Speaker 1: Fol Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is a special message from me, Margaret. It's
Speaker 2: not an ad message. It's just not related to what
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about today on the podcast. And
Speaker 2: I'm recording this separately. I'm recording this separately because on
Speaker 2: June tenth, twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier is going to
Speaker 2: have a parole hearing and I want to talk about that.
Speaker 2: One of the guests that we have a lot on
Speaker 2: this podcast, but also just like cool Zone Media podcasts
Speaker 2: in general, is my friend Moira Meltzer Cohen, who is
Speaker 2: a lawyer, a defense lawyer who is on Leonard Peltier's
Speaker 2: court case. And Moira asked us to read this statement,
Speaker 2: and I just want to say I co sign this statement.
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of research about Leonard Peltier for
Speaker 2: this podcast and also on my own as an activist.
Speaker 2: Some of the first protests I ever went to were
Speaker 2: related to free Leonard Peltier.
Speaker 3: So this is the statement.
Speaker 2: On June tenth, twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier enrolled member
Speaker 2: of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of Lakota and
Speaker 2: Ajibo Ancestry and the longest serving political prisoner in the
Speaker 2: United States, will be appearing before the US Parole Commission
Speaker 2: for the first time since two thousand nine. He faces
Speaker 2: staunch opposition from the FBI and other law enforcement due
Speaker 2: to having allegedly killed two FBI agents in a firefight
Speaker 2: on June twenty six, nineteen seventy five, after the agents
Speaker 2: appeared on reservation land to execute a pretextual warrant. The
Speaker 2: initial firefight occurred during the quote reign of terror on
Speaker 2: Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of Wounded Knee,
Speaker 2: a time of extreme violence when federal law enforcement installed
Speaker 2: a puppet tribal chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted
Speaker 2: Indigenous traditionalists. Everything leading up to these events, as well
Speaker 2: as the subsequent investigation and mister Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction,
Speaker 2: and sentencing, were characterized by gross misconduct on the part
Speaker 2: of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the courts. Mister Peltier's
Speaker 2: co defendants were separately tried and acquitted on grounds of
Speaker 2: self defense. Mister Peltier was railroaded, and his case is
Speaker 2: tainted by discrimination at every level, ranging from the withholding
Speaker 2: of exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition
Speaker 2: and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the trial
Speaker 2: judge to dismiss in avowedly racist juror, to the apologetic
Speaker 2: gymnastics of courts affirming his conviction in the face of
Speaker 2: meritorious legal challenges and admitted evidence of outrageous government misdeeds.
Speaker 2: Mister Peltier has been in prison for more than forty
Speaker 2: eight years and is almost eighty years old. He suffers
Speaker 2: from chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives
Speaker 2: insufficient and sub standard medical care. If you want to
Speaker 2: take action to free Leonard Peltier, you can call the U.
Speaker 2: S Parole Commission at two zero two three four six
Speaker 2: seven thousand. Again that's two zero two three four six
Speaker 2: seven thousand. Or you can sign the petition. And this
Speaker 2: is a string of This is a U R L
Speaker 2: so I'm going to read it out. N d n
Speaker 2: c O dot C C slash us PC dash free
Speaker 2: Leonard Peltier. Again, that's n D n c O dot
Speaker 2: C C slash us PC dash free Leonard Peltier. Leonard
Speaker 2: Peltier is spelled l E O N A R D
Speaker 2: P E L t I E R or you can
Speaker 2: follow Indian Collective on social media, which is n d
Speaker 2: N Collective. For more information on Leonard Peltier, Listen to
Speaker 2: Margaret's podcast on the Low Coda Nation. Oh thanks Moira,
Speaker 2: and read in the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matheson.
Speaker 2: And again, just want to reiterate, I go sign all
Speaker 2: of this. I've done a lot of my own search
Speaker 2: into this. You can and should too, and free Leonard Peltier, Magpie.
Speaker 4: Please tell these people, why will a mess the day
Speaker 4: this is happening?
Speaker 2: Well, because today on today is cool people did cool stuff. No,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Is there anything that's happened well, okay,
Speaker 2: today is a podcast about history and about cool people
Speaker 2: in history. And today my guess is prop and prop.
Speaker 2: You run a podcast called hood Politics with Props, Yes,
Speaker 2: and I use that when I want to figure out
Speaker 2: what the fuck is going on in current events. As
Speaker 2: far as I can tell, there's no current events happening.
Speaker 2: Oh man, right now, right, well, like not in the
Speaker 2: last fifteen minutes, the last.
Speaker 4: Fifteen minutes that completely derailed baits. Listen. Our mamas used
Speaker 4: to always tell us, baby, your arms is too short
Speaker 4: to box with God, and you just what we just
Speaker 4: watched it happen right now.
Speaker 2: Honestly, we are recording this on the day that Trump
Speaker 2: was found guilty on thirty four fellon account for.
Speaker 4: Unanimously, unanimously airy body Jerry Yo Peers bigged out.
Speaker 1: I just really don't know if I can be a
Speaker 1: professional today, Magpie.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be hard, it's gonna be very And it's
Speaker 2: funny because the news cycle. I mean, y'all are going
Speaker 2: to hear this four days from now. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: but four days from now is an infinite We could
Speaker 2: have had a coup between now and then.
Speaker 4: Who knows, you could have went to jail, broke out right.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just like the January sixth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was trying to like do the oh man,
Speaker 5: it's so funny.
Speaker 1: But I was trying to do like the all right, uh,
Speaker 1: like this is America, be rational, nothing nothing good could
Speaker 1: come of this. But the thing that I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: as he is a resident of the state of Florida,
Speaker 1: is that maybe, uh you know, voters rights could get
Speaker 1: changed there.
Speaker 4: So they actually did get changed, and just remembered, yeah
Speaker 4: they did. Last the good thing last ballot, they said
Speaker 4: the felons can vote. So yeah, well once they're once
Speaker 4: they're out, not once they're done. Yeah yeah, yeah, once
Speaker 4: they're out.
Speaker 1: Okay, is maybe voters' rights could uh once again get
Speaker 1: get amended.
Speaker 3: But it's so crazy.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be a professional. I'm going to be
Speaker 5: a professional.
Speaker 2: I'm mostly thinking about how four days from now we're
Speaker 2: gonna have so much more information, but you all can
Speaker 2: see the unfiltered Yeah right now, three people who two
Speaker 2: people who pay attention to curn events for a living,
Speaker 2: and one person who reads history books for a living
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 4: It's just so it's like as knowing to tie it
Speaker 4: all together, knowing we're witnessing history, knowing for a fact
Speaker 4: this is for until you know, the the heat dome
Speaker 4: rises and climate change finally takes us out. This is
Speaker 4: this will go down in history.
Speaker 1: So so to the Secret Service folks that are protecting
Speaker 1: him at his home.
Speaker 5: Are they legally allowed to have guns?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 4: They got to go to jail.
Speaker 1: Do they sit outside the jail if he got like
Speaker 1: sid First of all, he's not going to go the
Speaker 1: second of all, his jail would be like a room
Speaker 1: at mar A Lago, because.
Speaker 5: That's how fucked up this country is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just excited for Waco too.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we'll tell you.
Speaker 2: About how got followed at Waco.
Speaker 5: No, but I would love to hear that I went.
Speaker 2: I went on a trip recently across the country and
Speaker 2: the person I was traveling with was like, we gotta
Speaker 2: go see the Waco compound. And I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure I agree with you. We were not to
Speaker 2: have to go see the Waco compound. And so we
Speaker 2: drove by it and it's on this like gravel road
Speaker 2: and we got followed for like fifteen miles by a
Speaker 2: sports car for having driven by it on the gravel road.
Speaker 4: Wow, sports car, it's pretty random.
Speaker 2: No, And it like it turned around on the road
Speaker 2: to follow us. It was pretty like even it was
Speaker 2: just like, oh, there's someone behind us. It was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I see why, even though this is a public road, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I see why. They don't want I get it. I
Speaker 2: even I was like, I'm in my fucking I refer
Speaker 2: to my pickup truck as my Chud truck because it
Speaker 2: looks like a Chud drives it because I got a
Speaker 2: giant Tundra, and I'm like, oh, I'm safe I totally me.
