WEBVTT - Militant Kindergarten: Education for Adults 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:10.280 Also media, welcome to Dick It appan here a podcast, 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:12.119 and we're recording for the first time. All of the 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:17.720 audio worked perfectly. It was great. Yeah, we the society 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.320 that has put multiple human beings on the moon did 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.400 successfully produce functioning audio software. It's wonderful. Uh yeah, with 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:31.160 me to celebrate this is Carl Eugene Stroud. He's a 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.720 language teacher and anarchist builtins and read Angles, who's a 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:38.720 bus driver and an anarchist member of the Center for 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.800 Spesifical Studies. Yeah, both of you, welcome to the show. 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.000 Thanks for having us, Thank you for having us, for 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.839 this wonderful celebration of audio recording technology. 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:53.239 It's all great, it's all wonderful. Speaking of things that 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.080 are wonderful, this is this is this is why they 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.320 pay me the AM I legally allowed to say that 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:00.880 it is a below market rate, so why they paid 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.760 me the slightly below market rate box. Yeah. So, speaking 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:07.560 of wonderful, we are here to talk about a I 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:12.320 guess putting things back together project, which is miltant Kindergarten. 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.559 And I guess I guess we should start with talking 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:20.160 about what bulletin in kindergarten is and what it isn't 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.160 in terms of like, it's not we're teaching we're teaching 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.040 small children how to take apart buildings. 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:31.560 Yes, so Milton Kindergarten is a multi month study of 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.160 a text, and in that way, you know, we call 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.800 it a seminar' But it's not that much different than 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.360 reading group or study circle or any of those kinds 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:46.160 of things. Essentially, what we're doing is we're using one 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:52.080 text to revisit and have conversations with different people that 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:56.400 are at various you know, points in a path of radicalization. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.280 We're you know, distinctly trying to spread the word about 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.560 the importance and necessity of militancy in our movements, but 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:11.000 also teach people about a specifismo, which is an anarchist 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.200 current that comes out of Latin America. But it's also like, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.560 you know, in in the socialist movement, anarchists can often 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:25.679 be characterized by stereotypes that come from Marxists, and that 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:32.519 in the libertarian and anarchist movement, any kind of mass anarchism, 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.600 any kind of class struggle anarchism can also be characterized 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:42.079 by you know, individualists and insurrectionists. And so we mean 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.639 to you know, not convert people to a certain current 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.520 of anarchism. We see this as a kind of grouping 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.600 of tendency, So all the participants come from different ideologies. 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:55.200 This is just a reading group, so you've got to 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.800 apply this stuff, you know, outside of this. This isn't 0:02:57.840 --> 0:02:59.920 some kind of be all and dull solution. We're not, 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:05.440 you know, educationalists thinking that this is going to be 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.440 the first step in some like process that we're just 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.400 already on. But at the same time, we think that 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.320 educational space needs to be defended. That's why this is 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.640 the third militant kindergarten. So yeah, maybe I'll let Read 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.000 talk about some of the ones and how we've gotten here, 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:25.519 and yeah, kindergarten up to now. 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.640 Yeah, sure, I think that's a good explanation. The group 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:37.640 basically started off in the wonderful, amazing, complicated year twenty twenty, 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:44.000 in the wake of the uprising over the summer. Both 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.560 of us live in a relatively small town with maybe 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.760 an outsized hundreds above its weight in terms of like 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:57.000 activism and anarchism. There's probably more anarchist tendencies here than 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:01.840 there are anarchists, and something that we saw in the 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.320 wake of the height of the uprising was one a 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.840 huge amount of burnout that people weren't really addressing. The 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.760 solution to burnout that we saw being proposed was just 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:20.599 do it again, more harder, And we also saw the 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.640 burnout as kind of coming from a lack of strategy 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:29.039 and organization on the ground, people sort of repeating tactics 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.960 because that's what you do, and that's what we were doing, 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:33.440 so we're just going to try to keep doing it. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.640 And both of us were unable to participate in the 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:44.400 more aggressive street actions that were going on at the time, 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:49.400 so we decided we individually needed to study and get 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:53.840 better at our understanding of strategy an organization and try 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.360 to rethink like some of the problems that had occurred 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.440 and how to move on from there, and also to 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:04.360 provide us, for people who are more active in different places, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.200 the chance to meet together and reflect in a non 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.279 non urgent space where you could just like pause and 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:19.040 learn and discuss the topic. So we were, yeah, we 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.360 hit upon We're both kind of simultaneously interested in the 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:28.200 Spesso seasmal current from Latin America, so we both just 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:30.960 kind of decided, yeah, we want to read some of 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.440 these texts and we quickly came upon social anarchism and 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.400 organization and we thought, like, wow, this is a really 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.560 comprehensive introduction not only to this tendency but also to 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:48.720 anarchism and social anarchism broadly. Like it really covers just 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:56.240 the basic principles and theory up to history and organizational theory, strategy, tactics, 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:02.400 ideology in a much higher, morephisticated and like I guess, 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:08.560 like modernized way then many other previous documents we'd read. 