ways, Like we we we
know how to do this, but it's just that, you know,
we the past, the past few centuries, it's been less important.
And I think Parker is really fun because you can
kind of rediscover interacting with your environment in these you know,

(01:03:22):
kind of more wild ways. It's something that we all
do as children, just like evolutionarily for some reason, as
children we do this as play. We climb trees and
we try to go over fences. It's just that something
in our society has made a shift so that when
we become adults, it's suddenly not acceptable for us to

(01:03:45):
do this anymore. Yeah, I mean, I can remember when
I was a little kid growing up on the farm.
We had a bullpen because we kept the bowl away
from the cows, and my my cousin and I would
hop over the fence and we would throw stuff at
the bowl, and then when it started to charge, we
would hop back over the fence. Like I mean, Obviously
I'd never do that today because it's mean to throw
things at a bowl I was six. But also I
couldn't physically hop over the fence that way today. But

(01:04:10):
I'm guessing within like, I don't know, even just like
a few hours of practice, you could figure out a
lot of ways together. I could be back to fucking
with bowls. Is what exactly? You don't need to kiss
kiss the bull fucking goodbye? You can? We can? We
can go back to this. We could go I could,
I could return to tradition. Yes, exactly. What is the

(01:04:31):
degree of this that can be done without? Again, like
you know we have we have a wide variety of
income levels that listen to this show? Um, what is
the degree this can be done without like paying for training?
You know that? Like, like, how is it even possible
to like start on this kind of thing if you're
in reasonable shape, you know, on your own, without paying someone,
Because that that seems like a recipe for breaking something

(01:04:52):
to me, But again, I don't know. I don't know.
Ship It is very much about knowing yourself and knowing
what you're ready for. Uh, this was something I mean
I say that I never broke a bone in my training,
But there were a couple of times I started pushing
myself further than I should have, and it would have
been really good to have someone there to say, Hey,

(01:05:15):
you probably not ready for this yet. Let's break this
down into little pieces. But if you come at it
methodically and you don't endanger yourself too much. What I
started out with in Parker is I would just put
a piece of tape on the ground and another piece
of tape and jump from one piece of tape to
the other. And went out to parking lots and jumped

(01:05:39):
from just an arbitrary pebble to the curb on the
parking lot and found some just railings and learned how
to go over those railings safely, and gradually just started
building up to higher and higher things. You always want
to start at ground level when you're training Parkers. Don't
go up to high places for your first thing. Yeah.

(01:06:02):
I think there there's a lot of like instructional videos
on YouTube too that that are not just like showing off.
It's actually people trying to like break down movements. So
you can like get find a specific video and be like, Okay,
I want to, you know, bring this on my phone,
go out into like a playground a parking lot, like
like a wooded area and be like, okay, this is
this is this one vault. I don't watch the video

(01:06:22):
and I'm gonna try to replicate it myself. That's really
the the kind of easiest, cheapest way to kind of
break that down without having to you know, pay someone
tons of money. Um. You know, if parker classes aren't
the most expensive thing. Um, so that's if if you
do have a little bit of disposable income. I I
like park work classes. I did them for a long time,

(01:06:43):
but there was a certain point actually that like I
couldn't afford classes anymore. And luckily I've been doing park
wore enough at that point that I was able to
become an assistant instructor, which means I've got like a
free I got like a free membership in exchange for
you know, helping out in classes, like a few hours
a week. So that's what that's what I did for
years when I couldn't afford classes, is it's just helps

(01:07:06):
help teach, which I mean eventually I got leveled up
to being like a full time instructor. Um. So that
is kind of the other way is you know, once
you get enough stuff, there are you know, there's there's
ways canna like make friends who know more Parker than you.
You can do you know, outdoor training with them, which
can be free. Um, but if you if you do
really want like a like a gym environment, there is
there's ways of making classes not the most expensive thing.

(01:07:28):
There's online groups that schedule meetups every now and then,
So if you can find an online group in your area,
you can go to one of their meetups and ask
for advice. Not everyone's going to give the best advice.
There are some people in the park or community who
are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be in a cast

(01:07:49):
half of the time. Um, the more advanced people, yeah,
they generally, so always take advice with a grain of salt.
Not everyone knows every rething, and no one knows your
body as well as you do. So you've got to
keep yourself safe above everything else. You can't get better
at park Or if you break both of your legs. Yeah,

(01:08:11):
that's always So a couple of questions here. Number one
would be obviously, I don't expect you know, like somebody's
in Michigan or whatever. I don't expect you to know
the best parkour instructor there. But if somebody is looking
at going the gym route, are there kind of some
hard and fast rules for determining whether or not these
folks know what they're doing? Like, is there any kind
of advice you have in terms of picking a gym

(01:08:32):
or is it just kind of like go into Google
Maps and see see where the parkour will be. That's
a little bit tough because especially since COVID, there's not
many options for park or gins out here. Um, my
best advice would be go and if they let you
just watch a class and see what's going on. Um,

(01:08:54):
see how many people have casts? Yeah, yeah, back when
I was learning parkour originally we would have basically two
people in a cast all the time, just in the class. Yeah,
I didn't know that the guy that I was trying
to keep up with the whole times than three stints

(01:09:16):
in a cast. Yeah, just funny because I've never got
a serious injury ever. I was. I was always more
careful in my training, but like, the most I've gotten
is like is like you know, like bruises and stuff.
I've I've I've and I got to a relatively high
level of parker like if years ago only took classes
from me but was always on breaking things down and

(01:09:40):
making them accessible and safe. True. True, yeah, yeah, but
there is there's definitely people who are more who are
more carefree with their body and okay with hurting themselves
to do something cool. Yeah, and some people will get
away with that. So for folks who are there don't
have the financial means to go to a gym where
there's just nothing in their area, because as you said,
there's a play. Um, if people are gonna you've given

(01:10:02):
some advice and like how to start trying yourself. Are
there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks
who are you know, looking to get on unless on
their own dip their toes in um, you know, YouTube
channels or or people who you know do good like
writing breakdowns, anything that you would, uh, you would push
folks towards. I haven't been up to date on it recently. UM.

(01:10:23):
A lot of the videos out there are garbage. UM.
What I recommend you look for is you look for,
first of all, explanation. UM. Second of all, if you
can find videos of someone who's training something and they
failed to do the move that they're trying to do correctly,
and they fail to do the move that they're trying

(01:10:43):
to do correctly. They fail and fail and fail and
fail and then succeed. M hm. That's an honest video.
That's one that I would listen to more because they
understand the process. The other videos out there are sort
of greatest hits compilation and you don't get to see
the whole process that goes into that. So I don't

(01:11:06):
have a sense. I don't have any specific person or
channel to recommend, but when you're going out there and
looking for resources, just make sure that the person is
being some understanding into the fact that this is the
process of training and it's not just this is how
it's done. Do it now, you can do it. There

(01:11:27):
is there is a there is like a Parkore wiki
which was like you know Parkore dot fandom dot com
that you can you can find like just like lists
of all of the moves and they give you very
like simple explanations of them and they and they link
to some videos um and generally like if if you
just want to learn more about it, then that's then
that can be a good resource. Just so you're familiar
with all the different types of movement. But yeah, like

(01:11:47):
make sure you take every video with a grain of salt,
and you know, watch other watch other people's explanations and
be like, Okay, I kind of like the way this
person describes it versus this person, because you know, everyone
teaches differently. Everyone teaches for kind of you know, different
differently body types for different like you know, body like
performance models. Um. So you know, because you can't just
apply the same thing to everyone because everyone's everyone is different.

(01:12:08):
But you know, the parkore WICKI is a decent resource. Um.
And then you know there's YouTube is especially since since
the two thousands, there's been a plethora of content, most
of most of it bad, but you know there's lots
to at least look for. Al Right, Um, anything else
you wanted to get into, Yeah, I wanted to kind
of branch off of like the parkour discussion into kind

(01:12:32):
of like, uh, the more kind of stealth based discussion
of of kind of being aware of your presence in
relation to other people and recond I know you were
talking about like the different levels of stealth. So you've
got the combat training which prevents you from getting killed
or captured in uh, the worst of scenarios, and then

(01:12:54):
we have our core that you can use to prevent
the combat in the first place, and stealth is what
you use to prevent the chase from happening in the
first place. It's kind of a tree of I really
don't want to have to fight someone, so I'm going
to run away instead. I really don't want to have

(01:13:15):
to run away from someone, so I'm just going to
try and not to be noticed by them instead. And
that's been a lot of what my training in Parker
has been focused around, is just staying de escalated as
possible with everything. Yeah, because we me and Rick have

(01:13:36):
focused most of our Parker training on on stealth UM
as opposed to being you know, super strong or super
powerful UM. And stealth always a really hard concept to
talk about because it's kind of like nebulous in nature,
because stealth isn't being invisible, right, It's it's not it's
not being totally unnoticed. It's want It's it's it's wanting

(01:13:57):
to craft the way you're seen in a specific way. Yeah. Um,
it's always been very difficult for me to explain what
stealth is. The most recent definition that I've given for
it is that's everything that you do, everything that you
are gives off a certain amount of noise and a

(01:14:19):
certain type of noise. So the way that you dress.
You can dress in a very loud way with a
hive is vest day glow, colors, um, something that makes
you really easy to notice. But if you're in the
right environment, that might be the right type of noise

(01:14:41):
to be making to blend into a crowd. Like a
three piece suit is also a very loud outfit to wear,
But if you're on the streets of New York, that's normal.
If you come into a park origin wearing a three
piece suit, it's very abnormal. So that's not the right
type of noise if you're trying to blend in there. Yeah,

(01:15:04):
a lot of it's about kind of constructing the way
people see you based on what environment you're in and
who you're trying to remain undetected from, right, because I
mean they were like not even necessarily undetected, but just
detected in a specific way. Because people eyes. People's eyes
can glaze over a lot of a lot of stuff.
If if just that the right puzzle pieces are put

(01:15:25):
into their brain, that it's like nothing nothing to see here.
Every everything is normal. Nothing not nothing. To be alerted, right,
because what you're trying to do is prevent someone from
being like alerted to your presence. That is kind of
the main thing. So you can be within someone's sitelines,
but the way that you're dressed, the way that you're moving,
the way that you hold yourself fails to get their attention.

