Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions, all right, Welcome to it
Speaker 1: could happen here, a podcast that is about fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the time introduced well and about fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the time us talking about how we're bad at introductions,
Speaker 1: and today it is it is just be Christopher, but
Speaker 1: with me is Hadley and Mike from Lobelia Commons, who
Speaker 1: are here to talk about many things, one of which
Speaker 1: is there is the first edition of their Earthbound Farmers Almanac. Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: how how are you two doing today? I heard I
Speaker 1: heard there's maybe a thunderstorm rolling in. Yeah, we're doing
Speaker 1: pretty good. Um, it's gonna be glad of the rain,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, it'll be good. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit first about Labilia Commons. So how did
Speaker 1: that project start? I know, I know was something from
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic, But had you all been
Speaker 1: working on this kind of stuff before and yeah, I
Speaker 1: just want roasty a little bit of that. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it kind of started, um last year during the pandemic basically, UM.
Speaker 1: Basically at the beginning of the pandemic, we had UM
Speaker 1: that's like a surge of interest in these like kind
Speaker 1: of mutual a groups UM. And the largest of which
Speaker 1: that formed in New Orleans specifically, which some of us
Speaker 1: helped form, was called New Orleans Mutual a group which
Speaker 1: was doing like food distribution. It kind of stemmed out
Speaker 1: of a project that was already um running like a
Speaker 1: food share basically getting excess produce that was coming into
Speaker 1: the port and distributing it for free in front of
Speaker 1: like one of the gentrifying grocery stores. UM. But within
Speaker 1: like I want to say, like a couple of weeks, UM,
Speaker 1: there was such a surge of interest in doing that
Speaker 1: type of like volunteer or whatever UM, where that there
Speaker 1: was like a ton of labor to make it happen
Speaker 1: and that basically meant buying tons of produce eventually, because
Speaker 1: the ports eventually shut down and there wasn't any produce
Speaker 1: coming from anywhere at the beginning of the the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: that basically buying tons of produce from like costco and
Speaker 1: that labor meant like waiting in lines for you know,
Speaker 1: wrapping around entire like massive like multi city block warehouse stores. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that was basically doing like food distribution. So
Speaker 1: we took the opportunity to since there was so much
Speaker 1: labor happening, that we could go and start to adjust
Speaker 1: the question of like food production specifically and and try
Speaker 1: and do that in interesting ways. UM. So we felt
Speaker 1: like it was pretty important to start like experimenting and
Speaker 1: different forms of food production and like like ways of
Speaker 1: relating to food production. UM. So I mean this this
Speaker 1: first started with like a UM, we're basically just starting
Speaker 1: tons of seeds and delivering them all over the city, um,
Speaker 1: just driving around from We had like one centralized nursery
Speaker 1: that was run out of the warehouse um, and that
Speaker 1: was a ton of labor. Was a really time consuming,
Speaker 1: it was super centralized, and so we moved from that
Speaker 1: into a number of other projects. UM. Short Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: we put together like a like a collaborative mushroom production
Speaker 1: group where we were um, getting people who had been
Speaker 1: growing mushrooms and teaching folks and like doing skill shares
Speaker 1: to produce oyster mushrooms out of buckets. We started doing
Speaker 1: some like woodlock production of chautaukias, which has like since
Speaker 1: expanded pretty dramatically. Um and yeah, just like kind of
Speaker 1: like things that that draw people's interests like that, and
Speaker 1: and and think about like how you can grow food
Speaker 1: in an urban or parry urban scenario fairly interestingly and
Speaker 1: like with joy um also um. You know, after this,
Speaker 1: we we were reached out to by folks that were like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to grow herbs, and rather than specifically getting
Speaker 1: like a lot and covering it in different herbal medicines,
Speaker 1: we reached out had already had folks reaching out to us.
Speaker 1: And so if someone came up with the idea of well,
Speaker 1: let's just all grow in like our backyard stuns of
Speaker 1: herbs and let's find herbs that already grow abundantly around
Speaker 1: us to kind of collectively share the experience of harvesting
Speaker 1: and um and turning those into medicine. Um. And so
Speaker 1: now there's like this herb Commons group that the labor
Speaker 1: is distributed, it's distributed geographically. Um, but there's these like
Speaker 1: meet ups where they're bulk curbs are given up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: given out, just like in a canal space and um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's skill shares happening there and and so there's
Speaker 1: kind of some community being built around that. Um that
Speaker 1: that happens in a very decentralized manner. Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: very decentralized. There are working groups that are part of
Speaker 1: Lobelia Commons that I'm like not entirely sure what they're
Speaker 1: doing in any given day or you know, what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm involved in like a couple particular projects within it UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's really flexible for folks who
Speaker 1: are trying to get involved. They can kind of be
Speaker 1: involved at whatever level they want. Like, um, if somebody
Speaker 1: doesn't want to go to a bunch of garden work
Speaker 1: days or a bunch of meetings or something, which you
Speaker 1: know are have been a great way for us to
Speaker 1: like see each other and see our friends during the
Speaker 1: pandemic and stuff, is to get together for these work
Speaker 1: days outdoors or whatnot. But if somebody wants to just
Speaker 1: like do nothing but sprout plants at their own house
Speaker 1: and then somebody will come pick up those seedlings and
Speaker 1: and you know bring them to one of our decentralized
Speaker 1: nursery spots. That's great. Um. That's one of the other
Speaker 1: kind of projects we have we call the decentralized nursery.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like just something that people already
Speaker 1: do at a certain time of year. You know, gardeners
Speaker 1: will regularly start more plants than they need and then
Speaker 1: just kind of give them away to friends and neighbors
Speaker 1: and stuff. And we tried to just make it a
Speaker 1: little bit more of an intentional thing. Um. And this
Speaker 1: was also kind of growing out of like at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the pandemic, and we were actually doing
Speaker 1: seedling deliveries to people, which made sense of that time,
Speaker 1: but it was like very labor intensive. Um. So we
Speaker 1: kind of moved to this model of having just like
Speaker 1: free stands in front of houses on street corners in
Speaker 1: different places. Um. You know, there's already like a huch
Speaker 1: or free fridges around New Orleans and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so this is kind of like the free plant
Speaker 1: version of that. And it's really easy for somebody to
Speaker 1: just set one up. Um. And then that kind of
Speaker 1: also allows us to like work on this other aspect
Speaker 1: of of decentralizing food production, because like that's definitely one
Speaker 1: of our goals, right is to like not have a
Speaker 1: tiny percentage of the population be the only ones who
Speaker 1: know how to grow food and doing it under the
Speaker 1: control of a tiny number of corporations that own all
Speaker 1: the land. And you know, obviously we're trying to get
Speaker 1: away from that food system, and so one of the
Speaker 1: ways we can think about doing that is finding ways
Speaker 1: to really decentralize some of the skills that are um,
Speaker 1: that are necessary. So for example, like if somebody's growing
Speaker 1: avocados for our nurseries, UM, the thing about growing an
Speaker 1: avocado from a pit actually is that, uh, that tree
Speaker 1: probably won't produce fruit. It actually needs to be grafted. UM.
Speaker 1: So we can have people starting pits, and then we're
Speaker 1: also you know, sharing the knowledge of how to graph
Speaker 1: these things, UM, because we kind of like see a
Speaker 1: future in which a lot more people, um will need
Speaker 1: to be involved in food production. But also, like Mike
Speaker 1: was saying, like we want this to be not like
Speaker 1: a job that it feels like people have, but this
Speaker 1: joyous kind of thing that's just a part of everyday life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are the other things that I was I was
Speaker 1: interested in is you know, so so part of part
Speaker 1: of what I think the beginning of the Earth Performance
Speaker 1: Romanac is about is talking about how I guess people
Speaker 1: people have this tendency to sort of focus on climate
Speaker 1: change is just like the only sort of climate thing
Speaker 1: that's happening. And you know, I mean there's obviously the Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a bunch of sort of stuff that is
Speaker 1: climate change. But isn't the weather that are sort of
Speaker 1: you know, things like the phosphor cycle, things like the
Speaker 1: nitrogen cycle that are breaking. But simultaneously, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's also true that you know that that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff and this is also something that's that's talked
Speaker 1: about in there is is going to have a large
Speaker 1: impact both on sort of like even just what what
Speaker 1: kind of biomas exist in the in a very short term.
Speaker 1: And you know, another product of that is, you know
Speaker 1: it is that the sort of increasing rate of storms.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you all could talk a
Speaker 1: bit about what happened after Ida and how both just
Speaker 1: sort of in the short term in the long term
Speaker 1: that the sort of the increase of just hurricanes and
Speaker 1: I hesitate to call natural disasters because you know that
Speaker 1: there's there's a whole thing about how these disasters are
Speaker 1: sort of manufactured in a lot of ways, but how
Speaker 1: how that's been affecting how y'all think are sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about and working with these kind of mutual aid
Speaker 1: projects and food production. Yeah, so I think with IDA,
Speaker 1: it's kind of complicated because, UM, you can almost look
Speaker 1: at look at it as like two different storms, um,
Speaker 1: because what happened in New Orleans versus what happened and
Speaker 1: say like um Homa or the river parishes, Um, these
Speaker 1: areas that are you know, generally south and west of
Speaker 1: New Orleans. UM are are are kind of like two
Speaker 1: different uh animals in some ways, like what happened in
Speaker 1: New Orleans specifically relates to infrastructure. So like what you're saying,
Speaker 1: like the kind of quote unquote natural disasters thing, that's um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a pretty commonplace way of looking I
Speaker 1: mean it's not a very radical um conception that like
Speaker 1: these aren't natural disasters wherever the disasters is created. As
Speaker 1: soon as UM there was the attempt to create a
Speaker 1: colonial New Orleans in the first place. UM, so this
Speaker 1: became honestly part of like national discourse as a result
Speaker 1: of Katrina, most famously because of the Army cord engineers
Speaker 1: failure UM teven five and UM. So what happened this
Speaker 1: year UM was with with Hurricane Ida. Was one of
Speaker 1: the main transmission towers for the the Energy Energy Corporation
Speaker 1: in New Orleans is called energy that outside of the
Speaker 1: Gulf South aren't familiar with. So the Entergy tower fell
Speaker 1: into the Mississippi River, and you had that happening at
Speaker 1: the same time that thousands of power lines fell down.
Speaker 1: The power lines are are are on poles and very
Speaker 1: prone to getting knocked down even just during the during
Speaker 1: any day of the week, UM. And so there wasn't
Speaker 1: actually really much flooding UM that was happening. It was
Speaker 1: it was primarily wind damage. So that the tower falls
Speaker 1: into the river, power lines down. You had something like
Speaker 1: I believe fifty five barges in the Port of South
Speaker 1: Louisiana falling into their falling off their moorings and floating
Speaker 1: around just crashing into things, just crash, just like there's
Speaker 1: like several ferries that connected east and west banks of
Speaker 1: the city. UM those fell off the worrings. So so
Speaker 1: like the physical infrastructure of the place and and how
Speaker 1: that relates to beyond New Orleans is. New Orleans is
Speaker 1: located at the very um southern reach of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Rivers port of south southern Louisiana, which is like a
Speaker 1: fifty five mile port I believe a fifty two port
Speaker 1: um that processes like six of all U S grain
Speaker 1: going to exports. So it's like a massive, really really
Speaker 1: important piece of American capitalist infrastructure. So that when when
Speaker 1: those boats follow their mornings, it's not like, oh this
Speaker 1: like whatever quaint like vyou problem, it's a very serious
Speaker 1: imperial problem. UM. But so for for the average person
Speaker 1: living in New Orleans, UM, this looked like I think
Speaker 1: I think it ended up being for most people around
Speaker 1: a week and a half without power, which if anyone's
Speaker 1: lived even with air conditioning in New Orleans for a summer, UM,
Speaker 1: it's extremely difficult to live uh here during the summer. UM.
Speaker 1: It's that it's obviously not impossible when we have modern amenities,
Speaker 1: but when you're when you're without those, when you're without
Speaker 1: the refrigerator, when we throughout without new freezer air conditioning,
Speaker 1: it's it's really really really hot. Um. You know, so
Speaker 1: that's what was happening in New Orleans. There was some
Speaker 1: some damage to people's rooms, there was some you know,
Speaker 1: fairly fairly substantial damage to the structures. But what happened
Speaker 1: to the west, in cities like Laplace, UM, which is
Speaker 1: about thirty miles west of New Orleans. UM, that's where
Speaker 1: you started to see like very severe flooding, very severe
Speaker 1: UM damage to structures, places like Homa, Lafitte, um Portchean,
Speaker 1: all these places that are closer to the coast. That's
Speaker 1: where you saw the real heavy destruction. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been framing let's been down the Bayou
Speaker 1: and in the river parishes, as we would say, um
Speaker 1: as like those places Katrina, because it's the destruction was
Speaker 1: was so total in that way. UM. So the way
Speaker 1: that you relate to UM, that type of again quote
Speaker 1: unquote disaster is much is much different, whereas what happened
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, UM is more of a continuation of
Speaker 1: of what could be called like a series of apocalypses
Speaker 1: that have been happening since colonization. UM. I think that's
Speaker 1: a that's an interesting point also that that that I
Speaker 1: want to talk about a little bit about US grain
Speaker 1: exports because I think that that's another part of this
Speaker 1: whole food system question that is important on a scale
Speaker 1: that I don't think people understands, like you know, it's
Speaker 1: just for furvent background for listeners. So when when all
Speaker 1: of the sort of giant like free trade agreements went
Speaker 1: into effect, um, you know, so so the free agerments
Speaker 1: are like, okay, you're you're not supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to like have government subsidies of agricultural products. And there's
Speaker 1: there's a couple of carve outs that were put into
Speaker 1: this now almost all of them. There are exceptions for
Speaker 1: there's a couple of like weird manufacturing stuff in like
Speaker 1: Italy and Germany that have carve outs. And the other
Speaker 1: big one is that the US government is allowed to
Speaker 1: just do enormous levels of agricultural subsidies that no one
Speaker 1: else like really in the world is allowed to like
Speaker 1: match or I mean do it. Like you know, you
Speaker 1: know if if if you try to have grand subsidies, right,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, the I M F will come
Speaker 1: after you, like you know, you're not allowed to do it.
Speaker 1: But then you know somethings that you have the US
Speaker 1: producing all of this like this. I mean it it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not really cheap, right, but it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, this enormously subsidized grain that nobody can actually
Speaker 1: really compete with. And I think that's that's like an
Speaker 1: interesting I was wondering what, like, how how how do
Speaker 1: you guys think about that in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: try trying to do decentralized I guess, a your culture
Speaker 1: in a place that's to a large extent this sort
Speaker 1: of like conduit of grain to the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: but in a way that like also inhibits those places
Speaker 1: from actually you know, having their own kind of like
Speaker 1: essentialized a your culture. UM. I mean I can speak
Speaker 1: a little bit about like what that kind of does
Speaker 1: to our context of like making it, like especially when
Speaker 1: I see people in the kind of organic gardening farming
Speaker 1: world trying to go on this model of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make you know, regenerative agriculture profitable, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it somehow compete with conventional agriculture. UM. And
Speaker 1: I guess I just don't really think that that is
Speaker 1: feasible in that in that terrain. Like you know, if
Speaker 1: if we're trying to compete on that same terrain, and
Speaker 1: we're competing with these absurd subsidies. It definitely just the
Speaker 1: same problem that you see around the world world where
Speaker 1: people aren't able to afford to grow their own thing
Speaker 1: because there's no way they can they can sell it
Speaker 1: as cheaply as as us grain. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: it's more important to sort of like look at like
Speaker 1: there's there's a piece in the almanac actually that sort
Speaker 1: of gets into this this issue of like, well, are
Speaker 1: we really growing enough food in this regenerative way, Like
Speaker 1: you know, we don't even hardly grow that many grains
Speaker 1: or that many high calorie things. A lot of things
Speaker 1: are just focused on vegetables and things like that. And like,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important critique. And also I
Speaker 1: think that the way out of it isn't just gonna
Speaker 1: be us trying harder or something or um Like the
Speaker 1: future iron vision for us, like really changing the food
Speaker 1: system kind of involves like really large scale expropriation of
Speaker 1: that land where the grain is being produced and of
Speaker 1: those huge machineries, those huge like satellite powered or satellite
Speaker 1: directed you know, allows and tractors and whatnot that are
Speaker 1: that are doing this stuff UM. And so like when
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about like the impact that a
Speaker 1: food project is having, or like a food justice project,
Speaker 1: I don't try to think like we're trying to replace
Speaker 1: uh aggro business on its own terms. I think like
Speaker 1: we're trying to be an ally or an aid to
Speaker 1: any kind of antagonistic sort of social movement that actually
Speaker 1: is going to create the conditions where like we can
Speaker 1: all get together and start to actually address these problems
Speaker 1: UM without being hindered by you know, things like private property.
Speaker 1: So I guess that that that that's a good point
Speaker 1: to to jump into the Almanac from. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: do do you want to just introduce the project a
Speaker 1: little bit and then we can talk about some of
Speaker 1: the stuff in it that I thought was really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the Almanac kind of came out of like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a like partially is like a joke.
Speaker 1: You know, we're like everyone gets the uh UM Almanac
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, it doesn't really relate too
Speaker 1: much to UM like most of us what we would
Speaker 1: be growing UM. So we had we had posited something
Speaker 1: like different, you know, something that that does kind of
Speaker 1: grapple with some of the questions of you know, growing
Speaker 1: food and kind of the conditions we live in. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can speak kind of yeah, I can even just
Speaker 1: I'll actually just read the back of it, because I
Speaker 1: think it speaks to it pretty well. This is a
Speaker 1: farmer's almanac for the end of the world. Growing food
Speaker 1: used to be a lot more straightforward, when you plant
Speaker 1: your okra at the same time every year like your
Speaker 1: grandpa did. Now we've got to be ready for anything,
Speaker 1: late spring freezes, freak heat waves that bring plants out
Speaker 1: of dormancy, to early fire season longer every year, the
Speaker 1: polar vortex, and if that wasn't enough, we've also got
Speaker 1: to contend with the fallout from breakages in the global
Speaker 1: supply chain. When millions of gallons of milk get poured
Speaker 1: down the drain and mountain of potatoes are left to rock.
