April 23, 2020 • 58 mins
Katy and Robert interview, Michelle Manos, co-founder of Bernie's Coffee Shop in mid-city Los Angeles, and the current Chair of the Local Station Board at KPFK.
Project Mask LA
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IG: @projectmaskla
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Group order form: https://forms.gle/kvpy7ZrjY369Jp1TA
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https://urbanpartnersla.org/volunteer/
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California for Progress
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Bernie's Coffee Shop
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't Hey, everybody, Welcome back
(00:22):
to the incredibly aptly named show Worst Year Ever. My
name is Katie Stole, my name is Robert Evans, and
my allergies are exploding horribly and I apologize with that.
That's okay, apology accepted. Today we are joined by a
very special guest, Michelle Manos, who is a community organizer
(00:43):
and the co founder of Bernie's Coffee Shop. Hi Michelle, Hi,
thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being here.
Michelle and I actually met right before the reality of
coronavirus really hit here in l I like running those
transitioning days. I'd say, uh, we were. We were both
(01:05):
at the very last I'm assuming it was the last
bar met the class that you took. It was the
last one that I took. And we kind of connected
in the bathroom and and and struck up a conversation. Um,
and she started telling me all about the amazing organizing
that she was already doing to provide resources to people
here in Los Angeles who might need them during the coronavirus.
Can you start by telling us a little bit about
(01:26):
the projects you've been working on over the last few weeks,
uh in and and kind of how you got them started. Yeah,
thanks Katie. You know, it was pretty interesting when the
way we met, because I think there was several um
women standing around in the locker room sort of lamenting
the impact of the virus. And you mentioned your political
podcast and my ears perked up. Yeah. And I don't
(01:50):
do a lot of talking or like socializing and those
kinds of spaces that kind of keep to myself. Um,
but when you started talking about your podcast, I became
very interested because something that that I think is really important,
that that I think we're all always working on, is
how do we amplify the things that are happening in
our communities when the mainstream media won't cover it. And um,
(02:12):
it's really important to get the word out about some
of the ways its community is coming together to take
care of each other and to provide resources and infrastructure
beyond what the governments are able to do right now.
And so a couple of the projects I've been working on,
the main focus right now is called Project mass l
A or Project Mask Los Angeles UM on social media,
(02:34):
and the purpose of that project is we signed up
several dozen volunteers soists and UM. Many of them are
costume designers, many of them are are amateur soists, and
we have been coordinating the UM projects so that we
can do batches of masks to the most at risk
members of our community. So so far, we've been providing
(02:57):
masks to frontline volunteers and to essential workers, to assisted
living facilities and shelters and places like that around the community.
We're working with a couple of city council members so far,
UM they're helping us point us in the right direction
regarding like who really needs these masks and and quickly,
(03:18):
and it's been really wonderful to be able to participate
in helping to keep each other safe. UM. One of
the other things that I'm working on right now is
Urban Partners Los Angeles, which is an organization that has
been providing a food bank over in Koreatown. For the
food bank has gone on for over twenty years, and
a couple of my good friends are on the board
of that organization, and they were quickly trying to make
(03:40):
sure that they could scale fast enough to you know,
layer in all of the safety and and sanitary needs
to continue the food bank for the members of the
community that already rely on it. And in the time
since the coronavirus outbreak has started, the community reliance on
the food bank has doubled, and so we to continue
(04:02):
to grow as people continue to be out of work,
So that one is really important as well. And we'll
link to all of that for listeners in our so
that everyone can check out all those wonderful things Michelle
is working on. I'm so blown away by that. You know.
One of the things that struck me when we first
(04:22):
met was not only that you were organizing to to
to fill a need, but you were anticipating a need
and forming a plan to help before the full reality
of all of it had really hit And and I
just found that incredibly impressive. How um and and the
(04:42):
project mask l A hadn't You didn't even mention that
to me yet you just pulled all of us together
incredibly rapidly. How many people are you working with on
on that project specifically? And and and how did you
specifically get all of these people together? Sure? Well, so
originally it was the idea of a friend of mine
(05:04):
who is a professional costume designer UM but she and
she's incredibly progressive, politically minded, and she volunteered for years,
but she didn't have the capacity to organize it. So
she came to me and said, listen, I'm connected to
all these people who so I'm in these communities. I'd
like to find a way to organize them or to
(05:25):
give them a place to to make these masks. She
had her finger on the pulse um of the need
for masks. It's kind of like happened with us in
l A at the same time, as everybody had the
same idea around the country, like groups of mask making
people popped up right and so UM we started with
a Google form and when we realized how many people
(05:46):
were willing to sew for a project like this, we
had to get organized very quickly. The team now is
about twelve people and like a like the core organizing team,
we have UM a full delivery team. We have a
full laundry team with about dozen a dozen people on
each of those teams spread throughout the city, and we
have protocols for each of the for the cleanliness for
(06:07):
each of the teams, and a coordinator for each of
those sort of buckets of work. We also have an
amazing graphic designer who has been doing all the great
graphics that you see on the social media and um,
you know, doing like the stickers that we're putting on
the bags and things like that and so and just
a couple of a really amazing uh folks who stepped
up to want to organize this and make sure that
(06:29):
it was effective. And um, you know, there's this movement
in Los Angeles is full of talented people. Have to
give a shout out to um who has really become
like my co organizer on this project. Her name is
Chelsea Straw and she is our lead sewer, our lead sowist,
and also our nurse consultant. She recently passed her nursing
(06:50):
exam and she's been really carrying the weight of the
research and the contact for the sowest volunteers regarding like
what material works and what doesn't, how to go about
creating masks in a sanitary way, how to keep your
workspace clean. So many of those things that we've been
able to implement have come from her experience on the
medical side. So um, it's a really wonderful and active
(07:12):
and talented team. And like I said, in addition to
a couple dozen sewing volunteers. We have about ten driving
volunteers and I think fourteen laundry volunteers, all sort of
you know what I've come to term like the flight
patterns throughout the city, and like I'm not a math person,
but we have an amazing delivery coordinator who's really been
(07:34):
taking on like how to get things from A to
B and it's been pretty beautiful so far. What's the workflow,
Like you're talking about the laundry services and everything like that,
so like you have people making masks and then you
have a pickup to take it to be laundered to
make sure that it's disinfected and all of that. Yeah,
So basically, and that's part of like it's a it's
a large logistical operation. My role is the logistics coordinator.
(07:57):
I don't so I do and driving, um, but I
don't have laundry at home. And that's one of our
requirements is that all the laundry volunteers have a wash
or dryer in their home in order to prevent any
additional risk of contamination. And so the seists make requests
for materials and we have people donating materials UM, so
(08:19):
we get them whatever they need. Within our capacity. They
produce you know, a bulk of masks, maybe ten or
maybe fifty, or maybe a hundred or two hundred. We
send our drivers to go and get them, and they
go to a laundry volunteer and they are laundered and
then from the laundry volunteer uh AT. At the laundry
(08:40):
volunteers location, the masks are put into their own individual
sandwich baggy with an information card about you know, mature
to wash and things like that, and how to wash
the mask before using it each or after using it
each time. Um, all the masks go to a hub.
We have to distribution hubs. One is Bernie's Coffee Shop
(09:01):
in mid City and one is the Food Not Bombs
Collective in Silver Lake, and the hub will count them
and log them and then batch them into the correct
amounts for the drivers to pick up and take them
to their end user. This is all incredibly well thought out.
I'm very pride pulling this thing together, but it's been
(09:22):
so amazing to watch it come together. Really, I'm sure
there's a lot of learning on the flies. You're going
doing this, the organizer, you just sort of redeploy your
skills for whatever is needed at the time, you know,
And so like the delivery coordinator is amazing because he's
an Uber driver for part of his profession, for his income,
and so he has an idea of what what's convenient,
(09:44):
what makes sense, what the city layout looks like, what
drivers go through. And then again like all of us
having to layer in these safety and sanitary practices to
to protect each other and the end recipients of the masks. Well,
it's clear that this is not your first time doing
community organizing. Uh. It was clear from my very first
conversation and then when I actually had a chance to
(10:07):
talk with you before we recorded, I was truly blown
away by all of the incredible work that you've you've
done over the years. Uh. And I would love for
you to take some time and describe some of those
experiences and the other things that you've worked on. Sure,
well kind of where to start. Um. You know, I
was always what I would call progressive. I don't necessarily
(10:28):
identify as a liberal anymore. UM. I do identify as
like a leftist, progressive, a socialist, a democratic socialist. Um.
I'm a big Bernie supporter, and I have been since
two thousand eight when I first learned about at the
time Representative Sanders, and uh, you know, he was saying
the things that that no one else was saying that
(10:49):
I was thinking and my friends were thinking, and and
no one was saying it on any public airwaves or
from any you know, important pulpit. So it was very uh,
you know, it was very important to me to continue
to follow him. And when he announced in two thousand
and fourteen that um, if no other progressive candidate stepped
(11:09):
up to run for president, that he would run. And so,
you know, when he announced that he was running in
I found some people, and I'm lucky to live in
a city like Los Angeles where there are more of
us and there are some resources UM and there is
a beautiful community here, and several of us just wanted
(11:30):
to find an office where we could volunteer for Bernie
um phone banking canvas saying this was kind of before
this was right before text banking was really big, and
so we it was about half a dozen of us
at the time. We formed a group called Team Bernie
l A. And we found out later that we had
established the first full time, all volunteer office for Bernie
(11:52):
standers in the state of California, and that was in
South l A, the Lamart Park neighborhood. And then from there,
about two to three weeks before the primary in California
and seen, we launched Bernie's Coffee Shop and that location
set record numbers for phone bankers and canvassers. At the
(12:13):
end of the campaign, Senator Sanders gave a shout out
to our district and the numbers we had done there,
and so it was pretty amazing. Um, yeah, pull a
story behind Bernie's Coffee Shop too, but you know, I
think it was Senator Sanders. I'll always be able to say,
you know, thank you Bernie for awakening the full time
(12:35):
activists in me, because I always had these passions for
organizing people to to help each other and to build community,
but I didn't have those words yet and I didn't
have the tools yet. And when when when Bernie's campaign
brought us all together, we learned from each other and
I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, I've got more questions
for you regarding Bernie, But first I wanna can you
(12:57):
give us a little bit of history of Bernie's Coffee
Shop because it's actually kind of a cool story. It's
a local Los Angeles landmark that had been closed down
for a while. Correct. Yeah, so it's the old Johnny's
Coffee Shop on Wilshare and Fairfax. Many people who are
longtime Angelino's remember when it was a diner in a
restaurant um. And and the owners of that space, you
(13:18):
know that it needs too much work to to turn
it back into a functioning restaurant right now. There are
plumbing issues that would have to be dealt with and
things like that. But you know, the family that owns
a lot are big Bernie supporters. And it was originally
going to be a media stunt um in back in sixteen.