(01:15:48):
They're subconscious registers that you're there, but it doesn't register
consciously to them that you're there. It's the gray Man
stuff that we were talking about with Chelsea, which again
there's very frustrating chetty dimension to it. But the the
original idea, before it got taken over as an entire
fashion aesthetic, was if you're prepared, if you're if you're

(01:16:09):
going to make yourself prepared for badge situations, you don't
want to wear a bunch of tactical gear. You don't
want to be dressed in like five combat pants. You
don't want to be carrying like military backpacks and like
the cargo pants with the you know, clearly bulging with weaponry.
You don't want to be open carrying a gun. You
want to be dressed, however, is going to least to

(01:16:30):
least set you apart from the crowd. And that is,
as you said, got a vary. No, it's not a
matter of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. Um,
you're in downtown Salt Lake City, you know, a black
hoodie and jeans might stand out more than it does
if you're in downtown San Francisco, in which case you're
gonna look like a million other people. I mean, And generally,
if you're trying to avoid being seen, I recommend against

(01:16:52):
wearing black basically at all times, especially if you're trying
to remain like actually invisible at night. You don't want
to wear black because black is usually too dark. Um,
you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens. Um. Yeah,
generally black is should be avoided. Um. Of course, like
black block is a whole separate thing because black block

(01:17:12):
are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context. But
you know, in a lot of cases, you don't want
to be in black block at protests, or you want
to be able to switch from black block to what
we call like normy block very quickly. So like you know,
quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um
that you can like practice like you can you can
just practice doing quick changes like in your apartment, be

(01:17:32):
like how fast can I get from this outfit to
this outfit? Um in like a small space, right you can?
You can you can BacT to these even like outside
but specifically for like black block, changing both in and
out of is a skill that needs to be practiced. Um.
But overall, I think like there's a lot of other
ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block, Like,
there's a lot of other kind of methods Like black

(01:17:53):
blocks are very specific tactic, but it's not a tactic
that needs to get applied all the time. It's it's
it's very's you should be mindful that it has a
lot of downsides. Um. And based on what you're trying
to do, there's a lot of other ways to dress
that would maybe be better. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's this
um you know, it's a little bit like angles of
it are kind of what we talked about even in

(01:18:14):
like the last week when we were talking about like storing,
you know, food and canning food and like the value
of paying attention to the cycle of like what is
in stock and what is not stocked in stock during
what seasons. It's kind of the same thing at the
value of paying attention to how people dress and how
people move and like, what is a normal way to
move about and wherever you live as opposed to like

(01:18:34):
what stands out like it, there's a lot of value
and a lot of self defense value and just kind
of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting
an eye for what will stand out and what won't
stand out. If you're if you, if you are someone
for whom being able to blend in is something you
see value in. You know, Yeah, Rick, did do you
do you have any things kind of on that side

(01:18:55):
of things or any like exercises people can do to
improve their own personal stealth. Yeah, it's very very situational.
You have to sort of study many different environments. The
biggest advice that I give people for stealth all the
time is, um, pay attention. You have to pay attention
to the smallest details when I'm even just moving around

(01:19:19):
my house, like the bathroom door lock. Um, when you
twist the lock, the button pops out and makes a
huge noise. I actually place my thumb over it and
deaden the sound as I'm doing it, and I pay
attention to the kind of noise that I make in
every situation and try to minimize that as much as possible.

(01:19:39):
I pay attention to which parts of my house make
noise when you step on them and avoid those places.
Um I UM. Basically, just pay attention to every noise
that my body makes, that my environment makes as I'm
moving through it. Also, you have to pay at tension

(01:20:00):
and study other people in different environments. You can go
to a grocery store and watch the body language of
the moms who are shopping with their kids, so that
the people that normally you wouldn't pay attention to pay
attention to them because they're doing a good job of
blending in if you're not normally paying attention to them,

(01:20:22):
and then try to start mimicking their body language. What
I'll do when I go out is i don't directly
look at anyone, but I'm paying attention to if I'm
being paid attention to give myself that own that conscious
feedback and say, hey, I wasn't all that stealthy this time,
I kind of stuck out. Yeah, practicing your peripheral vision

(01:20:43):
is definitely useful for that. I mean in terms of exercises. Yeah,
just just go into like parks, or the places where
there's a lot of people and like people watching and
trying to figure out who does your eyes glaze over
the most and what what are they doing to cause that.
I think one one thing that me and Rick have
talked about before is like every part of your body
points somewhere, like whether that be your eyes, your nose,

(01:21:05):
your chin, your arms, your hips, your chest, your hands,
all of these things point in a direction. And if
you can figure out which direction you can point them
to make people pay less attention to you. That's kind
of one of the easier models understanding how to like
walk and move in a stealthy manner that I think
like out of all the different ways of thinking about
and I think that's the way that's helped me the most.

(01:21:27):
Um it's being like, you know, if if my head
is pointed up and my nose is pointed out and
I'm moving my arms around a lot, that's people are
gonna like like look at me more. You know, people
if if if if eye contact is made, that is
like a failure. So you know, if your head's pointed down,
your arms are more slouched, they kind of move with
your body. But that's not super exaggerated and it's not
super stiff. These are different kind of ways of pointing

(01:21:49):
your body to make you seem more like UM introspective
UM and less external. Also walking around with UM ear
plugs or like like like uh earbuds your owns. Those
are ways people will pay attention to class to you
look at your smartphone. Yeah, one of the back when
we by, back when I took classes with you and
taught classes, we we would we would we would have

(01:22:10):
like a weekly a weekly games class um where we'd
have different you know games and related to Parkore and
you know, stealth would always kind of be something I
would try to do. And you could survive so long
in stealth games by just like looking like pretending that
you're looking at your phone, like not even actually doing it.
Just like walking in like a circle around like walking
in a circle around the arena as people are trying

(01:22:31):
to like tag and stuff. And if you can just
like walk with your head down kind of slowly, you
can strive a ridiculously long time because people are looking
for people that are like running around and being like
and being super energy energetic, and if you're not, people
aren't detecting you as much Another thing to practice would
be uh, quiet walking, which is we kind of mentioned before.
It's like learning how to move your foot and interact

(01:22:53):
with different surfaces that makes your walking basically silent, which
is very fun because you can use this to scare
your friends. It's it's, it's it's it's very exciting to
to to to to like to try to figure out
what's what's ways I can hide in my friend's house
to like jump scare them, or like kind of how
close can I get behind someone with with with without
them noticing that. There'd be times I can just like
walk up behind someone and wait, like I kid you,

(01:23:14):
not like ten minutes before they noticed I was there.
It's hilarious. UM. I feel even better when I can
do that to their pets because generally the animals are
paying more attention to everything. So if you can successfully
sneak up on someone's cat, you're doing it right. Yeah.
Oh man, I do really enjoy stealth, and I'll be
happy to practice it more regularly once the plug is over. Um.

(01:23:37):
If it's over um. Any other kind of stealth notes
that you would want to kind of bring up for
if someone is trying to like get into stealth and
start to start thinking about detection, you know, more often
in their everyday life. It's very important that you engage
in indirect observations. Yeah up. You you were talking about
how everything points and one of the things that we

(01:24:00):
subconsciously noticed the most is people's eyes were kind of
programmed to notice eyes. So if you're looking directly at someone,
they're probably gonna notice that you've noticed them. But if
you're using your peripheral vision, or if instead of watching them,
you're watching a reflection of them, or if you're watching

(01:24:20):
their shadow um, or you're not even looking in their
direction instead you're tracking them by sound, it makes it
so that you have a big one up on everyone
around you. Yeah, in indirect observations one of the best
tools that you can use, UM if you get really
clever at it. Now this this, this, this is harder

(01:24:41):
because it actually if if you if you if you
do this wrong, people who people, people will pay more
attention to you. But you can get good at it
to start using like your phone camera or even just
your phone screen because like your black phone screen is pretty,
is pretty, is pretty reflective in nature, so you can
use this as like an error. UM but like, yeah,

(01:25:02):
using like phone cameras and phone screens as a reflective
surface or or just as like a camera can be
used in indirect observation. But you do have to be
careful because if if if it looks like you're filming somebody,
they're gonna pay so much more attension to you. So yeah,
you have, you have. You have to be very careful
with this method, but it is possible. This is how
I kind of this is how I um, this is
how it's like documented different like um not sees at rallies.

