Speaker 1: Welcome to it could Happen Here the show where I
Speaker 1: had to change the introduction because Sophie said it would
Speaker 1: confuse people. So now we're just doing the boring thing
Speaker 1: and saying the actual name of the show, which is
Speaker 1: it could happen here. Um. It's a show about the
Speaker 1: fact that the society is kind of falling apart or changing,
Speaker 1: depending on your perspective of things, and people need to
Speaker 1: prepare for what's coming, which is a world of greater
Speaker 1: instability and economic collapse and rising authoritarianism and increasing fights
Speaker 1: in order to reverse and stymy all of those terrible things. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things I've seen in
Speaker 1: some early feedback from um other stuff I've done on
Speaker 1: other shows, and also from earlier episodes of this is
Speaker 1: people who will go like, Hey, everything you're saying about
Speaker 1: mutual aid is rad but I live in X town
Speaker 1: and whatever state, and there's there's nothing here. There's not
Speaker 1: not an organized left. I don't I don't know of
Speaker 1: any mutual aid groups. Um, how can I get involved?
Speaker 1: Or like, how could I start my own organization and
Speaker 1: try to get people involved? And then another thing we
Speaker 1: get asked a lot of us, like, hey, what you're
Speaker 1: saying about building resiliency and preparing for difficult times, gardening
Speaker 1: and whatnot sounds great. But I'm poor as ship and
Speaker 1: I live in a tiny apartment um or whatever. I
Speaker 1: I have no resources or no room um. Even if
Speaker 1: you're not of enough money, like I'm in the middle
Speaker 1: of some horribly dense city. So this week we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking around those subjects in a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: And to kind of kick us off, I've got, of course,
Speaker 1: Garrison with me. Woke come up at nine in the morning.
Speaker 1: How are you doing, Garrison, ungodly early? Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hideous. It's hideous. Um. And then Margaret Killjoy, who's
Speaker 1: up at a much more reasonable hour because time zones
Speaker 1: are a wild ass thing. Margaret, how do you? How
Speaker 1: do we how do we introduce you? You're an author? Uh,
Speaker 1: you're a writer of fiction. You host a podcast called
Speaker 1: Live like the World is Dying, right, and you've had
Speaker 1: me on and you talk about a lot of the
Speaker 1: same things we talked about it and it could happen here.
Speaker 1: We're actually shamelessly stealing your your your podcast in order
Speaker 1: to make it corporate and sold out. How are you doing, Margaret.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be part of the corporate sold out
Speaker 1: my own podcast, um, and and actually very glad that
Speaker 1: you all do a wider audience thing. But um, I
Speaker 1: think that is a decent way to introduce me. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of different things, and I've been doing also,
Speaker 1: like organizing and trying to seek radical political change for
Speaker 1: about twenty years, to degrees of success. Actually mostly not
Speaker 1: to any success, because we actually still live in maybe
Speaker 1: a worse society than we were in two years ago.
Speaker 1: I tell people that I dropped out of college to
Speaker 1: ride freight trains and overthrow the government, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: good at either of those things. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: all your limbs, that's true. I do have all in
Speaker 1: my limbs. Yeah. And you're not in prison, um, which
Speaker 1: is really all anyone can ask of the universe. UM.
Speaker 1: So you have started a number of organizations in your
Speaker 1: career as an activist in kind of that hat. And
Speaker 1: I guess let's start with like, yes, somebody who lives
Speaker 1: in a place there's no kind of really really organized left,
Speaker 1: there's probably not in a lot of these places much
Speaker 1: of even like a democratic party. There's certainly not mutual
Speaker 1: aid efforts UM, and I do think that there's a well, well,
Speaker 1: mutual aid as a concept is is pretty firmly rooted
Speaker 1: an anarchism. There's mutual aid kind of organizations that are
Speaker 1: are not particularly leftist or at least people doing stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Like I think a good recent example will
Speaker 1: be the Occasion Navy, who did a lot of rescues
Speaker 1: after the most recent set of hurricanes, where certainly not
Speaker 1: a left or an anarchist organization, but a lot of
Speaker 1: what they're doing is UM is a community aiding itself. UM.
