WEBVTT - Refuse Dystopia 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:06.200 Episode five refuse Dystopia. In the end, the state failed 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.840 in more places than it succeeded. It was a matter 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.080 of sheer logistics. After more than a century of taking 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.000 the United States for granted as a concept, the men 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.040 women in jack booted thugs at the top were reminded 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.520 of just how big this country is. In response to 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.279 a government crackdown, wildcats strikes sparked up all across the 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:29.240 big cities. Many were crushed by police and arrested. Activists 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.159 were often forced back into their old service industry jobs 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.760 as prison labor. But some of the strikes succeeded. With 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.200 interstate commerce breaking down, police in many urban areas weren't 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.480 able to maintain their supplies of riot munitions and ammunition 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:45.559 in your own area, a spirited alliance with some of 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.159 the rural communities near by allowed you to move like 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.080 water when the cops came in force while choking their 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:55.160 access to supplies from the central government. Eventually they broke 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.160 and left. That story more or less was repeated in 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:03.000 hundreds of com unities across the country. Eventually the Feds 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.399 gave up. There were attempts to impose demands on the government, 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.080 and some of those demands even went through, but most 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.120 of the old States power devolved into a loose association 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.000 of local communities. What's going on in some of those 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:19.440 communities sounds pretty scary. You've heard awful stories from other states, 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:22.720 but where you live things are looking up. No one 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.880 pays rent now in your neighborhood. People own the property 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.319 they're willing to maintain. There are more houses than people still, 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.240 as there have always been, so the biggest logistical hurdle 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.279 has been organizing training and skill sharing across the city 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.160 and nearby towns to ensure everything stays maintained. For the 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.959 most part, it does. Power is almost as reliable as 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.360 it used to be before things fell apart, and the 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.920 hybrid solar wind set up you and your community put 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:50.640 together works better than the old system did. By the end. 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:53.840 You all have to be more careful about your power use. 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.160 No leaving things plugged in, fewer personal appliances, and more 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.240 shared ones. During the summer, you run your ace at 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.440 the heat of the day and keep your homes properly 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:07.720 sealed so it stays cool at night. The food situation 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.440 got bad at a couple of points. During the worst days, 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:12.840 you learned what it feels like to be truly hungry. 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.720 But between the people who died and the people who fled, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.160 including most of the old money types, the overall caloric 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.799 need in your area dropped substantially. You all got better 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:26.520 at aquaponics, building greenhouses, learning how to cultivate and survive 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.679 off plants native to your area. Now chickens and even 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.560 a few cows graze free in every neighborhood. You and 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.280 your next door neighbor keep goats and make cheese. You 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.480 trade for eggs every couple of weeks. You no longer 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:41.200 own a car, or rather, your car is no longer 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.040 just your car. It was new enough that one of 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.440 the mechanic collectives was able to modify it into a 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.200 purely electric vehicle, and now it runs off the same 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.400 solar grid as everything else. Every block has a couple 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.320 of vehicles just like this in common. They're used for 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:59.200 hauling produce, transporting small groups on occasional johnts across town, 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.800 and even the odd joy ride. There's a sign up 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.720 sheet for that. There are times when you miss the 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.480 old days, but then you think about the people who died, 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.960 and those last terrible convulsions of a broken system. You 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.040 think about the friends you had who didn't make it 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:15.520 through the months of hunger, or who died to gunfire 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.720 by the police or from vigilantes. The new world you've 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.079 helped to build isn't perfect, but you know it will 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:23.519 never turn into the kind of monster that brought you here. 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.160 You owe it to the dead to make sure of that. 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:36.600 On Thursday June at approximately one am, the twelve story 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:41.320 Champlain Tower South Complex in Miami, Florida collapsed. Dozens of 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:45.680 people were buried in the rubble would ultimately die crushed 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.640 to death by their own homes. It took weeks for 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.280 rescuers to search through more than fourteen thousand pounds of rubble, 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:54.880 and was just over a month before the final victim 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:59.040 was definitively identified. The story of how and why the 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.600 Champlain Tower collapsed and killed so many of its residents 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:06.040 is a perfect example of how social democracy can fail 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:10.160 when confronted with an existential threat. See In a condo 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.720 complex like the Champlain Towers, all the residents own part 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.240 of the building. They elect representatives a condo board to 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.800 make decisions about things like when to make repairs and 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.080 how much to spend on those repairs. In many ways, 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:25.800 this is a better situation for the residents than say, 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.599 living in an apartment complex. Your home is your own property. 