Speaker 1: A media.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's me James, and I'm coming at you
Speaker 2: today with one of these little requests that I make
Speaker 2: sometimes when there's something that we would like you to do,
Speaker 2: when it's very important to do. So today I want
Speaker 2: to talk to you about Syria, and specifically Northeast Syria.
Speaker 2: So with the world's eyes fixed on Syria, many are
Speaker 2: rightly celebrating as a brutal dictatorship of Bashara Lasad comes
Speaker 2: to an end. But for Kurdish and other minority communities,
Speaker 2: recent days have bought violent attacks, ethnic cleansing and occupation
Speaker 2: by Turkish back to Jahadis groups in an attempt to
Speaker 2: take advantage of the chaos by crushing the Rajava Revolution.
Speaker 2: Turkey and its mercenaries are openly committing war crimes against
Speaker 2: the regions autonomous communities. Many thousands have already been forced
Speaker 2: to be displaced and thousands more are in danger. To
Speaker 2: make matters worth this remains largely absent from the mainstream
Speaker 2: media reporting on Syria. If you'd like to share your
Speaker 2: solidarity with the people of northern and Eastern Syria, please
Speaker 2: call on Congress to take urgent action by passing the
Speaker 2: emergency Legislation to stop the violence, hold Turkey accountable, and
Speaker 2: commit US support to the Syrian democratic forces and the
Speaker 2: diverse communities under their protection. If you want to take
Speaker 2: action today, you can go to Defendrojaba dot org. That's
Speaker 2: d E F E N d R o ja va
Speaker 2: dot org. If you are able to the most effective
Speaker 2: action we can take right now is to call a
Speaker 2: couple of representatives, one representative on one. Senator representative would
Speaker 2: be Gregory Meeks. He's from New York. He's a Democrat.
Speaker 2: He is a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker 2: His phone number is two zero two two two five
Speaker 2: three four six one. Leevon will be Senator James Risch.
Speaker 2: He's an Idaho Republican. He is a ranking member's Senate
Speaker 2: Foreign Relations Committee. His phone number would be two zero
Speaker 2: two two two four two seven five two. If you'd
Speaker 2: like to have some talking points, you can find those
Speaker 2: on Defendrojaba dot org. If you'd like to donate financially instead,
Speaker 2: especially to this humanitarian aid effort for the tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of people who have been displaced by the SNA's advances,
Speaker 2: you can donate to two organizations that I would suggest.
Speaker 2: The first we be Heavier store the Curtis Red Crescent.
Speaker 2: That's h E Yva s O R dot com and
Speaker 2: you want to go slash e n if you want
Speaker 2: to see their website in English, you can donate there.
Speaker 2: The other one will be the free Burmer Rangers who
Speaker 2: are currently working in Raka. I was talking to my
Speaker 2: friend Abat who works with them. You can donate to
Speaker 2: them at www dot free fr e E Burma b
Speaker 2: U r m A rangers dot com. We will put
Speaker 2: all of this in the show notes or the URL,
Speaker 2: so if you're driving you don't have to write them down.
Speaker 2: Those are the concrete ways that we can help right
Speaker 2: now and what is unfolding as a very terrible situation
Speaker 2: in nor Syria. Thanks. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3: It's it could happen here the podcast that's afficing right now.
Speaker 3: This is maybe the foremost of the Putting Things Back
Speaker 3: Together episodes. I'm your host Mia Wong with me as
Speaker 3: James Stout.
Speaker 2: A guy who likes it to put things together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, on the subject of putting things
Speaker 3: together over the last I don't even know three four weeks,
Speaker 3: the question I have been asked the most by everyone
Speaker 3: is how do I start organizing? And you know the
Speaker 3: problem with how do I start organizing is that it's
Speaker 3: not a question that has cleaner simple answers. Now, the
Speaker 3: most common answer you get is just join an org.
Speaker 3: And the problem is that most of the people who
Speaker 3: you were hearing this from are already in an org
Speaker 3: and want you to join their org.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, the problem is a lot of the orgs that
Speaker 2: are currently dominating left to spaces in the in the
Speaker 2: United States are trash, yeah, and bad for people. Bad
Speaker 2: people in them, bad people who are not in them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Here's a little test you can you can do, is
Speaker 2: your org currently sad that Basha a Lasad is no
Speaker 2: longer governing Syria? Because if that's the case, leave yep.
Speaker 2: And that's that's a lot of orgs that that's not
Speaker 2: for me. Yeah, it takes most of them right now.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to orgs in a bit. But what
Speaker 2: I'll say about orgs is that, Okay, if you know
Speaker 2: an organization in your area that you like and you
Speaker 2: think does good work and most importantly spends their time
Speaker 2: actually doing work instead of either in fighting or talking
Speaker 2: about doing work, you join them. It'll be good but
Speaker 2: the important thing about organizations, and this is something we'll
Speaker 2: come back to you later. The important thing about organizations
Speaker 2: is they have a lot of people. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: thing that makes organizing work is people. It's not organizations.
Speaker 2: It's not even necessarily at eological labels. It's there being
Speaker 2: a bunch of people who you can use and who
Speaker 2: want to do things. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But something I realized that the more I had these conversations, right,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm having them with friends, I'm having them
Speaker 3: with strangers, I'm having them with other organizers. And the
Speaker 3: more I had these conversations, the more I realize something
Speaker 3: sort of startling you. The person listening to this almost
Speaker 3: certainly already knows how to organize, but you don't know
Speaker 3: that that's called organizing. Yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 3: I have encountered some of the most stunning or I
Speaker 3: mean organizing that like I can't discuss the specifics of
Speaker 3: but like some of the best organizing I've ever encountered.
Speaker 3: I have ran into in the last three weeks some
Speaker 3: people who don't think that they're organizers and started talking
Speaker 3: to me about their stuff. I was like, what, like,
Speaker 3: people are winning victories that like the like hardcore committed
Speaker 3: organizers haven't been able to do in like thirty years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's just by random people who don't think they
Speaker 3: know how to do anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can I tell a little organizing story? We do
Speaker 2: have time, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. So
Speaker 2: I remember, in like twenty eighteen, I am on a
Speaker 2: trip with a friend. We're coming back and we see
Speaker 2: the arrival of the migrant caravan. One of the migrant
Speaker 2: caravan is the one that everyone decided to have a
Speaker 2: fucking cow about right before the twenty eighteen mid terms.
Speaker 2: And at that time, they were corraling the people of
Speaker 2: the migrant caravan in a baseball stadium in Tijuana, and
Speaker 2: like it was raining every day. So the baseball stadium
Speaker 2: ends up looking like the Battle of the Psalm after
Speaker 2: like a couple of days, right, you know, kids in needy,
Speaker 2: mud and shit, and I particularly know what to do,
Speaker 2: but evidently there were people there who were hungry and thirsty,
Speaker 2: and so I get three of my free my friends.
Speaker 2: At this time, I was still making about half my
Speaker 2: money riding bicycles and the other half riding so my
Speaker 2: friends and I was supposed to do a long bike
Speaker 2: ride all of us are people who make a living
Speaker 2: riding bikes, right, We're not like expert organizers. And I
Speaker 2: was like, hey, guys, this is fucked. Which we do.