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.479 It's like, if you took the platform, you know, the 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:13.160 Macknivist platform. 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.880 We should explain what that is because people are not 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:21.320 going to yeah, okay, going back. 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:26.080 So's it's the organizational platform of the Anarchist Federation of 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:31.880 Riodaian hero which is basically their foundational document, and it's 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:37.120 a very comprehensive look at the kind of theory and 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:43.680 strategy and work that goes behind goes on behind founding 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:48.600 an organization. Like that, it's similar to the anarchist platform 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:53.760 written by X the Macknivist in exile in Paris, the 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:59.919 Ukrainian anarchists in exile after the the Revolution in Russia. 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.480 They wrote this platform saying anarchists should maybe be somewhat 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:10.760 organized and unified in their tactics and their strategies and 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:14.720 received a whole bunch of pushback from it, but founded 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:19.800 the sort of the platform. It's current of anarchism. But really, 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.560 when you go back to the platform, there's not a 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.960 ton there. It's more of a document for organizing a 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.480 like a military force in a already ongoing revolution, whereas 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.360 what we found in Social Anarchism and Organization is a 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:42.000 much more road kind of introduction to social anarchist organization 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.320 that is more widely applicable to a variety of situations. 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.960 Yeah, and you know, Okay, so we've covered a spacifismo 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.000 on here with Andrew once. I think we've talked about 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:58.880 it a little bit in some other episodes. But yeah, 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.720 do we want to get in to what about A 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:07.920 SPECIFIESMO was sort of different from older kinds of like 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:10.560 well just like other anarchist tendencies and other sort of 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:15.040 kinds of platformism, and talk a little bit about how 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.320 it sort of came about because it's one of the 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.880 tendencies I guess that some people adopted in the US, 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:24.800 but I don't. I don't think it's as famous as 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:26.480 a lot of other tendencies here. 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.520 Yes, so you know, a lot of the motivation behind 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:36.800 organizing the center for us Specifismo studies this came after 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:41.199 us studying this text a few times locally, we decided 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.600 to formalize this into militant Kindergarten. And a lot of 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:49.880 that came from the need to articulate what is a 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:54.200 specifismo in English, because a lot of the resources, a 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.640 lot of the ideas and writings come from Latin America, 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.600 and so they're written in Spanish. A lot of the 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:07.600 theory has been developed in Spanish. Especifismo originally comes from 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:13.120 the Anarchist Federation of Uruguay in the nineteen sixties. They 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:19.720 began to articulate a kind of organizational strategy that imagined 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.800 what the way we've described it is kind of two 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.960 rails for a train, and this train is bringing this 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:31.920 revolutionary rupture. So these two rails are the social level, 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:36.079 which includes all kinds of class struggle. This is class 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:41.800 struggle against domination, exploitation, and oppression. And that the other 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:43.800 rail is the political organization. 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:45.040 And so this is. 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:51.360 The anarchist principles and ideologies that yeah, I think we 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:55.880 share probably pretty broadly with most all anarchist currents, at 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.480 least you know, coming out of the socialist movement. But 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:04.360 when it comes to the way to balance these and 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:11.560 to keep them both working towards the same ends, we 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:16.400 see a need to keep them theoretically distinct. And so 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.559 a lot of what we've done at the Center for 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.200 Specifiesmo Studies is try to articulate these ideas in English 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.640 so that we can start to develop what that means 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.800 here and not just sort of translate or take a 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:35.400 translation and sort of try to input an idea into 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.200 our own context. So, like you said, like I think 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.720 that some of the we we could take for example, 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:48.960 the Black Rose Rosa Neegra Anarchist Federation in the US, 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:54.960 that's the largest organization of a specifict anarchists in North America. 0:10:55.720 --> 0:11:00.360 They are distinctly influenced by this current. They have sister 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:08.400 organizations in Latin America, but they're just one kind of 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.079 organization that's that's kind of known on a national level. 