Speaker 4: I like this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Anyways, you go to the near future. So
Speaker 2: today I even went more recent than usual. Today, today
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about the time when in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one. See, it's even in this millennium, after
Speaker 2: bankers and predatory international loan funds gutted their economy, thousands
Speaker 2: of working class folks in Urina took over hundreds of
Speaker 2: abandoned factories, got those factories running again, and found work
Speaker 2: with dignity and no bosses.
Speaker 4: Would you say that the government was behaving very messy?
Speaker 2: I would say that there's even going to be politicians
Speaker 2: who get convicted and don't serve time in this great.
Speaker 4: I was making a Lionel Messi joke.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, it went over my head.
Speaker 5: Okay, do you even know who Lionel Messi is? Magpie?
Speaker 4: No? All right, yeah, on the level of Pele as
Speaker 4: far as.
Speaker 5: Like Great is either.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: If you've heard of the game soccer, yeah, do you
Speaker 4: know that it's internationally loved as like the.
Speaker 2: Beautiful I genuinely like soccer, and I've watched the World
Speaker 2: Cup at least once. Whenever I'm not in the US,
Speaker 2: people are like it's way better in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's way better outside anyway, Lionel Messi, it was
Speaker 4: Messi Argentina.
Speaker 2: Sorry, okay, no, no, no, this is good.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you could borrow that later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, all right. So one of my favorite
Speaker 2: things to do on this show is draw wild conclusions
Speaker 2: and connections by draping red string all over my wall, okay,
Speaker 2: or talk about strange chains of dominoes. And today I'm
Speaker 2: going to tell you that the reason I have a wall,
Speaker 2: and that I'm recording this from inside a house that
Speaker 2: I live in, a house that I bought, is because
Speaker 2: of those workers from Argentina.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: When workers started taking over their factories, it inspired people
Speaker 2: from all over the world. A few of the people
Speaker 2: from the global North, like the author and filmmaker Naomi Klein,
Speaker 2: who alongside with her husband, went and made a documentary
Speaker 2: about the struggle called The Take. Some finance people from
Speaker 2: the US took note of that documentary, including a guy
Speaker 2: named Brendan Martin, who moved Argentina to figure out how
Speaker 2: to help finance this cooperative revolution in a non extractive way.
Speaker 2: While he was there, he learned about what's called non
Speaker 2: extractive finance, which is a way of loaning money to
Speaker 2: cooperatives that doesn't extract value from them, but is still
Speaker 2: a sustainable form of finance. Don't worry, there's gonna be
Speaker 2: burning tires and shit later in this story. I know
Speaker 2: I'm starting with finance.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: He came home, This guy, Brendon Martin. He comes home
Speaker 2: from Argentina a couple years later, and with what he learned,
Speaker 2: he starts a worker cooperative finance organization called the Working World. Okay,
Speaker 2: in proper cooperative form. They soon federated with a shitload
Speaker 2: of nonprofit loan funds to finance worker cooperatives and spread
Speaker 2: this model that came from Argentina. That federation is called
Speaker 2: Seed Commons. I worked for Seed Commons for two years,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that a modest nonprofit salary is
Speaker 2: enough to buy a house if you are shopping in
Speaker 2: West Virginia.
Speaker 4: Got it okay, because I was like, my wife works
Speaker 4: for a nonprofit.
Speaker 2: And uh, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: have a very nice house for you know, I've been
Speaker 2: live in West Virginia though, so it's affordable. And I
Speaker 2: got to confuse my family by showing up as like
Speaker 2: the anarchist bad daughter, you know, yeah, and be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I got a job in finance.
Speaker 4: You are quite a pickle for that family or yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so funny dominoes. Some seamstresses took over their factory,
Speaker 2: and now I no longer live in a twelve by
Speaker 2: twelve cabin in the woods. We're going to start our
Speaker 2: context with one of my least favorite things, and one
Speaker 2: of the things that people don't know what the word
Speaker 2: means is they use it wrong all the time, including,
Speaker 2: and I'm not mad at them, the word neoliberalism. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's fucking messy.
Speaker 4: It's messy. That's I'm glad you're bringing this up because
Speaker 4: like for the next couple of shows, like I have
Speaker 4: to actually get in and explain what it means. So
Speaker 4: I'm glad you're doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, it's because I all the time I
Speaker 2: hear people basically be like, oh, liberalism, it's neoliberally they
Speaker 2: conflate them there, misfortunately. Yeah. One of the most confusing
Speaker 2: and annoying things about language and politics is the same
Speaker 2: word means different things in different contexts. An Irish Republican
Speaker 2: has nothing nice to say to an American Republican. If
Speaker 2: you ever want to be entertained, look at the comments
Speaker 2: on like Irish Republican Army songs on YouTube, and it's
Speaker 2: all these Americans being like, yeah, we love Republicanism, and
Speaker 2: then Irish people being like, we would murder you.
Speaker 4: Yeah that is I don't think. Yeah, we are not
Speaker 4: the socialists.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Republican means opposite things between those two countries
Speaker 2: and a lot of the world. Libertarian is used by
Speaker 2: anti authoritarian socialists to distinguish themselves from authoritarian socialists. In
Speaker 2: the US, it means that you believe in private property
Speaker 2: above everything else and don't give a shit about people. Yes,
Speaker 2: liberalism is one of these words. Classically, liberalism was like, well,
Speaker 2: I like capitalism and I don't like kings, so privilege
Speaker 2: should rest not in the hands of the aristocracy but
Speaker 2: in the hands of the business owners.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: For an awfully long time, liberalism has now instead meant
Speaker 2: vaguely center left politics.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is like most people who are hearing this, If
Speaker 2: you like yourself as a liberal, or you complain about liberals,
Speaker 2: you're imagining people who follow the Democrats party line. Biden
Speaker 2: is a liberal, you know, believing in more rights for
Speaker 2: marginalized people, a state that you'll look after people who
Speaker 2: can't work, but not too extreme.
Speaker 4: Yeah, any of them that like that would what we
Speaker 4: would call bare minimum, Like it's just this is.
Speaker 2: I'm not a monster, Yeah, exactly, Like just enough to
Speaker 2: make it so that people fewer people feel justified in
Speaker 2: violent revolution. Yes, liberalism is to the right of progressives
Speaker 2: in US politics who start tying a little bit of
Speaker 2: class politics into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in the late nineties, a new word started floating around, neoliberalism,
Speaker 2: and it was confusing as shit to people because neoliberalism,
Speaker 2: I mean it basically means the old liberalism again, but
Speaker 2: not liberals like we understand them today, but free market capitalism.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Neoliberalism stands for shutting down all government protections for the
Speaker 2: environment and for workers. It stands for selling off public
Speaker 2: infrastructure to private companies, often to international companies, and free
Speaker 2: trade agreements that I think very negatively of and tend
Speaker 2: to well we'll talk about their effects.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, this episode the scuttle bucket around like the
Speaker 4: policy wonks is like, I think it's they're kind of like,
Speaker 4: it's time to admit that neoliberalism failed. Yeah, it did.
Speaker 4: Not give us the promises, the NAFTA free trade aught
Speaker 4: at just the Clinton of it all, the boy Clinton
Speaker 4: of it all. That's neoliberal. It's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: if we will bring China, will make China modern, you know,
Speaker 4: we'll just like, you know, instead of just having a factory,
Speaker 4: have factories all over the world, and you know, we'll
Speaker 4: just trade, you know, and then everybody wins, right, like
Speaker 4: you know, you know, we're all making money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, And like you said, like eventually even
Speaker 2: the realization that it didn't work trickled up.
Speaker 3: That's my trickle down econot.
Speaker 4: It's good. It trickled down.
Speaker 2: Hey, people eventually realized that this didn't work. It took well,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about what it took. By the end of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, neoliberalism has swept across the globe for
Speaker 2: the rich and powerful. It swept across the globe like
Speaker 2: a trend. This is cool, We're excited for the downtrodden.
Speaker 2: It swept across the globe like a plague and destroyed
Speaker 2: economies and collapsed economies everywhere. It went through a series
Speaker 2: of predatory loans. Groups like the IMF the International Monetary
Speaker 2: Fund managed to start the process of extracting more and
Speaker 2: more value out of developing nations. Okay, I'm kind of
Speaker 2: curious because like when I used to try and explain
Speaker 2: the IMF to people, the main people that you would
Speaker 2: talk about is like bail bonds, like predatory loans, like
Speaker 2: pay payday loans, these things that show up and fuck.