(01:25:25):
If I don't want to be like super obvious that
that I'm taking a picture of them, there's ways of
doing indirect observation with my phone that I can like
get pictures of them from certain angles to be like okay,
so now now I can put you. I can add
you to my to my folder of nazis that have
showed up um that method. You have to be super
careful if you're surrounded by potentially hostile people. Anyone who's

(01:25:47):
behind you is going to see that your phone camera
is on. So it's something that you only want to
use if people are on one side of you, or
you know, you keep you you you use your body
as a shield for certain for certain like angles be
tricky for hoodie and uh increase your odds of success

(01:26:07):
with that. But but but most often I would recommend
against this method, especially if you're just starting out, because
it is it is a lot more risky. Um. But
when it does work, it can come in very handy.
But but more often than not, using using like reflections
like windows, mirrors, you know, like a car, windows, puddles
on the ground, shadows, sound, all of these different methods
of observing someone without looking directly at them are generally

(01:26:30):
much much safer um and they can be very useful
for for trying to track someone or just be aware
of what they're looking at without looking directly at them. UM.
Kind of more similar to like what I talked about
in like the fictional opening we did for stealth is
very dependent on what you know is trying to watch

(01:26:51):
you write, like like how you need to be aware
of the ways people are trying to detect you. Of
course you're tracked back canine unit. It's very very different
than just being being yeah, than being like chased down
on foot um or you know, like security cameras. Of course,
like online tracking which we're not we're not really getting
into today. But you know, like being aware of where

(01:27:12):
security cameras are mapped out, um can be can be
very useful. Learning to learning to figure out where they
are without looking directly at them can be useful. There's
a lot of cities have websites that like map out
where where all the cameras are. Um. I know there's
one from Portland that you can like map out all
of the cameras in downtown and then you can like
plan like a route through downtown that has no cameras

(01:27:35):
watching right there. There's only there's only very few routes
that that actually have that, but but they do exist. Um.
So learning to move in ways that make cameras less
able to spot you, um, those that's definitely another kind
of method of learning about stealth and learning about like
how surveillance works. Looking directly at the camera, But that's

(01:27:57):
that's that's definitely useful. Which intention to where they are, yeah,
which plays into which plays into indirect observation. Um. But
I mean this gets more tricky. We know when police
are using like thermal drones. Uh, this is its whole whole,
whole other side of things that it's very hard too.
Sex side of thing is hard to combat. And it's yeah,

(01:28:18):
there will be a point in time in which it
becomes effectively impossible to the monitor for cameras. Yeah, there's
like there's there's like a hierarchy of worry because yeah,
if because if, like the n s A wants to
find you, they will, but most often they're not, Like
most often people are dealing with their local law enforcement unit.
Most often people are not dealing with the FBI. Most
people people usually aren't dealing with the FBI, CIA or

(01:28:40):
n s A. If if they want to find you,
they will. But if you can learn to only interact
with your surroundings in a way that would only concern
your local police department, that's much easier too. That's much
easier to kind of combat against, um, because it's it's
way easier to hide from you know, your local department
than it is from the n s A. All right, Um,

(01:29:01):
anything else? I think that pretty much covers everything. Yeah,
I think that's a good that's a sode. It's a
cast that we have potted. Um all right, Um, we
got any any plugables here to plug at the end
before we before we roll out me. Yeah, you don't
find me. Don't don't find him. This is the most

(01:29:23):
visible you've ever been. Yeah, so is there any um,
I don't know a fundraiser charity for someone else that
you want to highlight? Not currently? No, you are? You
do try to be uh you do, try to be
a virtual ninja. All right, Well, I'll plug something. One
of our fans is putting together a graphic novel about

(01:29:47):
the famed anarchist militant of the Spanish Civil War. Win
even showed a d Ruty. So if you just go
to type d Ruty into Kickstarter, you'll find the graphic
novel Kickstarter. Um, check it out. It's cool. Yeah, and
I guess other things. I'll close with his learned to
walk quietly, learn to observe, learn to observe your surroundings. Um,

(01:30:08):
keep these things, practice, practice, practice with other people. Don't don't.
Don't do this alone. It's really useful to have stealth
be a collaborative process, because stealth isn't Stealth isn't by itself,
isn't just about you. It's about you and your whole environment. Um,
collaborate with the CVS clerk. When you robbed the CVS stealthily.

(01:30:29):
That is that is a different podcast I'm working on.
Is that How to Shop the Shoplifting Cast? I mean, yeah,
that is something I will pitch very soon. Anyway, I've
had trouble getting sponsors for the Shoplifting podcast, I will
tell you that. And it's difficult. If you could actually
get CVS to sponsor that big shoplifting, I mean, we

(01:30:51):
are giving them a lot of free advertising if if
if it does if it does happen. Anyway, most people
who shoplift also spend. That's true. That is one of
the best ways to shoplift is to buy other things.
In this story, I'm seeing I'm already giving out advice. Um, yeah,
that that is how I always shoplifted back when I shoplifted, Yeah,
back when I did that twenty years ago. That's what.

(01:31:13):
That's how I did it as well. I feel like
if Sophie were here, she'd be trying to back pedal
right now and stop you guys. So if you support shoplifting,
this is a very pro shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast.

(01:31:36):
You were out of town when the last cop left Seattle.
It had been unseasonably cool that week. The seventy degrees
of old and not the ven you had come to
dread every summer. But you'd already promised you'd visit your
family in Montana, and so when the riots started in
the National Guard open fire into the crowd, you watched
it on Twitter from your couch like everyone else. The

(01:31:57):
Second Battle of Seattle, they were calling it. You wondered
briefly what the first one was. They've been fighting in
Portland too, some kind of massacre in Oakland, and no
one was quite sure what was happening in that Appa Valley.
Couldn't be anything good, you thought, But it was Seattle.
Everyone was talking about. The mayor fled the city and
the helicopter when it became clear the police were losing.

(01:32:19):
After that, the cops had simply broken retreated across the Cascades.
No one knew who was running the city now, and
you sure as hell didn't want to be the one
to find out. But after two weeks, you've burned through
every vacation day in every favor you'd ever accumulated at
the hospital, and besides, the rent was due. No one
was sure if the pilstal service was even still functioning,

(01:32:41):
and with the eviction moratorium lifted. You weren't going to
risk getting evicted because you weren't there to hand your
landlord a check. So with ray resignation, you pile into
your battered car and head towards no Qualmy Pass. What
surprised you most when you hit Seattle was the art
you've been expecting. Burnt out buildings and streets filled with

(01:33:01):
burning cars, and there were some A few streets were
still blocked by what looked like improvised barricades, but every
surface of every building, it seemed, had some kind of
mirror on it. Someone, and no one seemed to be
quite sure who had first come up with the idea,
had blocked off an entire street up near Capitol Hill,
and people were painstakingly painting portraits of every protester killed

(01:33:24):
in the fighting and Seattle on it. As you walked past,
they were discussing doing the same for the dead in Oakland.
The second surprise came when you tried to pay your rent.
A woman you've never seen before was sitting at the
office's reception desk. When you tried to handle your check,
she laughed and handed it back to you, explaining that
after the cops fled. The local tenants union had taking

(01:33:46):
over most of the apartments in the city and placed
them in something it called a Community land Trust. You
didn't quite get the details, but no one was going
to evict you, so you decided to just take the win. Besides,
your friend had convinced you to do some child care
the tenants union in college, and they always seemed like
a decent sort, so it didn't seem to be any
immediate cause for concern. The hospital was another matter. Entirely

(01:34:10):
from what you could gather, there had been some kind
of labor dispute between the chaos. Management seemed to have
fired a group of nurses for giving injured protester or
shelter from the police. Your ward had already been understaff
due to COVID and budget cuts. Now the situation was
int tolerable. Where still many of the senior administrators had
fled the city with the police, no one seemed to

(01:34:31):
know who was in charge. Supplies were starting to run low,
and with so many administrators missing in the insurance situation
completely up in the air. On account of nobody being
entirely sure if Seattle was even still part of the
United States, it wasn't clear if anyone was going to
get paid, So when a co worker pulled you aside
and asked if you'd be interested in doing something about

(01:34:52):
the management problem, you figured, what the hell, Maybe it
was time for a change. It wasn't like it could
possibly make anything worse. The fired nurses, it turned out,
had started to set up a community health center with
the help of the local neighborhood council. But some of
the nurses still working at the hospital had another idea.

(01:35:13):
Why not just turn the hospital into the community health center.
After all, the hospital already had more equipment than any
new center could possibly assemble. All they needed was some
help from the community, and the whole thing could be
run by a council of the hospital workers. Insurance companies
be damned. Besides, if all the hospitals started pulling their
resources together, they might be able to solve some of

(01:35:34):
the shortages. At the mention of solving the supply shortages,
even the more skeptical workers started to come around. By
the next morning, the Seattle Hospital Workers Council was marching
on the hospital. The remaining management found out somehow, and
tried one final lockout to hold onto their property. But
as you saw yet another column of protesters joining the

(01:35:57):
crowd surrounding the hospital, you knew this wasn't their city
any longer. On April eighteen, two thousand, one, military police
in the Kabylia region of Algeria shot an eighteen year
old high school students. Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of
people took to the street, chanting, you can't kill us,

(01:36:19):
we are already dead at the lines of policemen assembled
to attack them. The police would kill over a hundred
people and severely wound five thousand more in the months
long battle for control of the streets that followed, but
protesters burned police stations, government offices, courts, and the offices
of Islamic fundamentalist parties until the government agreed to give
ethnic minority groups language and cultural rights. The hated military

(01:36:43):
police were driven from the region entirely, and so few
regular police stations survived the uprising. At the regular police
likewise ceased to function across broad swaths of Kabilia. They
were replaced on a local village level by self organized
security committees, which would assemble on the rare occasion. Travel
will emerged. Contrary to the expectations of the state crime plummeted,

(01:37:05):
but the Algerian government otherwise continued to function as usual
for over a decade until the local government in a
small region, cover Baca, attempted the regular local elections. After
banning the most popular political party in the region, they
installed an unpopular coalition governments. The people of Barbaca responded

(01:37:26):
by storming the city hall, seizing control of it and
setting up a democratic General Assembly inside the newly dubbed
House of the People to replace the existing government. This
was dual power in its original sense, the Council of
the People facing off against an increasingly illegitimate parliamentary representative
in a struggle for control over the fate of a

(01:37:46):
new society. If you google dual power, you are likely
to encounter a pamphlet written by Vladimir Lenin entitled The
Dual Power, describing the conundrum of the situation following the
First Russian Revolution in February of nineteen after the overthrow
of the Czar, political power was split between two competing bodies.

(01:38:06):
On the one side, a new provisional government of liberal
and social democratic politicians holdovers from the old Duma from
the previous regime. On the other side, revolutionary social forces
rallying around assemblies popular power called soviets, which were councils
of delegates sent by directly democratic factories, soldiers and sailors committees.