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:16.800 And as far as planting its, you know, ideas in 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.439 North America, we're definitely still doing that work. So a 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:25.080 lot of what we've done is also developed second secondary resources. 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.000 This includes like audio versions of this text, but also 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:33.560 like things we've produced through our study and through these 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.920 discussions that come out of kindergarten. So last year, for example, 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.640 we made a minizine. There was like a kind of 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.840 working group that worked on a mini zine to define 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:49.680 some basic terms and make something really really really basic 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:56.040 in introductory to a specifismo. We also I've written a 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.240 few pamphlets, one of which is how do you say 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.520 a specifismo in English? 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:02.280 And so that is. 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:07.120 Yeah, exactly trying to address this idea. And you know, 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:11.400 some people they hear a specifismo and they're like, oh, 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:15.640 that's you know, exotic and cool and like new, and 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.160 that's a reason to be attracted to it. But then 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.120 you know other people might hear that and they have 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:24.200 kind of other reactions where they sort of try to 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:27.280 put it into a really specific box. I mean, what 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.880 our understanding is is that it's important to be able 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:37.160 to acknowledge what current you're kind of plugging into where 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:39.400 your ideas are coming from. It takes a lot of 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:42.120 pressure off of us to not feel like we're inventing 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.920 everything and we're supposed to be coming up with like 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:49.240 the most perfect, cool ideas, but it's also a humbling 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.839 experience of like, yeah, we know about this because other 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:56.440 people have done this militancy before us to make these 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.760 things available for us to have preserved these ideas. 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.480 That's the political level of the two rails. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.800 Right, So that's that is preserving this so that it 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:11.000 is possible to say I have this opinion about a 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.440 specifismo and it relates to my context in this way 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.800 or likewise that it doesn't you know, if we don't 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.360 have anyone doing that militancy to preserve those ideas, then 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:25.040 it's actually not even up to people to be able 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:26.880 to pick them up and use them the way that 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:27.600 they see fit. 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:40.720 One of the sort of barriers is, I think kind 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:45.120 of when you're alluding to of like specifiesmo as a 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:49.840 tendency in the US, is that it wasn't like, it 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.200 wasn't really it wasn't developed in the American context, and 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.240 that has different sort of you know that that that 0:13:57.480 --> 0:13:59.360 that that that has sort of like a range of 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.680 different effect x. And one of the things that I 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:05.920 think is very interesting about it that I think is 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.319 definitely a product of the context that it was developed 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:13.520 in is the strategy of social insertion. Yeah, and I 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.480 was wondering if you could talk a bit about social 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.040 insertion and how you see that working in the US 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.200 and how sort of like, how do we think about 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:24.000 this sort of in the wake of twenty twenty and 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:28.920 the kind of restructuring of what is sort of happening 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:30.920 is out of social movements in the US. 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:35.000 Yeah, I think the twenty twenty lesson is very important 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.680 for thinking about social insertions for anyone who doesn't know, 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:42.320 it's just the practice of anarchists who are organized in 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:47.680 the same organization being present in social movements within them, 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.520 supporting them, trying to help them achieve their own goals 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.120 rather than take them over, or something like you would 0:14:54.200 --> 0:15:02.440 see in maybe a entryism from Trackeeasts or something. But yeah, 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:04.600 I think one of the major problems that we ran 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.640 into when we started reading this stuff is like social 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.480 insertion requires there to even be social movements. 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.080 Yeah, that was an issue in the US for a 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.160 long time because we didn't really have social movements in 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:17.960 the way that like Latin America does. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.440 Right, or when we do, they're like extremely spontaneous or 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.600 kind of chaotic, or they're also there they could be 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:31.320 extremely co opted or managed by a political party, Democrats, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:37.560 some socialist group, Republicans, whoever. And so that's kind of 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:43.200 one of our major sort of projects of theoretical translation 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:46.920 into North Americas. You can't just plug this into North 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:49.440 America and say, Okay, we're going to go join ex 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.480 social movements to achieve these goals and obtain this amount 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:57.040 of influence there and some we really have to start. 