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. Well, I'm Robert Evans may
Speaker 1: have said that already. I don't know, like I said,
Speaker 1: too many motherfucking podcasts, but this is the last school
Speaker 1: week episode. Um and and with me actually in the
Speaker 1: office right now. Maskless is a protest against the mask
Speaker 1: man Garrison David's it's fine, it's fine, Garrison. I understand
Speaker 1: that that you don't believe in health mandates. We have
Speaker 1: to respect each other's differences. I have magic to protect myself.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's that's fine. You use chaos magic to
Speaker 1: protect yourself from COVID? What do you got for me?
Speaker 1: We're doing we're doing the first it could happen here
Speaker 1: daily book episode excellent, um sexy and so I Irotic.
Speaker 1: We were looking for for spooky content for Spooky Week
Speaker 1: and around Halloween, and I wanted to find a book
Speaker 1: written by an unhinged like Christian writer about what they
Speaker 1: think Halloween is. And I found I found one with
Speaker 1: very very little browsing. It took It was very quick.
Speaker 1: It took me like five minutes. It used to be
Speaker 1: you were too wrong. Well, no, because you did grow
Speaker 1: up in the cold, but you were tooting to remember
Speaker 1: this being a super mainstream I mean, I wasn't like
Speaker 1: we had no Halloween when I was a kid. We
Speaker 1: couldn't got treating. We had like we had, like we
Speaker 1: had like a we had like a harvest party. The
Speaker 1: church put off, but like we had we had, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. The first time I went tricker treating was
Speaker 1: when I was like twelve and I moved to Portland. No,
Speaker 1: I was like thirteen, was the first time I went
Speaker 1: trick or treating? Yeah, it's um. I mean it used
Speaker 1: to be like it used to be something that got
Speaker 1: more mainstream play. The like anti Halloween thing, um kind
Speaker 1: of tied in with a satanic panic. I remember the
Speaker 1: early nineties. That's what this book is going to be about.
Speaker 1: Angry about it, but man, it just is like it's
Speaker 1: it's it almost feels like homey and comforting. Thinking back
Speaker 1: to that as this book has been oddly comforting because
Speaker 1: it just reminds me people with childhood. Was like, that's
Speaker 1: just all the same stuff. Yeah, I want you, I
Speaker 1: want you to read the title and the author of
Speaker 1: this amazing book. Okay, so this is wow. The cover
Speaker 1: is honestly just looks like a normal jack. It looks
Speaker 1: like a regular a bat into a Jack Lanard, but
Speaker 1: it's got like spooky white smoke coming out of it.
Speaker 1: The title is Helloween Satan's New Year by Dr Billy Dimily.
Speaker 1: It's not a real name. Is not a real name,
Speaker 1: Billy Billy like it's I swear to God listeners, b
Speaker 1: I L L y E. That is not a name.
Speaker 1: And the last it is certainly not Billy, that's Billy.
Speaker 1: But the last nay, it was just as bad. Dimily.
Speaker 1: Yeah d y M A L L y dim ally
Speaker 1: ally don't know nonsense. So we have Whenever you find
Speaker 1: a Christian book written by someone with doctor and from
Speaker 1: their first name, you know it. You know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be good. You gotta figure out what kind of doctor.
Speaker 1: Guess what? Guess what kind of doctor. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: for the maybe so, Billy dim Ley, the author earned
Speaker 1: earned a theological doctorate of ministry in the mid eighties
Speaker 1: at the Honolulu extension of the of the Western Conservative
Speaker 1: Baptist Theological Seminary headquartered in Portland, Oregon. So that's fine.
Speaker 1: The Honolulu one headquarters. The branch was in Hollelululu, but
Speaker 1: the headquarters was apparently Importland, Oregon in the eighties, And
Speaker 1: that makes sense much if it's still here. But you know,
Speaker 1: sister cities Portland and Honolulu. She wrote at least fifteen
Speaker 1: original manuscripts her word manuscript UM, on a wide range
Speaker 1: of biblical doctrines. And so he is a lady, I believe,
Speaker 1: So I mean, has she her pronounces I gotta, I gotta,
Speaker 1: can't continue. I'm gonna look this up. So yeah, but Billy,
Speaker 1: So then the book that we're looking at is is
Speaker 1: one one of her fifteen manuscripts UM self published by
Speaker 1: Infinity Publishing. Um. Yeah, this was in the publish in
Speaker 1: two thousand six. That gives that's a lady. And if
Speaker 1: that's her actual picture on the front, she just kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a looks like a white lady like
Speaker 1: a white lady. So yeah. So one of my favorite
Speaker 1: parts of the book so far is right when you
Speaker 1: opened up to the title page, it says, you know, Halloween,
Speaker 1: satans know you're a the titled the book, and then
Speaker 1: as a as a brief description of what the book is,
Speaker 1: it says, a systematic compilation and narrative of paraphrased Bible scriptures.
Speaker 1: Oh whoa, No, that is not her on the cover
Speaker 1: because she is not a white lady, is she not?
Speaker 1: So that's her? Oh? She she's like a black conservative
Speaker 1: bath Yeah, just like she looks like kind of like
Speaker 1: a judge. She does look a lot like a strong judge,
Speaker 1: does Judge Jennery? Yeah? Okay, well I do. I do
Speaker 1: love the systematic compilation narrative of paraphrased Bible scriptures, not
Speaker 1: actual Bibles. Not actual Bible scriptures. Wow, Garrison, Uh, you
Speaker 1: want to guess what she has as her as her
Speaker 1: place of employment on Facebook? Well, let me thank I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm gonna read it verbatim. Works at in
Speaker 1: and this is all caps now the service of God. Alright,
Speaker 1: she works at in the service of She who doesn't
Speaker 1: work at in the service of God? Am I right
Speaker 1: fucking incredible. Based on this book, I'm guessing she got real,
Speaker 1: real into Q and on. But that's just based on
Speaker 1: what I read. I think she may have died. Oh
Speaker 1: really well, her last post is in February. I wonder
Speaker 1: what happened around in February. Maybe she's just not super
Speaker 1: into Facebook but just posting quite a lot. No, she's not.
Speaker 1: She's actually not super He's a decent chance COVID got her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe she just doesn't use a lot of social media.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Con So, yeah, I do like that. She
Speaker 1: describes the book as paraphrase Bible scriptures, not actual par paraphrase,
Speaker 1: and and Bible paraphrase Bible scriptures on the doctrines of
Speaker 1: good and evil, including an expose on the practice of witchcraft, magic, occultism, divination,
Speaker 1: and Satan worship. So that that is how she describes
Speaker 1: the book. Now, the book is like almost the book
Speaker 1: is two pages long, and it is mostly the same
Speaker 1: sentence rewritten in like twelve ways. Um, it's all saying
Speaker 1: about how good Jesus is and how evil Satan is
Speaker 1: and how people using magic our servants of Satan. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's just that for for two hundred pages, and she
Speaker 1: includes like a lot of a lot of like again
Speaker 1: paraphrase Bible scriptures about you know, basically like really classic
Speaker 1: evangelical kind of conservative Baptist Christianity type stuff. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's how most of the book is. There's there's not
Speaker 1: much Halloween content in this Halloween book that doesn't sup rise.
Speaker 1: That's often the case with these weird like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just it's they've got some bizarre theological grife that's only
Speaker 1: potentially related to the culture ward stuff on, like like
Speaker 1: they have like stuff on like Zionism and the Holy Spirit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet she's got great takes on sacred books, Baptism. Like,
Speaker 1: it's a whole bunch of the whole bunch of just
Speaker 1: like regular kind of conservative Christian stuff. Except there is
Speaker 1: one chapter that is pure gold. It's called the Witch
Speaker 1: of Endor and it is this is this is the
Speaker 1: explos day on witchcraft and Halloween. I'm very excited. It's
Speaker 1: it is. It is the best part of the book.
Speaker 1: And I'm hand it's it's like at least like thirty pages.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna we can't read the whole thing because honestly, again,
Speaker 1: it is mostly the same kind of sentences. But I
Speaker 1: have highlighted a few a few key passages from the
Speaker 1: witches of endor Um to to distill out to us.
Speaker 1: So first the first thing, That first thing for when
Speaker 1: when a billy billy billy so, and in the section
Speaker 1: called what is a witch? Uh is a question says
Speaker 1: which is a sorcerer? Which is a Satanist? Which is
Speaker 1: worship ancient false gods and practice magic. Magic is the
Speaker 1: divinely forbidden black heart of bringing about the results beyond
Speaker 1: the human power by use of evil spirits and including
Speaker 1: the devil and his demons. Magic always brings Satan's diabolical
Speaker 1: power into play. So it's it's it's really good, um.
Speaker 1: She She goes on. She goes on to to describe
Speaker 1: the practice of witchcraft using like a cult, formulations, incantations,
Speaker 1: magical mutterings, peeping and chirping. Now it says, it says chirping, parenthesis,
Speaker 1: criminal hypnosis, parenthesis. Oh okay, that's chirping. That's what I'm glad,
Speaker 1: she clar up. That's what makes a good writer is
Speaker 1: when you you you anticipate the questions chirping, criminal hypnosis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that great writer would have further explained, is that hypnosis
Speaker 1: that is itself criminal? It is that is hypnosis on
Speaker 1: a criminal as it nosis that makes you criminal, not
Speaker 1: it does not give you any indication real mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh she she she basically rounds up all all
Speaker 1: different types of of kind of magic and hildism into this,
Speaker 1: into this banner of witchcraft. Um. She said that there's
Speaker 1: there's no distinction to be made between witchcraft and sorcery,
Speaker 1: despite the erroneous claims that sorcery is diabolical and witchcraft
Speaker 1: is creative art. Both are diabolical and devilish. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I I do agree with her that I
Speaker 1: don't feel like there's a meaningful distinction between craft and
Speaker 1: sorcery um, and that they're both things from from from
Speaker 1: your books that you read as a kid. But so
Speaker 1: the first thing she gets into in witchcraft, I think
Speaker 1: is this. It is a weird intro, but I guess
Speaker 1: it makes sense from like her perspective is demon possession.
Speaker 1: So this is the first the first like technique that
Speaker 1: she gets into. Demon demon possession is a result of
Speaker 1: which is of witchcraft. Incantation in diabolical whichcraft the which
Speaker 1: voluntarily invites the devil and his and his demon spirits,
Speaker 1: who are sometimes referred to as the goddess or god
Speaker 1: or the host of a particular names of a particular
Speaker 1: deity for each society, However, there's a difference between demon
Speaker 1: possession through deliberate invocation than demon possession by demonic internal
Speaker 1: attack up on helpless and often unsuspecting suspects. Possession is
Speaker 1: often a common aftermath of certain illness, of certain forms
Speaker 1: of certain illnesses, such as strokes. So she says that
Speaker 1: the most that one of the easiest ways to figure
Speaker 1: out if you're possessed if you have a stroke, also
Speaker 1: if you have if you have epilepsy or coma. This
Speaker 1: is really you know, my my, my, my grandpa was
Speaker 1: pretty hard into demonology. There at the end, I's man.
Speaker 1: And one of the fun things about this book though,
Speaker 1: is that she really tries to hammer down in all
Speaker 1: of like the biblical examples of witchcraft, which there is
Speaker 1: like a few. Ye, it's the Bible. There's lots of
Speaker 1: wacky magic. She really tries to convince like her Christian readers,
Speaker 1: that witchcraft is a current problem to be worried with
Speaker 1: um because she is, she's kind of upset that people
Speaker 1: view it as like a fake thing. She's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's real. It's in the Bible. You have to be
Speaker 1: scared of it. Um, the God's word authenticates the reality.
Speaker 1: Witchcraft therefore is not mere superstition. So a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of this is her trying to her trying
Speaker 1: to scare people into believing that witchcraft is actually is
Speaker 1: a is an ongoing problem. Yeah. She says that the
Speaker 1: familiar spirits of witches spoken of in the Bible are
Speaker 1: referred to in folk history as dwarfs, fairies, trolls. I
Speaker 1: don't know where this one is. What what's was this
Speaker 1: was this? I don't Well, they're usually like a cr
Speaker 1: one or less little monster, a little bit of reptilian
Speaker 1: things often found in dungeons. If you've got a low
Speaker 1: level party you want to bring them up against. I mean,
Speaker 1: Cobalds are one of the things that you could have
Speaker 1: them go up against. Personally. I have not encountered them
Speaker 1: weird games. Yeah, they're they're little little little little lizard
Speaker 1: tye type goblin things. Yeah. So those guys, dwarves, fairies, trolls,
Speaker 1: and other small spirits of Northern folklore. They can be
Speaker 1: friendly mischievous or malignant. In folklore, they were purported as
Speaker 1: nature spirits. This is the other thing she really hammers
Speaker 1: down on is that if you like nature, that means
Speaker 1: that you're actually a Satanist. That that does remind me
Speaker 1: of my explore Nature, Hail Satan shirt, which is my
Speaker 1: favorite shirt. Yeah, that is mean that that you do.
Speaker 1: That is a very good shirt. It's pretty good. So
Speaker 1: she she traces back the origin of magic to the
Speaker 1: fall of man at the beginning of human history, as
Speaker 1: as said in the book, is that where we got magic.
Speaker 1: That's what she says. Um, she says so bracically. The
Speaker 1: way she explains it is that you know magic and
Speaker 1: this is something actual kind of a group. It's like
Speaker 1: magic is the idea of like that you are kind
Speaker 1: of on your way to become God in some way. Um,
Speaker 1: this is this, Wait, you believe that, all right, we
Speaker 1: don't need to get in terms of like in terms
Speaker 1: of like in terms of like chaos. Magic it's like
Speaker 1: you're trying to like increase your own ability to have
Speaker 1: power over you, like your own life and that of
Speaker 1: the idea. So what she says is that basically in
Speaker 1: the fall of in Genesis, when Eve tried to eat
Speaker 1: the try to eat the fruit fruit of the knowledge
Speaker 1: of the of good and evil. This was her attach like,
Speaker 1: this was her attemption to like gain god like power.
Speaker 1: God can see good and evil. At the time, man
Speaker 1: could only see good. So when Eve ate the fruit,
Speaker 1: she was trying to become like God. She was taking
Speaker 1: agency over her existence and her fact eating the fruit
Speaker 1: to gave her the magic power to see good and evil, right,
Speaker 1: which is what which we have now. So this is how,
Speaker 1: this is how she tricks back the origin of magic.
Speaker 1: She's a biblical she's obviously because you know she's a
Speaker 1: conservative Baptist. She has a biblical literalist. She reads The
Speaker 1: Garden of Bean as a literal historical tale, not as
Speaker 1: like a piece of poetry or art meant to like
Speaker 1: symbolize things and culture, like it was obviously written as
Speaker 1: Um okay, I mean, there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of misogyny in this book. Um sorry, Dr Billy Sorry,
Speaker 1: there is a lot. She rails against feminism later on,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of hatred because like Eve was
Speaker 1: the one that ate the fruit, so the woman's fault,
Speaker 1: like the woman is like the tempter of man. It's
Speaker 1: always their fault. That's that's very well tread evangelical ground.
Speaker 1: Although it is extra fun when it's a woman who
Speaker 1: is hating on ye. And it's easier because this whole
Speaker 1: chapter is about witches and which is a typically feminine um.
Speaker 1: But she she does say that there's like wizards and warlocks,
Speaker 1: but she just kind of ropes them all together. They
Speaker 1: searched a second ago and I couldn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: that she wrote books about Harry Potter. M This was
Speaker 1: written to us in six so from what I've read,
Speaker 1: I have not seen Harry Potter mentioned in this. So
Speaker 1: far fascinating, is boy? That piste off a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are otherwise very similar to Yeah, it sure did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's see she is. She she is very
Speaker 1: concerned that that satanism and witchcraft is basically a re
Speaker 1: re in vention of paganism um. And she finds this
Speaker 1: to be incredibly disturbing and tied into a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of like all like the woo woo spiritual stuff of
Speaker 1: the nineties. Is also very concerned about She says millions
Speaker 1: are now involved in some manner of ancient magical practice
Speaker 1: and rights ranging from walking on hot coals with no
Speaker 1: ill effect, to booking knives through flesh without creating wounds,
Speaker 1: to reading from blind eye sockets or from sighted eyes
Speaker 1: which have been masks, to magically filling the cade teeth
Speaker 1: with gold, which I don't know is that is that
Speaker 1: just dentistry? What is she referring to? Yeah, seem like
Speaker 1: I have parents who have like gold filings. A lot
Speaker 1: of people that doesn't, Um, that's witchcraft. I don't think
Speaker 1: that is witchcraft. Well in a way that it it
Speaker 1: makes money disappear. Also, it's I would I would compare
Speaker 1: most dentistry to more like armed robbery. But sure, I
Speaker 1: haven't had great dentist experiences. Yeah, I mean I'm not
Speaker 1: a big dentist. Dentists or bastards would be my contention.
Speaker 1: So yeah, she she She says that basically, the sign
Speaker 1: of the of the new uptick magic around this is
Speaker 1: a round to us, and six this is random. Panic
Speaker 1: was the sign of the end times. Magic is the
Speaker 1: colossal revolt against God, whose satanic purpose is to instill
Speaker 1: in fallen man the desire to be a god. Try
Speaker 1: to say, cool, that sounds rash, Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: is that's also the Mormon faith more or less. I'm
Speaker 1: sure she has opinions about more. We're gonna at her
Speaker 1: opinions on the Irish Lader so good, oh good, oh fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has a lot of that. She's real, real punchy
Speaker 1: towards the Papists. So she does break down the difference
Speaker 1: that she she sees between black magic, white magic, and
Speaker 1: what she calls a neutral magic. Um. She says that
Speaker 1: the term black magic refers to the direct league with
Speaker 1: Satan himself, often involving an actual blood pact of allegiance,
Speaker 1: so that she she thinks that the black magic is
Speaker 1: when you directly involve Satan, okay, and white magic is
Speaker 1: merely black magic in a in a in a mask.
Speaker 1: It may it may deceptively employ the names of Jesus, Christ,
Speaker 1: the Father, and the Holy Spirit magically, along with other
Speaker 1: Bible phrases and the Christian terminology, but this facade is
Speaker 1: covering its demonic character, so she thinks that even though
Speaker 1: they may use so this is interesting. Like she she
Speaker 1: complains here that white magic uses the names of God
Speaker 1: and Jesus and in its magic, but later on in
Speaker 1: in the book she complains that no magic uses God's name.
Speaker 1: So that's the fun thing that we'll talk about, um.
Speaker 1: And then and then for neutral magic UM, she says,
Speaker 1: the devil shrouds himself with nature. He is referred to
Speaker 1: he is. Oh boy, he's that. That's that's her take
Speaker 1: on Wicca. Huh, he is. He has revered as Mother
Speaker 1: Nature and worship in the door by which is under
Speaker 1: this deluding guy's neutral magic. Satan just stresses up as
Speaker 1: leaves and that's how Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, Wicca
Speaker 1: only gets one mention in this actually, Yeah, but she's
Speaker 1: clearly like that's what she's talking about. I mean, she
Speaker 1: talks about a lot of like she she uses these
Speaker 1: terms very loose. She's got a lot of gradients. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of gradients. Yeah. Uh. She has a small
Speaker 1: section on magical ceremonies and symbolism and kind of actually
Speaker 1: lays out kind of how magic works in terms of
Speaker 1: like using like like like this, like symbolic objects and
Speaker 1: incantation and like calling upon powers, which is a more
Speaker 1: like traditional magic. UM. I find it more fun to
Speaker 1: call on fake characters because it's very silly, which is
Speaker 1: more of a more of a chaos magic thing, UM,
Speaker 1: because the more silly again, I think the more fun
Speaker 1: it is. Then she does have a nice section on initiation,
Speaker 1: rites and rituals, which gets into the really good Satanic
Speaker 1: panic stuff. So she she she describes the you know,
Speaker 1: a covid of of which is coming together to have
Speaker 1: sex with the devil um usually maybe in like symbolically
Speaker 1: with like a male leader of a cult or something.
Speaker 1: But then she says, when the initiation has been completed,
Speaker 1: the devil worship takes part in a parody of the sacrament,
Speaker 1: many times bringing in the bodies of children who the
Speaker 1: who whom they have murdered. Good. Yeah, that's the good ship.
Speaker 1: That's the good ship. In America alone, there are over
Speaker 1: one million missing children at any time. Many of these
Speaker 1: children who are never found or seen again are victims
Speaker 1: of satanically controlled perverts who do the grossest forms of evil.
Speaker 1: Of many more are the victims of witchcraft and incantations
Speaker 1: and other rights. Oh that's great. These children who are
Speaker 1: being stolen at an astonishingly at an astonishing rate each day,
Speaker 1: may be stolen from unbelievers homes or they maybe children
Speaker 1: can see by the witches themselves at regularly held sexual orgies.
Speaker 1: Witches are that that's an old one, that witches are
Speaker 1: having orgy babies and like not reporting them to Yeah,
Speaker 1: the children are often offered up a sacrifice to the devil,
Speaker 1: and some ceremonies that which has may boil the children's bodies,
Speaker 1: mix them with lobes and substances, or then they consume
Speaker 1: the children's bodies in the blood ritual parody of the
Speaker 1: Lord's supper. So that's fun. And I do like that
Speaker 1: this idea never went anywhere and is not and as
Speaker 1: not an important part of the USS politics now No, no, no,
Speaker 1: of course not nope. Um, yeah, you love to hear it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. That is that is that is fun.
Speaker 1: She she does have a small section on a pagan music. Magic, religion,
Speaker 1: and sorcery are some of the means used by the
Speaker 1: devil for the purpose of luring men away from the
Speaker 1: Christian truth. The heavy metal, punk, hip hop and other
Speaker 1: such abuse of confining the Western European world. Okay, yeah, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember it actually gets quite more racist and not
Speaker 1: it's counterpart of the hypnotic traits inducing inducing drum rhythms
Speaker 1: employed throughout the whole world by the African nations through
Speaker 1: the millions, which the insidious and evil MSR the devil
Speaker 1: and setting them to sexual lust in Satan worship. It
Speaker 1: is incredible that in two thousand six she's doing the
Speaker 1: people music is the Devil and she is also like
Speaker 1: black which is very safe. That's incredible. Yeah, it's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: unfortunate would be a word for it. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: is it? Is it time for an AD break? I'm
Speaker 1: not looking at the close. Yeah, it's probably about time
Speaker 1: for an ad break. Speaking of oh oh boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of millions of missing children. Maybe some of them
Speaker 1: are in these ads. We're back putting more children in
Speaker 1: the cauldron. Oh we're recording. Sorry, anyway, back to back
Speaker 1: to reading this magnificent two hundred page book by dr
Speaker 1: I've read the first hundred pages because after that it's
Speaker 1: just the same words rewritten again and again in different
Speaker 1: in different combinations. Like it's just it's just the same stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: So the next section is this is this is again
Speaker 1: I'm skipping over a lot of stuff, but this is
Speaker 1: like the rough this is the most fun sections of
Speaker 1: her stuff on magic and which is um. Now we
Speaker 1: have her section called Halloween Satan's New Year. Um. She
Speaker 1: she starts by explanning, which is, celebrate eight major festivals
Speaker 1: or sabbats each year. Halloween is the primary annual festival
Speaker 1: commemorating Satan's new year. Yeah. She then goes on to
Speaker 1: explain that the Sabbat is a parody of the holy
Speaker 1: Sabbath of God. Now, this is actually really interesting kind
Speaker 1: of historical tidbits. So, yes, the words Sabbat in terms
Speaker 1: of which is does come from does come from like
Speaker 1: the Sabbath, This actually probably comes from, uh, the persecution
Speaker 1: of which is being heavily tied to anti Semitism in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. The first witch hunting book was called
Speaker 1: The Hammer of the Witches Um and it is Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is large port large portions of which are
Speaker 1: plagiarized from a previous book called Hammer of the Jews.