(01:38:27):
Lenin solve this as a situation to be overcome by
the seizure of state power by Socialist Party. For Lenin
and his Bolsheviks, dual power was a problem because, after
the Czar's state ceased to exist in the middle of
the World War, the new provisional government failed to fill
the vacuum left in its wake by its collapse. To Lenin,
the solution was obvious, fill that vacuum with Lenin. For

(01:38:50):
the peasants, soldiers, and workers, who made up the majority
of Russia's population, however, dual power was their first fleeting
taste of freedom and autonomous control over their lives. Lennon
used the soviets to seize power, but almost immediately began
to turn on these democratic assemblies of popular autonomy. Over
the course of the Russian Civil War, Lennon and the

(01:39:11):
Bolsheviks strip power away from the workers, peasants, and soldiers,
sometimes by bureaucratic fiat, often at the point of a bayonet,
until the Soviet have been stripped of all meeting in
the very state named after their democratic form, and became
synonymous with dictatorship. Dual power today draws from the potential
of that post revolutionary crisis from the bottom up direct

(01:39:33):
democracy that was so threatening to the social order that
Bolshevik revolutionaries and Czar's Police by his alike conspired to
wipe them from the historical record. Just as Russia was
haunted by the memory of the French communes, so is
America today haunted by a memory of dual power that,
against all lodge refuses to die. We are, after all,
still ruled by a greedy, bloodthirsty, and out of touch

(01:39:55):
elite who have chosen the march us to our deaths
by the hundreds of thousands by forcing us back to
work doing a plague. But the Russian Revolution is as
far away from us today as Napoleon and his brass
cannons were from the Russian revolutionaries and their machine guns.
Times have changed. There is no Bolshevik party waiting in
the wings to seize power as the state crumbles. The

(01:40:15):
vacuum of the state leaves in its wake as its
power deteriorates, be filled by any number of organizations, most
even more hostile to the working class and the Bolsheviks
had been. It could be war lords with the personal
allegiance of the remains of the military. It could be
organized crime. It could be religious fundamentalist militias. Most likely,
it will be an uneasy combination of all of the above.

(01:40:37):
Or it could be you. It could be your family,
your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, the person you
waved here every morning at the bus stop when you're
on your way to work. The past to that world,
the world run not by capitalists in their cops or
by war lords in their armies, but by autonomous communities
free to decide for themselves what to produce and how

(01:40:59):
to bet, to use their resources, to care for each other.
Is dual power in the twenty first century. At its core,
dual power is about creating a counter power against the state.
During the Russian Revolution, this counterpower was formed essentially by
historical accidents, as two governing bodies emerged from the course
of the Febrarian Revolution. But modern dual power does not

(01:41:21):
arise from the whims of the course of revolution or
from an innate instinct of the working class. It is
something we've built together by creating organizations that resist the
power of the structures of violence, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and
the state name a few that control this world. Dual
power organizations can take many forms, from tennis unions, the

(01:41:42):
debtors councils, childcare cooperatives, to land occupations, workers councils, to
rank and file labor unions, mutual aid networks to community
self defense organizations. These organizations seek to build autonomy from
and against capitalism. In the state alone, there are no
match for the state's world power to inflict violence and

(01:42:03):
corporate control over our resources. But by joining together to
form federations and pooling their resources and expertise to coordinate
their efforts, they can become a powerful enough force to
challenge the state both directly and indirectly. These dual power
organizations are designed to be the state's successor. As the
industrial workers of the world famously put it, they form

(01:42:24):
the structure of the new society and the shell of
the old. In order to fulfill that task, they take
the shape of new society they set to create. Academics
called this prefigurative politics, organizing that employs the values and
organizational structures that they seek to create in the world.
As we will discuss in the next episode, there are
right wing forms of both dual power and profigative politics,

(01:42:47):
but for most of the people who employ it, prefigurative
politics means creating direct democratic institutions without bosses, managers, bureaucrats,
or party apparatus. The means of career aiding the new
world are thus the same as the ends. Dual power
organizations serve multiple purposes. Their long term goal is to

(01:43:09):
replace the state and the corporation with free and autonomous
forms of organization. One's organized and powerful enough to protect
themselves and manage the logistical challenges of a new world
with previous forms of organization and power no longer exist.
But even reaching a point where this is remotely plausible
requires not just the painstaking construction of counterpower and organization

(01:43:32):
out of a fragmented American population. It requires a profound
cultural transformation and how we make decisions. As the anthropologist
David Graeber put it, it is assumed in many parts
of the world that democracy is a group of people
facing a certain problem who come together to solve it
in a way where everyone has an equals say, it's
true that most Americans think of themselves as living in

(01:43:54):
a democratic country. When put the last time that any
Americans actually sat down and came to a collective to
decision maybe if they were ordering pizza, but basically never
Dual power organizations thus also service schools for democracy where
people can learn, experiment with, create, and spread their own
forms of democracy and collective decision making. When these spaces

(01:44:16):
of democratic experimentation are functioning properly, their very organizational structure
serves as a kind of recruitment tool. This was the
original theory behind Occupy Wall Street, that democracy and the
experience of autonomy were contagious and would spread rapidly as
more and more curious people experienced it for themselves. That experience,
in turn, would create a new generation of people trained

(01:44:38):
in democratic practices who could go forth and transforming the world. Obviously,
this didn't quite happen. Occupies model of democracy was limited
in many ways, not the least of which was that
it required a public, physical meeting space that could be
closed down by police violence. But the initial premise worked
Occupy itself, of course, had been inspired by the mass

(01:44:58):
democratic assemblies in Spain. In Greece in two thousand eleven
and the direct democratic coops and factory occupations that engulfed
Argentina for the better part of the two thousand's. At
the most basic, short term level, however, dual power organizations
are designed me people's needs. The cornerstone of this effort
is mutual aid. Probably the most famous example of such

(01:45:20):
a project with the Black Panther Party survival programs. Former
Black Panther Janina Irvine describes them in detail. The Black
Panther Party survival programs were, in fact an example of
an effort, a successful effort, while it lasted to create
dual power in the United States. The Black Panther Party
had a school, had free food programs. One of its
most respected survival programs was a breakfast for children, which

(01:45:44):
was overall a response to hunger and poverty in the country,
particularly among poor, low income black people. We had free
medical clinics in Winston Salem, North Carolina. We had free ambulances,
free past control, free shoes, we had free bussing to
prison programs, legal aid programs to help people get attorneys
who needed them. And we had a program that was

(01:46:04):
called the Safe Program Seniors against a fearful environment in
which we provided free transportation and escort service the senior
citizens who needed to get out and take care of
their errands their business. They were often being attacked, so
this was a forre protection for them. The Panthers were
able to grow their influence by keeping their communities safe, healthy,
cared for, and increasingly autonomous for the state. But most importantly,

(01:46:28):
they were able to keep people alive. As Black Panthers
co founder Hue P. Newton famously said, these survival programs
satisfy the deep needs of the community, but they are
not solutions to our problem. That is why we call
them survival programs meeting survival pending revolution. The existence of
the survival programs themselves reflect the necessity of keeping people alive,

(01:46:51):
especially people who the state would rather kill or leave
to die for building any kind of power. These programs
are also necessarily insufficient. No mutual aid program, no autonomous project,
no liberated territory can provide for the entire community. While
the corporation's capitalists and states maintain their stranglehold over the

(01:47:11):
resources and production capacity at the working class, collectively created
over centuries of grueling labor or struggle, dual power more
than just survival, is about building the counter power to
take it back. Building powers withdraws the line between what
is and isn't dual power. Growing food for you and

(01:47:33):
your friends, make cut down on bills, and make some
killer pesto, but it's not necessarily challenging the capitalist system.
Autonomy for its own sake is not necessarily dual power
if it doesn't actively aid in struggle or better organize
the community. That from the perspective of building counter power,
that autonomy is meaningless. Making food for striking workers to

(01:47:56):
allow them to stay on strike longer is building dual power.
We're simply producing it for general consumption is not. While
dual power organizations necessarily serve the needs of the community,
they must also be able to pivot and attack the
state in capital and provide solidarity and mutual aid to
those in their community who are already in struggle, or

(01:48:17):
they simply aren' dual power organizations at all. The simplest
solution to this problem, of course, is to organize around
a specific side of resistance. Organizations that build up the
capacity to fight can emerge from almost anywhere. The Symbiosis
Research Collective described how dual power organizations emerge from Palestinian
prison organizing bring the First into Fata and uprising against

(01:48:38):
the Israeli governments in late nineteen eighties. Most discussion of
the First into Fata focuses on the role of mass
protests in making Palestinian society ungovernable for the Israeli occupying forces.
Less discussed is the role of community organizations of mutual
aid and confederated participatory democracy and making such mass protests possible.

(01:48:59):
Organizing for within the political system was a political incubator
of the Palestinian resistance movement and offers a microcosmic example
of the developments of dual power in the much larger
prison of the occupation with hunger strikes. Political prisoners eventually
won concessions for their own self administration within the prisons.
They assembled structures of political organization and representation, forced prison

(01:49:23):
authorities to recognize their representatives, and developed a division of
labor around hygiene, education and other daily tasks. Palestinian prisoners
described this arrangement as internal organization, similar to the concept
of dual power. Even the least free of circumstances, these
prisoners carved out space for self governments and created the

(01:49:43):
preconditions to revolutionary struggle. Prisoners taught and studied everything from
Palestinian history to Marxist the political economy, often from eight
to fourteen hours per day. As freshly educated and trained
political activists were released back into society, the resistance movement
was gal vanized. Illiterate teenage boys arrested for throwing stones

(01:50:03):
re entered the fray months later as committed, competent organizers
who had studied movement building, strategic resistance, and dialectical materialism. Meanwhile,
the organizing context outside of the prison transformed dramatically. Saleh
Abou laban of Palestinian political prisoner from nineteen seventy until nine, stated,
when I entered the prison, there wasn't a national movement.