Speaker 1: It's a world that calls for a new kind of
Speaker 1: farmers almanac. Today's crisis has roots in the earliest moments
Speaker 1: of land theft against Native people's, a process that has
Speaker 1: continued alongside hundreds of years of slavery and colonization. The
Speaker 1: way forward out of this mess will mean grappling with
Speaker 1: the crimes of the past. As well as charting a
Speaker 1: new course guided by black and Indigenous knowledge, creative experimentation
Speaker 1: and food production, and paying attention across generational and species divides.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what one like very concrete example of
Speaker 1: like how this farmer's almanac is different than what you
Speaker 1: might see just from the standard almanac is um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't have like oh, it's it's May, it's
Speaker 1: time to plant corn or whatever, because I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, that that was never that useful as for
Speaker 1: a publication that's meant to be used across this vast continent.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to be different everywhere, um, where
Speaker 1: you're going to plant things at which time? Um. But
Speaker 1: also like those standard resources that we would go to
Speaker 1: like for here, for the southeast for example, or wherever,
Speaker 1: Like if you're looking at something that was made a
Speaker 1: few decades ago, it's not going to actually be accurate
Speaker 1: or it's going to give you undo certainty about where
Speaker 1: the seasons line up and things like that. So you know,
Speaker 1: instead of telling people exactly when to plant their seeds,
Speaker 1: we have a chart that has the actual German nation
Speaker 1: temperatures of like all the major annual vegetables that people
Speaker 1: would want to grow. UM. And then we also have
Speaker 1: like the monthly notes from this local farm in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so you know, located in this area. You can you
Speaker 1: can also get a really precise view of like oh
Speaker 1: they were planning this, then they were harvesting this. Then. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that we hope to make something that was
Speaker 1: you know, our our original focus was something that was
Speaker 1: specific to New Orleans in the region, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Gulf South and the Southeast generally. UM, because
Speaker 1: we're so aware of the you know, the differences or
Speaker 1: what have you between growing through here and growing food
Speaker 1: in Ohio or something or whatever, and we all get
Speaker 1: these same seeds you know, out of Walmart or Lows
Speaker 1: or whatever and try and grow the exact same plants
Speaker 1: all over the place to trying to um hone in
Speaker 1: on some of that local perspective. UM with me with
Speaker 1: in terms of like getting some like folk tradition, getting
Speaker 1: some um, you know, anecdotal evidence about you know, things
Speaker 1: that worked with things that people are trying UM. And
Speaker 1: I think that that was that was fairly successful. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I think aside that we weren't really expecting
Speaker 1: as much was just the amount of national and even
Speaker 1: international UM kind of grasp that it had UM. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people like could could use something
Speaker 1: like this in their area UM. And it's fostered some
Speaker 1: really interesting connections for people that are experimenting in New York,
Speaker 1: for people that are are growing things or thinking about
Speaker 1: maybe UM food systems and how they relate to prisons
Speaker 1: in California or UM even you know, as far away
Speaker 1: as Brazil. UM. It's kind of began to foster a
Speaker 1: connection between Labelia Commons and a group called the BOGUS,
Speaker 1: which translates roughly to like the Web of People's UM
Speaker 1: in Brazil, so called Brazil UM, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: like experimental agroecology project that's very specific UM specifically focused
Speaker 1: on UM, you know, sovereignty, land stewardship, kind of following
Speaker 1: a little bit in the tradition of the Landless Workers movement.
Speaker 1: If anyone's familiar with mst UM, it's kind of following
Speaker 1: in that tradition a bit UM, but is heavily stewarded
Speaker 1: by Black and Indigenous knowledges. Yes, so I was something
Speaker 1: I think of a like a kind of pleasant surprise
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, I thought that was that was
Speaker 1: really interesting way of looking at it, because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's this tendency in the US too, you know
Speaker 1: when when when when we talk about sort of a
Speaker 1: relationship to the land, which which is something that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot in in the sort of essays that
Speaker 1: are are in the All Neck is about, you know,
Speaker 1: like there there there there's a piece that I related
Speaker 1: to a lot, which is about someone from Guam trying
Speaker 1: to sort of deal with like I mean particularly like
Speaker 1: legacies or Japanese imperialism and being driven from their home.
Speaker 1: And it was like, oh, hey, look like this is yeah,
Speaker 1: you know is this is this is someone who experienced
Speaker 1: which when Japan went west. And I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: my family had this basically very similar thing when they
Speaker 1: went east. And you know, but but there's there's I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very smartly you get you get
Speaker 1: to a point very quickly where you're trying to grapple
Speaker 1: with you know, how do how do you build connections
Speaker 1: to land? But then also how how does that work
Speaker 1: in a context in you know, in a context that's
Speaker 1: basically defined by southern colonialism and defined by by this
Speaker 1: sort by this occupation. And I think looking at the
Speaker 1: MSc looking at a lot of stuff that happened in
Speaker 1: Latin America. I mean there there's very similar to what
Speaker 1: you guys were talking about. In Brazil, there was a
Speaker 1: huge movement like this that was indigenous land recormation sort
Speaker 1: of agrocology in in Columbia for example too in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and they they run into this problem of you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a civil war going on in Columbia and
Speaker 1: they a lot of them getting murdered by sort of
Speaker 1: state paramilitary is in the army. But I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really interesting way of of looking
Speaker 1: at what what does what does lambak actually look like?
Speaker 1: And how how you deal with interacting with land. And also, yeah,
Speaker 1: the lands workers in particular, they use a lot of methods,
Speaker 1: but you know they actually do just take a like
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of land like back from this state
Speaker 1: and sort of back from corporate things. So I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how we all started talking to a lot of
Speaker 1: these a lot of the Brazilian groups, and how that
Speaker 1: sort of like that that perspective is shaped the way
Speaker 1: that like this, this this whole sort of project turned out. Um,
Speaker 1: So we were specifically to dispose UM some previous connections
Speaker 1: that some of us had UM in Brazil had when
Speaker 1: talking about what we were doing and just kind of
Speaker 1: keeping up an exchange of uh, you know, just like
Speaker 1: kind of updates from from the Gulf, and they would
Speaker 1: send updates from things going on down there. They kind
Speaker 1: of do the connection for us and put us towards them.
Speaker 1: And I reached out to day Dispobos and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're doing this thing, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: and inspired by what you're doing personally and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I I'd be curious to see what what what kind
Speaker 1: of relationship whatever we can foster. And they took it UM,
Speaker 1: you know, also with with some inspiration, seeing that this
Speaker 1: very clear connection in terms of relationship with land historically,
Speaker 1: this possession historically between the two continents across the Caribbean UM,
Speaker 1: the implementation on a wide scale of plantation, monoculture UM.
Speaker 1: It that was fueled entirely by slavery and genocide UM.
Speaker 1: And And I think that having that kind of like
Speaker 1: shared common history, I think gives us a good bedrock
Speaker 1: to like UM exchange notes about where we are now
Speaker 1: kind of multiplied by the fact that the way that um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so called emancipation happened here versus in Brazil, radically different
Speaker 1: UM the UM like the for instance, the existence of
Speaker 1: PET or the Workers Party in Brazil being such a
Speaker 1: force after the dictatorship and having that like strong populist
Speaker 1: movement UM that was you know, rooted a very traditional
Speaker 1: left UM that that fueled MST. Well, you don't have
Speaker 1: anything like that here. You know that that happens at
Speaker 1: the same time that here, Actually the workers movement in
Speaker 1: the US was was kind of getting defeated, I mean
Speaker 1: them up in the seventies. So with respect to like
Speaker 1: UM land back specifically, UM, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you I don't know if you will see it
Speaker 1: in the same forms. I doubt at least obviously would
Speaker 1: totally be there cheering it on. And I'm happy to
Speaker 1: see it, UM. But I think it looks a lot
Speaker 1: more like during the uprising last year. You saw in Chicago,
Speaker 1: for instance, UM, the when when like the trains were
Speaker 1: being expropriated as they were moving, taking goods out of
Speaker 1: these box cars, UM, and just expropriate in tons of goods,
Speaker 1: taking you know, taking goods that would normally be going
Speaker 1: you know, just commodities normally going to court just cut
Speaker 1: off in the middle of line or you know, UM,
Speaker 1: these these these these kind of like more um ah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say small scale, but um focus
Speaker 1: more on like infrastructural choke points rather than necessarily um,
Speaker 1: like having thousands of people swarming uh you know, a
Speaker 1: massive industrial agriculture UM set up in Kansas or something.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah, I think it's great to imagine that.
Speaker 1: I think I really love sharing the history of MST
Speaker 1: with people in America who have never heard it before,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a great way to kind of
Speaker 1: expand the imaginary of like what is possible, like what
Speaker 1: kind of actions are actually at our disposal like it
Speaker 1: and it truly is not, you know, look exactly like that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also really important for us to
Speaker 1: like not forget a lot of the similar histories here,
Speaker 1: like um. Part of the inspiration for the Almanac or
Speaker 1: what kind of drove us to to make it was
Speaker 1: some of us were doing a reading group of this
Speaker 1: book called Freedom Farmers that's about kind of like various
Speaker 1: uh um, black projects in the South for food autonomy
Speaker 1: after slavery, and a lot of it is about Fannie
Speaker 1: Let Hammer and UM Freedom Farms, and you know, we've
Speaker 1: we're definitely inspired for some of the little Bilia things
Speaker 1: by UM Fannie Leehammer's pig bank, which was a really
Speaker 1: cool thing where they just like started with a bunch
Speaker 1: of pigs and if you were in the community, like
Speaker 1: you get you get your pigs from, you get a
Speaker 1: couple of piglets from the pig bank, and then the
Speaker 1: inch risked on that is a couple of years later
Speaker 1: you got to give them a couple of pigs because
Speaker 1: you're producing your own pigs, and so the pig bank
Speaker 1: is like self sustaining. UM. And another thing from that
Speaker 1: book that was inspiring to us was UM reading about
Speaker 1: George Washington Carver's public education projects out of Tuskegee University
Speaker 1: that were UM just really inspiring in terms of like
Speaker 1: he was doing all of his own kind of independent
Speaker 1: research about soils and pests and all these different crops
Speaker 1: and everything and creating these farm bulletins that were then
Speaker 1: being distributed h to black farmers throughout the region to
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, share better practices, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff was like agro ecology before people had
Speaker 1: that word like he was very far ahead of his
Speaker 1: time in terms of understanding soil dynamics and and passed
Speaker 1: and things like that. Um, so yeah, we we definitely
Speaker 1: try to try to lift up all that history as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Yeah, I guess what Whene're the ether.
Speaker 1: Thing I thought was very interesting that you alluded to
Speaker 1: briefly in this was Yeah, because there's there's a session
Speaker 1: of this is talking about food in prisons, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about that part a little
Speaker 1: bit more, because that's a connection that I that I
Speaker 1: really don't think it's drawn very often here on me
Speaker 1: flip to the piece, right, I mean one of the
Speaker 1: things that it's kind of hard to describe. I do
Speaker 1: love the visual that that we have for this piece,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean it's just like the it's a
Speaker 1: striking image, you know. It's got like, um, in the center,
Speaker 1: there's a picture of a really high density chicken operation
Speaker 1: and there's somebody wearing sort of like a full tibex
Speaker 1: suit suit and just walking through this like massive herd
Speaker 1: of chickens. And then that's super imposed over this just
Speaker 1: like really nasty looking close up photo of a prison
Speaker 1: food draining and just like the canned veggies and the everything.
Speaker 1: And like, I mean, I don't I've been to jail
Speaker 1: a number of times, and the food is always terrible.
Speaker 1: It's always one of the things that you talk about
Speaker 1: or you can bond over or whatever. It's just how
Speaker 1: bad the food is. But I think people who haven't
Speaker 1: experienced that don't really think about just how much systematic
Speaker 1: like starvation is going on and mannutrition is going on,
Speaker 1: where it's like the only way you can possibly survive
Speaker 1: in these places is spending a bunch of extra money
Speaker 1: on commissary to get stuff that also isn't healthy, but
Speaker 1: at least you can get more calories and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And like I think that that there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of parallels between kind of the structure of prisons and
Speaker 1: the structure of our of our food system. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean one example that I used to talk about this
Speaker 1: is like the banana plantation, um, where like the you know,
Speaker 1: we have an entire variety of banana that's like basically
Speaker 1: stanct or it's it can't be grown commercially anymore because
Speaker 1: the banana industry, you know, functions by putting like warehousing
Speaker 1: these banas together and these like super tight plantation formations,
Speaker 1: you know, which really only makes sense if you're just
Speaker 1: trying to maximize your profits and get as much out
Speaker 1: of a small space as possible. But what it does
Speaker 1: is is the exact same thing that happens in prisons
Speaker 1: during COVID or with any kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: pathogen like tuberculosis or whatever. Um. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: like the trees are so close together that the fungus
Speaker 1: spread so rapidly, and then they're also like pumping all
Speaker 1: these things into to fight that, and they're actually breeding
Speaker 1: super funguses all the time. And at some point the
Speaker 1: banana that we eat now is going to also stop
Speaker 1: existing because of this. Um. And I guess I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can draw anything deeper out of those
Speaker 1: similarities than the fact that there's this like overriding logic
Speaker 1: of capitalism that is just like has no respect for
Speaker 1: these beings, like whether it is a person or a minatory,
Speaker 1: Like it's all just commodities and things to be warehouse.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I think. UM to add on that, I
Speaker 1: mean this this is the piece in there which is
Speaker 1: called the struggle for good food across walls. Um, I
Speaker 1: think it does a nice job of talking about how like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're talking about quote unquote food, food
Speaker 1: justice or what have you, like, UM like, how can
Speaker 1: we talk about that on the outside of all forgetting
Speaker 1: about just the most deplorable UM food conditions on the
Speaker 1: entire continent. UM. And I think that that it's it's
Speaker 1: really good at that. I think I would really like
Speaker 1: to see in the next year all the ways that um,
Speaker 1: the imaginaries of of inmates kind of go in in
Speaker 1: like attack that UM the like the lodge of prison
Speaker 1: food being completely deplorable. Like you know, you have all
Speaker 1: these forms of creativity of like making tortillas and stuff
Speaker 1: and like doing wild things with like stuff that's in
Speaker 1: the commissary, you know, contraband kind of ways of of
Speaker 1: making kind of life a little bit more livable in there.
Speaker 1: And and if anyone has um spent time in jail
Speaker 1: or prison or or kept up a relationship with someone
Speaker 1: on the inside or what have you, UM, everyone has
Speaker 1: a story about a way of UM making making food
Speaker 1: more UM interesting and joyful, and and like there becomes
Speaker 1: whole cultures around them. One of the things that we're
Speaker 1: starting to do in one of the farm spaces we
Speaker 1: work with outside of the city is is UM through
Speaker 1: pre existing relationships with inmates in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, which,
Speaker 1: for those that don't know, UM was a plantation civil
Speaker 1: War happens two years after the Civil War, it becomes
Speaker 1: a Louisiana State pen Potentiary. It's still a plantation. It's
Speaker 1: you know, uh this many times the descendants of the
Speaker 1: same enslaved folks who were on that plantation prior UM
Speaker 1: and you know it's a it's a guard on a
Speaker 1: horseback riding around while these UM folks pulling cotton, UM
Speaker 1: and so so through some of these relationships with some
Speaker 1: of these inmates who are m like kind of uh
Speaker 1: clandestine organizers, UM, we're starting to come up with ways
Speaker 1: to like grow food collaboratively with folks that are behind
Speaker 1: walls and and find ways to get food to either
Speaker 1: their family or maybe sell and get that into their commissary.
Speaker 1: Kind of just like trying to um spitball ideas about
Speaker 1: like different ways of producing food despite people's incarceration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that seems that seems like a really I guess
Speaker 1: we're you can really say is a necessary way for
Speaker 1: for this sort of food politics to go if it's
Speaker 1: going to actually deal with sort of both the land
Speaker 1: conditions and the conditions of just you know the fact
Speaker 1: that we haven't in that there's still just an enormous
Speaker 1: slafe population the US. And I think that kind of
Speaker 1: resistance in creativity, I think is how Yeah y'all, are
Speaker 1: y'll on the right track with with pushing it that way? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That this is this is sort of a bleique note
Speaker 1: to end on, I think, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a hopeful
Speaker 1: one too, And where can people find but basically all
Speaker 1: of your's work. And then also you talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about trying to get submissions for everything, So can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about how that how that's
Speaker 1: gonna work. Yeah, Um, so we're it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: been on hold a little bit because we've been like
Speaker 1: very active after IDA. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, trying
Speaker 1: to make sure our people are all good and supporting
Speaker 1: um in various places UM kind of doing like different
Speaker 1: workshops and stuff. And and because that our focus isn't
Speaker 1: just on food production, it's also like neighborhood survival or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we've been UM working with an old UM neighbor
Speaker 1: of one of ours who UM. You know, she's already
Speaker 1: been kind of doing this mutual aid stuff you know
Speaker 1: by any other name for decades, you know, letting people
Speaker 1: stay in their house, UM, feeding people. UM. She's like
Speaker 1: kind of like a block MoMA and she's really one
Speaker 1: of the last UM black home others in her neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So we're really trying to like help her achieve some autonomy.
Speaker 1: One way that we've been putting it is UM when
Speaker 1: all the airbnbs like lose their power because they're still
Speaker 1: reliant on the colonial world, Well, miss Elfie I could
Speaker 1: still have her lights on because she's going to be
Speaker 1: totally autonomous from the system. So UM, I think that
Speaker 1: that link is on our Instagram page if you click
Speaker 1: on the like UM the link or whatever, there's a
Speaker 1: go fund me that UM is UH where we've been
Speaker 1: putting a lot of our effort and really working with
Speaker 1: her on UM and then also like growing growing a
Speaker 1: garden like adjacent to her so that the people in
Speaker 1: that community are are food as as food autonomous as
Speaker 1: UM as we can get we can we can put
Speaker 1: it in the show notes yeah, and the the handle
Speaker 1: for both Twitter and Instagram is at Lobilia Commons and
Speaker 1: the Almanac. You can find links to the Almanac pdf
Speaker 1: on through either of those um if you want to
Speaker 1: just read it for free, and then UM there's also
Speaker 1: copies for sale on emergent Goods dot com. And for
Speaker 1: um submissions, I mean, yeah, like I said, we've been
Speaker 1: really behind on this just because of all this stuff,
Speaker 1: But for submissions, we're really um looking for folks um
Speaker 1: to contribute. Throw us a pitch. UM. I think if
Speaker 1: you've seen the first one or I've listened to this,
Speaker 1: you probably get something of an idea of what we're
Speaker 1: looking for UM, and we're happy to like talk to
Speaker 1: people about, like, you know, different ideas and bear with
Speaker 1: us if we're a little slower to spawn because we're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of still waist deep right now. But yes,
Speaker 1: submission for deadlines is the end of October UM, and
Speaker 1: you can email ideas or pitches or whatever to Lobelia
Speaker 1: Commons at proton mail dot com. And lastly, the project
Speaker 1: that I'm most focused on is the front Yard Orchard Initiative,
Speaker 1: where basically we just propagate as many fruit trees as
Speaker 1: cheaply as possible. Things that are really easy for us
Speaker 1: to grow from cuttings like figs, mulberries, things they're easy
Speaker 1: to grow from seed, like papaya, maringa, pecan um. And
Speaker 1: we basically just have some nice flyers that we put
Speaker 1: up and we advertise a bit on social media and
Speaker 1: also just kind of go door to door in neighborhoods
Speaker 1: where we already have gardens or connections and offer to
Speaker 1: give free fruit trees out to people, and we're also
Speaker 1: happy to plant them for people and then kind of
Speaker 1: offer a consultation on how to take care of it
Speaker 1: or whatever. And also if folks want to hear some
Speaker 1: of the pieces from the Earthbound Farmers Almanac read by
Speaker 1: some of the authors and then some interviews with those authors,
Speaker 1: you can check out this podcast called Partisan Gardens that
Speaker 1: did a really good episode that's kind of like an
Speaker 1: audio exploration of the Almanac. Cool. Yeah, people, people definitely
Speaker 1: definitely go read the Almanac. Is it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really good it's a really good piece of work.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, thank thank you too so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you for you suddenly wake up to the loud
Speaker 1: growling of a tactical vehicle must have left your window open.
Speaker 1: A few streets away, you can hear the troopers doing
Speaker 1: their morning patrols. This is closing in on week four
Speaker 1: of the all day curfew. Cops and state troopers have
Speaker 1: put checkpoints at every bridge and on all major streets
Speaker 1: for about every ten blocks. Your friends and the city's
Speaker 1: local liberal majority are now calling this what it is.
Speaker 1: Your city is functioning as a full on police state.