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.120 You don't live at the dictates of a landlord. But 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.200 if one or a few of you recognize a major 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:36.840 problem with the larger building, you have to get everyone 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.600 else on board in order to fund repairs. The Champlain 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.480 Towers Condo Board met repeatedly in the years that led 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.160 up to the collapse. Many on the board pushed their 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.120 fellow residents to pony up the cash hints of thousands 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:51.919 of dollars apiece to fix the very obvious damage and 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:55.640 structural failures of their building. People don't like to spend 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.040 huge amounts of money to fix problems they're pretty sure 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.080 they can ignore, so the repair is kept getting put off. 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.000 People would demand more inspections, which took more time and 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.040 put off further votes on the millions and desperately needed repairs. 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.359 With every year that went by, the damage deepened and 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.440 the price of repair increased from nine million dollars to 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.600 fifteen million dollars. For the people who accepted the severity 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.480 of the problem, this delay was intolerable. In two thousand nineteen, 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.680 the President of the condo board, and at Goldstein resigned 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:28.159 in protest. In a letter to the condo Association, she wrote, 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:30.839 we work for months to go in one direction, and 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.200 at the very last minute objections are raised that should 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:35.840 have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning. This 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:39.520 pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.919 the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.479 I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.640 functioning of our board and many before us, but describes 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.039 a board that works very hard but cannot, for the 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.560 reasons above, accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish. 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.800 Residents signed a petition against an assessment that pegged the 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.960 price of repair between eighty thousand and two hundred thousand 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:05.880 dollars per condo. People balked that the cost was akin 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.920 to taking out a second mortgage. Dozens of them then 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.360 died in their homes, lives over but bank accounts fuller. 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.760 They died alongside residents who saw the problem and supported 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.400 taking action, but failed to force the issue. Like the 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.279 residents of the Champlain Towers, we are stuck in a 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.160 problem of collective action. We cannot fix anything without getting 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:27.960 a hell of a lot of our fellow humans on 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.200 board a solution. And if we fail, opting out of 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.200 the system, moving to the woods or whatever won't stop 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.039 us from burning from the same wildfires that scorched the 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.960 homes of climate deniers. I tend to think that among 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.160 the people who see the true scope of the problems 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:47.040 facing us, you have two broad categories of response. They 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.840 are the optimists, always at work trying to mitigate harm 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.680 and wake people up, and there are the nihilists. The 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:56.240 nihilists also break into two broad chunks. One chunk of 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.239 us want to go hide in the woods or drop 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.200 out in other ways. These are the dark mountain types. 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.880 They accept the situation as fucked beyond unfucking and try 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.599 to enjoy what time they have left. On the other 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.840 side are people who decide the best thing they can 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.760 do is light fires and break things. Over a billion 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.680 sea creatures died on the Northwest coast when the Pacific 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:21.120 heat dome hit in early summer one. New research indicates 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:24.360 that in recent years, global insect populations have declined by 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:28.000 as much as seventy five one point five degrees celsius 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.680 of warming, which we absolutely will hit in the very 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.640 near future, will kill an additional hundred and fifty million 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.760 people per year from air pollution alone. When you put 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.600 the facts together and really force yourself to look at them, 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.200 it is hard not to at least consider terrorism as 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.280 a legitimate response to climate change. I would go so 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.040 far as to say that on a moral level, violence 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.520 against the individuals, institutions, and governments most responsible for our 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.720 shared catastrophe is very much justified. Again, we're looking at 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.800 roughly fourteen holocausts per year of additional dead people, and 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.480 just from the air pollution caused by one and a 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.800 half degree celsius of warming. There are people, individual human beings, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.160 who were warned about this decades ago and made the 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:12.200 decision to devote great wealth and power towards ensuring nothing 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.040 was done. There are people who recognize the reality of 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.360 the situation and chose to deny it for the sake 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:20.240 of their own political and media careers. In the wake 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.800 of the Second World War, with tens of millions dead, 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.800 the victorious Allies held a great trial at Nuremberg to 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.520 punish those most responsible. You could probably get quite a 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.920 few people on board the idea of holding a climate Nuremberg, 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.440 and if that's justified, why isn't some sort of insurgency. 