Speaker 1: So I don't where where do we Where do you
Speaker 1: want to start here? Well, I guess I mean specifically
Speaker 1: in disaster times, you don't necessarily work with the people
Speaker 1: that you would assume that you're expecting to work with.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the one of the stories
Speaker 1: that really sticks with me is like a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: who's this you know, UM train riding anarchist with governed
Speaker 1: in tattoos and and all of that. And during flood
Speaker 1: relief in eastern North Carolina was like flying into storms
Speaker 1: and small planes with libertarians because the people who are
Speaker 1: willing to fly small planes into storms and own planes
Speaker 1: tend to be the more libertarian side of things, and
Speaker 1: so here's anarchists and libertarians working together to get people
Speaker 1: what they need. And one of the things that I try,
Speaker 1: because this is one of the biggest questions I think
Speaker 1: that the left faces, and you know, people trying to
Speaker 1: make the world better faces, is how do we get
Speaker 1: people involved? And also how do people get involved if
Speaker 1: no one's helping them get involved? And UM, I don't
Speaker 1: have all the answers about it, but it's something that
Speaker 1: I I think about obsessively some a lot. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I really try and focus on
Speaker 1: with people as people say, well, I want to be prepared,
Speaker 1: and you talk about community being a very important part
Speaker 1: of apparedness, but I don't feel like I have a
Speaker 1: community because we live in a very isolated society. And
Speaker 1: one of the main things I try and remind people though,
Speaker 1: is that in the same way that property relations break down,
Speaker 1: like someone's like, oh, I don't have any stuff and
Speaker 1: if the apocalypse comes, what will I do? And like, well,
Speaker 1: the kind of the answer is that, like when's property
Speaker 1: relations break down, there's a lot of stuff and it's
Speaker 1: very people. There will be much stuff around, like warehouses
Speaker 1: exist full of stuff, and yeah, Amazon warehouses are going
Speaker 1: to become like fun boxes, Yeah exactly, slash fortified outposts alleged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and community is the same way, not that you would
Speaker 1: go raid community, but instead that um some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And but you can you can create community
Speaker 1: in times of crisis in a way that's actually harder
Speaker 1: to do when the existing social order exists. And and
Speaker 1: the the thing I always say uses my my dumb
Speaker 1: example of this about how people come together during times
Speaker 1: of crisis is you know, when I'm waiting for the
Speaker 1: bus and you know, some city or something, and no
Speaker 1: one talks to each other if you don't know each
Speaker 1: other until the bus is like five minutes late, and
Speaker 1: then everyone is comparing notes about where they think they
Speaker 1: saw the bus last, and everyone's friends and sharing snacks
Speaker 1: and things. You know. So in some ways, I'm like,
Speaker 1: be optimistic if you don't already no a community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think there's also things you can do that
Speaker 1: don't necessarily cost a lot of money to both kind
Speaker 1: of build resiliency and kind of community connections. Now, one
Speaker 1: of those things, I've had a lot of friends in
Speaker 1: different cities work for there there will be different farming
Speaker 1: co ops, right, and generally the arrangement is you volunteer
Speaker 1: some sort of time helping them with you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ship work on farms and in return
Speaker 1: you generally get some amount of produce or whatever. But
Speaker 1: really what you're getting is practical experience growing food and
Speaker 1: you're meeting the kind of people who are interested in
Speaker 1: growing their own food, and you know, those kind of
Speaker 1: connections can be really helpful when things get worse. And
Speaker 1: so I think it doesn't necessarily it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: cost much to to try building community now, or to
Speaker 1: at least try putting yourself in some of the spaces
Speaker 1: where the kind of people you might want to be in,
Speaker 1: the kind of people you you might want to know
Speaker 1: when things get worse might be. Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of um, there's a lot of like opportunities. The
Speaker 1: world kind of wants you to volunteer, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's all of these things that if you reach out
Speaker 1: to people and you're like, hey, I don't have any connections,
Speaker 1: but I'm interested in volunteering. There are types of organizations
Speaker 1: that do interesting things that are open to that. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of maybe it's terrible. But whenever my friends,
Speaker 1: especially my friends were in their twenties or something, who
Speaker 1: who don't really feel kind of lost and without direction
Speaker 1: for a while, I'm like, yeah, go sit in a tree, like,
Speaker 1: go join direct action environmentalist groups that are desperate for
Speaker 1: people to come live their lives in this like self
Speaker 1: sustaining community. That is incredibly traumatic and hard to do.
Speaker 1: And I don't necessarily recommend this to everybody, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's a thing that you can do, is that you
Speaker 1: can go participate in in different movements, some of which
Speaker 1: do want strangers, you know, some of which don't write. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't show up to everything and be like, why
Speaker 1: aren't you including me? You're a bunch of assholes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and UM, I don't know. So when when it comes
Speaker 1: to actually like trying to start something, um like like
Speaker 1: like going out and accepting, Okay, there's not Maybe I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't leave my family behind and go to a
Speaker 1: tree set, but I would like to, you know, start
Speaker 1: a community engaging in something direct Maybe that's not illegal
Speaker 1: direct action, maybe it is. It's none of my business. Um,
Speaker 1: how do you recommend people just kind of start organizations?
Speaker 1: Find people avoid pitfalls, like, you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: to make your own mutual aid group because there's not
Speaker 1: one in your town and you you wanna. I mean,
Speaker 1: people have expressed a desire to understand how to do that.
Speaker 1: So I'm you know, I've never I'm not an organizer.
Speaker 1: I'm barely a journalist. I am curious for your thoughts
Speaker 1: on that. Well, okay, so as my own caveat is,
Speaker 1: I'm no longer an organizer. I spent much of my
Speaker 1: twenties being part of organizations and then I finally um
Speaker 1: realize that I can just kind of do whatever I
Speaker 1: want and then figure out how to plug that into
Speaker 1: other people's things. But I will say the the main
Speaker 1: way I've heard this expressed and I believe in is
Speaker 1: that we should do if you want to start getting involved,
Speaker 1: is you think about what you're good at, and or
Speaker 1: you think about what you want to be good at,
Speaker 1: and then you think about the problems that you're facing,
Speaker 1: and then you think about how to apply what you're
Speaker 1: good at to the problems that you're facing. So if
Speaker 1: you're sitting there and you're like, well, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a really good illustrator, right, I'm not I'm a terrible illustrator.
Speaker 1: But let's say you're a good illustrator, and then you
Speaker 1: you could basically reach out to organizations that maybe you
Speaker 1: aren't even close and be like, hey, I'm an illustra rader.
Speaker 1: Is there anything I can do for you? All? Um,
Speaker 1: But if what you want to do is start an
Speaker 1: organization locally, it's okay to start small and build up.