Speaker 3: Over environments everywhere they go.
Speaker 2: What you I'm curious what you're the thing you're going
Speaker 2: to talk about with neoliberalism.
Speaker 4: As Yeah, so I'm trying to talk about what does
Speaker 4: it mean to be a world power? And if you
Speaker 4: are a world power and fail, what does that mean? Right? So,
Speaker 4: and like what does it mean to have a collapsed government?
Speaker 4: Like so, so that's what I'm talking about, like you know, essentially,
Speaker 4: like all right, so you know, whether it's like rust Bell,
Speaker 4: it's basically it's like I'm trying to explain voters like
Speaker 4: in what we're working about. Like so, like, you know,
Speaker 4: the center of American economy was the car until it wasn't,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, And kind of when it wasn't,
Speaker 4: really dovetails well with the birth of neoliberalism because the
Speaker 4: stuff went international. So ultimately it's like if you're going
Speaker 4: to be mad at immigrants for taking your job, it's like,
Speaker 4: well this isn't really not really a new thing, and
Speaker 4: like you mad at the wrong people and just kind
Speaker 4: of understanding what it like the supply chain, the goal,
Speaker 4: the goal of finance is, you know, the most amount
Speaker 4: of money for the least amount of work. And then ultimately,
Speaker 4: so I'm kind of going through all that and then
Speaker 4: I'm going to land in the Congo to talk about
Speaker 4: the the cobalt things right there, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So ultimately that's what. Yeah, but it's like a I
Speaker 4: have to get through neoliberalism to even understand this because
Speaker 4: it's like it's not it's there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's kind of what I'm using.
Speaker 2: No, no, I mean, I mean, honestly, this is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I like your show. I think you
Speaker 2: do a lot of work showing context and then yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, thank you, Like I'm going to need
Speaker 2: that because it's like I keep hearing about what's going
Speaker 2: on in the Congo and I haven't like really dived
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, and like really it's like
Speaker 4: it's I mean the thing is like, it would probably
Speaker 4: have got there anyway, like, because you know, the the
Speaker 4: global North is propped up by the global South and
Speaker 4: just has been for centuries, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So eventually, whether it was nafter or neoliberalism or not,
Speaker 4: we were going to end up there. But the fact
Speaker 4: that it's so exploitative I'm putting on at the feet
Speaker 4: of neoliberalism.
Speaker 2: No, totally. It's yeah, it's the some of the same
Speaker 2: stuff as regular capitalism, just like turned up to eleven.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: So, as neoliberalism started to cross the globe, a powerful
Speaker 2: global movement rose up to fight it, which at the
Speaker 2: time was called the anti globalization movement. In retrospect, we
Speaker 2: tend to call it the alter globalization movement because we
Speaker 2: don't want to sound like a bunch of anti Semitic assholes,
Speaker 2: and also we don't want to sound like nationalists.
Speaker 4: Or Alex Jones. Yeah, I want to be all Alex Jones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And one I'm gonna cover that in
Speaker 2: more detail, that movement. But that movement didn't smash capitalism,
Speaker 2: but it it won. It absolutely broke the neoliberal consensus.
Speaker 2: It showed enough people that this is not what people
Speaker 2: actually want, and that they exposed the lives of neoliberalism
Speaker 2: enough that it eventually trickled up to the halls of power,
Speaker 2: and like the expansion of free trade agreements across the
Speaker 2: world is something that had stopped. I didn't know that
Speaker 2: until years after the movement had collapsed. I basically was
Speaker 2: like I wasted so much in my fucking life, Like
Speaker 2: I got all this PTSD fighting cops and shit, and
Speaker 2: we didn't accomplish shit. Every you know, FTAA still existed,
Speaker 2: we didn't shut them down, blah blah blah. And then
Speaker 2: I read this essay by David Graeber called The Shock
Speaker 2: of Victory that I'm not going to get into too much,
Speaker 2: but it basically was like, here's what we were trying
Speaker 2: to do. It basically was like people suck at gaining
Speaker 2: their immediate and their long term goals, but you can
Speaker 2: also often activist movements gain their middle goals. Our immediate
Speaker 2: goal was like end the FTAA, yeah right, And our
Speaker 2: medium term goal was like crush neoliberalists consensus, and our
Speaker 2: long term goal was like smash capitalism and have a
Speaker 2: society of like free association or whatever. And we failed
Speaker 2: at two of the three. But we accomplished a middle work.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I I felt way better, you know,
Speaker 2: pre rad. So this is a wildly internationalist movement. There
Speaker 2: were coordinated demonstrations happening all over the globe, from Italy
Speaker 2: to India to the US. People fought these extractive policies.
Speaker 2: At least two people I know about died in this fight,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to shout them out. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, an Italian anarchist named Carlo Giuliani was shot
Speaker 2: dead by a cop in Genoa at a protest while
Speaker 2: he was wielding a fire extinguisher. Carlo was twenty three
Speaker 2: years old and he was a history student, a punk,
Speaker 2: and a petty criminal. May he rest in peace, just
Speaker 2: to show this also shows the variety of people who
Speaker 2: were in the streets together and coordinating together. The other
Speaker 2: person that I know about who died in this In
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, a fifty six year old cattle
Speaker 2: farmer from South Korea named Lee Kyong Hey traveled to Cancun,
Speaker 2: Mexico to participate in the protest against the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 2: He held a sign that read wto kills farmers, and
Speaker 2: then he scaled a fence a top the fence, he
Speaker 2: faced the media cameras, and he killed himself with a
Speaker 2: pen knife.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: He was the president of the Korean Federation of Small Farmers.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: He had seen farmer after farmer take their own life
Speaker 2: because in South Korea so many people were dying from
Speaker 2: the poverty caused by.
Speaker 3: The World Trade Organization.
Speaker 2: They may he also rest in peace, And that's the
Speaker 2: movement I got into politics through.
Speaker 4: Wow. I just learned a lot about you right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a little moved, like wow.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 2: I dropped out of college and went to every protest
Speaker 2: I could and tried to organize things, and you know it,
Speaker 2: I acted like it was my full time job and
Speaker 2: got a lot of PTSD but also accomplished some stuff
Speaker 2: and amazing. Around the turn of the millennia, neoliberalism was
Speaker 2: just fucking gutting the world. I read a statement about
Speaker 2: it recently that was like, people talk about it as
Speaker 2: if there was winning countries and losing countries in globalization,
Speaker 2: but they were actually the only winners were multinational corporations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you want to be a winner, you can
Speaker 2: use our ads, I'm sure, one of which is gambling.
Speaker 2: If you do the thing, the ad says you'll win,
Speaker 2: always correct. That's the promise we make here, cools and media.
Speaker 2: It's legally binding, right, Sophie. Sophie's nodding, Oh no, shaking. Sorry,
Speaker 2: yeah no, sorry, I got those confused for a second.
Speaker 2: Here's the ads and we're back. So now Argentina. Okay,
Speaker 2: wait ah.
Speaker 4: Wait, before you do Argentina, I think like, first of all,
Speaker 4: if you're a cool Zone media listener, you probably understand
Speaker 4: how these dots work. But like, I'm gonna plain all
Speaker 4: this anyway on my show. But like the the a
Speaker 4: lot of times the question is like but how like
Speaker 4: how is And a good example I would give is like, okay,
Speaker 4: so say, for example, I'm use something light and then heavier,
Speaker 4: So like remember Tom's shoes. I was like a you know,
Speaker 4: a whole like thing where it's like, oh, you buy
Speaker 4: a pair of these, like you know, denim slippers, and
Speaker 4: then we'll send a pair to Africa. You know, so
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, yeah, buy one and then we give one. Okay,
Speaker 4: Well you're saying that is as if there's no shoemakers
Speaker 4: in Africa. So so when y'all do this, it's cool.
Speaker 4: You feel better about it. But you just you just
Speaker 4: put a shoemaker out of business right now, because everybody
Speaker 4: getting free shoes, right, So even even if they don't
Speaker 4: like them, you just flooded the market. So that's one way.
Speaker 4: Now you now scale that and say if you're if
Speaker 4: you're growing wheat, and you know outside of Kenosha, Wisconsin, right,
Speaker 4: you're next to a farm you know, also growing wheat.