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:42.000 Today we celebrate the French Resistance, the brave partisans from Czechoslovakia, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.320 Ukraine and Russia who struck hopeless blows against the Nazis 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.680 despite the certainty of their own doom. It is probable 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.319 that the people of the future will feel similarly about 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.400 our modern day eco terrorists, many of whom are currently 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:59.360 rotting away in federal penitentiaries. Most people outside of activist 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.120 circles have not heard of the Green scare. It's a 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:04.880 term that refers to a concerted campaign by federal law 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.640 enforcement and the federal government, both Republicans and Democrats, to 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.600 crack down severely on the activist wing of the environmental movement. 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.079 The culprits were people who had burnt down construction sites 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.400 for housing developments, destroyed SUVs and car dealership lots, spiked 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:23.280 logging or mining equipment, and in one case, set fire 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:27.000 to a McDonald's. Despite the fact that these activists did 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:30.120 not kill human beings, they were treated by law enforcement 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.319 as terrorists, a tactic that has become increasingly common in 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:37.360 the years since. Earlier this year, Jessica Resinesek, a Catholic 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.840 environmentalist activist, was sentenced to eight years in prison for 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.040 damaging heavy construction equipment meant for use on the Dakota 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:48.760 Access pipeline. Resinesek was prosecuted as a terrorist. The judge 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.040 who sentenced her said that domestic terrorism charges were warranted 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.520 because Jessica sought not only to stop the flow of 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:57.480 oil through a pipeline, but to prevent government approval of 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.400 pipelines like Dapple in the future. Now, it is possible 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.320 that the damage Jessica helped do to that construction equipment 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:07.200 de layed the construction of the pipeline that has certainly 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:11.400 acclaimed the government made. The Dakota Access pipeline was completed, though, 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.199 and has gone on to leak several times. In July 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.280 of this year, a Department of Transportation regulator issued a 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:21.040 notice against the company that runs the pipeline, alleging multiple 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.560 serious safety violations. If Jessica really did delay construction, it's 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:29.520 possible she reduced the harm caused by the pipeline, but 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:33.600 if so, the overall impact was sadly minimal. Hundreds of 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.319 thousands of gallons of oil still flow through the Dakota 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.840 Access pipeline every day. The company behind it suffered a 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.240 few million in damages, but Jessica rezinesex suffered much more. 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.600 She will spend almost a decade behind bars, an other 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.240 three years under probation, and she owes more than three 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.720 million dollars in restitution, ensuring she will never be able 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.760 to lead more than an economically marginal life in the future. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.840 That is, of course, the government's strategy here. When you 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.400 come at people like the hammer of God, whenever they 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.040 consider environmental direct action, you reduce the chances of something 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.200 like that going viral. Think of the way direct action 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:12.600 got briefly picked up by liberals nationwide during the George 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.640 Floyd protests. For the first time, maybe ever, you had 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.480 large numbers of normal people, the kind of folks the 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.040 cops can't brutalize without creating an outcry either doing or 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:27.119 physically supporting people doing damage to police infrastructure. This terrified 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.199 the people in power, both liberal and conservative, and as 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.040 a result, they've spent the last half year or so 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:35.480 pushing a raft of new laws to criminalize protest. More 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.360 than that, we've seen cities like New York, Los Angeles, 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.319 and Minneapolis deploy a wildly excessive police and sometimes military 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.319 forces at the start of new protest movements. The goal 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.840 is to scare away all but the most committed activists, 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.599 to avoid letting any protest reach the critical mass of 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:55.000 numbers that makes crackdowns dangerous. When considering this topic, I 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.160 found a lot of wisdom in something J. R. R. 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.000 Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in the dark day 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.280 days of nineteen forty three concerning the global plague of industrialization. 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.319 There is only one bright spot, and that is the 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:11.200 growing habit of disgruntled men dynamiting factories and power stations. 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.000 I hope that encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit, 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:17.880 but it won't do any good if it is not universal. 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.040 And that is more or less the truth. Ecological direct 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.080 action as an occasional fringe burst of fury does little 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.120 besides make a statement. It may be many things, but 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.000 it is not a path forward for us if we 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.760 care about more than just fenting our rage against industrial society. 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.680 I know that it can be extremely tempting to take 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.920 the attitude that the situation is already fucked, we might 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.960 as well just burn it all down, But that attitude 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:45.680 isolates you, and while you are offering people nothing but 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.280 a sense of doom, the fascist is promising them that 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:51.080 with enough state violence, they and their families can at 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.360 least be protected. Leviathan is coming to them and saying, 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:56.840 hand over power to the state, and we can bring 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.000 back some version of the good times. Every bad actor 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.559 route there is coming with promises that they can improve 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.840 people's material conditions. If you want a better future and 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.360 not just revenge, we're going to have to be able 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:22.080 to offer that too. There is a line from the 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.280 book Climate Leviathan. I find it quite stirring. It's written 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.400 in response to Roy Scranton, a climate change philosopher and 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.080 author of the book We're Doomed Now What, commenting on 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.560 his claim that nobody has real answers and the problem 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.520 is us. Wainwright and Man say, quote, at a time 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.520 when the left everywhere must reinvent means to live together, 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:47.200 we cannot make acceptance of death our aspiration. They go 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:50.959 on to note that the coming crisis is not unmanageable. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.880 It is already here, already being managed by liberal capitalism, 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:59.120 if rather badly. Indeed, the very manageability of the crisis 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:01.840 is part of the problem we face. To address it, 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.800 we do not need to learn to die, but to live, 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:09.479 think and rebel. I tend to agree with this assessment, 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.040 and I think that face with the ultimate failure of 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.840 older attempts at rebellion, we need to be open minded 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.480 in our search for a new rebellion. We may find 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.120 that in a society built to facilitate mass death, learning 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.760 how to survive and keep others alive is the most 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.640 effective method of revolt. Do I have suggestions for that 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.760 beyond start cooperative kitchens with your neighbors and hand out 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.480 supplies after disasters. Yes, But before we get into that, 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:36.000 I want to make the case for why I think 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.360 mutual aid is a viable path towards revolt. Earlier in 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:40.960 the series, I laid out what I see is the 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:44.640 most likely route towards radical change, a general strike with 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.760 a list of demands supported by a massive national and 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:53.400 ideally international mutual aid campaign. There is a tendency among 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.120 some radicals on the left to right mutual aid off 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.160 as charity dressed up to look like revolution, but the 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.560 evidence suggests that the state and the far right consistently 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.720 see effective mutual aid programs as what they are a 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.400 serious threat. In January of nineteen sixty nine, the Black 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.760 Panther Party held their first free for children breakfast program 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:17.400 at Saint Augustine Episcopal Church. They fed eleven children. They 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:19.840 kept going though every day, and by the end of 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.360 the week they had fed a hundred and thirty five kids. 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.320 Billy X. Jennings was one of the Panthers there. At 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.120 the very beginning, he recalled to the Guardian every office 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.600 was required to send two people to learn how it ran, 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:33.800 so you can open one in your area. In a 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.600 matter of weeks, the breakfast program had expanded to twenty 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.040 three locations around Oakland. By the end of nineteen sixty nine, 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.240 the program had been incorporated into one of the Black 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:46.240 Panther Party's survival programs and regularly fed twenty thousand people 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.920 in nineteen cities. On the surface, this was just cooking 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.520 breakfast for poor kids. It certainly looked less radical than, say, 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.480 the armed patrols the Black Panthers carried out to monitor 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.680 police officers in black neighborhoods. But j Edgar Hoover, director 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:04.600 of the FBI, considered the breakfast program an existential threat. 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.440 The program represents the best and most influential activity going 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.200 for the BBP, and as such is potentially the greatest 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:13.920 threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the b PP 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.880 and destroy what it stands for. Hoover recognized that the 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:20.560 Panthers were engaged in the most crucial task for any 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:25.240 insurgent movement, winning hearts and minds. The Maoist Marxist beliefs 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.280 of many Panthers were a lot easier to spread to 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.320 folks who saw them as the people feeding their damned children, 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.640 because at the end of the day, for almost everyone, 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:37.440 the basic needs of your loved ones trump specific ideology 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:41.000 every day of the week. That's why the FBI targeted 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.000 the free breakfast program specifically. At one rate in Chicago, 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.600 agents smashed and urinated on all the food that had 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.480 been collected for the next day's meal. In some cities, 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:52.960 agents were sent door to door, visiting parents in their 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.560 homes and claiming the Panthers were using breakfast clubs to 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:58.360 teach children to be racist against white people and to 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.320 urge them to riot in school. Historian Franzisca Meister says 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.919 that in San Francisco, quote FBI agents actually brought one 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.119 of the breakfast programs to a halt by talking the 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.960 parents of the participating children into believing that the food 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.920 the panthers were serving had been infected with funereal disease. 