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.000 I think what is useful about that problem is that 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.800 it forces us to start really trying to theorize what 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.280 actually is happening here, what social movement actually is there, 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:13.960 And that leads us to start thinking about things more literally, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.200 like movement. What does it mean to be moving? What 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.040 is the role of anarchists in movements? So we can 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.360 think of the idea that we've developed is the idea 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:28.960 of anarchists who are organized as anarchists, the role of 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:34.800 them in movement is to actually literally be moving between 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:39.080 different kinds of spaces, different movements, and starting through their 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:43.280 movement to generate a kind of flow of people and 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:47.680 of ideas and energy and momentum, acting as a small 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:53.160 motor within a big, a big system, if you will, 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:57.520 not striving it, but getting things going. And so I 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.360 think that's kind of more the level that we're here 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.720 in the US is we still need to just theorize 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:07.399 what is out there and how can we help it, 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.080 How can we plug into it, How can we start 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:16.040 getting things moving in a direction that is actually going 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:21.000 to meet the needs of these movements or these movements 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.000 that aren't yet articulated. Well, you know, you see this 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:27.359 with like the rise of tenant unions and tenant organizing, 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.399 still in a very like nascent stage, but people are 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.879 seeing that need and they're starting to get that moving 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:38.560 from a variety of socialist tendencies. And I think, yeah, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.399 the idea is important in this context because we have 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.520 to we have to be finding these spaces, we have 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:47.040 to be moving to them, and we have to be 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:50.880 returning to our own spaces to be able to actually 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.240 understand what we're encountering out there and figure out how 0:17:54.280 --> 0:18:00.119 to suss course or move to something else or that 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:01.200 to a new situation. 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:05.760 Yeah, like maybe similar to read said, they're this idea 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.680 that the politics need to be moving, that anarchism needs 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.159 to be a movement, and that in that way, like 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:19.760 we can't allow our ideas to be stuck in certain 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:25.840 you know, just stations or organizations or spaces that are 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:27.520 friendly or that. 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:28.640 We're really familiar with. 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.639 We need to be able to engage those ideas in 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.639 the relevant spaces where we do live. That looks really 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.040 different in different parts across the US and North America. 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.440 So the idea that you know, we would be able 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:48.640 to just simply take one thing and apply it across 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:53.320 the board would also, like yeah, be really limited here. 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.520 And so I think a lot of what we're we're well, 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:58.560 a lot of what we've seen in terms of the 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.960 utility of a specificismo as a as an influential current 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.840 in the politics in leftist politics in North America. Is 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:11.679 this theoretical aspect and how we can see both like 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:15.560 we learn more about social movements, more about the necessity 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:19.880 of them being popular, more about popular power, and at 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.600 the same time as in doing that, that shows us 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:27.600 more about what is political unity, what is uh, you know, 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.040 unity of strategy, what is unity of theory, what is 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:36.880 a unity of commitment? And that those things we want 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.120 to as we keep learning about them individually. That goes 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.680 back to this trained idea of their being to rails 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:47.760 is we need them to be on independent cycles. You know, 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:52.240 we know that that social movements don't last forever, that 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:58.600 mobilizations and uh, you know, insurrections will fade away, that 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.480 there are ebbs and flows of the engagement, and that 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.679 when we're talking about a massive popular level, we should 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:09.359 expect that even more right, plenty of people will only 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:13.520 even if they're engaging militantly, only be engaging militantly with 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:18.439 social movements, not with political ideas, not with political organization. 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.800 And so the idea that something needs to endure someone 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.080 even needs to be able to tell the story from 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.560 the last time that things got spicy, so that we 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:33.639 understand even what happened without even necessarily having the the 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.919 critique or the analysis, even just simply the retelling is 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:44.200 something that is grossly missing from our struggles in North America. 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:47.439 And so that's where we see like there being a 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:52.440 complete absence of political organizing, and especially when we think 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:56.240 about being on an entirely different cycle. So that kind 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:59.760 of goes back to kindergarten being an annual thing, and 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:02.560 you know where we live, like in the winter, there's 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.320 not a lot you can do, and so it kind 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.320 of made sense to develop a seasonal pattern of this, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.840 right where like exactly as things are dying down. It's 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:16.120 kind of like, well, the people who do still have capacity, 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.840 the people who are still attempting to be active, how 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.080 can we keep that little bit of movement moving and going. 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.119 The idea of the metaphor of a small engine, a 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:31.399 small motor is often used in a specifiesmo and that 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.960 that's what the political level is trying to be. Is 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:39.240 a small motor just assisting in something larger that's happening, 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.360 but it needs to be connected to something larger that's happening. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.679 Yeah, And I think a key part of this for 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:50.439 us that we've found is that in our context there 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.560 exists sort of these two levels. To some extent, there 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:59.160 are political organizations and there are social movements. But what 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:03.080 is often missing, Like we were struggling with this, trying 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:06.440 to find the way into one or the other, and 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.879 what we discovered is that like this kind of educational 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:19.120 tendency of really open, really educational, really discussion based learning 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.920 kind of starts to generate that movement between the two. 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:30.440 Like by having this space open to beginners and experts, 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:35.080 so to speak, you're able to actually get more movement 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:40.680 opened between the two. So it opens up political organizations, 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.760 people who have not participated in that before don't have 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:47.320 a way into it. And it opens up social movement 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.399 to people who may be politicized but are not organized 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:54.640 in some sort of social and it starts to mix 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:58.440 everything together in this learning space where we can build 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:02.680 trust as a learning commun unity and assisting each other 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:06.639 in connecting these kind of two necessary levels of organization. 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:09.919 I've been thinking a lot about how you were talking 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:14.440 about how we don't have any kind of organizational continuity 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:18.080 between movements and the kind of disorganization and the loss 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:22.240 of just memory that happens with that, And I think 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:24.399 it's one of these weird things because you can find 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:27.399 people who've been in like all of these movements, but 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:32.119 if you're relying on just you know, okay, well you 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:34.280 could you can get the story of what really happened 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:36.880 in Occupy Oakland if you know exactly like the right 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:40.040 for people and you can't like you can't say their 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:44.800 names because like you know, and I mean this has 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:47.679 always sort of been a problem with parts of social 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:49.679 movements because I mean, there's stuff that necessarily has to 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:52.959 be clandestine, like you know, and there's reasons for op 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:55.160 racial security, but also just means the stuff gets lost. 0:23:55.320 --> 0:24:00.680 And yeah, I think having having a like having a 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:03.960 thing that goes as a way to transmit got a 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:07.639 thing that goes. Wow, incredibly technical language, you know, but 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:10.240 having having an organization that can act as a bridge 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:13.199 between these sort of moments and also is able to 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.760 sort of you know, a lot of people's spaces for discussions, 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:21.320 for reflection, for learning. That's also sort of a bridge 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:24.480 between like a like I don't know, I guess like 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:29.280 capital p political organization, and the social stuff is it's 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:32.520 it's a really interesting idea, And yeah, I don't know, 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:34.600 I think I don't know. I think I think this 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:38.200 is like, this is a very cool project, and yeah, 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:40.639 I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes out of 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:43.720 it as the new session sort of approaches. 0:24:44.720 --> 0:24:47.040 Yeah, I think what you're just saying about, like, how 0:24:47.080 --> 0:24:50.120 do you learn about what happened to occupy Oakland without 0:24:50.320 --> 0:24:53.560 having to go through like three layers of signal chats 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.360 or something to find the right person to learn from 0:24:56.400 --> 0:25:02.720 anonymously being a preface with allegedly this happens is a 0:25:02.760 --> 0:25:06.000 real problem that we've thought about. Like, I think a 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:10.320 big thing for us that we've found is a role 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:13.240 that we can play, is that there is a need 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:17.840 out there for there to be some sort of we 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:21.520 call it mask off anarchism, like there needs to be 0:25:21.560 --> 0:25:27.159 a public facing, approachable space where you can actually just 0:25:27.240 --> 0:25:32.000 learn about stuff. And yeah, there is definitely a need 0:25:32.080 --> 0:25:38.080 for operational security culture or for clandestine things so that 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:41.000 those things don't need to be everything for those who 0:25:41.040 --> 0:25:45.879 even exist. You need levels that are more open to people. 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:50.880 Otherwise those things just become increasingly lost. They go down 0:25:50.920 --> 0:25:54.480 the memory hole, as they say, or the Latin American 0:25:54.520 --> 0:25:58.080 groups like to talk about anarchism becoming ghetto wised further 0:25:58.119 --> 0:26:01.800 and further, like separated from mainstream society and there's no 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:05.919 ways in unless you, like, you know, a guy. So 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:08.240 that was something that was a problem we were encountering 0:26:08.800 --> 0:26:13.639 and something that like from our particular circumstances, we felt 0:26:13.640 --> 0:26:16.919 like we could provide and maybe start and modeling for 0:26:16.960 --> 0:26:17.800 people as a group. 0:26:18.560 --> 0:26:21.399 I think also, like you mentioned there like this idea 0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:27.080 of memory and what what Black Rose has referred to 0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:31.040 in their program as muscle memory. Like for our organizations, 0:26:31.160 --> 0:26:34.879 this idea that like I mean, organizing seems so mysterious 0:26:34.920 --> 0:26:37.679 to us because we don't have this like kind of 0:26:37.760 --> 0:26:41.480 active like living memory of how to do that. It's 0:26:41.520 --> 0:26:44.280 not just a thing we do by second nature or 0:26:44.320 --> 0:26:48.639 like without without really needing a lot of work. And 0:26:48.680 --> 0:26:53.720 so I think in that sense, like we could also 0:26:53.800 --> 0:26:57.199 think of there being two kinds of struggles going on, 0:26:57.480 --> 0:27:02.800