Speaker 1: It's okay to you know, it's kind of a if
Speaker 1: you build it, they will come kind of thing in general,
Speaker 1: like if you start, if you figure out what you
Speaker 1: need to do, you know, we want to distribute supplies, right,
Speaker 1: then you just do it like you just um, even
Speaker 1: if you start by yourself or ideally you kind of
Speaker 1: start with yourself and a couple of friends that you
Speaker 1: drag into it, and then you see what gets inertia
Speaker 1: like rather than like forcing, rather than starting off, don't
Speaker 1: start off by writing your by laws. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe start with an idea of like if you have
Speaker 1: a cool name that you want to use, Like sometimes
Speaker 1: that's great to start with, like a hook, and like
Speaker 1: starting a band or something, you know, you start with
Speaker 1: like the thing that brings everyone together, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: a clever name. But but mostly you just start by
Speaker 1: doing it, and um, you know, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the ways that's longest standing that people can get
Speaker 1: involved with low really or start locally, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of resources about how to do it is is
Speaker 1: Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is a a mutual
Speaker 1: aid project that's existed and I wish I knew off
Speaker 1: the top of my head since when I want to say,
Speaker 1: the late seventies, but I really couldn't tell you. And
Speaker 1: it's just food. It's just organizing food to give to
Speaker 1: people in public. And it's actually wild how illegal it
Speaker 1: is in some places, Like people get arrested for food
Speaker 1: nut bombs all the time in Florida, in a couple
Speaker 1: of other places. But yeah, we talked about them in
Speaker 1: the first part of the season because there have been
Speaker 1: a couple of point. I don't think nationally the FBI
Speaker 1: is talked about them as a terror threat, but like
Speaker 1: in the Austin Field office, and I think one or
Speaker 1: two other places they've been like discussed as a terrorist
Speaker 1: threat for handing out food. I've had like helicopters flying
Speaker 1: overhead and like riot around the corner and stuffed for
Speaker 1: for handing out food with food nut bombs. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a they missed the second half of the name. I guess.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I think maybe if
Speaker 1: we were to create bombs not food, we we might
Speaker 1: not get as much police attention. But that's just a sory. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: what everyone says is that we need food, and no
Speaker 1: one says. No one would ever say this, no one
Speaker 1: would ever believe this. But we need food and bombs. Um,
Speaker 1: food and bombs, bombs for some food for others. We
Speaker 1: don't judge. We provide explosives and we provide food. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So if you can, I think, if you can, you
Speaker 1: start by working. You figure out what you're good at.
Speaker 1: You find a group of people that are interested in
Speaker 1: accomplishing the same thing, who maybe have such similar skill
Speaker 1: sets or different skill sets, and you figure out what
Speaker 1: you can do, and you start doing it, and you
Speaker 1: organize calling people and being like, hey, well you donate
Speaker 1: to us, or getting all your friends together to give
Speaker 1: you stuff to to redistribute or whatever, right, putting out
Speaker 1: calls on social media for things to redistribute. You know,
Speaker 1: most structures start grassroots, and most of the time they
Speaker 1: kind of tend to do best when they're grassroots instead
Speaker 1: of becoming a little more codified. So if possible, do that.
Speaker 1: But if you're just you, um, sometimes tying into existing
Speaker 1: organizations is a thing worth doing. And if there's nothing locally,
Speaker 1: you can look at things a little further away, or
Speaker 1: you can look at things that are on maybe on
Speaker 1: a national level. But there's a lot of dangers in
Speaker 1: joining existing organizations and structures, and I guess, I guess
Speaker 1: I would say there's like three types of danger, and
Speaker 1: one is that you talked about all the time. And
Speaker 1: thanks for bringing into the leftist vocabulary of the word grifter.
Speaker 1: I never heard anyone use the word grifter until your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's the most important word in the American English for sure.
Speaker 1: We live in a fucking grifter republic. It's incredible and
Speaker 1: we always have This isn't new, Yeah, but we need
Speaker 1: more words because we also need the word for people
Speaker 1: who are looking for useful idiots. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of social movements and not to be like I, I
Speaker 1: support the left. I think that what we're attempting to
Speaker 1: do is very worthwhile, and I like us more than
Speaker 1: the other side by a fair amount. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that there's a lot of problems with
Speaker 1: the left, and one of them is that people are
Speaker 1: looking either to just have you as a body with
Speaker 1: no decision making power and no autonomy, which doesn't actually
Speaker 1: build a better world because you're just stop being a
Speaker 1: cog in their machine and become a cog in our machine. Right.
Speaker 1: And then there's also people who are kind of um
Speaker 1: looking for useful idiots, canon fodder, like people to hang
Speaker 1: around while they while they do stuff, or you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to go to hot bodies to
Speaker 1: stand out in front of cop shops sometimes, yeah, and
Speaker 1: even like you know, even like movements that I really
Speaker 1: care about that might do a lot of like non
Speaker 1: violence of this obedience, although I don't I'm not particularly
Speaker 1: I'm not passist personally, but you know, it's a very
Speaker 1: useful strategy, non violence of disobedience. But sometimes they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're young and new, lock yourself to this thing. Get arrested.
Speaker 1: And I would definitely say to people, don't get arrested
Speaker 1: on purpose at your first actions, like don't be anyone
Speaker 1: else's cannon fodder. And so you feel like you are
Speaker 1: part of the decision making and part of like like
Speaker 1: you really matter and like then then don't um do
Speaker 1: dangerous things for other people? Those projects like the ship
Speaker 1: that states do that's so messed up is is turn
Speaker 1: human bodies into resources that then get sacrificed for unclear ends.
Speaker 1: Um And unless you feel like you have some sort
Speaker 1: of like there are times we're being arrested is necessary
Speaker 1: and helpful, but unless unless you feel you fully understand
Speaker 1: not just why you're doing it, but also that like
Speaker 1: you you you're not being told to do it, you
Speaker 1: have autonomy and like I'm going to do this thing
Speaker 1: that I know will end in my arrest because I like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's probably like I think most people
Speaker 1: in that position know this, But I definitely have encountered
Speaker 1: some uncomfortable situations in the past, I'm sure similar to
Speaker 1: once you have, where it did seem like people were
Speaker 1: kind of being pushed to take that risk for reasons
Speaker 1: they didn't fully understand or in a situation they didn't
Speaker 1: fully grock you know, yeah, which which it's at one
Speaker 1: of the things that when I talk about how I
Speaker 1: think this is the biggest problem, not not the cannon
Speaker 1: fodder issue, but the getting people involved is the biggest
Speaker 1: issue I think we currently face because there's so many
Speaker 1: people who want to be involved right now because the
Speaker 1: world is even worse than usual and um, and it's
Speaker 1: hitting groups of people who haven't been hit by before.