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.600 Mutual aid is just as frightening to our enemies to 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.399 day as it was to j Edgar Hoover. The Center 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.440 for Security Policy is a far right, anti Muslim, anti 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:38.520 communist think tank founded by former Reagan administration official Frank 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.840 Gaffney JUNR. Earlier this year, they were leased a report 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.760 analyzing the mutual aid efforts of a number of Texas 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:49.359 based leftist organizations, including the Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club, 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.000 and the d f W chapter of the Socialist Rifle 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:56.720 Association from the Center for Security Policy. But mutual aid 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.879 must not be understood as simply volunteerism, as its proponents 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.320 explicitly note, its true purpose is to build up capability 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.480 for dual power, a kind of shadow governance. As much 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.960 as avowed anarchists might hate the term to be exercised 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.920 by a network of a narco communist and autonomous groups. 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.280 As a result, the likelihood that mutual aid will also 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.719 involve the presence of community armed self defense groups like 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.199 the John Brown gun Club and other ANTIFA groups is high. 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.679 Such groups do not make a distinction between providing basic 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.880 aids such as providing water, emergency meal and motel rentals, 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.520 and direct clashes with law enforcement and others who they 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:37.399 perceive is threatening their agenda. Local and state officials dealing 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.600 with natural disasters should urge citizens to avoid contributing to 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:45.679 unknown or suspect mutual aid organizations and encourage support instead 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.199 to traditional, registered charities. They should likewise respond to an 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.800 increase in protest and activism activity generated by autonomous groups 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.439 seeking to use the disaster for propaganda purposes. Finally, they 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.320 should develop a comprehensive understanding of the extremist groups reading 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.480 in their areas of responsibility. The think tank is of 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.960 course wrong with they attempt to cast the DFW, s 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:08.160 r A, and John Brown Gun Club, neither of which 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.919 have been tied to terrorism, as violent extremists, but they 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:14.720 are broadly right about the purpose of mutual aid. One 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.040 thing that sets it apart from simple charity is that 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.639 the goal of mutual aid is to build power. Not 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.200 hierarchical power, not a shadow governance put in the hands 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:26.520 of a leader or a pollit bureau, but the power 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:28.800 of a community to meet its own needs and thus 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:33.439 resist domination. This is why mutual aid frightens those in power. 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.080 It's why in a two thousand and six lecture at 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.720 the Universities of Texas School of Law, the FBI Supervisory 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.879 Senior Resident listed Food Not Bombs as an organization on 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:48.000 the local terrorist watch list in Austin. In writing for 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.800 Belling Cat, I analyzed the chat logs of Patriot Coalition, 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.840 a group of several hundred armed far right extremists in 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.879 the Pacific Northwest. They looked forward to the potential of 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.879 fights with Antifa, but they were terrorified when during the wildfires, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.600 Portland's anti fascists put together and distributed thousands of pounds 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.879 of aid supplies to people who'd been displaced. If we 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:12.320 judge the efficacy of resistance tactics by who they scare, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.199 mutual aid ranks highly. Indeed, this is, of course not 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:18.280 the whole answer to the question, how do we pull 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.000 ourselves up out of the tail spin? I would be 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.399 an arrogant man. Indeed, if I pretended to know that, 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.480 or try to put myself forward as someone with the 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.080 ultimate solution to our problems. How would a national network 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.919 of mutual aid collectives organized to handle the manufacture and 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:35.639 distribution of more complex necessities like insulin. How would a 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.479 general strike movement reach some kind of agreement on an 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.679 actual list of demands without becoming bogged down in debate 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.359 and negotiations like a doomed condo board. How would we 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.520 protect such a movement from the kind of threats that food, medicine, 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:52.159 and good intentions can't defeat. Over the coming days and months, 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:54.760 we're going to try and find the answers to all 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.040 of those questions. Together. I'm going to bring on people 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.560 much smarter than me, and we're going to hear their answers. 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.600 I'm going to bring on activists and organizers from around 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.720 the world who have answered versions of those questions themselves, 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.080 and we'll see what we can learn from their struggles. 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.240 Together with a lot of help from our friends, I'm 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.639 hoping we can come to some conclusions. But before we 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.520 conclude this first week of episodes, I want to take 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:20.600 a look at the future we could have, or at 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.840 least new elements of it. Because when you tell people 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.159 the world needs to change very quickly or where fucked 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.320 it kind of behooves you to provide them with a 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.800 vision of the future you'd like to make instead. The 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.760 people of the Navajo Nation have been enduring the consequences 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.160 of capitalism for a very long time. Decades of US 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.720 government neglect has led to a situation in which thirty 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.680 to forty percent of their people lack access to clean water. 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.239 Climate change, drought, and reduced rainfall have further strained their 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:52.240 access to water, making farming and simple survival much more difficult. 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.640 Cameron sou who lives in the Navajo Nation, told an 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:58.399 interviewer some of them have to drive an hour and 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:00.399 a half one way to town to get drink water. 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:03.679 People say, well, water is not expensive. Sure, if you 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.040