Speaker 1: National establishment media has been more hesitants to use that term,
Speaker 1: but your Fox watching conservative family from out of state
Speaker 1: has been texting you about how good it is that
Speaker 1: someone is finally establishing law and order and taking back
Speaker 1: the town. After months of senseless looting and destructive riots,
Speaker 1: You've been mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit
Speaker 1: your job when the recent amount of protests started up,
Speaker 1: which now means you don't qualify for the working hours
Speaker 1: exemption of the curfew. You've got enough money saved up
Speaker 1: for another month, but you're looking to get a grocery
Speaker 1: delivery job, which would have the added benefit of allowing
Speaker 1: you to go outside during the day. Luckily, you've been
Speaker 1: able to sneak out at night to do rooftopping and
Speaker 1: surveil the police's checkpoints and patrol routes in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You've noticed that the cops rarely look up. You've been
Speaker 1: feeding your intail into a surveillance database shared on a
Speaker 1: telegram channel ran by some various activists. After lying in
Speaker 1: bed gathering your thoughts for a few minutes, you finally
Speaker 1: roll out and pick out your clothes. Dark loose pants,
Speaker 1: a plane shirt, beanie, and a highs jacket. Ordinarily, you'd
Speaker 1: break into your red bull stache for morning caffeine, but
Speaker 1: you've already got plenty of energy. Today it's your boyfriend's birthday,
Speaker 1: and for the past week you've been planning to surprise him.
Speaker 1: You think there's finally enough information in the surveillance database
Speaker 1: to plan a trip us town with little to no
Speaker 1: law enforcement interaction. Between the in person reconnaissance and hacking
Speaker 1: into the city's traffic cams, which was surprisingly easy, you've
Speaker 1: been able to figure out a route using city buses
Speaker 1: and on foot that should be able to avoid checkpoints
Speaker 1: and the regular patrol routes from what you've seen online.
Speaker 1: Bus drivers won't ask for your work authorization card, and
Speaker 1: you're hoping the high his jacket will make it look
Speaker 1: like you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you grab your
Speaker 1: small yellow messenger bag and jam in a water bottle
Speaker 1: plus a ten of a half a dozen cupcakes. Deep breaths, slowly,
Speaker 1: twist the handle of your door, and stare down in
Speaker 1: your apartment hallway. You're on your way. You keep telling yourself,
Speaker 1: just act like you belong. After taking the stairs down
Speaker 1: to ground level, you make your way street side. This
Speaker 1: part you feel more confident about. You've been able to
Speaker 1: study the patrol patterns around your media area more carefully.
Speaker 1: The bus stop you're going to was just four blocks away.
Speaker 1: You can zig zig through two streets and to avoid
Speaker 1: the main drags. As you walk through the sidewalks, you
Speaker 1: keep your head down, but your eyes are darting side
Speaker 1: to side to get a lay of the land. Don't
Speaker 1: walk too fast or too slow. Match the people around you. Obviously,
Speaker 1: not many people are out right now, but there are
Speaker 1: enough to mirror their movement and pace. It feels like
Speaker 1: it took forever, but you get to the bus stop
Speaker 1: without incident or seeing a single cop. Waiting at bus
Speaker 1: stops always feels like an eternity, but today it's worse.
Speaker 1: Within a few minutes, the blue metro bus does pull up.
Speaker 1: The bus driver gestures you on. The electronic ticketing system
Speaker 1: isn't turned on. You peek up to the driver. The
Speaker 1: look in her eyes is telling you just a head
Speaker 1: on back. At least you know she's probably on your side.
Speaker 1: You picked this bus not because it's the most direct
Speaker 1: route to your boyfriend's place. It's not, but because he
Speaker 1: gets you close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and
Speaker 1: your internet buddies have mapped out. It's a slower, more
Speaker 1: jagged route, but at least you get to relax for
Speaker 1: a while and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can
Speaker 1: get an in person look at the rest of the
Speaker 1: city under the curfew and police occupation. The ride is
Speaker 1: now closing in on a little over half an hour,
Speaker 1: about ten more minutes until you get off. Your heart's
Speaker 1: racing you might actually do this. In your flash of
Speaker 1: nervous excitement, you look up ahead on the road and
Speaker 1: your face drops. About half a mile up ahead, you
Speaker 1: spot a checkpoint. Fuck no, this, this is wrong. This
Speaker 1: wasn't on the map. The checkpoint on this street was
Speaker 1: supposed to be further up the road. After you get off,
Speaker 1: your mind flashes through different possibilities. Did the cops change
Speaker 1: the checkpoint this morning? Wait? Did the police find the
Speaker 1: database map on telegram? And are getting at false info?
Speaker 1: You stop yourself from thinking because you realize you need
Speaker 1: to act now and think later. You jump out of
Speaker 1: your seat and sprint up the bus towards the driver.
Speaker 1: You blurt out, I need to get off this right now. Please.
Speaker 1: The draw ever looks ahead, looks at you, and tilts
Speaker 1: her head down and pulls over quick. That's all she
Speaker 1: says to you. You dart out of the bus and
Speaker 1: into the half residential, half retail labyrinth, and as you're
Speaker 1: running you hear sirens. Fuck they saw you. Your head
Speaker 1: swivels around to catch a glance. One car from the
Speaker 1: checkpoint is headed your way. You hope the bus driver
Speaker 1: doesn't get in trouble, but right now that's not your problem,
Speaker 1: you think. First thing you need to do is prevent
Speaker 1: the vehicle from pursuing you. So off the big streets.
Speaker 1: You take a second to tighten the messenger bag around
Speaker 1: your body. And here we go to You're right. You
Speaker 1: see a walled courtyard for a small two story apartment.
Speaker 1: Estimate the wall is eight feet tall. Doable. You turn
Speaker 1: out the street and run towards the wall, slowly gaining speed,
Speaker 1: jump up and punch your foot on the side. Then
Speaker 1: your arms reach up and grab the top. It's a
Speaker 1: bit of a struggle to pull yourself up. You've got
Speaker 1: some stuff weighing you down and you're a bit out
Speaker 1: of practice, but you get up. You hop down onto
Speaker 1: the other side and keep going for now. You batrol
Speaker 1: through some dense bushes and vault a few small railings
Speaker 1: as you traverse the side streets. Soon enough, you're far
Speaker 1: enough away from the car, with plenty of obstacles in
Speaker 1: between you and it that you feel like you can
Speaker 1: catch a quick breather. Now you have a choice hide
Speaker 1: it out here for a bit or figure out a
Speaker 1: way to your boyfriends. You still got a decent sense
Speaker 1: of where you are. The destination should be only about
Speaker 1: ten blocks away. Now in a diagonal direction, you'll get
Speaker 1: plenty of time to rest your boyfriend's place, so you
Speaker 1: figure you should continue on. As you're about to head
Speaker 1: on your way to armored state troopers turned the corner
Speaker 1: on foot. You remember you're still pretty close to the checkpoint.
Speaker 1: One look at you with your hands on your knees.
Speaker 1: As you pant. The cops know you're out of place. Stop,
Speaker 1: yells the cop. You're being detained. Fuck, time to book it.
Speaker 1: Gonna have to think as you run. Good news is
Speaker 1: is that they're armor. Bad news is that you're tired
Speaker 1: and your outfit is blown. You can change clothes once
Speaker 1: you get to your boyfriends, so you decide the best
Speaker 1: course of action now is to make it hard for
Speaker 1: two people in armor to follow you. Time to put
Speaker 1: some obstacles between you and them. You're already mostly out
Speaker 1: of the retail area, which means it's time to hop
Speaker 1: some backyard fences Ferris Bueller's Day Off Shit. You make
Speaker 1: a sharp left turn behind a car and into someone's
Speaker 1: yard and up and over their fence. One hand grabs
Speaker 1: on top, one hand goes to the far side, and
Speaker 1: you flip your body over. Next few fences are shorter,
Speaker 1: regular speed vaults will do. The sound of the clinky
Speaker 1: tactle boots chasing you gets quieter as you traverse through
Speaker 1: the yards and zig zigging around blocks. Before you know it,
Speaker 1: you're on the back street of your partner's place. Only
Speaker 1: a few more steps and you can see their backyard
Speaker 1: in the distance. You quick to in your head and
Speaker 1: look around. From what you can see, you've lost the
Speaker 1: State troopers. You scurry through four more yards before you
Speaker 1: reach your target. You let it a sigh of relief.
Speaker 1: You jog past the side yard towards the front. You
Speaker 1: probably should use the front door before you knock. You
Speaker 1: take a look inside your messenger bag. You unclipped the latch,
Speaker 1: and inside lies a smushed pile of cupcake crumbs with
Speaker 1: pink frosting coating insides of your bag. H Well, at
Speaker 1: least I made it in one piece, you say out loud.
Speaker 1: After an exhausting trek, you finally knock on the door.
Speaker 1: It could happen here. Podcast Robert Evans. Sophie is not
Speaker 1: here today, so I get to open the episode with
Speaker 1: a tonal grunting um because she was unable to stop me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast that this is talking about things
Speaker 1: falling apart? How to you know make it not? Maybe? Uh?
Speaker 1: My guest today, well, my my co host today first
Speaker 1: is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how are you doing today? I'm
Speaker 1: doing good good. We have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: fun update. This actually happened last week but this will
Speaker 1: be the first episode we're recording since it happened. UM.
Speaker 1: Last week we put up some links to ago fund
Speaker 1: me and a couple of different episodes of Bastards and
Speaker 1: of It Could Happen here to try to help a
Speaker 1: woman named Ruba who lives in Portland, UM and is
Speaker 1: a community activists save her house. UM. When we started
Speaker 1: the fundraiser, she'd raised about twenty eight grand to to
Speaker 1: you know, get basically keep her home. UM, and it's
Speaker 1: up to the fifty grand she needed. Y'all did that
Speaker 1: in about three days. UM. So you've you've you've kept
Speaker 1: a woman in her home UM and allowed her and
Speaker 1: her family to stay where they are. And I'm just
Speaker 1: extremely grateful to everybody who donated, who shared. UM. It's
Speaker 1: just awesome. UM. You know this comes after earlier in
Speaker 1: this year you all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. UM.
Speaker 1: I just continued to be very impressed with with how
Speaker 1: how much people who listen to these shows are willing
Speaker 1: to throw down to help people out. So thank you all. UH,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison,
Speaker 1: what don't we what do we? What do we? What
Speaker 1: are we? What are we? What are we talking about today?
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna be talking about and discussing two
Speaker 1: of kind of my favorite practical skill sets hey been
Speaker 1: training for I don't know seven eight, I think almost
Speaker 1: eight years now. UM, and it's what, yeah, one of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's
Speaker 1: also useful for fun. We're talking about, uh parkour, which
Speaker 1: people may have hurt me discussed before, but also just
Speaker 1: kind of like stealth in general, um, and how to
Speaker 1: become mindful of your presence among other people. UM. As
Speaker 1: a big, clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in
Speaker 1: aggressive situations, I can confirm that your parkour is very
Speaker 1: very effective because you are a fast, little set of
Speaker 1: a bit very good at getting away from the cops
Speaker 1: and getting to where you need to be to film things.
Speaker 1: It was always, um kind of amazing, as frustrating as
Speaker 1: it was sometimes when you would when you would start
Speaker 1: out ahead of everybody, but yeah, I can't argue with
Speaker 1: the results. So and to help us kind of talk
Speaker 1: about parkorn and stealth, I have brought on a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who is the person who mostly taught me
Speaker 1: um parker and stealth. My friend Rick, who has been
Speaker 1: teaching Parker for a long time. UM, say hi Rick,
Speaker 1: that that that's right. Rick is very not super social,
Speaker 1: so it's I think it's amazing that I was able
Speaker 1: to convince him to come in a podcast. Pretty funny. Um.
Speaker 1: First off, Rick, do you want to kind of just
Speaker 1: like give your definition of like park or in general,
Speaker 1: because I know whenever we say Parker, everyone just thinks
Speaker 1: to the office, um, which I know you find frustrating.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for people who maybe aren't as into it
Speaker 1: as us, don't want to just give the kind of
Speaker 1: a brief overview of of Parker as like a concept. Uh,
Speaker 1: Parker is really annoy and concept to actually pin down. Um.
Speaker 1: But basically speaking, it's movement with purpose. You are somewhere,
Speaker 1: you want to get somewhere, and you're trying to find
Speaker 1: the best way of doing that. When we're training, we
Speaker 1: kind of focus on efficiency, safety, speed, and the reason
Speaker 1: behind the movement. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's thinking of
Speaker 1: it more as like the movement with purpose or like
Speaker 1: like intentional movement, Um, is much better than thinking of
Speaker 1: it's like like parkour isn't like flips like flips and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff is more of what we call
Speaker 1: like UM free running. It's it's more of like a
Speaker 1: creative expression. It's more of like a kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like a sport, whereas like Parker is more usually
Speaker 1: I mean, there's always gonna people that are going to
Speaker 1: fight you on this in the park, in the Parker community,
Speaker 1: but it's generally Parker is kind of more based on utility.
Speaker 1: So like last last summer at the protests, I I
Speaker 1: used you know, Parker in a lot of different ways,
Speaker 1: both to like you know, get somewhere specifically or parkor
Speaker 1: is grade is like a recovery tool, like if you
Speaker 1: get pushed over by cops. UM, park Work would be
Speaker 1: very useful for like getting up very fast. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like all that kind of more practical side of things.
Speaker 1: And I've used Parker you know before I was doing
Speaker 1: filming at different kind of activism related type things. It's
Speaker 1: just it's a super useful skill to have UM And
Speaker 1: today I wanted to talk talk a bit about like
Speaker 1: Parker's practical application in you know, conflict ish scenarios, but
Speaker 1: also wanted to touch on stealth um as you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't need Parker and if you can avoid
Speaker 1: a scenario where you have to use it would be
Speaker 1: kind of great. So I've asked Rick to kind of
Speaker 1: prepare a few things on stealth, which then we'll kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, bounce off each other and talk kind of
Speaker 1: a general discussion of Parker and stealth in general and
Speaker 1: how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. Um. So, Rick,
Speaker 1: where would you like to start for you know, stealth overview? Well,
Speaker 1: in conflict with other people, there's like three different levels
Speaker 1: of the conflict um and all of these get trained
Speaker 1: in different places. Usually there's the actual um like conflict.
Speaker 1: The combat, which is more of a martial arts or
Speaker 1: gun training or weapon training of any kind as well,
Speaker 1: compares you for that Beneath that is the Parker level,
Speaker 1: where you can avoid getting into the conflict in the
Speaker 1: first place. If you can get away from the situation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're more of an arm's length of way, then
Speaker 1: you can create more distance between you and someone it's
Speaker 1: trying to hurt you. And in nine percent of conflict situations,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a better self defense option than
Speaker 1: literally any weapon you could carry. Just getting the hell
Speaker 1: away is always the preferred. There's there's there's a really
Speaker 1: good comic. Um, it's it's like it's it's like a
Speaker 1: it's like a like like a comedy comic of like
Speaker 1: someone someone trying to get into like a knife fight
Speaker 1: and you're just like, nope, I'm running away because there's
Speaker 1: no there's no winner in a knife fight. The only
Speaker 1: way to win a knife fight is to be oh
Speaker 1: far away from someone with a knife. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: literally Again, the only justified situation I can think of
Speaker 1: too physically getting into a knife fight is like what
Speaker 1: happened on the Portland Max train when someone else can't
Speaker 1: get away. Yeah, you're still gonna stick to them. And
Speaker 1: the two guys who did that died. They died. Yeah yeah, um,
Speaker 1: not that they did the wrong thing. They did the
Speaker 1: only thing they could. But that's what a knife fight is.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's being able to get the funk away
Speaker 1: is the best self defense. Yeah. I carry weapons with
Speaker 1: me wherever I go, but I don't want to ever
Speaker 1: use them. My first response is always going to be
Speaker 1: look for an escape path. Yeah yeah, yeah. A weapon
Speaker 1: is only for if you can't get away or if
Speaker 1: someone else can't get away. So pretty much like yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always been interested because again I've watched you know,
Speaker 1: Garrison hop Away from Cops over ps is where I
Speaker 1: had to like, you know, fall over the fence essentially
Speaker 1: because I'm not nearly as good. I'm someone who exercises,
Speaker 1: But like number one, is it even possible to like
Speaker 1: learn this stuff without fucking your thirty three year old
Speaker 1: body up a bunch in the process. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of scared of is like over sixty, and he's good,
Speaker 1: very good. He's actually like one of my high intermediate,
Speaker 1: low advanced students, honestly, and he started when he was
Speaker 1: like fifty. How do you uh, I mean, like it
Speaker 1: it just seems like injury, I guess because my my
Speaker 1: my stereotypical view of it is like a bunch of
Speaker 1: jumping up on buildings and leaping over stuff like, um,
Speaker 1: it seems like injuries would be a pretty common fact. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of like always been my first
Speaker 1: concern there, like how do you how do you how
Speaker 1: do you train people to do this stuff with a
Speaker 1: minimum of risk? Well, that's kind of always the focus
Speaker 1: of my teaching. There certainly are other instructors out there,
Speaker 1: like the guy who taught me Parker was Basically, this
Speaker 1: is a con vault. This is what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Do it my training, Like, I sucked at Parker when
Speaker 1: I started, So my teaching method has been coming at
Speaker 1: this as a sort of Okay, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: break this down into as many pieces as I can,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. Um,
Speaker 1: Bumps and bruises do happen when you're training Parker. That's
Speaker 1: just unavoidable. It's learning how to do walking but fancy.
Speaker 1: So you get bruised when you're learning how to walk.
Speaker 1: You get bruised when you're learning every technique in Parker.
Speaker 1: But I've been doing it for fourteen years now and
Speaker 1: I've never broken any of my bones. If you do
Speaker 1: it right, you should be able to stay safe when
Speaker 1: training you. Definitely, if you can get someone who's more experienced,
Speaker 1: getting them to break down steps for you was very useful,
Speaker 1: whether that be like a park Ord gym in your
Speaker 1: area or just like a friend that that's that's been
Speaker 1: that's been messing around. Trying to like train with somebody
Speaker 1: is probably one of the most important things, um, is
Speaker 1: to have someone else there both if you like want
Speaker 1: like get hurt, you need help, but to to kind
Speaker 1: of prevent to help prevent that from even happening in
Speaker 1: the first place, because there's a lot of like very
Speaker 1: simple moves that can be introduced in very safe environments.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've been wanting to get Roberts down to
Speaker 1: the gym for like over a year now just to
Speaker 1: go over like a few basic kind of stuff that's
Speaker 1: just really really useful, pretty and like pretty easy. Like
Speaker 1: we're not we're not jumping to like you know, doing
Speaker 1: like roof topping right where we're like jumping from one
Speaker 1: roof to another. We're starting by we're starting by being like,
Speaker 1: here's like a concrete barricade, what's the safest way of
Speaker 1: getting over this if you're under pressure? Right? It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's that kind of stuff that's specifically useful and
Speaker 1: like conflict scenarios, right, because like when we're when we're
Speaker 1: facing in a riot line, I'm not gonna be doing
Speaker 1: like flips and cart wheels to like get over fences.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be like, what's the safest, fastest way
Speaker 1: I can get over this thing? Well, making sure I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get like shot with the rubber bullet, Right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of it's it's it's it's it's very different
Speaker 1: from like what you see on YouTube, right, YouTube's very
Speaker 1: like showy people are like trying to like basically when
Speaker 1: what you see on YouTube is people are doing people
Speaker 1: are doing like a choreographic performance, whereas Parker from a
Speaker 1: utility standpoint is very different from what you see online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the things that we try to
Speaker 1: train to when we're training Parkre is we just give
Speaker 1: ourselves an environment and say, okay, I'm going now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like do it over and over again and try
Speaker 1: to figure out what's the best way of getting over
Speaker 1: this specific path. Right, if you can like make a
Speaker 1: designed path, be like, you know, even doing this at
Speaker 1: like a playground or like any any place with like logs,
Speaker 1: you know, you can do Parker in the forest and stuff,
Speaker 1: be like, I'm just like setting this path and experiment
Speaker 1: with how many ways can I move through this kind
Speaker 1: of set set of obstacles, um, And you can kind
Speaker 1: of figure out Parker on your own on in in
Speaker 1: in that kind of way, because because your body knows
Speaker 1: what it's gonna do, Like, you know, people have been
Speaker 1: moving like this for thousands and thousands of years. It's
Speaker 1: only in the past few hundred years we've like kind
Speaker 1: of lost this ability, or it's like become it's become
Speaker 1: less necessary. So like we we know how to interact
Speaker 1: with our environment in creative ways, Like we we we
Speaker 1: know how to do this, but it's just that, you know,
Speaker 1: we the past, the past few centuries, it's been less important.