Speaker 1: Entire sections are copying paste. But they just change the
Speaker 1: word Jews to which And you really had to put
Speaker 1: the effort into plagiarism back because your hand hand. No,
Speaker 1: you're doing the whole thing yourself. This is also where
Speaker 1: like a lot of like the pointy hat, which stuff
Speaker 1: a lot of like the big nose with like like
Speaker 1: like a really big nose, green oily skin like all
Speaker 1: the stuff kind of comes from anti Semitic tropes because
Speaker 1: the persecution of Jews and the Semitism was heavily tied
Speaker 1: to the persecusion of which is often one of the
Speaker 1: same things. So when they would so then when they
Speaker 1: would do Sabbath, uh, they would they would say, like
Speaker 1: they're doing like a sabot. They're going to They're going
Speaker 1: to basically do like blood libel with children and with
Speaker 1: the devil, which is which is which is what a
Speaker 1: lot of witches are about, like finding children and stuff,
Speaker 1: because it actually is tied to all the stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we have to cancel witchcraft, which if
Speaker 1: is totally fine, you can do all this stuff. It
Speaker 1: is really cool. But the a lot of the origins
Speaker 1: of which hunting is tied to these antis anti Semitic tropes. UM.
Speaker 1: So anyway, she she goes to describe different like pagan
Speaker 1: like festivals throughout the years, um with like like le
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff, Midsummer blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And the last one the eighth one. It's
Speaker 1: October three one or Halloween, because she calls the the
Speaker 1: unholy Satanic New Year. UM. She says that the rights
Speaker 1: and ceremonies and which Halloween was originally observed had their
Speaker 1: origin among the Druids. In the course of time, there
Speaker 1: were added to them some of the rights, particular to
Speaker 1: the Roman festival of Panama, which is which presided over
Speaker 1: the harvests. November first among the Druids was the beginning
Speaker 1: of the year and the festival of the Sun God.
Speaker 1: They lighted fires in honor of their false god. They
Speaker 1: believe that October thirty one, to the end of the
Speaker 1: old year, the Lord of Death, which she puts in
Speaker 1: apprentices the devil. Oh good, I'm really, I'm really again
Speaker 1: very appreciative of how of how clear her writing is.
Speaker 1: So the Lord of Death gather gathered together all the
Speaker 1: souls of the dead who had been allowed to enter
Speaker 1: the body of another human being. The belief is that
Speaker 1: the root this belief is the root of the false
Speaker 1: belief and reincarnation. Now I did not fact fact check
Speaker 1: any of this, so I have no idea how how
Speaker 1: accurate these these claims are for what she views as
Speaker 1: the origin of Halloween. But I think they're pretty funny. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, like there is Halloween like Halloween kind of
Speaker 1: traditions are are there is like stuff around this time
Speaker 1: throughout a lot of like old pagan stuff. Like the
Speaker 1: modern notion of Halloween is pretty pretty modern, like the
Speaker 1: whole like tricker treating thing and all. Like the way
Speaker 1: we modernly think of Halloween is pretty it's pretty new,
Speaker 1: because I mean there was of course, like All Hallow's
Speaker 1: Day or like All Saints Day and the Eva which
Speaker 1: other people would do Shenanigans, which is what we currently
Speaker 1: have as Halloween. That's the day before All Saints Day.
Speaker 1: All Saints Day is November one. Um, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: the modern notion of Halloween is not it's not super old.
Speaker 1: So I'm not quite sure how tied these old harvest
Speaker 1: festivals really are to our modern Halloween. That's something I
Speaker 1: could look into later, But I just picked up this
Speaker 1: book and I'm reading right from it because that's easier.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so she views Halloween now as like a
Speaker 1: as a pagan the pagan holiday. Um, this pagan festival,
Speaker 1: Halloween is it broadly celebrated throughout the Christian nations as
Speaker 1: a major holiday. In America, Halloween has become a kind
Speaker 1: of saturnalia for children, a night in which the rules
Speaker 1: are suspended and children venture out to demand streets and
Speaker 1: certain reprisals against the dingy. Yeah, okay, I mean that
Speaker 1: is a cooler way of looking at Halloween. If it
Speaker 1: were literally the saturnality a children would actually take the
Speaker 1: role of the parents and make decisions for the family
Speaker 1: and demand Yeah, I mean parents would have to go
Speaker 1: to school, kids would have to go to work. That
Speaker 1: would actually be an incredible that would be that would
Speaker 1: so many people would die in plane crash, but it
Speaker 1: would be especially if you enforced it, Like you don't
Speaker 1: have a choice. You're you are piloting the plane today,
Speaker 1: a bunch of other kids are getting on it to
Speaker 1: go on work. The kids on air traffic ConTroll they
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing either. Forcing all of the
Speaker 1: soldiers out of the various countries we put them in and
Speaker 1: and having like the children of Special Forces guys conduct
Speaker 1: raids in the Midia, It is pretty easy for a
Speaker 1: kids to use an AK so it is a rs
Speaker 1: even easier. Yeah, it would be funny. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are not going to have very successful heart
Speaker 1: surgeries that, but it will be very funny in like
Speaker 1: a cosmic sense. Increasingly and alarmingly, this celebration is assuming
Speaker 1: dreadful expressions of evil and harmful acts are perpetuated against
Speaker 1: the children themselves. In serious proportions. The treats are increasingly
Speaker 1: found to contain drugs, poisons, razor blades, needles, ground grass,
Speaker 1: and many other harms. Oh I I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: even think of that, because that's like needles and grass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh no, grass, So yeah, she she, she does seem really,
Speaker 1: really really thrilled with this idea that the people are
Speaker 1: giving out free drugs, which, man, what a dream I wish. Um. Halloween,
Speaker 1: like Christmas, is also highly commercialized and it's part of
Speaker 1: a major money making event for the merchants. Okay, breaking
Speaker 1: in at the present time second only to Christmas in
Speaker 1: that vein. Halloween is the Satanic New Year, and as
Speaker 1: a celebration of the devil and is he's using the
Speaker 1: world today to gain greater acceptance of the perversity as
Speaker 1: he continues to prol mate his doctrine of demons. So
Speaker 1: that that is fun um. Then she has a very
Speaker 1: small section on old world Halloween traditions, which I'm not
Speaker 1: going to read tons of because again, I don't know
Speaker 1: how verified these things are. But I am going to
Speaker 1: read like and she she goes on to talk about
Speaker 1: like how like the laws against witchcraft and like the
Speaker 1: six hundreds and stuff. Um she was, she was, but
Speaker 1: I do I will read just the first sentence of
Speaker 1: the Old World Halloween Traditions section Irish Traditions Devilition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here that Irish We're coming for you. Bring it on,
Speaker 1: devil origin, various methods of finding the future and Halloween
Speaker 1: we're accepted as tradition. So that that's really all I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, because I just love the line Irish traditions
Speaker 1: devilition in Richards. Yeah, I mean that's I think every
Speaker 1: Irish person I know would agree with that. That's really
Speaker 1: all you gotta say. Yeah, oh man, it is it is. Wow,
Speaker 1: what a what a book. It just keeps going on.
Speaker 1: So she talks about like the basically like the people's
Speaker 1: different Honestly, this there's not even tons about Halloween and
Speaker 1: more about different people's belief in witchcraft. So like she
Speaker 1: goes through like all the laws against witchcraft in Britain,
Speaker 1: she goes against, like she goes she she talks around
Speaker 1: the witch trials in America, um, saying that there were
Speaker 1: witches but she doesn't talk about all the like, come on,
Speaker 1: you coward. Yeah. Uh, it's it's pretty she she has.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of I okay, I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: read some of the stuff on on on America. Belief
Speaker 1: in witchcraft was common to the early settlers in America,
Speaker 1: but which is, were charged with making wex and images
Speaker 1: of their victims and causing their illnesses by sticking pins
Speaker 1: in the image or making by sticking pins in the image,
Speaker 1: or making them waste away by melting the images before
Speaker 1: the fire. This belief is held by the peoples of Africa,
Speaker 1: as well as other pagan people in a and widely
Speaker 1: varieting in widely varying civilizations and localities. The early settlers
Speaker 1: do not initiate this belief in America, but found it
Speaker 1: already to be belief in the American Indians who populated
Speaker 1: this country. So that that's her little section on that,
Speaker 1: which is I don't know, hashtag problematic, Yeah, I would,
Speaker 1: I would call that slightly problemat I would call it
Speaker 1: slightly problems. You know what's not problematic? Garrison the products
Speaker 1: and services that are gonna hopefully sell candy kids. We
Speaker 1: we guarantee that less than a third of them are
Speaker 1: responsible for the disappearance of a million children, million children.
Speaker 1: That's the behind the bastards guaranteed less than a third
Speaker 1: of our sponsors who are undocumented too, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: which is making them so much more. It's likely much more.
Speaker 1: But anyway, here's the ads, here's the ads. Ah, we're back,
Speaker 1: we are all right. Bring it home, Garrison, bring it home.
Speaker 1: So yeah, she she does mention that the devil likes
Speaker 1: to withhold the fact of existence of witchcraft, like the
Speaker 1: devil likes to height. So most people kind of live
Speaker 1: in the dark. Um, she says. Although the imps which
Speaker 1: frolic on Halloween and now are small children raping on
Speaker 1: doors and gleefully seeving treats, wrapping on doors, wrapping on doors,
Speaker 1: not raping on doors. That's a very different, very different holiday. Well,
Speaker 1: who knows, that might be Canadian things. That's Canadian Halloween.
Speaker 1: The night which was formally accepted as the time when
Speaker 1: witches met and demons in the form of ghosts and
Speaker 1: ghoules who are likely to wander about, has come to
Speaker 1: be regarded that's a time of merrymaking and frolic. The
Speaker 1: majority of people are so engaged and are unaware if
Speaker 1: they satanic consultation of the magic oracles and the Covin's
Speaker 1: and groves on this night. I say, cons that's not
Speaker 1: how you say it, Well, that's how I say it.
Speaker 1: You just you just got COVID on the brain. COVID
Speaker 1: is what you call a coven that meets during COVID
Speaker 1: because they're not properly socially distancing. All right, right, there
Speaker 1: we go. But basically she thinks that basically these all
Speaker 1: of the witches and magic doors are meeting, all these
Speaker 1: ghouls and Halloween and people are unaware of this, very
Speaker 1: extremely concerned that children might like walk in on a
Speaker 1: ceremony and it didn't get murdered. Very funny when you
Speaker 1: realize like how isolated these people are from the real
Speaker 1: world because they've never just like stepped outside during Halloween,
Speaker 1: not really like especially I mean Halloween and two that's
Speaker 1: in six I was eighteen then, So maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think there was. It wasn't huge then, like
Speaker 1: it's gotten kind of smaller every year. The biggest fear
Speaker 1: back then was like traffic accidents. Yeah, that's always the biggest.
Speaker 1: That's like the number one thing. Every year. Thinking back
Speaker 1: on it, my parents shouldn't have let me be a
Speaker 1: ninja as often as they, But I made it through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we're saying so many the same words. Again,
Speaker 1: that's the most of the book is. But Halloween Satan's
Speaker 1: New Year. Halloween has a long and dark history of
Speaker 1: devilish traditions, which has survived both Christianity and the science
Speaker 1: for two thousand years. Is to be considered the chief
Speaker 1: festival for the worship of the devil which begins his
Speaker 1: new year. Halloweena witchcraft for the means by which the
Speaker 1: devil seems to reintroduce the worship of old false gods
Speaker 1: by a synthesis of polytheism and feminism. Yeah, that's what halloweenas.
Speaker 1: Polyphism and feminism, two sides of the same devil coin.
Speaker 1: I love to worship multiple gods and respect women. Just really,
Speaker 1: that is my That's my way to spend a night
Speaker 1: with my ghoul friends. Incredible, there's also a real here's
Speaker 1: a real here's a real. Good quote. Um, there is
Speaker 1: no question of the existence of modern witchcraft. It has
Speaker 1: been admitted. It has been admitted of by thousands upon
Speaker 1: thousands worldwide, and growing rapidly in the Western countries, particularly America.
Speaker 1: The word of God makes it undeniably clear that witchcraft
Speaker 1: is real. It has existed at least six thousand years,
Speaker 1: and it still exists today. Oh good, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: Six thousand years going good. Good for happy six thousands.
Speaker 1: Just like that, she add so that it's a little
Speaker 1: been around for all these six happy six thousands, six
Speaker 1: six thousand years witchcraft on. I'm guessing because it's the
Speaker 1: new year, this is also the birthday of witchcraft. I
Speaker 1: mean also just the birthday of the world. Because if
Speaker 1: the world as we know was, if the world as
Speaker 1: we know it was when Eve ate the fruit and
Speaker 1: was Adam and Eve went into the greater world, if
Speaker 1: that's like the birth of Dawn, which has been here
Speaker 1: since the very beginning, well since the beginning of like
Speaker 1: the fallen world, because you have to assume that they
Speaker 1: had a hundred years or so beforehand. It's real unclear
Speaker 1: this it depends on what It depends on what denomination
Speaker 1: you're in and what kind of theological viewpoint you have
Speaker 1: on whether there were people outside the garden there as
Speaker 1: people who believe that some people just don't um that
Speaker 1: is up for debate among different congregations. Yeah, so and
Speaker 1: and and the other thing that she's really concerned with
Speaker 1: is that witchcraft is making more people have sex, because
Speaker 1: she she thinks that most of witchcraft is practicing sexual
Speaker 1: orgies on quote every continent of the world. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's what that's what, that's that's what black masses to her,
Speaker 1: So she is she's very concerned. I mean, there's are
Speaker 1: and sometimes in black masses sexual elements to them, I hope.
Speaker 1: So that is that it does sound much better, but
Speaker 1: she she thinks that that's another one of the main
Speaker 1: catalysts of her being fearful of of paganism and witchcraft
Speaker 1: is that is making more people have sex. Um. And
Speaker 1: again she reiterates that this is just a new form
Speaker 1: of paganism, saying that Satan's current day revival of paganism
Speaker 1: it's a sure sign of Christ's second coming and it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Oh. This this is the section where
Speaker 1: she where she complains that magic doesn't use the Bible,
Speaker 1: even though previously she said that white magic does. Because
Speaker 1: some magic some which is drawn other false religions such
Speaker 1: as the Kabbala, uh Sufism, or various Eastern religions, but
Speaker 1: never the Holy Bible, the Word of God, or is
Speaker 1: employed in their beliefs or practices, except in a paradoxical
Speaker 1: counterfeit imaginative magic, rites and rituals performed in the in
Speaker 1: the Covin's in the initiation of the converts and their
Speaker 1: celebrations of Halloween and other Satanic sabots. So that's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's what she thinks I mean. But honestly, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's like the Shabbas, it's the Sabbath, it's
Speaker 1: I've I've heard Covin and Saba in the stuff, right,
Speaker 1: So alright, alright, let's have let's have a debate everyone,
Speaker 1: everyone at no, don't don't do that. Um. She also
Speaker 1: claims that this is this is this is very exciting.
Speaker 1: Several universities in America offer a bachelor's degree in magic.
Speaker 1: I was unaware. Oh I would love a bat unaware
Speaker 1: of because this will read now, well, this will make
Speaker 1: me consider going to college. Now a bachelor's degree? Is
Speaker 1: that a a b A or is that a BS? Like?
Speaker 1: Is that like? Is it a Bachelor of Arts or
Speaker 1: of science? And really that's a that's a key question.
Speaker 1: About how the school match magic is both in our science.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well that's why I'm wondering. And she doesn't say,
Speaker 1: she doesn't say what university she claims does this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to open a witchcraft store, so I
Speaker 1: made to get a b a in or a bs
Speaker 1: in witchcraft along with my m f A. What's the
Speaker 1: business thing? What they don't I don't want to fill
Speaker 1: it in with the acronym from the is a misdegree.
Speaker 1: Whatever you get, I don't know we I've dropped out
Speaker 1: of college. Garrison hasn't gone. Yeah, I went to I
Speaker 1: went to film school. That doesn't count though it doesn't
Speaker 1: it absolutely does not. Um. Yeah. And then in this
Speaker 1: last section she really ties modern witchcraft to the rise
Speaker 1: of feminism UM, specifically starting in the sixties. She says
Speaker 1: the pre eminence of the goddess and witchcraft hasn't made
Speaker 1: an attractive to some feminists. In nineteen sixty eight, which
Speaker 1: the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, funded as a
Speaker 1: great acronym, AMAZING was founded as a political protist group
Speaker 1: who who purport who purportedly justified their name as mere
Speaker 1: jest ah it is what a what a good name,
Speaker 1: which women international. Quite an exciting um, quite an exciting
Speaker 1: back when we could have fun and activism. That does
Speaker 1: sound amazing. Many of the members of this feminist movement
Speaker 1: are unaware of the cultural movement within the political and
Speaker 1: many are are more, and many more are entirely unaware
Speaker 1: of the spiritualist movement within the cultural moment. So a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of weird stuff around. How whiches are using
Speaker 1: political feminism to inject cultural feminism, to inject cultural witchcraft
Speaker 1: into the mainstream. This is all what the goal of
Speaker 1: feminism is. Um so yeah, and she has this whole
Speaker 1: whole pair of feminist feminist witches. Feminist witchcraft is at
Speaker 1: present the most rapidly growing segment in the Witchcraft revival.
Speaker 1: And it is from the spiritual core at the heart
Speaker 1: of the feminist movement that the political and philosophical women's
Speaker 1: rights tenants as a whole emerge. To name what to
Speaker 1: name one such tenant the rights to abortion, or more
Speaker 1: correctly phrased, the might the rights to murder children not
Speaker 1: yet born. This this coincides with the which is present
Speaker 1: ritual practice of murdering children already born. So she thinks
Speaker 1: that abortion is just a way for which is to
Speaker 1: to speed up the ritual process. Yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: what that is her that that's her main bomb at
Speaker 1: the That sounds that sounds accurate. Um, she doesn't just
Speaker 1: have a great section describing the different tools which is used.
Speaker 1: Um and and uh. An athlete. A phallic penis symbol
Speaker 1: of the liberated, unbridled, auto lawful sex represents the power
Speaker 1: of self will. It's pretty pretty good. Sexual symbols are
Speaker 1: common in witchcraft and which is, are unrepressed by God's
Speaker 1: mortal law in their sexuality. Their use of sex symbols
Speaker 1: is rooted in paganism. So again, she's very scary that
Speaker 1: people are having sex and enjoying it, specifically women. She's
Speaker 1: very scared that women are having sex and enjoying it.
Speaker 1: Sounds right. I hate it when the people pushing this
Speaker 1: line are themselves women, But it does. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a huge part of the evangelical propaganda movement. Yeah, see
Speaker 1: a bunch of ship, Margaret Atwood wrote. You know, now
Speaker 1: she gets to describe some some of the coolest parts here.
Speaker 1: A typical which is Sabbath celebration will have a sky
Speaker 1: i clad parenthesis, nude pentis, which is gathered in an
Speaker 1: isolated place a grove of trees, if possible, around an
Speaker 1: altar which holds an icon or statuary of a false
Speaker 1: goddess and or God's, and candles for fire, a child's
Speaker 1: for water or wine, a container of salt and a
Speaker 1: container for earth rather than the bread, and a sword
Speaker 1: or a wand which sounds amazing to just have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of naked which is in the forest around
Speaker 1: a ritual altar fire. This sounds like the best best
Speaker 1: time ever. It does sound like a good Saturday night.
Speaker 1: This does sound like a good who knows we can?
Speaker 1: We can, we can get wild? So yeah. She She
Speaker 1: goes in to describe what she thinks magical rituals are
Speaker 1: and different things that she could do again. She is
Speaker 1: very concerned. Ritual sex is engaged in to intensify the
Speaker 1: magical power raised in the cone of power combined wheels
Speaker 1: of the coffin Witches is symbolized with a code shaped
Speaker 1: hats see the typical pictures of which is in literature.
Speaker 1: Are you fucking at me? Because nobody wearing one of
Speaker 1: those hats has ever gotten fucked? I feel confident say
Speaker 1: I wear that hat. All right, let's let's move forward, Garrison.
Speaker 1: That's not fair, allegedly, let's move forward. The Cone of Power.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Yeah, the Cone of Power is is incredible
Speaker 1: after raising, and it is phallic, so it must be
Speaker 1: for fucking After the raising and release of the Cone
Speaker 1: of Power, a ritual covid communication with cakes and wine
Speaker 1: which the priestess or priest has consecrated by dipping into
Speaker 1: the chalice and touching the cakes with other unholy tools,
Speaker 1: are passed on from a kiss from the priestess to
Speaker 1: the priest. Um. Basically, this just sounds like a fun time. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do love the Cone of Power, which I've
Speaker 1: not read in any other magic book. No, I have
Speaker 1: not ever heard of. I've read a decent amount, and
Speaker 1: I've never heard of the Cone of Power. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: feels like pure her. That feels like somebody who's deeply
Speaker 1: sexually frustrated seeing so happy it's kind of shape like
Speaker 1: a dick, and being like, that's got to be poor lady.
Speaker 1: And then she she has a small section on Satanism,
Speaker 1: particularly like the iron Rand version of Satanism, So I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna get into that. I find that boring
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter, and and and and she even
Speaker 1: says that these Satanists don't believe in an actual devil,
Speaker 1: just a little the evil. So I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: bother with this section because it's just talking about the dumb,
Speaker 1: iron rand version of Satanism. And I don't care about that. Um,
Speaker 1: if you like it, I mean whatever. It has an
Speaker 1: anarchistic stuff kind of but it's also very randy and
Speaker 1: and it has it has a lot of like, not
Speaker 1: great stuff either. I don't I it's fine and all
Speaker 1: it all is more effort than I want to put
Speaker 1: into thinking about the universe. And then I think, I
Speaker 1: think this this could be. I think this is our last,
Speaker 1: our last paragraph favorite. This section is called titled the
Speaker 1: End of the Witches, Witches, our children of the Devil,
Speaker 1: The end of the witches, sorry, the end of the witches.
Speaker 1: Already before their idolterous altars, that they're depraved spots where
Speaker 1: they eat and drink and play their gross music and
Speaker 1: sing and dance, naked and shameless and corrupt and defile
Speaker 1: themselves and desecrate God's holy Sabbath, shall surely be accomplished
Speaker 1: by God, who will put them, who'll put them to
Speaker 1: death and cut off their souls forever among his children.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the end of the Witches. Everybody, We're
Speaker 1: gonna be dancing naked, shamelessly, like having like an undeniably
Speaker 1: good time, being able to dance naked and shame listening
Speaker 1: to gross music and singing, what a time. Sounds like
Speaker 1: the ideal weekend. And then and then God will put
Speaker 1: us to death. And it does sound a little bit
Speaker 1: like our last weekend. But it was very cold, so
Speaker 1: people were wearing Yeah, that is that is that is
Speaker 1: most of that is most of the good parts of
Speaker 1: the book. Again, it gets two pages. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: nice easy read. Grab it, you know this weekend. It's
Speaker 1: only ten bucks on Amazon. What a deal, what a steal? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it is fun that she she does, Um, there
Speaker 1: is one there is one section where she like outlines
Speaker 1: what all she thinks like magic is like all like
Speaker 1: all of like the different groups. Um, she puts them
Speaker 1: into a really nice little package. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I can find that because again there's two hundred pages
Speaker 1: and I did not mark off that section. But I
Speaker 1: think I think we decently got the gist of the
Speaker 1: main main parts of this book. Um, again, most of
Speaker 1: it is just her talking about Jesus and and and
Speaker 1: and the Christian soul. Um. But the one which which
Speaker 1: is of indoor section is pretty good and honestly worth
Speaker 1: the read. So that is my first book report of her.
Speaker 1: It could happen here. All of you Satan's New Year
Speaker 1: beloved children, enjoyed this this this book and are are
Speaker 1: properly warned about the dangers of witchcraft which is coming
Speaker 1: to make your children have a pretty red time. You're
Speaker 1: gonna dance in the woods listening to gross music. So
Speaker 1: I hope everyone on this Halloween danced in the woods
Speaker 1: listening to gross music. I hope those of you who
Speaker 1: climactically could did so naked. Um. I hope none of
Speaker 1: you got hit by cars while dressed as Ninja's and
Speaker 1: I I also hope that most of you weren't out
Speaker 1: trick or treating, because I think the average age of
Speaker 1: our listeners is sometime in the mid twenties. That would
Speaker 1: be a little bit of a little awkward, a little
Speaker 1: bit weird, but hey, whatever, it's your life, your thing.