Speaker 2: We called a friend who has a company who makes waffles,
Speaker 2: where we obtained like as many waffles as we could
Speaker 2: physically carry across the border. At that time, we weren't
Speaker 2: able to get in. We found a way to get in.
Speaker 2: We began distributing the waffles. After that, we put something online,
Speaker 2: people sent us money, and we continued feeding people for months.
Speaker 2: None of us, I think, had a particular plan or
Speaker 2: a scheduled. Yeah, it was a bit chaotic at times,
Speaker 2: but we were able to do that and with a
Speaker 2: lot of other people. Clearly wasn't just us, right, but
Speaker 2: we were able to process tenths of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: and feed thousands of people be everyone there. And I've
Speaker 2: seen this countless times, especially working and organizing with well
Speaker 2: with refugees. For the most part, people are so good
Speaker 2: at organizing each other in themselves. Like when we got
Speaker 2: there with bottles of water and food. There are a
Speaker 2: thousand people there who have not had sometimes a drink
Speaker 2: for days, let alone more than a thousand. I think
Speaker 2: let alone something hot to eat. Right, everybody made sure
Speaker 2: that the children and the sick people got what they
Speaker 2: needed first. Organizing is something that is very inherent in
Speaker 2: us as people. It just we don't call it that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's part of what I want to try
Speaker 3: to the myth. I want to try to puncture with
Speaker 3: this because I think particularly in the US, but this
Speaker 3: is true in a lot of places. There's this way
Speaker 3: in which the organizers sort of TM capital T capital O.
Speaker 3: The organizer gets held up as this sort of I
Speaker 3: guess even a particularly masculinist thing, which is it's this
Speaker 3: guy with specialized knowledge. Yeah, and that's just not true.
Speaker 4: This brings us.
Speaker 3: Something that I think is actually really important, which is
Speaker 3: what what even is organizing?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: And the answer is that most organizing is you get
Speaker 3: you get a group of people together, you get them
Speaker 3: to show up to something, and then you do something right.
Speaker 3: And the thing about this, right, that's something all of
Speaker 3: you know how to do. If if you can organize
Speaker 3: a dinner party, right, if you can get eight people
Speaker 3: to show up to a place to eat dinner, you
Speaker 3: can do this. It is it is largely the same
Speaker 3: skill sets, and all of the skill sets that make
Speaker 3: people good organizers are skill sets that you have to
Speaker 3: develop to you know, work a job, right. You know,
Speaker 3: Like one of the things that comes up a lot
Speaker 3: in this which is less discussed and also kind of annoying,
Speaker 3: but you know you have to manage it, is that
Speaker 3: organizing is about people and sometimes you have to you know,
Speaker 3: you have to do things like you have to manage
Speaker 3: people's egos. But like, I don't know, almost all of
Speaker 3: you work jobs or have work jobs, right, you have
Speaker 3: had to like deal with your boss being on one right,
Speaker 3: you have the skills to do this.
Speaker 4: You know how to do.
Speaker 3: The interpersonal relationship stuff. It's just that you don't think
Speaker 3: about that as organizing, even though that's just what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the core of it is getting people to
Speaker 2: do stuff like you do it every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the way you do this is by building relationships
Speaker 3: with people, right. And this isn't necessarily friendships, although that works.
Speaker 3: And like one of the easiest ways to start organizing
Speaker 3: is by getting all of your friends together because you're
Speaker 3: already friends, you have pre existing relationships, and being like, okay, motherfuckers,
Speaker 3: we gotta go do something. And actually I love that
Speaker 3: the first thing that you brought up was an admittedly
Speaker 3: sort of medium ish scale lift version of this. But
Speaker 3: one of the very easiest things that you can do
Speaker 3: is you can just get food of some kind. You
Speaker 3: can either buy it or you can make it yourself,
Speaker 3: and you and a group of like eight people, not
Speaker 3: even eight people, you can do it with lower I
Speaker 3: know people who've done this just solo. Is that you
Speaker 3: can just go give food to people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Literally it was this morning yesterday morning. I have some
Speaker 2: man house neighbors, right and it was cold, and so
Speaker 2: I went out and gave them some hot breakfast or
Speaker 2: hot coffee. It's super easy to do. If you are
Speaker 2: struggling socially wherever you are, maybe you're finding it hard
Speaker 2: to make friends. I know that's the thing that people
Speaker 2: often struggle, especially if you've moved to a new place
Speaker 2: or post pandemic, or you're still concerned with liuved gatherings
Speaker 2: or any of those things. Like, if you start doing that,
Speaker 2: you will find other people who want to do it too,
Speaker 2: Like so many of my friends I organize with are people.
Speaker 2: Like when we had the end of Title forty two
Speaker 2: and people were in between the fences that a lot
Speaker 2: of the people who I organize with now or who
Speaker 2: helped people with now, I didn't know. I just showed
Speaker 2: up with a giant side of generator that I happened
Speaker 2: to have and some stuff that we had a whip
Speaker 2: around a call zone for and like, people who care
Speaker 2: about the same things as you are generally cool and
Speaker 2: it's a good way to make friends. And then you
Speaker 2: can go on from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a second compounding thing here too, which
Speaker 3: is that you know, feeding people it's a way to
Speaker 3: build relationships with people. And also it's a really good
Speaker 3: way for people to get to know you in general
Speaker 3: and know that you are someone who will help them
Speaker 3: with things. Yeah, and from there, and this is a
Speaker 3: very common exception. I mean this is I literally had
Speaker 3: this conversation with one of my friends who's like an
Speaker 3: old school Food Not Bombs organizer. Food Not Bombs is
Speaker 3: a very very it's a cool organization. You can just
Speaker 3: like found a food out Bobs chapter. They have like
Speaker 3: a couple of principles, or you can just do your
Speaker 3: own thing. And I'm pretty sure it's still like the
Speaker 3: largest anarchist project in the world because all it takes
Speaker 3: is you and like three other people and you just
Speaker 3: go feed people. But the thing is from doing that, right,
Speaker 3: if there's other things that you're concerned about, people will
Speaker 3: bring you their problems and you can help them doing it.
Speaker 3: And this is a very good way to get into
Speaker 3: other kinds of organizing because suddenly, once you start building
Speaker 3: these relationships, everything sort of cycles and cycles, and you know,
Speaker 3: you get involved in more and more things. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of a that's kind of a late stage
Speaker 3: thing that we're sort of jumping to a bit. But
Speaker 3: I want to go back to the beginnings of how
Speaker 3: so how do you get a group of people together
Speaker 3: to do a thing? And the answer is you kind
Speaker 3: of already know how to because you you presumably at
Speaker 3: some point in your life, have like organized a group
Speaker 3: of friends to go do something, right, Like I've gotten
Speaker 3: a group of people together to go accomplish a task.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could literally be anything, right like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you've got some people to go to a BA, you
Speaker 2: have the skills.
Speaker 3: One way I've been thinking about it recently and in
Speaker 3: my project is putting is thinking about it as like
Speaker 3: putting together a heist crew. And I, okay, I could
Speaker 3: vouch for this right. The feeling of walking up to
Speaker 3: eight people and telling them individually, I'm putting together a
Speaker 3: team and I want you it is. It feels you
Speaker 3: can just do it. There is nothing stopping you. Nothing
Speaker 3: in the world can stop you from just walking up
Speaker 3: to your friend and going I'm putting together a team.