Speaker 1: And I think Parker is really fun because you can
Speaker 1: kind of rediscover interacting with your environment in these you know,
Speaker 1: kind of more wild ways. It's something that we all
Speaker 1: do as children, just like evolutionarily for some reason, as
Speaker 1: children we do this as play. We climb trees and
Speaker 1: we try to go over fences. It's just that something
Speaker 1: in our society has made a shift so that when
Speaker 1: we become adults, it's suddenly not acceptable for us to
Speaker 1: do this anymore. Yeah, I mean, I can remember when
Speaker 1: I was a little kid growing up on the farm.
Speaker 1: We had a bullpen because we kept the bowl away
Speaker 1: from the cows, and my my cousin and I would
Speaker 1: hop over the fence and we would throw stuff at
Speaker 1: the bowl, and then when it started to charge, we
Speaker 1: would hop back over the fence. Like I mean, Obviously
Speaker 1: I'd never do that today because it's mean to throw
Speaker 1: things at a bowl I was six. But also I
Speaker 1: couldn't physically hop over the fence that way today. But
Speaker 1: I'm guessing within like, I don't know, even just like
Speaker 1: a few hours of practice, you could figure out a
Speaker 1: lot of ways together. I could be back to fucking
Speaker 1: with bowls. Is what exactly? You don't need to kiss
Speaker 1: kiss the bull fucking goodbye? You can? We can? We
Speaker 1: can go back to this. We could go I could,
Speaker 1: I could return to tradition. Yes, exactly. What is the
Speaker 1: degree of this that can be done without? Again, like
Speaker 1: you know we have we have a wide variety of
Speaker 1: income levels that listen to this show? Um, what is
Speaker 1: the degree this can be done without like paying for training?
Speaker 1: You know that? Like, like, how is it even possible
Speaker 1: to like start on this kind of thing if you're
Speaker 1: in reasonable shape, you know, on your own, without paying someone,
Speaker 1: Because that that seems like a recipe for breaking something
Speaker 1: to me, But again, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Ship It is very much about knowing yourself and knowing
Speaker 1: what you're ready for. Uh, this was something I mean
Speaker 1: I say that I never broke a bone in my training,
Speaker 1: But there were a couple of times I started pushing
Speaker 1: myself further than I should have, and it would have
Speaker 1: been really good to have someone there to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: you probably not ready for this yet. Let's break this
Speaker 1: down into little pieces. But if you come at it
Speaker 1: methodically and you don't endanger yourself too much. What I
Speaker 1: started out with in Parker is I would just put
Speaker 1: a piece of tape on the ground and another piece
Speaker 1: of tape and jump from one piece of tape to
Speaker 1: the other. And went out to parking lots and jumped
Speaker 1: from just an arbitrary pebble to the curb on the
Speaker 1: parking lot and found some just railings and learned how
Speaker 1: to go over those railings safely, and gradually just started
Speaker 1: building up to higher and higher things. You always want
Speaker 1: to start at ground level when you're training Parkers. Don't
Speaker 1: go up to high places for your first thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there there's a lot of like instructional videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube too that that are not just like showing off.
Speaker 1: It's actually people trying to like break down movements. So
Speaker 1: you can like get find a specific video and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to, you know, bring this on my phone,
Speaker 1: go out into like a playground a parking lot, like
Speaker 1: like a wooded area and be like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: this is this one vault. I don't watch the video
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna try to replicate it myself. That's really
Speaker 1: the the kind of easiest, cheapest way to kind of
Speaker 1: break that down without having to you know, pay someone
Speaker 1: tons of money. Um. You know, if parker classes aren't
Speaker 1: the most expensive thing. Um, so that's if if you
Speaker 1: do have a little bit of disposable income. I I
Speaker 1: like park work classes. I did them for a long time,
Speaker 1: but there was a certain point actually that like I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford classes anymore. And luckily I've been doing park
Speaker 1: wore enough at that point that I was able to
Speaker 1: become an assistant instructor, which means I've got like a
Speaker 1: free I got like a free membership in exchange for
Speaker 1: you know, helping out in classes, like a few hours
Speaker 1: a week. So that's what that's what I did for
Speaker 1: years when I couldn't afford classes, is it's just helps
Speaker 1: help teach, which I mean eventually I got leveled up
Speaker 1: to being like a full time instructor. Um. So that
Speaker 1: is kind of the other way is you know, once
Speaker 1: you get enough stuff, there are you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: ways canna like make friends who know more Parker than you.
Speaker 1: You can do you know, outdoor training with them, which
Speaker 1: can be free. Um, but if you if you do
Speaker 1: really want like a like a gym environment, there is
Speaker 1: there's ways of making classes not the most expensive thing.
Speaker 1: There's online groups that schedule meetups every now and then,
Speaker 1: So if you can find an online group in your area,
Speaker 1: you can go to one of their meetups and ask
Speaker 1: for advice. Not everyone's going to give the best advice.
Speaker 1: There are some people in the park or community who
Speaker 1: are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be in a cast
Speaker 1: half of the time. Um, the more advanced people, yeah,
Speaker 1: they generally, so always take advice with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Not everyone knows every rething, and no one knows your
Speaker 1: body as well as you do. So you've got to
Speaker 1: keep yourself safe above everything else. You can't get better
Speaker 1: at park Or if you break both of your legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always So a couple of questions here. Number one
Speaker 1: would be obviously, I don't expect you know, like somebody's
Speaker 1: in Michigan or whatever. I don't expect you to know
Speaker 1: the best parkour instructor there. But if somebody is looking
Speaker 1: at going the gym route, are there kind of some
Speaker 1: hard and fast rules for determining whether or not these
Speaker 1: folks know what they're doing? Like, is there any kind
Speaker 1: of advice you have in terms of picking a gym
Speaker 1: or is it just kind of like go into Google
Speaker 1: Maps and see see where the parkour will be. That's
Speaker 1: a little bit tough because especially since COVID, there's not
Speaker 1: many options for park or gins out here. Um, my
Speaker 1: best advice would be go and if they let you
Speaker 1: just watch a class and see what's going on. Um,
Speaker 1: see how many people have casts? Yeah, yeah, back when
Speaker 1: I was learning parkour originally we would have basically two
Speaker 1: people in a cast all the time, just in the class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that the guy that I was trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with the whole times than three stints
Speaker 1: in a cast. Yeah, just funny because I've never got
Speaker 1: a serious injury ever. I was. I was always more
Speaker 1: careful in my training, but like, the most I've gotten
Speaker 1: is like is like you know, like bruises and stuff.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've and I got to a relatively high
Speaker 1: level of parker like if years ago only took classes
Speaker 1: from me but was always on breaking things down and
Speaker 1: making them accessible and safe. True. True, yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: there is there's definitely people who are more who are
Speaker 1: more carefree with their body and okay with hurting themselves
Speaker 1: to do something cool. Yeah, and some people will get
Speaker 1: away with that. So for folks who are there don't
Speaker 1: have the financial means to go to a gym where
Speaker 1: there's just nothing in their area, because as you said,
Speaker 1: there's a play. Um, if people are gonna you've given
Speaker 1: some advice and like how to start trying yourself. Are
Speaker 1: there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks
Speaker 1: who are you know, looking to get on unless on
Speaker 1: their own dip their toes in um, you know, YouTube
Speaker 1: channels or or people who you know do good like
Speaker 1: writing breakdowns, anything that you would, uh, you would push
Speaker 1: folks towards. I haven't been up to date on it recently. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of the videos out there are garbage. UM.
Speaker 1: What I recommend you look for is you look for,
Speaker 1: first of all, explanation. UM. Second of all, if you
Speaker 1: can find videos of someone who's training something and they
Speaker 1: failed to do the move that they're trying to do correctly,
Speaker 1: and they fail to do the move that they're trying
Speaker 1: to do correctly. They fail and fail and fail and
Speaker 1: fail and then succeed. M hm. That's an honest video.
Speaker 1: That's one that I would listen to more because they
Speaker 1: understand the process. The other videos out there are sort
Speaker 1: of greatest hits compilation and you don't get to see
Speaker 1: the whole process that goes into that. So I don't
Speaker 1: have a sense. I don't have any specific person or
Speaker 1: channel to recommend, but when you're going out there and
Speaker 1: looking for resources, just make sure that the person is
Speaker 1: being some understanding into the fact that this is the
Speaker 1: process of training and it's not just this is how
Speaker 1: it's done. Do it now, you can do it. There
Speaker 1: is there is a there is like a Parkore wiki
Speaker 1: which was like you know Parkore dot fandom dot com
Speaker 1: that you can you can find like just like lists
Speaker 1: of all of the moves and they give you very
Speaker 1: like simple explanations of them and they and they link
Speaker 1: to some videos um and generally like if if you
Speaker 1: just want to learn more about it, then that's then
Speaker 1: that can be a good resource. Just so you're familiar
Speaker 1: with all the different types of movement. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: make sure you take every video with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: and you know, watch other watch other people's explanations and
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, I kind of like the way this
Speaker 1: person describes it versus this person, because you know, everyone
Speaker 1: teaches differently. Everyone teaches for kind of you know, different
Speaker 1: differently body types for different like you know, body like
Speaker 1: performance models. Um. So you know, because you can't just
Speaker 1: apply the same thing to everyone because everyone's everyone is different.
Speaker 1: But you know, the parkore WICKI is a decent resource. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you know there's YouTube is especially since since
Speaker 1: the two thousands, there's been a plethora of content, most
Speaker 1: of most of it bad, but you know there's lots
Speaker 1: to at least look for. Al Right, Um, anything else
Speaker 1: you wanted to get into, Yeah, I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of branch off of like the parkour discussion into kind
Speaker 1: of like, uh, the more kind of stealth based discussion
Speaker 1: of of kind of being aware of your presence in
Speaker 1: relation to other people and recond I know you were
Speaker 1: talking about like the different levels of stealth. So you've
Speaker 1: got the combat training which prevents you from getting killed
Speaker 1: or captured in uh, the worst of scenarios, and then
Speaker 1: we have our core that you can use to prevent
Speaker 1: the combat in the first place, and stealth is what
Speaker 1: you use to prevent the chase from happening in the
Speaker 1: first place. It's kind of a tree of I really
Speaker 1: don't want to have to fight someone, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to run away instead. I really don't want to have
Speaker 1: to run away from someone, so I'm just going to
Speaker 1: try and not to be noticed by them instead. And
Speaker 1: that's been a lot of what my training in Parker
Speaker 1: has been focused around, is just staying de escalated as
Speaker 1: possible with everything. Yeah, because we me and Rick have
Speaker 1: focused most of our Parker training on on stealth UM
Speaker 1: as opposed to being you know, super strong or super
Speaker 1: powerful UM. And stealth always a really hard concept to
Speaker 1: talk about because it's kind of like nebulous in nature,
Speaker 1: because stealth isn't being invisible, right, It's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not being totally unnoticed. It's want It's it's it's wanting
Speaker 1: to craft the way you're seen in a specific way. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it's always been very difficult for me to explain what
Speaker 1: stealth is. The most recent definition that I've given for
Speaker 1: it is that's everything that you do, everything that you
Speaker 1: are gives off a certain amount of noise and a
Speaker 1: certain type of noise. So the way that you dress.
Speaker 1: You can dress in a very loud way with a
Speaker 1: hive is vest day glow, colors, um, something that makes
Speaker 1: you really easy to notice. But if you're in the
Speaker 1: right environment, that might be the right type of noise
Speaker 1: to be making to blend into a crowd. Like a
Speaker 1: three piece suit is also a very loud outfit to wear,
Speaker 1: But if you're on the streets of New York, that's normal.
Speaker 1: If you come into a park origin wearing a three
Speaker 1: piece suit, it's very abnormal. So that's not the right
Speaker 1: type of noise if you're trying to blend in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of it's about kind of constructing the way
Speaker 1: people see you based on what environment you're in and
Speaker 1: who you're trying to remain undetected from, right, because I
Speaker 1: mean they were like not even necessarily undetected, but just
Speaker 1: detected in a specific way. Because people eyes. People's eyes
Speaker 1: can glaze over a lot of a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: If if just that the right puzzle pieces are put
Speaker 1: into their brain, that it's like nothing nothing to see here.
Speaker 1: Every everything is normal. Nothing not nothing. To be alerted, right,
Speaker 1: because what you're trying to do is prevent someone from
Speaker 1: being like alerted to your presence. That is kind of
Speaker 1: the main thing. So you can be within someone's sitelines,
Speaker 1: but the way that you're dressed, the way that you're moving,
Speaker 1: the way that you hold yourself fails to get their attention.
Speaker 1: They're subconscious registers that you're there, but it doesn't register
Speaker 1: consciously to them that you're there. It's the gray Man
Speaker 1: stuff that we were talking about with Chelsea, which again
Speaker 1: there's very frustrating chetty dimension to it. But the the
Speaker 1: original idea, before it got taken over as an entire
Speaker 1: fashion aesthetic, was if you're prepared, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to make yourself prepared for badge situations, you don't
Speaker 1: want to wear a bunch of tactical gear. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be dressed in like five combat pants. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be carrying like military backpacks and like
Speaker 1: the cargo pants with the you know, clearly bulging with weaponry.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be open carrying a gun. You
Speaker 1: want to be dressed, however, is going to least to
Speaker 1: least set you apart from the crowd. And that is,
Speaker 1: as you said, got a vary. No, it's not a
Speaker 1: matter of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. Um,
Speaker 1: you're in downtown Salt Lake City, you know, a black
Speaker 1: hoodie and jeans might stand out more than it does
Speaker 1: if you're in downtown San Francisco, in which case you're
Speaker 1: gonna look like a million other people. I mean, And generally,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to avoid being seen, I recommend against
Speaker 1: wearing black basically at all times, especially if you're trying
Speaker 1: to remain like actually invisible at night. You don't want
Speaker 1: to wear black because black is usually too dark. Um,
Speaker 1: you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: generally black is should be avoided. Um. Of course, like
Speaker 1: black block is a whole separate thing because black block
Speaker 1: are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context. But
Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of cases, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be in black block at protests, or you want
Speaker 1: to be able to switch from black block to what
Speaker 1: we call like normy block very quickly. So like you know,
Speaker 1: quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um
Speaker 1: that you can like practice like you can you can
Speaker 1: just practice doing quick changes like in your apartment, be
Speaker 1: like how fast can I get from this outfit to
Speaker 1: this outfit? Um in like a small space, right you can?
Speaker 1: You can you can BacT to these even like outside
Speaker 1: but specifically for like black block, changing both in and
Speaker 1: out of is a skill that needs to be practiced. Um.
Speaker 1: But overall, I think like there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other kind of methods Like black
Speaker 1: blocks are very specific tactic, but it's not a tactic
Speaker 1: that needs to get applied all the time. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's very's you should be mindful that it has a
Speaker 1: lot of downsides. Um. And based on what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do, there's a lot of other ways to dress
Speaker 1: that would maybe be better. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's this
Speaker 1: um you know, it's a little bit like angles of
Speaker 1: it are kind of what we talked about even in
Speaker 1: like the last week when we were talking about like storing,
Speaker 1: you know, food and canning food and like the value
Speaker 1: of paying attention to the cycle of like what is
Speaker 1: in stock and what is not stocked in stock during
Speaker 1: what seasons. It's kind of the same thing at the
Speaker 1: value of paying attention to how people dress and how
Speaker 1: people move and like, what is a normal way to
Speaker 1: move about and wherever you live as opposed to like
Speaker 1: what stands out like it, there's a lot of value
Speaker 1: and a lot of self defense value and just kind
Speaker 1: of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting
Speaker 1: an eye for what will stand out and what won't
Speaker 1: stand out. If you're if you, if you are someone
Speaker 1: for whom being able to blend in is something you
Speaker 1: see value in. You know, Yeah, Rick, did do you
Speaker 1: do you have any things kind of on that side
Speaker 1: of things or any like exercises people can do to
Speaker 1: improve their own personal stealth. Yeah, it's very very situational.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of study many different environments. The
Speaker 1: biggest advice that I give people for stealth all the
Speaker 1: time is, um, pay attention. You have to pay attention
Speaker 1: to the smallest details when I'm even just moving around
Speaker 1: my house, like the bathroom door lock. Um, when you
Speaker 1: twist the lock, the button pops out and makes a
Speaker 1: huge noise. I actually place my thumb over it and
Speaker 1: deaden the sound as I'm doing it, and I pay
Speaker 1: attention to the kind of noise that I make in
Speaker 1: every situation and try to minimize that as much as possible.
Speaker 1: I pay attention to which parts of my house make
Speaker 1: noise when you step on them and avoid those places.
Speaker 1: Um I UM. Basically, just pay attention to every noise
Speaker 1: that my body makes, that my environment makes as I'm
Speaker 1: moving through it. Also, you have to pay at tension
Speaker 1: and study other people in different environments. You can go
Speaker 1: to a grocery store and watch the body language of
Speaker 1: the moms who are shopping with their kids, so that
Speaker 1: the people that normally you wouldn't pay attention to pay
Speaker 1: attention to them because they're doing a good job of
Speaker 1: blending in if you're not normally paying attention to them,
Speaker 1: and then try to start mimicking their body language. What
Speaker 1: I'll do when I go out is i don't directly
Speaker 1: look at anyone, but I'm paying attention to if I'm
Speaker 1: being paid attention to give myself that own that conscious
Speaker 1: feedback and say, hey, I wasn't all that stealthy this time,
Speaker 1: I kind of stuck out. Yeah, practicing your peripheral vision
Speaker 1: is definitely useful for that. I mean in terms of exercises. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just go into like parks, or the places where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people and like people watching and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who does your eyes glaze over
Speaker 1: the most and what what are they doing to cause that.
Speaker 1: I think one one thing that me and Rick have
Speaker 1: talked about before is like every part of your body
Speaker 1: points somewhere, like whether that be your eyes, your nose,
Speaker 1: your chin, your arms, your hips, your chest, your hands,
Speaker 1: all of these things point in a direction. And if
Speaker 1: you can figure out which direction you can point them
Speaker 1: to make people pay less attention to you. That's kind
Speaker 1: of one of the easier models understanding how to like
Speaker 1: walk and move in a stealthy manner that I think
Speaker 1: like out of all the different ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: and I think that's the way that's helped me the most.