Speaker 1: Do you think, hello, everyone, Garrison here just going to
Speaker 1: be adding in one quick correction for our Halloween Satan's
Speaker 1: New Year episode. So towards the end we made some
Speaker 1: assumptions about the the Code of Power which were apparently incorrect.
Speaker 1: So the Code of Power does actually seem to be
Speaker 1: a thing inside ritual magic um, but particularly Wika. So
Speaker 1: I'm not super familiar with Wika. This is not this
Speaker 1: is not my system of choice, so I was unaware
Speaker 1: that this is actually a thing, but apparently apparently it is.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a method for centering or directing
Speaker 1: or like raising energy. Um, well it is. It is
Speaker 1: less tied to the which is had those so that
Speaker 1: part is is more um made up. I cannot find
Speaker 1: much tying the Cone of Power directly to like the
Speaker 1: cone shape, which is hats. This is mainly an invention
Speaker 1: of of of Doctor Billy from at least from from
Speaker 1: what I can tell. But apologies for assuming that the
Speaker 1: Cone of Power was completely made up and when in
Speaker 1: fact it is a part of Worker. So sorry, sorry
Speaker 1: to the Wickens and the more proper witches for that,
Speaker 1: for that, for that gross assumption on mine and Robert's part. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this wraps up our spooky week of content. I hope
Speaker 1: you had a good Halloween. This episode should be releasing
Speaker 1: on Halloween itself, so I I hope you are having
Speaker 1: or had a good time, and hopefully you were able
Speaker 1: to celebrate Halloween Satan style just like it was designed to.
Speaker 1: So goodbye everybody, see you on the other side and
Speaker 1: hopefully we can do Spooky Week again next year. Goodbye.
Speaker 1: Oh welcome to it could happen here a podcast about
Speaker 1: well mostly it's about how things are bad, but it
Speaker 1: is also sometimes about what you can do about it.
Speaker 1: And today we have two people who are in fact
Speaker 1: doing things about it. So with me we have a
Speaker 1: Bra and Shanine, who are part of the Common Humanity Collective,
Speaker 1: which is a mutual a group out of California, um
Speaker 1: clogen and Club Bra. How how are how are you
Speaker 1: doing today? Doing well? Thank you? Doing pretty good? Thank you.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we wanted to have you too on to
Speaker 1: talk about basically your mutual aid work and then also
Speaker 1: the sort of political aspect of that because I know
Speaker 1: about something YouTube and wanting to talk about that. I've
Speaker 1: read the media coverage of it in it does not
Speaker 1: ever make it into the interview. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I guess to start. So you two started doing mutual
Speaker 1: aid stuff with with this group, specifically around the beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. As I understand you know what, can
Speaker 1: you walk us through how it started and what you
Speaker 1: guys are up to? Absolutely, and I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: to trace out the different stages of this work because
Speaker 1: it's very much BEND, a kind of evolution. So let
Speaker 1: me go back to the very very early days, and
Speaker 1: this is really the first day of lockdown UM in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area where we live. I'm a PhD student
Speaker 1: at UC Berkeley and UM. As COVID was spreading from
Speaker 1: the East coast to the west, we knew that things
Speaker 1: would quickly get shut down in California UM. And there
Speaker 1: was someone in my lab, a good friend named Yvonne,
Speaker 1: and she and I just quickly realized that this pandemic
Speaker 1: was going to hit UM. Given the sort of crumbling
Speaker 1: public health infrastructure, the poorest among us, the elderly dispossessed UM,
Speaker 1: these people would be vulnerable and as PPE just completely
Speaker 1: disappeared from store shelves. These people UM, especially those living
Speaker 1: in cramped housing conditions, those with essential work UH, those
Speaker 1: in nursing homes just would not have access to UM
Speaker 1: the tools they needed to protect themselves from this disease. UM.
Speaker 1: And in the very early days, when we thought that
Speaker 1: the stuff was transmitted via surfaces, UM, all of the
Speaker 1: attention was focused on hand washing hand sanitizer. The problem
Speaker 1: was you couldn't even find hand sanitizer anywhere. So here
Speaker 1: we were in our labs and UM, you know, our
Speaker 1: few moths weren't being used and everyone was getting sent home.
Speaker 1: UM and UH, we realized that we could pull ethanol
Speaker 1: from the scientific re agent supply chains and stir up
Speaker 1: some hand sanitizer ourselves in lab and distribute it UM
Speaker 1: just to homeless shelters, to people who needed it in
Speaker 1: the city, etcetera. UM. So this began as a very
Speaker 1: sort of low key, quiet under the cover UM effort.
Speaker 1: And UM, you know, we didn't have a name. We
Speaker 1: didn't even know what mutual Aid was. I think we
Speaker 1: were just following our basic instincts UM. And fast forward
Speaker 1: a week or two, and suddenly a whole lot of
Speaker 1: people got involved. UM. We had this elaborate distribution infrastructure
Speaker 1: which started sort of self assembling. UM. Lots of people
Speaker 1: came to find ways of getting the sanitizer to everyone
Speaker 1: who needed it in the meantime, we realized that as
Speaker 1: the demand was enormous, we need to come up with
Speaker 1: ways of procuring the supplies UM and mixing it at
Speaker 1: scales that we didn't have to turn anyone down. So
Speaker 1: we called upon lots of different labs on campus and
Speaker 1: asked them if they could do this, if they could
Speaker 1: shift some of their discretionary funds towards getting these chemicals UM.
Speaker 1: And you know again, within a few weeks after that,
Speaker 1: we were mixing hundreds of gallons of hand sanitizer and
Speaker 1: delivering it to absolutely everyone who needed it. My phone
Speaker 1: was just getting UH called NonStop from the moment I
Speaker 1: woke up to when I went to sleep, I was
Speaker 1: forgetting to eat. I was barely sleeping. UM. Just responding
Speaker 1: to these cries for help from all over the Bay area. UM.
Speaker 1: And in that time we met so many people UM
Speaker 1: and we figured out how to do this work efficiently
Speaker 1: and effectively. But also UM, as the attention shifted from
Speaker 1: surface transmission to aerosol transmission UM, everyone started realizing that,
Speaker 1: in fact, masks were probably the primary way in which
Speaker 1: we protect ourselves from the coronavirus UM. And that's when
Speaker 1: a good friend of ours Chris, who was a PhD
Speaker 1: student that he's now a post a brilliant, brilliant creative guy,
Speaker 1: came up with ways of that actually making sub micron
Speaker 1: masks out of just UH supply chains that weren't getting
Speaker 1: tapped UM. So initially these were shop towels, and then
Speaker 1: he started looking at NANI fiber material UM and he
Speaker 1: found ways of for around sixty cents making a mass
Speaker 1: that was basically the quality of an N ninety five
Speaker 1: mass that could be made in just a few minutes
Speaker 1: at home UM. And so we suddenly just integrated that
Speaker 1: whole effort into our own and started just recruiting volunteers,
Speaker 1: sharing all of our resources, and UM this large assembly
Speaker 1: network of these little pods situated all across the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: each of them with a team lead with a little army,
Speaker 1: a battalion of assembly volunteers and dedicated drivers were just
Speaker 1: making thousands of these mass every week, which we were
Speaker 1: then distributing through the the distribution infrastructure that we had
Speaker 1: UH sort of put together earlier on in the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And so we found ourselves and this was still very
Speaker 1: much in a time when you couldn't even find cloth
Speaker 1: masks or surgical masks and shops, we found ourselves astonishingly
Speaker 1: being the primary source of this essential ppe for tens
Speaker 1: and tens of thousands of people in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: And as we were covered in the early days by
Speaker 1: the Chronicle in the l A Times, loads of people
Speaker 1: started joining the volunteer network, we started getting donations and uh,
Speaker 1: that was the earlier stage of what we did, and
Speaker 1: I'll pass it on to Jinine to talk about what
Speaker 1: we did next. Yeah, So, kind of as UM Common
Speaker 1: Humanity Collective was working on this project up Bar, myself
Speaker 1: and a couple other folks started adopting kind of a
Speaker 1: Democratic Socialists of America or East by d S A
Speaker 1: side of what was happening UM. And through this project
Speaker 1: our intent was to UM have a little bit more
Speaker 1: political education and think really critically about how we could
Speaker 1: make this true mutual aid, which A Row and I
Speaker 1: have learned is really really difficult to do, especially under capitalism. UM.
Speaker 1: And so because we started this project around December, so
Speaker 1: kind of the height of the pandemic, we wanted to
Speaker 1: make it accessible for people who were really COVID cautious UM,
Speaker 1: and so we would assemble kits of masks in a
Speaker 1: park with a couple of folks outside, and then we
Speaker 1: would drive these kits to people's homes and get on
Speaker 1: zoom UM and we would have a breakout room for
Speaker 1: people to learn how to make masks. UM. People oftentimes
Speaker 1: people who had only come to the build a couple
Speaker 1: of times started teaching new folks how to build these masks.
Speaker 1: And in the other room we were doing readings. UM.
Speaker 1: We were reading you know, Panna Cook and Jane mciwy
Speaker 1: b side by side talking about you know, trade unions
Speaker 1: and solidarity unionism. We were reading about tenant organizing. UM
Speaker 1: a bar. Do you want to talk about Rosa Luxemburg
Speaker 1: a little bit? Yeah, I mean it was an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: We were trying to sort of expand our own political consciousness,
Speaker 1: and we did things like host to three part series
Speaker 1: just discussing, examining, analyzing the political theory of Rosa Luxembourg UM.
Speaker 1: And we had huge participation. And this was at a
Speaker 1: time where in our d SA chapter UM and many
Speaker 1: of the different committees people were panicking because no one
Speaker 1: was showing up UM, and yet we found an enormous
Speaker 1: number of people joining our effort in these discussions were
Speaker 1: so energetic and so enthusiastic. Um. And you know, this
Speaker 1: was a lonely time. It was a difficult time, and
Speaker 1: people seemed to find something and what we were doing.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that, Jennie, Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think you know, not only were people coming and participating, right,
Speaker 1: we had high school students. We had people who had
Speaker 1: dedicated the pandemic to reading political theory, right, and so
Speaker 1: you have this huge breath of knowledge. We have more
Speaker 1: liberal people joining. We have like anarchists and communists right, like,
Speaker 1: all in this space that are actually talking together. And
Speaker 1: what was so empowering to me was everyone felt like
Speaker 1: they could speak. We had people that were really introverted,
Speaker 1: um then in the beginning didn't talk at all, slowly
Speaker 1: start to open up. We had high schoolers asking really
Speaker 1: incredible questions, right like is revolution even possible right now? Um?
Speaker 1: And kind of getting into some of this. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the most impactful things was that we
Speaker 1: had these calls from seven to nine at night, and
Speaker 1: after that we had what we called late night, where
Speaker 1: folks would stay on till like twelve at night and
Speaker 1: talk to each other. And in this time of like
Speaker 1: isolation and depression, I don't think anyone that I know
Speaker 1: at least was having a good time in December, January, February, right,
Speaker 1: people were coming together on Zoom and actually staying on
Speaker 1: Zoom after what we were doing to feel some type
Speaker 1: of camaraderie, to feel like they were part of a community. Um.
Speaker 1: And we were able to actually create that space. And
Speaker 1: I think that that was something that to me was
Speaker 1: really incredible. UM. And I think, you know, framing this
Speaker 1: also from the George Floyd protests that happened over the
Speaker 1: summer and thinking you know, more about abolition, right, thinking
Speaker 1: more about community building. I don't think you can truly
Speaker 1: or I can't imagine the future without the prison industrial
Speaker 1: complex that doesn't involve communities of care, that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: giving people both the resources and the like love that
Speaker 1: they need to be able to not be pushed into
Speaker 1: situations where they have to commit crimes, and also having
Speaker 1: accountability amongst each other. Um. Not to mention, right, this
Speaker 1: work is really really hard. People burn out, like we
Speaker 1: are exhausted to be able to create a space where
Speaker 1: everyone cares for each other or we're checking in with
Speaker 1: each other where you know, in the beginning of this
Speaker 1: virtual mask builds, I think, you know, a bar, myself
Speaker 1: and a couple other folks were doing the majority of
Speaker 1: the work and by the end we were doing none
Speaker 1: of it. We had like been able to reallocate those tasks,
Speaker 1: we had been able to develop leaders, and we had
Speaker 1: essentially organized ourselves out of a job, which to me
Speaker 1: is like the organizer's dream, right, Like that's what you
Speaker 1: really want to see happen, UM. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of what was happening on the production side of the
Speaker 1: Mask builds. On the distribution side, again, we're thinking, how
Speaker 1: can we act really make this true mutual aid UM,
Speaker 1: and so we started to partner with Tank Tenant and
Speaker 1: Neighborhood Councils, which is one of the main tenant groups
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area UM and working with them to
Speaker 1: go to food banks right places where people are generally
Speaker 1: low income, where they might not be able to have
Speaker 1: the resources to get masks, and we're distributing masks asking
Speaker 1: them are you having trouble with your rent or your landlord? Right?
Speaker 1: The goal in this is to give people the tools
Speaker 1: to organize around issues that are deeply pertinent and urgent
Speaker 1: to them, especially with an impending fiction moratorium. Right, and
Speaker 1: so UM, we learned a lot through this. We went
Speaker 1: to a lot of different food banks we found, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some of them were places where people primarily
Speaker 1: spoke Cantonese and Mandarin, and so we you know, used
Speaker 1: our networks again that we had created through this project,
Speaker 1: these relationships of trust to find people that spoke Mandarin
Speaker 1: and we're willing to come out, um and talk with folks. Um.
Speaker 1: We found people that spoke Spanish that we're willing to
Speaker 1: come out and talk with folks. And we started to
Speaker 1: develop relationships at these food banks where we are able
Speaker 1: to distribute masks to people, talk to them, understand what
Speaker 1: issues they were having, UM, and invite them to come
Speaker 1: to meetings where they could actually get their resources to
Speaker 1: try and tackle some of these issues that they're facing.
Speaker 1: Abrought you have more to add on the MASS project, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth saying that. UM, we're all very busy.
Speaker 1: I'm a PhD student. While we were doing this work, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, in d s A, I was teaching a
Speaker 1: class and I was doing research, and Janine is a
Speaker 1: extremely busy union organizer. UM, And normally, you know, we'd
Speaker 1: come home after work and be absolutely exhausted, UM, and
Speaker 1: this was very tiring, but we felt somehow energized, We
Speaker 1: felt driven to do this, and we found that lots
Speaker 1: of the other people who participated were also busy with
Speaker 1: their jobs and yet would make time to do this
Speaker 1: and UM in terms of our actual practice, in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to develop the political dimension of the distribution
Speaker 1: aspect of our mutual aid, there was a constant interplay
Speaker 1: between what we were reading and what we were practicing.
Speaker 1: So as we began working with this radical tenant organizing
Speaker 1: group tank that Jinin mentioned, whose aim is to give
Speaker 1: tenants the tools to form tenant councils and tenant unions
Speaker 1: in order to use tools such as rent strikes to
Speaker 1: rebalance power between themselves and their landlords and real estate companies, etcetera. UM.
Speaker 1: During that time, during our mask builds, we would then
Speaker 1: go and read articles in newspaper clippings from you know,
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, when there were examples of twenty year
Speaker 1: old factory girls in Lower Manhattan organizing groups of apartment
Speaker 1: buildings to go on rent strike, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 1: families in one case, to go on rent strike. These incredible,
Speaker 1: deeply inspiring stories, UM where people uh suddenly became UH
Speaker 1: subjects of history and not merely objects. And I think
Speaker 1: part of what's stained our own work in this group
Speaker 1: was some UH similar feeling and UM At the same time,
Speaker 1: when we were trying to imagine future beyond capitalism, we
Speaker 1: were looking at moments when that future seemed within reach,
Speaker 1: and so we were studying, for example, Paris in ninety,
Speaker 1: which is a moment within many people's living memory, all
Speaker 1: although not our own, UM and studying how it was
Speaker 1: that these protests began with the student movement and then
Speaker 1: spilled out into these massive strikes and all the sort
Speaker 1: of self activity that emerged from that. And there was
Speaker 1: such a wide, wide breath of people who came to
Speaker 1: these builds. There were people as young as high schoolers,
Speaker 1: were also much older, people in their seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: And when we were having this discussion, someone who lived
Speaker 1: through the sixties and witnessed these things very up close
Speaker 1: came to talk about Paris in n and shared the
Speaker 1: wealth of his own experience. And again, all of this
Speaker 1: was driving what we were actually doing with our hands,
Speaker 1: what we were doing on the streets, what we were
Speaker 1: doing at these food bank lines, UM and so it
Speaker 1: was very critical that everything we were reading was somehow
Speaker 1: feeding into our practice. Yeah, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we had over a hundred people participate in these masks builds.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that I really
Speaker 1: took away from this is again, people were craving that community,
Speaker 1: They were craving relationships, and people came back because they
Speaker 1: felt that in this group, UM. And that translated also
Speaker 1: as we transitioned, right, we had built a culture of
Speaker 1: friendship and of caring for each other that people wanted
Speaker 1: to continue working on this. They wanted to continue to
Speaker 1: be a part of this project. As we transitioned UM
Speaker 1: to building air purifiers, right as the um you know,
Speaker 1: vaccines became more prevalent, masks were still being worn, but
Speaker 1: to a lesser degree. UM, and we started turning to
Speaker 1: fire season UM. As these disasters right continue to strike,
Speaker 1: especially with climate change only getting worse and worse, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think is really powerful about
Speaker 1: mutual aid, and is really powerful about communities is that
Speaker 1: these disasters have been happening and continue to happen at
Speaker 1: a greater and greater frequency. And I think what I've
Speaker 1: learned from looking at you know, the heat waves that
Speaker 1: recently took many lives across the Pacific Northwest. The UM
Speaker 1: really really freezing temperatures that happened in Texas about a
Speaker 1: year ago, and especially COVID is that you know, the government,
Speaker 1: local or federal is not stepping in to help people.
Speaker 1: Billionaires are not really stepping in to help people. It's
Speaker 1: really only communities and networks of relationships that are keeping
Speaker 1: people alive. And the only way you know that we're
Speaker 1: going to get through this is through having those relationships,
Speaker 1: through understanding where people need support. And we started to
Speaker 1: do this with the distribution of masks, right is build
Speaker 1: relationships with community members in you know, fruit Vale in Oakland,
Speaker 1: which is not a large, not a place that many
Speaker 1: people from d SA or from TANK are living currently, right,
Speaker 1: and starting to build relationships with people that do need
Speaker 1: these resources in times of crisis UM, so that we
Speaker 1: know where we can plug in and also build relationships
Speaker 1: amongst our fellow organizers so that we can support each
Speaker 1: other through these disasters. UM. And so as we transitioned
Speaker 1: to the air purifiers, we started, you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: everything we have learned from the Mass project and kind
Speaker 1: of making that even bigger and better, and how can
Speaker 1: we you know, continue to take what we've learned and
Speaker 1: change it and turn it into something really really incredible.
Speaker 1: And UM we you know Chris who Abar mentioned before,
Speaker 1: who came up with the masks, came up with a
Speaker 1: really incredible way to make air purifiers that like ridiculously efficient.
Speaker 1: UM is really really useful, especially for wildfire smoke, but
Speaker 1: also for just people with asthma. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: environmental pollution in the Bay area, right these things can
Speaker 1: be used UM year round. And we began to build
Speaker 1: these air purifiers out of you know, box fans and
Speaker 1: help a filters UM with a shroud with weather stripping
Speaker 1: right to make the air like only go through the
Speaker 1: fan to make it extremely efficient. And UM started to
Speaker 1: think about how can we make this like community aspect
Speaker 1: even bigger at least this is what I was thinking of,
Speaker 1: because I started to realize, right, I think the only
Speaker 1: thing that we can rely on is each other right now,
Speaker 1: especially UM. And so we started bringing in a bunch
Speaker 1: of different groups to come to these builds. So we
Speaker 1: have you know, East Bay d s A. We started
Speaker 1: working really closely with Sunrise and developed a level of
Speaker 1: trust and reciprocity in that relationship that has you know,
Speaker 1: continued to be really beneficial to us UM and really helpful.
Speaker 1: We met amazing people that came out. You know, they've
Speaker 1: helped fundraise for US as our funding has gotten really
Speaker 1: really low because these air purifiers are not cheap those
Speaker 1: they are much cheaper than commercially available, but we're you know,
Speaker 1: giving them to folks for free because we want this
Speaker 1: to be mutual aid UM and so working with Sunrise,
Speaker 1: we're working with Asians for Black Lives UM, Berkeley Mutual
Speaker 1: Aid MASK Oakland UM who both came out to our
Speaker 1: builds but also helped us distribute air purifiers to Reno
Speaker 1: and to places that had you know a qu i
Speaker 1: s of five hundred right when fire season was so bad,
Speaker 1: when the smoke there was just like unlivable. UM. We
Speaker 1: were able to work with them to distribute these air
Speaker 1: purifiers where people really needed them most. UM we were
Speaker 1: able to you know, continue to work with tank UM.
Speaker 1: Some folks from the i w W came out. We
Speaker 1: were able to distribute these air purifiers to the Sagorata
Speaker 1: Land Trust, which is UM a land trust that is
Speaker 1: run by Indigenous women UM and is working on essentially
Speaker 1: giving um indigenous land back to Indigenous people. We were
Speaker 1: able to distribute with Critical Resistance and amazing abolitionist groups
Speaker 1: started by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela dave Us in Oakland.
Speaker 1: We were able to distribute UM to s r oh UM,
Speaker 1: a group that is working with UM low income Chinese
Speaker 1: immigrants in San Francisco who are generally living in single
Speaker 1: family homes right with really bad air quality UM and
Speaker 1: work with like all of these different groups, you know,
Speaker 1: Berkeley Mutual Aid. We're pulling in people from just countless
Speaker 1: networks to come and build air purifiers together. UM. And
Speaker 1: we had you know, an ex black panther talking to
Speaker 1: someone from Sunrise from San Francisco, right Like these just
Speaker 1: wild connections, UM that are happening at these builds of
Speaker 1: people who are deeply political and people who are barely
Speaker 1: understanding um you know what socialism means, but are wanting
Speaker 1: to come out and do something for their community. UM.
Speaker 1: And through these relationships and networks again, like we're able
Speaker 1: to hang out after the builds, people are able to
Speaker 1: enjoy themselves. Everyone said they were having a really fun
Speaker 1: time even though we were like literally doing work this
Speaker 1: satur Day. People were still like, this is so fun.
Speaker 1: We had you know, people baking bread and like fruit
Speaker 1: tarts and cheesecakes and bringing it. We had so we
Speaker 1: had music. It was like a very fun atmosphere and environment.
Speaker 1: And despite the fact that you know, it was physical
Speaker 1: labor and it was taxing and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it was on hot days. Um, people stayed for you know,
Speaker 1: four hours to help do this and to do this
Speaker 1: work because they cared, because they wanted to see, um,
Speaker 1: you know, what they could be able to do. And
Speaker 1: they also I think started to build relationships. Um. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, countless people talked to a Bra and I
Speaker 1: and had no idea. You know, we've known each other
Speaker 1: for less than a year now, um, and they thought
Speaker 1: we'd known each other our whole lives. And I think
Speaker 1: that that really speaks, right. I think that speaks so
Speaker 1: much to the relationships that we've been able to build
Speaker 1: through this. And you know, I think a Bra and
Speaker 1: I have met countless people and have developed like an
Speaker 1: incredible community through this work. Um. That definitely helps me
Speaker 1: keep going. I would definitely be able to continue to
Speaker 1: do this work if I couldn't, you know, call Librara,
Speaker 1: but nine pm and we talked for three hours, and
Speaker 1: we complain, but we also talked through like what are
Speaker 1: we doing and how can it be better? And how
Speaker 1: can we you know, get through this roadblock UM And
Speaker 1: I saw that in countless places UM as we moved
Speaker 1: to our own distribution, So we're partnering with these organizations,
Speaker 1: but we're also doing our own distribution UM, which I
Speaker 1: think is like a huge experiment. And how to actually
Speaker 1: do mutual aid which UM is something that you know,
Speaker 1: when we talked to the organizers in our circles, we
Speaker 1: weren't finding answers too, and so we kind of realized
Speaker 1: like we just have to kind of try and figure
Speaker 1: this out. But we would go out and do these
Speaker 1: distributions and afterwards, you know, have lunch with people and
Speaker 1: talk to each other like what could we do better?