Speaker 1: And people are often also looking for a sense of community.
Speaker 1: And there's a thing that people we don't talk about
Speaker 1: enough when people are getting involved. There's two different reasons
Speaker 1: people get involved, and both are entirely valid, and one
Speaker 1: is to fix things and another is to find to
Speaker 1: break out of the isolation that they live in their
Speaker 1: daily lives. Um. And we need to be aware of
Speaker 1: that when we talk about how to onboard people, and
Speaker 1: we need to be aware about that. If you are
Speaker 1: getting involved, you should think about your own desires. Are
Speaker 1: you looking for community and if so, you can find
Speaker 1: it within radical action right um. But you are doing that,
Speaker 1: then you especially need to be on guard against peer
Speaker 1: pressure because it's a really easy way to feel like
Speaker 1: you're involved with things is to go hang out with
Speaker 1: people who are all doing a release scary thing and
Speaker 1: and that's beautiful. And I absolutely did that when I
Speaker 1: when I first got involved in anarchism and politics in general,
Speaker 1: I i joined in head first, and you know, spend
Speaker 1: a night in jail within the first couple of months,
Speaker 1: and I don't have any particular regrets about that. And
Speaker 1: I found community in a way that I had never
Speaker 1: had in my life because of how isolated our society is.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only reason to go do these
Speaker 1: and that is I mean, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people experienced that last year during the George Floyd protests.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of I mean, it's the thing we've
Speaker 1: talked about on in the first season. If it could
Speaker 1: happen here that times like that this war does this too,
Speaker 1: can actually provide meaning that that people have lacked. And
Speaker 1: a lot of it is that community that like community
Speaker 1: of suffer, is the trauma bonding UM that feels like
Speaker 1: the most important thing, even because maybe it is the
Speaker 1: most important thing you've ever done. I think in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases it is UM. But that's also mind
Speaker 1: altering and it um it can lead to situations that
Speaker 1: are not entirely dissimilar to cults. UM. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that they are cults, because cults are number one. With
Speaker 1: a cult, there's generally going to be like a leader
Speaker 1: and a in such but like there are things that
Speaker 1: happened that that draw people into cults that are just
Speaker 1: human things, their aspects in some cases, as I've said before,
Speaker 1: of like a good party. Um, but there are cults
Speaker 1: like aspects to the kind of groups that form in
Speaker 1: these traumatic situations that can lead people to start making
Speaker 1: really poor decisions. Um. And and so you have to
Speaker 1: really you always have to be kind of analyzing not
Speaker 1: just what you're doing, but what's going on in your
Speaker 1: own head, in the head of the heads of the
Speaker 1: people around you. UM. That's that's just always important. But
Speaker 1: I think particularly when you're when you're trying to do
Speaker 1: something new and different in a lot of ways, bigger
Speaker 1: than anything you've done before. R. Do you have any
Speaker 1: specific advice for like kind of avoiding the cults of
Speaker 1: personality that sometimes form in new organizations. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: have both informal and formal structures can both cause problems
Speaker 1: with cult of personality. There are these brilliant essays that
Speaker 1: I haven't read in like twenty years that come from
Speaker 1: the feminist movement, and one of them is called the
Speaker 1: Tyranny of structural Lessness. And as best as I remember,
Speaker 1: these are very short essays as best. I remember at
Speaker 1: the Tyranny of Structurallessness says, if you don't have a
Speaker 1: formal structure in your organization, you're going to have this
Speaker 1: informal leader who basically tells everyone wants to do. And
Speaker 1: that's a problem and and as a very important piece,
Speaker 1: and I believe it comes from a Marxist feminist perspective,
Speaker 1: but I'm not certain. And then there was an anarchist
Speaker 1: femin response around the same time, maybe I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: called the tyranny of tyranny that was like, yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: And also when you have a formal structure and put
Speaker 1: someone in charge there in charge, and that has other
Speaker 1: problems too, And I think that it's just we we
Speaker 1: have to be aware of both of these things that Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that most movements are very decentralized
Speaker 1: in grassroots as as huge advantages, right, but it does
Speaker 1: have problems of causing informal cults of personality. UM. Podcasting
Speaker 1: is a big part of this problem. UM. And actually,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that you're not an organizer like Frankly,
Speaker 1: And it's part of why I'm not an organizer on
Speaker 1: some level is because when people read the books that
Speaker 1: someone writes or listen to someone's voice all the time.
Speaker 1: It is very influential, right, and being aware of that
Speaker 1: and therefore not exerting that power is a very good thing.
Speaker 1: Um And but there's okay, So the other thing, like
Speaker 1: when I worry about like people getting involved with like
Speaker 1: don't get peer pressured into stuff when you first join.
Speaker 1: There's also this thing that is needs to be talked about.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'll have talked about this some previously, but entrapment.
Speaker 1: Entrapment is a huge problem, and specifically the FEDS tend
Speaker 1: to look for young idealist activists who can be peer
Speaker 1: pressured into actions that they may or may not have
Speaker 1: otherwise ideologically agreed with, like hey, let's go blow up
Speaker 1: a bridge or let's go blow up a damn And
Speaker 1: and this doesn't just happen to the left. It happens
Speaker 1: m oh, yeah, it's all around, yeah for sure. Like
Speaker 1: there's that case of the guys who are trying to
Speaker 1: kidnap the governor of was it Michigan. A lot of
Speaker 1: that was informants who were there's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: you can debate heavily whether or not it was entrapment. Obviously,
Speaker 1: what we we might consider entrapment morally often isn't entrapment
Speaker 1: legally because the FBI doesn't know where the lines are legally,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it isn't morally entrapment, right, And
Speaker 1: they do that a lot, and they usually succeed. Um well,
Speaker 1: they may not usually succeed it, though they usually succeeded
Speaker 1: the case and entrapment defenses are hard to succeed with.