Speaker 1: Um it's being like, you know, if if my head
Speaker 1: is pointed up and my nose is pointed out and
Speaker 1: I'm moving my arms around a lot, that's people are
Speaker 1: gonna like like look at me more. You know, people
Speaker 1: if if if if eye contact is made, that is
Speaker 1: like a failure. So you know, if your head's pointed down,
Speaker 1: your arms are more slouched, they kind of move with
Speaker 1: your body. But that's not super exaggerated and it's not
Speaker 1: super stiff. These are different kind of ways of pointing
Speaker 1: your body to make you seem more like UM introspective
Speaker 1: UM and less external. Also walking around with UM ear
Speaker 1: plugs or like like like uh earbuds your owns. Those
Speaker 1: are ways people will pay attention to class to you
Speaker 1: look at your smartphone. Yeah, one of the back when
Speaker 1: we by, back when I took classes with you and
Speaker 1: taught classes, we we would we would we would have
Speaker 1: like a weekly a weekly games class um where we'd
Speaker 1: have different you know games and related to Parkore and
Speaker 1: you know, stealth would always kind of be something I
Speaker 1: would try to do. And you could survive so long
Speaker 1: in stealth games by just like looking like pretending that
Speaker 1: you're looking at your phone, like not even actually doing it.
Speaker 1: Just like walking in like a circle around like walking
Speaker 1: in a circle around the arena as people are trying
Speaker 1: to like tag and stuff. And if you can just
Speaker 1: like walk with your head down kind of slowly, you
Speaker 1: can strive a ridiculously long time because people are looking
Speaker 1: for people that are like running around and being like
Speaker 1: and being super energy energetic, and if you're not, people
Speaker 1: aren't detecting you as much Another thing to practice would
Speaker 1: be uh, quiet walking, which is we kind of mentioned before.
Speaker 1: It's like learning how to move your foot and interact
Speaker 1: with different surfaces that makes your walking basically silent, which
Speaker 1: is very fun because you can use this to scare
Speaker 1: your friends. It's it's, it's it's it's very exciting to
Speaker 1: to to to to like to try to figure out
Speaker 1: what's what's ways I can hide in my friend's house
Speaker 1: to like jump scare them, or like kind of how
Speaker 1: close can I get behind someone with with with without
Speaker 1: them noticing that. There'd be times I can just like
Speaker 1: walk up behind someone and wait, like I kid you,
Speaker 1: not like ten minutes before they noticed I was there.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious. UM. I feel even better when I can
Speaker 1: do that to their pets because generally the animals are
Speaker 1: paying more attention to everything. So if you can successfully
Speaker 1: sneak up on someone's cat, you're doing it right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I do really enjoy stealth, and I'll be
Speaker 1: happy to practice it more regularly once the plug is over. Um.
Speaker 1: If it's over um. Any other kind of stealth notes
Speaker 1: that you would want to kind of bring up for
Speaker 1: if someone is trying to like get into stealth and
Speaker 1: start to start thinking about detection, you know, more often
Speaker 1: in their everyday life. It's very important that you engage
Speaker 1: in indirect observations. Yeah up. You you were talking about
Speaker 1: how everything points and one of the things that we
Speaker 1: subconsciously noticed the most is people's eyes were kind of
Speaker 1: programmed to notice eyes. So if you're looking directly at someone,
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna notice that you've noticed them. But if
Speaker 1: you're using your peripheral vision, or if instead of watching them,
Speaker 1: you're watching a reflection of them, or if you're watching
Speaker 1: their shadow um, or you're not even looking in their
Speaker 1: direction instead you're tracking them by sound, it makes it
Speaker 1: so that you have a big one up on everyone
Speaker 1: around you. Yeah, in indirect observations one of the best
Speaker 1: tools that you can use, UM if you get really
Speaker 1: clever at it. Now this this, this, this is harder
Speaker 1: because it actually if if you if you if you
Speaker 1: do this wrong, people who people, people will pay more
Speaker 1: attention to you. But you can get good at it
Speaker 1: to start using like your phone camera or even just
Speaker 1: your phone screen because like your black phone screen is pretty,
Speaker 1: is pretty, is pretty reflective in nature, so you can
Speaker 1: use this as like an error. UM but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: using like phone cameras and phone screens as a reflective
Speaker 1: surface or or just as like a camera can be
Speaker 1: used in indirect observation. But you do have to be
Speaker 1: careful because if if if it looks like you're filming somebody,
Speaker 1: they're gonna pay so much more attension to you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you have, you have. You have to be very careful
Speaker 1: with this method, but it is possible. This is how
Speaker 1: I kind of this is how I um, this is
Speaker 1: how it's like documented different like um not sees at rallies.
Speaker 1: If I don't want to be like super obvious that
Speaker 1: that I'm taking a picture of them, there's ways of
Speaker 1: doing indirect observation with my phone that I can like
Speaker 1: get pictures of them from certain angles to be like okay,
Speaker 1: so now now I can put you. I can add
Speaker 1: you to my to my folder of nazis that have
Speaker 1: showed up um that method. You have to be super
Speaker 1: careful if you're surrounded by potentially hostile people. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: behind you is going to see that your phone camera
Speaker 1: is on. So it's something that you only want to
Speaker 1: use if people are on one side of you, or
Speaker 1: you know, you keep you you you use your body
Speaker 1: as a shield for certain for certain like angles be
Speaker 1: tricky for hoodie and uh increase your odds of success
Speaker 1: with that. But but but most often I would recommend
Speaker 1: against this method, especially if you're just starting out, because
Speaker 1: it is it is a lot more risky. Um. But
Speaker 1: when it does work, it can come in very handy.
Speaker 1: But but more often than not, using using like reflections
Speaker 1: like windows, mirrors, you know, like a car, windows, puddles
Speaker 1: on the ground, shadows, sound, all of these different methods
Speaker 1: of observing someone without looking directly at them are generally
Speaker 1: much much safer um and they can be very useful
Speaker 1: for for trying to track someone or just be aware
Speaker 1: of what they're looking at without looking directly at them. UM.
Speaker 1: Kind of more similar to like what I talked about
Speaker 1: in like the fictional opening we did for stealth is
Speaker 1: very dependent on what you know is trying to watch
Speaker 1: you write, like like how you need to be aware
Speaker 1: of the ways people are trying to detect you. Of
Speaker 1: course you're tracked back canine unit. It's very very different
Speaker 1: than just being being yeah, than being like chased down
Speaker 1: on foot um or you know, like security cameras. Of course,
Speaker 1: like online tracking which we're not we're not really getting
Speaker 1: into today. But you know, like being aware of where
Speaker 1: security cameras are mapped out, um can be can be
Speaker 1: very useful. Learning to learning to figure out where they
Speaker 1: are without looking directly at them can be useful. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of cities have websites that like map out
Speaker 1: where where all the cameras are. Um. I know there's
Speaker 1: one from Portland that you can like map out all
Speaker 1: of the cameras in downtown and then you can like
Speaker 1: plan like a route through downtown that has no cameras
Speaker 1: watching right there. There's only there's only very few routes
Speaker 1: that that actually have that, but but they do exist. Um.
Speaker 1: So learning to move in ways that make cameras less
Speaker 1: able to spot you, um, those that's definitely another kind
Speaker 1: of method of learning about stealth and learning about like
Speaker 1: how surveillance works. Looking directly at the camera, But that's
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely useful. Which intention to where they are, yeah,
Speaker 1: which plays into which plays into indirect observation. Um. But
Speaker 1: I mean this gets more tricky. We know when police
Speaker 1: are using like thermal drones. Uh, this is its whole whole,
Speaker 1: whole other side of things that it's very hard too.
Speaker 1: Sex side of thing is hard to combat. And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: there will be a point in time in which it
Speaker 1: becomes effectively impossible to the monitor for cameras. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like there's there's like a hierarchy of worry because yeah,
Speaker 1: if because if, like the n s A wants to
Speaker 1: find you, they will, but most often they're not, Like
Speaker 1: most often people are dealing with their local law enforcement unit.
Speaker 1: Most often people are not dealing with the FBI. Most
Speaker 1: people people usually aren't dealing with the FBI, CIA or
Speaker 1: n s A. If if they want to find you,
Speaker 1: they will. But if you can learn to only interact
Speaker 1: with your surroundings in a way that would only concern
Speaker 1: your local police department, that's much easier too. That's much
Speaker 1: easier to kind of combat against, um, because it's it's
Speaker 1: way easier to hide from you know, your local department
Speaker 1: than it is from the n s A. All right, Um,
Speaker 1: anything else? I think that pretty much covers everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good that's a sode. It's a
Speaker 1: cast that we have potted. Um all right, Um, we
Speaker 1: got any any plugables here to plug at the end
Speaker 1: before we before we roll out me. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: find me. Don't don't find him. This is the most
Speaker 1: visible you've ever been. Yeah, so is there any um,
Speaker 1: I don't know a fundraiser charity for someone else that
Speaker 1: you want to highlight? Not currently? No, you are? You
Speaker 1: do try to be uh you do, try to be
Speaker 1: a virtual ninja. All right, Well, I'll plug something. One
Speaker 1: of our fans is putting together a graphic novel about
Speaker 1: the famed anarchist militant of the Spanish Civil War. Win
Speaker 1: even showed a d Ruty. So if you just go
Speaker 1: to type d Ruty into Kickstarter, you'll find the graphic
Speaker 1: novel Kickstarter. Um, check it out. It's cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I guess other things. I'll close with his learned to
Speaker 1: walk quietly, learn to observe, learn to observe your surroundings. Um,
Speaker 1: keep these things, practice, practice, practice with other people. Don't don't.
Speaker 1: Don't do this alone. It's really useful to have stealth
Speaker 1: be a collaborative process, because stealth isn't Stealth isn't by itself,
Speaker 1: isn't just about you. It's about you and your whole environment. Um,
Speaker 1: collaborate with the CVS clerk. When you robbed the CVS stealthily.
Speaker 1: That is that is a different podcast I'm working on.
Speaker 1: Is that How to Shop the Shoplifting Cast? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is something I will pitch very soon. Anyway, I've
Speaker 1: had trouble getting sponsors for the Shoplifting podcast, I will
Speaker 1: tell you that. And it's difficult. If you could actually
Speaker 1: get CVS to sponsor that big shoplifting, I mean, we
Speaker 1: are giving them a lot of free advertising if if
Speaker 1: if it does if it does happen. Anyway, most people
Speaker 1: who shoplift also spend. That's true. That is one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to shoplift is to buy other things.
Speaker 1: In this story, I'm seeing I'm already giving out advice. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is how I always shoplifted back when I shoplifted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back when I did that twenty years ago. That's what.
Speaker 1: That's how I did it as well. I feel like
Speaker 1: if Sophie were here, she'd be trying to back pedal
Speaker 1: right now and stop you guys. So if you support shoplifting,
Speaker 1: this is a very pro shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast.
Speaker 1: You were out of town when the last cop left Seattle.
Speaker 1: It had been unseasonably cool that week. The seventy degrees
Speaker 1: of old and not the ven you had come to
Speaker 1: dread every summer. But you'd already promised you'd visit your
Speaker 1: family in Montana, and so when the riots started in
Speaker 1: the National Guard open fire into the crowd, you watched
Speaker 1: it on Twitter from your couch like everyone else. The
Speaker 1: Second Battle of Seattle, they were calling it. You wondered
Speaker 1: briefly what the first one was. They've been fighting in
Speaker 1: Portland too, some kind of massacre in Oakland, and no
Speaker 1: one was quite sure what was happening in that Appa Valley.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be anything good, you thought, But it was Seattle.
Speaker 1: Everyone was talking about. The mayor fled the city and
Speaker 1: the helicopter when it became clear the police were losing.
Speaker 1: After that, the cops had simply broken retreated across the Cascades.
Speaker 1: No one knew who was running the city now, and
Speaker 1: you sure as hell didn't want to be the one
Speaker 1: to find out. But after two weeks, you've burned through
Speaker 1: every vacation day in every favor you'd ever accumulated at
Speaker 1: the hospital, and besides, the rent was due. No one
Speaker 1: was sure if the pilstal service was even still functioning,
Speaker 1: and with the eviction moratorium lifted. You weren't going to
Speaker 1: risk getting evicted because you weren't there to hand your
Speaker 1: landlord a check. So with ray resignation, you pile into
Speaker 1: your battered car and head towards no Qualmy Pass. What
Speaker 1: surprised you most when you hit Seattle was the art
Speaker 1: you've been expecting. Burnt out buildings and streets filled with
Speaker 1: burning cars, and there were some A few streets were
Speaker 1: still blocked by what looked like improvised barricades, but every
Speaker 1: surface of every building, it seemed, had some kind of
Speaker 1: mirror on it. Someone, and no one seemed to be
Speaker 1: quite sure who had first come up with the idea,
Speaker 1: had blocked off an entire street up near Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: and people were painstakingly painting portraits of every protester killed
Speaker 1: in the fighting and Seattle on it. As you walked past,
Speaker 1: they were discussing doing the same for the dead in Oakland.
Speaker 1: The second surprise came when you tried to pay your rent.
Speaker 1: A woman you've never seen before was sitting at the
Speaker 1: office's reception desk. When you tried to handle your check,
Speaker 1: she laughed and handed it back to you, explaining that
Speaker 1: after the cops fled. The local tenants union had taking
Speaker 1: over most of the apartments in the city and placed
Speaker 1: them in something it called a Community land Trust. You
Speaker 1: didn't quite get the details, but no one was going
Speaker 1: to evict you, so you decided to just take the win. Besides,
Speaker 1: your friend had convinced you to do some child care
Speaker 1: the tenants union in college, and they always seemed like
Speaker 1: a decent sort, so it didn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: immediate cause for concern. The hospital was another matter. Entirely
Speaker 1: from what you could gather, there had been some kind
Speaker 1: of labor dispute between the chaos. Management seemed to have
Speaker 1: fired a group of nurses for giving injured protester or
Speaker 1: shelter from the police. Your ward had already been understaff
Speaker 1: due to COVID and budget cuts. Now the situation was
Speaker 1: int tolerable. Where still many of the senior administrators had
Speaker 1: fled the city with the police, no one seemed to
Speaker 1: know who was in charge. Supplies were starting to run low,
Speaker 1: and with so many administrators missing in the insurance situation
Speaker 1: completely up in the air. On account of nobody being
Speaker 1: entirely sure if Seattle was even still part of the
Speaker 1: United States, it wasn't clear if anyone was going to
Speaker 1: get paid, So when a co worker pulled you aside
Speaker 1: and asked if you'd be interested in doing something about
Speaker 1: the management problem, you figured, what the hell, Maybe it
Speaker 1: was time for a change. It wasn't like it could
Speaker 1: possibly make anything worse. The fired nurses, it turned out,
Speaker 1: had started to set up a community health center with
Speaker 1: the help of the local neighborhood council. But some of
Speaker 1: the nurses still working at the hospital had another idea.
Speaker 1: Why not just turn the hospital into the community health center.
Speaker 1: After all, the hospital already had more equipment than any
Speaker 1: new center could possibly assemble. All they needed was some
Speaker 1: help from the community, and the whole thing could be
Speaker 1: run by a council of the hospital workers. Insurance companies
Speaker 1: be damned. Besides, if all the hospitals started pulling their
Speaker 1: resources together, they might be able to solve some of
Speaker 1: the shortages. At the mention of solving the supply shortages,
Speaker 1: even the more skeptical workers started to come around. By
Speaker 1: the next morning, the Seattle Hospital Workers Council was marching
Speaker 1: on the hospital. The remaining management found out somehow, and
Speaker 1: tried one final lockout to hold onto their property. But
Speaker 1: as you saw yet another column of protesters joining the
Speaker 1: crowd surrounding the hospital, you knew this wasn't their city
Speaker 1: any longer. On April eighteen, two thousand, one, military police
Speaker 1: in the Kabylia region of Algeria shot an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old high school students. Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people took to the street, chanting, you can't kill us,
Speaker 1: we are already dead at the lines of policemen assembled
Speaker 1: to attack them. The police would kill over a hundred
Speaker 1: people and severely wound five thousand more in the months
Speaker 1: long battle for control of the streets that followed, but
Speaker 1: protesters burned police stations, government offices, courts, and the offices
Speaker 1: of Islamic fundamentalist parties until the government agreed to give
Speaker 1: ethnic minority groups language and cultural rights. The hated military
Speaker 1: police were driven from the region entirely, and so few
Speaker 1: regular police stations survived the uprising. At the regular police
Speaker 1: likewise ceased to function across broad swaths of Kabilia. They
Speaker 1: were replaced on a local village level by self organized
Speaker 1: security committees, which would assemble on the rare occasion. Travel
Speaker 1: will emerged. Contrary to the expectations of the state crime plummeted,
Speaker 1: but the Algerian government otherwise continued to function as usual
Speaker 1: for over a decade until the local government in a
Speaker 1: small region, cover Baca, attempted the regular local elections. After
Speaker 1: banning the most popular political party in the region, they
Speaker 1: installed an unpopular coalition governments. The people of Barbaca responded
Speaker 1: by storming the city hall, seizing control of it and
Speaker 1: setting up a democratic General Assembly inside the newly dubbed
Speaker 1: House of the People to replace the existing government. This
Speaker 1: was dual power in its original sense, the Council of
Speaker 1: the People facing off against an increasingly illegitimate parliamentary representative
Speaker 1: in a struggle for control over the fate of a
Speaker 1: new society. If you google dual power, you are likely
Speaker 1: to encounter a pamphlet written by Vladimir Lenin entitled The
Speaker 1: Dual Power, describing the conundrum of the situation following the
Speaker 1: First Russian Revolution in February of nineteen after the overthrow
Speaker 1: of the Czar, political power was split between two competing bodies.
Speaker 1: On the one side, a new provisional government of liberal
Speaker 1: and social democratic politicians holdovers from the old Duma from
Speaker 1: the previous regime. On the other side, revolutionary social forces
Speaker 1: rallying around assemblies popular power called soviets, which were councils
Speaker 1: of delegates sent by directly democratic factories, soldiers and sailors committees.
Speaker 1: Lenin solve this as a situation to be overcome by
Speaker 1: the seizure of state power by Socialist Party. For Lenin
Speaker 1: and his Bolsheviks, dual power was a problem because, after
Speaker 1: the Czar's state ceased to exist in the middle of
Speaker 1: the World War, the new provisional government failed to fill
Speaker 1: the vacuum left in its wake by its collapse. To Lenin,
Speaker 1: the solution was obvious, fill that vacuum with Lenin. For
Speaker 1: the peasants, soldiers, and workers, who made up the majority
Speaker 1: of Russia's population, however, dual power was their first fleeting
Speaker 1: taste of freedom and autonomous control over their lives. Lennon
Speaker 1: used the soviets to seize power, but almost immediately began
Speaker 1: to turn on these democratic assemblies of popular autonomy. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the Russian Civil War, Lennon and the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks strip power away from the workers, peasants, and soldiers,
Speaker 1: sometimes by bureaucratic fiat, often at the point of a bayonet,
Speaker 1: until the Soviet have been stripped of all meeting in
Speaker 1: the very state named after their democratic form, and became
Speaker 1: synonymous with dictatorship. Dual power today draws from the potential
Speaker 1: of that post revolutionary crisis from the bottom up direct
Speaker 1: democracy that was so threatening to the social order that
Speaker 1: Bolshevik revolutionaries and Czar's Police by his alike conspired to
Speaker 1: wipe them from the historical record. Just as Russia was
Speaker 1: haunted by the memory of the French communes, so is
Speaker 1: America today haunted by a memory of dual power that,
Speaker 1: against all lodge refuses to die. We are, after all,
Speaker 1: still ruled by a greedy, bloodthirsty, and out of touch
Speaker 1: elite who have chosen the march us to our deaths
Speaker 1: by the hundreds of thousands by forcing us back to
Speaker 1: work doing a plague. But the Russian Revolution is as
Speaker 1: far away from us today as Napoleon and his brass
Speaker 1: cannons were from the Russian revolutionaries and their machine guns.
