Rural Organizing Part 1 Ft. Andrew and Black Flower Collective

Andrew and Mia talk with two members of the Black Flower Collective about organizing in rural communities and the conditions that make it different from urban organizing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to it could happen here once again?
Who sits by myself and Drew as we talk about
whatever Today we have two special guests, Sprout and Ryan
from the Black Flower Collective, and they had to talk
to us about the dichotomy between urban and rural political organizing.
I mean, as we can all recognize in this day

(00:25):
and age, being politically active is incredibly important. There are
a lot of vulnerabilities that we are all facing on
this intersection of systems, and we are looking for we
as to get out, but it could be difficult to naviate,
especially when you don't know exactly where to begin. That's

(00:45):
part of the focus of my channel, and it's also
something that these folks are here to talk to us about.
But before we delve too deeply into the meat of
that discussion, let's begin with a quick introduction. You know,
who is black Flower Collective? How did you all begin? None?
What does its as a group? Hey, this is Sprout

(01:05):
and we got started organizing with the Black Flower Collective
through previous organizing projects here in Aberdeen, Washington, such as
the Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network. That collective got started
after the Black Lives Matter rebellion in so called Seattle
and was started by feeding the movement out there in

(01:28):
Capitol Hill and Chaz and then brought that organizing effort
back to the community to start a food and Not
Bombs here in town. Through those meetings and relationships that
we formed, we got to know the local homeless in
town and started getting to know their needs as we
tried to fill them with our mutual aid efforts. And

(01:50):
out of those conversations over meals, we learned that one
of the biggest needs was some sort of home base
where people like us trying to support the community could
come together and cook meals together and serve them in
a collective area. Yeah, having a safe place to be
able to just cook food and plan other types of

(02:14):
organizations or collectives is imperative because we faced a lot
of backlash from the reactionary politics around our town being
in the kind of the heart of trump Land and
the type of people that show up in the big
city protest to mow people down with their trucks and whatnot. Right,

(02:34):
and how has that affected your old reach efforts, would
you see? Thankfully, not too harshly, but we've definitely had
some scary situations. There was one time at the homeless
camp we were told about by the campers there where
somebody had tried to like run down a tent that

(02:55):
somebody was sleeping sleeping in. They may just like jump
out the like like you know, before they got hit,
and they jumped out of the truck and was like
waving of a like a police baton or some sort
of like a stick or something or something around threatening people.
Somebody got like a bigger stick, which prompted them to
get in their car and start waving a pull out

(03:15):
a pistol and start waving that around before they ended
up driving off. Yeah, sometimes when we get new volunteers,
there can be a bit of hesitance from people to like,
you know, take food or supplies because there's a bit
of a relationship that needs forming there of trust because
of those actions of right wing actors in town. So

(03:36):
it's kind of like, you know, what is why are
you out you're feeding? So there's a bit of hesitance there.
But once they realized they're with our group, we've established
enough of a reputation that that you know, that name
drop is usually enough to to re establish that trust. Right,
But it's good that you'll have somewhat established yourselves, you know,
locally and builds up a reputation. Would you see that

(03:58):
that has been one of you a media as a group,
to build that trust in the community and where you'll
see that trust go in from where it is now.
I've always seen that personally as our only asset. We
don't have a lot of money. Obviously we're not funded
by anyone, so all we really have is our reputation
in the in the community and in the wider community.

(04:21):
Our reputation has led to some of that backlash that
Cherianne was talking about, but within the actual un housed community,
you know, we have a reputation of doing whatever we
can to help people and always showing up consistently and
you know, always being willing to go to the extra

(04:42):
mile when someone needs something in crisis. That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
So having had some experience with UM like you'll mentioned,
working in the various movements that were happening in twenty twenty,
what would you see some of the media differences that
you've noticed between organizing and media cities and in Uban

(05:06):
areas compared to rural physical organizing UM Well, I'd say
the majority of the issues we've noticed depend on the
material conditions of the town that we're in. Being a
small and rural area, there's a lot more property here,
and so those material conditions lead to a lot of

(05:30):
differences between urban and rural areas. I found before come
into the area, I was involved with Occupy Oakland back
in the day, so I had a bit more of
a running with the larger city, larger cities way of
doing things. What about you share in Well, I've grown