Speaker 4: But but they got like seventy nine hectores owned by Walmart, right,
Speaker 4: So that means that in they're and they're getting their
Speaker 4: machines from China, they're getting their seeds from Mexico. They're
Speaker 4: getting there so they have the first of all, the
Speaker 4: connection the clients, the and and are just able to
Speaker 4: do things at a scale that are completely impossible for
Speaker 4: anyone to compete with. And and you have entire countries
Speaker 4: in entire government desiring for this to work. So you
Speaker 4: just it's like there's no competition, like there's just there's
Speaker 4: nothing you can do except for sell your land to
Speaker 4: that corporation. And so then so essentially what we're saying
Speaker 4: is like from the government perspective, it is like, what
Speaker 4: are you talking about? This is dope, man, all the
Speaker 4: costs go down. Everybody's happy. We're connected world. It's one country,
Speaker 4: this is one world, like and it's truly, we truly
Speaker 4: are sharing this one rock. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: it spinning through space. But in a way that says, oh,
Speaker 4: but but but this is better for everybody, But it's not.
Speaker 4: It's better for y'all. Yeah, it's not better for your
Speaker 4: neighbor who now like used to have could be able
Speaker 4: to grow wheat and then sell it like that is
Speaker 4: now impossible.
Speaker 2: No, totally. And this, yeah, the the buy one give
Speaker 2: one to Africa plan is like such a perfect example
Speaker 2: of a false solution to this kind of thing. And
Speaker 2: like what actually enriches areas is to bolster instead of
Speaker 2: gut their economies, you know, and like going in and
Speaker 2: saying like how do we foster small businesses? In my mind,
Speaker 2: especially cooperatives, but like how do you actually like what?
Speaker 2: And you know, and this is the era that you
Speaker 2: get the fair trap from, right, you get this response
Speaker 2: to it being like, well, how do we make sure
Speaker 2: that the coffee growers we're getting a coffee from aren't
Speaker 2: fucked over by the fact that we drink coffee because
Speaker 2: we're not going to stop drinking coffee, you know, and
Speaker 2: we're not going to start growing it in the US.
Speaker 4: Yes, not possible at scale unless climate changes, which it
Speaker 4: might eventually. Yeah, yeah, but right now we can't anyway,
Speaker 4: you're correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, So in Argentina, we did an episode a
Speaker 2: couple months back about a rebellion in Patagonia's huge wave
Speaker 2: of strikes across rural Argentina in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: If you ever want to hear me do early Argentina context,
Speaker 2: listen to that one. I'm not going to go over
Speaker 2: it all again. Then the stuff that Argentina's most famous
Speaker 2: for that I know the least about, happened like decades
Speaker 2: of various dictatorships. One day we'll probably talk more about
Speaker 2: the people who fought against that, But it's not what
Speaker 2: Argentine has been famous for in my circles. Instead, it
Speaker 2: is famous for what we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 2: an incredible bottom up labor movement. At the turn of
Speaker 2: the twenty first century, Argentina proved the neoliberal order wrong
Speaker 2: and showed the cracks in the IMF and the World Bank,
Speaker 2: and specifically and concretely, a fuck load of workers took
Speaker 2: over their factories and ran them more efficiently than they
Speaker 2: were under bosses.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 2: It's worth understanding that Argentinian politics in the twenty century
Speaker 2: they don't map very well to most other countries politics.
Speaker 2: For years, you have Perhonism, which is like right wing
Speaker 2: and authoritarian, but complicatedly so it was sort of a
Speaker 2: right meets left. It gets called centrist, but it's like
Speaker 2: way more horseshoe theory than that. It's like way more both. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, like Biden is a centrist, this man is
Speaker 2: the inversion of that, all right. Paranism is the ideology
Speaker 2: that ruled for a lot of this time after a
Speaker 2: guy named Peron, who took power after a coup nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three. It is fiercely nationalistic. It is anti communist,
Speaker 2: It is pro corporatist, but it's nationalism. Embraces ethnic diversity
Speaker 2: and believes in building a strong local economy and keeping
Speaker 2: foreign companies from stripping the economy.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, keive them money local.
Speaker 2: And believes in keeping class stratification to a minimum. There
Speaker 2: was a more proper dictatorship later, which was further right
Speaker 2: wing and anti pirnist, and I don't understand that show
Speaker 2: well enough to tell you about it. None of these
Speaker 2: tendencies that existed throughout the twentieth century were anything like neoliberalism.
Speaker 2: Neoliberalism is a different kind of conservativism. It's one that
Speaker 2: sells the country to the highest bidder. Yeah, but paronism
Speaker 2: was a really popular stance for politicians to take. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, this guy, Carlos Menim was voted into
Speaker 2: all office as a peronist. He immediately dropped the peronism.
Speaker 2: Politicians famously don't actually care about the values that are
Speaker 2: embedded into labels. They care about what they can get
Speaker 2: out of those labels. Correct, he was a neoliberalist.
Speaker 5: Fuck.
Speaker 2: He was also corrupt as fuck. He eventually was sentenced
Speaker 2: for arms trafficking and embezzlement, but he was like a
Speaker 2: politician still at that point, so he had immunity from
Speaker 2: actually going to jail, and he never went to jail,
Speaker 2: which is totally unrelated to oh, we successfully stopped thinking
Speaker 2: about today.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I was actually transfigurated into another place and
Speaker 4: then it was like, oh, yeah, no, never mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still Earth, nothing changes, still Earth. Yeah, Although what's
Speaker 2: interesting about actually Argentina collapsing, specifically Argentina, despite being like
Speaker 2: a globally south country, both in terms of physically and
Speaker 2: also like seeing as part of the developing world in
Speaker 2: a lot of contexts, was like by a lot of
Speaker 2: other contexts, it was like an up and coming economy
Speaker 2: like Canada or Australia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's quite a comfortable place to be with the
Speaker 4: incredibly beautiful humans Argentina.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, everything I read about Argentina, I'm like, I
Speaker 2: want to go to Argentina.
Speaker 3: That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2: It's pretty rat I mean there's yeah, there's certain places
Speaker 2: and times that I don't want to be there because
Speaker 2: I get killed.
Speaker 4: But most of the time, yeah, I mean the colorism
Speaker 4: runs incredibly deep culturally. Like I don't know a lot
Speaker 4: about the politics. I just know like of like the
Speaker 4: Latin countries, they're very they're they're a little more fair
Speaker 4: skin than the rest of them, and they take a
Speaker 4: lot of pride in that.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they are.
Speaker 2: During economic collapse. Yeah, they're in the economic collaps We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about a lot of the other countries,
Speaker 2: including like Uruguay, which is right next time we're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: fuck you, you had it coming. You thought you were better
Speaker 2: than us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically, yeah, because you think you better in all
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 2: Basically, it's like they thought you were white. You thought
Speaker 2: you were exactly what happened. Turns out your nose, That's
Speaker 2: exactly what happened to them.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: So once this guy met him, he takes power, I mean,
Speaker 2: he gets elected into office, he turns back on Peronism
Speaker 2: and adopts what's called the Washington Consensus model, which is basically,
Speaker 2: saw your country to Washington, and so he did, and
Speaker 2: this fucked the country up, just crash the fucking economy.
Speaker 2: Eventually for a little while, like Time magazine was like
Speaker 2: this is amazing, and they had like Time had him
Speaker 2: on the cover with the headline Menem's miracle.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety eight, Argentina started into a depression. And
Speaker 2: this was because the Russian and Asian markets were starting
Speaker 2: to crash, so foreign investment had dried up in quote
Speaker 2: unquote emerging markets, and Argentina has hit hard and the IMF,
Speaker 2: the International Monetary Fund, demanded its debts repaid. There's one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty two billion in debt, but they would
Speaker 2: like making up their own interest rates whenever they wanted.
Speaker 2: I don't entirely know the mechanism, but I was like
Speaker 2: reading it was like and then one month they jacked
Speaker 2: the interest rates from nine percent to fourteen percent. Like,
Speaker 2: but why man, I wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Sign that loan.
Speaker 2: That's like, and we could just change this whenever we want.
