WEBVTT - Dual Power Part 1 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:07.160 You were out of town when the last cop left Seattle. 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.160 It had been unseasonably cool that week, the seventy degrees 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.360 of old and not thee you had come to dread 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.360 every summer. But you had already promised you'd visit your 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.079 family in Montana, and so when the riots started in 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.079 the National Guard open fire into the crowd, you watched 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:25.079 it on Twitter from your couch like everyone else. The 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.600 Second Battle of Seattle, they were calling it. You wondered 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.440 briefly what the first one was. They've been fighting in 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:35.040 Portland too, some kind of massacre in Oakland, and no 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.240 one was quite sure what was happening in that Appa Valley. 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.159 Couldn't be anything good, you thought, But it was Seattle. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.280 Everyone was talking about. The mayor fled the city and 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.840 the helicopter when it became clear the police were losing. 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.400 After that, the cops had simply broken retreated across the Cascades. 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.480 No one knew who was running the city now, and you, 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:56.000 share as hell didn't want to be the one to 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.880 find out. But after two weeks, you've burned through a 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.320 vacation day in every favor you'd ever accumulated at the hospital, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.800 and besides the rent was due, no one was sure 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:10.240 if the postal service was even still functioning, and with 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.280 the eviction moratorium lifted, you weren't going to risk getting 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.680 evicted because you weren't there to hand your landlord a check. 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:21.119 So with ray resignation, you pile into your battered car 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:25.240 and head towards snow Qualmy Pass. What surprised you most 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.120 when you hit Seattle was the art you've been expecting. 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.399 Burnt out buildings and streets filled with burning cars, and 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:33.800 there were some A few streets were still blocked by 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.000 what looked like improvised barricades, but every surface of every building, 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.360 it seemed, had some kind of mirror on it. Someone, 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:44.080 and no one seemed to be quite sure who had 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.640 first come up with the idea, had blocked off an 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.640 entire street up near Capitol Hill, and people were painstakingly 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.080 painting portraits of every protester killed in the fighting and 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:57.560 Seattle on it. As you walk past, they were discussing 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:00.760 doing the same for the dead in Oakland. The second 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.840 surprise came when you tried to pay your rent. A 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.480 woman you'd never seen before was sitting at the office's 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.280 reception desk. When you tried to handle your check. She 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:11.920 laughed and handed it back to you, explaining that after 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.359 the cops fled, the local tenants union had taken over 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.320 most of the apartments in the city and placed them 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.840 in something it called a community land trust. You didn't 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:21.880 quite get the details, but no one was going to 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.440 evict you, so you decided to just take the win. Besides, 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.000 your friend had convinced you to do some child care 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.040 for the tenants union in college, and they always seemed 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:32.080 like a decent sword, so it didn't seem to be 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:37.480 any immediate cause for concern. The hospital was another matter entirely. 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.040 From what you could gather, there had been some kind 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.040 of labor dispute between the chaos. Management seemed to have 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.800 fired a group of nurses for giving injured protesters shelter 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.760 from the police. Your word had already been understaff due 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.840 to COVID and budget cuts. Now the situation was intolerable. 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.640 Where still many of the senior administrators had fled the 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.120 city with the police, no one seemed to know who 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.120 was in charge, Supplies were starting to run low, and 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.560 with so many administrators missing in the insurance situation completely 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.440 up in the air on account of nobody being entirely 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.880 sure if Seattle was even still part of the United States. 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:14.480 It wasn't clear if anyone was going to get paid. 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.360 So when a co worker pulled you aside and asked 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:21.920 if you'd be interested in doing something about the management problem, 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.440 you figured, what the hell, Maybe it was time for 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.079 a change. It wasn't like it could possibly make anything worse. 