Speaker 1: Times have changed. There is no Bolshevik party waiting in
Speaker 1: the wings to seize power as the state crumbles. The
Speaker 1: vacuum of the state leaves in its wake as its
Speaker 1: power deteriorates, be filled by any number of organizations, most
Speaker 1: even more hostile to the working class and the Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: had been. It could be war lords with the personal
Speaker 1: allegiance of the remains of the military. It could be
Speaker 1: organized crime. It could be religious fundamentalist militias. Most likely,
Speaker 1: it will be an uneasy combination of all of the above.
Speaker 1: Or it could be you. It could be your family,
Speaker 1: your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, the person you
Speaker 1: waved here every morning at the bus stop when you're
Speaker 1: on your way to work. The past to that world,
Speaker 1: the world run not by capitalists in their cops or
Speaker 1: by war lords in their armies, but by autonomous communities
Speaker 1: free to decide for themselves what to produce and how
Speaker 1: to bet, to use their resources, to care for each other.
Speaker 1: Is dual power in the twenty first century. At its core,
Speaker 1: dual power is about creating a counter power against the state.
Speaker 1: During the Russian Revolution, this counterpower was formed essentially by
Speaker 1: historical accidents, as two governing bodies emerged from the course
Speaker 1: of the Febrarian Revolution. But modern dual power does not
Speaker 1: arise from the whims of the course of revolution or
Speaker 1: from an innate instinct of the working class. It is
Speaker 1: something we've built together by creating organizations that resist the
Speaker 1: power of the structures of violence, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and
Speaker 1: the state name a few that control this world. Dual
Speaker 1: power organizations can take many forms, from tennis unions, the
Speaker 1: debtors councils, childcare cooperatives, to land occupations, workers councils, to
Speaker 1: rank and file labor unions, mutual aid networks to community
Speaker 1: self defense organizations. These organizations seek to build autonomy from
Speaker 1: and against capitalism. In the state alone, there are no
Speaker 1: match for the state's world power to inflict violence and
Speaker 1: corporate control over our resources. But by joining together to
Speaker 1: form federations and pooling their resources and expertise to coordinate
Speaker 1: their efforts, they can become a powerful enough force to
Speaker 1: challenge the state both directly and indirectly. These dual power
Speaker 1: organizations are designed to be the state's successor. As the
Speaker 1: industrial workers of the world famously put it, they form
Speaker 1: the structure of the new society and the shell of
Speaker 1: the old. In order to fulfill that task, they take
Speaker 1: the shape of new society they set to create. Academics
Speaker 1: called this prefigurative politics, organizing that employs the values and
Speaker 1: organizational structures that they seek to create in the world.
Speaker 1: As we will discuss in the next episode, there are
Speaker 1: right wing forms of both dual power and profigative politics,
Speaker 1: but for most of the people who employ it, prefigurative
Speaker 1: politics means creating direct democratic institutions without bosses, managers, bureaucrats,
Speaker 1: or party apparatus. The means of career aiding the new
Speaker 1: world are thus the same as the ends. Dual power
Speaker 1: organizations serve multiple purposes. Their long term goal is to
Speaker 1: replace the state and the corporation with free and autonomous
Speaker 1: forms of organization. One's organized and powerful enough to protect
Speaker 1: themselves and manage the logistical challenges of a new world
Speaker 1: with previous forms of organization and power no longer exist.
Speaker 1: But even reaching a point where this is remotely plausible
Speaker 1: requires not just the painstaking construction of counterpower and organization
Speaker 1: out of a fragmented American population. It requires a profound
Speaker 1: cultural transformation and how we make decisions. As the anthropologist
Speaker 1: David Graeber put it, it is assumed in many parts
Speaker 1: of the world that democracy is a group of people
Speaker 1: facing a certain problem who come together to solve it
Speaker 1: in a way where everyone has an equals say, it's
Speaker 1: true that most Americans think of themselves as living in
Speaker 1: a democratic country. When put the last time that any
Speaker 1: Americans actually sat down and came to a collective to
Speaker 1: decision maybe if they were ordering pizza, but basically never
Speaker 1: Dual power organizations thus also service schools for democracy where
Speaker 1: people can learn, experiment with, create, and spread their own
Speaker 1: forms of democracy and collective decision making. When these spaces
Speaker 1: of democratic experimentation are functioning properly, their very organizational structure
Speaker 1: serves as a kind of recruitment tool. This was the
Speaker 1: original theory behind Occupy Wall Street, that democracy and the
Speaker 1: experience of autonomy were contagious and would spread rapidly as
Speaker 1: more and more curious people experienced it for themselves. That experience,
Speaker 1: in turn, would create a new generation of people trained
Speaker 1: in democratic practices who could go forth and transforming the world. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this didn't quite happen. Occupies model of democracy was limited
Speaker 1: in many ways, not the least of which was that
Speaker 1: it required a public, physical meeting space that could be
Speaker 1: closed down by police violence. But the initial premise worked
Speaker 1: Occupy itself, of course, had been inspired by the mass
Speaker 1: democratic assemblies in Spain. In Greece in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: and the direct democratic coops and factory occupations that engulfed
Speaker 1: Argentina for the better part of the two thousand's. At
Speaker 1: the most basic, short term level, however, dual power organizations
Speaker 1: are designed me people's needs. The cornerstone of this effort
Speaker 1: is mutual aid. Probably the most famous example of such
Speaker 1: a project with the Black Panther Party survival programs. Former
Speaker 1: Black Panther Janina Irvine describes them in detail. The Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party survival programs were, in fact an example of
Speaker 1: an effort, a successful effort, while it lasted to create
Speaker 1: dual power in the United States. The Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: had a school, had free food programs. One of its
Speaker 1: most respected survival programs was a breakfast for children, which
Speaker 1: was overall a response to hunger and poverty in the country,
Speaker 1: particularly among poor, low income black people. We had free
Speaker 1: medical clinics in Winston Salem, North Carolina. We had free ambulances,
Speaker 1: free past control, free shoes, we had free bussing to
Speaker 1: prison programs, legal aid programs to help people get attorneys
Speaker 1: who needed them. And we had a program that was
Speaker 1: called the Safe Program Seniors against a fearful environment in
Speaker 1: which we provided free transportation and escort service the senior
Speaker 1: citizens who needed to get out and take care of
Speaker 1: their errands their business. They were often being attacked, so
Speaker 1: this was a forre protection for them. The Panthers were
Speaker 1: able to grow their influence by keeping their communities safe, healthy,
Speaker 1: cared for, and increasingly autonomous for the state. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: they were able to keep people alive. As Black Panthers
Speaker 1: co founder Hue P. Newton famously said, these survival programs
Speaker 1: satisfy the deep needs of the community, but they are
Speaker 1: not solutions to our problem. That is why we call
Speaker 1: them survival programs meeting survival pending revolution. The existence of
Speaker 1: the survival programs themselves reflect the necessity of keeping people alive,
Speaker 1: especially people who the state would rather kill or leave
Speaker 1: to die for building any kind of power. These programs
Speaker 1: are also necessarily insufficient. No mutual aid program, no autonomous project,
Speaker 1: no liberated territory can provide for the entire community. While
Speaker 1: the corporation's capitalists and states maintain their stranglehold over the
Speaker 1: resources and production capacity at the working class, collectively created
Speaker 1: over centuries of grueling labor or struggle, dual power more
Speaker 1: than just survival, is about building the counter power to
Speaker 1: take it back. Building powers withdraws the line between what
Speaker 1: is and isn't dual power. Growing food for you and
Speaker 1: your friends, make cut down on bills, and make some
Speaker 1: killer pesto, but it's not necessarily challenging the capitalist system.
Speaker 1: Autonomy for its own sake is not necessarily dual power
Speaker 1: if it doesn't actively aid in struggle or better organize
Speaker 1: the community. That from the perspective of building counter power,
Speaker 1: that autonomy is meaningless. Making food for striking workers to
Speaker 1: allow them to stay on strike longer is building dual power.
Speaker 1: We're simply producing it for general consumption is not. While
Speaker 1: dual power organizations necessarily serve the needs of the community,
Speaker 1: they must also be able to pivot and attack the
Speaker 1: state in capital and provide solidarity and mutual aid to
Speaker 1: those in their community who are already in struggle, or
Speaker 1: they simply aren' dual power organizations at all. The simplest
Speaker 1: solution to this problem, of course, is to organize around
Speaker 1: a specific side of resistance. Organizations that build up the
Speaker 1: capacity to fight can emerge from almost anywhere. The Symbiosis
Speaker 1: Research Collective described how dual power organizations emerge from Palestinian
Speaker 1: prison organizing bring the First into Fata and uprising against
Speaker 1: the Israeli governments in late nineteen eighties. Most discussion of
Speaker 1: the First into Fata focuses on the role of mass
Speaker 1: protests in making Palestinian society ungovernable for the Israeli occupying forces.
Speaker 1: Less discussed is the role of community organizations of mutual
Speaker 1: aid and confederated participatory democracy and making such mass protests possible.
Speaker 1: Organizing for within the political system was a political incubator
Speaker 1: of the Palestinian resistance movement and offers a microcosmic example
Speaker 1: of the developments of dual power in the much larger
Speaker 1: prison of the occupation with hunger strikes. Political prisoners eventually
Speaker 1: won concessions for their own self administration within the prisons.
Speaker 1: They assembled structures of political organization and representation, forced prison
Speaker 1: authorities to recognize their representatives, and developed a division of
Speaker 1: labor around hygiene, education and other daily tasks. Palestinian prisoners
Speaker 1: described this arrangement as internal organization, similar to the concept
Speaker 1: of dual power. Even the least free of circumstances, these
Speaker 1: prisoners carved out space for self governments and created the
Speaker 1: preconditions to revolutionary struggle. Prisoners taught and studied everything from
Speaker 1: Palestinian history to Marxist the political economy, often from eight
Speaker 1: to fourteen hours per day. As freshly educated and trained
Speaker 1: political activists were released back into society, the resistance movement
Speaker 1: was gal vanized. Illiterate teenage boys arrested for throwing stones
Speaker 1: re entered the fray months later as committed, competent organizers
Speaker 1: who had studied movement building, strategic resistance, and dialectical materialism. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the organizing context outside of the prison transformed dramatically. Saleh
Speaker 1: Abou laban of Palestinian political prisoner from nineteen seventy until nine, stated,
Speaker 1: when I entered the prison, there wasn't a national movement.
Speaker 1: There were only underground cells that performed clandestine lee. When
Speaker 1: I got out, I found a world full of organizers, committees,
Speaker 1: and community institutions. Central to this new world of community
Speaker 1: organizing was the Palestinian labor movement. Unions reformed out of
Speaker 1: workers places of residents rather than workplaces, because migrant labor
Speaker 1: was prevalence in Palestinian unionism within Israel had been criminalized.
Speaker 1: Unions then formed strong alliances with local organizations in the
Speaker 1: national movement. With rapid growth in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: labor unions found it necessary to to centralize and democratize
Speaker 1: their structures to become more resilient as Israeli repression intensified
Speaker 1: against union leaders and organizers. These local unions were networked
Speaker 1: together through the Palestinian Communist Party and the Workers Unity Block,
Speaker 1: creating a web of labor organizers and community groups that
Speaker 1: linked their class struggle to the larger project of national liberation.
Speaker 1: This wave of resistance, carried out largely outside the purview
Speaker 1: of the major Palestinian political parties, showed that even communities
Speaker 1: and the most dire circumstances can assemble astounding levels of
Speaker 1: organization and resistance, as was also true in the United States.
Speaker 1: Although today the memory of these prison radicals is largely forgotten,
Speaker 1: Palestinian organizing emerged from the sites of deepest depression in
Speaker 1: their society. But this kind and level of organization is
Speaker 1: not just the property of the left, and in Part
Speaker 1: two we'll see what happens when the right gets hold
Speaker 1: of it. It's been three months since you and your
Speaker 1: co workers took control of the hospital. Things aren't back
Speaker 1: to normal yet. You're not even really sure what normal
Speaker 1: is anymore. But the days have fallen into a kind
Speaker 1: of routine. It's Thursday, which means it's your turn to
Speaker 1: go report back to what a friend jokingly referred to
Speaker 1: as the Endless Meeting Assembly was now forever known as
Speaker 1: the e m A. The e m A is technically
Speaker 1: the closest thing left to a central government in Seattle.
Speaker 1: It was formed as a sort of coordinating council between
Speaker 1: the various organizations and workers councils that had emerged or
Speaker 1: simply emerged from the woodworks in the wake of the
Speaker 1: collapse of the police. Two things have become clear very quickly. One,
Speaker 1: there was need for some kind of coordinating committee between
Speaker 1: the different bodies to The only people who had any
Speaker 1: idea what was going on in their portion of the
Speaker 1: city or in their workplace were the members of the
Speaker 1: local council, which meant there was no way in hell
Speaker 1: any kind of central apparatus could dictate to them what
Speaker 1: actually needed to be done. There just wasn't a way
Speaker 1: to move the information around. The solution have been decentralization.
Speaker 1: Let the councils do their work, let them work out
Speaker 1: who they needed to talk to, but make sure there
Speaker 1: was some kind of daily council that people could show
Speaker 1: up to. Were the various groups we do report backs
Speaker 1: and what they were doing and what they needed. The
Speaker 1: structure was messy, but it mostly worked, and at least
Speaker 1: someone had had the idea to make sure if the
Speaker 1: delegate to the e m A rotated so one person
Speaker 1: wasn't stuck spending after life showing up every day. The
Speaker 1: problem really was the same problem you've been dealing with
Speaker 1: for months now. Even with the pooling of resources and
Speaker 1: people donating their last precious American dollars to paying people
Speaker 1: to import more supplies, the blockade was taking its toll.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to try to force their way through the
Speaker 1: blockades and the cascades. There's been some attempts to get
Speaker 1: in touch with groups in Portland's, but the control map
Speaker 1: was so ugly there was no real chance of getting
Speaker 1: any assistance. Besides, the real problem was the port. When
Speaker 1: the cops had fled, the ships should simply stop coming.
Speaker 1: They're routed further south, any of them to Oakland, or
Speaker 1: so you'd heard. The logistics lines were collapsing faster than
Speaker 1: anyone could piece them back together. What the long term
Speaker 1: consequences would be, no one knew, but something was going
Speaker 1: to have to change. The calls to start engaging in
Speaker 1: piracy were only half oaks. Now. A week later, an
Speaker 1: answer of sorts arrived. It wasn't precisely what anyone had
Speaker 1: been expecting. You'd heard about negotiations between workers councils, shipping companies,
Speaker 1: and a couple of governments to try to prevent a
Speaker 1: bloodbath the docks, with the porter to Seattle already at
Speaker 1: a commission, no one could afford another stoppage. You hadn't
Speaker 1: really been sure what to make of it, but the
Speaker 1: representatives were here now. What they proposed in front of
Speaker 1: the largest assembly you'd ever seen was a kind of
Speaker 1: under the table deal. In essence, the port workers would
Speaker 1: go back to work in both Oakland and Seattle in
Speaker 1: exchange for seeding part of Oakland itself to a newly
Speaker 1: formed federation. No one was sure how any of this
Speaker 1: was actually supposed to work, but it was the first
Speaker 1: chance you'd seen in months to start solving the supply problem.
Speaker 1: That didn't mean everyone else would agree to it. Democracy
Speaker 1: is still democracy, after all, but maybe, just maybe with
Speaker 1: a toe hold in Oaklands, the Council's would start to spread,
Speaker 1: and that so called government in California was looking shakier
Speaker 1: every day. Who knew, maybe next time you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: negotiating at all. In March of two thousand four, American
Speaker 1: occupation forces in a Rock attempted to shut down the
Speaker 1: newspaper of a Chiite cleric named Matada el Solder. The
Speaker 1: Americans had expected Sodder to simply fold under the weight
Speaker 1: of the coalition's pressure. Instead, they triggered mass protest that
Speaker 1: quickly turned into an armed uprising. This was a new
Speaker 1: force at Iraq. The American occupation force, who'd been expecting
Speaker 1: to be fighting al Quaeda and maybe the rump of
Speaker 1: the remaining Baptists, were stunned to suddenly be facing a
Speaker 1: working class uprising among the rock Si population. This new mode,
Speaker 1: the army, as it began to call itself, was extremely
Speaker 1: well organized and were initially able to route coalition forces.
Speaker 1: So what was this body army that had so thoroughly
Speaker 1: rewritten the rules of Rock? Shortly after the US to
Speaker 1: posted on Musse In two thousand and three Booktato Sawder,
Speaker 1: the son of another famous Rocky hi at religious figure.
Speaker 1: Both Sauders had been famous for this support and care
Speaker 1: for the poor, so when Sauder returned to a Rock,
Speaker 1: he began to build a political base among the Rocks
Speaker 1: working class, particularly in Solder City, a working class suburb
Speaker 1: of Baghdad. He used his organization to redistribute wealth, providing
Speaker 1: form of welfare states in an almost completely shattered country.
Speaker 1: But are In his allies also began to set up
Speaker 1: a network of freak clinics for pregnant and nursing mothers.
Speaker 1: They used these clinics, which were enormously popular, to build
Speaker 1: a base of support. It is, after all, extremely difficult,
Speaker 1: no matter what your ideological or political disagreements with the group,
Speaker 1: to attack them when the running free clinics for pregnant mothers.
Speaker 1: They protected these clinics with militias, which allowed them to
Speaker 1: transform the community organizations and good will that they had
Speaker 1: gained from the clinic into the military power necessary for
Speaker 1: self governance and eventually for resistance against the American occupation.
Speaker 1: Strategy proved enormously successful. Mattao Sauder is still today one
Speaker 1: of the most important political figures in Iraq, despite sustained
Speaker 1: coalition and occupation force attempts to stamp them out, but
Speaker 1: for all their working class support, the Soterists for by
Speaker 1: no means leftists. In late twenty nineteen, massive anti asterity,
Speaker 1: anti imperialists, and anti sectarian protests erupted in Iraq as
Speaker 1: a reaction to the murderous incompetence of the Iraqi government, who,
Speaker 1: among other crimes, managed to poison a hundred and eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand people in Bosra through the mismanagement and subsequent contamination
Speaker 1: of the water supply. Also are initially backed the protest
Speaker 1: but turned on them in early at which point sauterism
Speaker 1: alicias begin to carry out a brutal campaign of repression
Speaker 1: against the protest camps that culminated in outrent massacres of protesters.
Speaker 1: These massacres became semi regular features of soterist mass mobilizations,
Speaker 1: and alongside state and paramilitary disappearances of activists, the attacks
Speaker 1: essentially crushed the uprising. The violent homophobia and sexism of
Speaker 1: the Soderus may see met odds with their anti imperialism
Speaker 1: and concern for the poor, but right wing organizations have
Speaker 1: often adapted specific policies, positions, and organizational structures from the
Speaker 1: left and In this case, the soderus moobilizations have been
Speaker 1: extremely effective. Indeed, writing organizations are often more effective at
Speaker 1: utilizing dual power tactics and organizations and leftist movements. This
Speaker 1: is partly because of a fundamental asymmetry between the right
Speaker 1: and the left. Right wing organizations can almost always depend
Speaker 1: on financial support from wealthy political backers, who, when push
Speaker 1: comes to shove, can simply create a movement with pure
Speaker 1: money as the coax to create the Tea Party. Leftists,
Speaker 1: the ravings of right wing conspiracy theorists, notwithstanding, have no
Speaker 1: such backers. This funding and support can go a long
Speaker 1: way towards explaining the success of groups like Hezbollah. It
Speaker 1: is certainly true that without Iranian support, Hezbollah would not
Speaker 1: be the movement that it is today, but a great
Speaker 1: deal of their success is simply attributable to the tactics themselves.