Speaker 1: What are we doing wrong? Is this mutual aid? Like
Speaker 1: these are questions we're having right after we've been standing
Speaker 1: in the sun talking to people for three hours. Like
Speaker 1: the dedication of the people involved in this, like of
Speaker 1: our said, most of us are working forty fifty sixty
Speaker 1: hour weeks and yet we're dedicating constant time during the
Speaker 1: week and at least one day every weekend to either
Speaker 1: distribution or a build. UM is incredible. I feel like
Speaker 1: incredibly honored to be able to work with the people
Speaker 1: that we've been working with UM. But in our distribution,
Speaker 1: we started thinking about, you know, how can we invite
Speaker 1: some of these people to come to our builds. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's the reciprocity. I think true mutual aid is really
Speaker 1: about believing that the people that were distributing to can
Speaker 1: also give back to us, rather than seeing them as
Speaker 1: like helpless UM. And so we continue to do some
Speaker 1: of our distributions with tank UM and actually we were
Speaker 1: able to do some of these distributions in a way
Speaker 1: that helped new buildings who were just starting to form
Speaker 1: tenant councils. UM. You know, use the air purifiers as
Speaker 1: a way to open up conversation with some of these
Speaker 1: people and say, hey, you're building is being organized. Remember
Speaker 1: how the fire season was last year, right, Like, this
Speaker 1: is something that you can use, and let's talk more
Speaker 1: about other tools that we can use coming together to
Speaker 1: really fight for changes that we can't necessarily make on
Speaker 1: our own. UM. So that was happening, and then we
Speaker 1: also decided to look at data around where in Oakland
Speaker 1: or asthma rates really high, where in Oakland is air
Speaker 1: pollution really bad, and where in Oakland is it primarily
Speaker 1: lower income folks? Right? We want to be giving these
Speaker 1: air purifiers to people who can't generally afford a hundred
Speaker 1: to two hundred dollar air purifier. UM. And so East
Speaker 1: Oakland was one of those places. And again through this
Speaker 1: network that we had built through the Mask build, we
Speaker 1: had a connection in East Oakland someone that had UM
Speaker 1: that is part of East Bay ds A right, that
Speaker 1: had done a lot of community organizing, and someone that
Speaker 1: was actually able to, you know, send out an email
Speaker 1: to her neighborhood and say, hey, we have air purifiers.
Speaker 1: And so we had people posting up at her house. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, we were coming into a neighborhood that
Speaker 1: was not our own, which in some ways UM you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of complications to that, UM, but we
Speaker 1: were also able to do it at someone's house that
Speaker 1: we knew UM. And our goal in this was to
Speaker 1: get people to come to our builds to make air
Speaker 1: purifiers for themselves and for their family, their community, their friends,
Speaker 1: so that we then don't have to go into those neighborhoods, right,
Speaker 1: so that they can then start to own that distribution
Speaker 1: and own this project and like feel an autonomy over it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we also kind of door knocked around the
Speaker 1: neighborhood talking to people about the air purifiers, about wildfire smoke,
Speaker 1: about coming out to a build, you know, about why
Speaker 1: this is really important, um, why we need people to
Speaker 1: engage in this project. Um. And we distributed almost a
Speaker 1: hundred air purifiers that day, I think folks in that community.
Speaker 1: And after that that week UM, so we distributed on
Speaker 1: Sunday and then um a week later on Saturday, we
Speaker 1: would have a build. So within that week, right, we're
Speaker 1: calling everyone that we distributed to saying, hey, how is
Speaker 1: your air porifier working? Can you come out to a build.
Speaker 1: It's really really valuable that you come out to a
Speaker 1: build so that you can make sure that your community
Speaker 1: has clean air to breathe, especially during fire season. UM.
Speaker 1: And through these calls, right, I talked to someone who
Speaker 1: lived in East Oakland for an hour, UM, and this
Speaker 1: person just started opening up and was so touched that
Speaker 1: we had done this and basically said, you know, no
Speaker 1: one has ever cared for my community like this. No
Speaker 1: one has ever even thought about us, right, And you see,
Speaker 1: like there are nonprofits right California was giving out air
Speaker 1: purifiers to certain people, like there's a semblance of the structure.
Speaker 1: And yet we were actually interfacing with these people who
Speaker 1: seemed to have no idea that any of this was
Speaker 1: happening right there, saying, you know, no one else has
Speaker 1: been able to do this, UM, and we're starting to
Speaker 1: form relationships and develop connections in these neighborhoods and make
Speaker 1: people feel cared for and follow up UM. And despite
Speaker 1: all of this work, right, no one shows up to
Speaker 1: our bill that week UM, And I think Obra and
Speaker 1: I both felt pretty defeated, right, Like is mutually possible?
Speaker 1: What are we're doing wrong? Clearly? Like class and racial
Speaker 1: barriers are really hard to overcome in this UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking to our ex black panther friend
Speaker 1: that has continued to be a huge part of this project,
Speaker 1: and he was like, you're you know, you have to
Speaker 1: keep trying. You're doing the right things. And so we
Speaker 1: went to West Oakland again where we had a connection
Speaker 1: from our Mass project that helped us set up in
Speaker 1: front of this corner next to UM, a vegan cafe
Speaker 1: that serves trans poc for free UM and has really
Speaker 1: wonderful food. We're able to talk with them give them
Speaker 1: air purifier as they allowed us to. UM kind of
Speaker 1: set up shop in front of their store. And there's
Speaker 1: also like a liquor store on this corner. It's like
Speaker 1: a very busy corner in West Oakland. UM and kind
Speaker 1: of did the same thing. We're handing out air purifiers,
Speaker 1: talking to people about the build, talking to people about
Speaker 1: UM you know why this is important. And we're also
Speaker 1: door knocking in the neighborhood, talking to folks UM at
Speaker 1: their homes, UM asking people, you know, who needs an
Speaker 1: air purifier? Right, Like, these communities generally know each other
Speaker 1: really well, and we're able to talk to people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh my gosh, you know, like my aunt
Speaker 1: lives over there and her kid has asthma, and like
Speaker 1: you should go talk with her. UM. And so we
Speaker 1: start to develop these connections and kind of map out
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and UM you know, again we're following up.
Speaker 1: We're talking to these people on the phone, we're asking
Speaker 1: them to come out to the build. And we went
Speaker 1: out to this neighborhood again. So the second time we
Speaker 1: went out. Um. I started to recognize people, right, and
Speaker 1: I started to be able to talk with people, and um,
Speaker 1: through I was kind of like door knocking, um, while
Speaker 1: people were posted up by the liquor store and this
Speaker 1: beacon cafe and uh, there was like a church service
Speaker 1: going on and I recognized one of the people there,
Speaker 1: and he recognized me, and we were able to talk
Speaker 1: and he was really grateful for the work that we
Speaker 1: were doing. And he started calling his friends over and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, you know, do you all need an
Speaker 1: air purifier? Remember how a bad fire season was last year,
Speaker 1: And also like we should all go to this build
Speaker 1: next time. Um, you know we should actually be showing
Speaker 1: up and helping out um. And words spread so quickly,
Speaker 1: like these communities are so deeply connected, um, at least
Speaker 1: from what I like witnessed. And um that week again, right,
Speaker 1: we called everyone. We said, like, you know, we really
Speaker 1: think it's valuable for you all to come out to
Speaker 1: a build. We want to give you like ownership and
Speaker 1: autonomy over this in a world where I think so
Speaker 1: often you feel so little autonomy, um, and so little
Speaker 1: power when everything feels like it's crumbling. Right to have
Speaker 1: some semblance of ownership and autonomy. To be able to
Speaker 1: um do something that is immediately like visible and real
Speaker 1: UM feels really powerful, right when sometimes you know, uh,
Speaker 1: talking to elected officials is moving too slowly because disasters
Speaker 1: are happening so quickly. There is a need to balance
Speaker 1: immediate need and system change, right, and I think you
Speaker 1: have to constantly hold both. Um. But you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking to these folks, were asking them to come to
Speaker 1: the build and UM, we actually had a couple of
Speaker 1: people come out to our build from our distribution, people
Speaker 1: that had a really amazing time, People that you know
Speaker 1: said that they enjoyed being there um and took air
Speaker 1: purifiers back and gave them out to their friends and family. UM.
Speaker 1: And we're able to say, you know, I made this right,
Speaker 1: like this is something valuable, but also I understand how
Speaker 1: it works. And I talked to one of these people.
Speaker 1: Our next build is actually on his birthday, and he
Speaker 1: was like, I really want to come out on my birthday.
Speaker 1: I really want to come out and help people and
Speaker 1: do this thing that has been enjoyable um and is
Speaker 1: also like helping people. And that to me was someone right,
Speaker 1: like that someone wants to come on their birthday to
Speaker 1: like build air purifiers on a Saturday, when most of
Speaker 1: these people are you know, working forty two however many
Speaker 1: hours a week that they're willing to continue to even
Speaker 1: work on a Saturday, I think is a huge feat UM,
Speaker 1: and it's something that's definitely felt really really powerful in
Speaker 1: this Yeah. I think something that Janine brings out is
Speaker 1: really important, which is that UM, at every stage we've
Speaker 1: been sort of interrogating and examining the work we're doing
Speaker 1: and asking whether we are truly drawing out the full
Speaker 1: political potential of our work. So in the earlier days
Speaker 1: when we were just stirring up that sanitizer and getting
Speaker 1: out these masks, you know, we did a lot, and
Speaker 1: you know, this network of volunteers comprised well over two
Speaker 1: hundred people, and it was sort of consuming all of
Speaker 1: our time. But eventually we realized that to a large degree,
Speaker 1: we were basically just acting as a stopgap measure for
Speaker 1: government austerity, for the big gaps left behind by this
Speaker 1: extremely problematic nonprofit industrial complex, and the work we were
Speaker 1: doing then we realized, was sort of susceptible to co
Speaker 1: optation UM, and it didn't necessarily represent too much of
Speaker 1: a threat to capitalist hegemony and um. At that point,
Speaker 1: you know, we shifted into d s A and we
Speaker 1: started bringing in a very sort of explicit political education
Speaker 1: component and started associating with an organization like Tank, which
Speaker 1: is already been doing um, really incredible radical organizing in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, but eventually ran up against the limits
Speaker 1: of that as well. And you know, d Essay is
Speaker 1: an organization where a lot of us initially learned our politics,
Speaker 1: but you know, and its current sort of stage, it's
Speaker 1: characterized by a strong degree in our chapter of sort
Speaker 1: of democratic centralism, and most of the effort is being
Speaker 1: put toward electoral work and reform work, and everything that
Speaker 1: we were reading about seemed to point towards the extreme
Speaker 1: limits of that form of organizing and how these forms
Speaker 1: of organizing in fact represented sometimes the more reactionary elements
Speaker 1: of the left in earlier moments in history, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to go beyond that. And so we realized that
Speaker 1: we were spending a lot of time having to just
Speaker 1: sort of defend the work that we were doing. So
Speaker 1: eventually we just decided to uh sort of reassert our autonomy.
Speaker 1: And as we shifted into the air Purifier chapter of
Speaker 1: our work, that's what we were doing, and um our
Speaker 1: inspirations are manifold. And as we were reading about these
Speaker 1: earlier moments in history, something which UM had an extraordinary
Speaker 1: effect on me was studying the example of the Spanish
Speaker 1: Revolution in six and suddenly I was reading about this
Speaker 1: moment in history that's been more or less erased from
Speaker 1: most of our textbooks are presented UM in a very
Speaker 1: kind of dishonest form UM. And what these workers and
Speaker 1: peasants had done in the midst of fascist takeover was
Speaker 1: create on an enormous scale UM the perhaps the most
Speaker 1: egalitarian society that I've ever read about, which truly represented
Speaker 1: UM a sort of liberatory, radical, early form of anti
Speaker 1: authoritarian socialism that stands in tremendous contrast to the much
Speaker 1: uglier forms of so called so acitialism that we've seen
Speaker 1: appear in the twentieth century. And what I noticed was
Speaker 1: that this society in Spain in n six was absolutely
Speaker 1: replete with mutual aid, and these kind of anarchist tendencies
Speaker 1: had UM sort of penetrated the consciousness of many of
Speaker 1: the workers and peasants in Spain, you know, sixty years
Speaker 1: before the revolution, after UM Bakunin in the first International
Speaker 1: sent out an emissary to start spreading these ideas, and
Speaker 1: they took whole like wildfire and spread across the country.
Speaker 1: I think, I think one of one of the most
Speaker 1: incredible things about that story is the the guy they
Speaker 1: gets sent from Italy, like from as as the representative now,
Speaker 1: because yeah, he doesn't speak Spanish, right, he only speaks Italian,
Speaker 1: and he he he should stove at this place, right,
Speaker 1: and he's he's he's such a sort of brilliant order
Speaker 1: and and the sort of like the power of the
Speaker 1: ideas that he has is so strong that you know
Speaker 1: it it breaks through the language here, and it's it's
Speaker 1: this sort of I think it's just this incredible moments
Speaker 1: that you know, I think, I think comes into a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of WHI the two were running
Speaker 1: into with, you know, I mean, we still live in
Speaker 1: a place that's you know, incredibly defined by language bears,
Speaker 1: and just the the ability to break through that becomes
Speaker 1: it gives you this just incredible potential of power and organization. Yeah, Chase,
Speaker 1: you don't know how much it means to me to
Speaker 1: hear someone who's as familiar with this as most of
Speaker 1: the time when I talked about it, just total blank faces,
Speaker 1: even among my friends and comrades on the left. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean reading about Finelli, who didn't speak
Speaker 1: a word of Spanish and he just went and with
Speaker 1: his wild gesticulations and his passionate rhetoric was able to
Speaker 1: basically inspire people with the radical politics that he came
Speaker 1: there to represent. And it somehow then took on a
Speaker 1: life of its own. Is kind of an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 1: And what I would do to take a time machine
Speaker 1: back and just see what this guy, you know, stuck
Speaker 1: on rains and basically lived as a tramp as he
Speaker 1: went from village to village, spreading the word what what
Speaker 1: this looked like? What was he doing? Um? And yet
Speaker 1: these ideas took hold in a only deep way. And UM,
Speaker 1: these notions of solidarity, mutual aid, cooperation, free association existed
Speaker 1: by the time of the Spanish Revolution in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: So these sort of dual power counter institutions were more
Speaker 1: or less in place. And these are the things which,
Speaker 1: um were the basis the precondition for this sweeping egalitarian
Speaker 1: social revolution that then unfolded, which was unfortunately destroyed by force. UM.
Speaker 1: But this was the sort of society that I imagined
Speaker 1: I might actually want to live. Um and and uh
Speaker 1: and and what you see is that there is a
Speaker 1: deep element to UM, a sort of shared consciousness that
Speaker 1: existed at that time. And it was quite an effort
Speaker 1: for people to bring that consciousness from sort of the
Speaker 1: countryside where it took hold more nash naturally into sort
Speaker 1: of the industrial um centers, the metropolitan areas where people
Speaker 1: working in factories were um, you know, found it a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult to sort of exercise these UM values
Speaker 1: because these things are effectively bled out of them as
Speaker 1: a work on the factory floor. And UM. That brought
Speaker 1: a whole different meaning to the work that we were
Speaker 1: doing now. And we wondered, what can we do to
Speaker 1: uh inculcate, to nurture this kind of consciousness among the
Speaker 1: people with whom we're interacting as we do our mutual aid,
Speaker 1: as we do our distributions, as we hold these builds
Speaker 1: that you know, even though we had trouble getting initially
Speaker 1: a few of the people from our distributions to show up,
Speaker 1: there were still you know, sixty seventy people showing up
Speaker 1: every other weekend. And now we finally started having the
Speaker 1: people that were distributing extraordinarily surprising and exciting and yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been It could Happen Here. Join us tomorrow
Speaker 1: for part two of this interview, where we'll go more
Speaker 1: in death in the political side Common Humanity Collectives work. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter That Happened Here pod
Speaker 1: and also on Instagram in the same place, and you
Speaker 1: can find the rest of her worker cools and media
Speaker 1: in the same places. Welcome it could Happen Here podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and about how we can put
Speaker 1: them back together in a way better than they originally were.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to continue our interview with Janina
Speaker 1: Abrar from the Common Humanity Collective. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: their work. We've been talking about the origin of the
Speaker 1: mutual aid products. We've been talking specifically about the political
Speaker 1: aspect of their work and how they're reading this sort
Speaker 1: of anarchists. The history of anarchists Ruckle in Spain and
Speaker 1: particularly bbitual agere in the Spanish Civil War helped impact
Speaker 1: and shape the politics and work that they've been doing.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted, I wanted to sort of circle
Speaker 1: back all the way too from the beginning was the
Speaker 1: stuff you got you were doing at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Because I think that this is I've
Speaker 1: talked about this before on here, but you know, the
Speaker 1: difference between a country like the US where what seven
Speaker 1: hundreds and undifty people are dead and places where that
Speaker 1: didn't happen was the degree your community mobilization. And I
Speaker 1: talked about this with the Chinese example, is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like that the reason that China that the
Speaker 1: pandemic sort of got contained there, it wasn't because the
Speaker 1: state stepped in and was like, we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: It was because hundreds of thousands of ordinary people just
Speaker 1: took to the streets and we're like, okay, we're doing
Speaker 1: a lockdown now. And you know, and it takes a
Speaker 1: different form in China because you know, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different sort of things going on there, but
Speaker 1: that kind of mass community mobilization in the beginning of
Speaker 1: it's just like it. It didn't happen that much in
Speaker 1: the US. And I think, like, you know, the the
Speaker 1: world where we don't all die in the pandemic, right
Speaker 1: is the one where the things that you all were
Speaker 1: doing happen. I mean, one the way the things. I
Speaker 1: remember my sister is a bios grad student, and she
Speaker 1: was telling me about how, you know, so so the
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of the things, one of
Speaker 1: the bottlenecks beginning of a pandemic, and it's still kind
Speaker 1: of a bottleneck, was it was about being able to
Speaker 1: being able to do COVID tests. And you know, bio
Speaker 1: grad students can do PCR tests like it's easy. This
Speaker 1: is you know, this is one of the first things
Speaker 1: they teach you. And that capacity just was never used.
Speaker 1: It just it was just sort of left and like
Speaker 1: sat there and rotted, and it sat there and rotted
Speaker 1: because you know, the actual pandemic response was run by
Speaker 1: a state that just didn't care. Any bureaucracy that even
Speaker 1: when it did care, was sort of you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't have this capacity to mobilize. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: its entire existence is about making sure that sort of
Speaker 1: the capacity for a tonics mobibilization never happens. And I
Speaker 1: think that that was one of the most interesting and
Speaker 1: powerful parts of what y'all were doing, was that you
Speaker 1: just did it and it just it kept spreading. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a that's a really good and important
Speaker 1: point you're bringing up. And I should mention that before
Speaker 1: we started doing any of the stuff with PPE, I
Speaker 1: was actually you know, as word as as as the
Speaker 1: um uh, the fear of the pandemic started spreading, and
Speaker 1: we finally had a picture of what the US would
Speaker 1: soon look like. I remember going to a union meeting
Speaker 1: among my Spellow grad student workers and talking some people
Speaker 1: afterwards and saying like, hey, um, I don't think that
Speaker 1: we have anywhere near the kind of testing infrastructure that
Speaker 1: we're going to need to prevent the spread of this stuff,
Speaker 1: Like why don't we just is there any way that
Speaker 1: we can just take pc art machines and set up
Speaker 1: these little guerrilla operators and start testing people for free?
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, one of the things I noticed was that people,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just very confused by this idea. They
Speaker 1: had much more faith in the state's ability to um
Speaker 1: assemble these infrastructures, and I just realized that was not
Speaker 1: the way in which I was going to be able
Speaker 1: to help out. And so it's it's unfortunate, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people have even though they have these instincts
Speaker 1: for sort of mutual aid and for this kind of
Speaker 1: autonomous organized. This stuff lies just below the surface. Often
Speaker 1: they don't feel actually capable of it. And I think
Speaker 1: more than anything, what we've done with this project is
Speaker 1: we've created a context and atmosphere in which things which
Speaker 1: people typically feel like they cannot do they suddenly realize
Speaker 1: they can do again. It's just to come back to
Speaker 1: that idea that most of us, you know, we live
Speaker 1: our lives, We sell our labor for wages. A few
Speaker 1: people who own the means of production, you know, accumulate
Speaker 1: profits and use them to manipulate the state for their
Speaker 1: own purposes. Um. And this has an effect on us.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has an effect on dulling our consciousness
Speaker 1: um And it's an extraordinary transfer asian in our social relations,
Speaker 1: in our sense of our own individuality when we do
Speaker 1: realize in these moments that we can be um subjects.
Speaker 1: And so unfortunately my initial to try to stimulate some
Speaker 1: of this activity around testing didn't work out. Um But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it just presents this recurring problem, which is
Speaker 1: that people are not used to doing this kind of work.
Speaker 1: And Janine and I have found many many times that
Speaker 1: you know, people are willing to come and use their
Speaker 1: hands and build something for a few hours. But then
Speaker 1: what we try to do is get them involved. We say,
Speaker 1: come to the meetings. You have decision making power. You
Speaker 1: can determine the trajectory of this work. And that's always
Speaker 1: a very very difficult thing to be doing now, given
Speaker 1: the way that sort of people have been conditioned, um
Speaker 1: right now. And I think that's something which is concerning
Speaker 1: because these uh traits of subservience and sort of submission
Speaker 1: and I think are incompatible. If there were a moment
Speaker 1: of revolutionary rupture, I'm not sure that that would necessarily
Speaker 1: lead to any better sort of society. So I think
Speaker 1: this stuff is deeply, deeply important to get people involved
Speaker 1: in this kind of work. I just want to go
Speaker 1: back to one of the things you said, Like you
Speaker 1: mentioned the community aspect and like those relationships, and I
Speaker 1: think that I know I've said this so many times,
Speaker 1: both in my organizing space and even on this podcast today,
Speaker 1: but I truly have felt like building community is one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful ways to organize. And I think
Speaker 1: so many people in leftist spaces right now see organizing
Speaker 1: as like a place where you just do work, um,
Speaker 1: And I actually think that that's a really terrible way
Speaker 1: to organize. I don't think that you're gonna have people
Speaker 1: come back, right, Like I don't think that UM, anyone
Speaker 1: is going to feel empowered. And you know, kind of
Speaker 1: through talking to a bra I've started reading this book
Speaker 1: on the Free Women of Spain and like thinking more
Speaker 1: about this also right and thinking about how they're talking
Speaker 1: about community building and how they're talking about like community
Speaker 1: is believing in each other and like helping each other
Speaker 1: realize their full potential UM and as a way to
Speaker 1: actually find equity and equality through like horizontalist structures, through
Speaker 1: allowing people to reach their full potential UM And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, these are some of the politics that have
Speaker 1: informed what we're doing, that have informed how we're trying
Speaker 1: to allow people to grow. And so many people have
Speaker 1: come to us and said, you know, these mass builds
Speaker 1: or these air purifier builds are like the highlight of
Speaker 1: my week or the highlight of my month, UM or
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the like the way that you're structuring
Speaker 1: UM your distributions and thinking about how I can implement
Speaker 1: that into the work that we're doing UM And I
Speaker 1: think that those things are so powerful when you're able
Speaker 1: to create these spaces again where people care for each other,
Speaker 1: and like you're saying, that goes a long way towards
Speaker 1: being able to mobilize um when there are disasters, to
Speaker 1: being able to mobilize around protests, to being able to
Speaker 1: mobilize around these ruptures because you have solid air that's
Speaker 1: built through relationships and that is allowing you to build power.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that YouTube sort of getting
Speaker 1: it is that you know, there's it's hard in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways because yeah, I mean, the US has
Speaker 1: and you baked into just to every single part of
Speaker 1: your life is there's going to be someone who is
Speaker 1: above you, who can order you and tell you what
Speaker 1: to do. And that's you know, that's that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the defining characteristic of life in the United States. And
Speaker 1: the second defining characteristic is if you don't do what
Speaker 1: they tell you, a person with the gun shows up
Speaker 1: and either beats you or haulds you away and slaves you.