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.440 The fired nurses, it turned out, had started to set 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.840 up a community health center with the help of the 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.560 local neighborhood council. But some of the nurses still working 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.839 at the hospital had another idea. Why not just turn 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.360 the hospital into the community health center. After all, the 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:47.920 hospital already had more equipment than any new center could 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.640 possibly assemble. All they needed was some help from the community, 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.320 and the whole thing could be run by a council 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:59.240 of the hospital workers. Insurance companies be damned. Besides, if 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.000 all the hospitals started pulling their resources together, they might 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.880 be able to solve some of the shortages. At the 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.040 mention of solving the supply shortages, even the more skeptical 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.160 workers started to come around. By the next morning, the 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:16.600 Seattle Hospital Workers Council was marching on the hospital. The 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.400 remaining management found out somehow and tried one final lockout 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.040 to hold on to their property. But as you saw 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.560 yet another column of protesters joining the crowd surrounding the hospital, 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:35.040 you knew this wasn't their city any longer. On April eighteen, 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.680 two thousand, one, military police in the Cabiliar region of 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.400 Algeria shot an eighteen year old high school students. Almost immediately, 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.560 hundreds of thousands of people took to the street, chanting, 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.000 you can't kill us, we are already dead at the 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.240 lines of policemen assembled to attack them. The police would 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.080 kill over a hundred people and severely wound five thousand 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.080 more in the months long battle for control of the 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:02.800 streets that followed, but protesters burned police stations, government offices, courts, 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.120 and the offices of Islamic fundamentalist parties. Until the government 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.400 agreed to give ethnic minority groups language and cultural rights. 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.120 The hated military police were driven from the region entirely, 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:17.000 and so few regular police stations survived the uprising. At 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.200 the regular police likewise ceased to function across broad swaths 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.680 of Kabilia. They were replaced on a local village level 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.200 by self organized security committees, which would assemble on the 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:31.799 rare occasion trouble emerged. Contrary to the expectations of the state, 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:37.240 crime plummeted, but the Algerian government otherwise continued to function 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.359 as usual for over a decade until the local government 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.640 and a small region cover Baca, attempted the regular local elections. 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.120 After banning the most popular political party in the region, 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:53.520 they installed an unpopular coalition governments. The people of Brabaca 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.440 responded by storming the city hall, season control of it 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.479 and setting up a democratic General Assembly inside the newly 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.839 dubbed House of the People to replace the existing government. 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.960 This was dual power in its original sense, a council 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:11.160 of the people facing off against an increasingly illegitimate parliamentary 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.240 representative in a struggle for control over the fate of 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:18.040 a new society. If you google dual power, you are 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.479 likely to encounter a pamphlet written by Vladimir Lenin entitled 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.320 The Dual Power, describing the conundrum of the situation following 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.600 the First Russian Revolution in February of nineteen seventeen, after 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.920 the overthrow of the Czar, political power was split between 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:36.960 two competing bodies. On the one side, a new provisional 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:41.080 government of liberal and social democratic politicians holdovers from the 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:44.279 old Duma from the previous regime. On the other side, 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:50.000 revolutionary social forces rallying around assemblies popular power called soviets, 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.320 which were councils of delegates sent by directly democratic factory, 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:57.240 soldiers and sailors committees. Lenin solve this as a situation 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.200 to be overcome by the seizure of state power by 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.120 a socialist party. For Lenin and his Bolsheviks, dual power 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:06.360 was a problem because, after the Czarist state ceased to 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.960 exist in the middle of the World War, the new 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.200 provisional government failed to fill the vacuum left in its 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.920 wake by its collapse. To Lenin, the solution was obvious, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.480 fill that vacuum with Lenin. For the peasants, soldiers, and workers, 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:24.200 who made up the majority of Russia's population, however, dual 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.440 power was their first fleeting taste of freedom and autonomous 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:31.800 control over their lives. Lenon used the Soviets to seize power, 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.120 but almost immediately began to turn on these democratic assemblies 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.800 of popular autonomy. Over the course of the Russian Civil War, 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.600 Lennon and the Bolsheviks strip power away from the workers, peasants, 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.720 and soldiers, sometimes by bureaucratic fiat, often at the point 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.400 of a bayonet, until the Soviet had been stripped of 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.640 all meeting in the very state named after their democratic 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:57.000 form and became synonymous with dictatorship. Dual power today draws 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.360 from the potential of that post revolutionary crisis from the 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.960 bottom up direct democracy that was so threatening to the 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.920 social order that Bolshevik revolutionaries and Czari's police buys alike 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:20.000 