Speaker 3: And it feels exactly as good as you think it
Speaker 3: with them Ice movie, it rules. It's so fun, amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and and and but this gets into also what kinds
Speaker 3: of people you want to do right, because obviously you
Speaker 3: know there's two vectors of this. There's on the one hand,
Speaker 3: you have the aspect of okay, who do you know? Right,
Speaker 3: And a lot of organizing is just about here is
Speaker 3: a problem, and I know someone who has some sort
Speaker 3: of skill or resource that can that can help deal
Speaker 3: with it, and you put people in touch with each other,
Speaker 3: and that's organizing. That's so much organizing is literally just hey,
Speaker 3: like I have like a broken part of my car.
Speaker 3: I know someone who's like a car mechanic, right, and
Speaker 3: you put you put them in touch. And you have
Speaker 3: successfully organized people, and you have built relationships, and you
Speaker 3: have made all of the sort of social web that
Speaker 3: creates organizing. You've made it stronger. It also just feels
Speaker 3: good because you know, and that that's an auxiliary benefit
Speaker 3: to all of this is that it's it's a great
Speaker 3: it's a great way to sort of break break the
Speaker 3: isolation we're all under.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the best solution for despair is I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of a quotation here something the busy bee have
Speaker 2: no time for despair. But the thing that makes me
Speaker 2: feel better about the world is that I have seen
Speaker 2: that people can fix massive problems with very few resources
Speaker 2: by just showing up. And like, I think, organizing is
Speaker 2: what gives me, what allows me to enter this period
Speaker 2: of time that we're entering into with a great deal
Speaker 2: more hope than I otherwise would have done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And do you know what else will help you
Speaker 3: enter your situation?
Speaker 2: Is it the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but
Speaker 3: we are not in control of the length of the ads.
Speaker 4: They just do it. We're sorry, here's a really long
Speaker 4: period of ads. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: We are back. So I want to I want to
Speaker 3: return to my my highst career. If I don't know
Speaker 3: if you're a D and D person, the other way
Speaker 3: you can think about this is you're putting together like
Speaker 3: a Dungeons and Dragons party or like an RPG party.
Speaker 3: And the way you need to think about this is, Okay,
Speaker 3: so you've picked a thing that you want to do, right,
Speaker 3: you see, you've seen something in the world that is
Speaker 3: bad and you you figure it. You go, okay, I
Speaker 3: can do this thing to solve it. And maybe and
Speaker 3: maybe that's you know, it's literally something as simple as
Speaker 3: feeding people. Maybe that's you know, I want to start.
Speaker 3: I want to start doing tenets organizing. I want to
Speaker 3: start because my rent is too high, right, people are
Speaker 3: getting evicted. I want to start doing like immigration defense.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And from there you make a list and that list
Speaker 3: is you know what you're interested in doing, and you
Speaker 3: try to match what things need to be done with
Speaker 3: people you know who have those skills. Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is you know this, this is this is where you
Speaker 3: really get into the hist things, right, because everyone has
Speaker 3: their sort of like highst role. Now, obvious part of
Speaker 3: this that you want is you want to create sort
Speaker 3: of balanced teams. Right. You want people who have overlapping
Speaker 3: strengths so you don't just have only one person who
Speaker 3: can do a thing. And part of the way to
Speaker 3: successful organization works over time, and I mean just how
Speaker 3: successful organizing works is that eventually you are trying to
Speaker 3: organize yourself out of a job, which is to say,
Speaker 3: you want your organization to function such that if you're
Speaker 3: not able to do it, you know, or just you're gone,
Speaker 3: or you cycle onto a next thing, or you know,
Speaker 3: any any number of things that can happen. You want
Speaker 3: the organization to still be able to keep working without you,
Speaker 3: and you want you want you're trying to get people
Speaker 3: to be able to replace you as the person who's
Speaker 3: like organizing the thing, right. Yeah, And at this point
Speaker 3: we can start talking about the kinds of skills that
Speaker 3: people need for organizing, and a lot of people and
Speaker 3: this is unbelievably common when I talk to people, and
Speaker 3: like especially women and especially like a lot of non
Speaker 3: binary people and trans people particularly have this is that
Speaker 3: people don't believe that they have any skills. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: then you talk to them for five seconds and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm good at carrying heavy objects, right, I'm good with kids,
Speaker 3: which is a huge one. We'll get to you in
Speaker 3: a second, right, or like I don't know, I have
Speaker 3: a car that's a huge skill. There are so many
Speaker 3: different skills that are so useful for so many things.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna go over lots of things that are
Speaker 3: actually really useful to get to get people a sense
Speaker 3: of like the kinds of things that there are. There
Speaker 3: are massive roles for so one of the most important ones,
Speaker 3: and this is something you can you deliberately look for.
Speaker 3: You know, this is this is one of the things
Speaker 3: you do at the beginning of any union organizing campaign.
Speaker 3: Someone who's good at talking to other people and making friends.
Speaker 3: That is a staggeringly useful person because against most organizing
Speaker 3: is just talking to people and building relationships. And you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things you do when you when you're
Speaker 3: doing you're sort of they call it power mapping. But
Speaker 3: when when you when you're figuring out how you're going
Speaker 3: to organize a workplace, is you find the person who
Speaker 3: everyone likes and talks to and respects, and you talk
Speaker 3: to that person. Yeah, because that person can you know,
Speaker 3: can sort of like organize people down the chain because
Speaker 3: they have they have their relationships already and also they're
Speaker 3: good they'll be good at, you know, talking to new
Speaker 3: people and and spreading your organization that way, and so
Speaker 3: like you know, if you're just someone who's social or
Speaker 3: and this is also very useful if you have a
Speaker 3: friend who is very social, because I know a lot
Speaker 3: of us are oporary social. But you probably have a
Speaker 3: friend that you're thinking of right now who is very
Speaker 3: good at conversations that is charming and is good at
Speaker 3: making friendships. That person unbelievably useful, incredibly useful and compelling skill. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there are also things like research people who are good
Speaker 3: at and I think people are much better at research
Speaker 3: than they think to take like a Tete's organizing example. Right,
Speaker 3: one of the common things you have to do is
Speaker 3: find out stuff about a landlord, right, Yeah, And there's
Speaker 3: the higher difficulty version of that, which isn't that hard. Also,
Speaker 3: want to I want to mention this, but like going
Speaker 3: to a courthouse and finding records about who owns property
Speaker 3: companies that it's not that hard. It's it's like you
Speaker 3: could just do it, right, It's not as hard as
Speaker 3: you think it is from someone saying it. But there's
Speaker 3: also even just easy things in that, right that all
Speaker 3: of you probably already know how to do, which is
Speaker 3: just looking at someone's social media profiles, and finding out
Speaker 3: information about them. Yeah, and this is very useful, yeah,
Speaker 3: for like union campaigns, bosses.
Speaker 2: If you've ever been a person who uses dating apps,
Speaker 2: especially if you're a woman, Yeah, yeah, then you know
Speaker 2: how to ocin. Actually maybe you don't credit yourself with
Speaker 2: that skill, but one hundred percent that like you've developed
Speaker 2: that skill to keep yourself safe and you can use
Speaker 2: it for good.