(13:39):
We've we brought together a team of like filmmakers and
artists and you know, organizers and builders and things like that,
and um, it was going to be you know, Johnny's
historic Johnny's Coffee Shop one night only as Bernie's Coffee Shop,
and we did this big, gorgeous unveiling and a whole
bunch of media showed up. Francis Fisher cut the river
(14:00):
in with the big you know, uh scissors and things,
and and those of us who were organizers kind of
went to the to the owners of the landlord and said,
what about keeping this thing open and inviting people to
come volunteer here, and they were with it. So so
that's exactly what we did. And again, you know, and
(14:20):
and I'll send you some pictures, you know, afterwards, but
these it's very large inside, and there's two main counters
kind of in an L shape, and the long encounter
was was filled with canvassing packets and then like food
and snacks for the volunteers. All the booths were filled
with phone bankers the whole day, all week long. And
(14:42):
then on the short side of the counter we did merchandise.
People brought us boxes of Bernie's books, you know, t shirts,
anything we could think of, you know, we had the
campaign at the time bringing us packs of bumper stickers,
anything we could do to bring in a few bucks
so we could feed the volunteers, so we could keep
the lights on, so we can keep volunteering for Bernie.
And it's really beautiful. As you said, the building is
(15:04):
a historical cultural landmark in Los Angeles, so we don't
do any major changes to the structure of the building
besides keeping it up. And so there's an interesting side story.
If you've seen the mural, you know, it's an old
fifties diner with the Google architecture and there's a there's
a gorgeous googie style uh mural on the fair fact
(15:26):
side of the building that after two years or so,
somebody in the neighborhood started to complain and we got
to notice we were going to have to take the
mural down, and uh we we rallied the troops. We
we sent letters, we created a slide show. We asked
for a hearing about forty people and from the community
showed up to that hearing with the Historical Cultural Society
(15:48):
here in l a and they we had a slide
show about political art and the art history of the
space and being right there in museum row and and
being a neighbor to LACMA and the peter An Autumn Museum.
And the beautiful thing that came out of that was
that rather than make us take the mural down, they
actually declared the mural its own historical cultural monument. I
(16:11):
love that. Wow, that's such as a lot of happy
tears that day. And the artist, what you know, we
had looped in. The artist was now based in Arizona,
and we were like, they're trying to make us take
your mural down, like can you help us? And he
was so happy. We were all so happy. That's a
great story. I still have the slide show to its
(16:32):
great slide show, Welcome, get everything. So for this nice
moment down just a little bit, I think and give
a slight tangent from our organizing talk. I think a
lot of Progressives were dealta kind of a blow last
(16:55):
week when when Bernie officially suspended his campaign. And we've
seen a lot of conversations, you know, debates about whether
or not Bernie supporters will be voting for Joe Biden. Uh.
You know, people have very reasonable fears about that or
or qualms with Joe Biden, and it's something that we
(17:17):
are all going to have to spend the next several
months figuring out for ourselves. And I think we're all
a little bit curious how you're feeling right now, what
you're thinking about all of that. Yeah, I mean this,
this particular Bernie supporter will not be voting for Joe Biden. Um.
I'm well aware and just as horrified as everyone else
(17:38):
about the problems with Trump and the administration that we have. However,
you know, and I I don't I don't need to
tell out any credentials, but I did do my undergrad
and my masters in political science and global politics, and
I am horrified as well by the steady march to
the right, uh for the United States that is occurring
(18:00):
pretty much since the Reagan years. I do want to
ask what we're still on the subject of, Like, you know,
Joseph Robin at Biden, do you think your calculus would
be any different if you lived in a swing state
somewhere where that like that was literally kind of because
because because you know, I'm in this point of like,
I'm not going to vote for Biden either, but I
live in a state where the state's going to go
(18:22):
for Biden, right, So I'm not I'm not on an
electoral since worried um. And I'm curious as to whether
or not that's entered into your calculus at all. For me,
it doesn't. And I don't envy the position of people
who think like I do or like we do, who
are in swing states. I mean, my my own mother,
you know, as a huge Bernie supporter, and it's very
(18:43):
proud of the work that we do. She's in New
Jersey and feels the need to participate in defeating Trump,
which I don't have any blame or ill will towards
anybody who feels that way. I totally get it and understand.
For me, it's not just about Bernie. Um are our
eyes are open now to the complacency and the corruption
(19:04):
of the establishment within the Democratic Party, the sort of
jaded bitterness with which they operate. Many of our friends
here in uh In at the local level, attempt to
participate in the Democratic Party at the local and state
level and are consistently shut down. It's a very toxic
environment to attempt to participate in local party politics as
(19:26):
a you know, as a progressive. Uh And what we've
been saying about Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders for a long
time is that he is is really pretty down the
middle politically on the global political spectrum. However, as I
was saying, you know, this country has been marching to
the right for several decades, and it's you know, it's
it's it's the sort of right off a cliff phenomenon
(19:47):
we are now in in a corporatist, fascist sort of scenario.
And I personally, you know, my ideals bigger and beyond
Bernie Sanders don't allow me to participate aid in endorsing
that sort of political structure. I think we need to
to overhaul and that I don't I don't identify myself
(20:08):
as like Bernie or Bust. I don't think that that
it doesn't have to be like a dichotomy like that,
But I do think we need to think extremely critically
about the situation in which we find ourselves because you know,
Joe Biden and Donald Trump are far more similar to
each other than than Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are right,
And so a lot of people feel that the shaming
(20:31):
of you know, okay, Bernie supporters, it's time to fall
in line. A lot of us are not Democrats and
don't owe our vote to anybody in the party. And
we came out and attempted to get involved, and Bernie
Sanders asked us to be Democrats for a little while,
to to to participate in the power structures that exists,
an attempt to bring that power back to the people
(20:52):
and the DNC and the establishment within the Democratic Party.
Rather than than being in awe of Bernie's ability to
bring people into the party and to bring a diverse
coalition into their Party, they attempted to stop it at
every turn, and ultimately they seem to have succeeded in
this in this moment, and and the message that we
(21:13):
received was loud and clear. You are not wanted. Yeah,
I mean, I I don't I don't disagree with any
of your calculus there, and I in fact feel the
same way. But I also, like I have to, I
think that I probably would wind up, you know, swallowing
a lot of things in order to do what I
could to get Trump out, because while he and Biden
(21:33):
have a lot similar Like I the person that I
live with right now is a is a Chinese national
um and just the changes in her life and the
lives of a lot of friends of mine who are
immigrants as a result of all of this, Like, there
are things that wouldn't be as much of a problem
as they are right now if Biden were in office.
And I guess that's kind of like, I feel two
(21:56):
ways about it, because I agree with you, like the
Democratic Party, if it weren't the Republican Party didn't exist,
the Democratic Party would be the most despicable organization in
the United States. But yeah, but at the same point,
there is a difference between the two of them. Yeah,
there there is. But I think perhaps the I don't
want to, I don't want to get a sort of
(22:18):
caught up in who's worse kind of questions. I think
that the issue of being asked to vote for the
lesser of two evils. Okay, for instance, right, part of
my work has included being a founding member of the
me Too movement here in Los Angeles. Right, I'm not
talking about big me Too. I'm not talking about times Up.
I'm talking about, you know that, the grassroots movement of
(22:41):
women and survivors to believe women and survivors here in
Los Angeles. And um so we did our first big
march with several thousand people UM in I think November.
And in addition to that, I've done also a lot
of work with and for and alongside immigrants and immigrant communities,
(23:02):
direct action video and written content around the kids and cages,
things like that, um working with uh native groups that
are not only uh, you know, horrified by the situation
of you know, people crossing the border, but also continuing
to suffer under the continued colonization of the current day. Right,
(23:26):
um and so nobody can speak for an entire community.
There's differences about opinions about Biden and Trump and Bernie
within immigrant communities. There's differences in the Me Too movement.
But I'll tell you that that my friends that I'm
connected to that are still actively organizing me too, UM,
(23:48):
they will not be endorsing Joe Biden. And I think
we know why. You know, um, And the biggest fear
that I have right now is that UM and I'm
her last misforgetting me Tara, Tara Read. My biggest is
that the Democrats will attempt to vilify terror read and
(24:11):
if that, if we start to see that happen, that
is just absolutely unforgivable. UM. So you know and have
in the immigrant communities. You also have to understand that
people were calling Obama the deporter in chief for years
before President Trump was even a possibility. Obama reported more
people than Bush. You know, years of Obama was worse
(24:33):
for in many ways for our immigrant communities than eight
years of Bush, with the possible exception of you know,
the vilifying of Muslims after nine eleven. But you know,
what we're talking about is two parties that in their
own way right, and you could argue one potentially more
dangerous because they attempt they attempt to make it look
(24:55):
like they're being your friend. You know, they attempt to
look good on the social issue. But Nancy Pelosi is
up there, you know what is she doing her golf
clap and she's ripping up Trump's speech. But you know,
the very same week, she's approving his military budget, which
no performative. Yeah, exactly, So I'm not just not interested
(25:16):
in that. Y and and uh. I know some people
will say, well, how do we protect the people that
are suffering under this administration currently in these horrific ways.
I think we take to the streets. I think we
we flood into the We flood into the party structures
and the power structures and take them over. What you
guys are doing here with independent progressive media. All these
things matter, Um, but voting for someone who is more
(25:39):
of the same, and you know holds many of the
ideological problems that the current president does, I I just can't,
you know, I can't be a party to that. It's tough.
I've said this several times on this show. Just the realization,
I mean, it's not a realization. I've known this, but
the cycle has certainly underscored it that we are vastly
(26:03):
different parties trying to get one person nominated, vastly different
political affiliations here, and and yes, we align ourselves with
the democratic establishment in order to try to progress this agenda.
You know, this philosophy, and it's it's continually disappointing. I
feel bolstered. And this might be me being naive, This
(26:25):
might be me being I'm someone that's that tends to
hear towards hopeful because that's my sort of my coping
mechanism with life. Uh, I'm I'm I'm proud of us.
I'm proud of the gains that have been made. I'm
I'm I'm disappointed by what's happening right now, and I'm
also invigorated by how how many people I see now
(26:47):
that align with me. Um and I think that we
are further ahead than we've ever been. I find myself
veering between two things, which is that like I grew
up very conservative, and I watched as these things that
like these very fringe beliefs that like when I was
a kid, my parents are like, no one really agrees
(27:08):
with these people. These people aren't normal conservatives, Like they
don't have any power or anything, and they never will.
And I watched them very methodically and very carefully take
over the Republican Party. And they did it by compromising.
They didn't by voting with people who were on board
with them and then either marginalizing those people are pushing
them further because those folks were power hungry. And I
(27:29):
watched it get to the point where now my parents
are endorsing all of the views that when I was
younger they said, we're not representative of normal conservatives. So
I I am not a person. I have very I
would say, very very far left political beliefs, um, much
more so than than Mr Sanders even Um, But I
(27:49):
I have watched a radical political party take over a
mainstream political party, so I don't believe it's impossible. Um.
At the same time, I also recognize, like where the
hour is like because of how how much progress the
far right has made in taking over the Republican Party.
We don't have twenty five years right there. For a
(28:12):
variety of reasons we don't have. Yeah, maybe we bought
ourselves a bit of time with coronavirus. Yeah, that's one
of the up shots of it, I guess, Um, But
I I so I'm not. I'm not someone I don't
reject electoralism out of hand. But also, um, I don't know,
(28:33):
like taking to the streets is all well and good,
but I have seen for one of the things that's
been really frustrating to me is how even a lot
of like the progressive left has kind of thrown anti
fascist street activists under the bus because of the way,
you know how And I don't know. I guess maybe
the mask issue has been sort of one thanks to
(28:54):
the coronavirus two people are going to complain about that
so much in the future. Um, yeah, they were just
forward thinking. The big task is how do we I
mean really the question that we're all asking dancing around,
I think is how do we get a general strike going?