Speaker 1: And so really, just like and thinking about it, I
Speaker 1: think developing your own moral compass and sticking to it
Speaker 1: is one of the single most important things that a
Speaker 1: new activist can can do. And not to be afraid
Speaker 1: of radical action necessarily like militant action, but but be
Speaker 1: wary of it um. But then again, I mean in
Speaker 1: terms of like being wary of what the other thing
Speaker 1: to avoid doing is like accusing each other, like fed jacketing,
Speaker 1: like being like, oh, well, that person is doing the
Speaker 1: same thing a FED might do, like wink wink. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a really complicated an annoying game to play, and
Speaker 1: if you're just getting involved, you're gonna have to learn
Speaker 1: how to get it play this game of not fed
Speaker 1: jacketing and also not um falling. Into stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: annoying because you probably have to kind of learn some
Speaker 1: of the stuff, even if all you want to do
Speaker 1: is give away blankets. You know, if you want to
Speaker 1: tie what you're doing to a larger ideological structure, then
Speaker 1: it's going to come up that you need to be
Speaker 1: aware of how repression applies to that larger ideological structure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all this is very useful specifically if you're trying
Speaker 1: to find something kind of pre existing um or you know,
Speaker 1: looking you know, or you know, starting something in the
Speaker 1: bigger city where you have like connections can be made
Speaker 1: to other existing organizations. And I'm trying to think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who live in more like
Speaker 1: rural areas. It's not much like a liberal or like
Speaker 1: you know, especially left is kind of subculture. How would
Speaker 1: how would you recommend people who live in those kind
Speaker 1: of scenarios try to start building this can really wouldn't
Speaker 1: say like they only have a few friends, Um what
Speaker 1: what steps do you think people can take if they
Speaker 1: have more, you know, a secluded set up, so it
Speaker 1: is harder. And I live in a red area close
Speaker 1: to a blue area, right, and I do most of
Speaker 1: my organizing and as much as I do organizing within
Speaker 1: the the nearby small hippie city, even though theoretically the
Speaker 1: thing that I care the most about is connections to
Speaker 1: my immediate neighbors. Right, Um, that is harder, and it
Speaker 1: is harder for a lot of different reasons, especially if
Speaker 1: you have cultural differences between you and the people that
Speaker 1: you're around. Right Like, I'm a trans woman and I've
Speaker 1: live around a lot of like farms and stuff, right
Speaker 1: And and previously this wasn't a problem before Trump. This
Speaker 1: what just wasn't a problem after Trump. Now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the fact that I'm trans as like an
Speaker 1: attack against people in a way that it never used
Speaker 1: to be. And and so now they all have an
Speaker 1: opinion about the fact that we're in address. But it
Speaker 1: still at the end of the day, I would say
Speaker 1: that most of the people that I'm around are actually
Speaker 1: totally chill. Like there's a vocal minority of really horrid people,
Speaker 1: right um. But even the people who might be and
Speaker 1: might have even voted for Trump or whatever, um, are
Speaker 1: not necessarily at least along my own identity lines. And
Speaker 1: also white are not necessarily going to give me ship.
Speaker 1: And you know, I can go talk to them and
Speaker 1: address and they might be sort of confused, and they
Speaker 1: might not be. But if you have more culturally in
Speaker 1: common with the people around you, then there is a
Speaker 1: lot of room that you can start working on from there.
Speaker 1: And this actually ties into something that I think applies
Speaker 1: to people across the board, which is we have this
Speaker 1: especially new activists, but also including people who've been in
Speaker 1: it for a long time, have this like real arrogance
Speaker 1: about the fact that we're like right, And when you
Speaker 1: want to change the world, you need a certain amount
Speaker 1: of arrogance. You need a certain amount of like I mean,
Speaker 1: I literally believe we need to not have a government
Speaker 1: or capitalism, and these are very major changes to our
Speaker 1: existing structures, a huge amount of arrogance to that. Although
Speaker 1: not having a guft amen a slightly less of a
Speaker 1: major change now than it was a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: it's true. And also like something like sometimes, actually, it's
Speaker 1: funny I used that it more in common with these neighbors,
Speaker 1: but then all the libertarians when goddamn authoritarian That bummed
Speaker 1: the funk out of me. Yeah, there's there's some good
Speaker 1: ones still, There's like again, there's the there's the there's
Speaker 1: the taking your private plane and do a disaster area libertarians,
Speaker 1: and God bless him totally. And you know, they're like,
Speaker 1: they just don't want them. You know. It's like, my
Speaker 1: dad is sort of on the libertarian side of things
Speaker 1: and keeps twenty dollar bills in the visor of his
Speaker 1: truck to give to people flying signs, and he just
Speaker 1: doesn't want the government redistributing his money. He doesn't mind
Speaker 1: redistributing his money. Yeah, And I'm like, all right, I
Speaker 1: don't have any real objection to that. He's also no
Speaker 1: longer anyway. If you come at people with this attitude
Speaker 1: of like I'm right and you're wrong, the kind of
Speaker 1: people that you can get to join your side by
Speaker 1: saying I'm right and you're wrong are not the people
Speaker 1: you want. You want people who challenge authority, including the
Speaker 1: authority of people who claim there should be authority, and
Speaker 1: and so just actually listening to people and like hearing
Speaker 1: people out and um when possible. Avoiding drawing lines between
Speaker 1: people is one of the main ways to connect with
Speaker 1: people across either cultural divides or especially political divides. And
Speaker 1: this this can't always happen, right, Like I walked down
Speaker 1: the street and address and someone like calls me a
Speaker 1: bad word, like I'm not going to be like, I
Speaker 1: understand why you think to call me that, and I
Speaker 1: understand how like me dressed this way kind of challenges
Speaker 1: your sense of masculinity that you've been brought up into.