Speaker 3: Do you want to explain what ocenters and yes? How
Speaker 3: that how that process works? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure. So open source intelligence is it's an acream doesn't
Speaker 2: really need to exist. It's gathering information of open sources,
Speaker 2: things that are openly accessible, right, as opposed to like humint,
Speaker 2: which is like being a spy, or singint, which is
Speaker 2: capturing signals. Open source information is you're creeping someone's Instagram,
Speaker 2: creeping their Facebook, looking at the weird fucking shit that
Speaker 2: they put on good Reads.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: All the data that is out there, largely on the Internet,
Speaker 2: about us. A lot of people put a lot of
Speaker 2: information on the and it's very easy. And I would
Speaker 2: imagine if you're under fifty and maybe if you're over
Speaker 2: fifty two, like you just know how to do this
Speaker 2: because it's what you do anyway, you want to find
Speaker 2: out about someone. And especially if you are a person
Speaker 2: who goes on dates with people who you haven't met
Speaker 2: before and haven't been introduced to by a mutual friend,
Speaker 2: but you meet on the internet, you probably already do
Speaker 2: this to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is something that's very useful for I mean,
Speaker 3: there's so many use cases for this, right there's you know,
Speaker 3: there's the very obvious ones where you're dealing with the
Speaker 3: local Nazi and you're trying to organize around like running
Speaker 3: them out people say from them, and you can find
Speaker 3: information about them. But I mean, it's useful for cops
Speaker 3: who are beating people, is useful for like politicians particularly,
Speaker 3: It can be very useful for It's useful for landlords.
Speaker 3: This happens all the time. It can be very very
Speaker 3: useful for bosses in union campaigns. Unions have like teams
Speaker 3: of researchers usually to like do this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But the thing is also and this is something I
Speaker 3: don't think people understand. Those guys, like the people they're
Speaker 3: hiring difer researchers are just you, but they got a
Speaker 3: job being a researcher for a union. Like they have
Speaker 3: the same skills as you They know how to like
Speaker 3: Google stuff, and they know how to look through people's
Speaker 3: like dating profiles and like look through their their facebooks
Speaker 3: and their Instagrams and like a big one, a big
Speaker 3: one that that the rich people especially do not think about,
Speaker 3: is like cash app and venmo.
Speaker 2: Oh venmos app because yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3: Because people's peoples trying. People just leave public transactions out
Speaker 3: there like that. That's how they got what's his name,
Speaker 3: the congressional Gates. Can I legally call him the congressional pedophile?
Speaker 3: I guess they call him the accused pedophile?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the man credibly accused of sleeping with an
Speaker 2: underage woman lots of times, you know.
Speaker 3: And one of the ways they found that was that
Speaker 3: and also like paying paying for that, right yes, which
Speaker 3: is which is rape. By the way, I want to
Speaker 3: be very clear about that, Like, yeah, having sex with
Speaker 3: someone who is underage is rape. It is always rape,
Speaker 3: you know. And the way people found that was that
Speaker 3: they just looked through like his cash app history and
Speaker 3: they found all of these money transfers to people. You know,
Speaker 3: this is all very very simple stuff. That's that's very
Speaker 3: very useful organizing wise, that you already know how to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pinterest is another absolute bad people. Yeah, so much
Speaker 2: people that they be pinning you know if if if
Speaker 2: you're hearing some of these things and and you think
Speaker 2: that you can figure out how to do this. That's
Speaker 2: also a huge skill. Finding people who are willing to
Speaker 2: learn things and willing to learn new skills is a
Speaker 2: huge benefit to to organizers because you know this, this
Speaker 2: gives you, like, this gives you a flexible person, right,
Speaker 2: it gives it gives you someone you can like flex
Speaker 2: into into any of a bunch of roles that you need.
Speaker 2: And also can you know, pick up skills to learn things.
Speaker 2: Having a car and being able to drive, and I
Speaker 2: know a lot of you don't do this, but if
Speaker 2: you do do this, this is you immediately, even if
Speaker 2: you literally cannot contribute anything else to a project, being
Speaker 2: able to just drive a bunch of water to a place,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, huge, staggeringly useful. The amount of things people
Speaker 2: can't access because they can't get there, it's vast, Especially
Speaker 2: when I talk to migrants right have recently arrived in
Speaker 2: the US. They don't have a US cell phone, they
Speaker 2: can't uber Oftentimes nowadays you can't even pay for mass
Speaker 2: transit with cash, you have to have a special card
Speaker 2: and you have to get to the place to get
Speaker 2: the card. Right, The problems you can solve by being
Speaker 2: able to drive someone five miles are enormous, especially in
Speaker 2: the US where everything is designed around everyone owning a
Speaker 2: motor car at all times.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, And like transport based skills are also very useful.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you hike a lot, that's a very
Speaker 3: very useful skill. There's a lot of sort of mutual
Speaker 3: aid projects. There's a lot of you know, I mean
Speaker 3: even things like setting up summer camps is the thing
Speaker 3: that like leftist groups do right, and being able to
Speaker 3: hike very good for that. It's good for things like
Speaker 3: wilden just rescue. There's a lot of you know, the jams,
Speaker 3: like the work you do that has to do with
Speaker 3: like going in helping migrants. Like being able to hike
Speaker 3: is staggeringly useful skill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's very like, it's useful. It's important. It's
Speaker 2: okay if that's not something you can physically do or
Speaker 2: you know that that works for the way you like
Speaker 2: to live your life. Like another thing I was thinking
Speaker 2: of which can be massively important and people don't realize
Speaker 2: is if you know how to take off a tail
Speaker 2: light and replace the bulb in it. Yes, like we're
Speaker 2: entering a time when people with darker, people with TPS,
Speaker 2: people who are undocumented, people are on temporary migration statuses
Speaker 2: are going to be definitely afraid of any interaction with
Speaker 2: law enforcement. If you can change the bulb on someone's
Speaker 2: tail light or their turn signal indicator as of us
Speaker 2: in the UK, then you can meaningfully protect that person
Speaker 2: in a really important way. And it can literally take
Speaker 2: ten minutes.
Speaker 3: And this is something that you know, can scale up
Speaker 3: depending on how much skill you have. Right, there's even
Speaker 3: just very basic auto maintenance stuff is very useful for
Speaker 3: stuff like this. But you know, like if you're a carpenter, right,
Speaker 3: if you're an electrician, you do some kind of trade work, right,
Speaker 3: you do plumbing, right, That is the thing that is
Speaker 3: massively useful to a lot of people. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of other kind of just skills that you have from
Speaker 3: your job that can be very useful. I mean, having
Speaker 3: someone to manage a spreadsheet, oh yeah, yeah, is staggeringly useful.
Speaker 3: And another one that I think people don't understand that
Speaker 3: they really have. But like being able to set up
Speaker 3: a meeting and like having a thing that lets you
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, here's when everyone is free, Like you
Speaker 3: probably have to do this for your job or just
Speaker 3: for you know, trying to get your friends to go
Speaker 3: even just like be on a call together or like
Speaker 3: go have food or like just do anything. That is
Speaker 3: what literally, genuinely one of the most important skills you
Speaker 3: can possibly have as an organizer is the ability to
Speaker 3: just sort of like go talk to people and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: can you show up to this thing here?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And that is that is so much of just what
Speaker 3: organizing is. Can you be here at this time? And
Speaker 3: then trying to figure out a time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we're going to close out this sort of skill
Speaker 3: section with some I think just sort of like domestic
Speaker 3: these skills that I don't think people realize are super useful.