conspired to wipe them from the historical record. Just as 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.360 Russia was haunted by the memory of the French classes, 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:25.560 so is America today haunted by a memory of dual 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.040 power that, against all Ladge refuses to die. We are, 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.240 after all, still ruled by a greedy, bloodthirsty, and out 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.000 of touch elite who have chosen to march us to 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.280 our deaths by the hundreds of thousands by forcing us 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.920 back to work during a plague. But the Russian Revolution 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:42.640 is as far away from us today as Napoleon and 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:45.560 his brass cannons were from the Russian revolutionaries and their 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.839 machine guns. Times have changed. There is no Bolshevik party 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.520 waiting in the wings to seize power as the state crumbles. 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:55.200 The vacuum of the state leaves in its wake as 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.560 its power deteriorates, be filled by any number of organizations, 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.000 most even more hostile to the working class and the 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.960 Bolsheviks had been. It could be war lords with the 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.880 personal allegiance of the remains of the military. It could 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:11.160 be organized crime. It could be religious fundamentalist militias. Most likely, 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.480 it will be an uneasy combination of all of the above. 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:18.920 Or it could be you. It could be your family, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.800 your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, the person you 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:24.719 waved to every morning at the bus stop when you're 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.560 on your way to work. The past to that world, 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.880 the world run not by capitalists in their cops or 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.200 by war lords in their armies, but by autonomous communities 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.240 free to decide for themselves what to produce and how 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:39.480 to best use their resources to care for each other. 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.680 Is dual power in the twenty first century. At its core, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.840 dual power is about creating a counterpower against the state. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.120 During the Russian Revolution, this counterpower was formed essentially by 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.000 historical accidents, as two governing bodies emerged from the course 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.920 of the Fibrrian Revolution. But modern dual power does not 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.800 arise from the whims the course of revolution or from 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.600 an innate instinct of the working class. It is something 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.000 we've built together by creating organizations that resist the power 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:12.440 of the structures of violence, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and the 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.920 state name a few that control this world. Dual power 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:21.400 organizations can take many forms, from tennis unions, the debtors councils, 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:26.240 childcare cooperatives, to land occupations, workers councils, to rank and 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:30.800 file labor unions, mutual aid networks to community self defense organizations. 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.199 These organizations seek to build autonomy from and against capitalism. 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.880 In the state alone, there are no match for the 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.640 state's wor all power to inflict violence and corporate control 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.679 over our resources. But by joining together to form federations 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.320 and pooling their resources and expertise to coordinate their efforts, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:51.920 they can become a powerful enough force to challenge the 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:56.920 state both directly and indirectly. These dual power organizations are 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.400 designed to be the state's successor. As the industrial workers 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.000 of the world famously put it, they form the structure 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:04.959 of the new society and the shell of the old. 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.240 In order to fulfill that task, they take the shape 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.000 of new society. They need to create academics, called this 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:16.199 prefigurative politics, organizing that employs the values and organizational structures 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.760 that they seek to create in the world. As we 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.360 will discuss in the next episode, there are right wing 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.680 forms of both dual power and profigative politics, but for 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:29.200 most of the people who employ it, prefigurative politics means 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:35.400 creating direct democratic institutions without bosses, managers, bureaucrats, or party apparatus. 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:39.120 The means of creating the new world are thus the 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:44.920 same as the ends. Dual power organizations serve multiple purposes. 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:47.719 Their long term goal is to replace the state and 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.880 the corporation with free and autonomous forms of organization. One's 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:55.120 organized and powerful enough to protect themselves and manage the 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.640 logistical challenges of a new world with previous forms of 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:03.080 organization and power no longer exists. But even reaching a 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.720 point where this is remotely plausible requires not just the 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:11.000 painstaking construction of counterpower and organization out of a fragmented 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.360 American population. It requires a profound cultural transformation and how 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:20.400 we make decisions. As the anthropologist David Graeber put it, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:22.320 it is assumed in many parts of the world that 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.359 democracy is a group of people facing a certain problem 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.360 who come together to solve it in a way where 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.640 everyone has an equals say. It's true that most Americans 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.760 think of themselves as living in a democratic country. When 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.480 was the last time that any Americans actually sat down 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.120 and came to a collective decision? Maybe if they were 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:44.680 ordering pizza, but basically never. Dual power organizations thus also 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:49.040 service schools for democracy where people can learn, experiment with, create, 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.439 and spread their own forms of democracy and collective decision making. 