(01:50:27):
There were only underground cells that performed clandestine lee. When
I got out, I found a world full of organizers, committees,
and community institutions. Central to this new world of community
organizing was the Palestinian labor movement. Unions reformed out of
workers places of residents rather than workplaces, because migrant labor
was prevalence in Palestinian unionism within Israel had been criminalized.

(01:50:49):
Unions then formed strong alliances with local organizations in the
national movement. With rapid growth in the early nineteen eighties,
labor unions found it necessary to to centralize and democratize
their structures to become more resilient as Israeli repression intensified
against union leaders and organizers. These local unions were networked
together through the Palestinian Communist Party and the Workers Unity Block,

(01:51:12):
creating a web of labor organizers and community groups that
linked their class struggle to the larger project of national liberation.
This wave of resistance, carried out largely outside the purview
of the major Palestinian political parties, showed that even communities
and the most dire circumstances can assemble astounding levels of
organization and resistance, as was also true in the United States.

(01:51:34):
Although today the memory of these prison radicals is largely forgotten,
Palestinian organizing emerged from the sites of deepest depression in
their society. But this kind and level of organization is
not just the property of the left, and in Part
two we'll see what happens when the right gets hold
of it. It's been three months since you and your

(01:52:02):
co workers took control of the hospital. Things aren't back
to normal yet. You're not even really sure what normal
is anymore. But the days have fallen into a kind
of routine. It's Thursday, which means it's your turn to
go report back to what a friend jokingly referred to
as the Endless Meeting Assembly was now forever known as
the e m A. The e m A is technically
the closest thing left to a central government in Seattle.

(01:52:25):
It was formed as a sort of coordinating council between
the various organizations and workers councils that had emerged or
simply emerged from the woodworks in the wake of the
collapse of the police. Two things have become clear very quickly. One,
there was need for some kind of coordinating committee between
the different bodies to The only people who had any
idea what was going on in their portion of the

(01:52:47):
city or in their workplace were the members of the
local council, which meant there was no way in hell
any kind of central apparatus could dictate to them what
actually needed to be done. There just wasn't a way
to move the information around. The solution have been decentralization.
Let the councils do their work, let them work out
who they needed to talk to, but make sure there
was some kind of daily council that people could show

(01:53:08):
up to. Were the various groups we do report backs
and what they were doing and what they needed. The
structure was messy, but it mostly worked, and at least
someone had had the idea to make sure if the
delegate to the e m A rotated so one person
wasn't stuck spending after life showing up every day. The
problem really was the same problem you've been dealing with
for months now. Even with the pooling of resources and

(01:53:31):
people donating their last precious American dollars to paying people
to import more supplies, the blockade was taking its toll.
Nobody wanted to try to force their way through the
blockades and the cascades. There's been some attempts to get
in touch with groups in Portland's, but the control map
was so ugly there was no real chance of getting
any assistance. Besides, the real problem was the port. When

(01:53:54):
the cops had fled, the ships should simply stop coming.
They're routed further south, any of them to Oakland, or
so you'd heard. The logistics lines were collapsing faster than
anyone could piece them back together. What the long term
consequences would be, no one knew, but something was going
to have to change. The calls to start engaging in
piracy were only half oaks. Now. A week later, an

(01:54:16):
answer of sorts arrived. It wasn't precisely what anyone had
been expecting. You'd heard about negotiations between workers councils, shipping companies,
and a couple of governments to try to prevent a
bloodbath the docks, with the porter to Seattle already at
a commission, no one could afford another stoppage. You hadn't
really been sure what to make of it, but the

(01:54:37):
representatives were here now. What they proposed in front of
the largest assembly you'd ever seen was a kind of
under the table deal. In essence, the port workers would
go back to work in both Oakland and Seattle in
exchange for seeding part of Oakland itself to a newly
formed federation. No one was sure how any of this
was actually supposed to work, but it was the first
chance you'd seen in months to start solving the supply problem.

(01:55:01):
That didn't mean everyone else would agree to it. Democracy
is still democracy, after all, but maybe, just maybe with
a toe hold in Oaklands, the Council's would start to spread,
and that so called government in California was looking shakier
every day. Who knew, maybe next time you wouldn't be
negotiating at all. In March of two thousand four, American

(01:55:28):
occupation forces in a Rock attempted to shut down the
newspaper of a Chiite cleric named Matada el Solder. The
Americans had expected Sodder to simply fold under the weight
of the coalition's pressure. Instead, they triggered mass protest that
quickly turned into an armed uprising. This was a new
force at Iraq. The American occupation force, who'd been expecting

(01:55:49):
to be fighting al Quaeda and maybe the rump of
the remaining Baptists, were stunned to suddenly be facing a
working class uprising among the rock Si population. This new mode,
the army, as it began to call itself, was extremely
well organized and were initially able to route coalition forces.
So what was this body army that had so thoroughly

(01:56:10):
rewritten the rules of Rock? Shortly after the US to
posted on Musse In two thousand and three Booktato Sawder,
the son of another famous Rocky hi at religious figure.
Both Sauders had been famous for this support and care
for the poor, so when Sauder returned to a Rock,
he began to build a political base among the Rocks
working class, particularly in Solder City, a working class suburb

(01:56:33):
of Baghdad. He used his organization to redistribute wealth, providing
form of welfare states in an almost completely shattered country.
But are In his allies also began to set up
a network of freak clinics for pregnant and nursing mothers.
They used these clinics, which were enormously popular, to build
a base of support. It is, after all, extremely difficult,

(01:56:54):
no matter what your ideological or political disagreements with the group,
to attack them when the running free clinics for pregnant mothers.
They protected these clinics with militias, which allowed them to
transform the community organizations and good will that they had
gained from the clinic into the military power necessary for
self governance and eventually for resistance against the American occupation.

(01:57:16):
Strategy proved enormously successful. Mattao Sauder is still today one
of the most important political figures in Iraq, despite sustained
coalition and occupation force attempts to stamp them out, but
for all their working class support, the Soterists for by
no means leftists. In late twenty nineteen, massive anti asterity,
anti imperialists, and anti sectarian protests erupted in Iraq as

(01:57:40):
a reaction to the murderous incompetence of the Iraqi government, who,
among other crimes, managed to poison a hundred and eighteen
thousand people in Bosra through the mismanagement and subsequent contamination
of the water supply. Also are initially backed the protest
but turned on them in early at which point sauterism
alicias begin to carry out a brutal campaign of repression

(01:58:02):
against the protest camps that culminated in outrent massacres of protesters.
These massacres became semi regular features of soterist mass mobilizations,
and alongside state and paramilitary disappearances of activists, the attacks
essentially crushed the uprising. The violent homophobia and sexism of
the Soderus may see met odds with their anti imperialism

(01:58:25):
and concern for the poor, but right wing organizations have
often adapted specific policies, positions, and organizational structures from the
left and In this case, the soderus moobilizations have been
extremely effective. Indeed, writing organizations are often more effective at
utilizing dual power tactics and organizations and leftist movements. This
is partly because of a fundamental asymmetry between the right

(01:58:47):
and the left. Right wing organizations can almost always depend
on financial support from wealthy political backers, who, when push
comes to shove, can simply create a movement with pure
money as the coax to create the Tea Party. Leftists,
the ravings of right wing conspiracy theorists, notwithstanding, have no
such backers. This funding and support can go a long

(01:59:10):
way towards explaining the success of groups like Hezbollah. It
is certainly true that without Iranian support, Hezbollah would not
be the movement that it is today, but a great
deal of their success is simply attributable to the tactics themselves.
This does not escaped the notice of the U. S.
Army Joint Special Operations Universities. Major James Love wrote a

(01:59:30):
monograph entitled Hesbllah Social Services a Source of Power. In it,
he writes, the most important branch of the Hezbillah organization
is a social service section, which can be demonstrated by
the allocation of an estimated fifty of Hesbala's two thousand
seven budget service efforts. It is through the work of
the Social Service Section that all party activities are possible.

(01:59:53):
Hesbalah Social Service Section was designed to influence all aspects
of Lebanicia society. The original intent of providing needed services
to an oppressed people appears to have been manipulated by
Hesbillah as a vehicle to bolster its ranks, provide a
humanitarian shield to the organization, increased influence within the Lebanese government,
and combat at shier arrival on ball. The Social Service

(02:00:16):
Section serves as an equal arm within the organization and
is used as much as the military and political wing
in terms of leverage. Hesbillah's Deputy Secretary General describes the
purpose and intent of the Social Service Section and the
following passage. Hesbellah paid particular attention to social work. Not
one aspect of aiding the poor was neglected. As the

(02:00:38):
party work towards achieving joint social responsibility, answering their urgent
needs and introducing beneficial programs. Such work was simply considered
party duty and concentrated effort towards raising funds and making
available social service resources served towards achieving these goals. The
party worked the best of its capacities, cooperating with official

(02:01:01):
institutions to respond societal needs. Has Blah's provided medical aid,
reconstruction assistance, education programs, and particularly programs that take care
of patrons and widows, which have served to solidify their base.
These organizations were critical to has Belah's meteoric rise from
a political nonentity to arguably the most powerful factuated side

(02:01:22):
of Lepanese politics. Has Belah's state within a state, as
it's become known, it's capable of even resisting the Israeli Army.
Major Love's frustration with the inability of the American Army
to either deny has Blah's own aid efforts or replicate
them in a way that could strengthen American power are
testaments the effectiveness of such a technique and the dangers
they posed to the American imperial and state project. One

(02:01:45):
of those Love's major concerns is that American aid programs
are simply caught up in red tape. They're unable to
respond as fast as community led efforts, which means that
those efforts will get off the ground faster, get to
the scene faster, and thus route the political of fits.
When the state is unwilling or unable to provide services,
especially in the wake of disasters, it leaves a power