Speaker 3: If you have a button maker, you are instantly the
Speaker 3: single most useful person in any organization. I love that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: you can obtain a button maker. They're very easy to use.
Speaker 3: But if you have one or you know the person
Speaker 3: who has the button maker, and suddenly you can just
Speaker 3: crank out buttons for every single event, they rule. Everyone
Speaker 3: loves them. It helps. It helps enormously. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: That's a badge for those in the Commonwealth. Also, if
Speaker 2: you have a sewing machine, yeah, I was about to
Speaker 2: mention that, Yeah, yeah, you're a hero.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my friends recently made me a little patch
Speaker 2: and it's really cool and I like it, but not
Speaker 2: all my stuff. But if you can sew, like, that's
Speaker 2: a skill that I do not have. It's so great
Speaker 2: when people can fix stuff for someone or you know,
Speaker 2: make stuff fit someone. You know, if you're a person
Speaker 2: who finds it hard to get closed that you like
Speaker 2: to wear that make you feel good and someone one
Speaker 2: of my friends could do that. And one of my
Speaker 2: friends was making clothes for another friend for like a
Speaker 2: Renaissance fair, and like it was the nicest thing I've
Speaker 2: seen someone do for someone else in a very long time.
Speaker 2: It really made her like, yeah, feel like nice and
Speaker 2: cared for. And like you might think that like this
Speaker 2: is just a weird little thing that you like to
Speaker 2: do with your sewing machine, but you can meaningfully really
Speaker 2: make someone feel cared for using that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's a huge part of what organizing is right,
Speaker 3: and that that goes into one of the things that
Speaker 3: is also an appreciable skill that's very useful. Is I
Speaker 3: mean just like being nice to people, being kind to people,
Speaker 3: and having people around who are good at like keeping
Speaker 3: groups together. Yeah, that's its own distinct kind of person
Speaker 3: is someone who can you know, keep all of the
Speaker 3: people who are involved in a thing enjoying being around
Speaker 3: each other. That's that's the kind of person who's very valuable.
Speaker 3: And it's something that you can and look for, you know.
Speaker 3: And if that's not you, like you can there's something
Speaker 3: you can you know, find in your friends. You can
Speaker 3: find in this sort of the people around you. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 3: there's also something that I think you can tell when
Speaker 3: an organization is collapsing because this is like the first
Speaker 3: thing with the quality drops drawing and graphic design are
Speaker 3: very very useful because a big part of what you
Speaker 3: do organizing is like you make a flyer and you
Speaker 3: put a flyer on a bunch of telephone poles to
Speaker 3: tell people that there's a thing happening. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and this is also something you know later
Speaker 3: on you might be making a social media presence, but
Speaker 3: just having good artists and having good graphic design people
Speaker 3: is enormously useful for this kind of stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: al along this line, these things like making music, and
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of different ways this can go. This
Speaker 3: can be an immediate thing where you know, like you
Speaker 3: have people on a picket line, right and everyone's singing
Speaker 3: songs and this is great. We love this. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 3: and this is another thing that you can be thinking
Speaker 3: about in terms of what skills you have and what
Speaker 3: things you can create. Benefit shows. Yes, this has been
Speaker 3: a huge part of a lot of how some of
Speaker 3: the unions off up here has been getting funded is
Speaker 3: by just having like punk benefit shows. And if that's
Speaker 3: the thing that you can do, or you know, people
Speaker 3: in bands, you know, people who make music, you know,
Speaker 3: people who just make stuff who are willing to contribute
Speaker 3: it to the cause, that's great.
Speaker 2: I remember one of we had one night last September,
Speaker 2: so cold. We were in the desert and they're like
Speaker 2: a thousand people, right, and we were at that point
Speaker 2: we were really struggling to feed everyone, even you know,
Speaker 2: because there was so few of us. But my friend
Speaker 2: bought out like their guitar and some bongo drums they had,
Speaker 2: and I think I had my harmonica in my truck
Speaker 2: and like we were sitting around with these We had
Speaker 2: some Sikh guys, had some Weiga folks come from China,
Speaker 2: and then some Kourdish people and they were all displaying
Speaker 2: their different music and it was so nice like that,
Speaker 2: taking people out of a shitty situation for a moment
Speaker 2: with music. Again, like, don't underestimate how important that it.
Speaker 2: Don't feel like if you have that skill, it's not
Speaker 2: a useful one.
Speaker 3: No, And this is something I've I've been starting to
Speaker 3: say more and more. If you need a theory brained
Speaker 3: way to say this to someone who like is is
Speaker 3: like a curmudgety Marxist who hates fun. Morale is a
Speaker 3: terrain of struggle that this is. There's a reason why
Speaker 3: morale is one of the most important factors of military campaigns.
Speaker 3: You can't get people to do things if they're too
Speaker 3: depressed to do it. Yeah, and being able to raise
Speaker 3: people's morale, it's it's this massive If you want again,
Speaker 3: want to go into technical language, is a massive force
Speaker 3: multiplayer right, It makes everyone you have enormously more effective.
Speaker 3: The better they feel about themselves and the better they
Speaker 3: feel about the situation they're in. And things like music,
Speaker 3: things like art. I mean things like pulling pranks. This
Speaker 3: is a yeah, if you were, if you were a
Speaker 3: good practical jokester, this is a staggeringly useful skill both
Speaker 3: like in terms of you know, you need to be
Speaker 3: careful about whether you're you're playing your pranks on like
Speaker 3: other people in the org, but like you know, if
Speaker 3: you know how to just like pull pranks, this is
Speaker 3: a really really useful thing. In like Union cap Tenant's organizing.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of people who you can pray
Speaker 3: and it's very funny and it lowers their morale and
Speaker 3: it raises your morale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I going back to your music as all, like,
Speaker 2: like morale is a terrain of struggle. Like the other
Speaker 2: memory I have last year of playing guitars is in Rajava,
Speaker 2: being inside at night because everyone was getting drone struck
Speaker 2: all the time and it was dangerous to be driving around,
Speaker 2: sitting around with some ZD friends and like we spent
Speaker 2: all night playing the ood, which is like a it's
Speaker 2: like a guitar with a gord on the bottom, and
Speaker 2: to describe it like it's a string instrument. It's a
Speaker 2: string instrument, is what it is. And like that made
Speaker 2: everyone so happy we had such a nice evening. Everyone
Speaker 2: was able to like get through. It's a relatively difficult thing. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, it sucks that people are being killed and
Speaker 2: just for driving around are existing, and they're bombing all
Speaker 2: this city and infrastructure and the power keeps going out
Speaker 2: and all these things, right, like, but there's a reason
Speaker 2: that those people have ooed around after fifteen thirteen years
Speaker 2: of war, and it's because it is important, and so
Speaker 2: don't overlook that.
Speaker 3: And you know, and resisting fear is another huge aspect
Speaker 3: of this, right, A lot of the ways that people
Speaker 3: like a lot of the ways that you demobilize people
Speaker 3: this is, this is why regimes like this spend a
Speaker 3: lot of effort trying to make people afraid. He is
Speaker 3: that it makes it harder for you to act. And
Speaker 3: things that you know, the things that make you less afraid,
Speaker 3: even if they sort of seem silly, are very very important.