Speaker 1: Is the only way that you can hold yourself strong
Speaker 1: in a very hard world. No, I don't do that.
Speaker 1: I um scream funck you and chase them. Um, I
Speaker 1: would ever chase anyone with a knife. I think that's
Speaker 1: not legal, So I wouldn't do that, but um, you
Speaker 1: know that might work. And you know, like, funk those people.
Speaker 1: I don't care what they have to say. No, of
Speaker 1: course not. And it when I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that I don't know Twitter brain has done is
Speaker 1: that like when you when you talk about reaching out
Speaker 1: and talking to people who you know don't agree with you,
Speaker 1: aren't aren't on your side ideologically, there's folks who will
Speaker 1: kind of assume, like, oh, so you're saying I should
Speaker 1: like try to be friendly with people who would have
Speaker 1: murder me. Like, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that, Like, as a trans person or black person,
Speaker 1: you should go talk to um a militant anti LGBT
Speaker 1: activist or a fucking klansman or something. I'm saying that, like,
Speaker 1: that's not within the broad I'm saying what what you
Speaker 1: need to recognize, But what I think is important to recognize,
Speaker 1: especially if you're when we talk about like post you know,
Speaker 1: collapse or whatever, is that within broad political tendency. So
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about like fascist or whatever, but I'm
Speaker 1: talking about like liberal, conservative, progressive, very broad political tendencies.
Speaker 1: You have roughly the same percentage of people who are ship.
Speaker 1: So in an anarchist group, the amount of people who
Speaker 1: are shitty is to be similar to the amount of
Speaker 1: the general population that are shitty. It's the same with
Speaker 1: every political tendency. But the corollary to that is, again,
Speaker 1: within broad tendencies, you'll find roughly the same amount of
Speaker 1: people who are basically rad And maybe yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: they have their brain got poisoned with dis info and
Speaker 1: they believe some stupid shit and they vote like an asshole.
Speaker 1: But you know they'll stop their car if they see
Speaker 1: someone in an accident, and they keep a fucking medical
Speaker 1: kit in their bag, and you know there that it's
Speaker 1: the it's the it's the ship that you know, I
Speaker 1: talk a lot about this, the stabbing on the Portland
Speaker 1: Max train. Well, the two people who who died confronting
Speaker 1: that asshole. Um, we're a republican retired veteran and a
Speaker 1: far left social justice activist, and they both you know,
Speaker 1: put their bodies on the lines. I think that, like
Speaker 1: when we talk about like being willing to kind of
Speaker 1: talk with people who are who are not on the
Speaker 1: same ideological boat as you, that's that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Not you should make nice with the people who want
Speaker 1: to w terminate you, Like fuck those people. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the thing you're looking for, the thing I'm looking for
Speaker 1: is the Republican who's going to, hopefully, instead of dying
Speaker 1: to saw alongside me, successfully defeat the you know, actual
Speaker 1: far right person. But yeah, yeah, totally, And and I
Speaker 1: think that that actually is part of the It's not
Speaker 1: always the answer for every person who's isolated, right, everyone
Speaker 1: who's socially isolated, but it is part of it. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to organize with people where you say you're
Speaker 1: the only leftist or the only anarchist in your area,
Speaker 1: then maybe you don't start. And this is actually funny.
Speaker 1: I'm very into being very public about my political ideology
Speaker 1: so that people know what bias is UM coming into
Speaker 1: things with. But but maybe you don't start your rural
Speaker 1: mutual Aid project calling it the rural Mutual Aid project,
Speaker 1: or maybe you do, and maybe you you just start
Speaker 1: doing it and you find people who are willing to
Speaker 1: have the same goals and means as you, and and
Speaker 1: I think you can do alongside of that, you can
Speaker 1: also just be really public about what you believe. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, UM Again, as an anarchist, I end up
Speaker 1: working with like church groups and things that I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily agree with on a lot of a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But they're not mad when I'm like, oh, I'm an anarchist.
Speaker 1: They're just like, huh, okay, I'm a church person or
Speaker 1: what you know, and like, okay, I'm not. I don't
Speaker 1: expect different of them, and they don't expect different of me.
Speaker 1: And we we know what we have in common and
Speaker 1: what we don't to a certain degree, and then we
Speaker 1: work on what we have in common and so airing
Speaker 1: and so this is both true if you're within the
Speaker 1: movement and you're hoping to try and solve this problem
Speaker 1: for other people. But I also think it's going to
Speaker 1: be true for people who are trying to build things
Speaker 1: in areas where they don't have, where they don't feel
Speaker 1: like the part of something larger is airing on the
Speaker 1: side of inclusion versus exclusion and not And like you're
Speaker 1: talking about, it's about airing on the side of not
Speaker 1: always include everyone, not always committing to a hard and
Speaker 1: fast rule. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, be be open to
Speaker 1: the fact that people can surprise you in ways that
Speaker 1: aren't terrifying. Yeah. Also, because you get terrified enough by
Speaker 1: an of like people who you think are on your
Speaker 1: side that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm sad. You all
Speaker 1: donto the ad pivots in this show because you can
Speaker 1: do it. We can do it, we can we can
Speaker 1: cut it in during one of the long awkward pauses.
Speaker 1: Go for it, and we'll keep all this up to
Speaker 1: it in, but we'll actually cut the actual so you'll
Speaker 1: hear it. It's like Finnigan's Wake. You're going to hear
Speaker 1: it out of order, Okay, And I hopefully you all
Speaker 1: be able to figure out the second half of it.