Speaker 1: And you know that that that has these enormous sort
Speaker 1: of psychological consequences that you know, create creates this culture
Speaker 1: where people you know, I mean, and that this goes
Speaker 1: along with there's there's this whole skilling process that that's
Speaker 1: been a sort of part of the broad arch of
Speaker 1: capitalism that you all trying to reverse. But even even yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like about even the people who have
Speaker 1: the skills just don't sort of they don't believe in
Speaker 1: our own autonomy in a way, and that that that
Speaker 1: becomes this incredibly powerful, you know, tool of of keeping
Speaker 1: people in line. But when that breaks and when when
Speaker 1: people start to see it, it can take time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that the the kinds of power in the
Speaker 1: depth of the sort of organization that you build isn't
Speaker 1: from that is incredible. And I think this is only
Speaker 1: everything is about the Spanish example that people tend to forget,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, okay, so that the c
Speaker 1: NT which is the sort of giant c n T.
Speaker 1: F Ayes, the giants sort of anacaust the union that's
Speaker 1: that's running a lot of this stuff. You know, they're
Speaker 1: almost completely destroyed at the dream, like over the course
Speaker 1: of the spanis civil war, and they're you know, distruber
Speaker 1: the Stalus, disruber the Fascist at the end. By the
Speaker 1: end of the war, you know that the Fascist control
Speaker 1: Spain for about forty years. But even that, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, they kill hundreds of thousands of people. They like,
Speaker 1: there's massacres is you know, it turns into literally a
Speaker 1: fascist police state. But the moment that, the moment the
Speaker 1: fascist a tatorship collapses, the CNT reappears. And they even
Speaker 1: even in you know, in seventies Spain, in a place
Speaker 1: that is in a lot of ways industrialized, they still
Speaker 1: almost overthrow the government one more time. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're still around the sort of much
Speaker 1: reduced form to this day. But I mean, once, once
Speaker 1: you build that kind of power, right, even you know,
Speaker 1: even forty years of fascist dictatorship was not enough to
Speaker 1: completely destroy it. It was you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was still there, sort of waiting underground, and then the
Speaker 1: moment there was a rupture reappears. This is a really
Speaker 1: important thing that you're bringing up, Chris, because I think
Speaker 1: it has um a lot to do with how we
Speaker 1: just measure and talk about success on the left. Um,
Speaker 1: what you're describing, which you know, Spain is typically by
Speaker 1: many people on the left described as kind of a
Speaker 1: failed experiment. Oh it was nice, but it ultimately failed.
Speaker 1: So let's look at Russia, you know, Um, but uh,
Speaker 1: some people have argued and I think very correctly that
Speaker 1: you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Once
Speaker 1: something like this happens, it's there that energies are there,
Speaker 1: they are not forgotten, they're not lost. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: a very vigorous sort of left wing radical anarchist movement
Speaker 1: that's resonant um uh and very sort of consistent with
Speaker 1: with the earlier movement during the thirties. And UM, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's an extraordinarily important thing to think about.
Speaker 1: We tend to measure these projects in these very sort
Speaker 1: of linear sort of status terms, and we discovered, especially
Speaker 1: when we were doing work in d say, that a
Speaker 1: lot of people were trying to frame our own project
Speaker 1: in that way. You know, what are the demands that
Speaker 1: you're making, what are the what pressure are you exerting
Speaker 1: on the state? Um? And so there's these criteria that
Speaker 1: people use to evaluate kind of the efficacy or success
Speaker 1: of projects like these, And the Spanish example tells you,
Speaker 1: UM that the way that these things work is in
Speaker 1: fact much more complicated and much more interesting UM. And
Speaker 1: that by assembling these structures, these organizations, even if at
Speaker 1: sometime or another they don't necessarily exist anymore, all of
Speaker 1: those people who participated in them are transformed, and the
Speaker 1: people that they interact with might then also be transformed.
Speaker 1: And so something like the c n T, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, an extraordinary organization, the f AI is what
Speaker 1: you know, really gave it the kind of anarchosymbical list
Speaker 1: content that defined the quality of that revolution. Um, that
Speaker 1: never got lost, that never went away, even when it
Speaker 1: seems to have disappeared. UM. And so I think we
Speaker 1: have to learn to think about success in failure um,
Speaker 1: you know, as we very simplistically use these terms very
Speaker 1: very um differently, and this is something which informs our
Speaker 1: own work when we're asking was this successful? Was this
Speaker 1: not successful? Um? I think that's a much more difficult
Speaker 1: and complicated question than we often make it out to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think there's something very specific about you know,
Speaker 1: I think we can go into sort of d s
Speaker 1: A factional politics for a little bit, but like I
Speaker 1: think like in some ways you see this shallowness of
Speaker 1: a lot of the approaches that was happening in the
Speaker 1: d s A where you know, like if if you
Speaker 1: if you look at a lot of how the sort
Speaker 1: of medicare for all stuff went or a lot of
Speaker 1: how the sort of Bernie campaigning stuff went. Right, it
Speaker 1: was okay, you know, you have these you have these
Speaker 1: organizations that are like a mile wide and inch deep,
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, they're they're capable of mobilizing people
Speaker 1: to vote one time, but you know, then they lose
Speaker 1: the election, and then what right, so that they don't
Speaker 1: they don't don't they don't have you know, there's they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be this whole thing of like Bernie being
Speaker 1: an organizer in chief and this whole sort of plan
Speaker 1: to use the sort of lists de developers and organize anything.
Speaker 1: And it's never happened. And you know, it didn't happen
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways because it was just sort
Speaker 1: of they treated the whole process of building power as
Speaker 1: essentially a bureacratic exercise. Right, it's how many people are
Speaker 1: on this list, how many people are showing up to
Speaker 1: state like you know, and like how how many how
Speaker 1: many how many doors have we knocked on? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just you know, and that's the that's the
Speaker 1: other thing you're talking about with the fact that organizing
Speaker 1: spaces have to be more than just another just another
Speaker 1: place you go to work, right is if you know,
Speaker 1: if if all you're doing is just replicating these sort
Speaker 1: of beercrarect things, you're you're going to watch them fail
Speaker 1: exactly the same way the burocracies do. Except you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're not the American State, you're not a
Speaker 1: Democratic party. You don't have an infinite amount of money
Speaker 1: or the ability to sort of you know, you don't
Speaker 1: you don't have the ability to call an arm to
Speaker 1: enforce what you need to do, right, You don't. You
Speaker 1: don't have you do you don't have the fallback of
Speaker 1: bad methods of organizing, which is violence. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: you know, and and suddenly and you can't confront your
Speaker 1: own failures because you're stuck in this, things just start
Speaker 1: to sort of implode, and you start to lose people,
Speaker 1: and you start to sort of, you know, you see
Speaker 1: this sort of stagnation and decline that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about, Yeah, without getting exactly too much into what's
Speaker 1: going on in East Bay, like that's that that, that's
Speaker 1: been everything I've seen out of it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think to go kind of off of what a bro
Speaker 1: was talking about to kind of put this into terms
Speaker 1: of the work that we've been doing right, you know,
Speaker 1: through the Mask builds UM. As they were winding down,
Speaker 1: weren't quite sure what our next project was, and you know,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about like how do we keep
Speaker 1: this energy going, like we don't want to just lose this.
Speaker 1: And I also felt, you know, a certain amount of
Speaker 1: social obligation to you know, keep this community together that
Speaker 1: had formed during the pandemic. And so we started a
Speaker 1: book group kind of in the interim reading How Europe
Speaker 1: Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, and you know, had around
Speaker 1: thirty people show up to that UM And I think,
Speaker 1: as you know, you're talking about the importance of once
Speaker 1: you know, these relationships are formed, once these ideologies start
Speaker 1: to percolate, that they don't just go away, right. These
Speaker 1: people that we you know, brought into D s A
Speaker 1: and a lot of ways these by D s A
Speaker 1: came to join this book group and later came to
Speaker 1: join the Air Purifier project. Despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: was more outside of D s A. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people because of you know, what we had built
Speaker 1: and what we had created, continued to be such a
Speaker 1: huge part take on incredible leadership Roles um and you know,
Speaker 1: facilitate this project in a way that it would not
Speaker 1: at all look like what it does without you know,
Speaker 1: these people dedicating so much of their time and energy
Speaker 1: to this project kind of throughout the process. Yeah, and Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to what you're saying earlier. I think,
Speaker 1: um M, I've seen a very interesting, um a kind
Speaker 1: of reflection come out of some of these organizations, and
Speaker 1: you see these different splits and sort of uh wings developing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I Janine is a very sort
Speaker 1: of organic, radical and revolutionary who I've learned an enormous
Speaker 1: amount from. But I think my own trajectory was much
Speaker 1: more characteristic of what you described earlier, which is that
Speaker 1: you know, I put all my eggs in this basket.
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, Bernie Sanders, like, that's that is, that
Speaker 1: is the that is the beginning of how we undergo
Speaker 1: a sort of democratic social transformation. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: in a few snaps of the finger, even though I
Speaker 1: had spent just like hundreds of hours just knocking doors
Speaker 1: and promising all these things to people who might you know,
Speaker 1: vote for him at their door, and and all this
Speaker 1: stuff that and and and just sort of regurgitating all
Speaker 1: these slogans and and talking, you know, rapturously about these
Speaker 1: welfare programs. UM. I saw all that dissolved in a moment,
Speaker 1: and I realized that I didn't leave anything behind. And
Speaker 1: there was, you know, in D s A and our chapter,
Speaker 1: you saw that there was a large group of people
Speaker 1: who just wanted to keep that flame burning and just
Speaker 1: say we'll do better next time, you know, we'll do
Speaker 1: more work at the local level to elect representatives. But
Speaker 1: then there was another group of people, it was much
Speaker 1: more disillusioned UM and really started wondering is this what
Speaker 1: we should be doing, or at least is this all
Speaker 1: that we should be doing? UM. And you see the
Speaker 1: same thing coming out of a group like Sunrise, which
Speaker 1: whose primary sort of mandate is to just put pressure
Speaker 1: onto Congress UM to urge the necessity of a green
Speaker 1: new Deal or whatever. And nevertheless, out of Sunrise, we've
Speaker 1: met people who, after the George Floyd protests, after the
Speaker 1: dissolution of the Bernie campaign, have been led down the
Speaker 1: same radical path as as some of us UM found
Speaker 1: ourselves traveling UM in in East by D s A.
Speaker 1: And they're the ones who have now come to help
Speaker 1: our project, and you know, using whatever autonomy they have
Speaker 1: at the sort of UM hub level in Sunrise, because
Speaker 1: even though it's an organization with sort of paid staff
Speaker 1: and something of this bureaucracy right now in this moment,
Speaker 1: the individual little local hubs actually have a surprising amount
Speaker 1: of autonomy, and I really hope they're going to fight
Speaker 1: for protect that autonomy. So they've been able to use
Speaker 1: that autonomy to actually put a lot of effort towards
Speaker 1: raise money thousands of dollars our work at c HC
Speaker 1: and come to our organizer meetings, become a part of
Speaker 1: the effort, and urge upon their own UM friends and
Speaker 1: co organizers and people they know in Sunrise to shift
Speaker 1: the direction of their work of their branches towards doing
Speaker 1: more work like this. So there are these kind of
Speaker 1: interesting different uh splinterings that you see happening, which give
Speaker 1: me some hope that we're not just going to keep
Speaker 1: running the same tape over and over again. So one
Speaker 1: of the other interviews we did on this show was
Speaker 1: with a bunch of people who were working with the
Speaker 1: basically this giant effort in Atlanta to stop this like
Speaker 1: just atrocious sort of destruct this destruction of a bunch
Speaker 1: of forests to create this like weird teaching cops, how
Speaker 1: did you counter terrorism? Enormous academy thing that's being funded
Speaker 1: by a bunch of the adalytic corporations in Atlanta, And
Speaker 1: they were describing you know, they didn't talk about sort
Speaker 1: of the exacting process of solution, but you know, you
Speaker 1: saw they were like, you know, one of the people
Speaker 1: with the hair was from Sunrise, and they were also
Speaker 1: talking about how they pulled together. That's just like enormous
Speaker 1: coalition of a bunch of community groups that was you know,
Speaker 1: and like the their their initial goal was just they're
Speaker 1: trying to pressure the city council into stopping the into
Speaker 1: you know, not approving and that doesn't work. But you know,
Speaker 1: you know some of some of the other groups that
Speaker 1: were that were involved in this, you're talking about like okay,
Speaker 1: well you know that they're they're planning is like if
Speaker 1: this fails, we're gonna go stop it ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: think that pivot right is one of the most crucial
Speaker 1: things that is happening right now, because you know, okay,
Speaker 1: if if you if you you know, if if you,
Speaker 1: if you you you pull out your like Polly, your
Speaker 1: policy like policy space diagrams, right, like it's it's the
Speaker 1: United States. The policy that's enacted is the one that
Speaker 1: is the policy decided aby the sixtieth senator. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, even even if if even if you're
Speaker 1: gonna try to do an electoral thing, right, you need six,
Speaker 1: you need sixty votes in the Senate, there is one
Speaker 1: arguably socialist senator and we've never elected another one, so
Speaker 1: you know, and you're just looking at this right and
Speaker 1: it's like okay, like you know, we we elect like
Speaker 1: to maybe three socialists in in the House every year,
Speaker 1: and if you know, if you continue at the same rate,
Speaker 1: they'll be like what like like two hundred years before
Speaker 1: we have a majority there. And it's like yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and at a certain points like yeah, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: like we're not gonna be around because we'll be dead,
Speaker 1: but like most of most most of the stuff on
Speaker 1: earth will also not be around because it would have
Speaker 1: been obliteral black climate change there, and you know, and
Speaker 1: at some point you have to get to we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to do it ourselves because no one, no one
Speaker 1: else is going to do it for us. And I
Speaker 1: think the work you two have been doing is just incredible,
Speaker 1: is just an incredible example of how that can actually
Speaker 1: happen and what what that looks like. Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that it is so important, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's one of the reasons that to me, it
Speaker 1: was also so important to get all of these groups
Speaker 1: at these air purifier pips because I think oftentimes organizing
Speaker 1: is so siloed and it really frustrates me, and people
Speaker 1: seem very like loyal at least I've found this in
Speaker 1: East by d s A to like their particular organization,
Speaker 1: any other organization they don't even really want to talk
Speaker 1: about or they don't even know still exist. UM. And
Speaker 1: to me, like, if we can give people the tools
Speaker 1: to organize, I don't care who their organizing, UM, but
Speaker 1: if we can also like have these groups communicate with
Speaker 1: each other, right, Like different groups are doing exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing. Right. We have the Ecosocialist group UM in
Speaker 1: d s A, Right, you have Sunrise, you have the
Speaker 1: I w W, and then you have the Labor Committee
Speaker 1: of d s A. And it's like sometimes there is
Speaker 1: cross communication, right, But to me, it never feels like
Speaker 1: it's quite enough. It never feels like we're really all
Speaker 1: working on this or we're really all in it together,
Speaker 1: and I think we really should be, because, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: like there's kind of a ticking clock. We only have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time to actually make the changes
Speaker 1: that we want to see, and when we're not willing
Speaker 1: to actually work with each other and communicate with each other,
Speaker 1: things are not going to happen as quickly. UM. And
Speaker 1: so being able to have, like, you know, a table
Speaker 1: of people assembling purifiers from d S a Sunrise tank
Speaker 1: right and they're all talking about the organizing work that
Speaker 1: they're doing and sharing stories and strategies, so that we're
Speaker 1: not all constantly reinventing the wheel. That actually working together
Speaker 1: on this I think is so so valuable. And this
Speaker 1: is something that we've seen. You know, one of our
Speaker 1: friends who's helping lead one of the tank locals has
Speaker 1: come to a number of our events and was telling
Speaker 1: us how he's actually tried to bring things that he's
Speaker 1: seen that we're doing into his own local and we've
Speaker 1: heard this in other contexts as well. So things spread
Speaker 1: and that's I think a really important thing that um,
Speaker 1: you know, especially because of Janine's Um, you know, just
Speaker 1: just uh attempts to try to get all these groups
Speaker 1: together into one place to communicate, to build relationships. Um,
Speaker 1: we're now seeing what we've built sort of emanating elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And we're also learning a lot from all these different
Speaker 1: people in groups who come to our builds and then
Speaker 1: become organizers in the effort. And you know, to mention
Speaker 1: someone like you know, Gerald Jennine referred to earlier, who
Speaker 1: is this uh wonderful UM Cantanker is uh ex black panther,
Speaker 1: you know, who has such an enormous history of experience.
Speaker 1: For him to give us that historical perspective for everything
Speaker 1: that we're doing, um has been an enormous boost of confidence,
Speaker 1: and it's allowed us to focus and you know, just
Speaker 1: to reiterate what she said earlier, we were really depressed
Speaker 1: when we went out and we were talking to people
Speaker 1: in West Oakland and East Oakland and everyone was telling
Speaker 1: us we're gonna come, Yeah, we'll show up, we'll be there.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, while many other people showed up
Speaker 1: from Sunrise, D, S, A, C, HD elsewhere, none of
Speaker 1: those people showed up. And we said, Gerald, they're not coming,
Speaker 1: what's going on? And he said, you know, keep going,
Speaker 1: keep trying, keep doing it, do not give up. Do
Speaker 1: not judge from that one experience. This is really hard work.
Speaker 1: And these people have had the door shot on them
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, and they're tired, and
Speaker 1: it's the weekend. But you keep doing it and they
Speaker 1: will come. And then the next time they came, we
Speaker 1: may not have gone there again had it not been
Speaker 1: for Gerald bringing in this enormous um breath of experience
Speaker 1: to share with us. You know, at the end of
Speaker 1: our previous bill, there's this there's this quote that I
Speaker 1: remember from Frey who was it was one of the
Speaker 1: one of the people who've been heavily involved in the
Speaker 1: Egyptian Revolution. She Dousan eleven had this quote and she's
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, I should be doing this for decades, right,
Speaker 1: And she's like, yeah, because you have a protest and
Speaker 1: if if a hundred people show up, you're happy, and
Speaker 1: if a hundred people show up, you're depressed. And then
Speaker 1: one day, eight hundred thousand people show up and you
Speaker 1: kind of just forgot that could happen. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that that is something that you know, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: organizing is not easy. There you're you're gonna spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time like not winning. You're gonna spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time feeling like you're barely treading water. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of time where you know, nothing
Speaker 1: works and everything seems to be falling apart. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you keep pushing, people show up and you know,
Speaker 1: and suddenly the regime is like taking like you know,
Speaker 1: trying trying to catch planes out of the country. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you get to that that CLR.
Speaker 1: James line about how the ruling classes not defeeding until
Speaker 1: it's ruling until it's running for its lives. But you
Speaker 1: know they do run for their lives. This is the
Speaker 1: thing that happens. Yeah, and you know, if if we
Speaker 1: do this together, we can get there totally. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, what a bar saying is so true. And
Speaker 1: we also, you know, in doing these distributions, talk to
Speaker 1: people and I literally would say, like what, we'll get
Speaker 1: people to show up, right, there's kind of like honesty
Speaker 1: in these conversations of like, you know, this is what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do, Like there's a reciprocal relationship here again,
Speaker 1: like help us understand Also, like what we need to
Speaker 1: do in order to make sure that the reciprocal relationship
Speaker 1: is actually realized and actually happening. UM And I think
Speaker 1: that that was kind of an exciting moment of like
Speaker 1: having people have some autonomy and like say and like,
Speaker 1: you know, they know this community better than we do, right,
Speaker 1: they know like how people are going to show up
Speaker 1: and how maybe they won't. But Chris, Uh, just to
Speaker 1: bring it back to what you were saying, I think
Speaker 1: describing the kind of nonlinear trajectory of uh popular movements
Speaker 1: in history is something that we try to keep always
Speaker 1: in our minds. Um, things may begin small, things may
Speaker 1: seem small, even when you study the examples in Spain
Speaker 1: of sort of the groups of people who formed sort
Speaker 1: of the early f AI who were just sort of
Speaker 1: discussing these ideas around the fire before they tried to
Speaker 1: sort of infiltrate the CNT, and then this became the
Speaker 1: sort of predominant UM mood and sort of ideology that
Speaker 1: that that that characterized the CNT, which then you know,
Speaker 1: spread out and sort of characterized the Spanish Revolution at
Speaker 1: large and massive numbers millions of people, you know. Um
Speaker 1: And and just seeing what happened with the George Floyd
Speaker 1: protests and studying the examples of you know, Paris in
Speaker 1: where it at first just seems like small groups of
Speaker 1: students and then you know, just a few days and
Speaker 1: weeks later, you know there's thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of workers, um, you know, who are out
Speaker 1: literally just pulling out cobblestones from the street, you know,
Speaker 1: up against the police. And and the way that these
Speaker 1: things happen is very unpredictable. And I think that's also
Speaker 1: a very important thing to keep in mind as we're
Speaker 1: trying to evaluate, you know, what we're doing in a
Speaker 1: given moment. Yeah, I think, I think I think that's
Speaker 1: that's that's a very good note to end on. It's
Speaker 1: you know, every the struggle we have embarked in is
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult one, and we're not going to know
Speaker 1: how it ends for a long long time. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't yeah, you know, that doesn't necessarily means it ends badly.
Speaker 1: And the kind of resiliency we can build is incredibly
Speaker 1: deep and incredibly powerful. Okay, plugs time, Where do you
Speaker 1: too want people to go? What do you want people
Speaker 1: to know? And yeah, we can we can link stuff
Speaker 1: if you want to send it to us in the
Speaker 1: in the in the chat chat, we can we can,
Speaker 1: we can link stuff. We can we can we can
Speaker 1: link stuff. In the description of this episode, this is
Speaker 1: why we have editors. Yeah, UM, I think definitely like
Speaker 1: our social media UM so Twitter and Instagram is see Humanity,
Speaker 1: see UM for folks to be able to donate UM,
Speaker 1: to visit our website, to be able to plug in.
Speaker 1: If they are in the Bay area and want to
Speaker 1: get involved, they can find ways to do that through
Speaker 1: those social media channels. You know, they can message us
Speaker 1: UM and then our fundraiser a bar. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we should just send the link or what the
Speaker 1: best way to do at it. If you go to
Speaker 1: a Common Humanity collective dot org, there's a donate button
Speaker 1: which leads to the fundraisers. You can find it also,
Speaker 1: so if you if you go there, you can see
Speaker 1: how they You can see instructions are how to make
Speaker 1: the fans and they are so cool, like they're awesome,
Speaker 1: it's it's sweet, it's so go do go do that
Speaker 1: too because it's sick. And there's also instructions for how
Speaker 1: you can make them as well. And we hope people
Speaker 1: do this elsewhere please reach out to us. We want
Speaker 1: to not be the only ones doing and so this
Speaker 1: is why we've tried to just put everything online that
Speaker 1: others can replicate this model. And this is why we're
Speaker 1: coming on a show like this and going into so
Speaker 1: much detail into our history just that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, a bar and I have learned so much
Speaker 1: from this project, UM, and a lot of it really
Speaker 1: did feel like reinventing the wheel, which is unfortunate because
Speaker 1: I know that you know, mutually it has been done elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But with the organizers that we were talking to, a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that we were doing, we were
Speaker 1: having to kind of start from scratch. And at least
Speaker 1: my goal is like we're both very accessible people, like
Speaker 1: if there are questions, you know, to be able to
Speaker 1: reach out so that we can you know, explain our
Speaker 1: experience to other folks, UM and talk through you know.