Speaker 3: And you know, on sort of this note, one of
Speaker 3: the things that you know, as you've assembled your group
Speaker 3: of people, right, one of the things that that's important
Speaker 3: to be able to sort of have a grasp on
Speaker 3: is that you can't just do organizing by having it
Speaker 3: only be the capital the serious thing, the captalty organizing
Speaker 3: thing all the time. Your organization will not hold together.
Speaker 3: There has to be actual, like bonds formed between you
Speaker 3: and the people you're organizing with and the people you're
Speaker 3: trying to help.
Speaker 2: Hm hmmm. I don't want to call out any organization
Speaker 2: in particular, there is an organization that perceives organizing to
Speaker 2: exist solely in the realm of wearing a high vias
Speaker 2: vest and carrying a clipboard and getting people to write
Speaker 2: their email addresses down and then telling them to attend things.
Speaker 2: And like maybe there are several organizations like that. I
Speaker 2: don't know, I've just I've perceived one locally. If you
Speaker 2: don't have those bonds that, like those interpersonal relationships like
Speaker 2: these things won't hang together. Like yeah, So many of
Speaker 2: my happiest organizing memories, like again going down James's memory lane,
Speaker 2: I guess I have a memory of like Christmas Eve
Speaker 2: last year, twenty twenty three, me and my friends have
Speaker 2: been out I know some of them listen. Some of
Speaker 2: them have come across from different states to help us
Speaker 2: at Christmas Holidays, which is nice.
Speaker 4: And it was.
Speaker 2: Cold and we had been feeding people all day and
Speaker 2: then we'd heard some people in another location that we've
Speaker 2: gone to find. And then we got to the end
Speaker 2: of the day and like, rather than just going home,
Speaker 2: I had a bunch of we had some MRIs left
Speaker 2: refugeemor is sort of vegan. Lots of us a vegan,
Speaker 2: so we were like, we're not going to find any
Speaker 2: other vegan food in the middle of nowhere out here,
Speaker 2: so we'll set around eating little vegan MREs and like
Speaker 2: just talking and like sharing some thoughts and things we
Speaker 2: experienced over the last months of doing this, and like,
Speaker 2: it's those moments that make you're organizing groups so much stronger.
Speaker 2: No one's telling anyone to do anything, you know, those
Speaker 2: genuine bonds and that the love and friendship we build
Speaker 2: up between each other doing things that are very important.
Speaker 2: Don't overlook the value of those because it's extremely valuable.
Speaker 3: And this is something that I think you can understand
Speaker 3: in your own life pretty easily, where Okay, if a
Speaker 3: random person on the street walks up to you and
Speaker 3: tells you to go do something, are you going to
Speaker 3: do it? It's like no, why No? Probably not, Like
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe it's something like really sort of hey,
Speaker 3: there's children in a burning building. We're going to run
Speaker 3: in and grab them. But like the odds are no,
Speaker 3: you're going to ignore them. But if your friend goes
Speaker 3: and tells you to do the same thing, and you
Speaker 3: know you've been friends with them for a long time
Speaker 3: and you really care about them, the odds of you
Speaker 3: doing it are much much higher. And that's that's all
Speaker 3: organizing is. It's finding ways to You have a thing
Speaker 3: to do, and you go talk to people and you
Speaker 3: ask if they want to help you do it, And
Speaker 3: the stronger your relationships are, the more likely it is
Speaker 3: to happen. And that's why it's very important to do
Speaker 3: things like you know, just like having potlucks, like bringing
Speaker 3: snacks to meetings. Oh yeah, and like you know, even
Speaker 3: if you're doing a potlucks, it's good to you know,
Speaker 3: you do like one capital capital T organizing thing, right,
Speaker 3: You get like a little bit of work done, but
Speaker 3: mostly everyone's just sort of relaxing and eating chili or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're a baker, you know, you can base people.
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful thing to shot God.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and just knowing how to cook. I realized
Speaker 3: I forgot to mention this one. Knowing how to cook
Speaker 3: is a staggeringly useful skill. And it's useful in literally
Speaker 3: every literally, any kind of organizing you could possibly be.
Speaker 4: And it is the thing.
Speaker 3: It is a skill that is useful in like it's
Speaker 3: useful in war zones. It's useful like literally no matter
Speaker 3: what organization you're in, if you can cook for people,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, and you don't even and you don't have
Speaker 3: to be like a good cook. It's just like you
Speaker 3: can show up with food that you have made. You
Speaker 3: have instantly made this whole thing more successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, Like I've had some wonderful meals in war
Speaker 2: zone and I've deeply appreciated those people. More broadly though,
Speaker 2: those ties like the way we organize without the state.
Speaker 2: The reason I believe that that is the way we
Speaker 2: should organize and the way we will continue to organize
Speaker 2: in a way that we can make the state irrelevant
Speaker 2: is because we understand each other as people and care
Speaker 2: about each other as people, and then we approach our
Speaker 2: organizing holistically, right with everyone in it, knowing this person
Speaker 2: is good at this, but they're struggling with this right now,
Speaker 2: and I care about them, so I'm not going to
Speaker 2: make them do that right now. That is how we
Speaker 2: can build sustainable communities in a way that state cannot
Speaker 2: and in a way that capitalism cannot. Right, because fucking
Speaker 2: hurts rent Car doesn't care or know about its employees
Speaker 2: in a way that we who organize with people and
Speaker 2: care and love one another do, And like that's why
Speaker 2: our organizations will always be stronger than those created by
Speaker 2: capitalism or the state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unfortunately, speaking of capitalism of the state, we're taking
Speaker 3: our last ad break where.
Speaker 2: You yeah, hopefully it's Hurts Renticr.
Speaker 4: We are back.
Speaker 3: So I want to wrap things up by doing a
Speaker 3: couple of doing a few things. I want to talk
Speaker 3: about some kind of basic organizing things that you're going
Speaker 3: to have to do that are not very difficult but
Speaker 3: are extremely important. And second, I want to talk a
Speaker 3: bit about how we did the first organizing project that
Speaker 3: I ever was involved in, which was tenants organizing, Because
Speaker 3: it's really not that hard, right, you just go do
Speaker 3: the thing, it will happen. Yeah, and suddenly it ceases
Speaker 3: to be this like, oh, this domain of expert knowledge,
Speaker 3: and there's like, oh, this is a really difficult thing.
Speaker 3: If you just I don't know, you go give food
Speaker 3: to someone and suddenly you've done that and it's happened.
Speaker 3: So there are things that are important to like basic
Speaker 3: organizing stuff. Knowing how to book rooms from like churches,
Speaker 3: from libraries, from whatever meeting spaces, and also knowing how
Speaker 3: to book rooms in places that like accommodate disabilities is
Speaker 3: a huge thing because a lot of people book meetings
Speaker 3: in places are a wheelchair accessible and it's a fucking fiasco.
Speaker 3: And you can avoid that very easily, but you have
Speaker 3: to put a little tiny bit of work into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Literally, I reached out to a friend to book a
Speaker 2: room last night because I knew they would get at
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's arranging people's schedules, getting people show
Speaker 3: up for stuff, things you can do to prepare if
Speaker 3: what you're doing is basically all the things we've been describing, right,
Speaker 3: getting together a bunch of people to do a thing
Speaker 3: that is technically forming an organization. Yeah, Now, how formal
Speaker 3: or informat you want it to be, or just you know,
Speaker 3: maybe it's just your organizing project or whatever. There's things
Speaker 3: you usually want. You want some kind of email so
Speaker 3: people can contact you in tandem with the email. Something
Speaker 3: that's very helpful that I think younger people tend not
Speaker 3: to think about. Is getting Google Voice. Yes, when Google
Speaker 3: Voice lets you set up a voicemail account so people
Speaker 3: can call you and leave phone messages. I mean, everyone
Speaker 3: should just do this because this is the way that
Speaker 3: a lot of older people communicate.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: They won't send you an email, but they will leave
Speaker 3: you a voice message. And it's very, very useful for this.