Because that's that's what's necessary, Like the hour is late
enough that we need to we need to get enough
(29:16):
of America on board a simple list of demands that
would take sizeable chunks that are like the big issues
facing us. Um that we can have some breathing space
to figure out the rest. And I I guess you're
better at organizing than I am, for damn sure, you
have a lot more experience with this what do you
how do we how do we how do you think
we start doing that? How do we save the world? Uh,
(29:37):
please answer the form of a question. Yeah. You know
they say that luck is a combination of persistence in timing,
and I'm a pretty firm believer in that that. You know,
we get opportunities in cycles. Right if we had attempted
to throw a march about surviving sex old violence without
(30:01):
the media moment that had happened, you know, it wouldn't
have had four thousand people and it wouldn't have had
international media covering it. Right. We we had a moment
where we looked at each other, you know, we're all
sitting around at Bernie's coffee shop, and we looked at
each other and said, Wow, we have an opportunity to
make a splash on this issue right now if we
(30:23):
move quickly, you know. And it's it's really about when
when is when are the people going to be ready?
So I know one one thing that you guys, or
whether I talked to Katie about offline, was um, we're
working with the rent issue and reclaim our homes and
the tenants unions and the fact that you folks have
(30:45):
been covering those issues. UM, I think it's an amazing
moment for reclaim our homes, which is, you know, families
basically houseless families, unhoused families moving into vacant houses that
are on public proper be right there, owned by Caltrans,
and they've been sitting in some cases for decades empty.
(31:06):
They're single family homes in you know, nice, average or
above average neighborhoods that are sitting boarded up because they're
owned by cow Trans and they're not being used. And
so what we have is support for the idea that
people should not have to be on the street, right,
So you can get public support for something like a
housing occupation in a moment like this where the coronavirus
(31:29):
is on top of everyone's mind and people are not
supposed to be outside, and yet we're allowing families to
live on the streets. And so it's a big difference
in in the narrative because of because there's a larger
public narrative happening. I think that organizing for things like
a rent strike and a loan strike um could get
(31:50):
us to a general strike. But here's the issue with
a general strike. The biggest impact of a general strike
is people not going to work, which most people are
already not doing. So part of what we could do
in this moment is capitalized on the idea of, well, hey,
maybe it really is those grunt workers that how are
the damn economy that are the engine? Because when people
(32:13):
can't go to their minimum wage jobs in broad scale,
the whole damn thing is shutting down globally. Right. I
saw a meme floating around that said, uh, you know,
people tell mother Earth, well, we can't possibly shut down
global capitalism, we can't possibly close down the economy to
deal with climate change, and mother Earth goes here's a
(32:34):
virus practice. I know. I that was one of the
first things I was thinking in all of this is
it's like, Wow, we've shown that we actually can mobilize
on a great, big scale, and we can see rapid
results from that. We can see the earth start to
regrow a little bit. You know, a sudden you have
people talking about universal basic income, universal health care. Uh
(33:00):
you know, you have people talking about again like masses
of people sleeping outside and sleeping in the streets, and
we have it taught. We we're talking about it in
a way that really affects us all right, because no
matter how wealthy you are, it's still is gonna mess
you up when you go to get gas and you
can't touch that that gas panel, or you want to
(33:21):
get your coffee and your coffee shop is closed down,
you know. And and it's really starting to force us
to consider the role that we have in our interconnectedness
and why it makes sense to be able to like
Canada implemented monthly u b I almost immediately, many others
are doing the same. South Korea is leading the way
in identifying cases and and and issuing the the social
(33:44):
distancing type measures to keep people from spreading this thing.
And they're listening. You know, the people are listening because
in many other places around the world, uh, you know,
the leadership of the countries and the formation of the
governance is all about the interconnectedness the people, whereas in
America we've really built a pride on this sort of
(34:05):
libertarian sort of every man for himself. I'm I'm not
concerned with whether my neighbor has what they need as
long as I have what I need. And you know,
you've asked about what to do, um, about what to
do about the fact that we have to deal with
reality how it is right, and we have to deal
with the fact that we have this monster in the
(34:26):
White House, and we could continue to go in the
wrong direction if we're not very careful in this moment.
And I agree, but I I start to take the
perspective and when I take my my humanity hat off
right and I let myself get out of the anger
for a second, and I sort of put my political
(34:47):
scientists hat on and I go, we'll we'll look at
this grand experiment, right the the Great American experiment has
lasted perhaps three hundred years before, you know, it seems
to have peaked and the bottom, you know, in my opinion,
during the FDR years um and the bottom has fallen
(35:10):
out from it. And you know, I'm not gonna I
don't advocate any which way. I'm not. I'm not married
to any any path right now. I think that regardless
of what happens, we have a responsibility to help and
save as many people as we can, and we have
a responsibility to each other first and foremost, because those
(35:32):
in power are so incredibly disconnected from what we're going
through that you know, I do support one of the
biggest things that that Bernie Sanders gave us was the
will and the drive and the understanding of the importance
of running for office. So as much as you know,
I may leave that that top of the ticket blank
uh come November, Um, you know, I'll absolutely be voting
(35:56):
all the way down the ballot for all the progressives
that I can find and that are attempting to take
this power structure back for the people, because it does
involve getting involved in your community, running for your local
seats everything from dog catcher, you know, school board all
the way on up, and really advocating within those spaces
for progressive policies. And that's what I was talking about
(36:16):
when I said it's a bit of exposing yourself to
some toxicity because you know, within these establishment spaces there's
a lot of gaslighting and telling progressives that these policies
are just not possible and we need to be realistic.
And then we look around the world and go, we're
the ones that are being unrealistic here, you know. Yeah,
And I'm and speaking of gas lighting. Did you see
(36:37):
Barack Obama's endorsement video today and Sanders in it. I
didn't get I read about it. I perhaps we'll have
the stomach for it later. I've avoided it so far
to read about how and I was duped by Obama.
I voted for Obama twice and then I doubt that
(36:59):
so he we He came into office and he was
bomb we were bombing two countries, and when he left office,
we're bombing seven countries. You know, he had a he
had an opportunity to lift up Bernie Sanders and continue
towards progressivism, and you know, he made his decision. He
made it start clear and it isn't in my mind,
and I feel completely duped by the Obama years. Oh,
(37:20):
I thought you were going to say that's a three
percent improvements, So like, yeah, look at look at we're
weak together. Ever since you're you're working with reclaim our Homes,
(37:40):
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about
kind of I guess you'd say, like illegalism, which has
been really pushed out of kind of mainstream left wing
politics for a while, and I think Reclaiming our Homes
is the first time I've I've seen something that that
his widely popular and seems to be getting some some
traction on a larger scale, that is based around sometimes
(38:02):
we have to break the law to do the right thing.
And I I've seen like the Republican Party already got
on board breaking the law to make their things happen
a while ago. Um, And I think that uh, this
idea that like, okay, well, if there's homes here that
are owned by the government, maybe we just open them up.
I see that as one of the more this understanding
(38:25):
that uh, there's not actually any value in just being
polite and waiting your turn and holding off on doing
something necessary because it will make people, um angry or
violate the law. And I'm curious as to I don't
know whether or not you're even thinking about it in
that sense, or or or what. But that's that's something
that has occurred to me in this and I think
(38:46):
something that has a lot of potential um for future
necessary movements as we encounter food shortages and medical shortages
and the like. Yeah. Yeah, And I just want to
clarify I'm not organizing with Reclaim our Homes. I've I've
been volunteering with them and supporting them. My friend and
mentor is good friends with one of the lead organizers
(39:09):
with Reclaim our Home. So I'm I'm you know, grateful
to be able to be to be able to tap
in and really find ways to help. Like we've delivered
groceries to the families. Um, we're organizing to get them
some of the equipment they need. And what what's really
happening though, the hard work is is the volunteers are
taking shifts to help guard the community because there's backlash
(39:30):
from residents, from detractors, from police. UM. So you know,
it's a it's a very it's very um, you know,
sensitive situation. And regarding your question about thinking about it
in terms of legalities, I mean, listen, I'm I'm a socialist.
I'm not an anarchist. Um, I'm I'm only I'm only
(39:56):
really the type of person that wants to see it
just society. So I believe in a strong society that
is built as a collective. I believe that we were
all in this together, and I believe in following the
rules when the rules are to benefit the most or
the all. Right, But unfortunately, we don't live in a
society where the rules are set up to benefit the
(40:19):
most or the all. We live in a society where
the rules are set up to benefit the status quo
and the elite. I mean, just this you know, coronavirus
response right now is is just resulting in another massive
transfer of wealth to the top to Wall Street, right
while they parce out a little for us, like that
(40:40):
doesn't even cover half of people's rent in Los Angeles,
you know, And they want to dangle that in front
of us as a one time thing, while we're hearing
the headlines about other countries that are getting a monthly
u b I during this and things like that. And
they're leaving it up to individual companies and individual industries
to determine how they're going to handle things, or individual cities,
(41:02):
and the governors are looking at the federal government like
is it really all on us? You know? And so
and you listen to this president's speak and and as
much as I hate the Democrats, nobody wants to hear
you blame the Democrats right now. People want answers, you know,
and so frankly, you know, they find a reason every
ten years or so to to to do a massive
(41:24):
transfer of wealth. And and last time in the two
thousand and eight crisis, you know, they robbed people's pensions
in four oh one case right by by illegal um
illegal insurance scams, right and they were able to basically
bet against the American people and and the homeowners of
(41:45):
this country and transfer that wealth then, um via the
insurance policies that they had purchased on things like their
mortgage backed securities. Right, so we all know that that happened.
And here we find ourselves again in a crisis situation
where they've created a pathway to transfer wealth to the
very wealthy already. So when when you look at it
like that, and you look at it that, you know,
(42:08):
again and again and again you find uh decisions made
in favor of industry and quote unquote the economy rather
than the health and well being of the people. I mean,
I use Amazon, and I'm gonna get you know, I'm
gonna get lambasted for saying that. Um. But but I
do and not a lot from time to time. But
(42:29):
you know, the this is something that it should it
should exist, but it should be nationalized. It should not
be to benefit one or very few people, and the
workers should not have to put up with the conditions
that Amazon is currently imposing upon them. But when a
company like Amazon or Facebook is so deeply integrated into
our society that it is too big to fail, then
(42:52):
it should belong to the damn people. That's my opinion
on things like that. So until we are making moves
towards a society that looks something I could just society,
then then take those homes that are sitting vacant, when
you have unhoused families, not just unhoused in general, but
now in the middle of a pandemic, when people are
literally being told by police to go inside, and some
(43:15):
people have no place to go, it's it's horrific that
they didn't already open the doors to those homes and
many others as well. We have been talking for forty
five minutes about all the incredible stuff you've been working on,
and we've barely even scratched the surface of your past.