Speaker 4: No, I need a fixed rate, and you just just
Speaker 4: make it in numbers up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in order to allow for repayment, the IMF basically
Speaker 2: imposed austerity measures on Argentina. And this is what's happening
Speaker 2: all over the world. So pensions are cut, unemployment benefits
Speaker 2: are cut, education is cut, healthcare is cut, state employee
Speaker 2: salaries dropped wildly, and it's basically strip mining the country.
Speaker 2: They're like, okay, give us all your money, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we need that money so that we can eat. And
Speaker 2: they're like, that's not what we asked. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, the economy collapsed. Fifty eight percent of the
Speaker 2: population was below the poverty line by that point. Wow.
Speaker 2: By two thousand and three, unemployment hit thirty eight percent
Speaker 2: in Argentina. The election of nineteen ninety nine before the
Speaker 2: economies totally collapsed, but at depression has hit. Menem's position
Speaker 2: was weakened. He'd abandoned peronism for neoliberalism. He'd guided the
Speaker 2: country and things were in decline. He was voted out.
Speaker 2: This didn't turn the country around. It had already been sold,
Speaker 2: and the depression worsened. And so the working class got
Speaker 2: real organized and got real militant, and in particular, the
Speaker 2: unworking class got really organized. Okay, the unemployed workers, which
Speaker 2: was twenty percent of the country, is unemployed by the
Speaker 2: turn of the millennium. It goes up to thirty eight
Speaker 2: percent a couple of years later. Yeah, plus another twenty
Speaker 2: percent that's underemployed. They'd start what's called the unemployed workers movement,
Speaker 2: and they were called pikateo's for like picket picketers, and
Speaker 2: they would set up pickets, but they didn't have a
Speaker 2: union workplace to complain about scabs, so they were just
Speaker 2: blockade roads and demand subsidies for the unemployed be outside. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they would go and they would blockade roads with
Speaker 2: burning tires and shit. There's a lot of early evocative
Speaker 2: images from this time, and these were horizontal movements. The
Speaker 2: government would like show up and be like, who's the
Speaker 2: leader here and they would all yell back all of us.
Speaker 2: Most of the there's like one hundred thousand a month.
Speaker 2: Two sixty percent of them were women, most of them
Speaker 2: were young. Whole families would come out and join these protests.
Speaker 2: They would like set up like kitchens and shit in
Speaker 2: the middle of the road and start feeding everyone, which
Speaker 2: is good because people are literally starving. Their signature weapon,
Speaker 2: because what protest movement doesn't have a signature weapon?
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, was a.
Speaker 2: Three foot wooden club?
Speaker 4: Oh word?
Speaker 6: And okay, yeah, they're not around heavy. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 6: I think it's a I don't think it's like I
Speaker 6: don't think we're imagining like a caveman club that's like
Speaker 6: a huge you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like more like a three foot dowel rod.
Speaker 2: Thinking for my own nevermind.
Speaker 4: It still sounds big. Yeah, bonkers.
Speaker 2: Their signature uniform was a black and red bandana around
Speaker 2: their neck, and I love them. Women with black and
Speaker 2: red bandanas, burning tires and declaring they had no leaders.
Speaker 3: This is like my.
Speaker 4: Shit, Yeah, it's pretty dope.
Speaker 2: They started setting up basic neighborhood assemblies and mutual aid networks.
Speaker 2: The government is collapsing all the economies collapsing, They're like, well,
Speaker 2: we still got to take care of it ourselves and
Speaker 2: take care of our neighbors. And they started negotiating with
Speaker 2: clothing manufacturers to get clothes to kids. They started building
Speaker 2: childcare centers. They set up education workshops. They taught people
Speaker 2: like health and nutrition at different classes. They set up
Speaker 2: a network of pharmacies, a bakery, and a cement brick factory.
Speaker 2: I don't know as much about that.
Speaker 4: Last time.
Speaker 2: Through their bakery they managed to undercut I think bread
Speaker 2: was nationally subsidized at this point, where like you couldn't
Speaker 2: charge more than a certain amount for a lot of bread.
Speaker 2: That amount was still a lot by a person who
Speaker 2: has no money standards. So they the Pikataros, were able
Speaker 2: to sell bread for a peso for a kilo loaf,
Speaker 2: which is the cheapest that the government subsidies ever got
Speaker 2: was a buck sixty. But that was only three days.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they averaged, and so there's growing
Speaker 2: unrest in the parliamentary elections of October two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: The blank ballot one. I believe this means that people
Speaker 2: showed up and got their ballot and then wrote nothing
Speaker 2: on it. To blank and then turned it in hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think they feel like they got much to
Speaker 2: lose at this yeah point.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're burning tires in the streets, dude, bread
Speaker 4: is to experience, like d none of the above.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're probably like, Oh, the neighborhood assembly that actually
Speaker 2: feeds me, that's what I'm bout actually voting for.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, there's a clothing manufacturer named Brookman, and the
Speaker 2: seamstresses who worked there had the lives of seamstresses and
Speaker 2: factories everywhere, which is that it kind of sucked. They
Speaker 2: had fast turnaround deadlines, there was no talking, no music.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much worse than that. It was
Speaker 2: obviously seen. Some sweatshop factories are like the worst places
Speaker 2: in the world. I get the impression that this one
Speaker 2: like sucked, but wasn't like murder Land. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know whatever. As the economy started to sour, the company
Speaker 2: fell deeper and deeper into debt, and the workers' salaries
Speaker 2: were cut so low that they couldn't afford bus fair
Speaker 2: to go to work. Like, they're basically volunteering to go
Speaker 2: to work at that point, right, because you're like, I
Speaker 2: don't get paid enough to get here.
Speaker 4: I can't Yeah, yeah, if I can't afford to get
Speaker 4: to work, Like then what am I doing? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: paying you to be there? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, most of them had been. I've read from
Speaker 2: one source half of the three hundred employees were fired,
Speaker 2: but I've also read that there's only like fifty eight
Speaker 2: workers left at the time of the takeover the factory,
Speaker 2: which is like, you know, a sixth or a fifth
Speaker 2: the women who started this revolution, because they kind of
Speaker 2: started they at least started the factory takeover part of it.
Speaker 2: As best as I can tell, they didn't do it
Speaker 2: through like anger. They did it through stubbornness and resourcefulness.
Speaker 2: On December eighteenth, two thousand and one, they went to
Speaker 2: the factory owners. They like went to the factory, went
Speaker 2: to the owners and were like, hey, you're going to
Speaker 2: subsidize our bus fare or we can't afford to work
Speaker 2: for you anymore.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Like you know, the.
Speaker 2: Handouts from us to you are going to stop, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, And the owners were like, all right, you
Speaker 2: wait here and we'll be right back with some money.
Speaker 2: We're totally coming back, right, don't go nowhere. Definitely be
Speaker 2: right here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just never showed up, right, They just like
Speaker 2: they went out for a pack of cigarettes and never
Speaker 2: came back. And so the women wag and waited and
Speaker 2: the owners never showed. They just abandoned the factory and
Speaker 2: the workers and all the unpaid wages entirely. So the
Speaker 2: workers were like, well, we know how to run this place.
Speaker 2: It's our place anyway, and so they ran it more
Speaker 2: efficiently than ever. They paid down all the debts that
Speaker 2: the company had accrued, they found new customers, like in
Speaker 2: the middle of this like massive economic crash. They were
Speaker 2: just like, all right, we can just do this. I mean,
Speaker 2: one worker, Yeah, no, they just I love it.
Speaker 3: It's so fucking cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One worker named Celia Martinez said, quote, I don't know
Speaker 2: why the owners had such a hard time. I don't
Speaker 2: know much about accounting, but for me, it's easy addition
Speaker 2: and subtraction.
Speaker 4: Like you notice, most people when they say man, I
Speaker 4: could do your job's not that hard, usually are just
Speaker 4: being arrogant and dumb. But in this situation today, it
Speaker 4: was like, I don't understand what the product. You just
Speaker 4: here go to money, Like you said, that's so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you just yeah, you just you give the workers the
Speaker 4: money for the hours that they worked. Yeah, I just
Speaker 4: don't understand what's so hard about that. That's funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've ever seen the chart of theft in America
Speaker 2: where it's like all of the different categories of theft
Speaker 2: and they are all lined up, and all of the
Speaker 2: like burglary and robbery and like muggings and all of
Speaker 2: that or this like tiny percentage and then I think
Speaker 2: a bigger percentage than that is like asset forfeiture from cops. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then far and away the majority like is unpaid wages,
Speaker 2: Like that is most of the theft that happens in America. Wow,
Speaker 2: because there's no criminal prosecution.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like who do you? Yeah, how do you
Speaker 4: prove it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And so Celia Martinez also said, quote, they are
Speaker 2: afraid of us because we have shown that if we
Speaker 2: can manage a factory, we can also manage a country.