(05:53):
up here in this town my whole life and have
a really left outside of it all too much. This
type of organizing is always up that I heard about
more so through rumors than anything else sources actually seeing
people on the ground and doing things. Once we got
our food not Bombs chapters started during twenty twenty, it

(06:18):
opened kind of just a new a new world for
not just myself, but a lot of people around here. Right. So,
one major difference that we've noticed that is the dichotomy

(06:39):
of electoral politics in the town. Most of the opposition
that we've faced has not been from the city but
from grassroots initiatives, and so some of those people over
the course of the last two years have taken positions
on city council, but the police that they control are

(07:04):
still demonstrate an unwillingness to attack their own community in
the way that far right politicians would want them to. Yeah,
so take like the police that show up and the
like big city protests and whatnot. They'll bring in all
police stations from all surrounding areas, people who aren't familiar

(07:24):
with the community, who you know, it's just a job
to them, which helps sever that their connection to that area,
while here it's the same people dealing with the same
people every day, and in the minds of police, it
does create create like a sense of community in their
mind that makes them a little more reluctant to use

(07:47):
the type of violent force that we see in in
the bigger cities. And it's not to say that force
isn't present and doesn't happen here, but it definitely doesn't
happen on the free Let's see if I can run
back a second by well, this is me, I'm also
on this episode. Um, yeah, if I could, if I

(08:08):
could walk back a second, ask or something? When when
when you say that most of the resistance to what
you've been doing is from grassroots movements. Is that like, like,
are you talking about like sort of grassroots like right
wing political movements. Are you talking about sort of NGOs
opposing you or no, Like, we have a local grassroots
right wing initiative in town that's been the main brunt

(08:29):
of our our little groups opposition. And they have, like
I said, they have run and won a few city
council seats since then. But it started as a grassroots
you know, clean up the trash sort of campaign. Yeah. Yeah,
you can still find their page on Facebook. It's a
save our Aberdeen, Oh God, save our Aberdeen please soap

(08:55):
and they got like little soap bubbles and whatnot. And
they're here to clean up the city streets. Oh boy,
I don't think they're talking about the trash, not trash
as we would define it. Yeah, so sort of right,
So this is a place where sort of like right
wing like anti homeless stuff has been has been their
sort of main way to build organization. Yeah, it's a

(09:16):
it's a huge I mean, I don't really even know Sherry,
And like, what other talking points do they have other
than the homeless. Everything centers around the homeless, even stuff
that has to do with like businesses in town and
local economics. That gets blamed on the homeless. You know,
everything gets blamed on the homeless. So it really all
goes back to that. Yeah, they are the scapegoat for

(09:40):
every problem that the city council faces, or not just
a city council, but businesses. You run a shitty business,
it's it's the homelessess fault. I don't have customers. It
has nothing to do with the fact that I haven't
sold anything in years and this is just a hobby
shop for me because I got a fat inheritance. But yeah,

(10:01):
I'm talking about you. All that glitters we call it
names now, so you speak. You spoke about how this um,
this grass or right wing movement has picked up some
steam and want some seats in the city council. Um. Right.

(10:22):
One thing I recognize about grassroots movements is that they
tend to have to sort of balance their goals with
the trust they need to build with the product public,
with the perception that the public has of them, and
how they're trying to shape that perception. So how would

(10:44):
you say that the public of Aberdeen views the right
wing initiatives the soup movement as your reference in and
how do you think that they of tentative view Black
Soil Collective. Well, I think a lot of people feel

(11:09):
scared to voice their opinions if they're on the left
in town. But we do get a lot of support
for the mutual aid that we do the the base
of the other The right wing movement in town is
pretty strong, and you know, I don't see them drawing

(11:31):
in a whole lot of new people because of their
extreme nature and their tendency towards conspiracies, but they do
have quite a substantial base that whatever they say, they're
gonna they're gonna agree with and they're gonna go along with.
Take for example, like here about a year or two ago,

(11:54):
I think it was November twenty twenty one or August,
there was a big anti Trent trans rally outside of
a Star Wars shop here in town that yeah, they
had to bring in a bunch of proud boys from
you know, out of town and the like, filled their
numbers from outside, you know, with outside help and whatnot,