I mean, you've mentioned a lot, so just tell me
(43:35):
to shut up. No, no, it's incredible, it's wonderful. You
know you've mentioned me too and your work with that
and and reclaim our homes. Um. You know you also
have been did stuff with Standing Rocky or at Standing
rock you work with California for Progress. I think for me,
what's so inspiring about all of this and this conversation is, yes,
(43:56):
this is the status of our government and of our
society right now. And yes, we may not be able
to support the politicians that we are offered, but there
are things that we can do ourselves, two organized to
to come together to fight back against all of this stuff,
(44:18):
to do actual tangible work that that affects people's lives immediately.
And and and this is incredible for us to have
this opportunity to talk to you because it demystifies it
a little bit. I mean you you are an event planner,
am I right? That's your background lance event planning, And
and I don't know nobody's doing events anymore right currently?
(44:38):
Freelance writing? Oh where where? Where events happening right now?
Is there something that's going on? I was for my
income for me personally, you know, about half my income
came from freelance events and half from my freelance writing.
And so I'm down to just the writing. So I'm
trying to expand on that. Well, you know, this is
a good time to write your masterpieces special I've been
(44:58):
told not that things aren't stressful. A friend of mine,
who are I've been saying for years, we're going to
write a book. He kind of said that to me
the other days. But I think it's just it's so
inspiring to me that, Okay, so you've got this skill set.
You are an event planner and a writer, yes, but
you know you you you bring that to your work
(45:20):
and and do community organizing and you know, and and
earlier you're talking about everything that you've done for for
the masks. Here in l A. You've got people seamstresses,
you've got an Uber driver coordinating the delivery. You know,
it's it's it's people using what they have to do
(45:41):
something tangible. Uh. And that's what I really wanted to
hammer home with this episode also, to to say that
we all have that power within our reach if if
there's something that we can do. So, you know, after
the campaign came to an end, and you know, Team
Bernie l A as it existed, voted to disband. I
(46:04):
voted against that, but I was outnumbered. And so a
couple of us who still wanted to work together kind
of looked at each other and we're like, what do
we want to do? And a friend of ours had
created California for Progress logo, a website. He set up
the social media infrastructure, and he was like, do you
guys want this? Like I created this, you know, and
(46:25):
we kind of just looked at each other and said,
do you guys want to be California for Progress? Sure,
let's be California for Progress. And you know, it's a
it's a beautiful thing that we were able to do
because it's such an innocuous name. It can it can
do anything right. It can support the me to a movement,
it can support immigrants, it can support Bernie. You can
do whatever it wants to do. And it's pretty clear
in the name like what it is um and so
(46:48):
really though, the point of my saying that is that
once we showed up to volunteer together, right, and we
kind of went through the ringer for a few months together.
We were in the trenches together with the Bernie campaign,
and it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to.
But we've wanted to continue to make a difference. I mean,
even with Bernie's coffee Shop. Once the campaign was over,
(47:10):
the coffee shop became more of a community center based
in the issues, right. And I can talk more about
how we've utilized the coffee shop in the interim between
the campaigns, but the key of it is is once
you find a little niche where you enjoy volunteering and
you meet other like minded people who also enjoy volunteering,
then it's just a little hop skip to get together
(47:31):
and say, let's create a project of our own. Let's
start an initiative. What do we like to do? Do
we want to gather signatures? Do we want to knock
on doors? Do we want to create media content? Do
we want to put marches in the streets and create events?
And we do media awareness? Like you can decide with
your with your group of friends basically that that that
(47:54):
share these that a share the same or similar views
as you and be are willing to volunteer their time.
So all of us who are organizers and it seems like,
you know, we're out here like doing these these big
like um, sometimes it seems like untouchable. I know, like
when I look up to people like you know, Molina
Abdullah from Black Lives Matter, you know, I think, wow,
(48:16):
like this person who's been doing this for decades and
really understands what we're dealing with here, you know, and
is fighting for the most marginalized. Or or my mentor
Carlos Markin, who has been working on housing issues since
the foreclosure crisis and has really anchored himself in that
sort of um, that struggle of how to lift up
the people who are suffering the most under these systems.
(48:39):
When we entered into the Bernie movement, we did it
for to try to make Bernie president, right, but we
came out of it going Holy cow, there's a lot
of work to do. I mean, as a as a
community organizer or as a as an activist, really you
can run yourself ragged, and many people do, and many
(48:59):
people have to hit the wall before they've reorganized, you know, themselves,
to say, Okay, I need to have boundaries with this work,
because you can work twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week and and still feel like you're not
doing enough. And so part of what it what it
really is, is finding a niche, you know, finding a
type of work that you really like to do. Is
it food bank stuff and helping the poor and the
(49:22):
n housed? Is it doing that work within the Democratic
Party and showing up to your local county and city
and state party and and being a progressive voice in
that space, and and running for an office or being
on the E board or something like that. If that
strikes your fancy do it? I'm I'm. Also, we haven't
even talked about my my work with KPFK, currently the
(49:43):
chair of the board at our local Pacific A station
KPFK in Los Angeles. And that's because you know, and
a strong and strong, functional, productive independent media is extremely
important to me. And so when a friend of mine
who was on the board said, you know, a couple
of us would like to ask you if you can
still are running for the board, UM, I found a
new way to be able to interact with my passion
(50:05):
for getting us off of our addiction to mainstream media. Right.
And so because in my opinion, even like our Rachel Matadows,
are are participating in the completeency and the march to
the right right by not calling out um. The issues
with the Democrats are with the establishment right. And Trump
gives us a great, big, evil boogeyman that we can
(50:26):
point to all day long, and he will continue to
give us that content. You know, but it means that
when we're when we're wall to wall and how bad
Trump is, we're missing a lot of other important things.
You're overlooking all the other stuff that's going on that
was already a problem and was already broken in our system.
So I encourage people to find a space to volunteer,
(50:47):
talk to people, make connections, and plan your next steps.
You know, if you have an idea and a couple
of people willing to sit with you to talk it through,
then you you have, you know a way to to
make something happen in your community. Also, if you don't
have an idea, you can look and say, what is
it that I do. You've mentioned on our call before
(51:08):
accountants yea, every aization to support and that with the
money person and they are few and far between. So
if you're one of those people, help them. I would
I would go so far as to say that some
of the people that like the activist community in the
(51:29):
United States needs most are like accountants and people who
know how to like run organizations and organize that. Yeah
like that? That that is definitely um, like how to
set up your lawyers? What are the implications? You know?
Just not like that? Or if you're trying to operate
within the party. You know, within the Democratic Party, people
(51:49):
who get the party, they understand the by laws, they
understand the structure of the clubs and the layers of governance.
I mean, just people who are like wonky they perhaps
don't feel like there's a space all the time, or
like graphic designers. You know. The one of the ways
that we've been able to really send some of our
projects viral or even like international with the mainstream media
(52:12):
is by having you know, top notch professional graphics that
are branding our movements right and and it's you know,
and I've been criticized by some in the movement for
my sort of marketing thinking about this, but I think
branding what we do is really important. Like Project mask
l A is a brand new thing, just popped up
(52:32):
out of nowhere. Well, how we started asking for money
right off the bat? How do people know how to
trust it? You know? The first thing they want to
know is who's organizing this? Well if if they don't
know who Michelle Manno's is, because they don't know other
work that I've done, then how are they how do
they not to give this thing I'm endorsing money? Right?
(52:55):
So part of it is like being able to say like, yeah,
we are organized, we are a professional, we have done
this before, and you know, we're we're all volunteer and
we're bringing our very professional skills. Many times you know,
and so you know, I have a friend who her
thing is is social media and and she's so brilliant
(53:15):
at it. And if you can get her on a project,
and you can get her to focuses or eight, if
she has the time in the capacity, then your whole
operation levels up because she knows exactly how to reach
the people that you need to reach to execute your
your your vision. You know. So people who bring those
kinds of just showing up to a meeting and and
(53:36):
getting involved in conversations. First step is showing up and
the next step is, you know, putting yourself out there
a little bit, talk to someone, be willing to go
have that cup of coffee, even if you're tired and
you just wanted to home. And you're like, okay, I
went to the meeting. I did the thing I said
I was going to do. Go get that extra cup
of coffee and have a side conversation with someone who
thinks that you are interesting or someone that you think
(53:57):
is interesting. Because those have relation, ships get built. That's
how you build trust in community, and that's when you
bring each other onto these kinds of projects and say, hey,
you know what, I was talking to someone the other
day and that conversation we had two weeks ago popped
into my mind. I really want to bring you in
on this. It's little things like that how we build
community and we build these teams for these projects. Michelle,
(54:19):
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
with us. You're so eloquence and have such a wide
range of experiences. I think this was really fascinating. Um,
can you tell our listeners where they can find you
online or plug the projects that you're working on websites
or anything like that. Yeah. Sure, I'm not really on Twitter,
(54:40):
but you can find me on Facebook and Instagram. Um,
my name is Michelle Manos and my Instagram is miss
Lady mish M S l A d Y M I
C H. And uh, my my heart, My my heart
is always going to be with Bernie's Coffee Shop. You
can find Bernie's Coffee Shop Volunteer office on Facebook and
(55:03):
at Bernie's Coffee Shop all one word on Instagram. Uh.
And as you mentioned, you know, California for Progress and
currently Project mask l A. And you know, I'm happy
to come back and visit with you all again and
talk more about the history of what we've been doing
or what we're what's going to be coming next, so,
(55:24):
you know, because we have to figure out what we're
doing about this damn convention if it's even gonna happen.
So yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be lots of opportunities
to chat in the near future. And you know, I've
got some great war stories from the convention for when
the time comes. Great. Oh yeah, we can. I I
just want to say, I it's so incredible to me
(55:46):
that this started as a conversation between you and Katie
in a restroom. And I feel confident saying that nothing
this positive has ever resulted from a conversation in a
men's restroom. I do feel like I can stay that
objectively on a historic level. Um, it was faith that
brought us together. May actually have been the last day
(56:08):
of our method. I think it was because I remember
the same day I said to the girl at the
front desk, I'm going to keep coming as long as
you guys are here, so thank you for being here.
And it was that night that we got the email.
So I was there when he said that, and we
all got a little bit emotional, yeah, Steel emotional about
(56:29):
not being able to go to bar method again. Community.
Uh you know, I I rely on seeing people and
sharing that energy. I hadn't realized that. I mean I
knew it before this happened, but now I realized just
how much I rely on it. Yeah, and you know
for me, I you know, I moved to California in
(56:51):
two thousand and eight. I married the guy that I
was dating at the time, We bought a condo, we
got a divorce. Uh Like, just so you know, I
became a full time activist. My whole I went to
grad school. The only damn constant in my whole life
has been that freaking Bar method. And I don't I've
been going like over ten years, and I don't kind
(57:12):
of know what to do with it. I hate running.
I hate it. So I'm like, what do I do?
You know, Um, but you know, this is turning into
an ad for Bar method. Normal. I mean, we could
say Bar class, you know, but class is normal to
sort of rethink the ways that we're going about our lives.
I was talking to someone the other day that said,
(57:33):
you know, I think that in the United States and
the Western world is gonna become more like some of
the Asian countries where wearing a mask is pretty common,
you know, even in normal times, because people have lived through,
you know, a viral pandemic. So it's very it gonna
be very interesting to see where we land on the
other side of some of this. Well, I'm looking forward
to talking to you when we get there. Yeah, I
(57:56):
hope we keep checking in. And thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it. And again, like let me stress,
I am so incredibly supportive of progressive independent media. So
thank you for for having a people powered program, and
thank you for all that you're doing. Shall thank you
for coming on the show. So Chelle, yeah, for sure,
any everything, So everything so dull and start again. I tried.