(02:02:06):
vacuum for organizations to exploit. May not have heard of
the RSS before. It's a paramilitary group affiliated with India's
ruling party, the b j P, counts among its members
India's Prime Minister Modi. It's also probably the world's largest
fascist organization. The RSS was founded in a group nominally

(02:02:27):
dedicated to protecting and promoting Hindu interests. What this means
in practice is that the RSS is dedicated to creating
a Hindu state and maintains and promotes a violent hatred
of Muslims. The results in RSS members being at the
forefront of anti Muslim programs. The rss IS pre World
War Two leaders were open admirers of Hitler and Mussolini,

(02:02:48):
and while they eventually abandoned those positions at the start
of World War Two, the rss IS politics have remained
thoroughly fascist in the intense communal rioting that both preceded
and followed the partition of India and Kistan after independence,
which saw mass population transfers of Hindus and Muslims and
the death of somewhere between two hundred thousand and two
million people. The RSS established itself as a protector of

(02:03:11):
Hindi refugees against Muslim violence, provided protection and aid to
those trying to survive the chaos the good world has generated, however,
collapse after a former RSS member did the single most
famous thing anyone associated with the RSS has ever done,
assassinated Gandhi. The RSS was almost immediately banned, but in

(02:03:32):
light of the terrible pr you get when you're associated
with killing Gandhi, the RSS became increasingly involved with disaster relief.
Over half a century of painstaking organizing, it created schools
and youth programs to spread its influence and use them
to fuel further anti Muslim violence. In two thousand one,
the organization gained national acclaim for its response to a

(02:03:54):
massive earthquake and Gunjarat. The RSS heavily emphasized the nondiscriminatory
nature of their aid work and their propaganda, but in reality,
many of the villages the RS s had rebuilt after
the devastation had been transformed into miniature versions of the
fabled Hindu state that the RSS seeks to impose on
all of India. Strategically, this should look familiar to us now.

(02:04:19):
It's essentially a fascist form of prefigurative politics. The RSS
used an earthquake to build the structure of the new
Hindu society in the shell of the old. The b
JP's dominance over Indian politics while led by a member
of the RSS, and the brutal crackdowns body carried out
in Kashmir our bloody testament to the success of their strategy.

(02:04:40):
Christian fundamentalist organizations have also been extremely effective and utilizing
their own form of right wing prefigurative politics, so in
a somewhat different way. In the RSS, their new world
is defined above all by theocratic patriarchal authoritarianism. Like the
radicals that occupy, the religious right was operating off of
a form of contagion theory, theory that exposure to their

(02:05:03):
social organizations and forms would essentially be contagious and spread,
but the Christian rights preferred form as the patriarchal family,
which serves as a microcosm of the kind of hierarchy
and patriarchal violence that dominate their long dreamed of theocratic society.
The Christian right would instill these values into their children

(02:05:24):
and send them off into the world to propagate their ideology. Ettinger,
an expert on the Christian right, wrote this about the
second phase of the strategy. In nineteen, several church leaders
came up with a new approach, identifying seven spheres of
culture to focus on one after another. They try to
bring about the lasting change and have a significant impact

(02:05:45):
on the superstructure of American culture. Lauren Cunningham, founder of
Youth with the Mission, a Christian missionary group coordinating international
and national mission churchs for young Christians, describes these seven
areas as such, these are the areas you can go
on as missionaries. Here they are first, it's the institution

(02:06:06):
set up by God. First the family. After the family
was the church or the people of God. The third
was the area of school or education. The fourth was
media public communication in all forms printed and electronic. The
fifth was what I call celebration, the arts, entertainment, sports,

(02:06:27):
where you celebrate within a culture. The sixth would be
the whole area of the economy, which starts with innovation
and science and technology, productivity, sales, and service. The whole
area we often call it business, but we leave out something.
We leave out the scientific part which actually raises the
wealth of the world, anything new like making sand and

(02:06:50):
chips for a microchip that increases wealth in the world.
And then of course prediction, sales and service helps to
spread the wealth. And so the last area was the
area of governments. This is a need encapsulation of the
rights p Refigurative politics start first with the family, and
then with the church, then reshaped school and education and

(02:07:12):
mass media in their image, and from there you can
begin to take the entire economy. Churches have also long
used aid programs to proselytize and also expand their control
over the population, which becomes dependent on their aid. In
the places where the left has failed to provide for
their community, the far right has stepped in and has
been able to rapidly and effectively reshape the political landscape.

(02:07:36):
This does not mean, however, that they can't be beaten.
Cooperation Jackson has offered one of the most powerful visions
of dual power in the modern US. A product of
the New African People's Organization and the Malcolm ex grassroots movements,
Jackson Cush Plan. Cooperation Jackson has put forward a radical
and democratic bottle of dual power, with the aim of

(02:07:57):
turning over control of the land and the means that
products into Jackson's black working class and allowing it to
achieve its own self determination. Corporation Jackson has formed mutual
aid networks, started an incubated program to help workers corroperatives
get off the ground, and formed a community land trust
that purchases abandoned buildings in Jackson it turns them over
to the community. They've also somewhat unusually wound up engaged

(02:08:19):
in the electoral process after the untimely death of Ally
and Jackson Mayor Choqua La Boomba, which led to the
election of his son, Choquant La Bomba. This placed the
movement in a somewhat awkward position of having allies, even
if constrained by the realities of state power in the
state itself. But politics in the real world is never

(02:08:40):
as clean as the models we create to describe it.
It is only in our ability to adapt the changing
conditions of struggle while maintaining our political principles that we
can build the new world in the shell of the old,
and we can build it. The question is simply, will
we uh well that wasn't very good. I'm Robert Evans,

(02:09:18):
host of the podcast you're listening to, and ashamed of,
probably because that was Jesus Christ. Garrison. Come in here,
fix this this Scarrison, Um, this is it could happen
here a podcast about the fact that the world was
folding apart, as embodied by me falling apart. When I

(02:09:40):
try to introduce the show, see I tied it in. Yeah,
good job, thank you, thank you. Well it is it is.
It has to rhyme. It's like it's like the Star
Wars movies. That's what I was doing. Our guest today
is Melissa A sidera founder and director of Polo's Pantry,
a mutual aid food distribution project in Los Angeles, California.

(02:10:03):
A Melissa, thank you for coming on and talking to us.
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm pleasure to
be here. I apologize for the introduction, but I honestly
it's better. It was better than I usually do, so
if you can back that up. Yes, okay. So I'm
an l A native, and um, I've been doing community

(02:10:24):
organizing for probably like close to a decade, doing a
lot of community work for a lot of time, and
a few years before the pandemic. Actually, I started to
organize with a lot of grassroots organizations in l A,
working with a lot of house less folks UM all
over l A, and kind of clock pretty early that

(02:10:47):
a lot, you know, a lot of a lot of
groups were burning through their budgets spending it on food.
And so since I worked in kind of the food industry,
I started to kind of poke around and figure out
that we could get a lot of these things donated
to us UM and pretty much started building a roster

(02:11:08):
like building, kind of like a rulodex of UM other organizations,
non profits, UM, food banks that we could rely on.
So almost kind of created sort of like an altera
system UM for these groups who are working with houseless
folks to get food every week. UM. I just wanted

(02:11:30):
to figure out a way to make a steady and
the reliable system so that our own house neighbors would
get food and that organizers across the l A wouldn't
have to worry about it. And so that's pretty much
how POLO started. Officially started in two thousand eighteen. I
was organizing with a group called Caton for All and UH,

(02:11:52):
they do a lot of political advocacy and mostly rooted
in like, um kind of you know, human rights for
our houses, neighbors. If you don't know, kaytime for all.
Look them up. They're awesome, follow them fantastic. Yeah, And
you know, I actually was because I was already doing
a lot of mutual aid work in skid Row around

(02:12:15):
that time and really kind of felt at some point,
um that you know, like, yes, it was great that
I was going out there with teams getting hot meals
out and hot beverages whatever people needed to people, but
I just was so down on what the conditions, seeing
all the conditions that they were living in, and I

(02:12:36):
just wanted to meet other activists and other folks um
who could really figure out how you connect people to
services and and just really you know, anyone working in
policy that's that's really changing things for people out there.
And so I wanted to take sort of my advocacy
and like my work a step further and connected with
activists all the railway and so that's sort of like

(02:12:58):
my organs really rooted lot of activism and organizing. So
I see I see a lot of I'm not sort
of your standard kind of or nonprofit I really see
things in the lens and as a community organizer, and
so that's why our our work pretty much exploded during COVID.

(02:13:18):
So I'm kind of interested for for starters because you're
you're you know, this is um a mutual aid project
as opposed to kind of a charity project, and what
do you what do you see as being the dividing
line there? Well, for you know, for a lot of
for us, you know, it's very easy for for folks
to kind of see the work that we do as

(02:13:39):
part of the kind of charitable food system because obviously
we're you know, UM mutual aid. It's the difference really
is that obviously, UM, you know, there there's a there's
a reciprocity between the two of you, UM, between between neighborhoods,
between individuals, between organizations of sharing resources with each other,

(02:14:03):
UM and charitable obviously is that there's only one way, right,
there's only like one person giving. But for us, UM,
the way we picked our partners, I mean, you're you're
ready part of this nucleus of kind of a coalition
of or doing this work. So it was just really
very easy for us to kind of share resources with

(02:14:25):
each other. So I was doing food and some folks
were doing hygiene kits, other folks were doing tents, other
folks were doing types or whatever, and so there was
so much you know, kind of mutualid and activity going on.
And so that that's why we're we're really kind of
rooted in that comment that thinking as far as as

(02:14:46):
opposed to charitable ors that basically just set up somewhere
and give, you know, give give stuff out to people.
And so we have look in part and part of
my advisory circle are a lot of houseless neighbors UM
houses leaders in our community. UM. I also take a
lot of advice from UM Indigenous organizers UM black community