Speaker 1: But the first the first half is anyone who claims
Speaker 1: to have all the answers. Is selling you something? Oh
Speaker 1: uh huh yeah, oh oh you know who else is
Speaker 1: selling you something? Is it the ads? Go listen to
Speaker 1: the Guico Geico or or Jesus. We've had some bad
Speaker 1: ones lately. Um, there's that s os Cuba show that
Speaker 1: sounds we're rough. Uh. There was that one that was
Speaker 1: just like God, it was just like this is we
Speaker 1: are sponsored by God. Yeah. I think I've gotten like
Speaker 1: Walmart and McDonald's on your show before. Remember that's the
Speaker 1: people's food. Oh yeah, organized actually try to organize around
Speaker 1: the Walmart. That could be very so. Anyway, here's ads.
Speaker 1: If someone is trying to start something new inside one
Speaker 1: of these more secluded areas and like they have decided
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'm willing to do something. I'm willing to
Speaker 1: actually just like start it. How how would you recommend
Speaker 1: they try to figure out what some of the like
Speaker 1: biggest needs of the community are that they can actually tackle.
Speaker 1: Like how how does someone find out what to do
Speaker 1: with their mutual aid because they can like commit like yeah,
Speaker 1: I can do something around supply, something around this, you
Speaker 1: know whatever. Like how does one try to actually gauge
Speaker 1: what is important to tackle? I guess It depends on
Speaker 1: whether you feel like you're totally Like if in my head,
Speaker 1: if I'm totally inside Annissie community, but an area, right,
Speaker 1: I probably kind of know because I'm also experiencing whatever
Speaker 1: the thing is. But if I'm if I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit detached from it, then I do need to like
Speaker 1: do kind of you know, the sort of traditional methods.
Speaker 1: I think it's called listening projects. I've never actually personally
Speaker 1: done a listening project. I've been around many people who do,
Speaker 1: where you basically like sometimes you go door to door
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, what's up, Like what do you need?
Speaker 1: Like what's going on? You know? Um, But like say,
Speaker 1: for example, in the area that I live, there is
Speaker 1: a a rural organizing It's not the actual Rural Organizing project,
Speaker 1: which is a specific structure, but there is a rural
Speaker 1: mutual aid group in the largely red area that I
Speaker 1: live in that's run by by leftists, and they I
Speaker 1: think that largely they did a lot of like firewood delivery,
Speaker 1: for example, because a lot of the areas around here
Speaker 1: are heated by wood stoves, and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of poverty in rural areas, and of course poverty looks
Speaker 1: very different in rural areas versus urban areas. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the advantages of being rural poor. There's many disadvantages,
Speaker 1: like lack of access to certain types of services, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But one of the sometimes advantages of rural poverty, as
Speaker 1: I understand it, I'm not specifically an expert, um, is
Speaker 1: do you have space? Right, you just don't have stuff
Speaker 1: for money, and so you can have stuff if people
Speaker 1: give you stuff, so you can like story your firewood
Speaker 1: and so. And then also because it's this very specific
Speaker 1: tangible thing, people can get really excited about, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can chop firewood, or maybe even I can't chop
Speaker 1: firewood because my legs busted because I work in the
Speaker 1: paper mill or whatever, but I can. But I got
Speaker 1: a trailer on my truck, you know, Um, and I
Speaker 1: can haul that. And people get really excited when there's
Speaker 1: like things that they specifically are good at, especially things
Speaker 1: that I kind of have alienated them from other people
Speaker 1: that they're that they're good at that they can then
Speaker 1: participate in. And O. Which isn't totally answer your question,
Speaker 1: but I would say if anyone specifically is in a
Speaker 1: rural situation, I was looking to start a mutual a group.
Speaker 1: Look at the Rural Organizing Project. Yes, I don't believe
Speaker 1: that they specifically do rural mutual aid organizing, but they
Speaker 1: talk a lot about what it means to be an
Speaker 1: organizer within areas that are largely controlled by the far right,
Speaker 1: but are not. It's not like the people are all
Speaker 1: far right, they're just controlled by the far right, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the people actually there, once you talk to them, might
Speaker 1: actually be a lot more reasonable than like the media
Speaker 1: influencers who are part of this you know, same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is. It is one of those things. This
Speaker 1: is a topic we're drifting too, but it's when we
Speaker 1: drift too regularly on this show. We're like, when I
Speaker 1: talk with conservatives, it's it's not uncommon that I can
Speaker 1: without especially if I don't start by mentioning anarchy, I
Speaker 1: can get them to agree to a lot of the
Speaker 1: things I believe, which is like, yeah, maybe people don't
Speaker 1: need to be governed, Maybe that doesn't work out good,
Speaker 1: Maybe politicians are corrupt and should have less power, And
Speaker 1: like that doesn't mean that you're gonna you're gonna get
Speaker 1: them on the barricades with you. Um, because any productive
Speaker 1: kind of relationship starts from like a base of shared interests,
Speaker 1: and it's not a useless endeavor to engage in kind
Speaker 1: of trying to subtly, you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: feel out people around you who are ideologically not particularly
Speaker 1: similar to you, but also decent people, um, you can
Speaker 1: kind of try and work in some some something you've
Speaker 1: not not just some common ground, but you can try
Speaker 1: and get them to see that they agree with you
Speaker 1: one more than they think, um, and that that has
Speaker 1: an effect of changing the way people think about the world.