Speaker 2: That's why this government decided to repress us.
Speaker 4: M hmm.
Speaker 2: Because eventually the government's going to repress them. Although spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: they win and they still exist. This is still a
Speaker 2: cooperatively run business. All three of the examples that I'm
Speaker 2: going to use today still exist and they're still run
Speaker 2: by the workers. So now that the women ran their
Speaker 2: own place, they worked harder than ever because they had
Speaker 2: an equal ownership stake in the success of the business.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, well, you know it's like if you're
Speaker 2: like washing dishes for McDonald do you have kind of
Speaker 2: like a duty to slack off as much as.
Speaker 4: You Yeah, like the bare minimum, that's your your job
Speaker 4: is to do the bare minimal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're paying you minimum wage, so you do minimum
Speaker 2: mappter exactly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But when a business succeeds or fails and you succeed
Speaker 2: or fail alongside of it, you care about it.
Speaker 4: Different story.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're a small business owner, you know that.
Speaker 2: You know it's your life. Yes, Like like people are
Speaker 2: like time off and you're like, oh, that sounds like
Speaker 2: an interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was that. Yeah, But.
Speaker 2: While they're working, their lives don't suck the same, right,
Speaker 2: because they're doing something that they care about and they're
Speaker 2: trying to do it well. Because they care about their craft,
Speaker 2: they get to listen to music while they work, and
Speaker 2: it became a culture of helping one another learn. Like
Speaker 2: the older women would come by and like teach stitches
Speaker 2: over people's shoulders and all this stuff that was like
Speaker 2: not allowed.
Speaker 3: Before, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they made all their decisions and open assemblies.
Speaker 4: Like a democracy, like what could have been. Yeah, we
Speaker 4: sit down in discussion the.
Speaker 2: Whole, one of the whole. Like things that people talk
Speaker 2: about in the cooperative movement that kind of blew my
Speaker 2: mind when someone first brought it up, is like, why
Speaker 2: do we claim that we live in a democracy when
Speaker 2: like you spend forty hours a week in an autocracy?
Speaker 2: Like yes, So, while working at this factory, end of
Speaker 2: the bosses, one woman had her pay deducted whenever she
Speaker 2: would go to chemotherapy. They're like, oh, you didn't come
Speaker 2: into work, you don't get paid. When the workers took over,
Speaker 2: she didn't have to come into work anymore because she
Speaker 2: was sick with canvas.
Speaker 4: Had cancer.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all the rest of her co workers supported
Speaker 2: her and paid for all of her treatments.
Speaker 4: Just you, we shouldn't be so floored by, right, such
Speaker 4: a human Yes yet duh, Like you got cancer? We
Speaker 4: I got you girl, like you good?
Speaker 2: Like we got you? Yeah yeah, you've worked here forever forever.
Speaker 4: It's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like could have been any of us. Yep,
Speaker 2: Naomi Klein wrote about the Brookman women in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, quote, if there's anything to be learned from
Speaker 2: these surprising Brookman women, it's that the working class already
Speaker 2: knows how to organize and fight. In Argentina and around
Speaker 2: the world, original, creative and effective direct action is way
Speaker 2: ahead of intellectual leftist theory.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 2: And the very next day after the women occupied their factory,
Speaker 2: the country exploded into protest, not as a result, but
Speaker 2: just as part of the same thing. And if you
Speaker 2: want to explode your wallet all over.
Speaker 4: There, you go, goods and services, just pop a load
Speaker 4: right on your services.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's yep, here's the ads and we're back.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry about the popping the load guys.
Speaker 2: No, no, I set you up for You did set
Speaker 2: me up for it. Yeah, you're not the only one
Speaker 2: who sullid yourself there. So these protests pop up all
Speaker 2: over the country, especially in Buenos Aires in the capitol.
Speaker 2: And these are called, I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: different names for different parts, but these are called the
Speaker 2: Cassalaza pop protests, the stewpot protests, or the saucepan protests,
Speaker 2: compending on your translation. Yeah, some places will say, it's
Speaker 2: like casserole, like casserole dish. I'm under the impression that
Speaker 2: that's not the case, but my Spanish is like pretty mediocre.
Speaker 2: This is a classic form of protest where you get
Speaker 2: pots and pans and you march around banging them. I
Speaker 2: think of like the kid's book. It's like, is it
Speaker 2: where the wild things are something? It's like some kids
Speaker 2: book I have where someone's just like walking around the
Speaker 2: pot and pan banging on it. It's like the classic,
Speaker 2: like annoying kid thing to do to piss off your parents.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a cool form of protest. I've only been around it,
Speaker 2: like once in Italy when they were mad at the
Speaker 2: prime minister or something. Most famously, this method has been
Speaker 2: used in Chile, but it's also been used all over
Speaker 2: the world. These protests were spontaneous in that they were
Speaker 2: not like organized or called for by a labor union
Speaker 2: or by any other specific organization. Later the government is
Speaker 2: going to be like, ah, it's the peronists they organized it.
Speaker 4: That is, of course.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, there's nothing to that as far as they
Speaker 3: can tell.
Speaker 2: One participant said that it just started that someone like
Speaker 2: went out to their they just like walked outside of
Speaker 2: the pot and pants started banging, and so their neighbors
Speaker 2: started banging, and so then people all down the street
Speaker 2: did it. So people who saw it on TV did
Speaker 2: it's dope, and soon enough, yeah it's super organic. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: soon enough. Basically, the entire country was mobilized under the
Speaker 2: slogan kisevan totos they all must go or out with
Speaker 2: them all to be more libal. Yeah okay, yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: And and this was a slogan that then spread to
Speaker 2: the rest of the anti globalization movement.
Speaker 3: This was like.
Speaker 2: Argentina was like our shit, this is like this is
Speaker 2: our high water mark, Like, holy shit, people are going
Speaker 2: to fucking do something with this, you know, because the
Speaker 2: people of Argentina basically demanded the end of their entire
Speaker 2: political and economic system, which they blamed correctly for gutting
Speaker 2: their economy. And it wasn't like we demand communism or
Speaker 2: anarchism or anything out there. They're like, they're like, we
Speaker 2: don't like what's fucking happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, simple, you know.
Speaker 2: And this was both the working class and the middle
Speaker 2: class in the streets together, which is frankly a rare thing.
Speaker 2: Most of the working class was organized into unions and
Speaker 2: grassroot networks. So interestingly, the middle class elements actually had
Speaker 2: some of the more spontaneous rebellion vibe. Although then also
Speaker 2: you had the unemployed Picutari's right, who were working class
Speaker 2: and very rowdy. But you have all of these crazy,
Speaker 2: rowdy middle class people. When we whitewashed the history of this,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, they all went out in pots and pans,
Speaker 2: and then the government decided I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: the government anymore. Yeah, there's there's video footage of like
Speaker 2: middle class people sipping their mate while kicking in the
Speaker 2: glass panes of banks. Yes, it's so good.
Speaker 4: Hey, you guys want to smash this bank right now? Like,
Speaker 4: let's go get okay, listen, let's go get a couple
Speaker 4: of lattes. Oh mate, yeah yeah, being silly, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: I know. Mates. Yeah, they yerba yerba, so they go
Speaker 4: through yerbra mate, you know. And uh and then let's
Speaker 4: go let's go do some uh, let's go do some
Speaker 4: direct action. You guys down, Yeah, I'm down. I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why not?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And as best as I can tell, the protest didn't
Speaker 2: start off specifically destructive, but they got more routy more
Speaker 2: destructive when the state started shooting them with shit and
Speaker 2: killing a bunch of them, which is a common enough pattern.