(58:24):
Daniel Worst Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't Hey, everybody, Welcome back
(00:22):
to the incredibly aptly named show Worst Year Ever. My
name is Katie Stole, my name is Robert Evans, and
my allergies are exploding horribly and I apologize with that.
That's okay, apology accepted. Today we are joined by a
very special guest, Michelle Manos, who is a community organizer
(00:43):
and the co founder of Bernie's Coffee Shop. Hi Michelle, Hi,
thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being here.
Michelle and I actually met right before the reality of
coronavirus really hit here in l I like running those
transitioning days. I'd say, uh, we were. We were both
(01:05):
at the very last I'm assuming it was the last
bar met the class that you took. It was the
last one that I took. And we kind of connected
in the bathroom and and and struck up a conversation. Um,
and she started telling me all about the amazing organizing
that she was already doing to provide resources to people
here in Los Angeles who might need them during the coronavirus.
Can you start by telling us a little bit about
(01:26):
the projects you've been working on over the last few weeks,
uh in and and kind of how you got them started. Yeah,
thanks Katie. You know, it was pretty interesting when the
way we met, because I think there was several um
women standing around in the locker room sort of lamenting
the impact of the virus. And you mentioned your political
podcast and my ears perked up. Yeah. And I don't
(01:50):
do a lot of talking or like socializing and those
kinds of spaces that kind of keep to myself. Um,
but when you started talking about your podcast, I became
very interested because something that that I think is really important,
that that I think we're all always working on, is
how do we amplify the things that are happening in
our communities when the mainstream media won't cover it. And um,
(02:12):
it's really important to get the word out about some
of the ways its community is coming together to take
care of each other and to provide resources and infrastructure
beyond what the governments are able to do right now.
And so a couple of the projects I've been working on,
the main focus right now is called Project mass l
A or Project Mask Los Angeles UM on social media,
(02:34):
and the purpose of that project is we signed up
several dozen volunteers soists and UM. Many of them are
costume designers, many of them are are amateur soists, and
we have been coordinating the UM projects so that we
can do batches of masks to the most at risk
members of our community. So so far, we've been providing
(02:57):
masks to frontline volunteers and to essential workers, to assisted
living facilities and shelters and places like that around the community.
We're working with a couple of city council members so far,
UM they're helping us point us in the right direction
regarding like who really needs these masks and and quickly,
(03:18):
and it's been really wonderful to be able to participate
in helping to keep each other safe. UM. One of
the other things that I'm working on right now is
Urban Partners Los Angeles, which is an organization that has
been providing a food bank over in Koreatown. For the
food bank has gone on for over twenty years, and
a couple of my good friends are on the board
of that organization, and they were quickly trying to make
(03:40):
sure that they could scale fast enough to you know,
layer in all of the safety and and sanitary needs
to continue the food bank for the members of the
community that already rely on it. And in the time
since the coronavirus outbreak has started, the community reliance on
the food bank has doubled, and so we to continue
(04:02):
to grow as people continue to be out of work,
So that one is really important as well. And we'll
link to all of that for listeners in our so
that everyone can check out all those wonderful things Michelle
is working on. I'm so blown away by that. You know.
One of the things that struck me when we first
(04:22):
met was not only that you were organizing to to
to fill a need, but you were anticipating a need
and forming a plan to help before the full reality
of all of it had really hit And and I
just found that incredibly impressive. How um and and the
(04:42):
project mask l A hadn't You didn't even mention that
to me yet you just pulled all of us together
incredibly rapidly. How many people are you working with on
on that project specifically? And and and how did you
specifically get all of these people together? Sure? Well, so
originally it was the idea of a friend of mine
(05:04):
who is a professional costume designer UM but she and
she's incredibly progressive, politically minded, and she volunteered for years,
but she didn't have the capacity to organize it. So
she came to me and said, listen, I'm connected to
all these people who so I'm in these communities. I'd
like to find a way to organize them or to
(05:25):
give them a place to to make these masks. She
had her finger on the pulse um of the need
for masks. It's kind of like happened with us in
l A at the same time, as everybody had the
same idea around the country, like groups of mask making
people popped up right and so UM we started with
a Google form and when we realized how many people
(05:46):
were willing to sew for a project like this, we
had to get organized very quickly. The team now is
about twelve people and like a like the core organizing team,
we have UM a full delivery team. We have a
full laundry team with about dozen a dozen people on
each of those teams spread throughout the city, and we
have protocols for each of the for the cleanliness for
(06:07):
each of the teams, and a coordinator for each of
those sort of buckets of work. We also have an
amazing graphic designer who has been doing all the great
graphics that you see on the social media and um,
you know, doing like the stickers that we're putting on
the bags and things like that and so and just
a couple of a really amazing uh folks who stepped
up to want to organize this and make sure that
(06:29):
it was effective. And um, you know, there's this movement
in Los Angeles is full of talented people. Have to
give a shout out to um who has really become
like my co organizer on this project. Her name is
Chelsea Straw and she is our lead sewer, our lead sowist,
and also our nurse consultant. She recently passed her nursing
(06:50):
exam and she's been really carrying the weight of the
research and the contact for the sowest volunteers regarding like
what material works and what doesn't, how to go about
creating masks in a sanitary way, how to keep your
workspace clean. So many of those things that we've been
able to implement have come from her experience on the
medical side. So um, it's a really wonderful and active
(07:12):
and talented team. And like I said, in addition to
a couple dozen sewing volunteers. We have about ten driving
volunteers and I think fourteen laundry volunteers, all sort of
you know what I've come to term like the flight
patterns throughout the city, and like I'm not a math person,
but we have an amazing delivery coordinator who's really been
(07:34):
taking on like how to get things from A to
B and it's been pretty beautiful so far. What's the workflow,
Like you're talking about the laundry services and everything like that,
so like you have people making masks and then you
have a pickup to take it to be laundered to
make sure that it's disinfected and all of that. Yeah,
So basically, and that's part of like it's a it's
a large logistical operation. My role is the logistics coordinator.
(07:57):
I don't so I do and driving, um, but I
don't have laundry at home. And that's one of our
requirements is that all the laundry volunteers have a wash
or dryer in their home in order to prevent any
additional risk of contamination. And so the seists make requests
for materials and we have people donating materials UM, so
(08:19):
we get them whatever they need. Within our capacity. They
produce you know, a bulk of masks, maybe ten or
maybe fifty, or maybe a hundred or two hundred. We
send our drivers to go and get them, and they
go to a laundry volunteer and they are laundered and
then from the laundry volunteer uh AT. At the laundry
(08:40):
volunteers location, the masks are put into their own individual
sandwich baggy with an information card about you know, mature
to wash and things like that, and how to wash
the mask before using it each or after using it
each time. Um, all the masks go to a hub.
We have to distribution hubs. One is Bernie's Coffee Shop
(09:01):
in mid City and one is the Food Not Bombs
Collective in Silver Lake, and the hub will count them
and log them and then batch them into the correct
amounts for the drivers to pick up and take them
to their end user. This is all incredibly well thought out.
I'm very pride pulling this thing together, but it's been
(09:22):
so amazing to watch it come together. Really, I'm sure
there's a lot of learning on the flies. You're going
doing this, the organizer, you just sort of redeploy your
skills for whatever is needed at the time, you know,
And so like the delivery coordinator is amazing because he's
an Uber driver for part of his profession, for his income,
and so he has an idea of what what's convenient,
(09:44):
what makes sense, what the city layout looks like, what
drivers go through. And then again like all of us
having to layer in these safety and sanitary practices to
to protect each other and the end recipients of the masks. Well,
it's clear that this is not your first time doing
community organizing. Uh. It was clear from my very first
conversation and then when I actually had a chance to
(10:07):
talk with you before we recorded, I was truly blown
away by all of the incredible work that you've you've
done over the years. Uh. And I would love for
you to take some time and describe some of those
experiences and the other things that you've worked on. Sure,
well kind of where to start. Um. You know, I
was always what I would call progressive. I don't necessarily
(10:28):
identify as a liberal anymore. UM. I do identify as
like a leftist, progressive, a socialist, a democratic socialist. Um.
I'm a big Bernie supporter, and I have been since
two thousand eight when I first learned about at the
time Representative Sanders, and uh, you know, he was saying
the things that that no one else was saying that
(10:49):
I was thinking and my friends were thinking, and and
no one was saying it on any public airwaves or
from any you know, important pulpit. So it was very uh,
you know, it was very important to me to continue
to follow him. And when he announced in two thousand
and fourteen that um, if no other progressive candidate stepped
(11:09):
up to run for president, that he would run. And so,
you know, when he announced that he was running in
I found some people, and I'm lucky to live in
a city like Los Angeles where there are more of
us and there are some resources UM and there is
a beautiful community here, and several of us just wanted
(11:30):
to find an office where we could volunteer for Bernie
um phone banking canvas saying this was kind of before
this was right before text banking was really big, and
so we it was about half a dozen of us
at the time. We formed a group called Team Bernie
l A. And we found out later that we had
established the first full time, all volunteer office for Bernie
(11:52):
standers in the state of California, and that was in
South l A, the Lamart Park neighborhood. And then from there,
about two to three weeks before the primary in California
and seen, we launched Bernie's Coffee Shop and that location
set record numbers for phone bankers and canvassers. At the
(12:13):
end of the campaign, Senator Sanders gave a shout out
to our district and the numbers we had done there,
and so it was pretty amazing. Um, yeah, pull a
story behind Bernie's Coffee Shop too, but you know, I
think it was Senator Sanders. I'll always be able to say,
you know, thank you Bernie for awakening the full time
(12:35):
activists in me, because I always had these passions for
organizing people to to help each other and to build community,
but I didn't have those words yet and I didn't
have the tools yet. And when when when Bernie's campaign
brought us all together, we learned from each other and
I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, I've got more questions
for you regarding Bernie, But first I wanna can you
(12:57):
give us a little bit of history of Bernie's Coffee
Shop because it's actually kind of a cool story. It's
a local Los Angeles landmark that had been closed down
for a while. Correct. Yeah, so it's the old Johnny's
Coffee Shop on Wilshare and Fairfax. Many people who are
longtime Angelino's remember when it was a diner in a
restaurant um. And and the owners of that space, you
(13:18):
know that it needs too much work to to turn
it back into a functioning restaurant right now. There are
plumbing issues that would have to be dealt with and
things like that. But you know, the family that owns
a lot are big Bernie supporters. And it was originally
going to be a media stunt um in back in sixteen.
(13:39):
We've we brought together a team of like filmmakers and
artists and you know, organizers and builders and things like that,
and um, it was going to be you know, Johnny's
historic Johnny's Coffee Shop one night only as Bernie's Coffee Shop,
and we did this big, gorgeous unveiling and a whole
bunch of media showed up. Francis Fisher cut the river
(14:00):
in with the big you know, uh scissors and things,
and and those of us who were organizers kind of
went to the to the owners of the landlord and said,
what about keeping this thing open and inviting people to
come volunteer here, and they were with it. So so
that's exactly what we did. And again, you know, and
(14:20):
and I'll send you some pictures, you know, afterwards, but
these it's very large inside, and there's two main counters
kind of in an L shape, and the long encounter
was was filled with canvassing packets and then like food
and snacks for the volunteers. All the booths were filled
with phone bankers the whole day, all week long. And
(14:42):
then on the short side of the counter we did merchandise.