Speaker 1: Our relationship with Sunrise started because they heard about the
Speaker 1: mutual aid work that we were doing and they said,
Speaker 1: we want to do that also, and we're like great,
Speaker 1: and you know a bra are co organizer Joe and
Speaker 1: I and this woman from Sunrise met in a park
Speaker 1: and eat dinner and just talked about mutulateing, you know,
Speaker 1: the pitfalls that had happened and what went well and
Speaker 1: how we could do it in the future. And then
Speaker 1: like this beautiful collaboration began like a bar was talking
Speaker 1: about so um, I think, you know, we're really happy
Speaker 1: to talk about where things have gone awry and what
Speaker 1: we've learned from this project and thankfully at this point
Speaker 1: to like what successes we've had. So yeah, go go everyone,
Speaker 1: go go go go find them, go out of your communities,
Speaker 1: go do this theirselves, and yeah, go go go get
Speaker 1: us another Spanish revolution. We need another one. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank thank you to much for joining us. I s
Speaker 1: agread Chris. This has been such an huge pleasure for
Speaker 1: talking to you. We've we've been covered by a lot
Speaker 1: of places, but never quite like just thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this, and thank you. Such an honor
Speaker 1: to be here and so much fun to talk with
Speaker 1: you both. Thank you so much for having us and yeah,
Speaker 1: so this this has been it could happen here pod.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Happened Here Pod, on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and at cool Zone. For just the rest of the
Speaker 1: stuff that we do. Alright, bye, everyone, whats critical my
Speaker 1: race theories? UM? Well, all right, that's not a great introduction,
Speaker 1: but it's not a great time in America. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is it could happen here with me tonight as
Speaker 1: often but not always is is Garrison Davis UH and
Speaker 1: our good friend Christopher Wong. Uh. We're here to talk about,
Speaker 1: um a bunch of stuff. Largely, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: increasing and escalating attacks on school boards and attempts to
Speaker 1: take over and dominate school boards by far right activists.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is centered around critical race theory,
Speaker 1: a lot of it centered around vaccine mandates. It all
Speaker 1: kind of blends together like a good gumbo UM or
Speaker 1: like fascist syncretism UM. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: would say, that's that's kind of most relevant right now
Speaker 1: as we're recording this. I don't think the race has
Speaker 1: been officially called, but it's become an increasingly obvious that
Speaker 1: UH Terry mccauliffe has lost his re election bid and
Speaker 1: the uh new governor of Virginia will be a Republican who,
Speaker 1: among other things, as like homist and based a huge
Speaker 1: amount of his campaign on banning critical race theory and
Speaker 1: specifically like banning books and ship from being taught in
Speaker 1: Virginia schools. Um and this is all the result of
Speaker 1: a pretty far reaching, um and and complex and honestly
Speaker 1: pretty pretty scary campaign. And we're gonna talk about that tonight, Garrison.
Speaker 1: Do you wanna do you wanna take it from here? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do a little bit then we can move over
Speaker 1: to telegram. But yeah, you like the getty lee of this,
Speaker 1: So so this is your drum solo time. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we decided we needed to do an episode on this
Speaker 1: sinn and later when a few weeks ago a large
Speaker 1: number of of of of anti Vacts and anti mask
Speaker 1: protesters took over a school board meeting in uh Portland.
Speaker 1: And the reason why that is special in it of
Speaker 1: itself because this has been happening across the country for
Speaker 1: a long time. But that but the fact that they
Speaker 1: were able to overwhelm and shut down an entire school
Speaker 1: board meeting with hundreds of people, like invading this building
Speaker 1: then shutting this down with just the essurement of like
Speaker 1: power that the people had there was it was It's
Speaker 1: notable because it's like it's it's a liberal ish city, right,
Speaker 1: It's that's generally how people view it as. And you know,
Speaker 1: we're used to this happening, you know, more like southern
Speaker 1: states and states that are more like overwhelmingly conservative. But
Speaker 1: when like a Portland school board me to get shut down,
Speaker 1: people were like, oh wow, this is like extra important
Speaker 1: because this is showing that it's not this isn't isolated
Speaker 1: to like quote unquote red states, right, this can this
Speaker 1: can spread out everywhere now, you know. With Portland it
Speaker 1: was it was a mix of like hippie types who
Speaker 1: are like anti vax but there was a good deal
Speaker 1: of like actual proud boys there as well. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it was partly organized through an organization run by the
Speaker 1: Bundies UM, and there were some direct ties and they
Speaker 1: helped to advertise it. So it's there's a lot of UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that was so unsettling
Speaker 1: is that a lot of these people were not Portland's
Speaker 1: resident but they were showing up and we're able to
Speaker 1: effectively like take over and dominate at Portland's school board meeting.
Speaker 1: UM in part because law enforcement is never ever willing
Speaker 1: to do anything against There's there's a there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of points here, so like, yeah, one
Speaker 1: of it being is like these like these big mobs
Speaker 1: are definitely able to benefit from being you know, white,
Speaker 1: mostly middle class like parents and stuff, or maybe not
Speaker 1: maybe not not even parents. They're gonna be white middle
Speaker 1: class um, which means they can like storm buildings and
Speaker 1: shut stuff down without any real consequence because police aren't
Speaker 1: police and security aren't really going to get involved that much,
Speaker 1: and the like the libs are not gonna like really
Speaker 1: be pushing back on this in any kind of me
Speaker 1: They'll just make fun of these people if they misspell
Speaker 1: something on a sign. Yeah. So, like basically the idea
Speaker 1: for this episode as we want to talk about why
Speaker 1: and how school boards have become kind of the new
Speaker 1: front lines for pushing far right stuff into the culturals
Speaker 1: like guyst because they've really become the new, the new,
Speaker 1: the new like space that people on the right are
Speaker 1: able to push things that are that are more that
Speaker 1: are more extreme, and push things that are gonna you know,
Speaker 1: hurt you know, kids mostly m So looking for this,
Speaker 1: we put together a decent amount of stuff from organizing
Speaker 1: chats for how basically the right is talking about these
Speaker 1: things and how they're trying to organize it. UM. And
Speaker 1: one really interesting kind of thing of not which will
Speaker 1: come up later in the telegram stuff, is that in
Speaker 1: I think it was when was it It was late September, UM,
Speaker 1: the National school Boards Associations like that, the National school
Speaker 1: Board Union UM put in a request for federal assistance
Speaker 1: to stop ongoing threats and acts of violence against UH
Speaker 1: school boards like meeting members and people president at school
Speaker 1: boards because this has been ramping up. You know this
Speaker 1: that this was happening the last last school season as well,
Speaker 1: but really the past few months, the the prevalence and
Speaker 1: the number of these types of like mobs based overtaking
Speaker 1: these school boards has become so much more common, UM
Speaker 1: that the school Board Union put in like sent like
Speaker 1: a letter directly to the president saying, hey, we kind
Speaker 1: of need help here. UM. So it's it's not just
Speaker 1: it's this is this is a problem that's recognized widely
Speaker 1: even among people like on school boards, because yeah, they're
Speaker 1: getting like carasped, they're getting death threats. UM. This is
Speaker 1: becoming like unsafe to hold school board meetings. UM. And
Speaker 1: whether or not you like our modern school system or not,
Speaker 1: the resulting effect to this is that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hurting like kids. Like, like, it's a good whether it
Speaker 1: be through like COVID, whether it be through teaching them
Speaker 1: racist like curriculums, or whether it be to you know,
Speaker 1: making trans kids have make their lives a whole lot harder. Right,
Speaker 1: all of this kind of stuff is gonna be worse
Speaker 1: by this happening. So it is something definitely worth caring about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's worth caring about all. Like, it's clearly an attempt
Speaker 1: in order to to to arrest the kind of progressive
Speaker 1: tilt that that society has gone through. All of this
Speaker 1: is a reaction both too. I mean, the religious right
Speaker 1: was initially, more than anything, a reaction to desegregation and
Speaker 1: the women's liberation movement UM. And what we're seeing now
Speaker 1: is a reaction to primarily the gains that LGBT people
Speaker 1: have made in the last like twenty years, including the
Speaker 1: legalization of gay marriage UM. And so the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: of all of this is to stop progress towards racial justice,
Speaker 1: to roll back gay rights, UM, to enshrine white supremacy
Speaker 1: using violence. And that's why that's why all of these
Speaker 1: different school board meetings, like the the threat of violence
Speaker 1: from these people is a constant factor. Um, there's regular
Speaker 1: discussion of it. There's like, I mean, that's why the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys are showing up is to be a of
Speaker 1: like is to be a death squad. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: a little precursor death squad. They're not quite willing to
Speaker 1: start start pulling triggers yet, but they want people to
Speaker 1: know that it's possible. They want to scare people away
Speaker 1: from getting involved in local politics unless they adhere to
Speaker 1: a very specific far right political ideas. It's working because
Speaker 1: a lot of these school boards are getting these school
Speaker 1: meanings are just getting shut down, like they just can't
Speaker 1: have them in person or sometimes not at all because
Speaker 1: they'll just they'll like zoom bom. Like it's not like
Speaker 1: they're just shutting down so they cannot take place or
Speaker 1: at school by members are afraid to go out in
Speaker 1: public because these people are are going to hurt them. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is like a lot of people involved in
Speaker 1: this are maybe not themselves like Proud Boys, like they
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're not super like they're individually are
Speaker 1: more kind of regular Republicans in these states. But the
Speaker 1: reason why it gets so extreme and accelerate so quickly
Speaker 1: is mostly because of how these organizing efforts take place,
Speaker 1: and also because of stuff like Fox News and news
Speaker 1: Max and Ona and o An like pushing people further
Speaker 1: right in the past few years, but like specifically the
Speaker 1: method of organized zing on apps like Telegram and Facebook groups.
Speaker 1: This this is, this is the thing common on the Internet,
Speaker 1: but like it rewards accelerationism, it rewards the most extreme,
Speaker 1: takes those the ones to get shared the most. So
Speaker 1: even if you know this is just some mom in
Speaker 1: her forties who's not a proud boy by any means
Speaker 1: she's she still poses a threat in this in this
Speaker 1: way because she's poo boosting this same rhetoric and as
Speaker 1: part of these same organizing channels that are full of
Speaker 1: like actual fascists. Uh, there's a decent amount of very
Speaker 1: popular posts from very popular channels I pulled that talks
Speaker 1: about the Jews in the school boards and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get to that kind of stuff shortly. Um, So there, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you wanna start on the telegram with the whole
Speaker 1: the whole school board telegram channel that is popped up
Speaker 1: by no means the most popular to Telegram channel for organizing,
Speaker 1: but it is specifically dedicated to school boards. And because
Speaker 1: of how Telegram works, this channel gets it around a
Speaker 1: lot in other much bigger channels. Yeah, and and just
Speaker 1: so you know, So the way Telegram works. If you're
Speaker 1: a decent person um and you don't live in a
Speaker 1: country where Telegram is a legitimately good choice for you,
Speaker 1: there some areas where it's perfectly normal social media network,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, in the United States it's
Speaker 1: used by fascists and weirdos um. So if you're fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to not use Telegram, the way it works is
Speaker 1: you have open groups and closed groups. Open groups are
Speaker 1: anyone can view them. Uh, you don't expose yourself by
Speaker 1: looking at them, and people largely just kind of post images, memes,
Speaker 1: videos and then can comment on them. And a lot
Speaker 1: of what's posted in any given Telegram channel is shared
Speaker 1: from another Telegram channel. So for people like Garrison and
Speaker 1: I who research extremism, one of the uses of telegram
Speaker 1: is that by looking at what's being shared in one
Speaker 1: group from other groups, you can actually start to build
Speaker 1: networks and see, oh, there's affinity between these two groups.
Speaker 1: Because this group may claim that they're just concerned conservatives.
Speaker 1: They're sharing all of this all of this content from
Speaker 1: this far right you know Pepe group that's also sharing
Speaker 1: a lot of neo Nazi content, and you can see
Speaker 1: there's a lot of affinity between the other thing that
Speaker 1: happens is that these channels that are getting big and
Speaker 1: being you and you're being used for this kind of
Speaker 1: like right wing organizing who present themselves as more just
Speaker 1: like regular conservative channels. If you I've been in this
Speaker 1: channel for like years at this point, and this channel
Speaker 1: used to be a like proud Boy channel. They just
Speaker 1: changed their name. Like It's like that happens all the time,
Speaker 1: where a lot of the big organizing channels used to
Speaker 1: be like openly violent organizing, like for different mobs to
Speaker 1: go beat up people, and now they've rebranded to make
Speaker 1: them appeal more to like just regular Trump voters. That
Speaker 1: is the other thing that happens all the time. And
Speaker 1: one of the main channels that we're talking about today
Speaker 1: is one of these one of these channels that used
Speaker 1: to be a Proud Boy thing and is now just
Speaker 1: kind of right wing organizing in general. Yeah, and it's um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just gonna get into it. So actually,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm to get into before I start
Speaker 1: talking about fascists on telegram trying to destroy the concept
Speaker 1: of democracy. You know what else is trying to destroy
Speaker 1: the concept of democracy. That's right, Chris, products and services,
Speaker 1: that's right. Oh my god, we are just having a
Speaker 1: great time here. So let's talk about stand for Students,
Speaker 1: which is a telegram channel that Garrison pointed out to me,
Speaker 1: and I spent more time than I really wanted to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's never, never, never a good idea. So the stuff
Speaker 1: in here, this is number one, on the surface, a
Speaker 1: much more moderate group. These people are not ranting about
Speaker 1: like Jews destroying civilization or the need to like execute
Speaker 1: black people or something like that. Um, the stuff in
Speaker 1: here runs the gamut from like one of the first
Speaker 1: things I found was a clip from Jesse Ventura, wrestler,
Speaker 1: predator star and former governor once had a conspiracy TV show.
Speaker 1: There's a popular clip in anti vaccine Circle is from
Speaker 1: it where he's talking with Alex Jones about the Builderberg
Speaker 1: group and stuff. So I found that in there, which
Speaker 1: is like pretty garden variety, like early two thousands conspiracy nonsense.
Speaker 1: Definitely like, oh yeah, these are like older people like
Speaker 1: I don't think what mostly boomers, but definitely gen X
Speaker 1: and stuff like folks who were in like their forties
Speaker 1: and fifties. Um, this is the kind of ship that
Speaker 1: they would have been like exposed to in their late
Speaker 1: twenties and whatnot. Um. One of the posters I found
Speaker 1: commenting on that video said, quote aired onto TV in two,
Speaker 1: that's a nine about a plan for depopulation through a
Speaker 1: virus and injections. Too much of a coincidence, and another
Speaker 1: responded to this. I was never a huge Alex Jones fan,
Speaker 1: but he was right all along. My kids were born
Speaker 1: in the early eighties and I refused their vaxes way
Speaker 1: back then. Unfortunately, one of them is now a late
Speaker 1: thirties CNN jabbed zombie and has infected my grandkids with
Speaker 1: this inspiric experimental treatment. I'm done, um, which is silly,
Speaker 1: but it also keeps you in like the are it's
Speaker 1: it's what you see a lot with Q and on right.
Speaker 1: It's these folks who are getting brought in onto telegraph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. It's terrible that this person, this lady who
Speaker 1: has to be what in her fifties sixties, My parents
Speaker 1: age the boomer um is on Telegram, which two years
Speaker 1: ago even was the only Americans you were would find
Speaker 1: were like extremely online nazi weirdos. Um. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: doing like old training. It's like, yeah, I was like
Speaker 1: over over two years ago, and Telegram was nowhere near
Speaker 1: this prevallem for like regular organizing. And this is a
Speaker 1: result of of the d platforming of folks in the
Speaker 1: wake of the capital attack. But anyway, we don't need
Speaker 1: to get too much into that right now, So I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit more about some of
Speaker 1: the things folks are sharing in this in this channel,
Speaker 1: which is again kind of like I'm gonna guess everyone
Speaker 1: here is kind of late thirties to maybe sixties, fifties, sixties.
Speaker 1: There's one local story that it was actually very popular
Speaker 1: among a lot of like lefty folks on Twitter of
Speaker 1: this like group of dads who showed up to stop
Speaker 1: there's like an epidemic of fighting in their school or something,
Speaker 1: and they showed up to do like a community policing
Speaker 1: or a community self defense sort of thing. It was
Speaker 1: celebrated by a lot of folks because it was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: this is you know, a way that communities can protect
Speaker 1: themselves without cops YadA YadA, YadA, which is a nice
Speaker 1: thing to see. It was also celebrated um by these people, um,
Speaker 1: by by people in this channel, and specifically the clip
Speaker 1: of the news story covering this I found was from
Speaker 1: the Pepe Lives Matter channel, which is, um, you know,
Speaker 1: an alt right channel like it. Again, as we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, the Pepe Lives isn't all like the
Speaker 1: way full Nazi pilled stuff, um, but it shares a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff from the channels that are straight up Nazis,
Speaker 1: and so you can you can see already this like
Speaker 1: lady in her sixties who's probably was some pretty normal
Speaker 1: boomer three years ago, is now two steps away from
Speaker 1: Adam often type motherfucker's that's just the way telegram works, um,
Speaker 1: and all kind of bonding over again, this is not
Speaker 1: a bad story what these local dads did, but it
Speaker 1: very much ties into this idea of like we gotta
Speaker 1: get all these parents together and take action in the
Speaker 1: real world, like and that's gonna that's gonna go towards
Speaker 1: taking action against the people you don't want showing up
Speaker 1: in your school, meaning like black children and like children, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: community self defense is great, but also it really depends
Speaker 1: on what community is defending itself from what. UM. So
Speaker 1: that's uh, we'll probably we'll have to talk about that
Speaker 1: more at some point in the future. But Yeah, Another
Speaker 1: thing I found on that channel was video this. This
Speaker 1: I dug into a bit. So there was this video
Speaker 1: that was claimed to be an ad. It was, in
Speaker 1: fact an ad that Comcast had refused to air. UM
Speaker 1: and the video this, this unaired ad claimed that it
Speaker 1: was about. It was telling the story of a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old girl, Maddie de Garay Um, who was vaccinated.
Speaker 1: She was part of a FASER trial and had she claims,
Speaker 1: like a disastrously bad reaction. UM an ad about her
Speaker 1: situation was rejected by Comcast. UM and this girl like
Speaker 1: has done the whole right wing in her I'm I'm
Speaker 1: guessing her parents are the driver's done the whole right
Speaker 1: wing media kind of circuit at this point. UM. The
Speaker 1: fact that Comcast banned the ad is what the people
Speaker 1: in this telegram channel were yelling about. UM. And I
Speaker 1: want to actually quote from the an article about why
Speaker 1: Comcast rejected it, because it makes clear what's actually happening here.
Speaker 1: Comcast is said to have told the ads buyer it
Speaker 1: was rejected because it needed substantiation at all. Graphic images
Speaker 1: needed to be removed. Documents reportedly submitted for substantiation included
Speaker 1: the girl's complete medical records, which are said to have
Speaker 1: outlined symptoms such as erratic blood pressure and pulse, muscle spasms,
Speaker 1: muscle tremors, headaches, brain fog, mixing up words, and the
Speaker 1: inability to walk and cough. Um. So you've got this
Speaker 1: case where number one there's graphic images, um, and number
Speaker 1: two there's documentations that this girl has symptoms, but there's
Speaker 1: not documentation that they're tied in any way to the vaccine,
Speaker 1: Like it's just one these The comcast is being careful
Speaker 1: to not spread unsubstantiated shit about vaccine reactions and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But within the telegram channel, the focus is entirely on
Speaker 1: like how this is evidence of this conspiracy there suppressing
Speaker 1: the information, suppressing information. UM. One response was, why in
Speaker 1: Heaven's name don't these parents do their research before having
Speaker 1: their kids vaccinated? My heart goes out to the precious
Speaker 1: child and family. What a lesson to learn for so
Speaker 1: many parents. Never too late to educate yourselves people. UM.
Speaker 1: Also I want to point it just that the spelling
Speaker 1: and the area incredible. There's an upsetting amount of emojis
Speaker 1: that Yeah, honestly I couldn't never never two with one
Speaker 1: oh late to educate your space selves. Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: again and now I'm doing the doing the thing. I'm
Speaker 1: doing the thing I tried not to. I did try
Speaker 1: to give it a straight read through. You can be
Speaker 1: challenging with it. It's like a very content it's it's
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, but but but I think you know this,
Speaker 1: this is this goes back to the whole point about
Speaker 1: how this pradicalization works, right, which is you know you have,
Speaker 1: especially with anti vax stuff that has this sort of
Speaker 1: larger base from just like regular peer like hard right
Speaker 1: Nazi stuff. You get to see people who you know,
Speaker 1: otherwise probably would be a vaguely normal person, very very
Speaker 1: quickly get all this stuff and very quickly just go
Speaker 1: off the deep end. They're not like, yeah, it's these
Speaker 1: it is it's hard to like say like these are
Speaker 1: all extremists because like they themselves aren't extremists. There's surrounded
Speaker 1: by so much content that is made by extremists that
Speaker 1: it's making them do these things, which is how which
Speaker 1: is how extremism works, right. But it's it's challenging because
Speaker 1: like when you try to explain this to someone, you're like, no,
Speaker 1: this is obviously just like a regular grandma or something, right,
Speaker 1: And it's hard to explain to them how fast this
Speaker 1: thing can move to the point where they're showing up
Speaker 1: at a school board with their grand killed children yelling
Speaker 1: at like teachers and stuff. Yeah, and it's not that
Speaker 1: this lady is a Nazi. It's that this lady can be,
Speaker 1: through the process you just outlined, convinced to stand up
Speaker 1: next to a Nazi and like, uh, defend his his
Speaker 1: right to do violence to people. She has been convinced
Speaker 1: are president a threat to the lives of her, her grandchildren,
Speaker 1: which is people may say like the whole like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not worth parsing out that much if you're standing
Speaker 1: next to a Nazi or a Nazi, but like I
Speaker 1: would argue, no, what's actually the logistics of what is
Speaker 1: happening here are much more dangerous than a grandma got
Speaker 1: radicalized into national socialism. Anyway. Another meme I found it
Speaker 1: was a screen grab from fucking um Shawshank Redemption with
Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman and I don't know whatever. One of the
Speaker 1: white dudes in that movie in prison jumpsuits sitting next
Speaker 1: to each other, and it's the text on it is
Speaker 1: what are you in for? I spoke of at a
Speaker 1: school board meeting, which you she see a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff like this, this idea that they're going to jail,
Speaker 1: they're going to get rated by the FBI because they're
Speaker 1: like showing up at school boards to pro test vaccine
Speaker 1: mandates and mask mandates. Um. And then like in the
Speaker 1: middle of all this stuff, mostly talking about like anti vaction,
Speaker 1: there's also this post talking about how this post that's
Speaker 1: a video of a woman at a school board talking
Speaker 1: about how a book needed to be banned, and she's reading.
Speaker 1: The book she's reading is a queer memoir. Um. And
Speaker 1: I'll talk about I'll talk about this more at the end,
Speaker 1: but you can definitely mention it here because it gets
Speaker 1: up a lot. It's it's a gay it's a gay
Speaker 1: coming of age story, right, And as a result, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of semi graphic scenes in it. And she
Speaker 1: like gets up in front of the school board and
Speaker 1: reads this and argues that it's basically like pornography. The children.