(02:15:12):
leaders in different neighborhoods that we work in. So our
work is really informed by the community. And so we
basically asked folks, hey, you know, like, what can we
do UM and plug into to work that UM that
already exists in those in those areas. I hope, I
hope that makes sense. But that's kind of how I

(02:15:32):
feel about what we do. And and as an as
an organizer, because I think we get a lot of
questions from people who are interested in starting mutual aid
projects in their own areas. And one of the questions
we often have It is like, well how do I
how do I do that? Right? UM? And Yeah, I'm
interested in like like if you could kind of walk

(02:15:53):
us through the steps when when Polo's pantry got started,
Like what is what was the kind of order of
operations that you had to go through to get this
this been running? I think the first thing to do
is really too For me, it was already kind of
being part of grassroots UM or so I was part
of a few of them UM and so it's really
important to UM to kind of identify the needs of

(02:16:17):
a community first before setting up your organs. So I
feel like I already had an idea of you know,
of of what certain orcs needed, UM which areas, how
many and so kind of identifying the needs first kind
of UM number one. And and to do that you
really have to connect with the grassroots organizations, local ones

(02:16:39):
in your area. So you know, I recommend really just
kind of doing researchers. Always folks doing that kind of
stuff all over. If you're into political advocacy, there's folks
that do that with their folks who are more food
justice oriented, Like I would recommend going to a local
food bank or sup kitchens to have also, Like I've
been doing that for years and I've met a lot

(02:16:59):
of people UM with kind of similar values mine UM,
so just kind of pretty much identify one what you'd
like to do, what you're good at UM, and then
essentially research UM, you know, kind of opportunities to tap
into a local organ doing that work and then essentially

(02:17:20):
start organizing with them. Right. I don't I don't recommend
to build like to build an order prior to not
having this kind of knowledge, because I feel like it's
really crucial to sort of kind of map out first
what the community needs instead of you building mutual aid
organization based on you know whatever, because I feel like

(02:17:44):
it's it's important to work through things from the ground
up UM. That way, you feel like the work is impactful.
That way, the community is leading and informing your work.
And so that's that's kind of like how I I
approached MINE. So look for a local org so kind
of sit and organizing for a little bit, and then

(02:18:06):
from there, once you guys identify what it is UM
and start to kind of have an idea of the
demand or the need in that area, then start to
reach out to say, for me, for for food. A
lot of local, um, local chains will well well pretty

(02:18:26):
much if you if you tell them what you're doing, um,
a lot of them will support you. So I actually
have I started with just going literally to my local
Ralphs and telling the manager. They're like, hey, this is
what I'm doing, I'm starting this or you know, it
wasn't Ralph's being a local grocery store in Likes Angeles area.
A lot of I didn't know what Ralph's was before

(02:18:47):
I moved to l A. So I just wanted to
be like, she's not just like rolling over to where
buddy Ralph's house, like, I guess you've got some food? Yeah? Sorry, yeah,
so that Ralph's out here in l A. So most
places yeah more or less, yeah, yeah and will more
folks said, not everyone is down for that kind of stuff,
but somehow you'll you'll really end up on one that's

(02:19:07):
really you know, that is really unkind. I think most
folks have to realize that this this this kind of
work is not it didn't happen overnight like building like
building uh, you know, like a reliable network of people
to donate to you is. It takes time. So but
I think if if you hit kind of larger chains,

(02:19:30):
you will get UM, you know, you'll you'll you'll get
you'll start to get a steady supply from them. Do
you have any kind of advice for UM when you're
actually approaching you know, manager at Ralph's or something, somebody
who works for Like, what do you have like I
don't know, like a script kind of a rough guy
to like here's how I try to start these conversations here.
Some ways I try to phrase for things because that

(02:19:51):
could be useful for folks. You know, I actually have
like a form letters I could share later. Maybe you
can show, Yeah, that would be great, UM that you
know that they can use to UM you know, if
they're if they're going to UM solicit folks with that stuff.
And I think a lot of mutual aid organizations to
have that kind of UM kind of literature, that kind

(02:20:12):
of form, so UM, I think just basically kind of
letting them know who you are, who you're serving, UM,
how often which demographic is going to that's usually really important. UM.
What what helped me though, was I was as I
started to get more serious about about doing the food work,

(02:20:33):
I connected to you know, some some community partners, and
I actually UM turned Polos into a fiscally sponsored organ
so we moved from being just fully grassroots to being
fiscally sponsored. That basically means we're operating under the five
one C three number of another organization of a larger organization.

(02:20:54):
So that that was that open so so many opportunities
for us. It really allowed us to be able to
access larger amounts of food and really help out a
lot of a lot of a lot of smaller organs
that needed to get their food programs off the ground.
And so UM that is something I recommend if you're
if people are serious about it, to define a community

(02:21:17):
of community partner who who isn't established five one C
three that they trust UM to see if they if
they you know, if they can sign on to to
be a physical sponsor UM. That I think is one
of the quickest ways to be able to UM to
really kind of establish yourself as as far as getting

(02:21:37):
larger amounts of food then, and by that I mean
getting pallets of food, not just cases, but literally palettes
of food delivered to wherever you are. As soon as
we did that, that completely changed the game UM. And
and I think I did that because I knew I
had so many friends who were doing mutual aid that
needed so you know, just so much stuff from groceries

(02:22:01):
to um, you know, fresh produce, and it wasn't and
it wasn't you know, it didn't stop. And food we
were getting you know, hand sanitizer, we were getting tense,
we were getting all sorts of stuff, you know, and
so um. So yeah, that's what I recommend for folks
were serious about food is to really again start to

(02:22:22):
build a relationship with local businesses, um that they that
they like food businesses, and really telling people this is
what I'm doing. If you're if you know, if you're
if you're you know, if you are, what support us?
You know, like this is um, you know, these are
these are the days that we need food or whatever,

(02:22:42):
or these are the times that we'll need food and
just let them know that you know, you're you're happy
to pick it up or that you're happy to because
there's there's I think, at least for California, we're starting
to change law, like policy and law behind food waste,
and so I think, um, something's going to change. In
January of two, where a lot of food waste basically

(02:23:07):
going to decrease because it's going to be much more difficult.
The city is going to make it much more difficult
for for businesses to just carry this stuff. Um they're
they're really pushing them to uh um to separate them.
But anyway, regardless, you're helping the business really UM move,
you know, move food waste, and and most of them

(02:23:30):
and a lot of employees too that I've talked to
UM just you know, just our heart work. And every
time they have to clear out you know, a full
full tray or just trays of trays of of of
of a perfectly fine food. So yeah, there's there's a
video going viral on Twitter right now of of like
someone working at Dunking Donuts and just like dumping just

(02:23:52):
like hundreds and hundreds of donuts into the garbage. And
then that happens. That happens every single day. You know.
I have I have friends who used to work on
Whole Foods and they would tell me just just how
heartbreaking it was, just the amount, just the massive amount
of that's being wasted. Yeah, it's evil, it's it's it's
it's it's it's it's it's it's a thing that in

(02:24:14):
the more difficult days ahead as you know, things like
well like we under in a lot of areas, like
the crop was half of what it normally is this year.
That's going to continue. One day we will look at
videos of Dunkin Donuts dropping an entire day's worth of
donuts into the trash and use it as a pretext

(02:24:34):
to bring executives to trial. And it's going to be
like like like a war crime. Yeah is I mean,
I mean honestly though, as someone in food, um, you know,
like the food system is changing massively in so many ways.
I feel like the one kind of good thing that
happened in the pandemic is that lawmakers were able to

(02:24:55):
identify that the White Snap or cal Fresh pretty much
food stamps were not enough really to um, you know,
to feed families and feed people. It's not nearly enough, though,
but at least it kind of pushes the needles where
we need where we needed to go UM. And I

(02:25:15):
think I think, having having been so focused and so
like in the center of mutual aid work in l A,
I'm able to kind of broadly tell you know, tell
um really tell lawmakers too that hey, you know, there's
so much um there's so much meat out there, but
the community themselves have built alternate food systems to be

(02:25:38):
able to care for themselves. I feel like my hope
really is to be able to have to kind of
hyperlocalize our food systems that way neighborhoods and really like
communities are are essentially dictating their own you know, their
own needs. They're they're basically bringing in the resources that

(02:25:59):
they want, They're bringing in the kind of food that
they want, you know, and um, and really just working
towards the real kind of food food sovereignty where people
are able to you know, to get the resources themselves.
And and for me, I feel like mutual aid scares
a lot of people because again it really is this

(02:26:21):
sort of like, um, the reason why we were able
to a lot of communities were able to to survive COVID.
You know, we're still doing it and it still ours
so deep in it. And and even like I try
to tell students to and like, you know, um, mutual
aid isn't just food or whatever. It's also like say

(02:26:41):
your dad is a pickup truck and your neighbor needs
to move, I don't know, their dining room table across town,
Like that is a form of mutual aid UM or Like,
there's there's so many things that especially a lot of
immigrant communities that I that I work with. This this

(02:27:02):
form of care, community care, you know, has existed forever,
and it's just somehow elevated itself during the pandemic because,
as we know, the safety net just wasn't enough. It
didn't it didn't it really didn't help me, you know,
it didn't really help a lot of communities, and so
this system essentially kept people afloat. And now we're trying

(02:27:27):
to figure out how to really create better ways to
sustain it and to really create better ways to get
the resources directly to communities that need them. So that's
kind of where I'm at im. I'm working with other
folks trying to figure out how to how to keep
the sustainable and really have more agency over what kind

(02:27:48):
of food and what kind of aid you want. How
have people that have been needing to access the mutual
aiding the food, how have they been learning about your organization? UM.
I think honestly, all this stuff really happened by word
of mouth. I think because I was I was already
part of this huge coalition UM. That's part of of

(02:28:09):
the Sophie Knows a Cat for All. There's a group
called Street Watch. There's a group called Brown Game, There's
a group called Like There's there's all these different folks
that basically are in our wide coalition. I haven't had
to really advertise much like people just sort of like
just kept telling others like, hey, you know, like Melissa
Polos and her team were doing this and UM. Also

(02:28:31):
as a COVID response, I created another UM um UH
like COVID initiative called Homemade Meals and and that is
the partnership with another organization called YIS. And so as
of today, I think we're close to seventy meals UM.