People brought us boxes of Bernie's books, you know, t shirts,
anything we could think of, you know, we had the
campaign at the time bringing us packs of bumper stickers,
anything we could do to bring in a few bucks
so we could feed the volunteers, so we could keep
the lights on, so we can keep volunteering for Bernie.
And it's really beautiful. As you said, the building is
(15:04):
a historical cultural landmark in Los Angeles, so we don't
do any major changes to the structure of the building
besides keeping it up. And so there's an interesting side story.
If you've seen the mural, you know, it's an old
fifties diner with the Google architecture and there's a there's
a gorgeous googie style uh mural on the fair fact
(15:26):
side of the building that after two years or so,
somebody in the neighborhood started to complain and we got
to notice we were going to have to take the
mural down, and uh we we rallied the troops. We
we sent letters, we created a slide show. We asked
for a hearing about forty people and from the community
showed up to that hearing with the Historical Cultural Society
(15:48):
here in l a and they we had a slide
show about political art and the art history of the
space and being right there in museum row and and
being a neighbor to LACMA and the peter An Autumn Museum.
And the beautiful thing that came out of that was
that rather than make us take the mural down, they
actually declared the mural its own historical cultural monument. I
(16:11):
love that. Wow, that's such as a lot of happy
tears that day. And the artist, what you know, we
had looped in. The artist was now based in Arizona,
and we were like, they're trying to make us take
your mural down, like can you help us? And he
was so happy. We were all so happy. That's a
great story. I still have the slide show to its
(16:32):
great slide show, Welcome, get everything. So for this nice
moment down just a little bit, I think and give
a slight tangent from our organizing talk. I think a
lot of Progressives were dealta kind of a blow last
(16:55):
week when when Bernie officially suspended his campaign. And we've
seen a lot of conversations, you know, debates about whether
or not Bernie supporters will be voting for Joe Biden. Uh.
You know, people have very reasonable fears about that or
or qualms with Joe Biden, and it's something that we
(17:17):
are all going to have to spend the next several
months figuring out for ourselves. And I think we're all
a little bit curious how you're feeling right now, what
you're thinking about all of that. Yeah, I mean this,
this particular Bernie supporter will not be voting for Joe Biden. Um.
I'm well aware and just as horrified as everyone else
(17:38):
about the problems with Trump and the administration that we have. However,
you know, and I I don't I don't need to
tell out any credentials, but I did do my undergrad
and my masters in political science and global politics, and
I am horrified as well by the steady march to
the right, uh for the United States that is occurring
(18:00):
pretty much since the Reagan years. I do want to
ask what we're still on the subject of, Like, you know,
Joseph Robin at Biden, do you think your calculus would
be any different if you lived in a swing state
somewhere where that like that was literally kind of because
because because you know, I'm in this point of like,
I'm not going to vote for Biden either, but I
live in a state where the state's going to go
(18:22):
for Biden, right, So I'm not I'm not on an
electoral since worried um. And I'm curious as to whether
or not that's entered into your calculus at all. For me,
it doesn't. And I don't envy the position of people
who think like I do or like we do, who
are in swing states. I mean, my my own mother,
you know, as a huge Bernie supporter, and it's very
(18:43):
proud of the work that we do. She's in New
Jersey and feels the need to participate in defeating Trump,
which I don't have any blame or ill will towards
anybody who feels that way. I totally get it and understand.
For me, it's not just about Bernie. Um are our
eyes are open now to the complacency and the corruption
(19:04):
of the establishment within the Democratic Party, the sort of
jaded bitterness with which they operate. Many of our friends
here in uh In at the local level, attempt to
participate in the Democratic Party at the local and state
level and are consistently shut down. It's a very toxic
environment to attempt to participate in local party politics as
(19:26):
a you know, as a progressive. Uh And what we've
been saying about Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders for a long
time is that he is is really pretty down the
middle politically on the global political spectrum. However, as I
was saying, you know, this country has been marching to
the right for several decades, and it's you know, it's
it's it's the sort of right off a cliff phenomenon
(19:47):
we are now in in a corporatist, fascist sort of scenario.
And I personally, you know, my ideals bigger and beyond
Bernie Sanders don't allow me to participate aid in endorsing
that sort of political structure. I think we need to
to overhaul and that I don't I don't identify myself
(20:08):
as like Bernie or Bust. I don't think that that
it doesn't have to be like a dichotomy like that,
But I do think we need to think extremely critically
about the situation in which we find ourselves because you know,
Joe Biden and Donald Trump are far more similar to
each other than than Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are right,
And so a lot of people feel that the shaming
(20:31):
of you know, okay, Bernie supporters, it's time to fall
in line. A lot of us are not Democrats and
don't owe our vote to anybody in the party. And
we came out and attempted to get involved, and Bernie
Sanders asked us to be Democrats for a little while,
to to to participate in the power structures that exists,
an attempt to bring that power back to the people
(20:52):
and the DNC and the establishment within the Democratic Party.
Rather than than being in awe of Bernie's ability to
bring people into the party and to bring a diverse
coalition into their Party, they attempted to stop it at
every turn, and ultimately they seem to have succeeded in
this in this moment, and and the message that we
(21:13):
received was loud and clear. You are not wanted. Yeah,
I mean, I I don't I don't disagree with any
of your calculus there, and I in fact feel the
same way. But I also, like I have to, I
think that I probably would wind up, you know, swallowing
a lot of things in order to do what I
could to get Trump out, because while he and Biden
(21:33):
have a lot similar Like I the person that I
live with right now is a is a Chinese national
um and just the changes in her life and the
lives of a lot of friends of mine who are
immigrants as a result of all of this, Like, there
are things that wouldn't be as much of a problem
as they are right now if Biden were in office.
And I guess that's kind of like, I feel two
(21:56):
ways about it, because I agree with you, like the
Democratic Party, if it weren't the Republican Party didn't exist,
the Democratic Party would be the most despicable organization in
the United States. But yeah, but at the same point,
there is a difference between the two of them. Yeah,
there there is. But I think perhaps the I don't
want to, I don't want to get a sort of
(22:18):
caught up in who's worse kind of questions. I think
that the issue of being asked to vote for the
lesser of two evils. Okay, for instance, right, part of
my work has included being a founding member of the
me Too movement here in Los Angeles. Right, I'm not
talking about big me Too. I'm not talking about times Up.
I'm talking about, you know that, the grassroots movement of
(22:41):
women and survivors to believe women and survivors here in
Los Angeles. And um so we did our first big
march with several thousand people UM in I think November.
And in addition to that, I've done also a lot
of work with and for and alongside immigrants and immigrant communities,
(23:02):
direct action video and written content around the kids and cages,
things like that, um working with uh native groups that
are not only uh, you know, horrified by the situation
of you know, people crossing the border, but also continuing
to suffer under the continued colonization of the current day. Right,
(23:26):
um and so nobody can speak for an entire community.
There's differences about opinions about Biden and Trump and Bernie
within immigrant communities. There's differences in the Me Too movement.
But I'll tell you that that my friends that I'm
connected to that are still actively organizing me too, UM,
(23:48):
they will not be endorsing Joe Biden. And I think
we know why. You know, um, And the biggest fear
that I have right now is that UM and I'm
her last misforgetting me Tara, Tara Read. My biggest is
that the Democrats will attempt to vilify terror read and
(24:11):
if that, if we start to see that happen, that
is just absolutely unforgivable. UM. So you know and have
in the immigrant communities. You also have to understand that
people were calling Obama the deporter in chief for years
before President Trump was even a possibility. Obama reported more
people than Bush. You know, years of Obama was worse
(24:33):
for in many ways for our immigrant communities than eight
years of Bush, with the possible exception of you know,
the vilifying of Muslims after nine eleven. But you know,
what we're talking about is two parties that in their
own way right, and you could argue one potentially more
dangerous because they attempt they attempt to make it look
(24:55):
like they're being your friend. You know, they attempt to
look good on the social issue. But Nancy Pelosi is
up there, you know what is she doing her golf
clap and she's ripping up Trump's speech. But you know,
the very same week, she's approving his military budget, which
no performative. Yeah, exactly, So I'm not just not interested
(25:16):
in that. Y and and uh. I know some people
will say, well, how do we protect the people that
are suffering under this administration currently in these horrific ways.
I think we take to the streets. I think we
we flood into the We flood into the party structures
and the power structures and take them over. What you
guys are doing here with independent progressive media. All these
things matter, Um, but voting for someone who is more
(25:39):
of the same, and you know holds many of the
ideological problems that the current president does, I I just can't,
you know, I can't be a party to that. It's tough.
I've said this several times on this show. Just the realization,
I mean, it's not a realization. I've known this, but
the cycle has certainly underscored it that we are vastly
(26:03):
different parties trying to get one person nominated, vastly different
political affiliations here, and and yes, we align ourselves with
the democratic establishment in order to try to progress this agenda.
You know, this philosophy, and it's it's continually disappointing. I
feel bolstered. And this might be me being naive, This
(26:25):
might be me being I'm someone that's that tends to
hear towards hopeful because that's my sort of my coping
mechanism with life. Uh, I'm I'm I'm proud of us.
I'm proud of the gains that have been made. I'm
I'm I'm disappointed by what's happening right now, and I'm
also invigorated by how how many people I see now
(26:47):
that align with me. Um and I think that we
are further ahead than we've ever been. I find myself
veering between two things, which is that like I grew
up very conservative, and I watched as these things that
like these very fringe beliefs that like when I was
a kid, my parents are like, no one really agrees
(27:08):
with these people. These people aren't normal conservatives, Like they
don't have any power or anything, and they never will.
And I watched them very methodically and very carefully take
over the Republican Party. And they did it by compromising.
They didn't by voting with people who were on board
with them and then either marginalizing those people are pushing
them further because those folks were power hungry. And I
(27:29):
watched it get to the point where now my parents
are endorsing all of the views that when I was
younger they said, we're not representative of normal conservatives. So
I I am not a person. I have very I
would say, very very far left political beliefs, um, much
more so than than Mr Sanders even Um, But I
(27:49):
I have watched a radical political party take over a
mainstream political party, so I don't believe it's impossible. Um.
At the same time, I also recognize, like where the
hour is like because of how how much progress the
far right has made in taking over the Republican Party.
We don't have twenty five years right there. For a
(28:12):
variety of reasons we don't have. Yeah, maybe we bought
ourselves a bit of time with coronavirus. Yeah, that's one
of the up shots of it, I guess, Um, But
I I so I'm not. I'm not someone I don't
reject electoralism out of hand. But also, um, I don't know,
(28:33):
like taking to the streets is all well and good,
but I have seen for one of the things that's
been really frustrating to me is how even a lot
of like the progressive left has kind of thrown anti
fascist street activists under the bus because of the way,
you know how And I don't know. I guess maybe
the mask issue has been sort of one thanks to
(28:54):
the coronavirus two people are going to complain about that
so much in the future. Um, yeah, they were just
forward thinking. The big task is how do we I
mean really the question that we're all asking dancing around,
I think is how do we get a general strike going?