Speaker 1: They think it's child pornography. Yeah, that's what they're marching
Speaker 1: mistaken what child pornography is. They're trying to they're trying
Speaker 1: to get all the people at the school board either
Speaker 1: killed or arrested over this. That is that is their goal.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk about this specific instance later because it
Speaker 1: keeps coming up with all of these channels, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the main things that links someone from like
Speaker 1: a sodden red channel to a channel like this. This
Speaker 1: is like one of the main things they've been using
Speaker 1: the past few weeks, like this is the current, this
Speaker 1: is like the past, and and this is this though
Speaker 1: has been going on for a while. You've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of like the libertarian right wing, a lot of
Speaker 1: like kill your local pedophile shirts because who's gonna Most
Speaker 1: people don't think, like, who's going to defend a pedophile pedophiles? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the proud boy at the Portland school Board who was
Speaker 1: standing and ready to fight, the ready to fight security
Speaker 1: guards and stuff, he was wearing a kill your local pedophile. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's this is this is the thing. This is the
Speaker 1: thing the right wing figured out. And if they figured
Speaker 1: this out a long time ago, which is that Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to get a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are vaguely normal to do like absolutely horrible violence, the
Speaker 1: way you do it is to tell them that they're
Speaker 1: threatening kids and it doesn't matter what you went on
Speaker 1: works so well yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this once and once you've convinced you know, like this,
Speaker 1: this is this is just a very I think a
Speaker 1: very important thing about media messaging in general is that
Speaker 1: the literally the instant someone says think of the children,
Speaker 1: you need to stop and you need to disregard everything
Speaker 1: they're about to say after that with a stick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like of the time that person is like about to
Speaker 1: try to convince you that like you need to like
Speaker 1: we need to murder the gauge or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like That's that. That's the thing that follows from I
Speaker 1: feel confident saying no one has ever advocated thinking of
Speaker 1: the children and meant anything, but I want to kill
Speaker 1: this specific group of people. Um just like I that's
Speaker 1: not even really hyperbole. It's it's a a trite and
Speaker 1: true organizing tactic for these people. And it's part of
Speaker 1: the reason why, like the famous white nationalist catchphrase is
Speaker 1: focused around we need to secure a future for white children, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's what they're always talking about with all of this
Speaker 1: ship and it's it's about being able to demonize a
Speaker 1: group in a way that they can't be defended. It's
Speaker 1: about ending any sort of debate or conversation, and it's
Speaker 1: about justifying thoughtless violence because it's you're protecting children. Um,
Speaker 1: you know who else protects children? Robert definitely not the
Speaker 1: advertisers of this show, um, because we are sponsored by
Speaker 1: raytheon brand. School bus seeking missiles the only missiles that
Speaker 1: only seek school buses. You cannot shoot them at a tank,
Speaker 1: at a at a technical at a at a terrorist
Speaker 1: training camp. They go right for school buses no matter
Speaker 1: where you aim them. So in that way, they are
Speaker 1: a fire and forget kind of weapon as long as
Speaker 1: you're willing to forget anything but hitting a child's school
Speaker 1: bus with a with a missile. Okay, here's here's some
Speaker 1: check it out. All right, Well we're back still talking
Speaker 1: about this. Uh yeah, so last segment for this episode.
Speaker 1: As we as we as I was talking about that,
Speaker 1: there's a post that In the post is a video
Speaker 1: of a woman from a different school board meeting reading
Speaker 1: out a graphics, graphic ish sex scene from this queer memoir,
Speaker 1: and ranting about how it's it's child pornography. Comments include
Speaker 1: fucking monsters running these schools, satanic and disgusting an elementary school. Unreal.
Speaker 1: Why aren't charges brought against the school for distributing pornography
Speaker 1: to minors? It's not even reading, they could, It's just
Speaker 1: available from some other library. It's like, because you can
Speaker 1: request a lot of books at libraries in all caps.
Speaker 1: Where's the sheriffs, where are the city, county, state and
Speaker 1: federal task forces? And uh yeah, it's I'll talk about
Speaker 1: this more in the next episode. Tied to just the
Speaker 1: overarching anti anti queer, anti trans, anti gay school board
Speaker 1: side of things, and of course other things I found.
Speaker 1: There's like video of them celebrating Capital rioters, celebrating Josh
Speaker 1: Holly for defending Capital rioters. Um. I went into some
Speaker 1: other channels that were adjacent that I saw shared, you know,
Speaker 1: in this channel. One of them was Oscar's midnight writer
Speaker 1: Patriot Post channel, which actually has thousands and thousands of followers.
Speaker 1: Average post would get two to three thousand views. Um,
Speaker 1: here's one. I'm considered a domestic terrorist if I tell
Speaker 1: a school board that I don't want my eight year
Speaker 1: old daughter watching sex videos in her third grade classroom. Um,
Speaker 1: And that post was right above this post. The Constitution
Speaker 1: actually says you can legally overthrow your government if they
Speaker 1: are tyrannical. And that post was right above this post,
Speaker 1: which was a screen which was a screen grab from
Speaker 1: a Twitter account for a guy who calls himself Murray
Speaker 1: Rothbard's seventeen seventy six The FBI didn't rate Epstein Island
Speaker 1: or protect hundreds of young female gymnasts from being sexually
Speaker 1: assaulted for years, but they'll raid your PTA meetings when
Speaker 1: you question the curriculum and on scientific mask mandates and
Speaker 1: their indoctrination camps, I mean public schools. And of course
Speaker 1: this from Twitter user named Emerald Robinson. And again this
Speaker 1: is all shared in that channel. It's like a screen
Speaker 1: grab from Twitter. When the FBI starts arresting parents at
Speaker 1: school board meetings, just remember the GOP senators who made
Speaker 1: it happen by confirming Merritt Gardland as Attorney General. And
Speaker 1: then it's a list of Republican u Emerald Emerald Robinson
Speaker 1: is the White House correspondent for news Max. Oh right,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, you're right. Uh huh great great.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, that's probably all I should get into. Well, no,
Speaker 1: there's a wen one more things. So Oscar's Midnight Writer,
Speaker 1: which was shared in in that uh that school board
Speaker 1: channel took me to the Western Chauvinist school Board channel,
Speaker 1: which took me to a post which with a video
Speaker 1: UM with a link to a video. The text with
Speaker 1: the video was woman at school board meeting calls out
Speaker 1: Jewish power by name um and it's a woman ranting
Speaker 1: about how the Jews are behind all of the critical
Speaker 1: race theory in schools. Um. So again not hard to
Speaker 1: get to this kind of ship. Another post was it
Speaker 1: was in the Western Chauvinist Telegram. It was sharing a
Speaker 1: post from the Murder the Media Telegram, who were part
Speaker 1: of the Capital riot. UM. That post from Murder the
Speaker 1: Media was National school Board Association apology letter for calling
Speaker 1: you domestic terrorist. It was we'll talk about this later,
Speaker 1: but the comment in the Western Chauvinist was like, we
Speaker 1: don't apologize for being like for being domestic terror rists.
Speaker 1: Like we're yeah, we we think it's rad that they
Speaker 1: called us domestic terrorists. Because in this channel by the
Speaker 1: Way has over fifty subscribers UM and used to be
Speaker 1: a Proud Boy channel, which is now just a general
Speaker 1: kind of farther right wing organizing channel that it's probably
Speaker 1: it's one of the most shared Telegram channels in this
Speaker 1: whole network. UM and they are really good at creating
Speaker 1: propaganda that appeals to Trump voters while slipping in a
Speaker 1: lot of accelerationist talking points UM to slowly lead people
Speaker 1: on that redcrumb trail to make them be okay with
Speaker 1: mass violence. There was a comment in there, forwarded from
Speaker 1: another from the telegram account of a guy named Eric Striker,
Speaker 1: UM and this was a post Striker made commenting on
Speaker 1: a video of a father being dragged out of a
Speaker 1: quote woke school board meeting. UM for uh complaining of
Speaker 1: complaining about this kind of ship UM. The post from
Speaker 1: Eric Striker I think is worth reading, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to read it now. For now, all we can do
Speaker 1: is impotently watch injustices like this unfold. This is really upsetting.
Speaker 1: We must build our political organization to the point where
Speaker 1: we can rapidly mobilize to defend this man, including physical demonstrations,
Speaker 1: sent him free legal support and make people realize that
Speaker 1: the time of fucking with whites is over. We need
Speaker 1: our own media, civil society groups and activists. We need
Speaker 1: money and volunteers. It's not the Republican Party or anything
Speaker 1: in the conservative movement. It never will be. We need
Speaker 1: to build it from scratch. We are well underway National
Speaker 1: Justice Party. We must quietly and patiently build. Eventually we
Speaker 1: will have the capacity to come on the scene when
Speaker 1: they least expect it and will be and we will
Speaker 1: be too powerful to stop. And that's probably where we
Speaker 1: should end for today. Yep, that's a good part on
Speaker 1: good sad intro into the current problem of schoolbar meetings.
Speaker 1: We'll get into a lot more like accelerating rhetoric in
Speaker 1: the next bit and then talk about kind where the
Speaker 1: stuff originated from and the other other side of things beyond,
Speaker 1: just like the CRT and UH and and mask stuff,
Speaker 1: because it branches out into a lot of other kind
Speaker 1: of adjacent cultural war bullshit issues. Um. Anyway, Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: do that tomorrow. Um. You can follow the show on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram, it happen here, pod and cool zone
Speaker 1: Media if you want to be on those apps, which
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would. Yeah, don't be on
Speaker 1: those apps. Get you know, I just found out they'll
Speaker 1: deliver skinned gators to your door. Get into cooking gators.
Speaker 1: That's what I plan to do. Getting off Twitter and
Speaker 1: I'm Gator is the new social network. So ga gator?
Speaker 1: What second? My part of this episode on right wing
Speaker 1: attempts to attack and dominate school board meetings in order
Speaker 1: to further their ability to do violence on marginalized groups.
Speaker 1: And also it rode democratic institutions from the ground. Uh
Speaker 1: statue title, Yeah, yeah, that'll that'll click. Well. Ah, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad we don't have to worry about clicking and titles.
Speaker 1: And that took up a lot of my mind back
Speaker 1: in the day, Garrison, back when, back when the internet
Speaker 1: was different. Now we don't have to worry about that anymore.
Speaker 1: But we do have to worry about our mobs of
Speaker 1: fascists attacking school board meetings. It happens every week, keeps
Speaker 1: happening more often. Boards are calling for assistance. That they
Speaker 1: seem pretty, they seem pretty, not thrilled. Yeah, they seem
Speaker 1: not psyched about. So where we're where? When we left off,
Speaker 1: I was talking about some things I found on the
Speaker 1: gram telegram. Uh, Garrison. What's next. I'll go into my
Speaker 1: preliminary research on Telegram and particularly response. Basically, I looked
Speaker 1: through every single Telegram post and all of the main
Speaker 1: fascist channels I lurk on that mentioned school boards from
Speaker 1: like the past two weeks. Um, so like yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like current current stuff on ongoing. UM. I got
Speaker 1: to a lot of the channels I was already familiar with,
Speaker 1: like you know, the Western Chavenist channel, which is uh
Speaker 1: subs um, the Standard Students channel, which was a when
Speaker 1: I was less familiar with, specifically dedicated to this school
Speaker 1: board issue. Um. One of one of the posts we
Speaker 1: have on there is UH says your enemy isn't some
Speaker 1: far off ship whole country. Your enemy is just down
Speaker 1: the street at your local school board meeting, teaching your
Speaker 1: kids to hate their ancestors, you and themselves. So like again,
Speaker 1: that is a very much white supremacist dog whistle just
Speaker 1: right there, um talking about producing Hollywood movies writing they're
Speaker 1: basically it's basically just a whistle. Um. So yeah. They
Speaker 1: then they, you know, the same post talks about you know,
Speaker 1: masks and shutting down businesses and the vaccines and stuff,
Speaker 1: and saying the fight is here and the fight is
Speaker 1: now so just in terms of like, yeah, they're really
Speaker 1: wanting to hype people up for doing this thing at
Speaker 1: school boards. They're trying to really hammer down the school
Speaker 1: board points. So like I found this, I found this post.
Speaker 1: This is this is a post from the Standford Students channel.
Speaker 1: Um and I saw this one re shared in a
Speaker 1: lot of different channels. One of the other first ones
Speaker 1: that I saw pop off was from Ron Watkins channel
Speaker 1: like Code monkey Z. He is one of the one
Speaker 1: of the architects or one of the you know people
Speaker 1: who really pushed Q and on stuff into He's the
Speaker 1: guy who ran like the physical infrastructure of Chan chan
Speaker 1: in eight Coon for years. Yeah. He and he's trying
Speaker 1: to pivot into being like having his just his face
Speaker 1: be like a kind of alternative right wing figure right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be running for office in Arizona, I believe. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he has a very popular telegram channel, um and he
Speaker 1: made he made this post that had over a thousand,
Speaker 1: over a thousand comments on it, which is a lot
Speaker 1: for telegram. A thousand comments on telegram post, especially telegram
Speaker 1: post of of code mackeyzs size. I ever see how
Speaker 1: how many subs doesn't so Ron just as context, Ron
Speaker 1: Watkins has four hundred and thirty two thousand subscribers on
Speaker 1: his on his telegram channel. So yeah, anyway, Uh, CRT
Speaker 1: is being rebranded as s e L a social emotional learning.
Speaker 1: If you are attending school board meetings as you should be,
Speaker 1: do what you can to make sure you stop both
Speaker 1: s e L and CRT and keep them and make
Speaker 1: sure that they are banned in your school districts. So again,
Speaker 1: just direct calls to action for getting people to show
Speaker 1: up to these school boards. And also, social emotional learning
Speaker 1: is not CRT, and of course SCRT is not even
Speaker 1: taught in schools. I think everyone who listens to this
Speaker 1: podcast knows that sr T, actually critical ray theory isn't
Speaker 1: taught in schools. This isn't an actual thing. It's it
Speaker 1: is like a legal theory. We'll get into more of
Speaker 1: how this got like pushed towards the end. I think
Speaker 1: Chris has some stuff prepared on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's again these none of these things are actually real.
Speaker 1: It's a complex legal theory. What they're really mad about
Speaker 1: is their people are teaching that racism is like an
Speaker 1: issue that's built into a lot of American institutions, and
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing thing. It's not a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: That's what they're actually mad about, and they just call
Speaker 1: that crt. Some some of the comments from the Ron
Speaker 1: Watkins post, stuff like these snowflakes are so annoying. I'm
Speaker 1: about to start cutting power to any school in my
Speaker 1: community that teaches this. Um so yeah, more Again, that's
Speaker 1: just a direct, direct threat of doing terrorism. Should like,
Speaker 1: I mean, less of a threat and more of a promise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does that? No? Sure it doesn't. Alright, Well I don't
Speaker 1: understand things the same way you zoomers do. Please continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of posts being a shipped
Speaker 1: around from channel to channel, including this full Nazi channels
Speaker 1: were like trying to trying to of course, like lots
Speaker 1: of Nazis are actually you know, I thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty funny that the that the school board union put
Speaker 1: in a call to assistance to the federal government to
Speaker 1: deal with this issue. They of course they thought that
Speaker 1: was funny. But they're going to use this to like
Speaker 1: spread networks to be like, hey, the government wants to
Speaker 1: stop you. They're calling you a terrorist. You like regular
Speaker 1: folk are being called terrorist because you're showing up the
Speaker 1: school boards, right, that's the kind of message that they're
Speaker 1: going to shoot out. So they a lot of Nazi
Speaker 1: channels crafted a lot of posts like that that got
Speaker 1: shared around a lot. Yeah, in trying to basically all
Speaker 1: time critical race theory and if you approached against critical
Speaker 1: race theory, they're calling you a domestic terrorist. That that
Speaker 1: type of thing. And this got this got shared in
Speaker 1: the school boards channel, and a whole bunch of whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff being being talking about how if
Speaker 1: you if you stand up, you're gonna be a domestic terrorist.
Speaker 1: You have to be brave and do this. A few
Speaker 1: days after the school board Uh, not a few days,
Speaker 1: I guess this. This was this was in like in
Speaker 1: October um, the school Association retracted some of the some
Speaker 1: of the words that they used in their letter because
Speaker 1: of this backlash that was created. And this was also
Speaker 1: shared in shared in uh lots of fascist channels. The
Speaker 1: main one who is shared in that I saw was
Speaker 1: the Honk Pills channel UM, which is just another type
Speaker 1: of Peppe meme Um, one of the other one of
Speaker 1: the other big big kind of groups active in this.
Speaker 1: In this whole sphere. And this this has been a
Speaker 1: group going on for a while and we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about on the pod, but we probably should do something eventually.
Speaker 1: Is this group called White Rose, So this is a
Speaker 1: White Rose is a COVID conspiracy group that has been
Speaker 1: very uh successful in creating on the ground organizers who
Speaker 1: are regular people. They do a lot of like sticker
Speaker 1: bombs and lots of neighborhoods. If you have if you
Speaker 1: ever seen anti like COVID or COVID conspiracy stickers in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood, it was probably a White Rose sticker. UM.
Speaker 1: These are all over the States and basically every time.
Speaker 1: As a quick heads up, the original White Rose was
Speaker 1: a student protest organization that existed in Nazi Germany UM
Speaker 1: and protested illegally and its organizers were executed by the Nazis.
Speaker 1: And I think it was the mid forty I mean
Speaker 1: it would be like like forty three, maybe maybe forty four. UM.
Speaker 1: Sophie Shoal was the person most associated with them. So
Speaker 1: they they're they're they've taken the names of these these heroes,
Speaker 1: UM in order to it's just disgusting, it's very gross.
Speaker 1: There's there's a decent amount of decent amount of researchers
Speaker 1: in this field. Thinks that there's like actual bad people
Speaker 1: behind White Rose of course, with like like bad people
Speaker 1: because they're spending COVID stuff, but like like wait, like
Speaker 1: like more like bad actors use basically astroturfing this thing,
Speaker 1: but at White rosterserves its own piece later. But because
Speaker 1: they have such a big following on telegram, they are
Speaker 1: of course using using this to using the school board
Speaker 1: thing to gain more support, and they have about fifty
Speaker 1: subscribers to their specific telegram channel. They showed a post
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago saying thank you to all the
Speaker 1: brave parents going out to their school boards and standing
Speaker 1: up for the children. Um. And they try that, you know,
Speaker 1: get people to do sticker bombs and stuff, but the
Speaker 1: fact that there's like specifically calling out people in school
Speaker 1: boards is like an extra step of like beyond just
Speaker 1: putting stickers up in your neighborhood. Um. Another another another
Speaker 1: White Right Rose post. They shared a shared a video
Speaker 1: UM that was captioned as concerned parent absolutely destroys school
Speaker 1: board with facts. The school boards are the battlefield of
Speaker 1: our time. This is how it's done. And just the
Speaker 1: increasing rhetoric around like battlefields. This is where like the
Speaker 1: fight is at all that kind of stuff. Um. There
Speaker 1: was another another, Uh, the White White Chauvinist Channel shared
Speaker 1: a video from Fox News UM and they they the
Speaker 1: Western Chauvinist Channel, which is again it's one of the
Speaker 1: most shared ones in this whole network. They captioned this
Speaker 1: saying parents and Virginia are trying to fight back against
Speaker 1: the school board that is anti white. Um. Every every
Speaker 1: school district in America needs to have an anti mandate
Speaker 1: pro right parents running for the school board. So that's
Speaker 1: just the It's this type of stuff all over and
Speaker 1: this this this post was got it has like an
Speaker 1: eleven eleven thousand, eleven thousand views. Um. So these things
Speaker 1: are spreading to a lot of a lot of these
Speaker 1: specific networks. And I mean, I I have so many
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff. I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: through every single one in detail. There's ones that are
Speaker 1: way more like openly anti Semitic, uh, you know saying,
Speaker 1: you know the Jews that run you know, ex school board,
Speaker 1: um are trying to force vaccinations on every student over twelve. Um.
Speaker 1: Other another Uh, there's this fake this is this this
Speaker 1: fake Clint Eastwood channel on Telegram. That's pretty popular. Someone
Speaker 1: who's pretending to be Clint Eastwood that spreads far right stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: He had a post that was shared a lot that
Speaker 1: started by saying, start taking over school boards, start taking
Speaker 1: over city council, start taking over city boards. Um, start
Speaker 1: to start being poll watchers, start being poll workers, start
Speaker 1: taking over sheriff's departments. It's not enough just to vote.
Speaker 1: So this, this is the other thing that we're going
Speaker 1: to see a lot more of, is rhetoric around voting.
Speaker 1: Isn't enough. You need to start doing more things. Um,
Speaker 1: there is one of it. Yeah, here, here's here's one.
Speaker 1: This is gonna this is referencing some of the trans stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll discussing a bit, but I just want to tie
Speaker 1: it in now. A post from the Western Chauvinist Channel
Speaker 1: saying there is no political solution, which is a direct Nazi,
Speaker 1: a direct Nazi lie. I mean that, That's what I
Speaker 1: did an article early this year on Riley Williams, the
Speaker 1: Nazi who stole Pelosi's laptop during the Capitol riot, and
Speaker 1: then like the video that we were able to identify
Speaker 1: her as a sig hiling Nazi and That's how she
Speaker 1: opened her quote. There is no political solution. It's a
Speaker 1: very common catchphrase among like the the fast right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of stuff around harassing like
Speaker 1: specific school board members, harassing specific teachers. There was this
Speaker 1: teacher in I think in California that was trying to
Speaker 1: like introduced like like anti fascist type rhetoric and talking
Speaker 1: about how fascism is a modern thing. They got absolutely
Speaker 1: bashed um and like docs um, and they got it
Speaker 1: I think fired because there was like hundreds of of
Speaker 1: parents organizing on on apps like telegram to harass this
Speaker 1: one teacher at school board's that you know, they took
Speaker 1: over massive goool board meetings and just talked about this
Speaker 1: one teacher endlessly um. And it was even It's interesting
Speaker 1: because like all the parents were like, yeah, Mike, my
Speaker 1: I got worried because my student actually really like liked
Speaker 1: the teacher and said that they were doing like giving
Speaker 1: really interesting points about like systemic issues. And the parents
Speaker 1: were like and they like brought their kids to the
Speaker 1: school board meetings. There's the kids are standing in the
Speaker 1: back as their parents are ranting about this and talking
Speaker 1: about how the kids actually like I thought they were
Speaker 1: learning things about systemic issues and then that got people mad.
Speaker 1: So you know what else gets people mad? Uh? This
Speaker 1: is advertisements. Yeah, and we're bad. We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: touch on the uh, the specifics, like all the stuff
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. Most of the modern most most
Speaker 1: of the current organizing is a lot of it's around
Speaker 1: like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. Um, Like all of
Speaker 1: this stuff called like you know, the the school board channel.
Speaker 1: All of this kind of stuff is usually around vaccine,
Speaker 1: vaccines and masks stuff. Uh. Of course there's critical Royce
Speaker 1: theory was the way more popular thing a few months ago.
Speaker 1: Right now is the vaccine thing. The other kind of
Speaker 1: like ever present thing is being upset that trans kids
Speaker 1: exist and being very fearful that that there are trans
Speaker 1: kids around your kids. Uh. This is a thing that's been,
Speaker 1: you know, a thing for years that people have been
Speaker 1: fighting against, and since the school board thing is becoming
Speaker 1: more popular, people are are starting to uh bring lastly,
Speaker 1: do these kind of flash mobs specifically around trans issues. Um.
Speaker 1: One of like the more like astro turf type things
Speaker 1: was people getting mad that there were like two specific
Speaker 1: books available in certain high school and some middle school libraries.
Speaker 1: UM that one of it was like a like one
Speaker 1: of it was the memoir that Robert mentioned. The other
Speaker 1: one was like a graphic novel memorial about someone realizing
Speaker 1: their gender queer. So these are books that are not
Speaker 1: in curriculums. These are just books that are available at
Speaker 1: the library. UM. And basically there was people who just
Speaker 1: who found these out and got turned it into like
Speaker 1: like a meme on telegram essentially, like people like sharing
Speaker 1: information about this, then you like look it up, see
Speaker 1: if it's in your library. So then we have all
Speaker 1: of these like coordinated attacks on school boards by these
Speaker 1: models of people all about these same two books. UM.
Speaker 1: And the goals to not only just get the books
Speaker 1: like banned, but they're also trying to like fire or
Speaker 1: arrest the teachers and school remembers for allowing these books
Speaker 1: to happen. There has been school members who have like
Speaker 1: stepped down because of just how much harassment is about
Speaker 1: these things. Quote from the Western Chapnist channel, Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: straight up pedophile books in our children's schools. Once again,
Speaker 1: the Jewish school boar member gets mad and trying to
Speaker 1: shut them down. How can you not connect the dots here.