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.800 When these spaces of democratic experimentation are functioning properly, their 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:00.760 very organizational structure serves as a kind of recruitment tool. 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.200 This was the original theory behind Occupy Wall Street, that 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.680 democracy and the experience of autonomy were contagious and would 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.800 spread rapidly as more and more curious people experienced it 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:14.199 for themselves. That experience, in turn, would create a new 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.320 generation of people trained in democratic practices who could go 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.640 forth and transform the world. Obviously, this didn't quite happen. 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.400 Occupies model of democracy was limited in many ways, not 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.640 the least of which was that it required a public, 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.520 physical meeting space that could be closed down by police violence. 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.000 But the initial premise worked. Occupy itself, of course, had 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.040 been inspired by the mass democratic assemblies in Spain, in 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.800 Greece in two thousand eleven, and the direct democratic coops 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.000 and factory occupations that engulfed Argentina for the better part 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:58.480 of the two thousand's. At the most basic, short term level, however, 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:03.720 dual power organizations are designed in people's needs. The cornerstone 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.680 of this effort is mutual aid. Probably the most famous 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:08.880 example of such a project was the Black Panther Party 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:13.840 survival programs. Former Black Panther Janina Irvin describes them in detail. 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.360 The Black Panther Party survival programs were, in fact an 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.320 example of an effort, a successful effort, while it lasted 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.120 to create dual power in the United States. The Black 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.760 Panther Party had a school, had free food programs. One 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:30.040 of its most respected survival programs was a breakfast for children, 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:33.280 which was overall a response to hunger and poverty in 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:38.080 the country, particularly among poor, low income Black people. We 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.440 had free medical clinics in Winston Salem, North Carolina. We 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:44.360 had free ambulances, free past control, free shoes. We had 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.960 free bussing to prison programs, legal aid programs to help 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:50.320 people get attorneys who needed them. And we had a 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.080 program that was called the Safe Program Seniors Against a 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:57.040 Fearful Environment, in which we provided free transportation and escort 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.520 service the senior citizens who needed to get out and 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.360 take or of their errands their business. They were often 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.720 being attacked, so this was a hour protection for them. 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:07.920 The Panthers were able to grow their influence by keeping 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:12.600 their communities safe, healthy, cared for, and increasingly autonomous for 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.920 the state. But most importantly, they were able to keep 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:20.000 people alive. As Black Panthers co founder hughe P. Newton 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:24.000 famously said, these survival programs satisfy the deep needs of 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.000 the community, but they are not solutions to our problem. 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:29.880 That is why we call them survival programs, meeting survival 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:35.920 pending revolution. The existence of the survival programs themselves reflect 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.640 the necessity of keeping people alive, especially people who the 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.120 state would rather kill or leave to die for building 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.920 any kind of power. These programs are also necessarily insufficient. 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.880 No mutual aid program, no autonomous project, no liberator territory 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.840 can provide for the entire community. While the corporation's capitalists 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:59.800 and states maintain their stranglehold over the resources and production 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.880 capacity at the working class collectively created over centuries of 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:09.600 grueling labor and struggle. Dual power, more than just survival, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.360 is about building the counter power to take it back. 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.480 Building powers withdraws the line between what is and isn't 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.720 dual power. Growing food for you and your friends, make 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.720 cut down on bills, and make some killer pesto, but 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:28.280 it's not necessarily challenging the capitalist system. Autonomy for its 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:32.280 own sake is not necessarily dual power if it doesn't 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.480 actively aid and struggle or better organize the community. That 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:40.479 from the perspective of building counter power, that autonomy is meaningless. 