Because that's that's what's necessary, Like the hour is late
enough that we need to we need to get enough
(29:16):
of America on board a simple list of demands that
would take sizeable chunks that are like the big issues
facing us. Um that we can have some breathing space
to figure out the rest. And I I guess you're
better at organizing than I am, for damn sure, you
have a lot more experience with this what do you
how do we how do we how do you think
we start doing that? How do we save the world? Uh,
(29:37):
please answer the form of a question. Yeah. You know
they say that luck is a combination of persistence in timing,
and I'm a pretty firm believer in that that. You know,
we get opportunities in cycles. Right if we had attempted
to throw a march about surviving sex old violence without
(30:01):
the media moment that had happened, you know, it wouldn't
have had four thousand people and it wouldn't have had
international media covering it. Right. We we had a moment
where we looked at each other, you know, we're all
sitting around at Bernie's coffee shop, and we looked at
each other and said, Wow, we have an opportunity to
make a splash on this issue right now if we
(30:23):
move quickly, you know. And it's it's really about when
when is when are the people going to be ready?
So I know one one thing that you guys, or
whether I talked to Katie about offline, was um, we're
working with the rent issue and reclaim our homes and
the tenants unions and the fact that you folks have
(30:45):
been covering those issues. UM, I think it's an amazing
moment for reclaim our homes, which is, you know, families
basically houseless families, unhoused families moving into vacant houses that
are on public proper be right there, owned by Caltrans,
and they've been sitting in some cases for decades empty.
(31:06):
They're single family homes in you know, nice, average or
above average neighborhoods that are sitting boarded up because they're
owned by cow Trans and they're not being used. And
so what we have is support for the idea that
people should not have to be on the street, right,
So you can get public support for something like a
housing occupation in a moment like this where the coronavirus
(31:29):
is on top of everyone's mind and people are not
supposed to be outside, and yet we're allowing families to
live on the streets. And so it's a big difference
in in the narrative because of because there's a larger
public narrative happening. I think that organizing for things like
a rent strike and a loan strike um could get
(31:50):
us to a general strike. But here's the issue with
a general strike. The biggest impact of a general strike
is people not going to work, which most people are
already not doing. So part of what we could do
in this moment is capitalized on the idea of, well, hey,
maybe it really is those grunt workers that how are
the damn economy that are the engine? Because when people
(32:13):
can't go to their minimum wage jobs in broad scale,
the whole damn thing is shutting down globally. Right. I
saw a meme floating around that said, uh, you know,
people tell mother Earth, well, we can't possibly shut down
global capitalism, we can't possibly close down the economy to
deal with climate change, and mother Earth goes here's a
(32:34):
virus practice. I know. I that was one of the
first things I was thinking in all of this is
it's like, Wow, we've shown that we actually can mobilize
on a great, big scale, and we can see rapid
results from that. We can see the earth start to
regrow a little bit. You know, a sudden you have
people talking about universal basic income, universal health care. Uh
(33:00):
you know, you have people talking about again like masses
of people sleeping outside and sleeping in the streets, and
we have it taught. We we're talking about it in
a way that really affects us all right, because no
matter how wealthy you are, it's still is gonna mess
you up when you go to get gas and you
can't touch that that gas panel, or you want to
(33:21):
get your coffee and your coffee shop is closed down,
you know. And and it's really starting to force us
to consider the role that we have in our interconnectedness
and why it makes sense to be able to like
Canada implemented monthly u b I almost immediately, many others
are doing the same. South Korea is leading the way
in identifying cases and and and issuing the the social
(33:44):
distancing type measures to keep people from spreading this thing.
And they're listening. You know, the people are listening because
in many other places around the world, uh, you know,
the leadership of the countries and the formation of the
governance is all about the interconnectedness the people, whereas in
America we've really built a pride on this sort of
(34:05):
libertarian sort of every man for himself. I'm I'm not
concerned with whether my neighbor has what they need as
long as I have what I need. And you know,
you've asked about what to do, um, about what to
do about the fact that we have to deal with
reality how it is right, and we have to deal
with the fact that we have this monster in the
(34:26):
White House, and we could continue to go in the
wrong direction if we're not very careful in this moment.
And I agree, but I I start to take the
perspective and when I take my my humanity hat off
right and I let myself get out of the anger
for a second, and I sort of put my political
(34:47):
scientists hat on and I go, we'll we'll look at
this grand experiment, right the the Great American experiment has
lasted perhaps three hundred years before, you know, it seems
to have peaked and the bottom, you know, in my opinion,
during the FDR years um and the bottom has fallen
(35:10):
out from it. And you know, I'm not gonna I
don't advocate any which way. I'm not. I'm not married
to any any path right now. I think that regardless
of what happens, we have a responsibility to help and
save as many people as we can, and we have
a responsibility to each other first and foremost, because those
(35:32):
in power are so incredibly disconnected from what we're going
through that you know, I do support one of the
biggest things that that Bernie Sanders gave us was the
will and the drive and the understanding of the importance
of running for office. So as much as you know,
I may leave that that top of the ticket blank
uh come November, Um, you know, I'll absolutely be voting
(35:56):
all the way down the ballot for all the progressives
that I can find and that are attempting to take
this power structure back for the people, because it does
involve getting involved in your community, running for your local
seats everything from dog catcher, you know, school board all
the way on up, and really advocating within those spaces
for progressive policies. And that's what I was talking about
(36:16):
when I said it's a bit of exposing yourself to
some toxicity because you know, within these establishment spaces there's
a lot of gaslighting and telling progressives that these policies
are just not possible and we need to be realistic.
And then we look around the world and go, we're
the ones that are being unrealistic here, you know. Yeah,
And I'm and speaking of gas lighting. Did you see
(36:37):
Barack Obama's endorsement video today and Sanders in it. I
didn't get I read about it. I perhaps we'll have
the stomach for it later. I've avoided it so far
to read about how and I was duped by Obama.
I voted for Obama twice and then I doubt that
(36:59):
so he we He came into office and he was
bomb we were bombing two countries, and when he left office,
we're bombing seven countries. You know, he had a he
had an opportunity to lift up Bernie Sanders and continue
towards progressivism, and you know, he made his decision. He
made it start clear and it isn't in my mind,
and I feel completely duped by the Obama years. Oh,
(37:20):
I thought you were going to say that's a three
percent improvements, So like, yeah, look at look at we're
weak together. Ever since you're you're working with reclaim our Homes,
(37:40):
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about
kind of I guess you'd say, like illegalism, which has
been really pushed out of kind of mainstream left wing
politics for a while, and I think Reclaiming our Homes
is the first time I've I've seen something that that
his widely popular and seems to be getting some some
traction on a larger scale, that is based around sometimes
(38:02):
we have to break the law to do the right thing.
And I I've seen like the Republican Party already got
on board breaking the law to make their things happen
a while ago. Um, And I think that uh, this
idea that like, okay, well, if there's homes here that
are owned by the government, maybe we just open them up.
I see that as one of the more this understanding
(38:25):
that uh, there's not actually any value in just being
polite and waiting your turn and holding off on doing
something necessary because it will make people, um angry or
violate the law. And I'm curious as to I don't
know whether or not you're even thinking about it in
that sense, or or or what. But that's that's something
that has occurred to me in this and I think
(38:46):
something that has a lot of potential um for future
necessary movements as we encounter food shortages and medical shortages
and the like. Yeah. Yeah, And I just want to
clarify I'm not organizing with Reclaim our Homes. I've I've
been volunteering with them and supporting them. My friend and
mentor is good friends with one of the lead organizers
(39:09):
with Reclaim our Home. So I'm I'm you know, grateful
to be able to be to be able to tap
in and really find ways to help. Like we've delivered
groceries to the families. Um, we're organizing to get them
some of the equipment they need. And what what's really
happening though, the hard work is is the volunteers are
taking shifts to help guard the community because there's backlash
(39:30):
from residents, from detractors, from police. UM. So you know,
it's a it's a very it's very um, you know,
sensitive situation. And regarding your question about thinking about it
in terms of legalities, I mean, listen, I'm I'm a socialist.
I'm not an anarchist. Um, I'm I'm only I'm only
(39:56):
really the type of person that wants to see it
just society. So I believe in a strong society that
is built as a collective. I believe that we were
all in this together, and I believe in following the
rules when the rules are to benefit the most or
the all. Right, But unfortunately, we don't live in a
society where the rules are set up to benefit the
(40:19):
most or the all. We live in a society where
the rules are set up to benefit the status quo
and the elite. I mean, just this you know, coronavirus
response right now is is just resulting in another massive
transfer of wealth to the top to Wall Street, right
while they parce out a little for us, like that
(40:40):
doesn't even cover half of people's rent in Los Angeles,
you know, And they want to dangle that in front
of us as a one time thing, while we're hearing
the headlines about other countries that are getting a monthly
u b I during this and things like that. And
they're leaving it up to individual companies and individual industries
to determine how they're going to handle things, or individual cities,
(41:02):
and the governors are looking at the federal government like
is it really all on us? You know? And so
and you listen to this president's speak and and as
much as I hate the Democrats, nobody wants to hear
you blame the Democrats right now. People want answers, you know,
and so frankly, you know, they find a reason every
ten years or so to to to do a massive
(41:24):
transfer of wealth. And and last time in the two
thousand and eight crisis, you know, they robbed people's pensions
in four oh one case right by by illegal um
illegal insurance scams, right and they were able to basically
bet against the American people and and the homeowners of
(41:45):
this country and transfer that wealth then, um via the
insurance policies that they had purchased on things like their
mortgage backed securities. Right, so we all know that that happened.
And here we find ourselves again in a crisis situation
where they've created a pathway to transfer wealth to the
very wealthy already. So when when you look at it
like that, and you look at it that, you know,
(42:08):
again and again and again you find uh decisions made
in favor of industry and quote unquote the economy rather
than the health and well being of the people. I mean,
I use Amazon, and I'm gonna get you know, I'm
gonna get lambasted for saying that. Um. But but I
do and not a lot from time to time. But
(42:29):
you know, the this is something that it should it
should exist, but it should be nationalized. It should not
be to benefit one or very few people, and the
workers should not have to put up with the conditions
that Amazon is currently imposing upon them. But when a
company like Amazon or Facebook is so deeply integrated into
our society that it is too big to fail, then
(42:52):
it should belong to the damn people. That's my opinion
on things like that. So until we are making moves
towards a society that looks something I could just society,
then then take those homes that are sitting vacant, when
you have unhoused families, not just unhoused in general, but
now in the middle of a pandemic, when people are
literally being told by police to go inside, and some
(43:15):
people have no place to go, it's it's horrific that
they didn't already open the doors to those homes and
many others as well. We have been talking for forty
five minutes about all the incredible stuff you've been working on,
and we've barely even scratched the surface of your past.
I mean, you've mentioned a lot, so just tell me
(43:35):
to shut up. No, no, it's incredible, it's wonderful. You
know you've mentioned me too and your work with that
and and reclaim our homes. Um. You know you also
have been did stuff with Standing Rocky or at Standing
rock you work with California for Progress. I think for me,
what's so inspiring about all of this and this conversation is, yes,
(43:56):
this is the status of our government and of our
society right now. And yes, we may not be able
to support the politicians that we are offered, but there
are things that we can do ourselves, two organized to
to come together to fight back against all of this stuff,
(44:18):
to do actual tangible work that that affects people's lives immediately.