Speaker 1: There's no political solution. Voting will not remove these people. Um.
Speaker 1: There was the mayor of Houston, uh So, in the
Speaker 1: mayor of Houston, Ohio heard about this, and he went
Speaker 1: to a school board meeting and instructed all of them,
Speaker 1: all of the board members to resign um quoting the
Speaker 1: quoting the Proud Boy right wing organizing channel Western Chavenista.
Speaker 1: This comes after some of the degenerate parasites in the
Speaker 1: system called educators, instructed kids to describe a sex scene
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't show their mom. Of course this didn't happen.
Speaker 1: This is this is they these these things are not
Speaker 1: are not These books are not used in any kind
Speaker 1: of curriculum anyway. So even even if they were that
Speaker 1: that we not even we're not even in that reality. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the mayor of this town basically got these instructed these
Speaker 1: instructed all of these people to resign. Um. Earlier, I
Speaker 1: think in mark No. In August of this year, pride
Speaker 1: flags were banned at a at a school school district
Speaker 1: inside south west Oregon. Um I think around I think
Speaker 1: around Newburgh. The Newberg school district banned but banded pride flags.
Speaker 1: So all this kind of stuff and and of course
Speaker 1: that is in a lot of states. But the yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's in like Oregon, a blue state
Speaker 1: is people got made. Like you know, there's like you know,
Speaker 1: NBC articles about it because it's it's Oregon. It's not
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not it's it's not a red state.
Speaker 1: So it's all big, it's all Portland, it's all Antifa,
Speaker 1: right yeah, yeah, so again the stuff is not not
Speaker 1: not like contained to one thing. And like yeah, if
Speaker 1: you google the stuff around these books, if you google
Speaker 1: like gender Queer Book, uh school boards, you'll find this
Speaker 1: in so many school districts. You'll see just mobs of
Speaker 1: people lined up yelling and screaming um and like like
Speaker 1: printing out giant, like giant cardboard prints of of this
Speaker 1: comic book showing like like with like you know, there's
Speaker 1: like a dick on it, Like there's like a drawn
Speaker 1: a drawn dick, because that's what human bodies look like.
Speaker 1: Like you can look at like a lot of like yeah,
Speaker 1: like what are you gonna band the statue of David
Speaker 1: because he has his dick out too, like like come on.
Speaker 1: And also these are the same people who talk about
Speaker 1: like oh they're you know, banning books, burning books, you know, right,
Speaker 1: there was that. There was that tweet from like James
Speaker 1: Woods about like these are the books that people want banned.
Speaker 1: That means they're the most important ones. But these people love.
Speaker 1: These people love like burning books. These people love banning books.
Speaker 1: They love cancel culture. That the cultures that I was
Speaker 1: that I was in as a kid, they would have
Speaker 1: like massive like book and like c D and DVD
Speaker 1: burnings for like unlike unholy and sinful media that you
Speaker 1: would like bring in and like throw like your sinful
Speaker 1: music onto this giant fight. Like these people love love
Speaker 1: burning books, they love they love banning stuff, they love
Speaker 1: cancel culture. Um, but they just laugh about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was that was most of my stuff around
Speaker 1: the kind of the ongoing queer and trans stuff. Of course,
Speaker 1: they know this ties into like bathroom stuff as well,
Speaker 1: with the people showing up to school board meetings to
Speaker 1: scream about you know, kids going ship in the bathroom
Speaker 1: that they want to and feel comfortable in. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: and again like it doesn't it's not gonna stop with
Speaker 1: trans people either. Right as soon as they banned trans people,
Speaker 1: the next thing is going to be oh, gay students. Right,
Speaker 1: this is it never it's never stops, it always keeps going. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's just an ever present problem that it's gonna
Speaker 1: require a lot more a lot more dealing with. And
Speaker 1: again with all of these flash mobs, like no one,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna stop them because they're like the people
Speaker 1: in power, they're the people that have all of the privilege.
Speaker 1: There's no really effective counter organizing for these school board
Speaker 1: meetings right now. Um, the cops aren't gonna do ship.
Speaker 1: Security guards aren't gonna do ship. Uh And regular libs
Speaker 1: and regular regular people aren't gonna do sh it either.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to figure out how to actually combat
Speaker 1: this because there's a lot of times that the people
Speaker 1: in school boards really like, no, we don't want this
Speaker 1: to turn into a giant like fist fights, Like, don't
Speaker 1: don't come in mass to start fistfighting them. But there
Speaker 1: needs to be something to combat, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: running running for school boards, just showing up outside school boards,
Speaker 1: having just more people there in, having more presence there, uh,
Speaker 1: so that it's not as overwhelmed by like a mob
Speaker 1: of two hundred anti mask people showing up. Right. There
Speaker 1: needs to be some type of thing happening because no
Speaker 1: one else needs to be countered, And yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: they might need to get the ship kicked out of them.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but like I don't like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that would actually help in this instance. Probably, but like
Speaker 1: they needs to be fucking something like they they are.
Speaker 1: The level of boldness that they have is evidence that
Speaker 1: they feel they are confident that there is no counter
Speaker 1: to what there is going to be done. And perhaps
Speaker 1: if they were being met by a wall of people
Speaker 1: in the community who were willing, if they tried to
Speaker 1: force their way into fucking throw down, you know, to say,
Speaker 1: you're not entering this building without a goddamn mask, you're
Speaker 1: not shutting down this meeting. Um, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: that would do something. I don't actually know what would
Speaker 1: do something. If it was people just as regular people,
Speaker 1: I think that would be. Yeah, it's certainly not going
Speaker 1: to help of its antifa. Um, for the love of God,
Speaker 1: don't show up in fucking black block at a school
Speaker 1: board meeting. Um, Like what would work is a bunch
Speaker 1: of other middle aged parents showing up and being willing
Speaker 1: to confront these people, and like everything that is worth
Speaker 1: mentioning is that a lot of the people at these
Speaker 1: protests like are not parents at all, Like they're not
Speaker 1: they're not they're not eve from the same school district.
Speaker 1: They're just sort of like this this is just how
Speaker 1: this is just how the sort of right wing outrage
Speaker 1: machine has worked. This is where they're drawing people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and again, like it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: the people and there there's gonna be big dudes who
Speaker 1: want to fight, but a lot of the people like
Speaker 1: screaming are are like you know, middle aged women. The
Speaker 1: people who are like really like leading the charge on
Speaker 1: this because they're able to use their privilege because like
Speaker 1: no one's gonna stop them, right, So that that's like
Speaker 1: when they're leading the charge of two people who are
Speaker 1: gonna like scream and harass and chase how black security
Speaker 1: guards chase out, chase out the all of this, all
Speaker 1: the school remembers no one's they're they're very effective at
Speaker 1: using their privilege to gain political ground by just like
Speaker 1: doing stuff on the ground. It's like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is like this is like the January six thing. It's
Speaker 1: like the January six thing. This is the new future
Speaker 1: of political action is just showing up in mass two
Speaker 1: places where no one's gonna stop you because you're like
Speaker 1: you're the you know, the good, relatable, you know every
Speaker 1: day Yeah, you're anyway, That's that's the stuff I had.
Speaker 1: Will probably have an ad break and then talk about
Speaker 1: maybe some of how this stuff started. Speaking of using
Speaker 1: your privilege, you know, what is the greatest privilege? Being
Speaker 1: able to purchase the products that Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: There's no privilege higher than being able to engage with
Speaker 1: these consumables. Yeah, and we're back, all right, Chris, you
Speaker 1: want to close this out. Yeah, So the last thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that is interesting about this
Speaker 1: whole thing is, you know, we we've we've mostly been
Speaker 1: focusing on the very furthest right elements of this, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the school board stuff is tied to
Speaker 1: i mean just trade, a Republican party operatives and people
Speaker 1: who work in this sort of you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there's there's literally a bunch of people who work for
Speaker 1: Republican parties will get into it, and there's also this
Speaker 1: sort of network of of Republican think tanks, Republicans sort
Speaker 1: of dark money dumps. That's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of AstroTurf groups and that kind of stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and so I want to talk about a few of
Speaker 1: these people because I think they're interesting. Um, I think
Speaker 1: we can start with Nicole Nelly, who's an interesting person.
Speaker 1: She's so she she most recently founded Parents Defending Education.
Speaker 1: Who are They're They're one of the big groups to
Speaker 1: sort of like spreads this this sort of attack on
Speaker 1: school board stuff over the country. They have chapters, they
Speaker 1: organize people, and they also, you know, they do this
Speaker 1: thing where they collect co incident reports from from school
Speaker 1: districts that they you know, just distribute to all these
Speaker 1: people and they put it online. They have all of
Speaker 1: these they they they have a lot of stuff they do.
Speaker 1: They do a lot of anti mask mandate stuff. So
Speaker 1: they have these like template letters, like template like fakely
Speaker 1: performed letter things that you can send to schools that
Speaker 1: if you don't want to wear a masks that is
Speaker 1: that's a staple of this type of organizing. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the interesting thing about Nickolenelly is that so
Speaker 1: this is not like her first organ like three years
Speaker 1: eighteen back in the Halcyon days of all right, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite going to say it was before the
Speaker 1: mask fully came off, but it was well, the mask
Speaker 1: was like a little bit more on. She she previously
Speaker 1: founded a speech first Yeah you might remember, yeah as
Speaker 1: the Republic when free speech was the big talking point.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and so she ran that
Speaker 1: for a while. Now she's you know, organizing with the
Speaker 1: holy people who just wants to Yeah, they just move on,
Speaker 1: they move on to the new things. It was it
Speaker 1: was free speech, it was christ theory. Right now it's
Speaker 1: anti mask stuff. Next up is gonna be trans stuff
Speaker 1: going real hard. Just today we had the fucking person
Speaker 1: who BBC platforms the fucking lincum. Yeah, Lily the rapist
Speaker 1: Lily Kade manifesto where she details which specific trans women
Speaker 1: she wants to personally kill. Yeah, I used to know
Speaker 1: Lily um. Oh yeah yeah yeah, uh real dark turned Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it's not super surprising. She
Speaker 1: was definitely interviewed her for a documentary and it was
Speaker 1: she was a bit off putting. Uh, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: this was going on. I mean, yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot a lot of reports of people
Speaker 1: in like the sex book industry of talking about her,
Speaker 1: like raping people in bathrooms, which again it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the people that's always screaming about oh no trans women
Speaker 1: or in bathrooms. Yeah, the people the person screaming about
Speaker 1: this is an actual rapist. Like like when when when
Speaker 1: we say rapists here like she she she raped so
Speaker 1: many people that, like on Twitter, like I was scrolling
Speaker 1: through my feet and I saw multiple people who were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know this person she assaulted me. Yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 1: The people who the turfs are like pushing. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the BBC was platform. So like, yeah, like trans
Speaker 1: stuff is as soon as as soon as the anti
Speaker 1: mask anti vax stuff like dies down in the next
Speaker 1: five months or whatever. Uh I I foresee a massive
Speaker 1: pivot towards specifically anti anti trans antiqueer antique stuff because
Speaker 1: that's going to be the new thing. Yep. And and
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's worth bearing in mind that
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, and you know, with with the Coldnelly specifically,
Speaker 1: so she she worked she like worked at the Cato Institute,
Speaker 1: which is like Murray Rothbart and Charles Cokes. Now it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's it's basically it's basically this is
Speaker 1: a slight oversupplication, but it's basically one of the cokes
Speaker 1: sort of like money laundering like money operation things. She
Speaker 1: also worked at Freedom Works, who oh yeah, yeah this
Speaker 1: is great. So um this is this is one of
Speaker 1: the fun parts of this which is that so freedom
Speaker 1: Works is another one of the Coke's sort of dark
Speaker 1: money laundering machine things. And Freedom Works are basically the
Speaker 1: people who created the Tea Party. Like there are the
Speaker 1: people who turned the Tea Party from like a bunch
Speaker 1: of weird guy just like like six weirdos into like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the basically the the the the entirety
Speaker 1: of the pre Trump conservative political machine who like built
Speaker 1: a Republican party after it was like completely discredited, um
Speaker 1: into two thousand's. And this is true of a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who are in charge of these big
Speaker 1: organs have connections like this. Um, the person you found
Speaker 1: in No Left Turn, which is No Left Turn know
Speaker 1: for an education, They're they're they're they're not one of
Speaker 1: these big sort of anti school board things. I mean
Speaker 1: they they are the people. They're one of people who
Speaker 1: like they have a list of books on their website
Speaker 1: that they want banned. Wow. Yeah it's great. And their
Speaker 1: founder rights for the Heritage foundations like magazine. So they're there,
Speaker 1: there's there's all of this stuff, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: the most implematic one is this guy is Mark Ruffo,
Speaker 1: who Yeah, so so he's he's the guy who just
Speaker 1: created the whole critical race theory thing out of nothing.
Speaker 1: He like threw together a bunch of like inc just
Speaker 1: like these incredibly tenuous connections. Like there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of old uh cultural Marxism conspiracy stuff in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like Frankfurt's school type ship. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and and but but what I think is interesting about him,
Speaker 1: it's less his ideas, which are just pseudo intellectual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't he's not actually super smart in what he
Speaker 1: says that there's a lot of videos of him talking
Speaker 1: to actual philosopher is getting schooled about what rice theory is. Like,
Speaker 1: he's actually not that intelligent in this in this side
Speaker 1: of things. But but you know that the thing is
Speaker 1: that there's nothing more dangerous than an idiot with a
Speaker 1: trick up his sleeve, exactly. And you know, and then
Speaker 1: the trick basically is Fox News. And you know, the
Speaker 1: reason the reason this whole thing exists is that this
Speaker 1: was you know, Mark Ruffo. He's very very explicit about
Speaker 1: this that this this, this was his solution to the
Speaker 1: George Floyd up rising. Yea, was that, oh, we we
Speaker 1: need we need to we need to find this thing
Speaker 1: to stop the medicum of this uprising. And this is
Speaker 1: this is who Tucker Carlson brings on and starts bring
Speaker 1: onwenty and this blows up. He immediately gets hired by
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Institute, which is a very not that old
Speaker 1: but there from the eighties, but a very an old,
Speaker 1: extremely powerful conservative think tank that I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think it's less known than things like the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 1: or the kid who wants to Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: so yeah. But he gets they hired him like immediately
Speaker 1: because you know, the sort of mainline at the Republican
Speaker 1: Party very quickly is like, this is the thing that
Speaker 1: we can use as like a hammer, right, and so
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Institute publishes this roop o work for them. Now.
Speaker 1: I can't I'm not actually sure if you. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he specifically wrote this or he was just
Speaker 1: involved in it. I think it's it's the bye line
Speaker 1: is just the Manhattan Institute. But they have this incredibly
Speaker 1: detailed tool kit explaining how you know, both both explaining
Speaker 1: what the sort of right wing like line on critical
Speaker 1: race theory is. And they have like a bunch of explainers,
Speaker 1: have like list of terms have you ever seen Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually yeah, if you've ever seen like list of
Speaker 1: terms of people want banned, Like it's all just pulled
Speaker 1: from this document, right, so I add stuff. Um, But
Speaker 1: but the interesting part of about this is the other
Speaker 1: thing is this this is an organizing manual, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a thing that tells you how to go
Speaker 1: and how to find other people, like other other people.
Speaker 1: You know, if if you're like an incensed right wing
Speaker 1: like freaking one of these school districts, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well here's here's how you like talk to other people
Speaker 1: in your districts. Here's here's a list of options of
Speaker 1: like things you can do going public. And then there's
Speaker 1: a very interesting thing part of this that that I
Speaker 1: think is really disturbing and outlines like really what's going
Speaker 1: on here, which is there's this whole like freak out
Speaker 1: thing about this thing called minority rule, where like, oh,
Speaker 1: the left has this like they have this like militant
Speaker 1: minority that that will compel the majority to follow them
Speaker 1: by because they keep on showing up and they keep
Speaker 1: on doing things. And if if this minority like it keeps,
Speaker 1: keep keeps, you know, being more in transient than everyone else,
Speaker 1: then they will inevitably win. And this the three quarters
Speaker 1: of this section is this like weird fear mongering thing
Speaker 1: about it. But then the last part of it is
Speaker 1: a bunch is the thing us saying, oh, we need
Speaker 1: to do this ourselves, right, this is how we win.
Speaker 1: We win by being more in transient. We win by
Speaker 1: showing up more often of course. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the other thing is this
Speaker 1: is from like last year. I think this is like
Speaker 1: the kid this summer. Yeah, okay, that's sorry. This is
Speaker 1: this is one. Yeah, this is really the ship. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's like this is the sort of
Speaker 1: you know this, this is this is the Republican Party essentially,
Speaker 1: I mean institute, very very mainstre Republican Party. This, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is how they do aspective in person organizing.
Speaker 1: We we talked about this a bit in our episodes
Speaker 1: um about the like in the aftermath of the abortion ruling,
Speaker 1: in Texas and how and how like the religious righting
Speaker 1: organizing has worked in local districts. Yeah, this, this is
Speaker 1: how they are able to get things done, which is
Speaker 1: why there's been so many school by members who either
Speaker 1: got fired, who have had to step down, who have
Speaker 1: been harassed off the job, and are now there's people,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of a lot of like people
Speaker 1: I would describe as people holding very extreme views are
Speaker 1: now running and taking these spots um because if you
Speaker 1: can do if you can do this type of like
Speaker 1: again it's not grassroots, but it's it's it is it
Speaker 1: is like astroturp, so like it appears grassroots. But if
Speaker 1: can do this type of like fox grassroots organizing, you
Speaker 1: can gain a lot of power over specific areas and
Speaker 1: make a lot of people's lives a lot more miserable.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's what the goal is, right, the
Speaker 1: goal is to make trans kids lives miserable. The goals
Speaker 1: they get people to not wear masks and dive of
Speaker 1: COVID like that those are the results of these actions. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think there's an interesting interplay here though,
Speaker 1: because I think because so freedom works, like like even
Speaker 1: even a lot of the specific protests that are happening.
Speaker 1: And this is especially true of of the very earlier,
Speaker 1: earliest ones. I think like when when like the very
Speaker 1: first school board protests that were happening. Yeah, like like
Speaker 1: a lot of these summer to follow was when they
Speaker 1: started to start up. Yeah, and and those a lot
Speaker 1: of those were directly organized by by people who work
Speaker 1: for Freedom Works. And and this is this is what
Speaker 1: a lot of the c RT ones yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they see the CRT one very specifically freedom works. And
Speaker 1: this is what I think is interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that you know, okay, freedom works. It's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: what does freedom works out of this? Freedom Works wants
Speaker 1: the T party again, right, because you know this, this
Speaker 1: is what freedom Works does. Right there. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: basically the group that comes in when when the Republicans
Speaker 1: start losing election cycles. They're like, Okay, well now we
Speaker 1: need to get the balance of power back, we need
Speaker 1: to bring drawn the Democrats out. So they're they're they're
Speaker 1: largely trying to build a sort of electoral base. And
Speaker 1: and again like this, this this will look familiar to
Speaker 1: people who remember two thousand and ten because it's the
Speaker 1: same thing, except And this is the thing that I
Speaker 1: I I this is the part where I genuinely they
Speaker 1: can't tell whether the Freedom Works people, whether the Cokes,
Speaker 1: whether that, whether this sort of dark wning network either
Speaker 1: I don't. I can't tell whether they understand what they're
Speaker 1: doing and like it or they're just incredibly naive. But
Speaker 1: you know this is not two thousand ten, right, You
Speaker 1: can't when when when you start mobilizing people like mobilizing
Speaker 1: people on the right wing to go to a place,
Speaker 1: they don't just like sit there and hold signs anymore.
Speaker 1: They cannot you cannot contain them at this point. You
Speaker 1: cannot control the spread like you have once you've you've
Speaker 1: opened this can, and there's no way of putting them
Speaker 1: back in because as soon as they start organized is
Speaker 1: it on appside telegram, they're one step away from skull masks.
Speaker 1: And then they're being okay with cheering around people that
Speaker 1: are going to go beat up that are going to
Speaker 1: go beat up people in these meetings. Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is this is this is really the thing that I
Speaker 1: think it's not just January six that we live in
Speaker 1: the shadow January six, but it's also about you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at how how the anti lockdown protest
Speaker 1: went in. Right, you have a bunch of people showing
Speaker 1: up with guns the capitals and that stuff was extremely effective.
Speaker 1: And that in the conformation between that in January six
Speaker 1: has you know, it's open the floodgates and now that
Speaker 1: was that was to January six being possible. Is the
Speaker 1: more and more protests around capitals of people showing up
Speaker 1: in mass to overwhelm anyone. And because they're all white,
Speaker 1: because they're all like middle class conservatives, no one's gonna
Speaker 1: stop them. Yeah, and and you know, and this is
Speaker 1: the thing, right, you know, the Cokes. I I genuinely
Speaker 1: don't know what the Cokes want out of this. My
Speaker 1: guess is that the thing that they want is a
Speaker 1: new based Republican voters. But that's not what they're creating.
Speaker 1: The thing that they're creating is a new core fascist
Speaker 1: street fighters. And you know it, at some point, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it literally doesn't matter whether or not this is
Speaker 1: what the coachs are trying to do or like not
Speaker 1: trying to do, because they're in the end it's it's
Speaker 1: just pushing people towards thinking there's no political solution. It's
Speaker 1: still only only violence. And overwhelming people in mass is
Speaker 1: the only way to get the change that they want.
Speaker 1: The change they want is to have trans kids not exists.
Speaker 1: And yeah, just more, more and more like fascistic policies. Um,
Speaker 1: whether that be you know, banning books that mentioned gay
Speaker 1: people existing or what it's like to be a gay person,
Speaker 1: whether that be teaching people that racism is still an
Speaker 1: actual thing that exists, or that be putting a mask
Speaker 1: on so you don't kill your grandma or whatever. Yep. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I think I think one last thing, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we saw what happened last time they were
Speaker 1: in power, right, and it was you know, and like
Speaker 1: you can you can talk about how a lot of
Speaker 1: the worst stuff were still happening. Was like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: put a bunch of people in concentration camps. Right, and
Speaker 1: if they if they take back power again, and there's
Speaker 1: a good chance that they're going to because you know,
Speaker 1: the Democrats are being they they you know, the Democrats
Speaker 1: never want to be in power. The thing they want
Speaker 1: to be minority opposition so they can do fundraising, right,
Speaker 1: and if you know, when when when these people, if
Speaker 1: these people take power again, it's going to be even
Speaker 1: worse than it was last time. Yeah, the thing looking
Speaker 1: at looking at the Virginia election the night of recording
Speaker 1: is a great example of that. Yeah uh In terms
Speaker 1: of yeah, it turns out when Democrats just do nothing
Speaker 1: and just sit around in office, you don't convince young
Speaker 1: people to want to vote for them because they're not
Speaker 1: actually doing anything. So then they just sit out. Then
Speaker 1: the Republicans actually do vote in people, then we get
Speaker 1: uh we anti CRT person elected to be the governor
Speaker 1: of Virginia. And that's the episode. Good times. Well, I
Speaker 1: hope everybody's optimistic feeling nice. Well, um, we'll be back
Speaker 1: with something else. Research your school boards, who's in it,
Speaker 1: and just protests around it and maybe show up with
Speaker 1: some of your I don't know buddies with your lattes
Speaker 1: and stand in front of the building and be like, no,
Speaker 1: we don't want you, we don't want you to shut
Speaker 1: stuff down because no one else is going to stop them.
Speaker 1: It has to be just like regular people. You can't cops,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be any elected democrat and honestly,
Speaker 1: like you can't rely on teens and black block to
Speaker 1: do this. That is this isn't this isn't what they
Speaker 1: need to be doing. It should be like yeah, it'd
Speaker 1: be like millennials and Gen X need to be like, Hey, no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna We're not gonna have you doing this. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the episode. Hey, we'll be back Monday,
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.