Speaker 1: This does not escaped the notice of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Joint Special Operations Universities. Major James Love wrote a
Speaker 1: monograph entitled Hesbllah Social Services a Source of Power. In it,
Speaker 1: he writes, the most important branch of the Hezbillah organization
Speaker 1: is a social service section, which can be demonstrated by
Speaker 1: the allocation of an estimated fifty of Hesbala's two thousand
Speaker 1: seven budget service efforts. It is through the work of
Speaker 1: the Social Service Section that all party activities are possible.
Speaker 1: Hesbalah Social Service Section was designed to influence all aspects
Speaker 1: of Lebanicia society. The original intent of providing needed services
Speaker 1: to an oppressed people appears to have been manipulated by
Speaker 1: Hesbillah as a vehicle to bolster its ranks, provide a
Speaker 1: humanitarian shield to the organization, increased influence within the Lebanese government,
Speaker 1: and combat at shier arrival on ball. The Social Service
Speaker 1: Section serves as an equal arm within the organization and
Speaker 1: is used as much as the military and political wing
Speaker 1: in terms of leverage. Hesbillah's Deputy Secretary General describes the
Speaker 1: purpose and intent of the Social Service Section and the
Speaker 1: following passage. Hesbellah paid particular attention to social work. Not
Speaker 1: one aspect of aiding the poor was neglected. As the
Speaker 1: party work towards achieving joint social responsibility, answering their urgent
Speaker 1: needs and introducing beneficial programs. Such work was simply considered
Speaker 1: party duty and concentrated effort towards raising funds and making
Speaker 1: available social service resources served towards achieving these goals. The
Speaker 1: party worked the best of its capacities, cooperating with official
Speaker 1: institutions to respond societal needs. Has Blah's provided medical aid,
Speaker 1: reconstruction assistance, education programs, and particularly programs that take care
Speaker 1: of patrons and widows, which have served to solidify their base.
Speaker 1: These organizations were critical to has Belah's meteoric rise from
Speaker 1: a political nonentity to arguably the most powerful factuated side
Speaker 1: of Lepanese politics. Has Belah's state within a state, as
Speaker 1: it's become known, it's capable of even resisting the Israeli Army.
Speaker 1: Major Love's frustration with the inability of the American Army
Speaker 1: to either deny has Blah's own aid efforts or replicate
Speaker 1: them in a way that could strengthen American power are
Speaker 1: testaments the effectiveness of such a technique and the dangers
Speaker 1: they posed to the American imperial and state project. One
Speaker 1: of those Love's major concerns is that American aid programs
Speaker 1: are simply caught up in red tape. They're unable to
Speaker 1: respond as fast as community led efforts, which means that
Speaker 1: those efforts will get off the ground faster, get to
Speaker 1: the scene faster, and thus route the political of fits.
Speaker 1: When the state is unwilling or unable to provide services,
Speaker 1: especially in the wake of disasters, it leaves a power
Speaker 1: vacuum for organizations to exploit. May not have heard of
Speaker 1: the RSS before. It's a paramilitary group affiliated with India's
Speaker 1: ruling party, the b j P, counts among its members
Speaker 1: India's Prime Minister Modi. It's also probably the world's largest
Speaker 1: fascist organization. The RSS was founded in a group nominally
Speaker 1: dedicated to protecting and promoting Hindu interests. What this means
Speaker 1: in practice is that the RSS is dedicated to creating
Speaker 1: a Hindu state and maintains and promotes a violent hatred
Speaker 1: of Muslims. The results in RSS members being at the
Speaker 1: forefront of anti Muslim programs. The rss IS pre World
Speaker 1: War Two leaders were open admirers of Hitler and Mussolini,
Speaker 1: and while they eventually abandoned those positions at the start
Speaker 1: of World War Two, the rss IS politics have remained
Speaker 1: thoroughly fascist in the intense communal rioting that both preceded
Speaker 1: and followed the partition of India and Kistan after independence,
Speaker 1: which saw mass population transfers of Hindus and Muslims and
Speaker 1: the death of somewhere between two hundred thousand and two
Speaker 1: million people. The RSS established itself as a protector of
Speaker 1: Hindi refugees against Muslim violence, provided protection and aid to
Speaker 1: those trying to survive the chaos the good world has generated, however,
Speaker 1: collapse after a former RSS member did the single most
Speaker 1: famous thing anyone associated with the RSS has ever done,
Speaker 1: assassinated Gandhi. The RSS was almost immediately banned, but in
Speaker 1: light of the terrible pr you get when you're associated
Speaker 1: with killing Gandhi, the RSS became increasingly involved with disaster relief.
Speaker 1: Over half a century of painstaking organizing, it created schools
Speaker 1: and youth programs to spread its influence and use them
Speaker 1: to fuel further anti Muslim violence. In two thousand one,
Speaker 1: the organization gained national acclaim for its response to a
Speaker 1: massive earthquake and Gunjarat. The RSS heavily emphasized the nondiscriminatory
Speaker 1: nature of their aid work and their propaganda, but in reality,
Speaker 1: many of the villages the RS s had rebuilt after
Speaker 1: the devastation had been transformed into miniature versions of the
Speaker 1: fabled Hindu state that the RSS seeks to impose on
Speaker 1: all of India. Strategically, this should look familiar to us now.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a fascist form of prefigurative politics. The RSS
Speaker 1: used an earthquake to build the structure of the new
Speaker 1: Hindu society in the shell of the old. The b
Speaker 1: JP's dominance over Indian politics while led by a member
Speaker 1: of the RSS, and the brutal crackdowns body carried out
Speaker 1: in Kashmir our bloody testament to the success of their strategy.
Speaker 1: Christian fundamentalist organizations have also been extremely effective and utilizing
Speaker 1: their own form of right wing prefigurative politics, so in
Speaker 1: a somewhat different way. In the RSS, their new world
Speaker 1: is defined above all by theocratic patriarchal authoritarianism. Like the
Speaker 1: radicals that occupy, the religious right was operating off of
Speaker 1: a form of contagion theory, theory that exposure to their
Speaker 1: social organizations and forms would essentially be contagious and spread,
Speaker 1: but the Christian rights preferred form as the patriarchal family,
Speaker 1: which serves as a microcosm of the kind of hierarchy
Speaker 1: and patriarchal violence that dominate their long dreamed of theocratic society.
Speaker 1: The Christian right would instill these values into their children
Speaker 1: and send them off into the world to propagate their ideology. Ettinger,
Speaker 1: an expert on the Christian right, wrote this about the
Speaker 1: second phase of the strategy. In nineteen, several church leaders
Speaker 1: came up with a new approach, identifying seven spheres of
Speaker 1: culture to focus on one after another. They try to
Speaker 1: bring about the lasting change and have a significant impact
Speaker 1: on the superstructure of American culture. Lauren Cunningham, founder of
Speaker 1: Youth with the Mission, a Christian missionary group coordinating international
Speaker 1: and national mission churchs for young Christians, describes these seven
Speaker 1: areas as such, these are the areas you can go
Speaker 1: on as missionaries. Here they are first, it's the institution
Speaker 1: set up by God. First the family. After the family
Speaker 1: was the church or the people of God. The third
Speaker 1: was the area of school or education. The fourth was
Speaker 1: media public communication in all forms printed and electronic. The
Speaker 1: fifth was what I call celebration, the arts, entertainment, sports,
Speaker 1: where you celebrate within a culture. The sixth would be
Speaker 1: the whole area of the economy, which starts with innovation
Speaker 1: and science and technology, productivity, sales, and service. The whole
Speaker 1: area we often call it business, but we leave out something.
Speaker 1: We leave out the scientific part which actually raises the
Speaker 1: wealth of the world, anything new like making sand and
Speaker 1: chips for a microchip that increases wealth in the world.
Speaker 1: And then of course prediction, sales and service helps to
Speaker 1: spread the wealth. And so the last area was the
Speaker 1: area of governments. This is a need encapsulation of the
Speaker 1: rights p Refigurative politics start first with the family, and
Speaker 1: then with the church, then reshaped school and education and
Speaker 1: mass media in their image, and from there you can
Speaker 1: begin to take the entire economy. Churches have also long
Speaker 1: used aid programs to proselytize and also expand their control
Speaker 1: over the population, which becomes dependent on their aid. In
Speaker 1: the places where the left has failed to provide for
Speaker 1: their community, the far right has stepped in and has
Speaker 1: been able to rapidly and effectively reshape the political landscape.
Speaker 1: This does not mean, however, that they can't be beaten.
Speaker 1: Cooperation Jackson has offered one of the most powerful visions
Speaker 1: of dual power in the modern US. A product of
Speaker 1: the New African People's Organization and the Malcolm ex grassroots movements,
Speaker 1: Jackson Cush Plan. Cooperation Jackson has put forward a radical
Speaker 1: and democratic bottle of dual power, with the aim of
Speaker 1: turning over control of the land and the means that
Speaker 1: products into Jackson's black working class and allowing it to
Speaker 1: achieve its own self determination. Corporation Jackson has formed mutual
Speaker 1: aid networks, started an incubated program to help workers corroperatives
Speaker 1: get off the ground, and formed a community land trust
Speaker 1: that purchases abandoned buildings in Jackson it turns them over
Speaker 1: to the community. They've also somewhat unusually wound up engaged
Speaker 1: in the electoral process after the untimely death of Ally
Speaker 1: and Jackson Mayor Choqua La Boomba, which led to the
Speaker 1: election of his son, Choquant La Bomba. This placed the
Speaker 1: movement in a somewhat awkward position of having allies, even
Speaker 1: if constrained by the realities of state power in the
Speaker 1: state itself. But politics in the real world is never
Speaker 1: as clean as the models we create to describe it.
Speaker 1: It is only in our ability to adapt the changing
Speaker 1: conditions of struggle while maintaining our political principles that we
Speaker 1: can build the new world in the shell of the old,
Speaker 1: and we can build it. The question is simply, will
Speaker 1: we uh well that wasn't very good. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: host of the podcast you're listening to, and ashamed of,
Speaker 1: probably because that was Jesus Christ. Garrison. Come in here,
Speaker 1: fix this this Scarrison, Um, this is it could happen
Speaker 1: here a podcast about the fact that the world was
Speaker 1: folding apart, as embodied by me falling apart. When I
Speaker 1: try to introduce the show, see I tied it in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good job, thank you, thank you. Well it is it is.
Speaker 1: It has to rhyme. It's like it's like the Star
Speaker 1: Wars movies. That's what I was doing. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is Melissa A sidera founder and director of Polo's Pantry,
Speaker 1: a mutual aid food distribution project in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: A Melissa, thank you for coming on and talking to us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. I apologize for the introduction, but I honestly
Speaker 1: it's better. It was better than I usually do, so
Speaker 1: if you can back that up. Yes, okay. So I'm
Speaker 1: an l A native, and um, I've been doing community
Speaker 1: organizing for probably like close to a decade, doing a
Speaker 1: lot of community work for a lot of time, and
Speaker 1: a few years before the pandemic. Actually, I started to
Speaker 1: organize with a lot of grassroots organizations in l A,
Speaker 1: working with a lot of house less folks UM all
Speaker 1: over l A, and kind of clock pretty early that
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: groups were burning through their budgets spending it on food.
Speaker 1: And so since I worked in kind of the food industry,
Speaker 1: I started to kind of poke around and figure out
Speaker 1: that we could get a lot of these things donated
Speaker 1: to us UM and pretty much started building a roster
Speaker 1: like building, kind of like a rulodex of UM other organizations,
Speaker 1: non profits, UM, food banks that we could rely on.
Speaker 1: So almost kind of created sort of like an altera
Speaker 1: system UM for these groups who are working with houseless
Speaker 1: folks to get food every week. UM. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to make a steady and
Speaker 1: the reliable system so that our own house neighbors would
Speaker 1: get food and that organizers across the l A wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about it. And so that's pretty much
Speaker 1: how POLO started. Officially started in two thousand eighteen. I
Speaker 1: was organizing with a group called Caton for All and UH,
Speaker 1: they do a lot of political advocacy and mostly rooted
Speaker 1: in like, um kind of you know, human rights for
Speaker 1: our houses, neighbors. If you don't know, kaytime for all.
Speaker 1: Look them up. They're awesome, follow them fantastic. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, I actually was because I was already doing
Speaker 1: a lot of mutual aid work in skid Row around
Speaker 1: that time and really kind of felt at some point,
Speaker 1: um that you know, like, yes, it was great that
Speaker 1: I was going out there with teams getting hot meals
Speaker 1: out and hot beverages whatever people needed to people, but
Speaker 1: I just was so down on what the conditions, seeing
Speaker 1: all the conditions that they were living in, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to meet other activists and other folks um
Speaker 1: who could really figure out how you connect people to
Speaker 1: services and and just really you know, anyone working in
Speaker 1: policy that's that's really changing things for people out there.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to take sort of my advocacy
Speaker 1: and like my work a step further and connected with
Speaker 1: activists all the railway and so that's sort of like
Speaker 1: my organs really rooted lot of activism and organizing. So
Speaker 1: I see I see a lot of I'm not sort
Speaker 1: of your standard kind of or nonprofit I really see
Speaker 1: things in the lens and as a community organizer, and
Speaker 1: so that's why our our work pretty much exploded during COVID.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of interested for for starters because you're
Speaker 1: you're you know, this is um a mutual aid project
Speaker 1: as opposed to kind of a charity project, and what
Speaker 1: do you what do you see as being the dividing
Speaker 1: line there? Well, for you know, for a lot of
Speaker 1: for us, you know, it's very easy for for folks
Speaker 1: to kind of see the work that we do as
Speaker 1: part of the kind of charitable food system because obviously
Speaker 1: we're you know, UM mutual aid. It's the difference really
Speaker 1: is that obviously, UM, you know, there there's a there's
Speaker 1: a reciprocity between the two of you, UM, between between neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: between individuals, between organizations of sharing resources with each other,
Speaker 1: UM and charitable obviously is that there's only one way, right,
Speaker 1: there's only like one person giving. But for us, UM,
Speaker 1: the way we picked our partners, I mean, you're you're
Speaker 1: ready part of this nucleus of kind of a coalition
Speaker 1: of or doing this work. So it was just really
Speaker 1: very easy for us to kind of share resources with
Speaker 1: each other. So I was doing food and some folks
Speaker 1: were doing hygiene kits, other folks were doing tents, other
Speaker 1: folks were doing types or whatever, and so there was
Speaker 1: so much you know, kind of mutualid and activity going on.
Speaker 1: And so that that's why we're we're really kind of
Speaker 1: rooted in that comment that thinking as far as as
Speaker 1: opposed to charitable ors that basically just set up somewhere
Speaker 1: and give, you know, give give stuff out to people.
Speaker 1: And so we have look in part and part of
Speaker 1: my advisory circle are a lot of houseless neighbors UM
Speaker 1: houses leaders in our community. UM. I also take a
Speaker 1: lot of advice from UM Indigenous organizers UM black community
Speaker 1: leaders in different neighborhoods that we work in. So our
Speaker 1: work is really informed by the community. And so we
Speaker 1: basically asked folks, hey, you know, like, what can we
Speaker 1: do UM and plug into to work that UM that
Speaker 1: already exists in those in those areas. I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope that makes sense. But that's kind of how I
Speaker 1: feel about what we do. And and as an as
Speaker 1: an organizer, because I think we get a lot of
Speaker 1: questions from people who are interested in starting mutual aid
Speaker 1: projects in their own areas. And one of the questions
Speaker 1: we often have It is like, well how do I
Speaker 1: how do I do that? Right? UM? And Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in like like if you could kind of walk
Speaker 1: us through the steps when when Polo's pantry got started,
Speaker 1: Like what is what was the kind of order of
Speaker 1: operations that you had to go through to get this
Speaker 1: this been running? I think the first thing to do
Speaker 1: is really too For me, it was already kind of
Speaker 1: being part of grassroots UM or so I was part
Speaker 1: of a few of them UM and so it's really
Speaker 1: important to UM to kind of identify the needs of
Speaker 1: a community first before setting up your organs. So I
Speaker 1: feel like I already had an idea of you know,
Speaker 1: of of what certain orcs needed, UM which areas, how
Speaker 1: many and so kind of identifying the needs first kind
Speaker 1: of UM number one. And and to do that you
Speaker 1: really have to connect with the grassroots organizations, local ones
Speaker 1: in your area. So you know, I recommend really just
Speaker 1: kind of doing researchers. Always folks doing that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff all over. If you're into political advocacy, there's folks
Speaker 1: that do that with their folks who are more food
Speaker 1: justice oriented, Like I would recommend going to a local
Speaker 1: food bank or sup kitchens to have also, Like I've
Speaker 1: been doing that for years and I've met a lot
Speaker 1: of people UM with kind of similar values mine UM,
Speaker 1: so just kind of pretty much identify one what you'd
Speaker 1: like to do, what you're good at UM, and then
Speaker 1: essentially research UM, you know, kind of opportunities to tap
Speaker 1: into a local organ doing that work and then essentially
Speaker 1: start organizing with them. Right. I don't I don't recommend
Speaker 1: to build like to build an order prior to not
Speaker 1: having this kind of knowledge, because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: really crucial to sort of kind of map out first
Speaker 1: what the community needs instead of you building mutual aid
Speaker 1: organization based on you know whatever, because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's it's important to work through things from the ground
Speaker 1: up UM. That way, you feel like the work is impactful.
Speaker 1: That way, the community is leading and informing your work.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of like how I I
Speaker 1: approached MINE. So look for a local org so kind
Speaker 1: of sit and organizing for a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: from there, once you guys identify what it is UM
Speaker 1: and start to kind of have an idea of the
Speaker 1: demand or the need in that area, then start to
Speaker 1: reach out to say, for me, for for food. A
Speaker 1: lot of local, um, local chains will well well pretty
Speaker 1: much if you if you tell them what you're doing, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of them will support you. So I actually
Speaker 1: have I started with just going literally to my local
Speaker 1: Ralphs and telling the manager. They're like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, I'm starting this or you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't Ralph's being a local grocery store in Likes Angeles area.
Speaker 1: A lot of I didn't know what Ralph's was before
Speaker 1: I moved to l A. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be like, she's not just like rolling over to where
Speaker 1: buddy Ralph's house, like, I guess you've got some food? Yeah? Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that Ralph's out here in l A. So most
Speaker 1: places yeah more or less, yeah, yeah and will more
Speaker 1: folks said, not everyone is down for that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: but somehow you'll you'll really end up on one that's
Speaker 1: really you know, that is really unkind. I think most
Speaker 1: folks have to realize that this this this kind of
Speaker 1: work is not it didn't happen overnight like building like
Speaker 1: building uh, you know, like a reliable network of people
Speaker 1: to donate to you is. It takes time. So but
Speaker 1: I think if if you hit kind of larger chains,
Speaker 1: you will get UM, you know, you'll you'll you'll get
Speaker 1: you'll start to get a steady supply from them. Do
Speaker 1: you have any kind of advice for UM when you're
Speaker 1: actually approaching you know, manager at Ralph's or something, somebody
Speaker 1: who works for Like, what do you have like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a script kind of a rough guy
Speaker 1: to like here's how I try to start these conversations here.