Speaker 1: It really does. Yeah, and you but you also have
Speaker 1: to go into it open to yes. Maybe maybe it's
Speaker 1: not going to change your opinion about the way the
Speaker 1: economy should be structured or the way that sure works, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, you definitely have to go into it
Speaker 1: with a I can now understand why you drive a
Speaker 1: big pickup truck that burns a lot of gas or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever thing. You might be coming into it thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least it might help you understand why they
Speaker 1: believe or do certain things outside of you know, Dave
Speaker 1: Reuben broke their brain because they got on YouTube at
Speaker 1: the wrong time. I don't know, Margaret, did you have
Speaker 1: anything else you wanted to really get into. I guess
Speaker 1: to one of the other questions that you all brought
Speaker 1: up was about preparedness, like maybe kind of almost in
Speaker 1: the inverse situation where let's say that you live in
Speaker 1: a small apartment and you want to be prepared and
Speaker 1: in which case maybe you have better access to community.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't write A lot of people who live
Speaker 1: in the city are just as isolated socially as people elsewhere,
Speaker 1: But at least you kind of have, like there's a
Speaker 1: little bit more easy access to ways to break out
Speaker 1: of certain types of isolation if you put work into it,
Speaker 1: because there's more likely to be groups around that are
Speaker 1: that are public that you can go interface with. UM.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like actual preparedness, you have the
Speaker 1: inverse problem, right of if you live rural you might
Speaker 1: have room to store beans and rice, and if you
Speaker 1: live in the city, you might not write UM. But
Speaker 1: I I will say, it's the other thing that I
Speaker 1: find people The two things that people talk to me
Speaker 1: about I think you all run into also is that
Speaker 1: people are either I don't have any community or I
Speaker 1: don't have any money in space. Yeah, and so if
Speaker 1: you don't have any money in space. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean in some ways, it's like, well, maybe your focus
Speaker 1: isn't like stockpiling stuff. Stockpiling and stuff is like the
Speaker 1: single most overrated part of individual community preparedness. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean I do it, but you know it's because I
Speaker 1: M my brain works that way. Um. But also the
Speaker 1: level of like stuff that you might be looking for
Speaker 1: might be a lot less than like, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like prepper media is filled with like here's how
Speaker 1: to build a bunk or under your pool, and I'm like, what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many levels I mean, somebody, somebody other
Speaker 1: things that you should be doing before you go to
Speaker 1: that stitch. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: if I had a pool, I'd be stoked, And if
Speaker 1: I have absolutely under it, I'd be even more stoked.
Speaker 1: I'd be so happy. Yeah. But but you know what
Speaker 1: it's like, it's the first five gallon bucket of like
Speaker 1: dried food you store is far and away more important
Speaker 1: than the tent, right, and like so just having a
Speaker 1: five gallon Jerry canful of water so that you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, what if the water turns off or we
Speaker 1: have a boil advisory, which happens all the time. I'm
Speaker 1: good for a couple of days, right, because most of
Speaker 1: the time people think about preparedness as like I'm preparing
Speaker 1: for the end times, and usually what it is is
Speaker 1: the end times are real slow and chunky and crumbles,
Speaker 1: that's the word, um. And so you're just really looking
Speaker 1: to like smooth out interruptions, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: can be done very cheaply and honestly. When when you
Speaker 1: start storing your fifth five gallon jerry can of water,
Speaker 1: you're not storing for you anymore. You're starting for your neighbor. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's good, but not exactly not the first step,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's better to prepare for if you
Speaker 1: have like a week's worth of power outages or a
Speaker 1: week's worth of the water not working right, And those
Speaker 1: are more incremental steps because we're not just gonna drop
Speaker 1: off and have no water forever starting in a month, right,
Speaker 1: probably not, but we mean very like there's gonna be
Speaker 1: there's enough remaining systems that that they want to fix it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's more likely that some some disasters gonna
Speaker 1: happen that we're gonna have, you know, a week worth
Speaker 1: of stuff gone, you know, and that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: actually more more reasonable to prep for. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, well, Margaret,
Speaker 1: where can Where can the good people and hopefully not
Speaker 1: the bad people, but statistically some of them will suck
Speaker 1: find you? Um, the good people can find me on.
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called Like the World Is Dying,
Speaker 1: which they can listen to you on if they would like.
Speaker 1: It's about individual community preparedness. I also am on Twitter
Speaker 1: way too much, at Magpie kill Joy, Instagram, at Margaret
Speaker 1: Killjoy my websites Birds Before the Storm dot net or
Speaker 1: Margaret Killjoy dot com. And that has like a list
Speaker 1: of all the books that I have out. And I
Speaker 1: have a new book, an old book being reissued that
Speaker 1: is coming out in November from a K Press. The
Speaker 1: book is called A Country of Ghosts and it's an
Speaker 1: anarchist utopian book because I was sick of people being
Speaker 1: like but how would an anarchist society work? And I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I wrote a book, damn straight. Um.
Speaker 1: It also has a plot, so it's not fancy get
Speaker 1: kind of bougie with yours. If you write a plot,
Speaker 1: you get the wall. Plots allowed only post structural literature well, okay,
Speaker 1: so this has actually happened to anarchist fiction writers before
Speaker 1: Buds of Mara was this anarchist fiction writer. Um oh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember where from I'm gonna this is terribly embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But he moved to England from a colonized African country. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: what did Rhodesia become? This is the most embarrassing. So
Speaker 1: it became a Zimbabwe, right, okay? Yeah, so yeah, so
Speaker 1: he was from there and then everyone and he moved
Speaker 1: to London until he realized that they're a bunch of
Speaker 1: racists and he would like breaksh it at awards ceremonies
Speaker 1: and then go back home. But he was a squatter
Speaker 1: for a while in the eighties. But he wasn't writing
Speaker 1: in the proper post colonial like Marxist realist tradition, because
Speaker 1: instead he was writing postmodern fiction, which is duckett and terrible.
Speaker 1: So he just like was like, I don't care, and
Speaker 1: so he's great. That is that is anyway. I love
Speaker 1: to see it. Um, that's the episode. That's the episode.
Speaker 1: Go out and right, postmodern jump on a train. But
Speaker 1: to yeah, probably also a bad idea. I talked to
Speaker 1: somebody who lost their legs doing that once anyway, Episodes
Speaker 1: over