Speaker 2: The reason the middle class was in the street was
Speaker 2: because the middle class was being robbed.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: The IMF cut funds off to Argentina in December two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, and all the rich business owners were
Speaker 2: like fearing a crash and causing a crash, so they
Speaker 2: converted their pesos to dollars and started taking them out
Speaker 2: of the country almost overnight. Multinational banks took forty million
Speaker 2: dollars out of the country.
Speaker 4: What yeah, damn.
Speaker 2: So it's like it's one of these things where, like
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, it's like collapses slow until it's.
Speaker 4: Fast, yes, yeah, until you hit the cliff.
Speaker 2: And like right now in the US, we're in like
Speaker 2: slow mode, although we might not be the time you
Speaker 2: hear this, you probably we're probably still.
Speaker 3: In slow mode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and often just stays in slow mode. But then
Speaker 2: sometimes cliff. So the government instituted what one journalist called
Speaker 2: uh cortolito, the children's playpen, or more literally the small enclosure,
Speaker 2: and they froze bank accounts, not just of the multinationals
Speaker 2: that were like robbing the country, and taking all the
Speaker 2: money out. They froze it all, so middle class people
Speaker 2: were suddenly frozen out of their life savings. You could
Speaker 2: only withdraw two hundred and fifty pasos a week. You
Speaker 2: could only do that if your account was pesos not dollars.
Speaker 4: So you can't pull your money out.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay wow, and soon enough as the crisis pulls on,
Speaker 2: you can't get any money out.
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 2: So people have just been robbed of their life saves
Speaker 2: by greedy, fucking corporations working hand in hand with their government.
Speaker 2: So they rioted. They smashed up banks while sipping mante.
Speaker 2: And I don't think sipping mante is not a middle
Speaker 2: class thing in Argentina. It's just such an evocative image.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty normal. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like coffee here,
Speaker 4: like everyone drinks it. But yeah, I just I like,
Speaker 4: what did what did y'all think was gonna happen? If you,
Speaker 4: like you shut down the bank, like you telling me
Speaker 4: my money in there? I just can't have it, Like
Speaker 4: who's not fighting? Like who not gonna fight for that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah totally. I have worked my entire life for
Speaker 2: the money that.
Speaker 3: Is in that bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can't have it.
Speaker 3: It's mine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even if it's as simple as like I just
Speaker 4: let's let's be as middle class as possible. I got Yeah,
Speaker 4: I got a direct debit for my light build. Yeah
Speaker 4: you're telling me I can't. So now I'm gonna have
Speaker 4: a late fee. It is not that I don't have
Speaker 4: the money. They gonna turn off my lights. Yeah, not
Speaker 4: because I can't pay for it. Yeah, because you won't
Speaker 4: let it go. Nah, fam we fight them.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and so they all you know, they chanted
Speaker 2: they almost go another banner read we are nothing. We
Speaker 2: want to be everything. I think they allowed credit card transactions. Oh,
Speaker 2: but you couldn't get cash out, and you couldn't convert
Speaker 2: the money out of paesos. There's like a million different
Speaker 2: things you can't do.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's kind of shady though, to be like what
Speaker 4: you can do credit because it's like, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 4: see what y'all doing. Yeah, that's even more shady. Noah,
Speaker 4: I want to pay cash. No, you can't have cash,
Speaker 4: you know what. Yeah, burns place down.
Speaker 2: And most of the economy at that point was running
Speaker 2: on cash for most people as best as I can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whack.
Speaker 2: Soon enough, the unions call for general strikes. The government
Speaker 2: called for a state of emergency. So you know, both
Speaker 2: sides do what both sides do. Yeah, And it's like
Speaker 2: if you read the like Cliff's notes, they're like, and
Speaker 2: thirty nine people died in the riots. Cops killed thirty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, say it right, say it correctly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nine of them were kids. Many of them were looting,
Speaker 2: mostly for food. Shop owners and security guards killed another
Speaker 2: seven people.
Speaker 4: I would love I would love to pay for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, yeah, exactly, I would.
Speaker 4: Absolutely love to buy this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew this, but we all
Speaker 2: got robbed just now, of all of our money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go check your account, Go check your account right now,
Speaker 4: shop owner.
Speaker 2: Check, you take some cash out?
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't take some cash out your cat, right, just
Speaker 4: to kind of low go get some twenties, try it, right,
Speaker 4: I'll wait here, I'll wait Yeah.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is even still with all of this,
Speaker 2: these protests weren't just like everyone running around losing their mind.
Speaker 2: They weren't like there was like puppets and street feater
Speaker 2: and this like celebratory like we are coming together to
Speaker 2: do this thing, vibe the president. It was not manim
Speaker 2: at this point, this other guy who's just to not
Speaker 2: throw in too many names, I'm not gonna includ him
Speaker 2: because he's not he's not gonna last much longer. He
Speaker 2: tried to get the military to intervene, and the generals
Speaker 2: were like, not fucking up, We're not doing that.
Speaker 7: You are on your own, homeboy. Yeah, we did not
Speaker 7: sign up. But it is, yeah, exactly similar to the US.
Speaker 7: They have laws about how the military is only allowed
Speaker 7: to be used for domestic policing in like really specific ways,
Speaker 7: you know, and they probably could have claimed that one
Speaker 7: of those was happening. And the generals were like, we're
Speaker 7: not fucking touching it.
Speaker 4: It looks like a parade to me, homeboy.
Speaker 2: They yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't making the fall for this, Like, yeah, shouldn't
Speaker 4: have fun with day money, you understand, ask people get
Speaker 4: like that you messed with day money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I tried to get some money out
Speaker 2: of earlier today and.
Speaker 4: It didn't work exactly. I should look, my son needed
Speaker 4: twenty dollars for his field trip. I couldn't give it
Speaker 4: to him. Yeah, it sounds like a U problem.
Speaker 2: And so it was the it was the Federal Police,
Speaker 2: the Border Guard, and the coast Guard out there killing protesters.
Speaker 2: So next the president goes to censor the news, of course,
Speaker 2: and the media secretary of the government is like, I'm
Speaker 2: not fucking the hell you got. Everyone is like this
Speaker 2: boat is sinking. I love it, Like, get away from me.
Speaker 2: You've got a fucking plague. So the whole time the
Speaker 2: president assumed it's the Peronists, so he he goes to
Speaker 2: the like Pironists, and he rather he goes on the
Speaker 2: news to beg the Pironists, this is fucking embarrassing. He
Speaker 2: gets on the news to beg the Pironas, who are
Speaker 2: not behind it, to please stop the protests. He will
Speaker 2: put them into the government as well if they will
Speaker 2: just stop the protests, and the Pronas are like, we're
Speaker 2: not fucking.
Speaker 4: Joining you either. I look like Drake, Like, bro, you
Speaker 4: done lost this one. Fam like there's no one you
Speaker 4: can call. I know that reference, all right, magbe I'm
Speaker 4: online enough for that, Yes, BBL. Pironis has already went viral. Man,
Speaker 4: there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 5: Hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the president resigned and had to be
Speaker 2: evacuated by helicopter because he couldn't get out by car,
Speaker 2: and so the the news footage of him fleeing by
Speaker 2: helicopter is just like it's two thousand l.
Speaker 4: Right, yes, just coward puss as. Like if we was
Speaker 4: in a like we was in New Orleans, yo, puss as.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we were not fucking Yeah, They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we knew he sucks. Now we know you suck.
Speaker 4: Knew he was a coward.
Speaker 2: Argentina went through five presidents in three weeks. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: I don't think they were either.
Speaker 4: That was that was it? Listen, Margaret. That was a natural, guttural,
Speaker 4: realcity like everything is, but that was really natural, Like
Speaker 4: what yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then importantly, and I actually think they did this.
Speaker 2: I think this is actually why I have pulled out,
Speaker 2: but I've read it in different confusing ways. They defaulted
Speaker 2: on their debt to the IMF. They were like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to fucking pay you and the rest of
Speaker 2: the world who's in debt as the IMF was like
Speaker 2: taking notes, they were like, wait, we can just wait.
Speaker 4: You could just tell them ukpay.
Speaker 2: Like what the fuck? That sounds amazing. Yeah. And the
Speaker 2: thing that I'm most excited about about these protests, if
Speaker 2: you ask me, is the alternatives to government that the
Speaker 2: people formed these neighborhood assemblies, which is what seems to
Speaker 2: happen all the time during these kinds of crises. We've
Speaker 2: talked about it extensively during our episodes on the Russian
Speaker 2: Civil War. For example, during the uprisings in Argentina, millions
Speaker 2: of people formed into neighborhood assemblies to make decisions and
Speaker 2: get things done in their areas in a bottom up fashion.