(12:17):
while chanting about how Antifa was coming from Seattle to
burn the shop down and kill the shop owner and
all this and all the stuff that they had the
guy during the whole protest. They gave him like a
bulletproof vest that he's like walking around. Did they brought
brought Matt Walsh the fucking town. It was a mess. Wow. Yeah,

(12:40):
it's um really a classic example of pot meatcatsle with
a lot of their metric a max arians. I think
the majority of the public though, does care about the
issues that the homeless are facing and the fallout issues
from that, but they kind of it's kind of this

(13:02):
tug back and forth between us telling them what's really
going on on the streets and the stories of people
down at camp and this other more right wing tendency
to just blame things on the homeless and take the
simple route of saying if we just get rid of
these homeless people, then our problems will be solved, and

(13:23):
local efforts to gentrify the area with the influx of
Terry Emmert, a right wing capitalist who's brought up like
sixty properties in town recently, and as well as just
the local media landscape in town has a right wing

(13:45):
tinge to it. I mean, where we're at, everything has
a right wing tinge to it. But so it's hard
because there's not a lot of voices even though there
is a lot of sentiment of caring about the homeless,
there's not a lot of voices that are actually telling
the truth of what's going on on the streets. And
so when you get all the lies and bullshit coming

(14:06):
from the police and city hall and just being reported
verbatim by the papers in town, it leads to a
lot of people forming conclusions based on faulty facts, and
so they might think, oh, the homeless did this, the
homeless did that. And we go into the comment sections
every time and push back and say, you know, actually,

(14:28):
this is what happened. And it's actually a lot of
times that we get people, you know, opening their eyes
and saying, oh, I didn't know that. You know, it's
not always just the standard dig your heels and sort
of thing that you see on social media. Because it
is a sort of smaller town, right, everyone kind of
knows everybody. Yeah, there's a bit more accountability in that sense.

(14:53):
If you're going to spout off online, it's you know,
it's likely that the grocery line and stuff. Not only that,
but it makes like for organizing a general um and
nonimidity a lot different of a um of a tactic
and how and how you use it because like say
in the big city, you're constantly surrounded by UM security

(15:18):
cameras everywhere you go. You're constantly being monitored, watched or whatnot.
But it's a lot easier just disappear in the crowd,
just another face, the you know the other. Like you
can go out spray paint ditch got a big deal
in place like here in Aberdeen for example, Like I
could mask up and do everything, um, you know, I can,

(15:42):
But if I get known in any kind of sense
of way, if I go out and you know, spray
paint a wall, it's like, oh, there goes Sherry and
you know, spray painted walls again. And once once you
are docs are identified, it's really hard to undo that
and just sort of renonymize yourself. So we've taken an

(16:03):
anonymity and our security and that aspect very seriously from
the get go. A couple of people in our organization
who didn't have faced you know, public harassment and stocking.
So yeah, it is a big deal. So you've managed
to maintain a lovel of anonymity despite your elder Jeffletz

(16:23):
in a small town, Yes, well, to a large degree,
to a large degree. Okay, there's different people in our group.
You know, it's not like our group has rules about it.
So some people use their real names, some people don't.
But those who are concerned about it have been able to,
although it's it's difficult, and you know once that, once

(16:46):
that identification comes, you know it's pretty much games up. Right.
It also kind of has affected our recruitment in the
sense that people on the outside looking in may see
what we're doing as more dangerous than it actually is

(17:07):
because of those security concerns, and they might be scared
of retaliation and not want to participate because of that.
So we have taken to kind of reducing the fire
in our online social media's for some of that mutual

(17:27):
aid stuff so that we don't get as much of
the backlash on those accounts. And we found that it's
helpful to have ancillary groups that can go and do
more autonomous stuff if we need stuff done that it
are said that is going to create more backlash, right,
sort of different layers of the organization. I remember the

(17:50):
Alpha Futurist abolitioncy America's one of the statements they had
puts out they were they had used it to move
like my zy in the sense of having sort of
different levels of network in police, you have like the
above ground level of you know, more visible public face

(18:10):
and action, whereas you have that sort of underground, fungal
network of anonymous and probably more risky action taken place. Yeah,
because we have to sort of maintain a certain level
of goodwill in town for the mutual for certain sides
of our organizing. Organizing like the police, for example, they're