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.000 Making food for striking workers to allow them to stay 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:49.120 on strike longer is building dual power. We're simply producing 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.640 it for general consumption is not. While dual power organizations 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:56.040 necessarily serve the needs of the community, they must also 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.440 be able to pivot and attack the state in capital 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.200 and provide solidarity and beach fual aid to those in 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.960 their community who are already in struggle, or they simply aren' 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.520 dual power organizations at all. The simplest solution to this problem, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.359 of course, is to organize around a specific side of resistance. 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.720 Organizations that build up the capacity to fight can everge 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.800 from almost anywhere. The Symbiosis Research Collective described how dual 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.440 power organizations emerge from Palestinian prison organizing bring the First 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.400 into Fata and uprising against the Israeli governments in late 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.880 nineteen eighties. Most discussion of the First into Fata focuses 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.080 on the role of mass protests in making Palestinian society 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.679 ungovernable for the Israeli occupying forces. Less discussed is the 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.800 role of community organizations of mutual aid and confederated participatory 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:47.240 democracy and making such mass protests possible. Organizing from within 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.480 the political system was a political incubator of the Palestinian 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.480 resistance movement and offers a micro cosmic example of the 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.600 development of dual power in the much larger prison of 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.600 the occupation with hunger strikes, political prisoners eventually won concessions 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:06.200 for their own self administration within the prisons. They assembled 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:10.800 structures of political organization and representation, forced prison authorities to 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:15.359 recognize their representatives, and developed a division of labor around hygiene, 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:20.480 education and other daily tasks. Palestinian prisoners described this arrangement 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.000 as internal organization, similar to the concept of dual power. 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:28.080 Even the least free of circumstances. These prisoners carved out 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:32.120 space for self governments and created the preconditions to revolutionary struggle. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.280 Prisoners taught and studied everything from Palestinian history to Marxist 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:40.440 political economy, often from eight to fourteen hours per day. 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.520 As freshly educated and trained political activists were released back 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:49.320 into society, the resistance movement was galvanized. Illiterate teenage boys 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.120 arrested for throwing stones re entered the fray months later 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:56.920 as committed, competent organizers who had studied movement building, strategic resistance, 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:01.639 and dialectical materialism. Meanwhile, the organizing context outside of the 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:07.160 prison transformed dramatically. Saleh Abou laban of Palestinian political prisoner 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.440 from nineteen seventy until nine, stated, when I entered the prison, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.480 there wasn't a national movement. There were only underground cells 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.600 that performed clandestine lee. When I got out, I found 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.959 a world full of organizers, committees, and community institutions. Central 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.879 to this new world of community organizing was the Palestinian 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.280 labor movement. Unions were formed out of workers places of 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.520 residents rather than workplaces, because migrant labor was prevalent in 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:37.160 Palestinian unionism within Israel had been criminalized. Unions then formed 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:41.679 strong alliances with local organizations in the national movement with 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.600 rapid growth in the early nineteen eighties. Labor unions found 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.800 it necessary to centralize and democratize their structures to become 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:53.280 more resilient as Israeli repression intensified against union leaders and organizers. 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.280 These local unions were networked together through the Palestinian Communist 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.320 Party and the Workers Unity Block, creating a web of 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.479 labor organizers and community groups that linked their class struggle 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.919 to the larger projects of national liberation. This wave of resistance, 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:11.320 carried out largely outside the purview of the major Palestinian 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.640 political parties, showed that even communities and the most dire 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:19.240 circumstances can assemble astounding levels of organization and resistance, as 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.840 was also true in the United States. Although today the 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:26.119 memory of these prison radicals is largely forgotten, Palestinian organizing 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.200 emerged from the sites of deepest depression in their society. 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.480 But this kind and level of organization is not just 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.760 the property of the left, and in Part two we'll 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:37.520 see what happens when the right gets hold of it. 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:43.480 It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.400 For more podcast on cool zone Media, visit our website 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:48.560 cool zone media dot com, or check us out on 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.119 the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.960 listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.960 happen here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:58.920 slash sources. Thanks for listening.