And and and this is incredible for us to have
this opportunity to talk to you because it demystifies it
a little bit. I mean you you are an event planner,
am I right? That's your background lance event planning, And
and I don't know nobody's doing events anymore right currently?
(44:38):
Freelance writing? Oh where where? Where events happening right now?
Is there something that's going on? I was for my
income for me personally, you know, about half my income
came from freelance events and half from my freelance writing.
And so I'm down to just the writing. So I'm
trying to expand on that. Well, you know, this is
a good time to write your masterpieces special I've been
(44:58):
told not that things aren't stressful. A friend of mine,
who are I've been saying for years, we're going to
write a book. He kind of said that to me
the other days. But I think it's just it's so
inspiring to me that, Okay, so you've got this skill set.
You are an event planner and a writer, yes, but
you know you you you bring that to your work
(45:20):
and and do community organizing and you know, and and
earlier you're talking about everything that you've done for for
the masks. Here in l A. You've got people seamstresses,
you've got an Uber driver coordinating the delivery. You know,
it's it's it's people using what they have to do
(45:41):
something tangible. Uh. And that's what I really wanted to
hammer home with this episode also, to to say that
we all have that power within our reach if if
there's something that we can do. So, you know, after
the campaign came to an end, and you know, Team
Bernie l A as it existed, voted to disband. I
(46:04):
voted against that, but I was outnumbered. And so a
couple of us who still wanted to work together kind
of looked at each other and we're like, what do
we want to do? And a friend of ours had
created California for Progress logo, a website. He set up
the social media infrastructure, and he was like, do you
guys want this? Like I created this, you know, and
(46:25):
we kind of just looked at each other and said,
do you guys want to be California for Progress? Sure,
let's be California for Progress. And you know, it's a
it's a beautiful thing that we were able to do
because it's such an innocuous name. It can it can
do anything right. It can support the me to a movement,
it can support immigrants, it can support Bernie. You can
do whatever it wants to do. And it's pretty clear
in the name like what it is um and so
(46:48):
really though, the point of my saying that is that
once we showed up to volunteer together, right, and we
kind of went through the ringer for a few months together.
We were in the trenches together with the Bernie campaign,
and it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to.
But we've wanted to continue to make a difference. I mean,
even with Bernie's coffee Shop. Once the campaign was over,
(47:10):
the coffee shop became more of a community center based
in the issues, right. And I can talk more about
how we've utilized the coffee shop in the interim between
the campaigns, but the key of it is is once
you find a little niche where you enjoy volunteering and
you meet other like minded people who also enjoy volunteering,
then it's just a little hop skip to get together
(47:31):
and say, let's create a project of our own. Let's
start an initiative. What do we like to do? Do
we want to gather signatures? Do we want to knock
on doors? Do we want to create media content? Do
we want to put marches in the streets and create events?
And we do media awareness? Like you can decide with
your with your group of friends basically that that that
(47:54):
share these that a share the same or similar views
as you and be are willing to volunteer their time.
So all of us who are organizers and it seems like,
you know, we're out here like doing these these big
like um, sometimes it seems like untouchable. I know, like
when I look up to people like you know, Molina
Abdullah from Black Lives Matter, you know, I think, wow,
(48:16):
like this person who's been doing this for decades and
really understands what we're dealing with here, you know, and
is fighting for the most marginalized. Or or my mentor
Carlos Markin, who has been working on housing issues since
the foreclosure crisis and has really anchored himself in that
sort of um, that struggle of how to lift up
the people who are suffering the most under these systems.
(48:39):
When we entered into the Bernie movement, we did it
for to try to make Bernie president, right, but we
came out of it going Holy cow, there's a lot
of work to do. I mean, as a as a
community organizer or as a as an activist, really you
can run yourself ragged, and many people do, and many
(48:59):
people have to hit the wall before they've reorganized, you know, themselves,
to say, Okay, I need to have boundaries with this work,
because you can work twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week and and still feel like you're not
doing enough. And so part of what it what it
really is, is finding a niche, you know, finding a
type of work that you really like to do. Is
it food bank stuff and helping the poor and the
(49:22):
n housed? Is it doing that work within the Democratic
Party and showing up to your local county and city
and state party and and being a progressive voice in
that space, and and running for an office or being
on the E board or something like that. If that
strikes your fancy do it? I'm I'm. Also, we haven't
even talked about my my work with KPFK, currently the
(49:43):
chair of the board at our local Pacific A station
KPFK in Los Angeles. And that's because you know, and
a strong and strong, functional, productive independent media is extremely
important to me. And so when a friend of mine
who was on the board said, you know, a couple
of us would like to ask you if you can
still are running for the board, UM, I found a
new way to be able to interact with my passion
(50:05):
for getting us off of our addiction to mainstream media. Right.
And so because in my opinion, even like our Rachel Matadows,
are are participating in the completeency and the march to
the right right by not calling out um. The issues
with the Democrats are with the establishment right. And Trump
gives us a great, big, evil boogeyman that we can
(50:26):
point to all day long, and he will continue to
give us that content. You know, but it means that
when we're when we're wall to wall and how bad
Trump is, we're missing a lot of other important things.
You're overlooking all the other stuff that's going on that
was already a problem and was already broken in our system.
So I encourage people to find a space to volunteer,
(50:47):
talk to people, make connections, and plan your next steps.
You know, if you have an idea and a couple
of people willing to sit with you to talk it through,
then you you have, you know a way to to
make something happen in your community. Also, if you don't
have an idea, you can look and say, what is
it that I do. You've mentioned on our call before
(51:08):
accountants yea, every aization to support and that with the
money person and they are few and far between. So
if you're one of those people, help them. I would
I would go so far as to say that some
of the people that like the activist community in the
(51:29):
United States needs most are like accountants and people who
know how to like run organizations and organize that. Yeah
like that? That that is definitely um, like how to
set up your lawyers? What are the implications? You know?
Just not like that? Or if you're trying to operate
within the party. You know, within the Democratic Party, people
(51:49):
who get the party, they understand the by laws, they
understand the structure of the clubs and the layers of governance.
I mean, just people who are like wonky they perhaps
don't feel like there's a space all the time, or
like graphic designers. You know. The one of the ways
that we've been able to really send some of our
projects viral or even like international with the mainstream media
(52:12):
is by having you know, top notch professional graphics that
are branding our movements right and and it's you know,
and I've been criticized by some in the movement for
my sort of marketing thinking about this, but I think
branding what we do is really important. Like Project mask
l A is a brand new thing, just popped up
(52:32):
out of nowhere. Well, how we started asking for money
right off the bat? How do people know how to
trust it? You know? The first thing they want to
know is who's organizing this? Well if if they don't
know who Michelle Manno's is, because they don't know other
work that I've done, then how are they how do
they not to give this thing I'm endorsing money? Right?
(52:55):
So part of it is like being able to say like, yeah,
we are organized, we are a professional, we have done
this before, and you know, we're we're all volunteer and
we're bringing our very professional skills. Many times you know,
and so you know, I have a friend who her
thing is is social media and and she's so brilliant
(53:15):
at it. And if you can get her on a project,
and you can get her to focuses or eight, if
she has the time in the capacity, then your whole
operation levels up because she knows exactly how to reach
the people that you need to reach to execute your
your your vision. You know. So people who bring those
kinds of just showing up to a meeting and and
(53:36):
getting involved in conversations. First step is showing up and
the next step is, you know, putting yourself out there
a little bit, talk to someone, be willing to go
have that cup of coffee, even if you're tired and
you just wanted to home. And you're like, okay, I
went to the meeting. I did the thing I said
I was going to do. Go get that extra cup
of coffee and have a side conversation with someone who
thinks that you are interesting or someone that you think
(53:57):
is interesting. Because those have relation, ships get built. That's
how you build trust in community, and that's when you
bring each other onto these kinds of projects and say, hey,
you know what, I was talking to someone the other
day and that conversation we had two weeks ago popped
into my mind. I really want to bring you in
on this. It's little things like that how we build
community and we build these teams for these projects. Michelle,
(54:19):
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
with us. You're so eloquence and have such a wide
range of experiences. I think this was really fascinating. Um,
can you tell our listeners where they can find you
online or plug the projects that you're working on websites
or anything like that. Yeah. Sure, I'm not really on Twitter,
(54:40):
but you can find me on Facebook and Instagram. Um,
my name is Michelle Manos and my Instagram is miss
Lady mish M S l A d Y M I
C H. And uh, my my heart, My my heart
is always going to be with Bernie's Coffee Shop. You
can find Bernie's Coffee Shop Volunteer office on Facebook and
(55:03):
at Bernie's Coffee Shop all one word on Instagram. Uh.
And as you mentioned, you know, California for Progress and
currently Project mask l A. And you know, I'm happy
to come back and visit with you all again and
talk more about the history of what we've been doing
or what we're what's going to be coming next, so,
(55:24):
you know, because we have to figure out what we're
doing about this damn convention if it's even gonna happen.
So yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be lots of opportunities
to chat in the near future. And you know, I've
got some great war stories from the convention for when
the time comes. Great. Oh yeah, we can. I I
just want to say, I it's so incredible to me
(55:46):
that this started as a conversation between you and Katie
in a restroom. And I feel confident saying that nothing
this positive has ever resulted from a conversation in a
men's restroom. I do feel like I can stay that
objectively on a historic level. Um, it was faith that
brought us together. May actually have been the last day
(56:08):
of our method. I think it was because I remember
the same day I said to the girl at the
front desk, I'm going to keep coming as long as
you guys are here, so thank you for being here.
And it was that night that we got the email.
So I was there when he said that, and we
all got a little bit emotional, yeah, Steel emotional about
(56:29):
not being able to go to bar method again. Community.
Uh you know, I I rely on seeing people and
sharing that energy. I hadn't realized that. I mean I
knew it before this happened, but now I realized just
how much I rely on it. Yeah, and you know
for me, I you know, I moved to California in
(56:51):
two thousand and eight. I married the guy that I
was dating at the time, We bought a condo, we
got a divorce. Uh Like, just so you know, I
became a full time activist. My whole I went to
grad school. The only damn constant in my whole life
has been that freaking Bar method. And I don't I've
been going like over ten years, and I don't kind
(57:12):
of know what to do with it. I hate running.
I hate it. So I'm like, what do I do?
You know, Um, but you know, this is turning into
an ad for Bar method. Normal. I mean, we could
say Bar class, you know, but class is normal to
sort of rethink the ways that we're going about our lives.
I was talking to someone the other day that said,
(57:33):
you know, I think that in the United States and
the Western world is gonna become more like some of
the Asian countries where wearing a mask is pretty common,
you know, even in normal times, because people have lived through,
you know, a viral pandemic. So it's very it gonna
be very interesting to see where we land on the
other side of some of this. Well, I'm looking forward
to talking to you when we get there. Yeah, I
(57:56):
hope we keep checking in. And thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it. And again, like let me stress,
I am so incredibly supportive of progressive independent media. So
thank you for for having a people powered program, and
thank you for all that you're doing. Shall thank you
for coming on the show. So Chelle, yeah, for sure,
any everything, So everything so dull and start again. I tried.
(58:24):
Daniel Worst Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio.
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