Speaker 2: The occupation of factories spread across this country at this
Speaker 2: time because hundreds of factories, well I thinks of factories
Speaker 2: had been abandoned by the bosses who were like, oh
Speaker 2: I'm in debt, everything sucks, I'm leaving, you know, And
Speaker 2: so hundreds of factories with hundreds of workers each start
Speaker 2: becoming occupied. Mutual aid networks are spreading too. Basically, the
Speaker 2: Piccateo model exploded across the country. One assembly put out
Speaker 2: a manifesto that I want to read because this is
Speaker 2: their like, it's just like up on their bulletin board.
Speaker 2: It's not even a like we published this manifesto for
Speaker 2: the world or whatever, right, and it's still fucking poetry.
Speaker 2: What is your dream? Do you remember? The nineteenth of December?
Speaker 2: That night you said enough of thieves. Yes, you shouted it.
Speaker 2: I heard you, We all heard you. We also heard
Speaker 2: you when you said, I no longer want to be
Speaker 2: who I was. I don't want them to decide any
Speaker 2: more for me. I don't believe in any political leaders anymore,
Speaker 2: nor in judges, nor in union leaders, nor in bankers,
Speaker 2: nor big businessmen, nor policemen. I felt so much pride
Speaker 2: to see you and me. It's just that I did
Speaker 2: not expect so much of you, even less of me.
Speaker 2: You surprised me because of that, because you pushed me.
Speaker 2: I am walking to find a way, banging pots, thinking
Speaker 2: out loud in assemblies with my neighbors. Where are we going?
Speaker 2: You ask, Well, we are trying to create, with neighbors
Speaker 2: a democratic and assembly based system from which our representatives
Speaker 2: can come forth. The majority express a firm refusal of
Speaker 2: political parties. There is no space for them in the assemblies.
Speaker 4: It's gorgeous. I know, man, we need that. Yeah, oh
Speaker 4: my god, we have this. I just got like butterflies.
Speaker 4: I'm like, god, damn, America needs that?
Speaker 2: And how And there's actually this thing about because Americans,
Speaker 2: especially white Americans, I think, see Argentina as like global South,
Speaker 2: it's all the same. It might as well be Mexico.
Speaker 2: And not that any of these places are replaceable or
Speaker 2: each other. But Argentina absolutely was like like we were
Speaker 2: saying earlier, it was it saw itself as like a
Speaker 2: Canada in Australia. It also had a really strong protection
Speaker 2: of private property. Like and so I think sometimes people
Speaker 2: see this and they're like, oh, well, people from other
Speaker 2: cultures are like just better at taking care of each other,
Speaker 2: and like, okay, sometimes that's true, but like this is
Speaker 2: still a country that like does it. You're not supposed
Speaker 2: to do this there. No, you're not supposed to create
Speaker 2: your own network of things. If they can do it there,
Speaker 2: it can be done, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very They really take pride in their Spanish
Speaker 4: like European ancestry.
Speaker 2: So yes, yeah, And so every neighborhood in Buenos Aires
Speaker 2: had an assembly, and then soon it spread to the suburbs.
Speaker 2: There's two hundred assemblies in Buenos Aires alone, with an
Speaker 2: average of two hundred participants at their Every Sunday they
Speaker 2: had an assembly of assemblies with four thousand people meeting
Speaker 2: for like four hours. This is the downside to this
Speaker 2: particular style of vav coach and it takes.
Speaker 4: To go to meetin's time, and there's a lot of yeas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they would break up into committees to address
Speaker 2: certain issues like health and media, and they would throw
Speaker 2: parties to bring the community together and help people in
Speaker 2: neighborhoods like find each other. Each assembly works differently. Most
Speaker 2: are open to anyone in the neighborhood. One band, bankers
Speaker 2: and political parties, another band media. One older guy, a
Speaker 2: shopkeeper said about them, quote, never in my whole life
Speaker 2: did I give a shit for anyone else in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2: I was not interested in politics. But this time I
Speaker 2: realized I've had enough and I need to do something
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so it's not like this wasn't just like waiting
Speaker 2: under the surface that everyone was just like really close
Speaker 2: friends with all their neighbors. Yeah, they just made it happen.
Speaker 4: I do think too, to your point, there's even even
Speaker 4: among you know, more progressive kind of people of color.
Speaker 4: We often romanticize our ancestral lands are ansenstral people's as
Speaker 4: if they were as if like you know, being power
Speaker 4: hungry is like modern like no, like you know, like
Speaker 4: there were people roaming the African Savannah, you know, lobbying
Speaker 4: for power against their chieftains, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 4: so this so to think that, like you said, like
Speaker 4: under the surface, they all wanted to go back to
Speaker 4: this sort of you know, communal lively like, no, this
Speaker 4: was hard fought, and it was. And if you're pressed
Speaker 4: and when pressed to a position, you have people like
Speaker 4: this shopkeeper that was like oooh, I was out here
Speaker 4: getting mine. It just the system failed me and I
Speaker 4: realized I needed each other. We needed each other, you know.
Speaker 2: And for me, that's actually a huge sign of hope, yes,
Speaker 2: is that you look at this and you're like a
Speaker 2: lot of people you could like look around and be
Speaker 2: like those that's my political enemy. Oh that's my political
Speaker 2: That guy voted for Trump, Oh that guy vote for Biden.
Speaker 2: I hate both of them. So I hate everyone, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: only I am like pure and radical.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you're like the people who did this revolution in
Speaker 2: Argentina were the shopkeeper who hated every.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, this is Karen and Chad Man. Karen
Speaker 4: and Chad you got radicalized, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And some of the stuff is going to stick and
Speaker 2: some of it is not. And the neighborhood assemblies are
Speaker 2: not going to stick, but like it's a fucking start. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so these assemblies were split. Some assemblies wanted to
Speaker 2: put pressure on government and reform it. Others wanted to
Speaker 2: restructure society around the assemblies themselves. But they were getting
Speaker 2: shit done and they were taking care of themselves and
Speaker 2: the you know, their neighborhoods, and they were taking over factories.
Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about those factory takeovers on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: The first we're going to talk about your show, which
Speaker 2: people probably probably already listening to. I hope, so they're
Speaker 2: not they're missing out, but I hope.
Speaker 3: So that's about.
Speaker 4: Anyway, every Wednesday, hood Politics will prop We really try
Speaker 4: to like step our game up. We're doing video ones
Speaker 4: now hood politics with eyeballs or four eyeballs where there's
Speaker 4: like zero potty words and so you can, you know,
Speaker 4: play it around either young or old ears. Yeah. So
Speaker 4: proptpop dot com hood politics a prop that's really the
Speaker 4: focus right now. And uh yeah, check me out there.
Speaker 2: And I have a substock you can read all the
Speaker 2: things I write a weekly column basically at this point
Speaker 2: of trying to spread hope in the face of darkness
Speaker 2: while also acknowledge while trying to make people acknowledge the
Speaker 2: goddamn darkness.
Speaker 4: And you're like, look, you're a good ass writer. I like,
Speaker 4: I like, like like full stop.
Speaker 5: Just got got my copy. I just got my copy
Speaker 5: of your book in the mail ship.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the other thing I'm supposed to talk about
Speaker 2: is I have a book that kickstarts like next week.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this, called a Sapling Cage, Sophie
Speaker 2: has a copy. Why don't you have a copy? I
Speaker 2: got to get prop up guy didn't get well.
Speaker 1: We're going to fix the friends of yours that get
Speaker 1: advanced copies and feel really special.
Speaker 2: But if you want a copy, you can back it
Speaker 2: on Kickstarter, unless you're a problem, which case I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you.
Speaker 4: One courious and I'll still back it on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, We'll see you on Wednesday, when we won't
Speaker 2: have two more days have gone by in the saga. Yeah, Trump,
Speaker 2: but we will. We're recording it in ten minutes from now,
Speaker 2: so we'll still be still won't have any more information
Speaker 2: that you.
Speaker 5: People in the future do.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, a more podcasts and cool Zone media,
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zone dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 5: Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, M