Speaker 3: Childcare is something that's important. I did, I mean a
Speaker 3: lot is probably too strong of a word, but like
Speaker 3: I did childcare when I was organizing, and it wound
Speaker 3: up being really helpful because there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: with kids, and so you know, there's a couple of
Speaker 3: ways that this could work. One is that you know,
Speaker 3: you have everyone bring their kids. You have like a
Speaker 3: little space, you bring them like coloring stuff, you bring
Speaker 3: them toys, you bring them games, and you just sort
Speaker 3: of watch everyone for a while. And as an organizing thing, again,
Speaker 3: if you're good with kid that's very useful staggering or
Speaker 3: useful organizing skill. Yeah. Another way this stuff happens is
Speaker 3: you know, everyone pulls together ten bucks and you hire
Speaker 3: a babysitter, yeah, for a bunch of kids. And that's
Speaker 3: a very useful organizing a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I organize with people who have kids. I remember
Speaker 2: four years ago, fuck me twenty twenty, a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and also yesterday, but like we were organizing to feed
Speaker 2: and house people and we were having a big Thanksgiving dinner,
Speaker 2: and like some of my friends have very young children
Speaker 2: and they bought them and I think it's actually really
Speaker 2: cool to do that. A like for those kids, it
Speaker 2: is normal that, like we look after people in our community.
Speaker 2: This is what we do, and ever since I've been little,
Speaker 2: this is what we did. And like it's also very
Speaker 2: nice for people. Like a lot of my friends also
Speaker 2: brought their children down to the border, especially last year
Speaker 2: when we had because there were children there anyway, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of my friends who bring their children down and
Speaker 2: their kids would play with the other kids, and like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter that some of the kids are Kourdition
Speaker 2: and some of the kids are from China and some
Speaker 2: of them are from Columbia or whatever. They'll get along
Speaker 2: just fine. When they're four or five years old, they
Speaker 2: don't care. They just want to kick a ball or
Speaker 2: see a Teddy Bear or something. And I think it's
Speaker 2: really good for your children to you know, you're bringing
Speaker 2: them into a world which is cruel and at times unequal,
Speaker 2: and like your kids seeing that, like we can make
Speaker 2: a difference and we can do this. I think it's
Speaker 2: one of the best educations you can give your children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's something that's good for everyone involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And it's also very I think one of
Speaker 2: the things I see a lot and people are organizing
Speaker 2: thing with refugees of the en housed, is like they're
Speaker 2: just people, Like you don't need to be afraid of them,
Speaker 2: Like they don't want to hurt your children. And having
Speaker 2: your children around shows that, like you have grasped they're
Speaker 2: just people, and that you feel safe and your children
Speaker 2: are safe around them. And I think that that's valuable too.
Speaker 2: You're giving both parties some dignity in that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are some other very basic things that I
Speaker 3: think are very important. If you've never done this before,
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk a little bit about how you
Speaker 3: run a meeting. Yeah, and you would think that this
Speaker 3: doesn't matter, and until you watch a group of one
Speaker 3: hundred people who don't know how to do this attempt
Speaker 3: to get anything done and they it just is a fiasco.
Speaker 3: And this is even true sort of smaller groups. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to give you how to run a
Speaker 3: meeting one oh one, Okay. A very common way to
Speaker 3: organize meetings that people use all over the world and
Speaker 3: it's very effective is you have two things. You have
Speaker 3: an agenda and you have a stack, and those are
Speaker 3: like the technical terms for them. The agenda, I mean,
Speaker 3: is an agenda, right, you know what an agenda is.
Speaker 3: You put the things that you need to do on it.
Speaker 3: And another thing that's very helpful with these is you
Speaker 3: know you're going to be operating at our time constraints
Speaker 3: because people don't have forty five hours to be in meetings,
Speaker 3: and my god, you don't want to be in a
Speaker 3: meeting for that long. Yeah, you know, knowing how long
Speaker 3: roughly you want to talk about these things is very
Speaker 3: very useful and making sure that you're sort of moving
Speaker 3: the conversation through the stuff on the agenda because you
Speaker 3: have more stuff you need to talk about. All of
Speaker 3: this again, like this all sounds very obvious, and again
Speaker 3: you know how to do it, but until you've been
Speaker 3: in a room where people have not realized they need
Speaker 3: to do this, you don't understand how I put on.
Speaker 2: This stuff gets the pain of it not happening.
Speaker 3: God, I have watched rooms full of like sciet these
Speaker 3: are like professional scientists.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: This is an entire room of one hundred feet of
Speaker 3: people with physics PhDs who don't know how to run
Speaker 3: a meeting, and it's a shit show. And all of
Speaker 3: this stuff could have been avoided with some very very
Speaker 3: simple things. Yes, the other thing, and this is genuinely
Speaker 3: a piece of social technology, right, it is the stack.
Speaker 3: It is very simple, right. You have one person who
Speaker 3: is the stack keeper, and whatsone wants to talk? You
Speaker 3: have one person talking at a time, and what someone
Speaker 3: wants to talk, they raise their hand, they make some
Speaker 3: kind of signal to the stack keeper, and that person
Speaker 3: writes their name down. And so you now have a
Speaker 3: list of who gets to talk in what order. And
Speaker 3: so you go down the list and people get the
Speaker 3: say things, and again you know how to do this.
Speaker 3: This is not like a complicated thing. But again I
Speaker 3: have one watch people who collectively have like more PhDs
Speaker 3: than like I earn money in a week, like who know?
Speaker 3: I cannot be able to pick this out, and you do.
Speaker 3: I believe in you.
Speaker 4: I believe in you, dear listener. That you could do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a very common Sometimes this is one person
Speaker 3: and sometimes this is two people. A very common way
Speaker 3: to do it is to have a stack taker and
Speaker 3: then have someone who's the facilitator. And the facilitator's job
Speaker 3: is to like call on the people and to try
Speaker 3: to like move the conversation forwards and get and make
Speaker 3: sure make sure everyone's involved. And also another important part
Speaker 3: of this, and this is again something you'll you'll know
Speaker 3: from your stupid work meetings, is you have to get
Speaker 3: people like me to shut up. Your meetings can't just
Speaker 3: be one person giving a speech. You have to cut
Speaker 3: them the fuck off and you have to get to
Speaker 3: the next person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and doing that courteously is a skill.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And finally, on this note, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of if you want to go into the like more
Speaker 3: technical stuff. Part of the things that facilitators use and
Speaker 3: part of you know, the formal name for this is
Speaker 3: like the progressive stack, but it's just a thing that's
Speaker 3: very useful in organizing is you want to make sure
Speaker 3: everyone in a room is engaged and talking and that
Speaker 3: it's not just three people who talk all the time.