Speaker 1: Some ways I try to phrase for things because that
Speaker 1: could be useful for folks. You know, I actually have
Speaker 1: like a form letters I could share later. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can show, Yeah, that would be great, UM that you
Speaker 1: know that they can use to UM you know, if
Speaker 1: they're if they're going to UM solicit folks with that stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of mutual aid organizations to
Speaker 1: have that kind of UM kind of literature, that kind
Speaker 1: of form, so UM, I think just basically kind of
Speaker 1: letting them know who you are, who you're serving, UM,
Speaker 1: how often which demographic is going to that's usually really important. UM.
Speaker 1: What what helped me though, was I was as I
Speaker 1: started to get more serious about about doing the food work,
Speaker 1: I connected to you know, some some community partners, and
Speaker 1: I actually UM turned Polos into a fiscally sponsored organ
Speaker 1: so we moved from being just fully grassroots to being
Speaker 1: fiscally sponsored. That basically means we're operating under the five
Speaker 1: one C three number of another organization of a larger organization.
Speaker 1: So that that was that open so so many opportunities
Speaker 1: for us. It really allowed us to be able to
Speaker 1: access larger amounts of food and really help out a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of a lot of smaller organs
Speaker 1: that needed to get their food programs off the ground.
Speaker 1: And so UM that is something I recommend if you're
Speaker 1: if people are serious about it, to define a community
Speaker 1: of community partner who who isn't established five one C
Speaker 1: three that they trust UM to see if they if
Speaker 1: they you know, if they can sign on to to
Speaker 1: be a physical sponsor UM. That I think is one
Speaker 1: of the quickest ways to be able to UM to
Speaker 1: really kind of establish yourself as as far as getting
Speaker 1: larger amounts of food then, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: getting pallets of food, not just cases, but literally palettes
Speaker 1: of food delivered to wherever you are. As soon as
Speaker 1: we did that, that completely changed the game UM. And
Speaker 1: and I think I did that because I knew I
Speaker 1: had so many friends who were doing mutual aid that
Speaker 1: needed so you know, just so much stuff from groceries
Speaker 1: to um, you know, fresh produce, and it wasn't and
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it didn't stop. And food we
Speaker 1: were getting you know, hand sanitizer, we were getting tense,
Speaker 1: we were getting all sorts of stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: so um. So yeah, that's what I recommend for folks
Speaker 1: were serious about food is to really again start to
Speaker 1: build a relationship with local businesses, um that they that
Speaker 1: they like food businesses, and really telling people this is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. If you're if you know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're you know, if you are, what support us?
Speaker 1: You know, like this is um, you know, these are
Speaker 1: these are the days that we need food or whatever,
Speaker 1: or these are the times that we'll need food and
Speaker 1: just let them know that you know, you're you're happy
Speaker 1: to pick it up or that you're happy to because
Speaker 1: there's there's I think, at least for California, we're starting
Speaker 1: to change law, like policy and law behind food waste,
Speaker 1: and so I think, um, something's going to change. In
Speaker 1: January of two, where a lot of food waste basically
Speaker 1: going to decrease because it's going to be much more difficult.
Speaker 1: The city is going to make it much more difficult
Speaker 1: for for businesses to just carry this stuff. Um they're
Speaker 1: they're really pushing them to uh um to separate them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, regardless, you're helping the business really UM move,
Speaker 1: you know, move food waste, and and most of them
Speaker 1: and a lot of employees too that I've talked to
Speaker 1: UM just you know, just our heart work. And every
Speaker 1: time they have to clear out you know, a full
Speaker 1: full tray or just trays of trays of of of
Speaker 1: of a perfectly fine food. So yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: video going viral on Twitter right now of of like
Speaker 1: someone working at Dunking Donuts and just like dumping just
Speaker 1: like hundreds and hundreds of donuts into the garbage. And
Speaker 1: then that happens. That happens every single day. You know.
Speaker 1: I have I have friends who used to work on
Speaker 1: Whole Foods and they would tell me just just how
Speaker 1: heartbreaking it was, just the amount, just the massive amount
Speaker 1: of that's being wasted. Yeah, it's evil, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's it's a thing that in
Speaker 1: the more difficult days ahead as you know, things like
Speaker 1: well like we under in a lot of areas, like
Speaker 1: the crop was half of what it normally is this year.
Speaker 1: That's going to continue. One day we will look at
Speaker 1: videos of Dunkin Donuts dropping an entire day's worth of
Speaker 1: donuts into the trash and use it as a pretext
Speaker 1: to bring executives to trial. And it's going to be
Speaker 1: like like like a war crime. Yeah is I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean honestly though, as someone in food, um, you know,
Speaker 1: like the food system is changing massively in so many ways.
Speaker 1: I feel like the one kind of good thing that
Speaker 1: happened in the pandemic is that lawmakers were able to
Speaker 1: identify that the White Snap or cal Fresh pretty much
Speaker 1: food stamps were not enough really to um, you know,
Speaker 1: to feed families and feed people. It's not nearly enough, though,
Speaker 1: but at least it kind of pushes the needles where
Speaker 1: we need where we needed to go UM. And I
Speaker 1: think I think, having having been so focused and so
Speaker 1: like in the center of mutual aid work in l A,
Speaker 1: I'm able to kind of broadly tell you know, tell
Speaker 1: um really tell lawmakers too that hey, you know, there's
Speaker 1: so much um there's so much meat out there, but
Speaker 1: the community themselves have built alternate food systems to be
Speaker 1: able to care for themselves. I feel like my hope
Speaker 1: really is to be able to have to kind of
Speaker 1: hyperlocalize our food systems that way neighborhoods and really like
Speaker 1: communities are are essentially dictating their own you know, their
Speaker 1: own needs. They're they're basically bringing in the resources that
Speaker 1: they want, They're bringing in the kind of food that
Speaker 1: they want, you know, and um, and really just working
Speaker 1: towards the real kind of food food sovereignty where people
Speaker 1: are able to you know, to get the resources themselves.
Speaker 1: And and for me, I feel like mutual aid scares
Speaker 1: a lot of people because again it really is this
Speaker 1: sort of like, um, the reason why we were able
Speaker 1: to a lot of communities were able to to survive COVID.
Speaker 1: You know, we're still doing it and it still ours
Speaker 1: so deep in it. And and even like I try
Speaker 1: to tell students to and like, you know, um, mutual
Speaker 1: aid isn't just food or whatever. It's also like say
Speaker 1: your dad is a pickup truck and your neighbor needs
Speaker 1: to move, I don't know, their dining room table across town,
Speaker 1: Like that is a form of mutual aid UM or Like,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many things that especially a lot of
Speaker 1: immigrant communities that I that I work with. This this
Speaker 1: form of care, community care, you know, has existed forever,
Speaker 1: and it's just somehow elevated itself during the pandemic because,
Speaker 1: as we know, the safety net just wasn't enough. It
Speaker 1: didn't it didn't it really didn't help me, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't really help a lot of communities, and so
Speaker 1: this system essentially kept people afloat. And now we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to really create better ways to
Speaker 1: sustain it and to really create better ways to get
Speaker 1: the resources directly to communities that need them. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of where I'm at im. I'm working with other
Speaker 1: folks trying to figure out how to how to keep
Speaker 1: the sustainable and really have more agency over what kind
Speaker 1: of food and what kind of aid you want. How
Speaker 1: have people that have been needing to access the mutual
Speaker 1: aiding the food, how have they been learning about your organization? UM.
Speaker 1: I think honestly, all this stuff really happened by word
Speaker 1: of mouth. I think because I was I was already
Speaker 1: part of this huge coalition UM. That's part of of
Speaker 1: the Sophie Knows a Cat for All. There's a group
Speaker 1: called Street Watch. There's a group called Brown Game, There's
Speaker 1: a group called Like There's there's all these different folks
Speaker 1: that basically are in our wide coalition. I haven't had
Speaker 1: to really advertise much like people just sort of like
Speaker 1: just kept telling others like, hey, you know, like Melissa
Speaker 1: Polos and her team were doing this and UM. Also
Speaker 1: as a COVID response, I created another UM um UH
Speaker 1: like COVID initiative called Homemade Meals and and that is
Speaker 1: the partnership with another organization called YIS. And so as
Speaker 1: of today, I think we're close to seventy meals UM.
Speaker 1: That's all community lad. Yes. So we so we the
Speaker 1: smart of UM. We essentially created a system where we
Speaker 1: uh we work with people who are who are cooking
Speaker 1: homade meals in their homes and connecting them to drivers.
Speaker 1: And so we have about six different UM organ partners.
Speaker 1: So one of them is obviously it's the same people Kaytown,
Speaker 1: street Watch, Covenant House. They work a lot with Homeless
Speaker 1: Youth um l a can or in skid Row UM
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other mutual aid groups in different
Speaker 1: areas of l A, so I recognize UM. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of COVID, a lot of my houseless neighbors were
Speaker 1: telling us that they were scared, like because a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of businesses were closing, a lot of
Speaker 1: corner stores, restaurants, UM that the food access completely shut
Speaker 1: off for them during at the beginning, and I started
Speaker 1: to freak out. I was like, we're going to get
Speaker 1: food to people. And so UM some friends who run UM,
Speaker 1: basically they weren't kind of like a youth kind of
Speaker 1: youth focus or UM wanted to activate their you know,
Speaker 1: activate their community. They're like, hey, how can we help?
Speaker 1: What can we do? So we created this program basically
Speaker 1: that you know, figure it out, like, okay, well a
Speaker 1: lot of people want to have volunteer, but they can't
Speaker 1: leave home, So why don't they cooked meals at home?
Speaker 1: And then we'll just pair them with drivers we can
Speaker 1: pick it up safely. And so we just start doing that.
Speaker 1: We created this system too, and and I think we honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought we were just gonna do it for two months,
Speaker 1: but now we're what like, in nineteen months later, seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand nails over a thousand volunteers, like it's been wild. Actually,
Speaker 1: Jamie a friend of dog expert, she would be angry
Speaker 1: if we didn't state that. So Jamie, UM, Jamie actually
Speaker 1: is it's one of our O g like like cooks,
Speaker 1: Like she started with home and made meals from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. UM, she's kind of one of our That's
Speaker 1: kind of how we know her. UM. It's because she
Speaker 1: found she found that program UM. And it's been a while,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been so amazing to to really activate
Speaker 1: so many people across l A to cook for our
Speaker 1: houses neighbors. And so I haven't even fully digested our
Speaker 1: our team hasn't even full digested that the real impact
Speaker 1: of that. But it's been seving five thousand meals UM
Speaker 1: made by the community for our for our houses neighbors.
Speaker 1: So so so that's yeah, so that I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I feel like and I truly believe there's just
Speaker 1: so much, just so much power and the people and
Speaker 1: really trying to figure out ways to continue to you know,
Speaker 1: to create UM better systems where where we can redirect
Speaker 1: those resources you know, UM to us and UM you
Speaker 1: know like really kind kind of break down these systems
Speaker 1: where you know, because because even people were telling me,
Speaker 1: like folks who are like, you know, these sort of
Speaker 1: big institutions, food institutions have been around for decades or
Speaker 1: even folks UM from like yeah, from like running food
Speaker 1: dogs since the eighties were like, you know, how are
Speaker 1: you able to move so fast? I'm like, that's mutual aid.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's mutual aid. Then our ability to not
Speaker 1: have to run through so much bureaucratic crap and red
Speaker 1: tape is a reason why we were able to, you know,
Speaker 1: to to to in secreate such huge impact because people
Speaker 1: believed in what we did and you know, and helped
Speaker 1: support us, funded us UM and we essentially just you know,
Speaker 1: just hit the ground running. We're able to figure out
Speaker 1: what people needed on the ground and just just got
Speaker 1: it to them. That's that's it, you know, and we'll
Speaker 1: figure out. If we don't have it, we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: you know, we'll ask around for folks who have it.
Speaker 1: Like UM. There's a group called SILA there. It's silver
Speaker 1: like UM and my friend Kat who's one of the
Speaker 1: co founders. She they also worked with with UM with
Speaker 1: Houseless Folks and they do uh incredible work, like you know,
Speaker 1: providing showers, providing hot meals, providing reference services for folks.
Speaker 1: Um she she was great, I'd getting hygiene kids, and
Speaker 1: so that's that was started me to wil between each other.
Speaker 1: Like she needed hot meals, so I gave that to
Speaker 1: her on Saturdays, and then I needed like hygiene kids,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of like the basis, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: like I literally will give her two hundred meals, She'll
Speaker 1: give me two hundred hygiene kids. And that was like
Speaker 1: that throughout the pandemic, Like we just would share resources
Speaker 1: and people thought we were this huge borg, but essentially
Speaker 1: it was just you know, literally like my friends and
Speaker 1: I talking to each other like hey, what do you
Speaker 1: have today? What do you have coming in today? And
Speaker 1: we just essentially kind of built this sort of cloud
Speaker 1: like sort of inventory. Right, so it's like Polos has
Speaker 1: a thousand meals and like Seela's got five hundred Hygian kids,
Speaker 1: and like you know, street Watch as like fifty tents
Speaker 1: and like a hundred tarps. So it's like we all
Speaker 1: were like, hey, you know, there's there's a houseless van
Speaker 1: on the corner of like Sunset or whatever that needs
Speaker 1: like blah blah blah. And so we essentially just you know,
Speaker 1: just grab and go like Poles has meals and like
Speaker 1: Streetwatch has tents, and like Kate Towns got like the tarps.
Speaker 1: So y'all just again beautifully just sort of started to
Speaker 1: like build this sort of sort of cloud like inventory
Speaker 1: of stuff and it just worked and it's still working
Speaker 1: so um and it's so assistant, Like is what what
Speaker 1: we're bringing up or at the beginning is talking about
Speaker 1: how consistent you're able to you're able to have done
Speaker 1: this work, which is if you're an l A resident,
Speaker 1: you know that you know the city's support is never consistent,
Speaker 1: so having that consistency is so vital. Yes, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not thank you know, it's it's a lot of hard work.
Speaker 1: There's so much that people don't see. Obviously, there's so many,
Speaker 1: so many things that people don't see. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of organizing behind it, just literally a lot of community building,
Speaker 1: a lot of meetings. Yeah, I think that again, like
Speaker 1: the bulk of mutual aid is relationships and trust, you know,
Speaker 1: like that that's that's really it. That's how you breathe
Speaker 1: life into your system. And it's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to have you have to continue to like nourish
Speaker 1: your relationships, you know, between yourself and other organizers, between
Speaker 1: yourself if you're running an order between yourself and another
Speaker 1: organ UM. And and really that's how we've been able to,
Speaker 1: you know, to to reach so many people, is because
Speaker 1: we focused on making sure but you know, UM, it's
Speaker 1: so easy to to burn out in this work. But again,
Speaker 1: we also have to make sure that we take care
Speaker 1: of each other, UM. And we focused on making sure
Speaker 1: that we're checking out the other two and so I,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's hard to fully explain what how
Speaker 1: do you even teach that you know, how to how
Speaker 1: to how to properly build relationships? But I feel like
Speaker 1: that's that's such a key part of creating a really
Speaker 1: robust mutual aid network. UM. And that's at least the
Speaker 1: experience that you had, you know, yeah, are the work
Speaker 1: that you've done and what you've been able to accomplish
Speaker 1: is very impressive and is is something that people a
Speaker 1: lot of people can aspire to. UM. Is there any
Speaker 1: like resources online that you can point to if someone's
Speaker 1: wanting to get into this type of work, UM or
Speaker 1: any any like any kind of like advice to get
Speaker 1: started in your own city, or to like look for
Speaker 1: stuff that's doing similar that that's like that's doing a
Speaker 1: similar thing. Um uh wow, let's see who has um gosh,
Speaker 1: that's a really really really good question. Um. Well, well,
Speaker 1: first I hope that people have read Mutual Aid by
Speaker 1: Dean Spade. Um. That's a really good book. Um. And
Speaker 1: and from there I would read I would read The
Speaker 1: Black Panthers Social Programs. I get a lot of I
Speaker 1: get a lot of my um my inspiration from there. Um.
Speaker 1: And really that's that's really those those two things to
Speaker 1: kind of start as just sort of like your um,
Speaker 1: your primers um. And then if you want to kind
Speaker 1: of get deeper into food justice, um uh, they're's a
Speaker 1: really good book I get ready years ago. I think
Speaker 1: it's literally called food Justice one on one. Okay, let
Speaker 1: me see, it's really called food Juice one on one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's quite a few, but but one that's one,
Speaker 1: and then there's another. There's a one book um I
Speaker 1: read called More Than Just Food um. And then it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty by Yeah, I'll give you guys my top
Speaker 1: five and that really kind of helps sort of um
Speaker 1: like shape my thinking or on food juice. So that's
Speaker 1: It's written by a guy named Garrett Broad and he
Speaker 1: essentially like kind of lays out sort of how the
Speaker 1: industrial food system kind of created this huge crisis that
Speaker 1: we're in, and you know, like how there's there's really
Speaker 1: kind of an abundance of food everywhere, but obviously it's distributed,
Speaker 1: yes exactly, and so and and and it also kind
Speaker 1: of lays out how food justice you know, activists um
Speaker 1: who are in mostly low income communities of color help
Speaker 1: really build community based kind of solutions to these problems.
Speaker 1: And so that's really kind of where my thinking and
Speaker 1: my my lens comes from. Is be because I am
Speaker 1: a child of l A. I'm able to understand what
Speaker 1: different neighborhoods need UM based on because I either grew
Speaker 1: up there, work there, have family there, you know, what's
Speaker 1: school there, or just have friends or other organizers who
Speaker 1: live there. And so say, if you know, I, I
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in Ball Heights, but I have friends
Speaker 1: who did. And so like, if I'm trying to build
Speaker 1: out a food program or mutual aid program and Ball Heights,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna just walk in there and be like
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna do it at you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna take over there, They're they're saying exactly.
Speaker 1: But I think that's one thing I think I really
Speaker 1: want to for people to really especially for for for
Speaker 1: young people who want to get to food justice, Like
Speaker 1: you really have to really honestly do your research first
Speaker 1: and let the media leaders lead, um lead lead your
Speaker 1: program with you. Right. And then there's a difference between
Speaker 1: like making community connections and then trying to take over, right,
Speaker 1: There's a very very two very different things exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be extractive, right, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be extractive. You don't want to be coming in
Speaker 1: and you know, and and and really like you know,
Speaker 1: try to like show up with like, you know, solutions
Speaker 1: where there they weren't informed at all by the community.
Speaker 1: And I keep trying to stress that, Yeah, is there
Speaker 1: anywhere that people can support you or at least follow
Speaker 1: you online to keep up with the work. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm very active on Twitter. Um it's uh, we're at
Speaker 1: Polos pantry, so that's p O l O, s um
Speaker 1: p A and t R Y. And then I'm also
Speaker 1: tweeting as myself as an organizer. It's under m E
Speaker 1: smelling music as M E L L E music. Um,
Speaker 1: and that actually that handled for me everywhere like my
Speaker 1: personal so I I tweet from there a lot. I
Speaker 1: tweet a lot about who Justice work I feel, and
Speaker 1: all our all our work in l A I tweet,
Speaker 1: I retweet a lot of our move network and coalition work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just thank you for coming on to the show to
Speaker 1: talk about through Justice and the work you've been doing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's great to hear more examples of people from around
Speaker 1: the country and then hopefully you know, around the world
Speaker 1: getting involved in in this type of work. UM. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that it wraps up us today. You can
Speaker 1: follow this show on Twitter and Instagram at Happened Here
Speaker 1: pod and cool Zone Media. UM, subscribe to the feed,
Speaker 1: leave a five star review or whatever. Anyway, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the show. Bye bye, everybody, say bye everybone, Bye
Speaker 1: bye everyone, by everyone. It Could Happen Here is a
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