(02:28:52):
That's all community lad. Yes. So we so we the
smart of UM. We essentially created a system where we
uh we work with people who are who are cooking
homade meals in their homes and connecting them to drivers.
And so we have about six different UM organ partners.
So one of them is obviously it's the same people Kaytown,

(02:29:15):
street Watch, Covenant House. They work a lot with Homeless
Youth um l a can or in skid Row UM
and a bunch of other mutual aid groups in different
areas of l A, so I recognize UM. At the
beginning of COVID, a lot of my houseless neighbors were

(02:29:36):
telling us that they were scared, like because a lot
of a lot of businesses were closing, a lot of
corner stores, restaurants, UM that the food access completely shut
off for them during at the beginning, and I started
to freak out. I was like, we're going to get
food to people. And so UM some friends who run UM,

(02:30:01):
basically they weren't kind of like a youth kind of
youth focus or UM wanted to activate their you know,
activate their community. They're like, hey, how can we help?
What can we do? So we created this program basically
that you know, figure it out, like, okay, well a
lot of people want to have volunteer, but they can't
leave home, So why don't they cooked meals at home?

(02:30:23):
And then we'll just pair them with drivers we can
pick it up safely. And so we just start doing that.
We created this system too, and and I think we honestly,
I thought we were just gonna do it for two months,
but now we're what like, in nineteen months later, seventy
five thousand nails over a thousand volunteers, like it's been wild. Actually,

(02:30:46):
Jamie a friend of dog expert, she would be angry
if we didn't state that. So Jamie, UM, Jamie actually
is it's one of our O g like like cooks,
Like she started with home and made meals from the
very beginning. UM, she's kind of one of our That's

(02:31:08):
kind of how we know her. UM. It's because she
found she found that program UM. And it's been a while,
it's been it's been so amazing to to really activate
so many people across l A to cook for our
houses neighbors. And so I haven't even fully digested our
our team hasn't even full digested that the real impact
of that. But it's been seving five thousand meals UM

(02:31:31):
made by the community for our for our houses neighbors.
So so so that's yeah, so that I don't know,
like I feel like and I truly believe there's just
so much, just so much power and the people and
really trying to figure out ways to continue to you know,
to create UM better systems where where we can redirect

(02:31:56):
those resources you know, UM to us and UM you
know like really kind kind of break down these systems
where you know, because because even people were telling me,
like folks who are like, you know, these sort of
big institutions, food institutions have been around for decades or
even folks UM from like yeah, from like running food

(02:32:20):
dogs since the eighties were like, you know, how are
you able to move so fast? I'm like, that's mutual aid.
That's like, that's mutual aid. Then our ability to not
have to run through so much bureaucratic crap and red
tape is a reason why we were able to, you know,
to to to in secreate such huge impact because people

(02:32:44):
believed in what we did and you know, and helped
support us, funded us UM and we essentially just you know,
just hit the ground running. We're able to figure out
what people needed on the ground and just just got
it to them. That's that's it, you know, and we'll
figure out. If we don't have it, we're gonna keep
you know, we'll ask around for folks who have it.

(02:33:06):
Like UM. There's a group called SILA there. It's silver
like UM and my friend Kat who's one of the
co founders. She they also worked with with UM with
Houseless Folks and they do uh incredible work, like you know,
providing showers, providing hot meals, providing reference services for folks.

(02:33:29):
Um she she was great, I'd getting hygiene kids, and
so that's that was started me to wil between each other.
Like she needed hot meals, so I gave that to
her on Saturdays, and then I needed like hygiene kids,
and so that's kind of like the basis, yeah exactly,
like I literally will give her two hundred meals, She'll
give me two hundred hygiene kids. And that was like
that throughout the pandemic, Like we just would share resources

(02:33:52):
and people thought we were this huge borg, but essentially
it was just you know, literally like my friends and
I talking to each other like hey, what do you
have today? What do you have coming in today? And
we just essentially kind of built this sort of cloud
like sort of inventory. Right, so it's like Polos has
a thousand meals and like Seela's got five hundred Hygian kids,

(02:34:16):
and like you know, street Watch as like fifty tents
and like a hundred tarps. So it's like we all
were like, hey, you know, there's there's a houseless van
on the corner of like Sunset or whatever that needs
like blah blah blah. And so we essentially just you know,
just grab and go like Poles has meals and like

(02:34:36):
Streetwatch has tents, and like Kate Towns got like the tarps.
So y'all just again beautifully just sort of started to
like build this sort of sort of cloud like inventory
of stuff and it just worked and it's still working
so um and it's so assistant, Like is what what

(02:34:56):
we're bringing up or at the beginning is talking about
how consistent you're able to you're able to have done
this work, which is if you're an l A resident,
you know that you know the city's support is never consistent,
so having that consistency is so vital. Yes, yeah, I'm

(02:35:18):
not thank you know, it's it's a lot of hard work.
There's so much that people don't see. Obviously, there's so many,
so many things that people don't see. There's a lot
of organizing behind it, just literally a lot of community building,
a lot of meetings. Yeah, I think that again, like
the bulk of mutual aid is relationships and trust, you know,
like that that's that's really it. That's how you breathe

(02:35:39):
life into your system. And it's like, you know, you
have to have you have to continue to like nourish
your relationships, you know, between yourself and other organizers, between
yourself if you're running an order between yourself and another
organ UM. And and really that's how we've been able to,
you know, to to reach so many people, is because

(02:35:59):
we focused on making sure but you know, UM, it's
so easy to to burn out in this work. But again,
we also have to make sure that we take care
of each other, UM. And we focused on making sure
that we're checking out the other two and so I,
you know, it's it's hard to fully explain what how

(02:36:21):
do you even teach that you know, how to how
to how to properly build relationships? But I feel like
that's that's such a key part of creating a really
robust mutual aid network. UM. And that's at least the
experience that you had, you know, yeah, are the work
that you've done and what you've been able to accomplish
is very impressive and is is something that people a

(02:36:45):
lot of people can aspire to. UM. Is there any
like resources online that you can point to if someone's
wanting to get into this type of work, UM or
any any like any kind of like advice to get
started in your own city, or to like look for
stuff that's doing similar that that's like that's doing a
similar thing. Um uh wow, let's see who has um gosh,

(02:37:12):
that's a really really really good question. Um. Well, well,
first I hope that people have read Mutual Aid by
Dean Spade. Um. That's a really good book. Um. And
and from there I would read I would read The
Black Panthers Social Programs. I get a lot of I

(02:37:33):
get a lot of my um my inspiration from there. Um.
And really that's that's really those those two things to
kind of start as just sort of like your um,
your primers um. And then if you want to kind
of get deeper into food justice, um uh, they're's a
really good book I get ready years ago. I think

(02:37:57):
it's literally called food Justice one on one. Okay, let
me see, it's really called food Juice one on one. Yeah,
there's there's quite a few, but but one that's one,
and then there's another. There's a one book um I
read called More Than Just Food um. And then it's
it's pretty by Yeah, I'll give you guys my top

(02:38:18):
five and that really kind of helps sort of um
like shape my thinking or on food juice. So that's
It's written by a guy named Garrett Broad and he
essentially like kind of lays out sort of how the
industrial food system kind of created this huge crisis that
we're in, and you know, like how there's there's really
kind of an abundance of food everywhere, but obviously it's distributed,

(02:38:43):
yes exactly, and so and and and it also kind
of lays out how food justice you know, activists um
who are in mostly low income communities of color help
really build community based kind of solutions to these problems.
And so that's really kind of where my thinking and
my my lens comes from. Is be because I am

(02:39:05):
a child of l A. I'm able to understand what
different neighborhoods need UM based on because I either grew
up there, work there, have family there, you know, what's
school there, or just have friends or other organizers who
live there. And so say, if you know, I, I
didn't grow up in Ball Heights, but I have friends

(02:39:27):
who did. And so like, if I'm trying to build
out a food program or mutual aid program and Ball Heights,
I'm not gonna just walk in there and be like
all right, we're gonna do it at you know, Yeah,
you're not gonna take over there, They're they're saying exactly.
But I think that's one thing I think I really
want to for people to really especially for for for

(02:39:49):
young people who want to get to food justice, Like
you really have to really honestly do your research first
and let the media leaders lead, um lead lead your
program with you. Right. And then there's a difference between
like making community connections and then trying to take over, right,
There's a very very two very different things exactly. Yeah,

(02:40:11):
you don't want to be extractive, right, you don't want
to be extractive. You don't want to be coming in
and you know, and and and really like you know,
try to like show up with like, you know, solutions
where there they weren't informed at all by the community.
And I keep trying to stress that, Yeah, is there
anywhere that people can support you or at least follow

(02:40:34):
you online to keep up with the work. Yes, Um,
I'm very active on Twitter. Um it's uh, we're at
Polos pantry, so that's p O l O, s um
p A and t R Y. And then I'm also
tweeting as myself as an organizer. It's under m E
smelling music as M E L L E music. Um,

(02:40:58):
and that actually that handled for me everywhere like my
personal so I I tweet from there a lot. I
tweet a lot about who Justice work I feel, and
all our all our work in l A I tweet,
I retweet a lot of our move network and coalition work. Yeah.
Just thank you for coming on to the show to
talk about through Justice and the work you've been doing. Um,

(02:41:21):
it's great to hear more examples of people from around
the country and then hopefully you know, around the world
getting involved in in this type of work. UM. Anyway,
I think that it wraps up us today. You can
follow this show on Twitter and Instagram at Happened Here
pod and cool Zone Media. UM, subscribe to the feed,

(02:41:41):
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(02:42:03):
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