Speaker 3: And you know, and so the idea of the progressive stack, right,
Speaker 3: is you're trying to find the most marginalized people in degrees,
Speaker 3: people who are least likely to speak, and you're trying
Speaker 3: to get them in first. And sometimes this is literally
Speaker 3: just like, hey, someone hasn't been talking in a meeting
Speaker 3: this whole time, and you can like ask them what
Speaker 3: they think about something, or asked if they have anything
Speaker 3: to say, and a lot of times they will, but
Speaker 3: they just don't feel confident enough to say it. And
Speaker 3: this is a very very important skill for a facilitator
Speaker 3: or just even you could just do this in a
Speaker 3: meeting too, right, Like you can be the person who
Speaker 3: goes like, hey, do you have this this person have
Speaker 3: anything to contribute? And that is an enormous thing. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it can be you know, sometimes it can be a
Speaker 3: little bit awkward, but it's a very important thing because
Speaker 3: you're just losing out on people who have really really
Speaker 3: valuable ideas and contributions and plans. And if you just
Speaker 3: let the same three people give speeches, you can't get
Speaker 3: to the stuff that's actually useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, if you've been a teacher or in any
Speaker 2: way what you know, you probably have had you have
Speaker 2: this skill. You might not consider it a skill, but
Speaker 2: even if you've been a TA in grad school something
Speaker 2: like that, you probably know how to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I'm gonna put all of this together one briefly,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to run through basically how we started
Speaker 3: the first organizing project I ever day, which was a
Speaker 3: tenants union in Chicago. Okay, so this is based on
Speaker 3: my memory. It's been a long time since I did this,
Speaker 3: but my basic memory of what we did was. Okay,
Speaker 3: so one of my friends is an experienced organizer. I
Speaker 3: was like a tiny baby, right this this was my
Speaker 3: first offline organizing project ever. Right, I had no idea
Speaker 3: what was doing. I thought I was a guy, which
Speaker 3: like that, that's how much of a fiasco, Like little
Speaker 3: tidy baby bea who doesn't know anything? This was, you know.
Speaker 3: And so my friend talked to some people that he knew,
Speaker 3: and he knew that I, you know, I was interested
Speaker 3: in getting involved in tennis organizing, and we we like
Speaker 3: went to a cafe and we sat down and we
Speaker 3: ate and we just talked about what we wanted to do,
Speaker 3: what our plans were, what things we needed to do
Speaker 3: to get this organization set up. We talked about ideological
Speaker 3: stuff and that's actually is something that's important too. Is
Speaker 3: part of organizing is getting people to think intentionally about
Speaker 3: their actions and think politically about their actions. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: that's something that's very useful. You also have to make
Speaker 3: sure that you're not forming a book club, Like book
Speaker 3: clubs are fine, but you need to make sure you're
Speaker 3: organizing group. If you try to do a thing, has
Speaker 3: it just become a book club. But that's you know
Speaker 3: that that was something that was very useful to us.
Speaker 3: And you know, we started making a plan. And our
Speaker 3: plan was, Okay, we made a bunch of flyers and
Speaker 3: then we went out and I did this and I
Speaker 3: walked around through a bunch of streets and put them
Speaker 3: a light post or whatever, and then we put them
Speaker 3: like we hung them up in the buildings of tenants,
Speaker 3: you know, because you can just like walk up the
Speaker 3: stairs right and need to put them on the walls.
Speaker 3: And you know, we had this flyer, this firehead information.
Speaker 3: This flyer said, Okay, we're starting a tenant's union. If
Speaker 3: you have tenant, if you have issues with your landlord,
Speaker 3: or you want to talk about tenants stuff like, come
Speaker 3: here at this time. We had an email you can
Speaker 3: send us stuff. We had a phone number that you
Speaker 3: could call. Yeah, you know, and so okay, and so
Speaker 3: parallel to this, we like, I forget if it was
Speaker 3: a church or if it was some building, some center
Speaker 3: or something. We booked a room. We were kind of
Speaker 3: lucky in that we had like local press people nice
Speaker 3: who we sort of knew. And this is another useful
Speaker 3: like if knowing a journalist can be a very useful skill,
Speaker 3: because one way to get a project off the ground,
Speaker 3: if you're trying to get to a bunch of people,
Speaker 3: is by finding a journalist who is willing to cover it.
Speaker 3: Because you know, we're we're finding founding like the first
Speaker 3: tenants union in this place, right yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: so we had media coverage and we got kind of
Speaker 3: screwed when this event eventually came together because there was
Speaker 3: like three feet of snow that night, but people still came,
Speaker 3: like people still came in the blizzard, Like a lot
Speaker 3: of people showed up for this. What are things that
Speaker 3: we do? We also, like, you know, we just we
Speaker 3: just started talking to people, right, We started talking to
Speaker 3: tenets about their problems. We just you know, we talked
Speaker 3: to our friends. We talked to the people they knew.
Speaker 3: We ended up talking to someone you know, And this
Speaker 3: is the thing that just happens as a spreads by
Speaker 3: word of mouth, right, people start contacting you. We ran
Speaker 3: into a really long time tenants organizer in the city
Speaker 3: who had a bunch of incredible stories about how our
Speaker 3: corrupt politicians got their jobs by portraying the old tenants organizers, right.
Speaker 3: And like I said, the thing is, you know, another
Speaker 3: thing that happens in projects is you'll you'll sometimes you'll
Speaker 3: just you'll just pick up someone who's you know, has
Speaker 3: been doing this since like the sixties. Yeah, and it
Speaker 3: rules because they have a wealth of experience and they
Speaker 3: want to do stuff. We plotted out what we were
Speaker 3: going to do at our meeting. You know, we were
Speaker 3: going to do some political education. We were gonna have
Speaker 3: a bunch of time for people to talk about stuff,
Speaker 3: and we were gonna, you know, get get people to
Speaker 3: understand what we were doing, how they could start organizing.
Speaker 3: And then we did it, and I unfortunately don't remember
Speaker 3: much of what we talked about because I was off
Speaker 3: in another room taking care of a bunch of people's kids,
Speaker 3: which was very nice, but I don't remember what we
Speaker 3: talked about. But like that, you know, but like you
Speaker 3: all of those things, right, all of those steps from
Speaker 3: the start of you get five of your friends to
Speaker 3: go eat dinner and you talk about what you want
Speaker 3: to do through someone makes a flyer in like Microsoft
Speaker 3: or whatever you make it in like PowerPoint, and that's publisher.
Speaker 3: What's what's what's the one I'm blinking, I haven't used
Speaker 3: it in so long? The one you make greeting cards
Speaker 3: in I really program and I've forgotten it is you
Speaker 3: see this to make Christmas cards? But like, you know, okay,
Speaker 3: so we made a flyer and then we walked around
Speaker 3: and put the flyers up and we made it. We
Speaker 3: made an email, you know, we got a space together,
Speaker 3: we figured out what we wanted to do, and then
Speaker 3: we did it, and you know, and there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of organizing from there, right, But like we had started
Speaker 3: a thing, and you can do every single one of
Speaker 3: those steps. And if you can't personally do one of
Speaker 3: those steps, you can think of a person who you know,
Speaker 3: who you can bring in to help you do these things.
Speaker 3: Because organizing you already fucking know how to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just have to go out there and do it.
Speaker 2: Yep, you can have faith.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this has been It can happen here? Go organize.
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