(18:34):
always down at camp and so having an amicable relationship
with them is advantageous in certain scenarios. So, yeah, splitting
apart roles, I would say, you know, one role being
the public facing side of things and one role being
the more private, autonomous group. And how would you see

(19:07):
you're talking about you some semi am a couple of
relationship with the police. How is that been sort of
sort of set up? You know, what was the basis
of that? Well, as we were mentioning the the the
structure of policing is a little bit different since the

(19:29):
police in an area small like this is going to
hire locally as opposed to in large metropolis areas. You
generally see police departments in big cities hiring from the
suburbs surrounding the area leads to sort of like a
foreign occupation feel. That's definitely the feeling that I got

(19:52):
when I was doing stuff in Oakland was that the
Oakland Police Department was not made up of anyone who
lived in oak you know. They were coming from the
surrounding suburbs that were much more affluent and removed from
the problems of Oakland, and they were just there to
occupy by force. And so we get more like the

(20:14):
Andy Griffith feel out here where it's like the cops are,
you know, the good guys, who's trying, who's helping grandma
across the road, and you know, will you know, carry
your groceries up the stairs for you and that kind
of stuff. At least that's more at least that's more
the public perception. Anyway. They also have a small tank

(20:36):
and conduct all sorts of drug right right there. That
caught to me, like, yeah, we're helping you, you know,
we're walking you down the route and carrying your groceries
in your house. Few within all those two. But because
of the small town aspects of it, though, um being
able to like play on their um wanting, you know,

(20:59):
for the ones who do want to help but are
misguided because they're cops a cab um. But for the
ones who are trying to help, who aren't like specifically
going out trying to fuck over homeless people besides their jobs,
you know once who occasionally like go out and buy
stuff of their own money or whatever to like help,
so whatever, they'll kind of like rely on us to

(21:19):
deal with that slide of the population so they don't
have to waste their time dealing with the homeless, is
how and which is allows us to deal with more
of the problems in the homeless community in house versus
having to get the police involved, right, because you know,
the police aren't ready treated or capable of resolving those

(21:40):
kind of issues. For example, like my father, for example, Um,
he was in and out of prison his whole life,
and after I was born and he got out of
prison that last time, Um, he had a moment where
he's going to get ready to have a relapse. Right,
he went to his dealer's house. You know, he's there,
he bought his ball. He's sitting there and you know,

(22:02):
getting ready to do his thing. And there's a knock
at the door and they open it up and it's
police there. They got a warrant for the dealer. They're
raiding the house, and this one cop you know, pulls
my dad aside because he knows if the other cops season,
he's gonna send him straight to prison. And he's like,
you know, hey, you know what are you doing here? Man?
And whatever possessed my dad to do it, He's like,

(22:22):
I just want to go home. He put the eight
ball in that dude's hand and cops kind of looked
at him, was like, just just get the fuck out
of here, just go because he knew if the other
cop you know saw him, he would have sent him
to prison right then, and the like again a cab,
the like, this is, you know, the best story you're
ever going to hear. It's our best story if a

(22:45):
cop is a cop, not being a cop pretty much, Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
every time. But you definitely get more of that here though.
That their advantage to take over. Yeah, and we have
a certain uh people in our group that can liaise
on better than others with the police, and so we've
used that to our advantage as well. They've largely ignored

(23:09):
I want to say, the police, not the city. The
city wants to stop us. It's like their undying wish apparently,
But the police have largely ignored or shown tacit support
for our efforts because they're members of the community and they,
at least the older crop of officers, have been working

(23:31):
these streets and seeing the same homeless individuals for in
some cases longer than I've been allowed, So you know,
there are relationships there, even even if it's one mediated
by that position that being a police officer, When you
see someone struggling for that long, you know, it's it's

(23:53):
hard not to be empathetic as a human. And so
we've been seeing a bit of a shift now that
they are all those officers are starting to retire and
we're getting a new crop of younger, more gung ho
police because who would who would van who would sign
up to be a police officer in twenty twenty three,
you know, other than people who have something going on

(24:16):
with them, So we're sure, yeah, But for a while
there it was this, you know, that sort of old
crop of police officers who had build relationships in the
community and had that public image of being the helpful
peace officer, as it were, which makes it hard to
push back when you're when you're a group that's trying

(24:38):
to advance, you know, abolitionists thinking and anti cop sentiments.
When they are beating people with batons, it's easy for
your community to look at that and be like, Okay,
these guys are clearly the enemy. But when they're just
you know, helping grandma across the street, it's a lot
harder to make those arguments. So that's been one aspect

(25:02):
that has made things difficult for us. And another dichotomy
in just the list of these in the mere differences
between the conditions around organizing in a small town, rural
area versus bigger than cities such as say Seattle. Yeah,
but despite all of their helpful nature there, they are

(25:24):
enforcing local ordinances that criminalize the n housed, despite the
ruling out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Martin v.
Boise that says it's unconstitutional to do so so even
with no alternative, no alternative shelter available. This year we
have zero cold weather shelters in Aberdeen. They're still out

(25:45):
there sweeping people and telling them, hey, you've got to
move along. When the maps handed out by the city
say specifically you can sleep here, and you can camp
here as long as you leave enough space for pedestrians
to get by. You can set up the sidebox, and
yet they move them along every day. Yeah, as you're
talking about, you know, the different eye caught to me

(26:06):
is that you feace between urban and rurope let's organizing.
I would imagine that population is certainly an issue the
matter that you might have to feace as you know,
an organization trying to make a change in a small space,
have your phone. It challenging to build your base and

(26:30):
you know, get connections and stuff going. Yeah, for certain like,
as we said, there's already the issues with the of
US having a more reactionary based politics in a lot
of our population, and that's scaring what allies that we
do have here. So it's definitely resulted in us having

(26:51):
to do the best we can to network outside as
much as possible. Yeah, there's not a really wide face
of radicals to pull from, so we have to work
a bit wider ranging group of folks out here. Although
it has always shocked me how many people are willing
to get involved in radical organizing here in town. You know,

(27:13):
I think the smaller group size has led to a
need for more connection and more listening in our decision
making processes, which has been nice. I think we've gotten
really good at operating as a small, tight knit group,
which may be organizers in larger areas where groups are larger,

(27:35):
I have to deal with a little bit differently, you know.
There's also the difference in terms of where we socialize.
In places like Aberdeen, there's nothing to do in terms
of social gatherings. There's no center of socialization in town.

(27:56):
The only thing that we did have was the mall,
which has been closed for a couple of years now,
so there's not a lot to do in terms of activities,
and there's also just not a lot of space, like
physical space in which to gather as a community. That's
why we are currently serving our through not bomb meals

(28:18):
under a bridge because the city has removed all covered
areas in one of the most rainy areas in the country. Yeah.
Like when I go to like Seattle, for for example,
I could walk into any business, any doorway, just about
any street pole and see flyer after flyer after flyer

(28:38):
for this event, this concert, this group is doing this, this, this,
these classes are taking place, etc. They straight up have
a law against putting anything on the poles in town
versus let alone. They're actually being any events happening worth
using the poles in the first place, right right. So

(29:01):
I would imagine that parts of your aims as a
collective would be to find ways to bring the community
together through those sorts of social events, in formal and
formal for sure, And that's definitely a big part of
our goal with the Black Flower Project is to create
a sort of social center, a place for the community

(29:24):
to come for various reasons and you know, experience whatever
they might discover. So it sounds like you'll have a
good lay of the land in terms of what is
happening in the town and what sort of movements you
want to be making. In the next part of this episode,

(29:44):
you can join myself and Miya and Shayan and Sprout
as we discuss the actions that Black Foil Collective plans
on taking in their community and what sort of material
conditions they've can to you to have to navigate in
this space until then, I'm Andrew of the YouTube channel

(30:07):
Andrew Zone. You can call me on Twitter at Underscore
seeing Drew and support on petreon, dot com, slash sne
Trewe and You could also check out Blackflower Collective and
support their week Yeah. You can find us at link tree, backslash,
black Flower LLC or Blackflower Collective dot no blogs dot org.

(30:29):
You can also find our content at at link tree
backslash al thirteen twelve, where you can find our podcasts
maltov Now and a bunch of our other projects by
Sabo Media. Thanks loot guys. It could Happen here as

(30:50):
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